Category: Monday

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Forty Days and Forty Nights, that chronicles the life of Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, and the national crisis that erupted in the Obasanjo years when six lawmakers impeached a governor in a gangster fashion. Lalong spent 40 days in OBJ’s gulag and it took the intervention of now President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu – then Lagos State governor – to plot his escape, underlining their long-drawn duel pitting his progressive forces against OBJ’s fascistic spirit. This excerpt begins in detention in Abuja by EFCC before Lalong ended up in Lagos.

“He gave us tea. We relaxed,” Lalong said. He was referring to himself and his deputy, Musa.

Later, Lamorde’s – EFCC’s operations director – men started interrogating them. But Lamorde said it was a political matter. “It is not us that brought you here,” Lamorde confessed. “It’s your political matter. Relax. Say what you want to say.”

They gave them papers to start writing statements. But they were still not comfortable with them. Magu became another pain in the neck.

“Do you know that at one point this Magu brought a plain sheet of paper for me to sign a specimen signature? Without a statement. That was when I abused him in that place.”

Again, Lamorde intervened when he heard the shouts and quarrels between them.

“I said, Look at this man. He said I should sign plain sheet. For what? I’m still speaker of the House ooo. I’m signing the destiny of Plateau State on a plain sheet for you? He said no, there were certain documents they wanted to verify. I said, bring those documents. If I am the one who signed I would tell you I signed. If it’s my signature, I would tell you it’s my signature. But I cannot sign my specimen signature on plain paper. I don’t know what you want to do with the people of Plateau.”

It was then that Lamorde told Magu, “No, you can’t do that.” Not long after, they played host to a few guests, including Solomon lar and Bishop Hassan Kukah. It was after that, they flew them to Lagos, and the man in charge again was Magu. They took them to the EFCC detention centre on Awolowo Road in Ikoyi, Lagos…

In detention were not only the two of them but at least 14, all members of the state house of assembly. Their mission was straightforward. They wanted Lalong, as speaker, to sign a draft impeachment notice. Who were those who drafted the document?

“A prominent SAN today was one of them. I was there when he did same to Fayose. Gani Fawehinmi was the consultant to the EFCC. So all of them, Gani and this other lawyer, were the ones drafting.”

Lalong said they were working together for their consultancy for the EFCC. He said he met the lawyer there. It was then that we got the information that they wanted to do the same to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was then the governor of Lagos. We were waiting to see if they would bring the Lagos House of Assembly. But they couldn’t because I think there were threats that if they tried it, they would bring the whole Lagos down. So, at the end of the day, they didn’t arrest anybody from Lagos. That was under Ribadu. Today, all of us are working for Asiwaju.”

Lalong remained there for 40 days because they could not coerce him to sign the impeachment notice.

It was Tinubu, who came to their rescue. The EFCC had said no bail was working because they said the people who brought land documents had fake evidence. So, it was Asiwaju who invited Fashola and Osinbajo. Osinbajo was the Attorney General of Lagos State. Fashola was the Chief of Staff. He asked them to process land documents, and they did in order to bail them out. They could not deny that land documents signed by Lagos State government were authentic.

“Any other person who brought land documents from Lagos, and brought it to us to bail us, they rejected it but accepted for others. They left me and two others. So, the day they came out, the day Lagos brought those documents, they seized the documents from Lagos State government. They now realized there was no way to keep me. Then, they said they’ll release me but bring me back there.”

Lalong was the last person they released. He had already signed to leave the jail. But when he was going downstairs, the EFCC was arranging for the judge to re-arrest him. But some persons, including policemen in the building, alerted him and asked him to take a way out before they got to him.

“They got me out of the place, put me in a taxi. So, when the taxi dropped me out, in less than ten minutes, EFCC came and raided the place for me. They didn’t see me, of course,” he recalled.

He said the fellows who organized his escape were his friends in the police and the SSS.

“They came and said, this thing is not fair and that my offence was that I refused to impeach Dariye,” he said.

They told him that the EFCC wanted to frustrate and leave him alone in detention and coerce him to sign the impeachment draft. They wanted to browbeat him to bow. They did not have the numbers. Out of 24 members, only eight of them signed the document. That was not even up to half of them, and so they did not have the numbers to impeach a governor.

So, before they realized, he entered the taxi. They sold a dummy. The EFCC thought he was heading for the airport, and they ran there to ambush him. The reason was that their wives were going to the airport to fly to Jos.

“So, they went to the airport to arrest us but they did not see us,” he narrated.

Rather the taxi took him to Ibadan through the express, disguised. From there, he kept on changing taxis until he reached Ondo and Akure in the wee hours of the morning. He said they slept in Akure. He recalled they got to Akure at about three in the morning. For food, they bought stuff along the way. They slept for a couple of hours in Akure before heading north by road.  He was with a few others on the trip.

When they got to Lokoja, they (SSS) realised that he had escaped and heading towards Jos. It was then they hurriedly rallied six turncoats in the house from where they hid in Abuja to Jos to impeach Dariye. They pulled it off around 6 am. They entered the house premises and barricaded it. It was a melee that involved shooting, and two persons died from gunshot wounds at the Plateau Hospital. They were patients. People were firing bullets at them. They even shot a policeman in their car.

They came with soldiers as well. They performed the exercise and left.

“By the time we arrived Jos, there was news flash that Dariye had been impeached…by the time they had impeached Dariye, they didn’t look for us again.” Dariye himself had fled. He was in Makurdi for a while and later he went to Lagos and Asiwaju picked him and gave him shelter.”

Lalong mused that it was bad for conscience that the same Asiwaju was running for president, and Dariye was supporting Peter Obi of the Labour Party.

This is not the time for some naysayers to hope. They are the vipers on the path of this democracy. They have nightmares over May 29. Some of them are otherwise wise people. They are lawyers of apparent substance. They are clerics with claims, however dubious, of hugging the Comforter.  Some are writers who manage to believe God endows them with force and elegance. Professors as protesters, pastors lacking pastures, SANs sans sound, and those who write without light. Many of them, however, belong to a coven of miscreants. They are the sort that makes a crowd without eyes or ears but only a tongue of the profane. To paraphrase Shakespeare, they are spendthrift with their tongues.

Their point is simplistic: they should not swear-in Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because someone or other is challenging the legitimacy of his victory at the polls. They say the matter should be adjudicated and the winner determined before he can mount the seat. This view would have been wise if it was not dubious. It would have made sense if it was the first time a man would win an election in Nigeria and if the law forbade such an investiture.

It might have made sense if those making the claims did not vote against Tinubu, or if they have not confessed their aversion to his candidacy. If they were neutral, or were strangers to the Nigerian history, we might say, well, they mean well. But they are pharisaic bunch.

But these men and a few women, who utter such pretensions, have made themselves serpents of the transition. Some of them are writers. They think because they have a platform to write essays, they have become servants of justice. But they are false savants. They decree victory without scoring. They anoint a pretender to the throne. They conjure figures, invent voters, charm geopolitics into being and believe them enough to make them into gospels and breed goons of believers. They rarefy their choice candidate’s drivel as oratory, refine his backwoods logic into classic philosophy, don him with a cassock. They have made a faith for themselves and revel in the fanatics they have bred. It brings to mind Shakespeare’s line on cheering fans of the Roman ruler, “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.” It is the sort of loyalty, as Shakespeare says, that makes “our faith folly.”

So, they suffer from what some sociologists call status anxiety. What will become of them when Tinubu says, So Help Me God and Shettima follows suit? What will turn in their stomachs, especially those of the Christian faith who would not tolerate any other when they show allegiance to another faith? They were here when President Goodluck Jonathan did this to his own God. It seems anathema to accept it in another even if Jesus Christ had admonished wheat and tares to dwell together. They will have duel in the hearts. They are imagining a Tinubu in Aso Rock and Remi Tinubu as first lady. They are unable to accept the fact of a majority vote unless it is their majority, or reality unless it is their reality. They want to sing Wike’s song, As e dey pain dem, e dey sweet us. They are afraid, some people will sing it at their expense. But Tinubu has not given a hint of gloating. He wants a rainbow nation of cooperation. They don’t want to accept his love. Somehow, hating him feels like a spiritual thirst.

So, it is not because they believe that it is wrong to swear anyone in before dispatching the cases in court. It is about the person, not the law. If it is about the law, they know they are wrong. They know that the law is clear about how many days a case can last in court. It is, on the whole, 180 days. They knew this before the election. Like poor EPL fans, they want to discard the referee and change the rule before it is 90 minutes.

Read Also: 10th NASS: Dont succumb to pressure, APC group urges Tinubu, NWC

 Maybe they did not know. Or when they knew, they decided to reimagine what they knew. The Poet Shelley urged everyone to reimagine what we know. By doing that, we expand the frontiers of our imagination. As Einstein said, “knowledge is limited. But imagination encircles the earth.” He further says

“imagination is more important than knowledge.” So maybe they are expanding their knowledge. But this is a fake version of the imagination. You cannot say you are reimagining it when the law is clear. You can only do same when there are caveats and windows. But the law is what it is. Some of the clerics should remember Paul who wrote, “for we can do nothing against the truth but for the truth.”

They know that they are full of mischief. This is not the first time since 1999 that we are having presidents sworn-in while challengers are wailing in the court room. Tinubu himself is a paragon of judicial endurance. We and a few of these clerics were in this country when he waited for close to four years while Oyinlola puffed in office. He won the case for Rauf Aregbesola. Adams Oshiomhole waited while Osunbor peacocked in office before the courts overturned his reign. We were all witnesses when Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) proclaimed, “one by one by God.” It came to pass in Ekiti and Ondo as well.

OBJ will not have the courage to join the raucous chorus because he was sworn in while Olu Falae challenged his victory at the polls. Muhammadu Buhari became a citizen of the court three times. He, too, exercised patience while May 29 elapsed. Jonathan was the only person who did not summon SANs for a pay day. He had no bloodlust for office after six years. He knew he would lose as others had done. He had misgoverned enough.

Some lawyers have said it was a misnomer that a few men who call themselves justices would sit and determine the fate of a people. One of the lawyers called for a change of that order. He has a point. But he was echoing Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, who wants to upturn the finality of supreme court verdicts. He wants a rubberstamp legislature to cancel a court pronouncement if it runs counter to his interest. He is a subvert of justice. He is undergoing a corruption trial, and the prospect of a guilty verdict terrifies him.

Our lawyers should not be turning matters upside down. They are saying the right thing for the wrong reason. Like Netanyahu, such lawyers want to compromise the inviolability of the court verdict because they do not want a Tinubu presidency. They know the consequence of undermining the court: anarchy. Hence, Israeli streets erupted in protests. Our mob without eyes and ears are becoming gangsters of the law.

Soyinka called some of them fascists. It is strange that some clerics have joined them in calling for the subversion of the law. They are, in essence, calling for the army. Some of the clerics were in this country when soldiers made us serfs in our land. They were the days of decrees and gulags. This writer, as managing editor of Abiola’s Concord Newspapers in Abuja, was stalked by two SSS cars every day until I escaped in the heady era of June 12.

Some of the mob without eyes and ears are so sure that the 25 percent view of Abuja will nullify the victory. Hence, they just want that aspect to be ruled upon. This is without merit because even the LP and PDP did not isolate those cases. They cannot eat their cake and have it. These “25 percent And-ers” are a desperate bunch.

They want to ambush the constitution. They think they are wise. They don’t even know how to keep supporters. Their chief apostle is on a mission to reconcile. He even tweeted a reconciliation, but our avatar said he did not reconcile. The literary patriarch who could have been their friend they abused and mocked out of their orbit. They turned his affection for them into what Shakespeare called cold fire, wolvish-ravening lamb, fiend angelical.

They cannot, no matter how much they try, upturn the constitution. They are the vipers slithering inside a tall grass waiting for the venom moment. But the law, bearing Tinubu, is a bird stalking the sky with its bold, piercing eyes. The bird sees it. The snake thinks it is ambushing the rabbit, but it is  the prey, a prey of its self-destruct conscience. The bird, in its benevolent majesty, would just soar ahead. And the Nigerian bird is the eagle, regal, gorgeous and, where necessary, ruthless.

The Port Harcourt visit threw up a lot to cherish.  A marvel of a flyover, a pageant of dancers and songs, a kaleidoscope of fashion, a bonhomie of national unity.

But the social media did what it often does best: invent a lie and run with it.  President-elect Bola Tinubu turned it into another teachable moment. At the banquet, he responded with the quip: “Get educated.” The next day, he reminded the people that he was only a president-elect, not president. He explained that the request from Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike was a policy request. He was not in a position to act on a policy. That would make him a subvert.

He was not like some people who wanted President Muhammadu Buhari to upturn the law and not swear him into office.  In his own case, he did not want to act as though the justices had already sworn him in. He had no conscience for such impunity of impatience. His meal is coming to his dinner table. He does not need to crane and peer at the kitchen. The aroma signifies a promise and coming destiny.

President-elect is not an office. If an office, it is in the offing. It is a title of expectation enshrined in the people’s verdict. It is a promissory status. So, if Governor Wike said out of half-humour and half-gravity that his note was ready for him for May 29, Tinubu responded in the same temperament. When he said, “I owe you nothing,” Wike shook with laughter. His internet interpreters frowned with malice. They were having a headache on the governor’s behalf.

When Tinubu said Wike would have to lobby him, it was a statement of temporary impotence. He could do nothing now. Even when that time came, he would have to look at the state of the exchequer. He was wise. He was not going to concede right away. It was a testament to Tinubu’s presence of mind. Nothing testified to such prescience than what Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi revealed at the banquet. The governor, now senator-elect, revealed that when Wike made the request, Jigawa State Governor Mohammed Badaru was clutching a sheet of paper with his own list. And another governor had followed suit. But once Tinubu responded to Wike, the two governors tossed their sheets of demand. So, it was an elaborate joke. The internet parade was not in on the laugh.

Again, Governor Wike had at the banquet chided the internet worms to go beyond the surface and probe the spirit of the exchange. Tinubu had come in a spirit of reciprocity, what Wike had popularized as Iyendeba, Iyendeba.  So, we saw two men banter, and the internet in a stutter. Tinubu remarked the next day, in his first response to internet worms, that they have called him different sorts of names. But what struck this essayist was that since the election period, the president-elect has been imparting knowledge to his traducers.

Read Also: Wike declares holiday for Tinubu’s visit

We cannot forget, for instance, the moment he promised to recharge Lake Chad. This was when he visited Borno State. In their ignorance, they revealed their narrow understanding of language, a lack of grasp of the power of metaphor. If you can charge a glass of whiskey with just a shot, when you release thousands of gallons into a lake, what would you call it? It was in Borno State, the state of now vice-president-elect Kashim Shettima, who as governor, pointed out the lake as a main source of the state’s unrest. The same crowd revealed their fashion ignorance when they saw suit over sneakers at the NBA conference. That was until a flurry of international pictures with models in the same outfits exposed their outdated eyes. Shettima won, the internet zero.

The other one was his comment about poisoned communion and church rat, and rather than understand the intricacies of his metaphor, they revived their so-called Muslim-Muslim prejudice. They, including Christian clerics, who saw nothing wrong in one other candidate who placed a Christian as a subordinate candidate but chuckled over a Christian candidate subordinating a Muslim, thought Tinubu’s metaphor was irreverent. Tinubu educated them on the value of environmental nationalism, and how we cannot run our economy on a Western clock. If they abused the environment to make wealth, we have a right to abuse it too, hence the poisoned communion. But if they want to retain the sanctity of the green earth, they have to pay us. The roughneck who becomes a priest has no right to condemn other rough necks in the street who would be priests later without giving them holy communion first.

Tinubu taught. Some understood. Most of the howlers did not understand it. They do not have the subtlety to grasp the interstices of the logic. They now fear his mind. Rather than acknowledge, they pelt abuse.

This shows that we need a conversation on how to save discourse in this country. Free speech is good. It is a tenet of democratic progress. But we can sometimes mistake stylized chaos of a fascistic liberty for free speech. Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher, worried that freedom means different things for good and bad people. Boko Haram, for instance, may see their butchery as freedom to entrench a theocracy.  We are seeing those who desecrate liberty today. Freedom to push ethnic agenda. Freedom to turn church into a magisterial pulpit for Christ’s kingdom on earth. In between, we have the nasty, brutish voices who celebrate misery, skew facts, upturn order, flay the innocent, sacralise the deviant, defy logic.

The law must come to play in this area, where those who libel must pay in the court of law. And those who peddle cancerous untruths must suffer the consequences. Recently, a toxic television station Fox News was humbled for working with the Trump group to deny that President Joe Biden won the polls. They brayed that the company known as Dominion had twisted the figures. They were forced to settle out of court after paying close to a billion dollars. Another company, Smartmatic, is also in court. The main culprit, one anchor, has been fired. It was a humbling moment for a peacock station that thrived on lies. This is a cautionary tale. The best way to temper the rabble on television and the internet is to hit them at their raw spot: their pocketbooks.

Some of the internet worms have no money. If they know there is consequence for foul speech and lies, they will not poop in public if they know they will be pooh-poohed.

That was the question I asked myself of the English royal who abandoned family and followed the coattail of an entitled American wife who cut him off from crown and home, and they became homeless. Harry was on a humiliating third row wearing a regular suit when his brother William was on the front row and playing a role. Harry was a bystander and spectator in his family day of glory. All because Meghan complained royalty was racist and did not treat her with respect. Harry collapsed rather than fight for his right in the home.  He looked like a dud of a man at the ceremony. If royals were nasty, why did he not fight from within, and enlist the world? Rather he left the palace to its own infamy. Now, his children may not forgive him and Meghan for cutting them away from what might have been their rights. I am not a royalist, but a person must stand and fight from within. It is better to be a Gorbachev and wait for the moment to change things. It might not be him, but his son. Or it might even be William if he put much heat on his brother.

Read Also: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle announce first project for Netflix

The other thing that struck one was the lie that British told themselves that, somehow, King Charles is a divine king. We have forgotten the era of the divine rights of kings. Even then, we saw slaughter in Europe that saw monarchs as neither divine nor kings. The evocation of scripture, application of anointing oil and wearing of the crown have no place in Christian doctrine. It belonged to the Old Testament, and every Christian is now king and priest. Christians cannot have a man anointed as king over them by another priest. It is subversion. There was no king in the New Testament, except Jesus. I enjoyed the spectacle and solemn grandeur. I hope the new king will look at the reparations agitation and pay Africa what they owe us for making them a wealthy empire and America great.

For us Nigerians, no one gave a prophecy that the day would not come. Or that the army would truncate the process. It happened in the past, though, in the days of King George IV, who said his wife Caroline, should not be allowed to appear in his investiture. He accused her of many offences, including adultery, but she made it and became queen. And she was popular with the people. So, Nigerian naysayers, take note.