The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Niger Delta, Boko Haram amnesty

    If anything, the recent visit of President Goodluck Jonathan to Borno and Yobe states has raised the propriety of amnesty for the Boko Haram religious sect to the vortex of public opinion. This renewed interest followed the outright rejection of that proposition by Jonathan as earlier canvassed by the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar and corroborated by Borno elders at a town hall meeting with the president.

    Jonathan had anchored his objection to amnesty on the ground that promoters of the sect are ghosts and it was inappropriate to grant amnesty to an under cover group. But many, including the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah had charged that Boko Haram was no longer faceless as they had been addressing press conferences and issuing statements. As if to give credence to this, the splinter group led by Sheikh Muhammed ibn Abdulaziz came up with a press statement repudiating the claim that they are ghosts.

    Abdulaziz could not understand why anybody should still take them as ghosts when they have been holding meetings with the Borno State government and a delegation of the northern governors’ forum. They also faulted a recent statement in which their overall leader Sheikh Shekau was said to have disowned their group. They claimed that those statements were not made by Shekau and that he was the one that promoted Abdulaziz to his current commanding position.

    But this claim goes with a credibility overhang given that Shekau is the only fit and proper person to enter a refutal if he is not a ghost himself. Abdulaziz cannot be speaking for himself and Shekau at the same time and wants to be taken seriously. If Shekau really exists and Abdulaziz has the kind of links he bandies with him, the minimum expectation would have been to get him corroborate or refute those claims. The inability to do that casts serious slur on his credibility and leaves us with no other choice but to believe that the voice we heard was that of Shekau. And this also puts to serious question the credibility of the ceasefire agreement he claimed to have entered into with the Borno State government. It is an uncanny irony that the effect of that ceasefire agreement is yet to be felt in Borno where he claims to be holding forth.

    Beyond these, is the rational for according Boko Haram amnesty in the same fashion it was extended to the Niger Delta militants? Can we possible marry the two groups by way of solving both problems through a common approach? In other words, is amnesty the therapeutic response to Boko Haram insurgency in the same manner it was applied to militancy in the Niger Delta? What of the philosophical and ideological motivations of the two groups? Do they have things in common or prompted by disparate and contradictory desires or belief systems? There is also a territorial dimension to both agitations. These are the issues that will come handy in resolving the controversy arising from the prescription of amnesty as the necessary and sufficient condition for taming the Boko Haram insurgency.

    For one, there are marked differences both in ideological and philosophical motivations of the two groups. And as the spokesman for the presidency, Doyin Okupe pointed out Niger Delta militants were piqued by the despoliation of their environment by oil producing companies and wanted greater share in nature-endowed resources at their backyard. They wanted the oil companies and government to be more caring and responsive to the sensibilities of the oil bearing states. They took up arms quite alright. But their target was largely expatriates working for the oil companies whom they saw as oppressors. At any rate, agitations for fair share in resources accruing from oil by host communities is as old as the Nigerian nation. Curiously however, the government did not deem it fit to attend to the peculiar circumstances of oil bearing communities despite the stupendous wealth accruing from that resource and the squandering of same by sundry buccaneers masquerading as leaders.

    For another, the ideological motivation of Boko Haram is essentially faith-based. They want non Muslims in the north to leave; the president to convert from Christianity to Islamic religion and the conversion of the country to an Islamic state. Above all, they are abhorrent of anything that is western including education. It is ostensibly for these reasons they have unleashed mayhem unto the country leaving in its trail the killing of innocent souls through indiscriminate attacks on Christian places of worship.

    When therefore the Sultan and some northern leaders came up with the idea of amnesty, the first set of resentment to it came from Christians in the north that bear the brunt of these unprovoked and senseless attacks. They could not comprehend why criminals should be rewarded for the reckless destructions that have trailed their activities. They found it hard to understand why arrested criminals should be released in the name of dubious amnesty without accounting for their misdeeds.

    The fate of families sent to their early grave without justification was another issue that polluted the air at the mere suggestion of amnesty for the insurgents. And given our experience with amnesty for the Niger Delta militants, acceptance of such a proposal would see the government rehabilitating the insurgents in the same fashion it did to the militants. In effect, they will not only get away with the heinous crimes they committed but rewarded handsomely for their acts of lawlessness. To worsen matters, those proposing amnesty for the sect were amazingly silent on the fate of Christians in the north who suffered heavily from their acts of lawlessness. This fact went a long way to expose the hypocrisy in that prescription. It is not surprising therefore that the idea could not fly on account of inherent contradictions.

    There are contradictions in constructing parity between Boko Haram and Niger Delta militancy as they differ very substantially both in ideology and doctrinaire motivation. And whereas the demands of the militants could easily lend themselves to easy handle, that much cannot be said for Boko Haram.

    Granting them amnesty when they have not repudiated their ideological leitmotif is nothing but a recipe for anarchy. Moreover, Boko Haram has an international dimension. It has been linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalists in the Maghreb. Their escapades extend beyond the shores of this country as shown by their taking into captivity of a French family in Cameroon in protest against Nigeria’s participation in Mali. We are also privy to how a faction of the sect killed some Nigerian soldiers preparing for the Mali assignment. The sect is not only concerned with events in this country but outside of it. There is no guarantee that issues concerning their associates outside our shores, will not provide the ground for them to strike again. So it is not only a Nigerian but global problem.

    Being an arm of an international terror group, amnesty as a solution to terrorism is bound to fail. There is for now, no record of that as a panacea for taming the global phenomenon. Insisting on amnesty for the sect also conveys the impression that there may be more to their activities than ordinarily meets the eyes. The impression is festering that the whole idea is to get the government commit its resources to rehabilitating insurgents and sundry criminals the same way militants were treated.

    But the challenges facing amnesty in Niger Delta even questions the propriety of that exercise again. Today, it has become a platform for sundry characters and criminals to make dubious financial claims on the government. The situation is bound to worsen if Boko Haram is accorded that undeserving treatment. Then, the gesture would have emboldened criminals and evil minded groups to take up arms against the government.

  • From spirit to flesh

    From spirit to flesh

    In different ways, the resignation of the old pope and the philosophy of the new one indicate one thing: that popes are human after all. They may bubble with the spirit from on high, but they are specimens of blood and flesh. Even Jesus, when he sojourned as the inaugural martyr of the spirit, showed in his last days that the tug of the flesh was powerful. Hence he wept and even begged God to let the cup pass.

    When Pope Benedict XVI relinquished his high office, I told myself that the Bishop of Rome had revealed a quality that the church had veiled for centuries: the fallibility of the supreme pontiff. The Roman Catholic Church after the reign of Pope Pius XII had established as a dogmatic reality what it termed the infallibility of the pope. The pope could do no wrong in matters of faith and virtue.

    Infallibility of the spirit did not imply the infallibility of the flesh, but a pope that is infallible of spirit should have fought to the finish in the battle of the waning of the flesh. He would not have capitulated to the prompting of the flesh by worrying about its effect on his work. By resigning, the flesh had a say.

    For the new pope, it appears to be a triumph of the poor in an age of material obsession. This also takes away from the perception of the papacy as out of touch with the commoner, a papacy of the people. Hence, the new pope named himself after the saint that some psychologists and historians described as the saintly fool, a man who emphasised the dignity of poverty over the frills and grandeur of the high throne of the priest.

    Both pontiffs have shown that the pope is one of us. I see both developments as good not only for the Catholic Church but also for the human race. Pope Benedict’s resignation has been located in the tumultuous eight years of reign, especially the eruption of sex scandals that unveiled the hypocrisy of priests and questioned the moral authority of the church. But that oversimplifies it. The papacy is coming to terms with an age of rampant materialism and invasive agnostics. In the past century, we have witnessed burgeoning waves of technology, the rise of individual ethos, the collapse of traditional authority, the flowering of prosperity and the retreat of the fear of God. When German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed God is dead, he did not mean that He existed in the first place, but that humans killed him in their hearts where He was born. Blasphemy has become one of the truculent undercurrents of the modern age. It is because of these factors that the West has called for a doctrinal revolution in the church, including the ordination of women as priests, the acceptance of homosexuals and gay marriage, the abolition of priestly celibacy among others.

    The calls for these doctrinal reversals do not take cognizance of the church as a spiritual, and not human institution. If Christianity did not have a text, it would lie in the hand of the priest to say what is right. Christianity is nothing without the Bible. But those who call, for instance, for the acceptance of homosexuals want the church to discard the Bible. If you do that, you open the gate to a flood of permissive reversals and, in the end, Christianity becomes a church, not of Christ, but of the human. That is why some critics do not accept the concept of papal infallibility because it places too much power in one man. As for the ordination of women, scripture frowns at it, and even Jesus did not pick a woman either as an apostle or among the 70 disciples to teach. Many women condemn St. Paul who firmly condemned it in his epistles to Timothy and Corinthians. We cannot cherry-pick scripture. We cannot choose what we want to be God’s will.

    But women were accepted to play leading roles in the Bible only when men failed, including when Mary Magdalene visited Jesus’ grave, when Deborah judged Israel and when Miriam played a leader. That can be a Biblical justification for women to be priests today since the Catholic Church admits to shortage of priests when some women can play the role. It will be a capitulation of men as indicated in the book of Isaiah who condemned men who allowed women to dominate them.

    But in the case of celibacy, the church has no Bible support. It is a convention, not an instruction. Even Paul, a Bishop who never married, urged the Bishop to be “blameless, the husband of one wife.”

    The resignation of Benedict represented his inability to persist in this battle, and he has surrendered it to Pope Francis. By resigning, we see the pope come down from the lofty pedestal of the spirit, where he alone had the authority to speak to God more than any other. He has become one of us.

    We should not forget that even St. Peter from whom the Pope allegedly springs was not perfect either before the death of Jesus or after the day of Pentecost. He was human. He died in the battle of the spirit. He is regarded by the Catholics as the superior apostle, but Paul, who rebuked him once, did not accept it as he said he was not behind any of the apostles.

    Those who praise Pope Benedict for not hanging on to office only look at the institution as a human one. In democracies, we expect leaders to step down.

    If Peter was human in spite of his spiritual office, how did we expect the pope not to be the same? The former Pope only made the office connect with the common man by accepting that flesh matters even if the spirit is supposed to be superior. By resigning and becoming pilgrim, he has shown that you can be spiritual and human, and the pope’s humanity makes it easier for the flock to see the spiritual as attainable.

    The ascent of Pope Francis reinforces the point as he wants the papacy to remember the poor. I particularly love this as the Pentecostal variety has tended to overplay the material. In Nigeria, pastors have not soared to God until they ride, not on the chariot of the Lord, but on private jets.

    This is in a society where the poor beg for funds to afford danfo to the same churches. If the idea is to evangelise, why not buy helicopters that can take them to the poor in the villages and creeks, where their jets and limousines are forbidden. They also use the money of the poor to set up schools for the rich.

    Pope Francis’ down-to-earth theology reminds one of the history of the papacy when it was simple. But Pope Benedict’s resignation shows a time when the papacy was human. At one time, the pope, to quote my history teacher Professor Femi Omosini, “became extremely worldly. He wined and dined with secular authorities and bargained openly for the expansion of the papal territory.” One of the notorious was Pope Alexander VI who ran a papacy like a mafia don and was said to be “flagrantly addicted to wenching.”

    The reason the church came up with a number of austere rules was to revamp it as a moral and spiritual force. The celibacy of the priest was to stamp a moral grandeur; the Petrine succession to give it the backing of scripture; and infallibility to invest it with a power that transcends all things earthly. Both Benedict and Francis are beneficiaries of these rules.

    Those were extreme. It is high time the papacy recognised that all doctrines be based on scripture and elevate the word above the world while not leaving it behind.

  • Princes of oil

    Princes of oil

    I am sure not a few Nigerians flew into the fury of the righteous when the roll call became news. We heard the names of Nderibe, Dantata, Atiku Abubakar, Folawiyo…these are the princes of oil.

    But if you examined their minds deeply enough, many Nigerians would know that they were lying who cried foul. They were guilty of the perfidy of hypocrites. They might have had a moment or two of envious resentment against the princes. It might have lingered or flashed across their minds in the form of these words: “why was I not in their shoes? What would I not do with all that bloc of oil!” They might have dreamed of the life of the big, bright Babylon, the palaces, the cars, the decadence of leisure, the trips of the fantastic as well as the choice toy of the well-heeled among us, both secular and pastoral: the private jet.

    We all know that the fabulously rich in our midst are casino merchants, those who reap bountifully where they did not sow. They are the Jay Gatsbys of our generations, those who never sweat except from the exalted exertions on golf courses or the whirligig of the dance floor. We have never as a people condemned unearned showiness. Rather we praise them at parties, honour them with traditional titles, give them national honours, devote monuments to them.

    If 83 percent of the oil blocs go to the North, why is Boko Haram festering in that same region? Unlike in saner societies, the Nigerian elites have not factored any sense of responsibility into their acquisition of wealth. Our primitive rich do not know value of money. For them, wealth is to donate token buses to church or throw huge parties to the poor on Friday afternoons. But wealth is responsibility.

    What writers, columnists and sundry commentators have said over the news is serious, if predictable: that the North should keep quiet over the Niger Delta states’ allocations. They own the oil, but others enjoy it. Others who enjoy are those who say they don’t have it. But that argument, true as it is, undermines the greater point. The northern wealthy are feudalists in the age of capitalism. They see wealth as their royal rights, and the people as their subjects who should be grateful to God for any crumbs delivered on Friday afternoons. What is also forgotten in the narrative is that even the oil firms have not favoured the indigenes in jobs such as engineers, salesmen, managers, accountants, etc. Other ethnic groups, from both the Southwest and Southeast, dominate those jobs in spite of qualified people from those states. The so-called local content policy is more mantra than practice.

    If we want to understand the story of Nigeria, we need to understand the story of oil. Its malignancy is pervasive. It has dazed us into all the vices known to corruption. In the oil states, those who are wealthy are errand boys, they do the dirty jobs, like bunkering, stealing of pipes and equipment, etc. These same errand boys become the oppressors of their own people. They corral weapons, form cults of violence, flaunt money in obscene defiance and entrench a culture of indolence. Oil does not only attract oppressors from outside but recruits servile tyrants within.

    Have we asked why the issue of amnesty was “resolved” in the Niger Delta without the question of oil bloc allocation ever raised as a matter of economic justice in the region? Why did the bloc go to individuals and not firms according to best practices everywhere? Why did the Niger Delta not get its share? We did not address it because the amnesty, at bottom, was not about economic justice but about appeasing a cult of greedy and disenfranchised youths. We wanted to let the oil flow for the rich.

    The news also throws up the question of capitalism as an ideology of the rich for the many. The recent crisis of the ideology has made some to sound the death knell of capitalism. The crisis of Spain, Portugal and Greece and the struggles of the epicenter of dollar have shown how a few greedy individuals can entrap everyone else. But we cannot forget that a few men like Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, whose doings birthed what historians call the Gilded Age, triggered capitalism as we knew it in the 20th century. In spite of their excesses, the same society gave us the progressive era, where they were checked with several legislations including anti-trust laws. It was capitalism checking itself. The present age was birthed by the technological and mercantile geniuses, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. What these men did was to show that they could conquer the world. What the system showed was that law could chasten them.

    The wash of derivatives and other insanities drove the system to excess and ruined everyone’s pocket. But we can say that this was a society that worked with money.

    Ours is a society that does not understand that wealth is not for consumption alone but to empower the society for more wealth. In his book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorsten Veblen showed that wealth can be used to build a life of leisure that can percolate from the top to the bottom. Harvard Professor John K. Galbraith demonstrated that if we don’t handle wealth properly we will have an affluent society but a mass of the poor with decaying social services and infrastructure.

    That is the society we have today in Nigeria. We have affluent persons with the poor everywhere. That is why the irony is potent that where we have the most oil blocs have thrown up the most vicious threat to the society.

    The death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has raised question on what to do with a nation’s oil wealth. He is a man as god today to his people. He redistributed for most part the oil wealth and reduced poverty by about 20 percent, with free education and health care, among other social services. The point has been raised whether that policy is sustainable where the money is distributed rather than used to stimulate more wealth as their Latin American counterpart Lula in Brazil did with capitalism. Lula brought 30 million people out of poverty.

    Either system is better than ours where a few people acquire the wealth primitively and flaunt them as though they are the blessed of the Lord. It is oil that brought Boko Haram. Before oil, the North developed thriving agricultural and textile cultures. The Niger Delta had palm produce, groundnuts, fishes, lumber, etc. That is the wisdom in the Delta beyond Oil programme initiated by Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.

    Oil suffocated all. That is why the princes eye the gold of the creeks. Without oil or its abysmal use, the North would be quiescent with prosperity.

    In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of two Cities, a big vat of wine cracks open by accident on a French street and everyone helps themselves with cups, hands, even handkerchiefs, and all are merry, holding hands and dancing. When it is finished and the effect dissipates, everyone remembers what they are doing before the revelry. The farmer to farm, seamstress to shop, butcher to the meat, all to their default suffering in pre-revolutionary France.

    Maybe we are waiting for our oil wells to dry up before our liberation from the dazzle.

  • A fearful Jonathan

    A fearful Jonathan

    Then Jonathan went to Maiduguri, he did exactly what I predicted he would do. Rather than show love, he extracted debt. And without grace or finesse. But from the rhetoric of the urbane Governor Kashim Shettima, Borno will not go to the bank for Jonathan. Jonathan imposed an army of occupation instead of an embrace. He closed down the city. But it was because he was afraid. Like a snake, he masked it with braggadocio, dripping with venom. He said he would not negotiate with ghosts. So if they are ghosts, it means he cannot find the militants. Of course, he has surrendered. He should employ exorcists and withdraw the soldiers. He did not learn anything from the 11 wise men who visited before him. Of course, the governors were not John the Baptist because Jonathan is not their anointed one.

  • Metuh’s misguided claims

    The national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh stirred the hornet’s nest last week when he bandied curious claims on the quest by the South-east for the presidency.

    Hear him “I am not aware that the Igbo are calling for the presidency; you can quote me on that. I noticed that one or two disgruntled persons are saying it. Nigeria has gone beyond the equation of where a person (presidential candidate) comes from”.

    He further went wild by asserting that the most important credential for that office is the capacity and capability of whosoever is leading Nigeria and not about where he comes from.

    Metuh is entitled to his personal views no matter how infantile they may sound. But since he purported to be speaking on behalf of the Igbo race, it will be inappropriate to allow him get away with the irreconcilable issues thrown up by his claims.

    For one, his position on the subject matter is not only vacuous and irresponsible but totally at variance with subsisting realities in the country.

    Besides, it is replete with tenuous assumptions that cannot stand the weight of evidence to the contrary.

    The first flaw is the propriety of arrogating to himself the conscience of the Igbo and the barometer with which their political temperament can be gauged. He neither possesses such attributes nor is he verily in a position to speak for the race. Apparently, he has been so absorbed by the little trappings of the office of the publicity secretary of a ruling party to the point of now assuming that South-east leadership is all about PDP. It is not so.

    At best, he can partly speak for the PDP which has not hidden the fact that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock given the high level subterfuge to have Jonathan run for another term.

    But he could as well have gone ahead to canvass support for his boss than denigrate his people as lacking in the credentials for the presidency. That is the reading of his claim that the most important credential for the office is the capacity and capability of the leader and not where he comes from. Its logical inference is that the South-east does not have people with such credentials. The other is that if there are agitations from that zone, they are not based on these leadership credentials but solely on where the person comes from. Nothing can be as asinine as this postulation. He is not aware there are demands from his geo-political zone to ascend the highest political office in the country except from one or two disgruntled persons. By his warped calculations, the views of these ‘disgruntled persons’ cannot represent the true feelings of the zone. But he should have gone further to let us into the grounds for the disenchantment of these people.

    By the way, Metuh should tell us the ingredients of this capacity and capability to occupy that office. We also need to be educated on the astonishing leadership qualities the late Yar’Adua or Jonathan had that qualified them for the presidency that are not abundant in other parts of the country.

    Perhaps also, we require further clarification on the circumstances that threw up Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan into that office. Or why the much touted second term ambition of Jonathan is trying to tear the country apart if where ones comes from is irrelevant in the political matrix of this country?

    In effect, if the prescriptions by Metuh were the factors that led to the emergence of Jonathan as president, why are such qualities no longer relevant today? Why is the north up in arms against his second term bid? And who stands to benefit in the event Jonathan is intimidated from running?

    These posers expose the insincerity in Metuh’s position and cast him as one hired to work against the overall interest of his people. This strategy is not new. It has been the bane of the South-east. It is for the same selfish prompting that he called Rochas Okorocha a regional player who should be ignored at the national level for his scathing remarks on the performance of the PDP in the zone.

    Metuh displayed unmitigated arrogance when he boasted he had directed his South-east publicity secretary to reply Okorocha since his office was too big to do that. And true to type, that reaction came from the vice national chairman of the party, Col. Austin Akobundu (rtd) who ended up making a mockery of himself and the man who prompted him on some of the issues he raised. Akobundu queried the performance rating of Okorocha and the decision of the All Progressives Congress APC to hold their meeting in Borno instead of Imo, asserting that it showed they were not comfortable with Imo. This is to say the least childish given the self evident reasons by the APC leaders for the visit to Borno, the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency. It was a personal risk the governors took to show sympathy to people of the state who have suffered direly on account of the security challenge. Is it not a twist of fate that Jonathan mustered the courage to visit Borno and Yobe states a few days after governors of the opposition were there? Yet someone speaking for the same president was denigrating the governors for that well thought out visit which exposed the tepid handling of sensitive national issues characteristic of the PDP government. Instead of taking the blame for lacking in the right ideas, Doyin Okupe had the effrontery to accuse the governors of opportunism for holding their meeting in Maiduguri after their maiden outing in Lagos.

    If there is any measure of opportunism and desperation in these visits, it is coming from the presidency which hurriedly amassed the entire security arsenal to ensure the safety of Jonathan. Such show of force contrasted sharply with the prevailing atmosphere when the governors visited.

    But then, the opposition governors were not expected to have been there before now, given that they came together just a few weeks back. The presidency should squarely lick its wounds for thoughtlessness on the matter rather than seek imaginary enemies in the private or public engagements of the opposition governors.

    Beyond this however, Metuh is on his own on the right of the South-east to canvass support for the presidency come 2015. It is a right which neither his PDP nor any other body can abridge or circumscribe. The reality on the ground today is that where one comes from is still the determining factor for choosing the president of this country. And until this primordial calculation changes, the Igbo owe nobody any apology to seek their turn. It is for the same reason that the South-south people are hell bent on Jonathan running. That is also the reason the north wants it by all means. That was the raison d’etre for Obasanjo’s ascendancy to that post in 1999. Metuh must be called to order for attempting to denigrate the Igbo race. At any rate, what concessions has he got for his largely marginalized and impoverished people to want them give up that inalienable right for now?

  • The visit

    The visit

    So far, it is the photo of the year. Even if you give allowance for partisan posturing, you cannot miss out on the significance of its poetry. The headlines could come in many incarnations. Eleven governors visit Borno State. Scratch that. Eleven Governors walk the streets of Maiduguri. Scratch that. Eleven Governors beat Jonathan to visit Maiduguri. Scratch that again. Eleven Governors defy…

    They did not dab across a street in the hurried frenzy of a rabbit. They did not don shorts and tee shirts. No bullet-proof clothing as far as the eye could see. They filled the street, apparently wide enough to take a football team and then some.

    They waved their hands at the inhabitants, most of them, even if you were as tall as the Governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, (SAN) in his cap and buba and sokoto, which was the most anti-athletic attire to don if you wanted to dodge a bomb. Or a small man like Adams Oshiomhole, or a smallish man like the grassroots governor, Rauf Aregbesola, whose bouncy physique undermines his fiftyish years. Or the cerebral Kayode Fayemi who knows a thing or two about military strategy and the vulnerabilities of the powerful.

    It was billed as the meeting of the governors of the All Progressives Congress, but it was easy to play the coward. They could have burdened the streets with the braggadocio of power: armoured vehicles rumbling, sirens fluting arrogantly, military men in heady and defiant gear, guns threatening, the governors themselves nestled in a bubble and invisible from outside.

    That was exactly the picture of the last visit from the number two citizen, Namadi Sambo. All markets were shut down, schools ironically fulfilled the Boko Haram agenda by shutting down, an unofficial curfew and restriction of movement darkened the city of Maiduguri. It was shut down not by the terror of the Islamic group but by the presence of the purveyor of peace and conciliation, the government from Abuja.

    But unlike that dreary scene, these governors walked the streets, and they also visited a girls’ school and sat with the pupils. Is that not what the people had wanted from their president since he ascended the throne?

    Yet the reports had it that the Presidency and the SSS did not want the governors to go. The reason: a report that the new terror group known as ANSARU was going to attack them. The directors of SSS in the states visited the governors and asked them to refrain from the visit. But the governors understood that leadership is not about fear, but about action.

    They acted like Charles de Gaulle who would not shrink from a public ceremony because security reports hinted that his assassination was afoot. As Frederick Forsythe recorded it, the French leader defied and triumphed over the day of the jackal.

    So, they flew their planes and left their homes to what many now see as a war zone. Their host, the debonair Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno State, had thrived like Daniel Webster’s black birds through the cumulus clouds of Boko Haram.

    The Jonathan SSS did not want the governors to go. They wanted to unitarise fear. If they had disdain for true federalism, they had to impose fear on the governors too. The governors federalised courage and good sense by defying a self-serving report.

    A President who cannot hold ceremonies of state outside the Presidential Villa wants to corrode the states with the spirit of cowardice. But it was after the governors’ visit that the Presidency has now let it out that the President will visit Maiduguri. So what is the purpose of the President’s visit? Is it to show that he loves them? If it is love, after how many markets razed and reborn, churches blown apart and restored, lives lost without hope of resurrection at least in this life? After how many mosques and police stations atrophied and schools out of joint? Did he not flee to Brazil once when one of the northern cities burned?

    Who does not think that Jonathan’s visit is about politics and not empathy? He wants to win enough northern states to cancel out his expected losses in the Southwest. He wants, as it is speculated, to endear himself to enough northern votes so he can defuse the new switch of politics: APC.

    When he does visit, will it be a visit, or an occupation? Will it be like Napoleon’s army in Moscow? The French general expected a royal entry like Jesus but found a deserted wilderness. Will he follow the magnificence of the governors and wave his presidential hands, not to an arranged crowd, but to a street of habitués and to a market? Will he pay visits that will show that he came out of love and not out of cynicism?

    Even when he visits places like Lagos, the city capsizes with traffic bedlam and schedules fall into anarchy. The day belongs only to the President and the city dwellers sacrifice the day like a lamb.

    Governor Shettima does not have the power that President Jonathan possesses over Maiduguri. As the commander in chief, he deployed the soldiers and the police that have kept charge. Governor Shettima is the chief security officer of the state, but neither the head of the army nor the commissioner of police reports to him. Yet, he has the courage to work the schools, do the roads, preserve the hospitals where the slain go to like a ritual.

    Yet, the President who controls all of the armed forces has not even sniffed the region to buoy the spirits of the men in uniform. The Borno and Yobe examples are a grand mockery of our federal system. President Jonathan has made this mockery even more emphatic. Was President Bush not flayed for not visiting Katrina when the flood ravaged Louisiana? Did Obama’s fortune not change because of prompt responses to Hurricane Sandy? Did both men not endear their hearts to their countrymen and women by their visits to Iraq and Afghanistan?

    Yet he preens when it is to corral PDP governors to Aso Rock and bully them with video clips and hectoring menaces about how to oust Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum.

    Why is it taking the President now to visit, or could it be that he has been planning this for a long time? Maybe the schedulers are to blame. You laugh. How far is Yobe from Abuja when Governor Ibikunle Amosun could fly a world away from Abeokuta?

    When prose stylist Joseph Conrad writes about a long journey, he chooses a long short story titled Youth, and it is about a 20-year-old who steers a ship from England to Bangkok. The journey takes long, but it is not for lack of trying. T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi valorises an epic walk over a long distance by those who know where they are going and won’t yield.

    The people who live in Maiduguri, according to the testimony of one of the governors, have too much love of life to allow the rite of violence to refrain them from the routine glories of their days. They eat, love, play and work daily. That was what the eleven governors affirmed from the picture.

    But if the president is visiting now, when politics has suffused the polity, his move has lost all innocence. Where were you, Mister President, when they wanted your love?

    Like the play by Friedrich Durrenmatt called The Visit, the President’s sojourn to Maiduguri will come away as a move to extract a debt rather than exude a love. If the President wants to exalt his coming, he must play a high act that even his foes will call gracious. It must match, if not exceed, the act of the eleven governors.

    If not, he would be fulfilling the words of the inimitable Oscar Wilde, who wrote that “when one visits, it is for the purpose of wasting other people’s time.” Let his visit be a photo and not a photo op.

  • Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way

    Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way

    When recently former president Olusegun Obasanjo unleashed a tirade against President Goodluck Jonathan, I had observed in this column that Obasanjo has embarked on a journey which nobody dared when he held sway without severe repercussions. This conclusion was largely informed by his strong aversion to and intolerance of criticisms especially from public functionaries.

    Then, you dare criticize or challenge his influence at the risk of having all manner of subterfuge pulled against you including but not limited to unleashing the all powerful EFCC just to settle scores. And those who had the effrontery to nurse presidential ambition without his consent saw the rough side of him. Ask former Rivers state Governor Peter Odili how he had to chicken out of his presidential ambition at the last minute. And what happened to Audu Ogbeh the then national chairman of the PDP for attempting to assert his independence?

    Such was the high level of intolerance of that era that many had likened him to a dictator masquerading as a democrat. Then, the fear of Obasanjo was the beginning of wisdom.

    It was therefore curious reading Obasanjo’s criticisms of Jonathan on sundry issues and even leading a coalition of the PDP governors and the party’s National Working Committee against him. We saw how the party’s decision in the Adamawa crisis was upturned to spite the president and the party’s national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. We saw how the election of the chairman, Board of Trustees of the party was severally stalled until just last week when Jonathan woke up from the slumber and tried to rescue himself from an apparent loss of control of the party. Obasanjo was said to be the unseen hand in all those events to whittle down the powers of Jonathan.

    All these tended to portray the picture of a weak president or one who was bereft of the right ideas on how to confront the mounting challenges increasingly eroding the credibility of his regime. Questions were raised as to why in and out of government, Obasanjo still remained the dominant character shaping the course of events. This became more puzzling given that even when he is known to have fallen out of favour with the government, Jonathan did not seem to have a handle on him.

    Not unexpectedly, the scenario began to raise some possibilities in the minds of discerning members of the public. Some of these were that perhaps, Jonathan was afraid of Obasanjo, his towering stature and background as an army general. The fact that he literally picked and installed him both as a vice president and in his present capacity, further created doubts as to whether Jonathan could possibly turn against his mentor. But all these doubts began to fizzle out last week with some actions initiated by the president to regain firm control of his party and the government and unambiguously reassert his capacity to bite. So it was when in a pre-determined meeting at the seat of government, a new body known as the PDP Governors Forum emerged with Akwa Ibom state Governor, Godswill Akpabio as chairman.

    Apparently buoyed by the success of that election, Akpabio was to announce soon after that the new outfit became imperative to enable them do away with the Judases in their midst. This was a veiled reference to some PDP governors known to be anti-Jonathan. Among them is Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers state who is also the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum NGF. Not only has he been very critical of the Jonathan administration, the move is part of the strategy to weaken the growing influence of the NGF which he leads and his loyalty to Obasanjo. It was for the same reason that election into that body was stalled with the government making frantic efforts to see to it that he does not return.

    Since then, Tukur has been telling whoever cared to hear that the PDP will field a consensus candidate for that post come May. That candidate can be any person but definitely not Amaechi. It is also very instructive that Akpabio emerged from the South-south as the new leader of the PDP governors. That choice definitely forecloses the chances of Amaechi irrespective of the support he enjoys from some of his colleagues and governors of the opposition parties.

    With that, Jonathan has put at bay the overbearing influence Obasanjo on the NGF and PDP governors which in the last couple of months had generated tension and paralyzed activities in that party. We also saw how key personages loyal to Obasanjo have been edged out of their posts in the party including that of the national secretary.

    So who says Jonathan cannot bite? Even Jonathan with his seemingly gentle mien and non controversial disposition could also succumb to the prism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Jonathan, like Obasanjo his mentor has definitely succumbed to the corrupting influences of power and logic of self preservation. And in the matter of the election of the chairman of the Board of Trustees BOT of the party, he has also demonstrated very strikingly that he is no alien of the game of self survival.

    Loquacious Jerry Gana did the magic. His committee did the ‘wonderful’ job that enabled Jonathan to install Chief Tony Anenih as his choice BOT chairman without Obasanjo and haven did not fall. Obasanjo is no longer talking. He may have recoiled to his shells. Who says Jonathan has not succeeded in silencing him at least for now? The scenario playing out is akin to what Obasanjo did to Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku Abubakar when he was in power. Obasanjo may have after all, fallen victim of the monsters he created during his autocratic regime. It is nemesis. That is the danger in playing god with temporary power. That is the folly of those who see power as an end unto itself rather than a means to approximate public good. That is the inherent dysfunction of creating personality cult around leaders instead of building self-sustaining institutions and structures. It is largely on account of these institutional weaknesses that very ambitious and self-serving leaders manipulate the rules to satisfy their selfish predilections. Africa is replete with such characters and Jonathan is not immune to the dire repercussions of such monsters.

    At the centre of the current manipulations by Jonathan is his desire to run for another term. Though he is constitutionally entitled to another term, the circumstance of his ascension to power and the realities of the power equation in the country are such that some shoulders would be ruffled if he runs. That was the purport of the reminder by the Niger state Governor Babangida Aliyu that he signed a single term pact with the governors before the 2011 elections.

    Events of the primaries of the PDP for that election, account for the escalation of insecurity in the country. The situation is bound to polarize with the current bickering in that party over the presidential ticket in 2015. Yet, Jonathan’s posters have once again appeared on the streets of Abuja. Tukur has said that he has a right to run. Other key officials like Kema Chikwe have equally been drumming up support for Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. Jonathan silence or ambivalence in the face of these weighty campaigns for him can be taken as acquiescence. And like his estranged godfather Obasanjo, he is set to uproot all obstacles to that ambition. How this will eventually work out and its larger repercussion for the polity is only a matter of time. But the future is loaded, very loaded indeed!

  • The bond of honour

    The bond of honour

    The evolving story of President Goodluck Jonathan’s one-term pact with governors invokes a critical signpost of the statesman: honour.

    Honour is not only a virtue, it is life. History has plied us with many men and women who have amplified this rare human light. Constitutions swear by, with it Mandela has gained immortality, Washington crafted the United States presidency on it, Jesus died for it. All other virtues – love, courage, loyalty, truth – find validation in the acts of honour.

    Honour dwarfs money, reinforces friendship, disdains consequences, affirms heroism. A love story slacks when it lacks honour. And it is because, against all odds, it is truth between partners that consummates all. In Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horsemen, the epic theme is the failure of honour at the last moment. Okonkwo, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, dies for the honour of his people, even if tragically the novelist propagates surrender.

    When the news of the pact broke, it conjured a recent absurdity: Dame Patience Jonathan’s banquet. She threw the party to celebrate her recovery from a terrible illness, which still remains nameless. The President and his crew of publicists denied that the woman was embroiled in so serious a situation. Just like the stories of the ailing governors who wrapped their medical narratives in a cloud, we knew what was going on and we did not know what was going on until we knew what was going on.

    But in the banquet last week Sunday we saw the extravagances: the extravagances of dances and choreography, the extravagances of flatteries, the extravagances of sartorial vanity and the extravagances of money. But the worst of the extravagances was lies. The same people, including the President, who said all was well or routine with the First Lady came to celebrate with her over the fact that all was not well before it became well. It was a banquet of lies because the basis of it was a lack of honour. Before the party we witnessed another extravagance: of curses. She poured woe on those who said she had died. It is not the sort of civility we expect from the first family.

    So, if the President could not be faithful to Nigerians in smaller matters such as telling the truth to the Nigerian people on his wife’s situation, why should the governors expect him to be faithful about a matter such as fulfilling a promise to abdicate an ambition to be president.

    Governor Babangida Aliyu is an ebullient man, whose dramatic flair in his public utterances is sometimes matched by a stunning candour. When he means it, he would say exactly what he means by saying exactly what he means. And for many in the media, the news blindsided us. How come no one had this scoop and the word was not out there to haunt Jonathan through his campaign and the early year of his Presidency?

    Was it that the governors had such infinite confidence in the man that he would not renege? Or was it naivety, losing the art to find his mind’s construction in his face? Maybe President Jonathan meant it before he did not mean it, especially after he settled to the epic pomp, grandeur and dizzy comfort of the throne? The aphrodisiac has taken root. The President’s spokesman, Ahmed Gulak, griped that Jonathan did not win Niger State. He implied that since the northern governors as “field commanders” did not capture the North for Jonathan, then the President owed no one any obligation, pact or no pact. Gulak has fallen into Jonathan’s moral gulag.

    The governors who sat – 20 in all – were probably lost in amnesia at the time. Two governors who were there confirmed to me that the meeting held, one of them told me how the President was almost moved to tears at the proceedings. But by December 2010, when the deal was allegedly brokered, Jonathan was pooh-poohing another pact of honour: zoning.

    Jonathan denied that such agreement existed. Constitutional maestros blindsided him by telling him that it was in his party constitution. He countered by appealing to his constitutional right. He had the right to run, but not the honour to step down. The same Jonathan swiveled back shamelessly to zoning in doling out positions. Why did the governors sign another pact when they knew all this?

    Jonathan’s men deny it, but when did honour matter in this Presidency? Even if there was no pact between the governors and the President, the President has not earned the right for us to believe him based on what that Presidency has turned itself to with its serial untruths.

    “It is not titles that honour men,” wrote Nicolo Machiavelli who knew a thing or two about opportunistic lying, “but men who honour titles.” The President and his men have not honoured the Presidency because what they said have not settled their differences with what they do. He has said many things about governance, about infrastructure, agriculture, education, but the chasm between reality and promise is a big gulf.

    Was it not the same President who said that he had no hand in the intrigues to oust former Bayelsa State Governor Timipre Sylva when the heat was on and all fingers pointed in his direction? But did he not come out in Yenagoa in his unforgettable stone-throwing speech to say that he was the one behind it because the ex-governor did not perform and singled out an uncompleted hotel as evidence?

    I don’t expect the President to say anything now about the so-called pact. Even if he signed it, he can still invoke, as in the case of zoning, his constitutional right to run. But it is a matter some have challenged in court, and the jury is still out. It is not a matter of law but of honour.

    It is an irony of juridical history that the law came into being to inspire and preserve the honour of men, yet men can hide under it to subvert honour. Hence the American essayist D. H. Thoreau said, “The law never made anyone a whit more just.” That was the frustration of law theorists like the eminent Ronald Dworkin who died recently. The author of Law’s Empire argued that moral principles were superior to all else in interpreting the law.

    The pressure to give up the transient comforts of the now often militates against the pursuit of honour. That is why gallantry among soldiers, the sacrifice of a family member, the desire to be a statesman and not a politician over lofty principles often fail in human societies. That is the challenge of our politics, not only in the PDP, but every party in the land. But Jonathan, as the man on top of it, has not shown examples.

    “I would prefer even to fail than to win by fraud,” wrote playwright Sophocles. When you fail for honour, you win for society. That is the challenge before Jonathan.

  • Lagos bomb: matters arising

    Lagos bomb: matters arising

    Given the way police authorities reacted to the bomb blast that killed a man and seriously injured another in Lagos, one had the initial urge to treat the incident as an isolated one that should not be blown out of proportion. This self-imposed caution was further dictated by the security challenges the nation is currently passing through. The fact that the explosion occurred under a seemingly innocuous bridge and did not take the shape of the terror attacks common in the northern parts of the country also combined to take the shine off that isolated but deadly bomb attack.

    But when my little son came back from school and asked “Daddy is it true that Boko Haram is coming to Lagos”, it dawned on me that the incident cannot possibly be played down no matter how hard one tries. My first reaction was that of surprise and then I asked what he meant by that. He told me he heard Boko Haram was coming and that they had already exploded a bomb that killed some people in Lagos. According to him, the rumour of the impending invasion of the sect was everywhere.

    It then struck me that there are issues the bomb blast at the FESTAC-Amuwo Odofin link bridge has brought to the front burner despite the efforts of the Lagos Commissioner of Police, Umar Manko to play it down. Initial reports that filtered quoted Manko to have attributed the blast to electrical fault.

    But when he visited the scene of the incident, he reversed himself and acknowledged the bomb even as he described it as a minor blast. He said “what happened here was a minor explosion. The improvised device that went off was not the type Nigerians were use to. It is the one common with torch battery”.

    It is apparent that the police chief wanted to disabuse the minds of the public from constructing parallels between this and Boko Haram attacks for fear of panicking. That is why he was quick to add that it is not the type we are used to. That also, is the reason he likened the device to the one common with torch battery.

    But whether torch battery or some other lesser contrivance, the device got the targets and dealt a death blow on them. It left horror in its trail such that the casualty figure could have been much higher were it detonated in a crowded area. This singular realization and the fact that it is the first of its kind since such attacks commenced in the north may have combined to spread the rumor that Boko Haram has infiltrated the state. Though the suspicion that it could be the handiwork of that religious sect is a very remote possibility, yet the incident bears positive correlation with the culture of violence introduced into the nation’s political landscape by the Boko Haram insurgents.

    For all one may wish to care, Improvised Explosive Devices IED’s have since been popularized by the insurgents such that it has sunk deep down the sub-conscious mind of the people. Frequent reports of improvised explosives hurled at the JTF, hidden along the road side and planted here and there, have combined to give the impression that bombs can easily be manufactured by whosoever cares.

    And in an impoverished society likes ours battling with myriads of social problems including high level criminality, the consequences could be very devastating. That is perhaps, the potent danger the incident has brought to the fore. That is the monster Boko Haram has unleashed unto this country. And since one monster begets another, it is not surprising that criminally-minded people will find it easy tool to eliminate opponents and settle personal scores. That is the real danger we are being made to face by virtue of that attack. Perhaps, the only bomb attack in Lagos before now was the one that killed veteran journalist Dele Giwa during the regime of Babangida. Though the nation did not imbibe the culture of letter bombs which that incident tried to introduce, there is nothing to give comfort that the use of improvised bombs for sundry devious objectives will not fester. That is the real danger now confronting us all.

    If our recent experiences are anything to go by, then we are in for another trouble. That was how kidnapping started in a very small scale involving the taking into hostage of foreign oil workers for ransom. It soon blossomed to an all-comers affair, degenerating to a very ridiculous level. In Abia State, it turned out an all comers affair as even commoners and local travellers quickly became easy prey. We saw how that devious activity held the state prostrate and virtually killed Aba until the collective might of the federal government had to be massively deployed to redeem the situation. The same pattern was toed by 419 and similar fraudulent activities. Till date, both criminal tendencies still fester despite concerted efforts by the government to make them a dangerous source of human engagement. That is the danger of importing high-tech criminality into a society that is still grappling with the daunting challenges of development.

    It is not unlikely that these were the fears that informed the casual manner the police set out to play down the wider implications of that explosion. But no matter how hard they try, it is obvious that something with dire repercussions for peace and security in the country has just happened. This is more so, as there is everything to suggest this singular incident had as its main objective, the settlement of personal scores. The target was Chief Pius Oladele, Chairman of the Sand Dealers and Dredgers Association in the area. This is not in any doubt. The bomb was planted around a dwarf brick wall beside the bank of the canal where Oladele usually sat to relax. The security agencies might as well have some other lead on the matter but every indication point to an assassination mission. And this makes the entire affair more frightening.

    If Nigerians have come to that point where improvised explosives can be freely used to eliminate opponents, then every body is in trouble. Before now, the use of hired assassins had been the vogue. We also know how difficult it has been for the law enforcement agencies to resolve the riddle many of these have posed. Now, we are being led into improvised explosives that will further task the energies of those charged with maintenance of law and order. The difficulty in fighting Boko Haram terrorism is instructive. We may soon be confronting IED terrorism.

    The police have said they are on top of the situation. We have heard this worn out cliché over and over again. They have arrested some suspects. We hope they will make serious breakthrough into this issue such that will discourage other evil minded people from taking resort to it to settle personal scores. But the issues must be that weighty since the process of making bombs, planting and detonating same could be a very tasking and risky enterprise. For now, let us watch and see what the police will make of this incident.

  • The APC challenge

    The APC challenge

    It mocks us as well as it embraces us. It is the ultimate judge, and its verdict can either bruise or boost us. But it is inevitable. It is history, a perennial guest at the contemporary dinner table. Whether or not we agree to fete it, its appetite gravitates avidly to our feast.

    Nothing evokes the undying quest of history more than the move by different political parties to coalesce into the All Progressive Congress (APC). It is the feast of the day, a blend of personas, tendencies, ambitions, geographies, ideological flavours. For some, it is poison. For others, it is mother’s culinary genius.

    As the news breaks, we see a tension in some parts of the political society, especially in the peacock ranks of the PDP. For them, including the serpentine President Goodluck Jonathan, it is poison in the woods. But this is nothing new. We have seen alliances of this sort through our history, and that is why, this time around, the burden is great. It is time to deliver the killer mouse to the slithering host hibernating in Aso Rock.

    Moves such as this make Nigeria’s political history to simultaneously fascinate and imperil. We cannot but admit that the task before us as a nation mounts monstrously with poverty and disease and ignorance hitting the stratosphere. The Jonathan administration has become a consistency of naiveté, a tragedy of errors and missteps. It is dooming us to destruction as a people partly from ignorance, partly from a provincial world view, and partly from surrender to low expectations.

    This is not the Jonathan Nigerians hoped for when they voted for transformation. The mass voted for geographic and ethnic change. It has proved fatal. Next time, I hope Nigerians will learn that elections embolden us to high quality of life, good education, health care, security of lives and property, pervasive infrastructure, all redounding to what utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham calls the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

    The story took a more potent turn when the governors, 11 in all, came together in a media coup to announce their coalition in support of APC. The debonair Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State, read out the communiqué. With audacity and finesse, he stressed the urgency that Nigeria is on the verge of salvation. My investigation showed the speech turned the Presidency into a mouse and Jonathan and company lost composure at the news.

    We have travelled this path before. The conservative governments at the centre jittered in the First and Second Republics, and they wheeled the democracies into rut, then chaos, then bloody disasters. That is why I say that the task before the governors and party wheel horses behind the mergers must pray for history not to prey on the nobility of the idea.

    In the First Republic, the Northern People’s Congress held sway and formed the government at the centre. It embarrassed everyone who wished the young nation well with brinkmanship, labour turbulence, deepening inequality all wrapped up in a petrifying lack of vision. To oust the Balewa government, a coalition came into being known as the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). It comprised Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens, Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union, Joseph Tarka’s United Middle Belt Congress, among others. The NPC formed the Nigeria National Alliance (NNA), which lapped up malcontents across the regions, including the Samuel L. Akintola’s Nigerian National Democratic Party of the Western Region.

    The election was turbulent, and the NPC had held its own fraudulently against the alliance until the elections in the Western Region that held the prospect of giving UPGA victory and therefore control of the senate. The NPC bigwigs tooled the quisling of the west, Chief Akintola who was premier, to rig the elections. That exploded into a series of violence and lit the tinder of the west in what was called we tie. The result was the rat-a-tat of soldiers that sounded the death knell of that democracy.

    In the Second Republic, the Shehu Shagari administration presented us with another drama of buffoonery. It was the first time that Nigeria would witness graduate unemployment. So dire was the polity that another alliance was born, the Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA). Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria launched a divide-and-rule strategy in the loose-knit PPA. Zik’s Nigeria People’s Party and Kano’s People’s Redemption Party reeled under divisions, with factions emerging and some merging with the NPN. Awo’s Unity Party of Nigeria was impregnable as the north star of the west.

    The ensuing elections were rigged, and it was so brazen that the NPN swept elections even in the strongholds of the East and West, like Anambra, Bendel and Ondo, although Ondo was taken back by the UPN. The NPN fraud swathed the nation in foreboding. The Shagari government had employed police with such brutal flagrance that Sunday Adewusi, the police chief, ordered “shoot at sight” at civilians. Wole Soyinka fought back by saying, “you are not God.” Professor Yemi Ogunbiyi had called him deputy president in his column in The Guardian. Awolowo, in a deadpan tone reflecting the ennui in the land, warned that Nigeria would never see democracy again in his lifetime. He also harked back to the days of Kwame Nkrumah when the Ghanaian leader introduced the preventive detention act that crushed dissent.

    The chill was a prelude to the second coming of the army. Ironically, the soldier was Muhammadu Buhari, whose mien of winsome severity ushered in another era of the gun. Buhari, now a born-again democrat, is a principal player in the APC move.

    Today, unlike in the first and second chapters of our democratic experiments, the North controlled the vortex of power in the centre. The alliance often arose from the hegemonic hubris of the Hausa-Fulani. The Jonathan victory of 2011 was a protest against it. Now, the alliance pits itself against a southern minority who, by deceptive humility, swept the votes in the Southeast, his Niger Delta region, the Middle belt and the Southwest.

    Now, the APC plans to encircle the serpent within his Niger Delta and Southeast, which will make victory an uphill proposition for the PDP in 2015.

    But it is a challenge that the APC must embrace with courage and patriotic zeal. In the First and Second Republics, it failed due to internal wrangling as well as the deployment of the apparatuses of state, including the armed forces and the electoral umpire. The alliance of progressives can win, but it will come down to solving these riddles. The choice of its flag bearer may even be more important than the ideological clarity of the union. Ideological purity is a luxury in times of fragile flux and change.

    For a good example, we must look back to the days of Babangida when M.K.O Abiola won the fairest election in history. It is the best scenario for the APC challenge. The Social Democratic Party purred as a coalition of the progressives against the National Republican Convention. It was the army that sullied that high noon.

    History beckons. Although some scholars believe that we will always replay our past, we can seize the noon. In his doctrine of eternal return, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wondered whether there was a mathematical certainty that we will repeat the past, a sort of abiku? Some mathematicians who veered into philosophy agree. But exponents of the concept of rational choice have questioned this premise. So should we. If everything that happened in the past happens again, then we will become victims of what Nietzsche calls amor fati, that is love of fate. It is surrender to our misfortunes.

    We have the example of the SDP, and that is the challenge. A candidate can come from the North or South, but he should have the gravitas to roll out a drumbeat against the ineptitude at the centre. It is also a challenge to Nigerians to decide for progress rather than suffocating sentiment. It is also a challenge for humility: the players should be a head ahead of their parochial interests.

    “To stumble twice over a stone,” writes Cicero, “is a proverbial disgrace.” Who deserves disgrace but the PDP gang in Abuja!