The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Omatseye’s special combo

A remarkable book grabbed the headlines as Sam Omatseye unveiled Beating All Odds: Diaries and Essays on How Bola Tinubu Became President in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, on March 12. Predictably, the event created a buzz.

The book shows the journalist as a historian, and the historian as a journalist. Omatseye, an effervescent columnist and Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Nation, studied History at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun State.

As the title of the book indicates, it has a diary section possibly inspired by a historian’s instinct. From August 19, 2022 to February 17, 2023, he wrote private diary entries documenting the various political dramas that preceded Nigeria’s presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023. He kept the diary for seven months, ending his record-keeping a week to the elections. “There was so much to document,” he noted in an interview, adding that he limited his diary entries to “500 to 600 words.”

In the build-up to the event, a TV interviewer asked him why he kept a diary in the period. His answer: “I thought this election was going to be really turbulent, and I told myself I really need to be taking these things down week after week… I didn’t know I was going to make it into a book. I didn’t know what I was planning to do with it, but I knew it was an interesting thing to do. I don’t think anybody had done it, a diary of Nigerian election campaigns. I thought that was an innovative way of looking at the events. I tracked them up to the very day of the election. After the election I stopped keeping a diary.”

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He was particularly interested in the presidential election, and his favoured candidate was Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who won the election and became president. The Special Guest of Honour at the event, Vice President Kashim Shettima, noted that the election “certainly was the most divisive in the history of this country.”

In the book’s second section, the diarist becomes a columnist. His weekly column in The Nation, ‘In Touch,’ is known for its colour and assertiveness. This part is a collection of some of his columns written before the elections and after. In an important sense, the selected columns are records of sorts.

Omatseye’s column on the eve of the event was an excerpt from the book, in which the author describes Tinubu as “a man of politics,” and ascribes his triumph in the presidential election to “the ineluctable force of destiny.”

His words: “I knew the president – Muhammadu Buhari – did not want him. The peacocks and vampires around him did not want him. Some stakeholders in the country did not only resent him, they were afraid of him. The plot thickened quickly. Conspiracies festered in sewers and in the open. And it began with the party’s top brass.”

On the role of inscrutable destiny in Tinubu’s electoral victory, he makes observations that are food for thought. His words: “He did not have a hand in all his victory… For instance, he was not the one who coerced the northern governors of his party, some of them with ambition to be president, to coalesce to endorse a southern candidate.

“Tinubu was not there when the party chairman was throwing tantrums over the choice at a party stakeholders’ meeting with President Buhari. Not a shadow of Tinubu was there when the northern governors were summoned to defend the idea of a southern candidacy to President Buhari. It was not he who was on Lalong’s lips when he defended the justice of having a southerner.

“It was not Tinubu who set Peter Obi on a collision course with his PDP. He did not set the party on fire with five governors led by then Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike. Or Kwankwaso who turned the Kano tide against PDP.”

The book would have been incomplete without his August 2022 article titled ‘Obi-tuary,’ which provoked a menacing response from the camp of one of the presidential candidates, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), whose supporters believed he had gone too far.

“It was a pun but they did not see the fun,” he says in a June 2023 essay titled ‘I Pardon All,’ which captures his endangerment following the publication of ‘Obi-tuary.’ “When I wrote the piece, ‘Obi-tuary, ’ there was a tempest in the land,” he recounts. “It was a hectic time for me and my loved ones. I did not go to the office for four months. I was a hermit, except for my trips for the TVC Breakfast show, and I had got here in disguise. I attended no parties, no public events, and restaurants. I was as Americans say a home buddy. But I forgive all. I forgive those who did not understand English enough to know that I was using a figure of speech.”

Indeed, this combo of diary entries and essays on Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election and Tinubu’s rise to power has special dimensions. This is the first time that the election journey of the country’s president has been tracked, documented and published in such a book form. It redefines record-keeping.

Interestingly, the concept of the book meant that it was being written as relevant events developed. It can be described as a ready-made book. According to the author, “Immediately the election was over, it was then I knew I was going to publish this book. It was already written. The only thing I had to do was the author’s note.” He told an interviewer that he did not know Tinubu would win the presidential election. He could not have known. Understandably, he admitted that the book would not have been published if Tinubu had not become president.

So, Tinubu’s electoral victory indirectly produced the book. The author must be commended for presenting a record of his path to victory. Omatseye says he expects the book to create “an atmosphere to look back at the election, to put everything in perspective, for all of us to know how we got here.” That is the significance of his book.

March 18, 2024
Kaduna’s peculiar banditry/terrorism

Kaduna State made headline news last week, albeit for bad reasons. The state appeared to have taken an ignoble lead over Borno State, in the high number of children abducted from their school premises by sundry terrorists, bandits and kidnappers.

Whereas the Boko Haram insurgents that invaded the Chibok Secondary School in Borno State in 2014 struck in the dead of the night, the terrorists that attacked Kuriga LEA Primary and Government Secondary Schools in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna state were bold enough to invade during the day.

The time of the attack and high number of abductees stand out the Kuriga incident over and above other school children abduction that had taken place in that part of the country. Numbering more than 100, the well-armed bandits that struck immediately after the early morning assembly, herded the teachers and school children into the adjoining forest.

That was the beginning of a tortuous journey that could lead to the incarceration or even death of some of the school children; many of them toddlers. Initial attempts by some local vigilante to thwart the abduction and secure the release of the children ended in some fatalities.

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When the dust settled, a total of 287 children from both schools were found to have been ferried away by the rampaging terrorists. Some of the children, who were lucky to have escaped, spoke of their horrifying encounter as they were horsewhipped and made to trek inside the forest for hours without end.

It has taken many days since the abduction with no traces of the children in sight. Curiously and in contrast with the Chibok incident, Kaduna State does not share any boundary with neighbouring countries that may inject some complication in the location of the children’s whereabouts. Yet, neither any trace of them has been of public knowledge nor was there any success in aborting the abduction somewhere along the terrorists route.

Before the Kuriga mass kidnap of school children, the so-called bandits had invaded the Gonin Gora area of Kaduna metropolis twice in four days, abducting 16 residents altogether. That was not all.

Within the same week, no fewer than 61 persons were reportedly abducted by bandits/terrorists that attacked the Buda community in the Kajuru Local Government Area of the same Kaduna State. The terrorists had invaded the community at night shooting sporadically before abducting the victims.

Kaduna had also in 2021 witnessed a series of attacks, killings and senseless abduction of students of institutions of higher learning suggestive of a choreographed campaign to discourage education. Greenfield University and the Federal College of Forestry, Afaka fell victims that year. Baptist Bethel High School among other key establishments in that state did not equally fare better in the hands of the rampaging terrorists.

But what stood out the Gonin Gora incident is neither the sheer number of the abductees (16) nor the two residents killed by the invaders before they fled. The incident is remarkable for the scandalous and unreasonable demands the terrorists were reported to have made as condition for the freedom of the 16 captives.

A community leader in the area, John Yusuf shocked many when he reeled out the extravagant ransom demanded by the terrorists. Yusuf said the bandits called and demanded N40trn, 11 Hilux vans and 150 motorcycles as ransom.

It is yet unclear how and the location this humongous amount of money, vehicles and motorcycles will be delivered if it is possible to source them. But even as we contend with these ridiculous and outlandish ransom demands, their very nature is bound to throw up salient issues that can only be ignored at our collective peril.

This is the first time such unreasonable ransom demand is surfacing since the bug of kidnapping crept into our social chessboard. That should ordinarily raise questions as to the purpose the terrorists intend to achieve this time around.

Could it be a joke taken too far? Or is the intention to direct the collective conscience of our leaders to the new dimension such malfeasance has possibly assumed? There is also the issue of how the terrorists intend to deploy the humongous amount of money, vehicles and motorcycles. Where will the 11 Hilux vans and 150 motorcycles be delivered to them – within the shores of this country or outside of it? And will that not give out their location to the security agencies?

Beyond these, the impression one gets is that banditry/terrorism is fast assuming the shape of a carefully organised enterprise perhaps, competing with the government for spheres of influence and authority. N40tn is more than the N25tn provided in the 2024 national budget by N15tn. That conveys the unmistakable impression of a government within a government- a republic of sorts. When the cost of the Hilux vans and motorcycles are summed up, the figures become even more scaring.

Assuming it is possible to meet all the demands of these terrorists nicknamed bandits, the purpose for which these monies, vehicles and motorcycles will be deployed should be a serious concern to the federal government. The boldness and audacity of the bandits, the relative ease with which they levy mayhem and disappear into the thin air, constitute a potent challenge to the authority of the government.

Before now, we had been told bandits were acquiring sophisticated weapons including the capacity to bring down aircrafts. There have also been suggestions that the ransom they collect is mainly deployed for the purchase of arms and ammunitions to further their murderous activities.

The demands by the Gonin Gora terrorists evoke such prospects. The terrorists that kidnapped 287 students and teachers in Kuriga are also demanding N1billion as ransom or they kill the abductees within three weeks. With a ransom demand that rubbishes the national budget, the prospects of non-state actors metamorphosing into an alternative government competing for the loyalty of the citizens have become a frightening reality. It conjures the imprimatur of a republic of the bandits/terrorists within the federal republic of Nigeria.

It is only in a bandits’ republic that N40trn, 11 Hilux vans and 150 motorcycles can be delivered and received as ransom by sundry criminals without severe consequences. Curiously, Kaduna is a landlocked state. It does not share any boundary with our foreign neighbours to suggest complicity in ferrying out of the children beyond our shores.

For that to happen, the terrorists must have to collaborate with their evil counterparts in other states. Could the bandits have crossed these boundaries with large expanse of land for days and weeks with toddlers without detection?

So, it is safer to assume the captured children are surely within our shores. And that makes the matter more troubling. It speaks of conspiracy in high and low quarters. How come these children were marched through the large expanse of the Kaduna landscape for days without any trace?

Neither the surveillance of the Nigerian Air Force nor the new technology that aided the Nigerian Army to detect suspicious bandits’ movement that led to the unfortunate Tudun Biri killings in the Igabi Local Government Area of the same state, could be of any help. It says much about the level of progress we have made between the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014 and nearly 10 years after.

It speaks of parallels between the 2014 Chibok and the 2024 Kuriga abductions. Coincidentally, the current vice president, Kashim Shetima was the governor of Borno State when the Chibok girls were kidnapped. Kaduna is now bearing the brunt of organised terrorism for inexplicable reasons.

It is difficult to forget in a hurry some of the vile issues traded then, including the allegation by former governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako that Book Haram was a subterfuge by purported enemies of the north to depopulate that region. Ten years thereon, the likes of Nyako – and they are legion – should know better.

We are being told that the solution to the metastasising insurgency lies in negotiation with the bandits whose grievances have at best, remained amorphous. We are all victims of the divisive politics of the past; the refusal by our leaders to form national consensus on potent challenges to law and order and our corporate being. The current insurgency in the country is not for nothing. It is time to resolve the nagging puzzle of differentiating between the Boko Haram terrorists, the bandits and the herdsmen.

Only then shall the real motivation of the dark forces behind the cascading terrorism become clearer. But it is definitely getting late.

March 18, 2024
Facts and prejudice

Abdul Ningi may not like it when he wakes up in the morning. He is called a senator but he does not attend the senate chambers. He is called a lawmaker but cannot make laws. He is a politician in exile. A public officer of sorts without an office. An irridentist with an eerie agenda, he is an island. To sedate the senate, his colleagues have robbed him of the name senator for three months.

What he cannot deny is that he is an Atiku acolyte, a sly bigot and a fly in the ointment of democracy. He was no backbencher in the Adamawa chieftain’s crash last year both at the polls and in the court. He was like his chief of staff and director of the campaign. He is no candidate for conscientious objector. He is a fellow traveler, and he is also a pied piper’s victim and marionette. As a bigot, he is borrowing from Atiku’s proclamation during the last presidential campaigns when he asked all northerners to vote north. Atiku did not disguise his plagued and wounded soul. He may be a prostitute, but he has his favorite customer: northern bigotry.

Senator Ningi is borrowing from the hollow book. Pity that he has been suspended for three months. He can take shelter in Adamawa’s bosom. He has made himself guilty of two often related sins: a bigot and hypocrite. A bigot of religion and region. A hypocrite because he claims that the budget was padded, and he did not raise a finger when the same budget went through the rigour of debates, additions and subtraction. Did he have eyes that did not see, ears that didn’t hear, or body that did not feel as the motions passed on the budget? He did not know mathematics then. He dusted up his book of pluses and divisions and multiplications after he discovered two things. That he could speak to BBC Hausa radio and the bitterness of the election loss reminded him of what might have been.

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So, he says there was padding before he said he did not say so. He said the executive presented a budget of 25 trillion naira and the senate, his senate, ballooned it to 28 trillion, adding 3.7 trillion naira. In his effort to invoke north, he stumbled. His northern colleagues abandoned him. In his mathematics, he stumbled and fell. In English language, he also hit the rocks. It was a trinity of failures. What he did with success was, in the words of Senate President Godswill Akpabio, damage the hallowed chamber with a hollow peroration.

He sounded a drum to his northern fellows but no one danced. He had to vacate his chair in the northern senate forum. He became a lone ranger, a bitter droplet in the northern tea. He showed himself a bad example of how to be a bigot, just like Atiku. Ningi was campaign director under Atiku, so it was the malice of the defeat that was still prodding him into mangling figures. Senate leader Opeyemi Bamidele and Appropriation Committee Chairman Olamilekan Adeola threw direct jabs at him. Has anyone addressed Bamidele’s assertion that it is Senator Abdulaziz Yari’s malice of loss fighting back? He referred to those who did not want Akpabio to outlast a year as senate present.

But certain issues have to be clarified. It concerns constituency projects. It is controversial and some have argued against it. But whether we want it or not, those who support it say it testifies to lawmakers’ heartbeat in the grassroots, that they see and feel what the executives sometimes miss. That is, taking the intimate projects to the precincts of the people.

Two, this is nothing new. It is a fixture year after year. Why is Ningi stoking an old fire that warmed his old bones in the past as though the heat is new? In this budget, he has constituency vote amounting to hundreds of millions. He did not cancel it. That is why Senator Bamidele says it is not a northern or southern matter but a Nigerian matter. But his fellow senators knew it was coded appeal to an irridentist impulse. That is why it is dangerous. Senator Akpabio asked Ningi for evidence, but he adduced none after battering about like a ram.

On the 3.7 trillion naira charge, Senator Adeola spelt out the list of allotees, including the judiciary, national assembly, NDDC, NEDC, etc, that amounted to over 3.2 trillion as first-line charge without details.

The dangerous part of this narrative is that some have not understood the political issues but have looked at it as mere mathematical and corruption issue. If it were a corruption matter, Ningi would have raised it when it was under scrutiny. His fingers would have pointed at him. If it were a mathematical issue, we are not running a senate of farmers and hunters. There are engineers, professors, bankers, historians, etc in the chambers. So there is a lot of mischief in the matter.

Padding, for instance, is misunderstood even by so-called genuine commentators. If you pad, there has to be a base or skeleton. You cannot pad a toe with cotton wool, if there are no bones and blood veins to cover. If a project is padded, there must be a cost and the difference with the approved sum is the padding. What is that difference? If it is not clear what the real cost is, no one can say padding has occurred. You can say it is opaque. In that case, you who accuses should do the costing before charging the law maker with padding, or exaggeration. Senator Bamidele responded by saying that we cannot determine exaggeration until after the budget period expires. It is then auditing will kick in for the facts. After all, a budget is a statement of intention, not necessarily funds disbursed.

It is also a failure of monitoring in the past that has led to this vexed hour. Have we ever compared budget with execution cost so as to develop a roster, constituency by constituency, on who gobbled up project funds? Groups like SERAP roar so as to get press clippings to submit to their sponsors abroad and at home.

The whole hoopla is about facts and prejudice. One lawmaker’s fact is another’s prejudice, one man’s padding is another’s envy or bias. One man’s pride is another’s prejudice. While some call Ningi a whistle blower, others say it is an irridentist cry.. It is time we acted like the two lovers in Jane Austen novel in which the pride of the wooer and the prejudice of sweetheart melt into what Thomas Hardy calls a “happy doing.”

March 18, 2024
Our Jacob and Esau

One Emma Ochuko Arodovwe stirred the internet with a poser, by asking readers who would they prefer, a Frank Kokori or Babagana Kingibe? Such a question would not make sense, if Kokori basked in material splendour after his grand sacrifice for democracy and human rights in Nigeria’s dark hour under the jackboots of soldiers.

Kokori died in want. He could not afford his hospital bills and no one heard his cry until the humane heart of his governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, commanded sympathy in form of medical assistance. Kokori died at 80, after a sojourn of heroic quests and conquests. Soldiers lost sleep and had daylight nightmares over him. He quieted the streets, paralysed work, mobilized oil by sterilizing it. He hid while in vain they searched for him day and night. He was betrayed by an aide to the man who epitomized the June 12 struggle. At last, they caught him, locked him up, but did not have peace. His spirit soldiered on in the streets, in the rage of NADECO and the turbulence of many Nigerians.

Why did he not have a great burial, or why did Nigerians not weep when he passed? But Kingibe has had a different trajectory. It means Nigeria reward Judas rather than Jesus. Jesus died a death of sacrifice. But this Kingibe has had his 30 pieces of silver. He betrayed but he thrives. He was rewarded with posh offices, including serving as secretary to the government of the federation. He was effectively the head of government bureaucracy, the nation’s first administrator. He enjoyed the spoils of the rich and powerful. After that, he has been not just Babagana Kingibe but kingmaker, and baba of sorts.

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Presidents defer to him. Candidates seek him, a traitor, to garland their ambitions. Is he not blessed? Is it no a good thing to deceive to receive? That is the sort of strain that runs through Orodovwe’s piece. He writes with a ruminator’s doubt, unable to take a stand for justice. But for sure, in spite of his travails, his bait by Ngige and abandonment to the Siberia of government in Imoudu’s institute, Kokori died a better man than Kingibe would ever live. He died for the most precious of all values: honour. Kingibe cannot boast of that. Kokori lived for ideas, not material things. He died for others, not for what philosophers call negative freedom, that is freedom to care only for yourself and family. He was a hero. Kingibe is travesty of that virtue.

Even those who go to him do accept him but don’t respect him. They praise him while despising him. They take from him what they will not digest. Kokori was like the English hero Thomas More, who Playwright Robert Bolt describes as a man for all seasons. He was not likeThomas Cromwell, a villain, that Hilary Mantel penned for applause in her historical novel, Bring Up the Bones. He is also not Cardinal Wolsey, who flattered his king into infamy and lost his soul. More privileged conscience over foul consensus, truth over pirouette.

The saga between both men is like the Bible Story between Jacob and Esau. My Government College Ughelli classmate, Dr. Joe Agidee, so characterized it. Kokori is Jacob, who owns the meal but gives it up for honour. Esau is Kingibe who sold his honour for a mere plate of porridge or privilege.

Kingibe was not alone in the perfidy. As another classmate, Victor Agbro, reminded me, Ebenezer Babatope, Lateef Jakande, Iyorchia Ayu, Olu Onagoruwa, et al, follow Kingibe’s fashion as turncoats. For all his magisterial strides as governor, Jakande’s image diminished after his tour with Abacha. He became the grand old man who could not hold his ideological liquor but bowed to the moment to defile a legacy of honour.

Even if he died poor, Kokori’s soul was rich. We cannot say so of the man whose main ticket for swagger today was that he abandoned his ticket of honour with Abiola.

March 18, 2024
Beating all odds

A few days after his colleagues elected him speaker in 2019, Femi Gbajabiamila was already looking ahead.

Plopped down in his chair with a wrinkled brow, he had a matter in mind.

“Has Asiwaju told you about his intention to run for president,” he asked me, his face part smile, part earnestness.

“It goes without saying,” I replied. “He does not have to tell me.”

“It’s going to be tough,” he predicted, the furrows clearing into a sunny visage. “But don’t underestimate his reach in the country.”

His face was now increasingly more sanguine. “He has acquired a lot of IOUs across the length and breadth of the country.”

As for him, he was ready to stand behind him, treasure, toil and all.

This author relished his sentiments of Asiwaju Tinubu’s bid. It looked like a long shot, but he can shoot long. He is an archer whose bow and arrow fire in the storm. He is like the species known as shorebirds that cruise to higher altitudes in stormy skies. He is like the character in John Webster’s play, The Duchess of Malfi, who said, “I will thrive some way: black birds fatten best in hard weather, why not I, in these dog days.”

So, I reckoned, like the Chief of Staff, that he needed to fight the good fight of faith. Faith, in this sense, had no God or mammon. It was the fight of a man of politics. But paradoxically, the issue of mystical faith or organized faith loomed in the horizon, and it was the least he expected in the fog of war. As a man of many battles and not few heroic conquests, he had the gear and stamina for the contest. The only obstacle I saw was not the general election but his party. Other than the vagaries of fate, the ineluctable force of destiny would either work for him or quelch him. The former happened.

I knew the president – Muhammadu Buhari – did not want him. The peacocks and vampires around him did not want him. Some stakeholders in the country did not only resent him, they were afraid of him. The plot thickened quickly. Conspiracies festered in sewers and in the open. And it began with the party’s top brass. In cahoots with the presidential cabal, they edged out Adams Oshiomhole’s executive as the first major step to immobilise Tinubu’s ambition. They also broached a consensus candidate. Law crippled them as they fell foul of defining the phrase they coined, and they could not even manage the idea of open and closed primaries. At every turn, they stumbled into crosswinds. Their own weapon turned their own folly.

Tinubu was never fazed about the task ahead. He peered a rose-scented garden when others saw for him a forest of a thousand demons. In 2021 December, he said he was preparing a speech towards the end of January, 2022, to announce his intention to run. He would wait for the yuletide and new year euphoria to ebb out before throwing himself in the ring.

But he was not a man to predict. Early January, he paid a visit to President Buhari at the Aso Villa, and on his way out he walked into a storm of reporters.

“I wondered what I was going to tell the reporters,” he recalled. He decided instanta to tell them that he had just discussed his ambition with the president. There was no need to formalise his entry into the race. No fanfare or ceremony necessary. It was there he uttered the phrase, “It is my lifelong ambition,” a quote that set in motion a long train of quotable quotes that juiced up his campaign north and south, spilling over to the first flushes of his presidency.

The word was out. Not that it was not out before. It was now out like taking the peel out of a groundnut. Everyone knew what it was, peel or not. Everyone knew he was running. Everybody knew the hour was coming. Announcing it was only a technicality. As Poet Samuel Coleridge wrote, “Anticipation is more potent than surprise.”

I had said once to him that I didn’t fear the general election, but only the party primary. Little did I know that after the party wheelhorses failed at the primary, they would move their artillery to the final battleground.

“If you win the primary, you will have nothing to fear,” I had declared in my naivety. He did not say a word in reply, only a smile, half-quizzical, half knowing. Very close to the primary, though, we spoke on the phone and I wondered if he was wary of the moves among the other contestants. I asked him, if he had a plan B in case the party cabal wrung the ticket from him and played a Houdini with the primary. He did not sound worried. I wanted to know if he might contemplate another platform, or party, or if he intended to fight it early or preempt any move to foist another candidate. His voice was aplomb.

This time, he replied, saying that he did not see or sniff any such major impediment and if he saw it, he would know how to respond. He would not say how he would respond. He did not think the party was capable of mounting any resistance or throwing any punches above the muscle and cunning of his ambition. He had a lot to depend on, his long history as a political matador, his inner reserves of strategy, his repertoire on the battle stage. He was ready. He said something I took to heart. “I have looked at the whole situation,” he said speaking about his ambition and reason for running. “I told myself, If I didn’t run, I am damned; If I ran, they may want to damn me. So, I had to run anyway. And I know that I will win.” He was speaking like a man in the eye of battle, suited for war like David and damning Goliath.

It had always been his attitude never to abandon the party he formed. In the heady days of the Buhari era when he was ignored and alienated, he resisted overtures. He saw it as self-betrayal and a cop-out. He was set to fight for his place in his own home.

So, when he picked up the APC ticket, and said in the air of celebration that he did not expect to win, it was the humility of triumph. The battle gear was no longer important. The brow and fury of war were already calm. The guns were mute. The party was won over. That part of the quest was over. Humility was the next virtue.

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His is also a matter of destiny. He did not have a hand in all his victory. In some of them, he watched himself rise like a swimmer on the crest of a sudden tide, or a shorebird. For instance, he was not the one who coerced the northern governors of his party, some of them with ambition to be president, to coalesce to endorse a southern candidate. He did not rally some northern governors to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari and say they did not believe the party should field a southerner because Atiku was too formidable to tackle with a southerner. A northern gladiator called for a northern foil. They returned with a list of themselves when the president asked them to draw a list, and the president shunned them for advertising themselves. He wanted someone else, Ahmad Lawan. His candidate was not the choice of the northern governors, so they compelled then Governor Simon Lalong as chair of the northern governors to convene a meeting. When it held, it was more a chaos of finger pointing and colliding ambitions than a strategy for a northern point man. Less out of altruism than love of the south, they yielded.

Tinubu was not there when the party chairman was throwing tantrums over the choice at a party stakeholders’ meeting with President Buhari. Not a shadow of Tinubu was there when the northern governors were summoned to defend the idea of a southern candidacy to President Buhari. It was not he who was on Lalong’s lips when he defended the justice of having a southerner. As Richard Nixon wrote in his memoirs, “history affects us more than we affect history.” It was a case of an unflinching hand of fate working for him. Even in epic tales from Shaka to Odysseus to Sundiata, the hero enjoyed the mercy of the gods.

It was not Tinubu who set Peter Obi on a collision course with his PDP. He did not set the party on fire with five governors led by then Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike. Or Kwankwaso who turned the Kano tide against PDP.

It is still speculative if all those votes would have gone to the PDP, although it is generally believed that the southeast votes were Peter Obi’s gift to Tinubu. Negative became positive. Could there have been a renewing of strategy if it was a straight fight between Tinubu and Atiku? Would Atiku have succeeded in rallying Christians the way Obi did? What kind of bona fides would he have invoked from his logic or biography to impress pastors who saw an apocalypse in a so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket. Would southerners and those in the Middlebelt have picked a Fulani to take over from a Fulani? Would a Tinubu hatred have forgiven Atiku’s sins? We can only speculate. Maybe Obi came to quell all their anxieties. He was a “godsend” expiation. He gave them an excuse to make peace with their conscience who would not vote a Muslim or a Yoruba man.

It is an irony that what they did not see during the campaigns are too obvious very early in his stewardship. For instance, the appointment of a Christian from southern Kaduna as chief of defence staff, Christopher Musa, let out a reverie of delight, a geo-political epiphany. Or an EFCC chairman as a pastor must have calmed apocalyptic fears.

Now, they see that having Oluremi Tinubu as wife was a big indicator of Tinubu’s pious neutrality. Or Kashim Shettima’s many accommodations of his Christian folks in Borno while he was governor was an act of genuine grace.

As the new Bishop of Katsina Diocese and first Hausa Bishop, Gerald Musa, told me, some clerics were bought over during the polls. It also shows that politicians exploit elections to lie and deceive in order to flatter the people’s secret hopes.

The polls are now over, and governance has begun, and the elections are taking backstage as we face the heres and nows of governance.

Excerpts from Sam Omatseye’s new book: Beating all odds: Diaries and essays on How Bola Tinubu became President, due for presentation March 12.

March 11, 2024
Adelabu’s threat to DISCOS

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu is seriously worried by the sharp decline in electricity supply across the country. In an apparent bid to find lasting solutions to it, he has summoned the chief executive officers of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), their Ibadan counterpart and the managing director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to a crucial meeting.

But even before the meeting is held, the minister could not hide his dissatisfaction with the distribution companies for allegedly failing to adequately distribute much of the power generated by the TCN. He is piqued that despite concerted efforts to improve power generation resulting to an increase of more than 4,000 megawatts, certain distribution companies have failed to live up to their statutory duties of distributing the additional output.

“Wilful non-performance will not be tolerated, and severe consequences, including license revocation may be imposed”, he threatened. It is not clear how the minister arrived at his conclusion that non-distribution of the additional output by the distribution companies is responsible for the shortages in power supply. Neither is it public knowledge the difference in the quantity of power generated but not distributed.

But one thing that stands out is that the threat followed persistent nationwide power outages with no respite in sight. The national grid suffered serious breakdown on February 4, throwing a greater part of the country into unmitigated darkness.

Before then, the national grid had also collapsed on September 14, 2023. The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company EEDC had in a statement then titled, “Notice on total system collapse” informed its customers of the unfortunate incident.

Ironically, the collapse came barely a week after the TCN rolled out its drums in celebration of a seeming 400 days of grid stability. The uncanny coincidence went at length to diminish whatever glory the TCN intended to take from the purported grid stability celebration.

If the grid breakdown of September 2023 was not sufficient to illustrate the dire straits the country is entangled in the provision of regular electricity, that of last month vividly showed the gravity of the challenge. There is little doubt there are inefficiencies on the part of power distributors that add to the epileptic power supply across the country. The differences on the level of performance of the various power distribution companies attest to this.

It will however, amount to scratching the surface of the matter to solely lay the blame for the dismal power supply in the country at the doorsteps of the power distributors. The issues are more fundamental than this and cannot be resolved by the revocation of the licenses of the distributors.

The crux of the matter is the abysmal shortfall in power generation which the distributors have practically no solutions to. The Association of Electricity Distributors puts the electricity needs of the country at 33,000 megawatts. The universal rule is that you need 1,000 MW for one million people. It estimates there are 32 million households connected to electricity. So you need to generate at least 32,000 mw to ensure stability in power supply.

The minister said the total output of the country stands at 4,000mw. How this will meet the needs of electricity users is a matter of conjecture. Even if all the 4,000mw generated are fully distributed, that can in no way make a significant change in the dismal power equation of the country.

It would seem much of the problem lies in power generation. How to make up for the deficits between the electricity needs of the country and what is currently generated is at issue. The gravity of the challenge is further reinforced by observed trends indicating rising demands for electricity across the country.

Estimates provided by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, have it that electricity demand will grow to 45,622 megawatts by 2030. There is a lot of work to be done especially in the sphere of power generation. We need to work very assiduously to ensure stability in power generation. Grid collapse as witnessed in the recent past cannot make for efficiency and stability in electricity supplies.

It is not enough to isolate the inefficiencies of the power distributors or generators for blame. We need to take a holistic perspective of the deficits in the power generation, transmission and distribution chain to address all the challenges that have rendered stable power supply an unmitigated disaster.

There are challenges of vandalism of power infrastructure across the country. There are challenges arising from the inability of the government to settle outstanding debts to power generating and gas supply companies.

The minister painted a sordid picture of the debt situation: “We are owing a total of N1.3tn to power generating companies, out of which 60 per cent is being owed to gas suppliers. We have a legacy debt prior to 2024 to the gas companies of $1.3bn; at today’s rate that is close to N2tn. Now if you add the N2tn legacy debt owed gas companies and the N1.3tn being owed the GENCOS, we have an inherited debt of over N3tn in this sector”.

He must have also shocked many when he attributed the crash in power generation and the attendant poor supplies witnessed in January to the stoppage of gas supplies due to indebtedness to gas producers. That is as bad as the situation has become.

When the minister said subsidy on electricity for 2024 will gulp N3tn, he may have been referring to this outstanding debt even as only N450bn was budgeted for that purpose. That may be a subtle argument for the total elimination of the subsidy on electricity which the International Monetary Fund IMF and the World Bank have been stridently canvassing.

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The other dimension of this disclosure is that for the country to meet its obligations in that sector and ensure stable power supply, total deregulation of that sector is the way to go. That may as well be the argument. But it is not all there is to it as the ability of the citizenry to cope with the additional burden has to come into consideration.

It is true that the oil sector has been deregulated with more money coming into the coffers of the government. There is also the claim that the government is still maintaining some form of subsidy in that sector and that petrol will definitely sell higher were the real dynamics of market forces allowed to play.

There may be some element of truth in that. The government may have chosen that path in order to mitigate the dire consequences of full deregulation on the lives of the citizenry. Yes, deregulation may conform to fine economic principles. But every policy operates in a given milieu and must factor in environmental variables in order to be effective.

Ours is still a vulnerable economy populated by the poorest of the poor. This economic reality must not be ignored by the multilateral institutions striving to impose the models of the advanced country on the rest of us. The effects of the fuel subsidy removal and liberalisation of the foreign exchange market have been telling on our citizens.

More money has been accruing into the federal government’s coffers after the deregulation. Instead of sharing the difference with the state governments to be frittered away, much of that should be injected into capital projects. The power sector which holds the ace for the industrial development of the country should be accorded topmost priority.

It is not just enough to always pass the burden of our inefficiencies in providing public goods and services to the ordinary citizens. There is a lot of waste in the public sector that should plugged, harnessed and injected into projects that will lead to public good. Countries all over the world subsidise goods and services. Developing ones with a large army of the unemployed and vulnerable population have even more reasons to reasonably subsidise.

The epileptic electricity supplies in the country despite the huge resources injected into that sector has become a serious national embarrassment. It is a sad development that despite the unbundling of the power sector, no significant change in power stability appears in sight. We must be licking the wounds of the mockery by South Africa which in a nationwide television advertisement during the AFCON competition tagged us, “a generator republic”

March 11, 2024
On the move in colour

The governor of Lagos State may not look it, but he is one of the most hardworking chief executives we have ever had, anywhere. It belies his sunny exterior, casual grace, folksy bonhomie and genial good nature.

Never combative, he does not require what locals call ‘gra gra’ to leave imprints of industry. Before last week when the second in a chain of colour-coded trains hooted into being, he touched the heartstrings of the masses. A soup kitchen might have quelled taste buds, but he had given a food hub. After the food hub, we might not have expected the money he rolled out for traders in the lower-tier of the entrepreneurial ladder across the local government areas. Or slashing of transport fares. He heard the rumble over cost of living, and he bared his heart with palliatives.

But the launching of the red line train in Lagos was a sort of mini-festival. It was a day of memory and a day for memory. It was a day of memory because it was time to recall how such a milestone project began. It was a day for memory because the dream came to fruition, a day for infrastructure diary entry not only for Lagos but for Nigeria. A day of recall and a day to remember.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the BOS of Lagos, was happy. With his vintage cap and good humour, he looked like a man who did not have much sleep the last night. But joy outshone furrows of drudgery as he spoke about how it all began. It was a time for humility as he gave kudos to all who started the work. He thanked the visioner, now president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who in 2003 wrote the vision. And others ran with it. First it was the then governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and then his successor, Akinwunmi Ambode. Yet, in the exchanges of baton, Governor Sanwo-Olu turned it all into bells and whistles. He finished the tape. All is well, as Shakespeare writes, that ends well. But he did not just do that. He propped them with interlocking infrastructure in roads and overpasses. Between the blue line and the red line, he erected five overpasses. Trains are ground transportation, but they often glide above road arteries. He laid the groundwork. He spoke with gusto about the other colour trains in the works, including the green line that will snake through Marina to Lekki corridor. Projects like this re-echo Shakespeare’s line when he asserts that “fancy outwork nature,” or when he says, “nature must obey necessity.”

Within two-weeks, Governor Sanwo-Olu showed a full-rounded performance, reflecting the hardware and software of governance. It is the triumph also of the imagination. As Lucille Clifton wrote, “we can’t create what we can’t imagine.”

That day was a sort of toast for the man who dreamed. President Tinubu drew mockery during the campaigns about what he did for Lagos, and one of the highpoints was the colour-coded trains. Some who would not accept evidence, even if it drowned them, denied the barebones of the project and wailed that work had not started on the train. While denying the dreamer, they also denied the dream.

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That red line day became another red-letter day for President Tinubu and a funeral for the naysayers. The day provided a platform for the president to give the country a taste of what is to come on a national scale, a cautionary note for the critics and their amen corners. He said something the media chose to pass over. He said corruption was fighting back. With a face of casual gravity, he warned that he would fight them to ruins. What was he referring to? Who was he referring to? Does it concern the Central Bank of Nigeria reforms, the reports about drainage of public till, the N23 trillion printing extravaganza of our money with no gold-paved mansions or roads to tell the story.

A fellow journalist asked last week, “is the president going to commit class suicide?” I said let us see. The man has always been a thorn in the hide of his class, and it was in such a tempest that he rode to power, clawing the musclemen of the class with their gog and magog. He is the ultimate contradiction in that narrative, abiding the class but also rebelling against it. He has always managed the delicate balance like a chess player. It is that special skill he will need to manoeuvre a stormy Nigeria of feudal sharks, wily intriguers and lurking upstarts.

Hence, he gave a swipe at labour, Agbaero and company, for their resort to strike with their enabling lawyers. They are strike-happy now, but neither they nor their enabling lawyers stoked the flame of street unrest when the Buhari men and Emefiele tossed the naira overboard last year in the runup to the presidential polls. They thought it might buoy their candidate to Aso Rock paradise. Rather, they met Dante’s divine comedy. They are not laughing, though. They scowl on the streets when their tortured brow on television and boilerplate rhetoric do not prove adequate. Now that they are in the wrong end of fortune, they have suddenly realized the ire of the oppressed.

For all the power and preening class in Abuja, Lagos remains the test tube of Nigerian politics and governance. And the BOS of Lagos is demonstrating it with all its range and intensity.

March 4, 2024
A punch on memory

It is a pity that we could celebrate Punch Newspaper without celebrating the man who dreamed it. Sam Amuka, that is. Cursory mention does not do justice. The newspaper has become a mainstay in Nigeria journalism, a testament to visionary stability and longevity, just like The Nigerian Tribune. I doff my hat to the newspaper that has soldiered through the turbulence of Nigerian politics and economy and has shown that it is possible to survive the climate of odds and ends with focus and attitude. There is not much weakness to point to in the newspaper, except its occasional penchant for juvenility. But its stature has come to stay, and all should applaud its managers for keeping faith not only with tradition but to the quicksand of changing times.

But to mark its 50 years without celebrating the founder of the Vanguard Newspaper is not only a disservice to him and the profession, it is a disservice to memory. Amuka dreamed the Punch after he left the Daily Times and founded a publication known as Happy Home. Restless, he wanted something else, and he met a man of money in Olu Aboderin, who offered to partner. Amuka served as the Sunday paper’s founding editor. But things did not go well, and Amuka, often known as a Sad Sam, decided to take the matter to court. It was grinding in the court until the Sketch newspaper slammed the proceedings on its front pages. That got Olu Aboderin’s attention, and he decided to negotiate with Amuka. Amuka left and started the Vanguard newspaper.

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Bitterness is not enough to discard memory. To have left him out is professional ingratitude and adds to the worry about an a historical generation. Our newspapers should not be guilty, like the rest of society, of the game of amnesia. Few who took part in the anniversary may have thought it was an Aboderin show alone, apart from cursory references to Amuka.

Amuka, a giant of giants in this trade, wrote columns of great impact. He started with what he called Off Beat, a column whose icon was a man blowing from the wrong end of a trumpet, a picture of a sardonic Uncle Sam. His columns, including Sad Sam, were biting satires that cut the powerful, often the military, to the quick. But because he penned satire, his pieces barbed power, yet they had nothing on him because jabs came out of laughter. Just like laughing gas that hurt by making you laugh.

March 4, 2024
Lawless Plateau

It is amazing that Plateau State could go on a boil when, for much of the years under Governor Simon Lalong, a template existed to keep the communities together. Governor Caleb Mutfwang took over and has to do two things. One, he should recognise the APC lawmakers. Two, he should return to the security template his predecessor left. Reports say, he dissolved the inter-religious council and pooh-poohed local arrangements that brought representatives of communities to share, vent and resolve grievances before they boiled over into bleeding machetes, butchery and limp babies. The state has been reporting a series of burials and weeping families, and it is obvious they can be avoided. Governor Mutfwang should not let what his predecessor left behind become in the words of Shakespeare like “insubstantial pageant faded.” Peace is about human beings, not systems. But we have to make systems for human beings to leverage. That was what the governor met. The area known as Miango, for instance, was one of the most violent in the state. It is tranquil today. For irony, it was in the neighbourhood of the 3rd Armoured Division. Yet, the hordes defied the army and made a parade of death and plunder. The state inaugurated what it called a Day of Forgiveness to mark peace because peace efforts at Miango yielded fruits. A predecessor is not a foe but a forerunner, a link in the chain to the future. Even in Lalong’s system, the state witnessed some spasm of bloodletting, but they were often few.

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On the legislature, the nation focused on Rivers State but what is going on in Plateau is worse, it is an endorsement of anarchy. The state is running a democracy without lawmakers. The governor has allowed this to go on because of the Supreme Court judgment that affirmed the governor on the same ground that the appeal court threw out the lawmakers. This is not acceptable. The PDP folks are throwing the constitution out of the window. We cannot cherry-pick the law. We cannot accept one and toss another and pledge fidelity to the constitution. We cannot be believers in part. It is a dangerous precedent. The media, the Nigeria Bar Association and the NGOs have been silent about this travesty.

March 4, 2024
Oronsaye’s report: Other matters

Last week’s directive by President Tinubu for the full implementation of the 12-year old Oronsaye report strikes as a measure of the administration’s commitment to cost saving and efficiency in statecraft.

The decision presents another dimension to other reforms of the government that have necessitated serious sacrifice and deprivation on the part of the citizenry. It is therefore only apposite that the government is seen taking the rightful lead in plugging wastages and pruning down the high cost of governance that have overtime, been the major source of stagnation of the national economy. That is the essence of the Oronsaye report.

Set up in 2011 by the Jonathan administration following national concerns on the negative impacts of the alarming and unsustainable cost of running government, the committee was among others, charged to review the establishing Acts and mandates of all federal agencies, parastatals and commissions to identify areas of overlap and duplication of functions.

It had recommended the reduction of 263 statutory agencies to 161, abolishing 38, merging 52 and reverting 14 to departments in the ministries. However, a white paper committee led by the then Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke rejected a majority of the recommendations. No further action was taken on the matter by the Jonathan regime before it wound up.

But in 2021, the Buhari administration dusted up the report with the setting up two committees to get it implemented. The first committee was mandated to review the Oronsaye report and the white paper while the second was directed to review ministries, departments and agencies created between 2014 and 2021. A white paper was also produced after the work of the committees.

No significant progress was seen to have been made in this direction until last week’s directive which was quickly followed up with the unveiling of the agencies and commissions affected by the exercise.

Curiously, that list which was released by the Special Adviser to the president on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga only contains agencies, commissions and parastatals affected by the approval of the Federal Executive Council FEC meeting of February 26, 2023 which considered the recommendations of the Oronsaye report. In effect, the recommendations slated for implementation were approved by the last administration a year ago.

But only two agencies- the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate and the National Senior Secondary Education Commission are to be scrapped contrary to the 38 recommended by the Oronsaye panel. Fifteen are to be merged as against the 52 contained in the original report while nine others are to be subsumed.

What seems to have emerged is that the current administration is implementing the decisions of his predecessor on the two white papers produced by the committees set up by both Jonathan and Buhari. It remains hazy if any independent review of the decision of the 2023 FEC on the report was undertaken.

Its corollary is that whereas the decision of the FEC of February last year, may have factored in the fate of ministries and agencies created during the Buhari regime, it could not have captured those created by the current administration. That still leaves the job incomplete.

Though an eight-man committee was charged to ensure that necessary legislative amendments and administrative restructuring for the implementation of the reforms are done in an efficient manner, its mandate did not involve a review exercise. Expectedly, there has been public apprehension on the possible fallouts of the implementation of the report. Much of these hinges on the time lag between the submission of the report and the white papers; their consideration and approval by the FEC and implementation. There is everything to expect that the recommendations would have been affected by the dynamism of our ever changing environment.

This line of thinking was manifest in the resolution by the House of Representatives last week which dubbed the report ‘outdated’. The House was of the view that the government should thoroughly review the report before going ahead with its implementation. It set up a 23-man committee to recommend measures to cushion the effects of the exercise.

There is also the fear that implementation of the report may led to possible retrenchment in the face of the excruciating economic circumstances in the country. This will worsen unemployment and throw more people below the poverty ladder. But government’s response to this is that the Oronsaye report is to improve efficiency in public service and not intended to retrench workers.

That may be the underlying principle. But the two are not mutually exclusive. It is inconceivable that you can scrap agencies, merge some and subsume others without job loss. They cannot just add up.

But all this cannot in any way detract from the pristine principles behind cost saving and efficiency in running the business of government. Should the business of government be cost effective and run in the most efficient manner? YES! There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement about that even as the overall public good ought to be the guiding principle.

Developing countries make concerted efforts to reduce the cost of governance to conserve funds for infrastructural development that will impact positively on the lives of the citizenry. India followed this route by introducing e-governance in administration. Ghana, Thailand, Ethiopia and Kenya resorted to drastic reductions in the number of political appointees to arrive at the same trajectory.

Beyond the scrapping and merging of agencies, commissions and parastatals, there are other costs of running government that must be equally pruned down if the right objectives are to be realized. The expansive bureaucracy consequent of our presidential system; high number of political appointees both at the federal and state levels are real issues to worry. If there is no commensurate effort on the parts of governments to reduce the overall cost of recurrent expenditure especially as they affect political appointees, we may end up scratching the surface of a malignant tumour.

Read Also: Oronsaye report implementation: Late but not too late

What level of progress can we possibly make in situations where political expedience blind the eyes of some governors to the extent of appointing more than 400 special advisers, assistants, etc. with no clearly defined roles? These are the areas to focus. We may need to amend our laws to limit the powers of the presidents and governors to make political appointments tainted by political expedience.

But all these are spurred and encouraged by the increasing perception of politics as the quickest source of ill-gotten wealth. There must be a deliberate effort to discourage this ruinous tendency. Cost saving and efficiency in running the affairs of government must be seen to permeate all strata of the country’s public life. It must reflect in the salaries and allowances paid to legislators at all levels; it must be seen to be guiding the award of contracts and all public procurement processes.

This writer was at a workshop organized by an international agency a couple of years ago. A white man and resource person shocked the audience when he disclosed the answer he got when he sought to know why it costs much higher to construct a kilometre of road in Nigeria than Ghana. According to him, the answer he got was that ‘Nigerian kilometre is longer than Ghanaian kilometre’.

We burst into laughter. But he had succeeded in ridiculing us. He had succeeded in drawing attention to the phenomenon of inflated contracts and the constraints they impose on cost saving and efficiency in the delivery of public goods and services. This area must also come into focus. So also scorching corruption in public offices!

Implementation of the Oronsaye report is just a small fraction of the fundamental reforms the government should undertake to reposition the country on the path of steady progress, growth and development.

March 4, 2024