The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Pele’s trophy

    Pele’s trophy

    Both are foot impresarios. With it, one gives many a black eye. The other kicks a storm of ecstasy. Later on in life, Muhammed Ali meets Pele. Pele kisses Ali on the cheek. Both have moved from laurel into lore. Ali no longer jousted in the ring. Pele’s three world cup trophies lie in his Brazilian vault.

    One best sportsman is hugging another best sportsman. It is in a stadium in the United States after Pele has dazzled as a player of the New York Cosmos. Ali is spectator. Pele is spectacle. Two special men meet. In his humour, Ali concedes defeat: “Football is the most beautiful game,” he says. But he has his own minute of triumphal vainglory. “But I am more beautiful than you.” Witnesses do not document Pele’s response. He is not a colourful hero outside the field of play. Ali is a thespian as much as a boxer.

    Hence, until disease crippled him, Ali was a factor of social conscience in the 20th century. He was perhaps the best name in the field as the best in his sport. Pele, who died at 82, was, at best, a bland hero in that arena.

    We love him for what he did, and the trajectory of his biography. He was born in a favela, a ghetto named after a plant that irritated the skin. He died wealthy but grew up in a slum where his inaugural contact with football was to engage rolled-up socks or a grapefruit. His father, his hero, could not afford even a rubber ball. Like Ali, he would bear his famous name later in life. Ali snatched his name from a faith and world historic-figure. Pele’s was from a mistake. He mispronounced a player’s name known as Bile. His myth-making began as a mistake just as his first world cup appearance in 1958 came as a substitution. From then, he became an institution.

    He became a song and rhythm of the game. He became also an aesthetic cause. He would become a cause celebre later. From age 15, he turned the soccer field into a pedal for his medals, into a performance arena. He curled passes, made dribble runs, patented the bicycle kick, discombobulated star defenders, made aerial magic of his headers, and remains the best scorer in the game over three decades after he hung his golden boot.

    He might be the best footballer ever, but his heroics as a black man in world of inequality has presented him as uncomfortable to fight. He thought it was not his style or his obligation to stand for a cause like Ali. Rather he became a sort of ancestor to such other big-name blacks as Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan,  who have waxed silent in the face of tyranny. When Woods began his great career, he sought an audience with Jordan, and the basketball star, who defied nature in his flights and dunks, advised Woods to steer clear of politics. Business abhorred controversy. So, while blacks suffocated in a racist coven, Woods and Jordan soared in ads and celebrity. They were cheered by whites and blacks alike. Blacks accepted them as models of what they could be. Whites thrilled to their exploits. When Woods was asked to comment on his silence, he said, “I am a golfer, not a politician.”

    Pele rose to fame in a world in turmoil. It was in the years of colonial fights and nationalist elan. It was in the age of civil rights, of Martin Luther King Jr, the ravages of dictators and youth rebellion. It was the beginning of television when reels of Pele’s acts kept eyes wet with wonder. His voice never rose for justice.

    Rather Pele allowed his country’s dictator to exploit his image in adverts and proudly appeared with him on television and in the press. He never reminded the world of his favela origin, of his days of want. His country did not allow him to play in Europe after they crowned him a national treasure.

    But Pele had a theory about his silence. He believed being the best player ever was enough cause in itself. Anyone who saw him knew he was black. That one virtue gave glory to the black race. It evangelised black potential and prowess.

    Pele might be right there. No two persons have the same temperament. Some are retiring like him and a few others. Others may punch and howl against wrong. But this essayist cannot excuse such silence. Pele was, at one time, the most famous person in the world. He might have turned easily into a sort of Mandela of justice. He did not have to exercise the pugilist poetry of Ali. An old Mandela gave us the grandeur of objection. Pele met Mandela. The first time he went to South Africa he suffered a racism. He vowed never to return there until apartheid fell.

    His fame gave him access to wealth and the top tier of society and he became sports minister when he campaigned for more blacks in office. His voice was more of a whisper when the world demanded a roar.

    Like Woods and Jordan, Pele rose at a time the western world was changing its attitude of dealing with blacks as entertainment. Blacks even in the US had opportunity in sports and they now could pay to make them laugh and swoon. In a racist remark in the 1990’s, they described blacks as creatures of natural rhythm. This was a redrawing of the past when blacks were exhibition of a savage nature. Historians hid this until a book on Belgian colonial past came to light about two decades ago. The book, titled: King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, recounted the primitive era, among other things, of the age of the Belgian dictator in his treatment of Congolese. He brought hundreds of enslaved blacks to his country and put them in a cage for whites to look at. They were designated as human zoos. They laughed and even threw bananas at them. This was not restricted to Belgium. It was in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Philadelphia – known as the city of brotherly love – and California. And more. Billions of whites attended such zoos.

    What we have today is a stylized version of the athlete as a spectacle of fun. That is why the athlete must convert it into a cause for equality or justice or it will all be a selfish waste. This story must admit that not all whites accepted the dehumanization as a fact. Some protested but the voices were muted. It was one of the supremacist antics of history. If they accepted that blacks were no more than monkeys in a zoo, why would they be allowed to do well as doctors or lawyers or parents or family members? I recall a friend of mine at a function in the US who introduced me to other Caucasians and he wanted them to understand that I was intelligent and not like others stereotyped as sportsmen. He quipped, “although he is tall, he is not a basketball player.” He didn’t mean it out of malice but that is how the culture has imbibed such malignant tropes.

    Russia had a story of a man of Cameroonian origin who became a darling in the court of Peter the Great.  He even became a general of no mean stripe. He was the grandfather of great writer Alexander Pushkin who always wanted the world to know he was a black man. He wrote a novel, titled: The Moor of Peter the Great, about a black man who was so good-looking every woman wanted him. He did not like them because they wanted him for being a black man, not because of his soul. He hated being a curiosity, a spectacle. The book was a tribute to his grandfather. Pushkin’s moor was like Pele or Jordan, who also had women, especially of the white race, swoon over them. But the writer, often described as the father of Russian literature, did not finish the novel because he died in a duel of a woman.

    Solomon in the Bible had such experience. He wrote, “Look not upon me because I am black and comely.” Did it inspire Solomon’s flirtation and acquisition of the biggest harem in history? Did he try to prove his humanity among the races and assert his blackness? Was his blackness a cause played out in eroticism, as a contrast to Pushkin’s character? Was that the case with Tiger Woods’ adulterous scandal? All his women were white. Ditto Pele. We can rest assured though that Pele the star is different from Pele the god of Hawain mythology who turned into an old woman and disappeared. Our Pele is a soccer god.

    Pele contrasts with Ali because Ali saw himself as they saw a trophy and dumped it in a river. Pele clutched his trophy as a pearl. Ali wanted mettle over medal. Pele died a trophy. Maybe it works well for him to be a soccer purist unsullied by a cause.

  • Atiku’s weird Math

    Atiku’s weird Math

    Nyesom Wike is no one to speak a trifle. Forget about his amateur line distinguishing pressmen and journalists. In spite of his tendency to humour, he is a serious man. Reacting to the reports of the G-5 and their endorsement, he made a remark about Atiku Abubakar, the PDP flag bearer meeting with governors in his home in Dubai. Who did he meet with? This drew a reaction from Femi Fani-Kayode over the hobgoblin of a northern hegemony and a Fulani taking over from a Fulani. My reporting shows that APC governors are intact but a certain governor in the north I will not name now is the turncoat. He is not even in a position to sway his state to Atiku. That is the irony of it all. It shows a thing about the Adamawa chieftain. Rather than woo his party governors, or what we might call low-hanging fruit, he is trying to climb the tree for the myth of tantalus, the elusive fruit. He has left the sturdy Governor Udom Emmanuel to do the yeoman’s job of parleying with the aggrieved governors, including Wike and Ortom. Atiku should, at least, bow and embrace his governors and follow Gov. Emmanuel’s path. He wouldn’t. It is still a mystery why Ayu should pay him more than five governors. It is a weird math. One minus five.

  • Between ASUU and Gbajabiamila

    Between ASUU and Gbajabiamila

    Those who followed events leading to the calling off of the last strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) would not be surprised at the emerging altercation between the union and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.

    The disagreement is sequel to allegations by ASUU president, Emmanuel Osodeke that Gbajabiamila deceived the union to call off the strike on October, 14, 2022. Osodeke had said that the union called off the strike following a promissory letter signed by the speaker stating that part of the withheld salaries of its members would be paid. He accused the Speaker of failing to deliver on his commitment.

    But the Speaker through the chairman, House Committee on Media and Public affairs, Benjamin Kalu denied Osodeke’s claims. In a statement, he said that at no time did Gbajabiamila agree with ASUU that the lecturers would be paid for the period they were on strike.

    “For the record, at no point did the Speaker of the House of Representatives commit to offset the arrears of salaries owed to union members for the time they were on strike. The House of Representatives helped resolve the strike by making commitment to improve the welfare package of university lecturers and revitalization funds to improve infrastructure and operations of federal universities”, Kalu insisted

    These commitments he said, “are reflected in the 2023 Appropriation Bill, which includes N170 billion to provide a level of increment in the welfare package of university lecturers and an additional N300 billion in revitalization funds”.

    But a copy of the promissory letter signed by Gbajabiamila made available to a national daily read inter alia “After exhaustive deliberations which necessitated several visits by Mr. Speaker to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Major General Muhammed Buhari (retd), the honourable Speaker called for another meeting with officials of ASUU on Monday, October, 10, 2022. The meeting came to the following resolutions: “the no-work-no-pay policy of the government remains a subsisting policy for all industrial actions, but the government will on the special ground concede ASUU to pay a part of its salaries during the strike period”.

    Apparently referencing on this letter, Osodeke queried: “How do you want our members to feel after we told them and showed them evidence that the speaker promised to pay partly”.

    Now, the issues! Unless this promissory letter is being denied by the speaker, there is no ambiguity in the claim by ASUU president that the speaker committed on behalf of the federal government to pay part of the salary arrears of ASUU members during the period of the strike. Though he restated that the policy of no-work-no-pay remains a subsisting policy of the government in all industrial action, he nonetheless gave an undertaking that the government will on the special ground concede ASUU to pay a part of its salaries during the period of the strike.

    There is no doubt about that commitment going by the contents of the promissory letter. What was not stated was the fraction of the owed salaries to be paid. Going by the same letter, it is really amazing that Kalu had the boldness to deny that the speaker promised to pay part of the salaries owed the union members. The promissory letter betrayed that denial.

    If the contention is that the speaker did not promise to offset the whole arrears owed union members, this could be understood. He only promised to pay a part of the salaries during the strike. The emphasis is on the payment of part of the owed salaries. But to deny that any commitment was made, contradicts the contents of his promissory letter.

    Kalu’s other argument that the House of Representatives helped to resolve the strike by making commitment to improve the welfare package of the lecturers which reflected in the 2023 Appropriation Bill is beside the point. Those issues were neither new nor were they the issues in contention when the House decided to intervene on the lingering strike. The intervention of the House came after the National Industrial Court (NIC) and the Appeal Court had given rulings directing ASUU to go back to classes. At that point, ASUU had the dilemma of how to get its members back to classes having not been paid for eight months and in the face of the insistence by the government on the policy of no-work-no-pay. It was a period well-meaning Nigerians were looking beyond legalism to practical and more effective ways to get the union back to work. The House then weighed in and engaged the union in a non-legal option to the conflict resolution.

    The intervention of the House no doubt, raised considerable hope that the end of the strike was in sight. Emerging from one of his meetings with President Buhari, the speaker had said,” the House has done its part to end the months’ long ASUU strike and Nigerians will hear the outcome of the deliberations from the president”.

    But the president was yet to speak before ASUU announced the suspension of the strike; acknowledging the efforts of President Buhari and well-meaning Nigerians including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila. Osodeke betrayed the confidence and satisfaction he had in the role of the speaker when he said that if those in charge of education and labour had handled the matter the way he (the speaker) did, the strike would not have lasted more than two weeks or so.

    This optimism was however, jolted when the counsel to ASUU, Femi Falana called on Gbajabiamila and all those who pressurized ASUU to call off the strike to mount similar pressure on the government to implement all the agreements reached with the union. He gave no details. The subsequent payment of the October salaries of ASUU members pro rata was all that was required to prove that something had gone wrong somewhere.

    ASUU complained bitterly of the seeming treatment of its members as casual workers through the pro rata payment. The speaker was quick to respond by giving hope that issues to the strike are getting appropriate hearing through increased allocation to education in the 2023 Appropriation Bill among others.

    He must have disappointed many when he sought to justify the pro rata payment thus, “ the executives position that it is not obligated to pay salaries to the lecturers for the time spent on strike is premised on the law and government’s legitimate interest in preventing moral hazard and discouraging disruptive industrial actions”.

    The speaker said interventions have been made to explore the possibility of partial payment to the lecturers and he looks forward to a favourable consideration by Buhari who he said has manifested desire for what is prudent and necessary to resolve all outstanding issues. It is worthy of note that the issue of partial payment of the arrears of the lecturers’ salaries had been a recurring decimal in all the interactions of Gbajabiamila with the union.  So at what point was it abandoned to warrant the raging disagreement? That also throws up the question of what was really gained from the intervention of the House in the crisis.

    In an earlier article published in this column titled, “Gbajabiamila’s ASUU burden” we had asked, so what was the benefit of the intervention of the House leadership? Was the speaker really sincere in his dealings with ASUU or he got betrayed by those on whose behalf he engaged the union. How did things get out of hands that ASUU failed to get any reprieve on the issue of salaries?

    These posers are still relevant especially given the promissory letter signed by the speaker. But one thing that stands out very distinctly is that we are yet to be told truth about how the promise of partial payment went awry. That is the burden Gbajabiamila is shouldering. The excuses offered by Kalu failed woefully in the face of the promissory letter signed by his boss.

  • Buhari’s change

    Buhari’s change

    Our tall, angular president with an aloof carriage and an air of a pious recluse afforded us in his eighth decade a rare glimpse into his human interior. Not that we have not seen some human sides before.

    But they have been vignettes and inevitably superficial. We have seen him shake hands, illumine his ambience with a few jokes, wallow in family photo ops. But they tend to stiffen rather than ease his martial profile. Too lofty to hug, nature compels him to look down often at others. In ceremonial postures, his handshakes or smiles with other personages look more ritual than mutual.

     Especially the smiles. We first encountered that smile in his days of Decree  2. Under his nifty beret, they gave him a puppy’s mien, a school-boy innocence like one who still kicked hays in the heydays of military academy. Until he started kicking everyone, soldiers, politicians, journalists, into jail. If he was winsome, he did not win so many hearts.

    The same cheer has now turned into a feral symbol for some. They link those smiles with an absence of light in the land, like a paternal mocker of his own people. Like when he said, live peacefully with your neighbours. The comment, over the sullen corpses of Benue, seemed to sully a funeral hour.

    But then, the man had to tell us that he lost two sons to sickle cell anaemia, lost a wife who gave him the sons he lost, that Aisha could not score A to qualify as his spouse if providence did not give her an AA blood type, that he was not going to miss Aso Rock because of the jibing of his fellow citizens in spite of his drudgery as our chief steward, and he draped his children and grandchildren with funny names and he did not favour any child who did not return his change. Then he lamented the fiction of a doppelganger, that a certain other Buhari in the name of Jubril, lurked in Aso Rock and wifed by the same Aisha. Buhari himself, now ghosted, ceded the job to a new host of democracy.   He said it was not funny. Baffling is his capacity for silence in the face of public tyranny.

    But it gives us a chance to look at the man and his politics, and see that Muhammadu Buhari’s performance has not attracted an exclamation of rapture. Rather some citizens have confessed wounds of torture. Few effusive birthday serenades. One may ask, does he have a reason to worry?

     I have had a few dialogues and noted that history will be kind to Buhari. He should, therefore, go gentle into the goodnight of his reign. For some may not agree that he even reigned. He is a dictator, period. So believes some persons. A newspaper calls him general.

    But history has a bigger eye than people of the time. The media despised Lincoln in his day. Truman was only seen as a near-great president over four decades after his reign. Ditto Lyndon Johnson. Britons rejected Churchill after his world war heroics. In a reverse of the fate of Jesus, Buhari may have shouts of ‘crucify him‘ before his hosanna. So, when we judge Buhari, we often look at our pocket books, the bloodstained nights and dreary pathways in bushes, and brushes with hoodlums on the highways of finality. We look at how he appoints some who sound and look like him and hoist the same holy book.

    This essayist has wept and hollered over these foibles and they are what we can call stains. Yet the story, as robust biographies go, is not often cast on one-sided slates. We are often more complex than we seem.

    Even when we say he was appointing men of his roots, he gave the marque jobs with buxom budgets to the Trojan of works Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and Rotimi Amaechi. None of them come from his Fulani ranch. One devours his holy book, the other does not. As we take our leisure walks this yuletide season, our eastern folks are ploughing the Second Niger Bridge. We can say, there has been no such major showpiece since the Third Mainland Bridge. Even in the Southeast where critics grind him daily, he has imprinted more roads than any administration since independence. I made this claim over a year ago, and no one has been able to controvert it except the hullabaloo of contrarian rants. West Africa’s busiest corridor, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, foot-dragged over corrupt financing before Buhari and corrupting politics under Eleyinmi Saraki. The financing is now right and the road is getting ripe like its eastern cousin. We still have great infrastructure deficit, but there are many done and underway.

    Read Also: Ngige: hardship giving Buhari sleepless nights

    We have seen the Lagos-Abeokuta-Ibadan train, a major feat, in spite of hiccups. Some persons so hate Buhari they are giving the credit to Amaechi as though he did not have a boss and approving authority. The Abuja-Kaduna nightmare on the train may not detract us from the immense accomplishment whose beginning traces to Jonathan. Unlike other administrations, Buhari did not shun it.

    He came in principally to end fear and trembling in the northeast. Today, few give him credit. Zulum announces almost on a monthly basis new homes and resettlement in Borno. Few even hear of their incursion into Yobe. Because many of the bad boys have fallen, no flags furl for the goons. When Kashim Shettima was governor, he screamed that Boko Haram was better armed than the Nigerian army. The zealots were even within miles of the state house. Not so now.

    Banditry followed, and it crippled much of the north and later most of the country. It turned out that the government needed a grade of aircraft and other weaponry through American consent to raze them down. Today, the big-name bandits are on the run. The news of their sweeps of schools and communities has reduced significantly. But it is a battle in progress. We still hear of attacks. I like to believe that we are seeing its rump, not its soul, at work. Now one may ask, if Buhari was in cahoots with the hoodlums as some like to believe, are they saying he is routing them against his own will? The question is not Buhari’s. It is his critic’s to figure out.

    The economy was a big part of his coming. He inherited an empty barrel of a purse. I recall even then no one could take a Nigerian credit card abroad and spend above two hundred dollars a day. That is how decimated our purse was. The economy was further crippled by Covid-19, and today the whole world is reeling from its aftermath. The only major country enjoying real growth is the United States. Yet, what jobs are giving, inflation is taking away. Hence the Democrats did not do so well in the off-year elections.

    We must not forget that many who flay Buhari fail to hold their state governors to account. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike said state governments have received a lot from Buhari. Many were able to pay salaries because of him. So, while he gave governors money to revive their states, Buhari has been taking the knocks in silence. In this regard, he has been his worst enemy for not putting their feet to the fire and challenging Nigerians to holler against their holier-than thou state executives who would not account for the money. On the economy, there are errors. Why the dual exchange rate? A policy that has fuelled inflation, a naira cascade and industrial atrophy.

    We can see two sides to the man. The one that seems locked in a hegemonic fever, and the one that counters it. It is his lack of open empathy, his inability to convey the nuance and cavern of his soul, that holds the key to how history will judge him. In the words of Poet Walt Whitman, he is Large and contains multitudes. He is not the cartoon, the one-dimensional figure, that many have drawn him to be. After all, Winston Churchill roared to save the world from a tyrant but would not free Africa from his English colonial loins. He also allowed three million Bengalese starve to death. De Gaulle began by resisting a free Algeria before he became their chief advocate.

    Buhari came to office promising change. As a man who wants his change returned, he owes us a change: To unveil his humanity hidden behind his handsome façade.

  • Vote buying

    Vote buying

    The pervasive deployment of money to influence the direction and outcome of elections in Nigeria has of recent, become a matter of grave concern. Political parties require funds in prosecuting their activities of voter education, voter aggregation and interest articulation. So it is a recognized practice that politics like any other form of human engagement requires substantial funding.

    But emerging concerns hinge on the undue use of money to influence the outcome of elections. To stave off the deleterious consequences of excessive use of money to influence the course of elections, governments are known to set limits to the amount of funds contestants to the various elective offices can spend during such engagements.

    Nigeria is no exception to this rule as the Electoral Act clearly stipulates the amount of permissible spending for the various offices at the national and state levels. What has been lacking however has been the inability of the various agencies of the government to monitor and enforce compliance to these regulations.

    In the face of the inability of the security agencies to enforce compliance with the laws guiding spending during elections, all manner of malpractices have had a field day.  These range from the snatching and stuffing of ballot boxes with thumb printed ballot papers, writing of results in the comfort of the hotel rooms of influential politicians and compromising electoral officers through monetary inducement to do all manner of odd jobs and sabotage the sovereignty of the electorate.

    There was also the incidence of voter inducement through monetary enticement. But its influence was quite reduced as politicians had more advanced ways of altering votes in their favour. Thus, agitations for electoral reforms had centred round substantial reduction in malpractices that reduce the credibility of elections by compromising the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box.

    In the last few years, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had introduced a number of innovations including technology to limit malpractices and shore up the integrity of election outcomes.  It also found support from the National Assembly through the recent amendment to the Electoral Act permitting the electoral umpire to deploy technology for the transmission of election results from the polling units to INEC result viewing portals IReV.

    These innovations hold high prospects for reducing to the barest minimum, most of the malpractices that had overtime marred our electoral process. But politicians are not relenting. If technology has eliminated ballot box snatching, writing of results and ambushing of results sheets with the aim of doctoring them, politicians have shown a desperate inclination to invent new avenues to sabotage the electoral process and continue business as usual.

    Vote buying seems to have provided them the new alluring window. The pervasive influence of this was witnessed during the off cycle elections held in some states recently. Reports spoke of politicians displaying uncanny desperation to buy votes from potential voters on the day of election even as the voters also showed an embarrassing interest to have their voting rights exchanged for money.

    There have also been reports of politicians asking voters to fill certain forms indicating their voters’ card numbers, their BVN and details of bank accounts among others. It is being speculated that the purpose of this data gathering is to facilitate electronic vote buying during elections.

    As if this does not constitute sufficient challenge, the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, and Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, had alerted that politicians were buying off PVCs from poor voters in order to manipulate the elections. These have further raised worries as to whether there is a choreographed script to compromise the integrity of the 2023 polls ahead of time.

    Apparently worried by these unsavoury developments, INEC last week organized a one day stakeholders’ summit to address the influence of money on the 2023 general elections. During the summit, the electoral umpire admitted that “many Nigerians have demanded to know what the commission is doing about the deleterious influence of money in elections particularly the diabolical purchase of PVCs from voters and vote buying at polling units on election day.

    INEC chairman, Yakubu Mahmood while re-stating commitment to tackle issues of campaign finances, observed that areas of violation included party and candidates’ expenditure beyond what is provided by the law and the diabolical practice of vote buying. He said the commission is mobilizing institutions with the responsibility of tracking and combating illicit flow of funds and the media to confront the problem.

    Read Also: DG: Atiku can’t harvest Buhari’s North vote-bank

    But he failed to address concerns about the purchase of PVCs by politicians and the possible use they intend to put them during elections. However, the answer to this puzzle was provided in another forum by the national commissioner for voter education, Festus Okoye when he said anybody purchasing PVC is engaging in an exercise in futility because the only thing he can do is to ensure that the owner does not vote during elections. We shall return to this shortly.

    He said with technology that will be deployed for the elections, it is impossible to vote with another persons’ PVC because BVAS will not capture the impersonators’ fingerprints. The fact that the buyer of the PVC can really prevent the owner from voting during elections is a serious challenge and a present danger to free, fair and credible elections.

    The diabolical practice suggests a well-crafted plan to disenfranchise some segments of the Nigerian electorate even before the day of the elections. It is a very serious matter that should not be dismissed with a wave of the hand as INEC is inclined to. Its full implication is that wealthy politicians who are unpopular in certain areas can buy off the PVCs and destroy them so as to whittle down the electoral strengths of their opponents.

    Having bought off the PVCs, they ipso facto succeeded in reducing the voting strength of those areas to the disadvantage of very popular candidates. While the popular candidates score low due to this criminal practice, those behind it will now garner huge votes from areas of their strength to upstage their opponents. This is even more dangerous; more diabolical than vote buying on the day of the election.

    For one, it prevents the voter from casting his vote on the day of election. This has negative consequences for popular electoral mandate. And for another, it assails the privacy of the voters by dispossessing them of that vital civic document that is also used for other purposes including official identification. The PVCs also face the risk of loss and eventual destruction thus creating additional burden for the INEC that will be stampeded to replace them.

    Ours is a country mired in debilitating poverty. With a burgeoning poor population, it is not surprising that the same politicians that mismanaged the huge resources of the country are also exploiting this human development deficit to deny the poor their civic rights through the purchase of PVCs and vote buying.

    Even as we blame politicians for corrupting voters through the purchase of PVCs and vote buying, the voters should share more of the blame. If there is no desire to sell, the urge to buy will not be there. Politicians indulge in this illegal endeavour because there is a willing population to exchange their franchise for a mess of porridge.

    It is an uncanny irony that those complaining of bad governance; who would want leaders held accountable for the mismanagement of the national economy, would be the same people selling their votes to these politicians to continue impoverishing our collective patrimony. It is a vicious cycle.

    Vote buying, underage and illegal voting as well sundry machinations to sabotage the sovereignty of the electorate are clear dangers INEC and security agencies must check if the integrity of the 2023 elections is to be guaranteed.

  • Lagos sets a record

    Lagos sets a record

    While we wait for the blue train to whir into service, we must not forget that it also promises to enhance a new statistic and record under the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. I saw the fashion statement as the governor donned a blue jacket on a blue train to tackle the blues of traffic in the city. It will become the eternal colour and sound of its part of Lagos. Just like the red train. But I am applauding a new high under him.  For the first time in history, an African city soared to the top 100 of start-ups in the world in 2022. In a nation of poor stats where not all start-ups are recorded, it is no mean feat. It is my cheery news of the year. This is Lagos under BOS where imagination meets facility. The governor is not only upgrading its internally generated revenue but internally generated geniuses. That is what an economy does with good infrastructure, peace and economic policy. Lagos will continue to show the way, and that is why it is Nigeria’s New York. It starts with a good leader.

  • The stingy party

    The stingy party

    The Labour Party must be showing us what it means not to be stingy this season. We just read that its Taraba State chairperson has been shown the door, if for a while, for stealing money. She didn’t show a stingy finger. A whopping N21 million out of the coffers. Before that, we know what Doyin Okupe is doing with his Ogun State fellows who said he was too stingy in keeping the money in his pocket when they were supposed to give them to million man marchers. To buy a crowd, you don’t want a stingy guy. Okupe, they say, was not stingy to himself. They want to give him to boot. Even before that, there was the national youth leader who went digital and was robbing the party’s threshing floor until they floored him and sent him packing. Everyone has their version of being stingy, including their leader and presidential candidate who, as governor, kept his stingy hand in an offshore account.

    Read Also: Messi’s emilokan

    There is enough “stingy” to go round for labourers.

  • Messi’s emilokan

    Messi’s emilokan

    Lionel Messi always inflicted me with a binary disease. I love him, but not his country. Any time I saw him play, he revived the maestro of my boyhood fancy: Haruna Ilerika. He is small, just like Haruna. He is a leftie, just like Nigeria’s former number nine who clutched Africa player of the year honours twice. He enjoys the dribble run, cuts through defences like a tailor through satin (fans often called Ilerika Tailor), browbeats marque defenders, executes an economy of schemes, pearls passes that even his opponent envies, takes the game like a writer cherishes poetry.

    I wanted France to beat Messi’s country, if I had a heartbeat for Messi’s game. It is a nation that never liked blacks. While Brazil is content to place its dark people in its ghettoes and salve its conscience by cultivating its Peles, their southern cousins decided to wipe them out. In a whitewashing sweep, they removed every trace of black people from their soils.

    They did not only cleanse the blacks out of their lands, they whitewashed its telling. They do not want even their forbears to know what happened. Today’s argentines do not learn that aspect of their butchery. They were the ancestors of Hitler. But no one can deny the story. Some of their leaders are even proud of it. One of their former presidents, Carlos Menem once quipped: “In Argentina, blacks do not exist, that is a Brazilian problem.”

    Blacks worked in the plantations of Argentina as they did in Brazil. At one time, half the population of Buenos Aires was black. They envied the human landscape of their European fellows, and so killed black after black. There was no mercy. They still love their country that way. It is the only country in Latin and South America that does not even feature a black player. It is the continent’s rampant bigot, an oasis of prejudice. It deprived itself the opportunity to discriminate, to kill blacks on the streets or even to dump them in slums and confront a moral crisis of immiserating them like we see in Europe and North America. Its ancestors committed the iniquities so as to sanctify them.

    When Nigeria beat Brazil in the Olympics decades ago to meet Argentina in the finals, a newspaper printed a headline that read, “Let the monkeys come.” A BBC broadcaster replied, if the Nigerians are monkeys, then the Argentines are bananas. In the end, Nigeria ate them up for gold.

    We are not going to see Argentina apologise soon for its pogrom. Its citizens don’t even know enough of it to apologise. It is not the debate front burner. But history haunts like a witch. Nero wanted to do same to Christians. When asked how history would judge him, he said by the time he was done with the followers of Jesus, history would not be sure they ever existed. Just like Nero, the Argentines were wrong. They are not even aware that their tango dance has ancestry in the rhythms of slave dance. It was what Dereck Walcott, a Caribbean poet wrote, “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me.”

    Yet I celebrate Messi. It gives me a schizophrenic bump, though. But it is the way it is. I accept his humanity. I adore his talent. He has also put paid, with this one act, his rivalry with Ronaldo. Both guys are hard to throw up in a generation. One a Portuguese, the other an Argentine. One feisty, the other shy and unobtrusive. About a week, I discussed it with my colleague and friend Femi Macaulay, and I was wading in favour of Ronaldo. But Ronaldo can never win a world cup. 2022 is an EXCLAMATION point for Messi. It is the culmination of struggles. Messi is lucky. He has a team fiercer than Ronaldo’s. As Conrad wrote in a Heart of Darkness, “Our strengths are accidents arising from the weaknesses of others.” Messi entertained and fate gave him a last hurrah.  If Portugal paraded a cast like Messi had, maybe both would have squared it off in the final. Not to be.

    Ronaldo shed tears when Morocco seared his dreams. Was he thinking of Messi? Did he wish Messi lost against France? That was all moot as Messi clutched the cup and his teammates hugged him because it was at once a collective dream as it was Messi’s.

    Speaking of teammates, he shared the spotlight with Kylian Mbappe whose presence and a hat trick gave us a rare moment in football. Messi hoisted the cup, Mbappe wears the golden boot. Mbappe becomes the second person to score a hat trick in a world cup final. He scored four if we count the penalty shootout.

    This is no time to weep for France. France does not have a glorious history of racism either. It is a colonial giant. Macron almost leapt when Mbappe touch equalised the scores. But an Mbappe outside of soccer might not be accepted in a middleclass suburb in France. Their colonial history of assimilation treated Africans with malignant contempt, like children who must be taught how to wear their panties and button their shirts.

    The final was an apotheosis of a career and the handing over of the baton. Exit Messi. Enter Mbappe. Few moments in history give such emilokan moments.

    When the World Cup began some Nigerian sports pundits handed it to Brazil. I was wary. They had disappointed me too often. And when the game began, their show was anaemic triumphs. They had grace but not speed. They had talent but not chemistry. They displayed flashes but could not blind the sky like a threatening storm. They passed as though to pass the time.

    Argentina wins its third World Cup. It seems when they have a world class player, he must have his emilokan hour. Kempes did it in 1978. Maradona dribbled his way to the crown in the 1990s. Messi today.

    Morocco gave me a pride and confusion. Was I going to support my black folks in a white man’s land or my Arab neighbours of Africa? It was a dilemma only resolved by the result. I was proud to see an African team best many a giant even if they could not be the best.

    An unsung hero of the World Cup is the Croatia fellow called Luka Modric. He is a technician of the game and one of the best ever to place foot to ball in any colour.

    Well, this was a fiesta without Nigeria. Nigeria ought to be there. But we are not there because of so many things that are not there in our history. Croatia has about four million people and placed third. We have to ruminate and develop first and not wait for accidents to make us great. A nation does not win with talent alone. It fights with a spirit. Mbappe and company may not have won, but we witnessed the spirit of their fight, their heroic joust with Messi and his kaleidoscope of go-getters. Until we mint the Nigerian spirit, all the big-name players we have in Europe will be only careerists, not nationalists on the turf of play.

  • INEC attacks: matters arising

    INEC attacks: matters arising

    Even with recent alarm by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the danger incessant attacks on its facilities pose to the 2023 elections, it appears respite is yet to come its way.

    INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, had a fortnight ago lamented the losses by the electoral umpire due to attacks on three local government offices of the commission across the country. He had said a total of 1,992 ballot boxes, 399 voting cubicles and 22 electronic power generators as well as thousands of uncollected Permanent Voters Cards PVCs were destroyed in those attacks.

    But he was not discouraged by those attacks and attendant losses as he assured INEC will recover from them and replace the lost materials. Yakubu captured the dilemma in the continued attacks when he admitted that there is a limit to the ability of the electoral body to keep on replacing these materials as elections draw nearer.

    What this implies is that security agencies just have to rise to the challenge of coming up with the right strategies to protect these facilities or risk the coming elections being put in harms’ way. That is the clear message.

    So a harvest of these attacks in the face of the inability of the security architecture to provide adequate protection to the facilities will amount to setting the ground for the disenfranchisement of sections of voters. That would obviously compromise the elections and diminish their credibility and acceptability. That is the potent danger.

    At the time Mahmood spoke, the facilities of the commission in Ogun, Osun and Ebonyi states had come under serious attacks by yet to be identified hoodlums. But the attacks are yet to abate with reports of similar incidents in the Orlu and Oru West local government areas of Imo State. INEC records had put the number of such attacks in recent months to seven thus raising more fears on the future of the 2023 elections should the trend continue unchecked.

    As I write, there was yet another attack at the headquarters of INEC in Owerri, Imo State. The hoodlums who arrived around 3 a.m hurled explosives into the INEC compound setting some structures on fire. In the ensuing confrontation with security agencies, three of the hoodlums were killed even as one gallant police officer equally fell to the fire power of the criminals. In this case, one of the criminals was reportedly arrested.

    INEC said the attack happened on the day of the commencement of collection of Permanent Voters Cards PVCs for the 2023 elections. But they were quick to add that no critical election material was lost. One thing that stands out from this last attack is that apart from neutralizing some of the criminals, an arrest was made at the scene. That marks a sharp departure from previous attacks where the arsonists operated freely and disappeared without any traces.

    In earlier incidents elsewhere, it was commonplace for security agencies to finger arsonists, unknown gunmen, hoodlums and the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, for the attacks. This pattern of blame trading in the face of their inability to make any arrests while the attacks were going on has raised considerable concerns among discerning members of the public.

    The frequency and motive of the attacks, the inability of security agencies to arrest the culprits and the increasing incidence of profiling suspects has begun to raise insinuations that there is more to these attacks than ordinarily meets the eyes. Why INEC facilities? Are there interests bent on sabotaging the elections in certain areas to serve predetermined ends? Or is there an attempt to stall elections in some area to give advantage to others? These are some of the puzzles elevated by the frequency, pattern and direction of the attacks.

    Not unexpectedly, a number of theories are already within the public space seeking to untangle riddle. Of particular concern is the disproportionate share of the attacks on INEC facilities in the southeast. This may have influenced the views of the Ohaneze Ndigbo, former governor of Anambra State Chukwuemeka Ezeife, and former Ohaneze Presdent, Nnia Nwodo, that the attacks were the handiwork of wicked politicians and enemies of Ndigbo who are desperate to whittle down the electoral fortunes of the zone in 2023.

    But in his reaction to the attack on INEC headquarters in Owerri, Governor Hope Uzodinma added another dimension to these theories when he claimed “the attack was politically contrived by those who are desperate to win elections by all means”.

    The main opposition party in the state, the PDP apparently piqued by the statement attributed the persisting insecurity in the state to bad governance.  That is how far opinions have varied on the possible reasons for the high number of attacks on INEC facilities in the southeast.

    One thing that seems to stand out in all these speculations is the political dimension to the attacks.  Implicit in these speculations are external and internal angles to the pervading attacks. But who are these interests bent on keeping down the voting strength of the southeast for whatever purpose? And who are the desperate politicians seeking to win elections by all means? Additionally, how will the burning of INEC facilities aid desperate politicians to win elections?

    These are the searing puzzles the security agencies may have to untangle. If the attacks in the southeast can be explained along these lines, on what factors do we now rationalize similar attacks on INEC facilities in Ogun and Osun states? Perhaps, these speculations expose the contradictions in the glaring inability of the security agencies to get at the roots of the recurring attacks.

    The security agencies will be doing a lot of good to the coming elections by providing adequate protection to INEC facilities. With water-tight security, such attacks will become a dangerous enterprise even as it will save the electoral umpire the burden of replacing lost materials as elections lurk around the corner. Adequate security protection is the only antidote to the flurry of speculations on the motive for attacks on INEC facilities in sections of the country.

    But attack on INEC facilities is only a dimension of the general security challenges facing the election. There is the more dangerous and more energy sapping unceasing insecurity across the country that may prevent elections from holding in many places. This is not something entirely new. But the full weight of the challenge was brought to public focus last week by the speaker of the Borno State House of Assembly, Abdulkarim  Lawan.

    Lawan shocked the country when he disclosed that the Boko Haram insurgents are in firm control of two local government areas in Borno State: Guzamala and Kukawa. This is against claims by the federal government that no local government is under the control of the insurgents. The government may not be comfortable with this, but the story has been told.

    Hear him: “There is no peace in Guzamala Local Government Area because there is still no civilian or military presence there”. He said though the state government had relocated IDPs from Kukawa back to their community, the place remains a no-go area for public officers as there is no security presence in the area.

    Borno is not alone in this predicament. There are many states in the country where the pervading insecurity has made human habitation a very risky venture. If only the leadership of those states can be bold enough as Lawan, the stark reality of the security situation will stun many. It remains to be figured out how elections can possibly hold in those areas. These are the subsisting security challenges INEC will have to contend with.

    How the electoral umpire goes about the elections in areas under the control of all manner of criminals and non-state actors holds a lot for the overall credibility of the election outcome. In the past, we had situations where votes cast in crisis infested areas came up higher than those in areas of comparative peace. This has remained a huge puzzle.

    As the elections come closer, it will only be proper for INEC to avail the country with a comprehensive list of areas in the country where the persisting insecurity is likely to impair their activities. And its position on such situations must be made abundantly clear. This will help reduce possible disputes and allegations of bias against the electoral body.

  • IPOB: Who is in charge?

    IPOB: Who is in charge?

    It is thought-provoking that those who enforced the recent Southeast five-day sit-at-home declared by Finland-based Biafra campaigner Simon Ekpa had ignored the disclaimer by Nnamdi Kanu, who is known as the leader of the proscribed separatist group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

    There was strong evidence of divisions within the group as zealous enforcers violently implemented Ekpa’s controversial order that Southeast residents should stay at home from December 9 to 14. The group is known for using terroristic methods in its fight for an independent “Biafra land” made up of Nigeria’s five Southeast states, and parts of the South-south geo-political zone.

    Kanu, 55, who is in detention and facing trial for alleged treason and terrorism, had disowned those who declared the five-day sit-at-home, in a message delivered by his lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, who visited him at the Department of State Services (DSS) detention facility, Abuja.

    The lawyer’s statement had described the sit-at-home announcement and any attempt to enforce it as “criminal acts,” adding that Kanu “unequivocally stated that he has not ordered any sit-at-home.” He directed that the people “should go about their normal life and businesses without let or hindrance.”

    It was convenient for Kanu to distance himself from the five-day sit-at-home. But IPOB under him had declared sit-at-home several times leading to a standstill in many parts of the Southeast as people obeyed the order largely out of fear of the enforcers.

    For instance, in May, the group under Kanu had ordered a sit-at-home in the Southeast, saying “the only sit-at-home order emanating and announced by IPOB leadership are the 18th and 26th of May, 2022 being the dates our leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu will appear in court.”

    This suggests that IPOB under Kanu had disclaimed the five-day sit-at-home because it was not its own idea. But IPOB, whether under Kanu or not, has no business issuing sit-at-home orders in the first place. The group, whether under Kanu or not, is operating unlawfully, and its activities are unlawful.

    Despite Kanu’s opposition, unidentified gunmen enforced the five-day sit-at-home in a series of destructive actions in the region. They killed six people in Imo and Enugu states, disrupted businesses in Ebonyi State, and kidnapped some expatriate staff of a German construction company involved in an ongoing road construction in Imo State, among other crimes.

    The apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze, in a statement, said Ekpa was responsible for the destruction, adding that it would pursue his extradition to Nigeria “to face prosecution and trials over killings of South easterners, burning of public properties, and disturbances of public peace.”

    Also, Kanu’s lawyer announced that they had formally commenced a legal action against Ekpa before the High Court in Abuja, “founded on a plethora of grave infractions arising from his violent, disturbing and false declarations.”

    Importantly, IPOB spokesperson Emma Powerful, in a statement, said Ekpa “is not our member and can never be an IPOB member.” What about those who enforced the sit-at-home? Were they IPOB members? Beyond Kanu’s disclaimer, what did the so-called IPOB members do to stop the enforcement?

    IPOB, in 2020, had launched its Eastern Security Network (ESN), which it described as “a vigilance group, established to protect Biafrans against terrorists.”  Where were ESN personnel when unidentified enforcers employed terroristic methods during the five-day sit-at-home disowned by the Kanu-led IPOB?

    Interestingly, Ekpa, 37, describes himself as Kanu’s “disciple on Biafra restoration.” He had been announced as the lead broadcaster of Radio Biafra in July 2021 after the Federal Government re-arrested Kanu, but IPOB later “observed with regrets” that Ekpa “doesn’t want to follow the laid down rules of operation in Radio Biafra.” His status in the group was unclear after that.

    He gloated over the five-day sit-at-home, saying it was “historic and successful.” This could encourage a repeat. The latest sit-at-home was a continuation of a practice introduced by the Kanu-led IPOB.  Ekpa’s version of sit-at-home suggests that those fighting for Biafra consider the method useful. Indeed, it can be said that the approach has become an obsession.

    This is why the authorities must urgently tackle the group’s lawlessness. The Kanu-led IPOB described Ekpa as a “paid agent” sponsored to give the group a bad name. But the group has always had a bad name.

    It is puzzling that IPOB has been allowed to continue operating despite its proscription. The authorities must stop accommodating the group. There are consequences for lawlessness, and those committing crimes using the group’s name should be arrested and prosecuted.

    It is disturbing that Ekpa was quoted as saying “There will be no general election in Biafra land in 2023, it is a sacrifice and a task that must be done by all Biafrans across the globe.”

    Notably, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Alkali Baba, accused “the IPOB and ESN” and “the pro-Yoruba secessionists” of working to stop elections in the Southeast and Southwest respectively. His representative made the accusation before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee Investigating the Attacks on Offices and Facilities of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).  He highlighted recent attacks on INEC facilities in Osun and Ogun states in the Southwest, and Ebonyi, Imo and Enugu states in the Southeast.

    The IGP, represented by the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in charge of the Department of Operations, Mustapha Dandaura, said the Southeast secessionists “have been attacking our personnel, they have been killing our personnel. They have been retrieving arms from members of the security agencies, not only the police – the military and other paramilitary organisations that are there.” The country’s security agencies must act urgently to prevent a breakdown of law and order in the affected areas.

    From all indications, IPOB has become a Frankenstein monster beyond the control of the people who created it. This makes the group more dangerous. It is unclear who is in charge of the group now, considering the enforcement of the five-day sit-at-home even after Kanu had opposed it.  The question of leadership and control of the group is critical. Ekpa’s move, and its outcome, show that it should not be taken for granted that Kanu is in charge.  Ultimately, the authorities must demonstrate capacity to uphold law and order.