After the genuine Yoruba group known as Afenifere drove Pa Ayo Adebanjo out as acting leader, the old man is not ready to abide. He says, through his acolytes, that he remains the leader and they plan to hold a meeting to make him so. I wonder why he is not inviting Peter Obi, or why the feminine voiced fellow has not spoken on his behalf. Adebanjo is a fighter but he is the bolekaja sort of wrestler. Except that he has neither the wisdom nor guile for that sort of muscle play. It is time for him to go, but the man would not budge. He is dancing to his own drum. He is dancing into the bush because that is where the drumbeat compels him. He does not know he is in the bush among the throbs of boughs and beasts until an amotekun leaps out into glare. The other drums say, go, Baba, go. He mistakes the language of the drumrolls for eulogy. That is the tragedy.
Category: Monday
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BOS Airborne
The closest to ancient Greek democracy in contemporary times is the town hall meeting, not elections. It is the only credible heart-to-heart moment in political accounting. It is a constant fair in American politics. Sometimes it is a mini-fest, a visceral touchstone. Other times, it can be a cantankerous affair, constituents jabbering and even jabbing. It is difficult to choreograph. It takes courage for a politician to hold it even if they want to be puppeteers and make the audience a mass marionette. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, held one a few days ago, and it ended with appreciation and without rancour. But most important, the governor turned it into a news show. He let us know that his stewardship is not only about roads, or bridges or even a policy like the single use plastics. The BOS is airborne. He announced that Lagos was planning an airline. With a new airport on the runway of his vision, it only made sense to start an airline. I called him a landmark governor, and he is not done. He had announced a medical university, the first of its kind by a state governor. On the airline, Joe Igbokwe triggered online names for it. Some call it Ibile Air, Eko Air, etc. From changing the landscape of the mind and the earth, he is set to race into the air.
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Kidnappers’ republic
It is heart-refreshing that President Tinubu has promised not to rest until the scourge of terrorism, banditry and kidnapping that resurged in various parts of the country is stamped out. He met with service chiefs last week to find solutions to escalating and embarrassing insecurity especially in and around the Federal Capital Territory FCT.
The Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike also summoned an emergency Security Council meeting where he was reported to have read riots acts to area council chairmen even as he assured that the government was handling the situation and respite was in sight.
The FCT has been in the news for bad reasons following the abduction of a man identified as Mansoor Al-Kadriyar alongside his six daughters and many others in the Bwari Area Council of the FCT. The father of the young girls had earlier been released apparently to enable him source the N60 million ransom demanded by the bandits for the release of his children.
As the family sourced for the money, a discreet attempt by the security agencies to free the captives turned out catastrophic. An uncle to the abductees who led the security agencies to the rescue mission was gunned down by the bandits. Two of the three policemen hit by bullets during the gun exchange reportedly died.
Apparently infuriated by the failed rescue attempt, the kidnappers were said to have been very uncompromising when the family told them they were only able to raise N30 million. After so much negotiations and pleas on the deadline for the payment of the ransom, the bandits instructed the family to come and receive a ‘message’ at a certain location in the night.
When the family got to the location around 10 pm, they were shocked to see one of the girls Nabeeha and three other victims brutally murdered. They had no option than to take the corpse of Nabeeha with them. One of those murdered alongside Nabeeha was a 13-year old secondary school girl Ariyo Folorunsho who was also abducted from the Bwari council area of the FCT.
The kidnappers later called the Al-Kadriyar family that they had increased the ransom to N100 million-N20 million each for the five remaining girls. They threatened to kill the girls if the ransom was not paid on the next deadline. That was the ordeal of the Al-Kadriyar family in the hands of the demented bandit-kidnappers.
The development caused so much national trepidation that some groups began online fund raising to save the lives of the remaining girls.
As the fund raising was going on, a former minister of communications, Isa Pantami told an anxious nation that a friend of his had paid in N50 million into the bank account of the girls’ father to enable him make up the N100 million ransom to save his daughters from mortal harm.
That was the kidnapping saga the country was embroiled in. The incident denoted a metaphor for the escalating kidnappings and sundry criminalities that have reduced the worth of life in this country. But worthy of note was the helplessness and hopelessness of the Kadriyar family as they took resort to self-help to secure the release of their children.
Even when they involved the security agencies, the outcome was fatal. Nabeeha may have been killed to punish the family for involving the police to rescue the poor girls. And after that callous murder, the family was left with no other option than to source for the ransom as the consequences of further default could be very dire.
Read Also: Our 19-day experience in kidnappers’ captivity, by freed Abuja sisters
So those who donated money to facilitate the release of the remaining girls are not to blame. It is also beside the point whether it was Pantami or his unnamed friend that provided the N50 million. The lives of the girls were really in grave danger after their sister had been killed. And if ransom was the only way out in the circumstance so be it.
But the experience of the Kadriyar family mirrors vividly the predicament of Nigerians in the hands of bandits and sundry kidnappers since that social malaise surface on our national chessboard. During the last regime, bandits, terrorists, herdsmen and kidnapers levied so much war on the rest of the society that questions were raised as to whether law and order had broken down irretrievably in the country.
There was the embarrassing Abuja-Kaduna train attack that led to the killing of innocent souls and abduction of many. For months running, the bandits held the captives hostage releasing piecemeal, those who were able to pay their ransom. The government appeared helpless as the reign of the bandits held sway. But the government hid under the excuse that it was merely exercising caution so as not to harm the abductees in any eventual attack on the bandits.
That could as well be. But such excuses are all that the bandits required to oil the wheels of their illicit business. Little wonder abduction and kidnapping for ransom by all manner of criminals have continued to be on the upward surge. The fate of the Kadriyars is a consequence of this state of anarchy.
It exposes the helplessness of abductees in the face of the inability of the security agencies to find a handle to this national embarrassment. It conjures the image of the sovereignty of the bandits – a republic within a republic.
In this column, I had in May 2021 under the title “A bandits’ Republic” expressed fears that the country was increasingly sliding to a verity of the sovereignty of the bandits. Then, the reign of the bandits-herdsmen and kidnappers especially in parts of the north had begun to convey the unmistakable impression that there existed a bandits’ republic within the federal republic of Nigeria.
Then, bandits had taken control of the many ungoverned forests in the country from where they levy war on the society dictating the rules of engagement with the government of the day seemingly helpless. That is the miserable scenario re-enacted by the Bwari incident. But the bandits’ territory is not a normal republic where the rule of law and due process form the basis for political action.
It is a republic in its most aberrant form, sharing common traits with the Hobbesian state of nature where life has at once become short, nasty and brutish. That republic is governed by the law of the jungle, bestial instincts and survivalist predilections. No singular economic or political activity goes on there. Neither are the inmates under the sovereignty of any singular dominion.
But adjoining the jungle republic is a modern government (republic) which the bandits rebel against. Ironically non-state actors operating from jungle republic regularly mount serious attacks on the legitimate government equipped with all the paraphernalia of office with the latter unable to establish its firm authority.
That is the paradox presented by the unmitigated reign of terror by the bandits and sundry kidnappers. Why will victims of the regular onslaughts of bandits not pay ransom if only to save their lives in the face of the inability of the government to protect them?
It is not just enough for the government to caution on the dangers of crowd-funding for ransom. Neither does it suffice to discourage families of victims from paying ransom. The government must show capacity and control in its statutory duty of securing lives and property. That is the basis of its authority and legitimacy.
A situation the bandits compete with the government for the loyalty of the citizens with the latter negotiating their freedom with ransom, creates the unmistakable image of a kidnappers’ republic within a republic. It has all the trappings of state failure. The government must rise quickly and diminish the authority and seeming invincibility of these non-state actors taking refuge in our forests.
Those hiding in the forests under the guise of whatever business are the biggest challenge to the escalating banditry and kidnapping. The inability to separate genuine herdsmen occupying the forests from their criminal counterparts provides the cannon fodder for the continued reign of the bandits and kidnappers. What to do?
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A scam and a murder
For the umpteenth time, the unsolved murder of former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Chief Bola Ige was recently in the news. He was shot dead at his home in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, 22 years ago, on December 23, 2001. He was 71.
Tragically, the case had gone cold because those who should have pursued its resolution were ultimately cold in their approach to finding the killers and possibly the puppeteers behind the scenes.
The puzzling murder case came up yet again following Nobelist Wole Soyinka’s intervention in the corruption-related case involving a former Minister of Power and Steel, Olu Agunloye, who was arraigned in Abuja by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in connection with a $6bn Mambilla hydropower project contract.
Soyinka fiercely objected to the court order that Agunloye be remanded in Kuje Correctional Centre, pending resumption of his case, saying it prompted “justifiable, high-level concern for his safety.”
According to Soyinka, “Bola Ige’s murder was not unconnected with the Mambilla scam. Olu Agunloye worked closely with me, both within and outside routine police motions, to unmask Ige’s killers. It would therefore amount to unpardonable complacency to propose that there are no forces sufficiently desperate to accord him the same fate as Bola Ige. That goal is made easier by the abrupt decision to remand him in prison.” This protest did not stop Agunloye’s detention at Kuje. He was released last week after meeting his bail condition. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
It was revealing that Soyinka linked Ige’s murder with the Mambilla scam. Ige was Minister of Power and Steel from May 1999 to January 2000, before he became Minister of Justice. What was the connection between the scam and the murder?
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Notably, Ige’s protégé and former governor of Osun State Chief Bisi Akande captured Ige’s murder in his autobiographical book, My Participations, launched in December 2021, 20 years after the killing. He drew attention to the case again. Akande was governor of Osun State at the time Ige was murdered under the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.
”As was his custom, Ige was preparing to spend the Christmas with his people in Esa-Oke where he held the traditional title of Asiwaju (leader),” Akande says in the book.
“He would normally hold a feast on Boxing Day, December 26, and all of us his friends would join him to celebrate.
“That day would be an open house and all members of the Esa-Oke community would troop to Ige’s expansive compound.
“So, by the time Ige entered Ibadan, preparation for Christmas at Esa-Oke was in top gear.
“Most of his personal staff, especially those in the kitchen, had moved to Esa-Oke to await his arrival.
“Instead of going to Esa-Oke, Uncle Bola decided to spend the night in Ibadan.
“He went to his junior brother, Sir Dele Ige, to have dinner and then, retired home.
“His wife, Atinuke, was waiting for him. As soon as he got home, his security details and personal staff, learning that they would not be travelling to Esa-Oke again, went out to look for dinner at a nearby restaurant as soon as they dropped their boss.
“Shortly after they left, some gunmen invaded the Ige residence.
“The house was at the end of the street. Behind it was a swamp of an undeveloped bush that terminated in a dead-end.
“They overpowered the only gateman who had been working with Uncle Bola before he took up the ministerial appointment with Obasanjo and marched him upstairs.
“All the doors were opened and they soon accosted their quarry in his bedroom.
“There, they shot him and fled. His wife, who was with him, was locked up in the toilet.
“Muyiwa came in shortly and discovered the horror.”
Ige’s son, Muyiwa, lives with the memory of the horrific killing. Akande also recounts a telephone conversation with then President Obasanjo shortly after the murder.
“Now, you see the lapses in your security! Look at what happened to Bola lge,” Obasanjo was quoted as saying.
“How can you say lapses in my security when Bola lge was killed in lbadan?
“I rule in Osun State! I am not the Governor of Oyo State!
“When his (lge’s) cap was removed at the Ife Palace during your wife’s chieftaincy ceremony, what did you do about it?”
Akande says Obasanjo hung up. The conversation showed the tensions of the time. The background information on Ige’s humiliating experience at the Ife palace also conveyed a context of contention.
It was clear enough that the incident was an assassination. It happened in the middle of Obasanjo’s first four-year term as president. Obasanjo was reelected for a second term, and was president for eight years. This means that he had about six years to find Ige’s killers.
Ige was a significant figure in the Obasanjo presidency, not only because of the weight of his position but also because of his political weight. Obasanjo was expected to get the killers at all costs. He should have been sufficiently embarrassed that such a high-profile member of his administration was killed in such a manner that suggested contempt for the law. His failure to solve the murder remains a massive minus both for him and the government he headed.
Ige’s tragic murder resulted in another tragedy, the death of his wife following signs that the investigation was going nowhere. Justice Atinuke Ige died “within 16 months” of her husband’s assassination, their son observed, saying “She died of a broken heart.”
She must have sensed that the murder case had reached a dead end when a major prosecution witness, Andrew Olofu, who was Ige’s private security guard, suddenly changed his testimony. He was said to have previously identified one of the killers in an identification parade and had also signed a written statement regarding that.
Then the unexpected happened. The same witness was later reported saying in court that he could not recognise any of the three gunmen that invaded Ige’s residence “because at that time, I was in a state of confusion and fear had gripped me.”
Sadly, there is still public confusion about Ige’s murder. The Bola Ige for Justice Centre organised a memorial symposium in Lagos on the 20th anniversary of the incident, lamenting “two decades of injustice.”
It is unclear who murdered Ige, and why it was necessary to murder him. It is unclear why the Obasanjo administration failed to get to the bottom of his murder. It is unacceptable that there is still no clarity.
It was disturbing that Ige’s ghost reappeared. He deserves justice. Will he ever get justice?
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Tinubu, Robin Hood and corruption
It’s money for the poor stolen by the rich. The scandals affecting Betta Edu, Sadiya Farooq, Halima Shehu and their shadows cast over Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, draws the mind to the core of President Bola Tinubu’s philosophy of public service. That is, take from the rich and give to the poor. It’s brigandage on behalf of the little citizen.
In its final chapter, how he implements it will either reinforce or cast aspersions on his image as the Robin Hood of Nigeria’s politics and history. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) bemedaled him with that name because of his doings as the first citizen of Lagos.
The programmes in the Buhari era, including school feeding, cash transfer to the poor, et al, arose from Tinubu’s mind. Buhari defiled it. Unfulfilled ideas, wrote former United States President Richard Nixon in his memoirs, are “like babies that are still born.” The baby died under Buhari. Stillbirths lack the luxury of a sweet cry. This time, the president must not only make this baby let out a great inaugural cry, but it must punch, kick and let out mellifluous shrieks of dawn like the baby born in Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son.
One of the tragedies of the modern era is its obsession with the poor. The first real culprit was the French Revolution. Before that, the elite did not pretend to love the downtrodden. In fact, religions and systems – from aristocracy to monarchism to feudalism – valorised the notion of the glorious eternity of poverty. The scriptures do not only say God loves the poor, but the rich will be blessed for taking care of them. No one goes to heaven for abolishing poverty.
“The poor will always be with us,” said Jesus. To become equal with the rich, the poor must first die. The grave is the equalizer. On earth, the poor never won. After brandishing equality and fraternity, even the French Revolution roared back into its feudal privileges under Napoleon. Across the pond, the U.S. anointed a capitalist-feudal revolution with some of the fancy phrases for equality and freedom. “Give me liberty or give me death,” declared Patrick Henry.
The first real system that devoted its idea to the poor was Marxism. Yet, when it came to fruition, the poor fulfilled Christ’s prophesy. Lenin and his country lived a lie for many decades until Gorbachev saved them with another lie called perestroika and Glasnost (restructuring and openness). Mao and Castro left a legacy that glamorizes poverty. The Russian people keep tagging along even though they invented a new oligarchy with their President Valdimir Putin as one of the richest men alive. The idea of Robin Hood, who is the eponymous hero of men who fight for the poor from Marx to Tinubu, is that poverty needs to be abolished. But the concept of the rich implies the preponderance of the poor. Hence the bearded Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, part anarchist, part revolutionary, said “the possessions of the rich are stolen properties…”
Not everyone believes so. Maybe that accounts for why the president places premium on his social empowerment programmes and the politicians see it as an opportunity for self-enrichment. He wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. Some of his appointees are perceived as taking from the poor to over-bloat the rich.
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It is this divide in government, not only in actions but philosophy, that the president needs to articulate to his cabinet and staff. Perhaps the first step was the decision to suspend the entire programme and reimagine it. I hope the programmes is going to sleep to wake up with a new dream.
The first act is not just to abolish poverty, but to abolish the contempt of the elite class. The contempt has two brands. One, cynical love. This is the more toxic. It implies the love of the poor from a distance. You love to send them money, send them bags of rice, but you don’t want them near you. This is often the case with philanthropy of the official kind. The word was coined by Greek playwright Aeschylus. It entails time, talent and treasure. It must give relief and improve lives under the rubric of social reform. The more intimate word is charity because it evokes sentiment of giving and sacrifice.
The other brand of contempt is ostentation. In the old television drama Hotel De Jordan, the rich man said all the poor were filthy and smelly and should be deposited in the public dump. We had that under IBB when a series of public officers said telephone, higher education, etc were not for the poor. These days, it is more subtle and more dangerous. It is stealthy and hides in the sewer. When it explodes in the open, the smoke smells like Edu and Shehu.
But it is no score for the poor. No system has ever saved the poor in history. It only mitigates, especially in the western countries. What is poor in Nigeria is not poor in Norway. But the worst form of poverty is in the mind. In my first visit to the United States, I had a discussion about poverty with a black American woman, a journalist, in Kansas City. I remarked that her complaint about the sufferings of her fellow blacks were touching but they can eat, clothe, and sown cars no matter how sputtering. Our poor see all that as luxury. About a year ago, an American journalist in Colorado could not believe that a friend of his who hails from Senegal could make anything out of used car spare parts he imported home. All poverty is not created equal. Otedola and Elumelu are rich but one is Forbes and the other is not.
And at the bottom of President Tinubu’s Robin Hood philosophy is that the poor are often impotent. In his The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle writes, “We steal from the poor because they can’t fight back.” Hence they need a hero. When they fight, they either bring down the system or prick the elite conscience for a short time. When the system comes down like in France, or Russia or even Cuba, it is a few powerful who will rebuild and own it. When they prick the conscience like the Glorious Revolution or even apartheid, the structure shows a little mercy and returns to its old disdain. So, the poor keep paying taxes in cash and toil for the rich and never die in peace. Recreating the elder Poet Pinder in the play The Acharnians, Greek poet Aristophanes quotes him as saying, “What I’d saved to buy a coffin, I must spend to pay a fine.” Most poor don’t save enough to buy their coffins when they die. That is what is at stake for the Tinubu Robin Hood image and poverty programmes.
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Sheriff 38, opponents zero
Governor Sheriff Oborevwori said at a thanksgiving service that he survived 38 legal onslaughts in his quest to be the governor of Delta State. The victory last Friday at the Supreme Court was the last of such battles. I don’t know of any public figure around the world who has had to confront such rat-tat-tat of charges other than Donald J. Trump. But Trump is losing his. Sheriff won all. In these days of Guiness Book of Records anxiety, Governor Oborevwori might have clicked something in that book, maybe for Africa, or for persons running for governor in a presidential system or regional governor in Westminster style. But it shows how the political class is riveted on power and how the courts have taken a pivotal part in our evolving political system. It is not only that he had these legal challenges, he conquered all. The attacks ranged from Pre-election to election challenges. I imagine how much lawyers were paid for each of those cases, and how we make career on fictive crimes. It is what Shakespeare calls all labour’s lost. But not for the cynical lawyers. For the politicians who challenged on flimsy ideas though, some people say it is one way the system takes back stolen wealth and redistributes to the system. But lawyers are not the right people to receive them because they are not the people.
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The most telling is the emotional rollercoaster the governor might have navigated, the highs and lows of blood pressure, the second guessing of judges, the possibility of losing a status or what sociologist call status anxiety, the fear that his grand projects and vision might turn into a soap bubble. Happily, the big projects, including the revamping of Warri, no one will now distract. All is well that ends well. His detractors thought the court proceedings were the beginning of the end. As Churchill noted, it is the end of the beginning.
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Utomi and Mega party
Pat Utomi denied widespread reports that a counter mega party would come. He wondered where the story came from. Editors must question their reporters for spreading lies. But more importantly, editors should question themselves why they did not question their reporters enough. My guess is that the media replaced facts with imagination. One of the perils of media is to turn anticipation into news. It breeds fiction. The PDP fellow in transition, Daniel Bwala, had said Tinubu would win 2027 presidential sweepstakes if PDP, LP and NNPP did not merge. Bwala was only saying it to embolden Tinubu and gain his attention, whereas the media thought Utomi and co were talking merger.
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They should know that coming together would create identity crisis for Obi, Atiku and Kwankwaso. So did they ask what would happen to the Obidients? That tribe brooks no marriages. They know only one altar: Obi. Or else, they will lose their gumption and dilute like salt in a bucket of water. They love their body and they embrace their misery. They are like the character in the Count of Monte Cristo who said, “If you ever loved me, don’t ever rob me of my hate. It is all I have.” Does anyone understand this about the obidients? Obidients cannot Atikulate, neither can the Atikulates be Obidient. They saw their chance but they were lost in their own grandiloquent fury. Such combo is like bad digestion. APC is the first ever such party in history to make it. Others have been strange bedfellows since independence. It takes a special acumen, like Tinubu’s, to wrest such a morsel from a tiger’s jaw.
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Who will dance naked?
Before the play itself, the audience witnessed a bit of touching theatre. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, volunteered to give a helping hand to Joke Silva, who sought help to walk up the steep flight of stairs to the stage at the Glover Memorial Hall in Lagos. A hand-to-hand mercy, a theatre of empathy. A woman of many histrionic triumphs, Silva produced the play, The King Must Dance Naked, authored by Fred Agbeyegbe, 88. The drama ran through the yuletide season. It’s about false identities, outrageous claims and redemption.
The play bristles with contemporary resonance: our election angst, corruption, lies, heroics. Betta Edu, Emefiele, Sadiya, the last presidential imbroglio, all tumble through this play first staged in 1983. The theme, about a king who is probably a queen, has to unveil the royal sex under the shadow of a depleting harem. So, the society suffers famine and plagues because of the lie on the throne.
At bottom is a power play, the question of legitimacy and their aftermath. Who should be king? Just like the 2023 polls. Who should be the president? Is it the woman who sounds like a woman but is a man, or is it the man sighing like a woman? The king is actually a queen masquerading as a man. Imposture and false right stalks the throne, as in Aso Villa. In the end, just like our polls, the truth emerges. The real heir is the one who is vilified, seen as no good by some cabals. The new king overtakes the queen. Just like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, justice is not jaundiced.
But a scene about a sacrifice to the gods reminds one of Emefiele, Edu and Sadiya, et al. The society sacrifices a big goat, a fowl and a sumptuous spread of food to the gods. But a madman cons his reluctant wife to join in looting the sacrifice. The couple will achieve two things. They will preserve the society in the illusion that the gods actually ate their sacrifice and worry that they didn’t give enough. So they keep giving. Two, the couple will continue to fatten on the superstition of their society. The lazy prospers on the people’s sacrificial misery. It is the paradise of greed. Achebe pictures such a scene in Arrow of God when the chief priest appropriates the fowl of sacrifice for family. It demystifies the sacred grove. Rite becomes right.
Just like Emefiele, who piled up 593 accounts and $6.2 million carted away under camera lens. Meanwhile, people die, masses hunger, foods rot, hospitals count the dead. There is room for pity. The mother of twins faces the prospect of the killing of the female one, so as to keep the male. It is a testament to the patriarchal tyranny of our society, and that enables the corruption of men. Also, the former king owns the twins and the mother is a former slave who climbs into royalty.
Feminine defiance bustles here, first in the woman who fights for her daughter. Two, the woman who appropriates the throne meant only for men. The three women in the ongoing corruption scandal today – Betta, Shehu, Sadiya – are asserting, in a reversal of roles, a place often reserved for men: Looting the treasury. This is not the feminism dreamed by Elizabeth Stanton and others who gave us the creed.
There is, however, a moral ambiguity to the tale. And that touches Betta Edu. Edu is not your airhead political hustler. She is less than 40, but she is not only a medical doctor but bags a PHD in public health. She is a potential high flyer, brilliant, young, dynamic. Again, from records, she is not the first offender in funneling official money to private accounts. So, why is she taking a fall? Could it be a case of entrapment? Was it that she lacked social tact? Why did the permanent secretary or any of the ministry mainstays not caution her? Why did the bird carry the secret of the bedchamber to the market square? Blessed are those whose sins are covered. Maybe they did not like her and wanted her to plunge into the scandal? For such a thing to happen and this quickly, it implies Edu offended someone. Was she rash, contemptuous, irascible as a boss? Is it the story of a tragic flaw? “All evil is in man, yet it can’t be fixed by man. It can only be forgiven,” wrote Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk in her novel, The Books of Jacob.
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But she was supposed to know. Ignorance is no excuse. I pity her because she and Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo acquitted themselves with verve and innovation. Some even called Tunji-Ojo minister of the year. But competence is not more important than values. Corruption is like a rotten bone that ruptures veins and blood flow. America’s defence secretary, Lloyed Austin, is being called to resign for not informing the president that he was undergoing prostate cancer surgery. No one is emoting pity for a sick man but they are stressing law and decency.
Louis Saint-Just, the French revolutionary known as the archangel of terror, said the job of justice is “not to find the culprit guilty, but to find him weak.” To find the culprit guilty is to inflict punishment for punishment’s sake. To find him weak is to explore avenues for moral rebirth, like in the early concept of correctional facilities. In Nigeria, though, it is the society that is weak because we suffer a collective guilt. Not many calling for Edu’s head do it out of moral superiority but out of sanctimony and envy. If we were she, they would say, I would be cleverer and make all that money without being caught. Hence Saint-Just asserted that the republic of forgiveness only leads to the republic of the guillotine. We appoint public officers to serve, not to purify their souls. They must serve with conscience. Competence without conscience is cynical. So, there is no way either Edu or Tunji-Ojo will not soil the system by remaining in office. The Tinubu administration is probably going through a gradual weeding out of tares from wheat. As Paul wrote, “the removing of those things that can be shaken, so that those that cannot be shaken can stand.”
Edu was given a task like Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan, to dole out good to the poor. But she might have fallen guilty to the line in the play: “For no one can be good for so long if goodness is not in demand.” Hence President Tinubu is overhauling the social empowerment programme to bring compassion back to charity. For there is no justice without compassion. Plenty does not guarantee a filled belly. As Brecht wrote, “stomachs rumble even on an emperor’s birthday.” Shakespeare wrote, “that distribution undo excess and each man have enough.”
Agbeyegbe’s play directed by Toju Ejoh was a great show in dance, song and movement, sometimes an invocation of the chorus of Greek plays by Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Sophocles. It makes us ponder our society as we thrill to the splendour on stage. And the grandeur and flourish of Itsekiri culture was on display. Kunle Ajibade called it “Itsekiri day.”
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Bwala meets Tinubu
Daniel Bwala is an interesting fellow. He quit the Tinubu vortex because, according to him, he could not accept the so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket. He joined Atiku, and TVC Breakfast show invited him to explain a crisis in his party when Wike and Atiku crossed swords over Ayu’s chairmanship of the party. He appeared on TVC Breakfast show, and I asked him why Atiku was insisting on retaining Ayu as chair when Atiku also came from the north against the party’s constitution. He replied that the party would remove Ayu after Atiku had won the election. It was an admission that the arrangement was not neat or just. So, I asked, “Do you want to do the wrong thing first and the right thing later?” Whether out of shock or technology glitch, he disappeared from the screen. Then he returned fuming. To all intents and purposes, that was the end of the interview. He became paranoid and went to social media to say I came to the show just because of him. He also ran scared whenever TVC called him. He asked if I was behind the interview request. I don’t recall him appearing on TVC since. I may be wrong, though.
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Now, he met with President Tinubu and has threatened to defect to APC. I like Bwala. He is a consistent man. Just as he was going to do the wrong thing first and the right thing later, he joined Atiku first and his plotting to join Tinubu later. A man should always do the right thing at last. A cheer for Bwala.
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Courts of confusion
Two anticipated judgments from the Supreme Court made the waves over the weekend. One in Kano State and the other in Plateau State. The top court ruled that it was wrong to cancel about 165,000 votes with unsigned INEC materials. In the second, they upturned the appeal ruling over dubious primaries. If the top court gave us justice, has it brought us peace or clarity? Lawyers will have to contemplate this. Do we give justice to placate a crowd or the law?
In the Kano case, does it mean we can always accept unsigned material as authentic against the law? Will it not open a floodgate of false documents. Democracy is about the majority as it is about the law. Majority cannot stand without the law. It will breed anarchy. The law must always act in the interest of the majority. How to navigate this is the conundrum. It can engender confusion. Hence, Thoreau wrote, “The law never made anyone a whit more just.”
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The Plateau matter highlights how we should define pre-election matters. The same Supreme Court dislodged a governor in Zamfara State for a similar matter in the previous election circle. In Bayelsa State, a deputy governorship candidate’s certificate annulled a ticket even though it was presumably a pre-election matter. Rotimi Amaechi was made governor over a primary miscue. Are we sure, justice is not becoming jaundiced or circumstantial in this country? Now, a cloud of illegitimacy hangs over Lawmakers in Plateau. Do we blame the constitution or judges? According to law, the appeal court is the Supreme Court on matters of the lawmakers. How do we fix this puzzle? Just a thought.