The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • The old fox

    The old fox

    IN the Nigerian tale, Olusegun Obasanjo is a tortoise. The sly, creeping creature abounds in almost all folk tales. So, does Obasanjo. But more than that, the Owu chief is an old fox. His eyes look weary and his limb limp, but beware of the leap.

    Last week, he met with the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It had the trappings of a carnival. The man had to remind the adoring crowd that the campaigns had not yet hooted into hustings. But no one can deny the air of bonhomie in the meet. It highlighted the best meeting between both men in this republic. Often their meetings were marked by a defiant Tinubu and a bullying Obj, what novelist Ousman Sembene called a “perfidy of words.” Here, however, we cannot miss Obj holding the former Lagos State governor’s hand, like an egbon to an aburo, a signature of filial tie. It also signals a closing of ranks in the Southwest with the big-name company of Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba, Femi Gbajabiamila, and Dapo Abiodun, et al.

    After the visit, Obj regaled an audience about how Tinubu had laced the political vocabulary with words like emilokan, eleyi and olule. Never mind those who escalated tales that never happened at Ota into the social media. Never mind Obj saying it was not political. Even to say it was not political was a political statement. So, there.

  • Dambazau’s worries

    Dambazau’s worries

    Concerns raised by former Chief of Army Staff Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau on the effects of raging insecurity on the 2023 elections should be something to worry about. He asked, “Would insecurity affect the 2023 elections? Surely it would because some of the communities would still be displaced and terrorists would likely continue to attack soft targets, INEC officials would be highly apprehensive despite the assurances by the government to protect them.”

    He said security threat should not be limited to the activities of terror groups in the north but also the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) that had earlier threatened there would be no election in the south-east. For this, Dambazau would want the government to take steps to reduce the potential threats posed by non-state actors to the overall success of the 2023 elections.

    There is merit in his concerns, given that security is one of the irreducible decimals in guaranteeing free, fair and credible elections. Even in times of comparative national peace and stability, our elections were fraught with sundry malpractices that combined to reduce their credibility. Cases of arson, killings, snatching of ballot boxes and other infractions that impugn the integrity of elections were noticeable flaws.

    But these are not the infractions Dambazau is concerned with. He is rather worried by the near state of war that has displaced thousands of citizens from their ancestral homes and organised confrontation between the government and groups nursing one form of grievance or the other.

    Within this group, we have the Boko Haram insurgents that are bent on enforcing their brand of weird religious belief, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the rampaging bandits/herdsmen that have become the greatest source of terror especially in the north and the IPOB that is canvassing for self-determination.

    The combined activities of these groups have resulted in the elevated level of insecurity across the country with the government seemingly helpless in maintaining law and order. The level of killings and descent into anarchy has become a monumental scandal to the authority of the government.

    Critical institutions of the government including those at the seat of power have been brazenly and successfully assailed by the terrorists forcing the government into panic measures. And it does not seem relief is in sight.

    Yet, we are about to enter into election campaigns that will further heat up the political atmosphere. So, the worries expressed by the former army chief are not only timely but a clarion call on the government to take decisive measures to de-escalate the high tempo of insecurity in the land.

    There is general fear and apprehension in the country. Many have fled their communities as sundry unidentified killer groups continue in their orgy of violence against innocent citizens. In some states, it has become a matter of buck-passing between the government and the opposition with each seeking to take advantage.

    This trend is dangerous. Knowing the desperation of politicians to win elections at all costs, nobody is certain the extent groups, individuals and those in government seeking power can go in exploiting the festering insecurity to advantage.

    So, the threat to the success of the elections by the festering insecurity is real and potent. It will arise from the unceasing attacks on critical institutions of the government including the INEC. It will also come through the inability of electoral officials to access certain areas on account of safety concerns. Insecurity will be exploited by politicians to take maximum advantage. They did that in comparably peaceful times.

    Self-serving prompting will propel politicians to do more of it this time around, especially given the new electoral law permitting direct transmission of election results. Insecurity could be exploited to disenfranchise voters in areas powerful interests are not popular by ensuring that voting did not hold there.

    That is why there have been calls from some quarters for the postponement of the elections to address not just insecurity but all other national questions whose resolution will equally guarantee national stability and progress. The impression one gets is that the 2023 elections hold the magic wand to resolve the plethora of political and economic deficits plaguing the country.

    But that appears to be a very limited perspective of the matter. Whereas a good leader may take some time through well- informed policies and programmes to redirect the country’s trajectory, it will be hard to expect the same results on security matters given its degenerate level to the point of encumbering the new government from easy take-off.

    These are the foreboding signals. And if President Buhari, with all his touted experience in the military and governance can be so overwhelmed by security challenges, what guarantee is there that any of the leading candidates of the parties will perform any magic so soon after? That is the issue to ponder.

    So, are we not deliberately laying landmines for the new government by allowing them to get embroiled in serious combat with non-state actors for the loyalty of the citizens so early? Can a new government afford such foundational challenges of establishing its authority over its constituents and be able to deliver on its electoral mandate?

    I have heard some of the candidates asked how they intend to go about the insecurity in the country. I am not aware any of them has been able to proffer conclusive answers. It will be equally uncharitable to expect them to do so. What their predicament highlights is the delicate nature of proffering conclusive answers to such dynamic but degenerate and complex situations.

    If there is no attempt to encumber the new government, then Buhari must take urgent measures to restore peace in the country. Where political solutions are readily available (as we know they are), no time should be further wasted in calling them into action.

  • Lawan and Akpabio as albatross

    Lawan and Akpabio as albatross

    It’s curious that the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is still in denial concerning the status of two of its high-profile members in the eyes of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The ruling party is still employing delaying tactics that cannot change things, rather than simply doing the right thing.

    Just in case the party needed a reminder, INEC’s National Commissioner and chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, recently restated the electoral body’s position on Senate President Ahmed Lawan, who represents Yobe North, and ex-governor of Akwa Ibom State Godswill Akpabio, who wants to represent Akwa Ibom North West.

    Okoye said in a TV interview on August 14: “In these two constituencies, two names were forwarded and the commission made a determination that the names were not persons who emerged from validly conducted party primaries and we did not publish their names. That is where we are.

    “Their (Lawan and Akpabio) names were uploaded by the APC to our candidates’ nomination portal but the commission made a determination that they were not the candidates that emerged from valid party primaries.”   He explained: “Under section 29(1) of the Electoral Act, it is the responsibility of the party to forward to INEC the list and personal particulars of their members who emerged from validly conducted party primaries.”

    Lawan was among the losers in the party’s presidential primary, and Akpabio had withdrawn from the same contest at the eleventh hour. Both had concentrated on the presidential primary, and had given the impression they were not interested in the senate seats.

    Now they want to be regarded as the party’s candidates for the seats when other persons who had emerged as candidates through a proper process are unwilling to give up their candidacies for the party giants.

    Obviously, the APC has a lot of explaining to do on the listing of Lawan and Akpabio among its 2023 senatorial election candidates.  The party had submitted their names to INEC on June 17, as its candidates for Yobe North and Akwa Ibom North West respectively. It’s unclear why the party had included their names in the list in the first place. The action was undemocratic.

    The winner of the APC senatorial primary in Yobe North, Bashir Machina, had observed that his name was not on the list the party was said to have presented to INEC. “For the avoidance of doubt, I remain the candidate duly elected to the APC Yobe North zone C senatorial zone,” he had declared.

    “I am the elected candidate; I did not withdraw for anybody and will not withdraw… So surreptitiously removing my name, I consider, is very undemocratic, illegal and of course inhuman.”

    Machina said he would seek redress from the party’s National Working Committee, headed by Senator Abdullahi Adamu, adding that he “would have no choice but to resort to legal action” if the party leadership failed to correct the “anomaly.”

    Indeed, he has gone to court.  When the matter came up before the Federal High Court in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital, this month, Machina’s lawyer, Ibrahim Bawa (SAN), told reporters that his client wanted the court to “declare that the APC cannot send the name of Ahmad Lawan, who didn’t participate in the primary election of the APC for Yobe North Senatorial District.”  He added: “We are saying the court should direct the APC to send the name of Machina, and INEC should be directed to accept and fill him as the candidate of the party for Yobe North Senatorial District.”

    In Akpabio’s case, the ex-governor, former senator and immediate past minister of Niger Delta Affairs had emerged the winner of a re-run senate primary.

    But the then Resident Electoral Commissioner for Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini, had described his emergence as a “Nollywood fantasy.”   He said the primary that produced a former Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Udum Ekpoudum (retd.), was the contest recognised by INEC because it “was not cancelled, was not nullified, was not inconclusive.”

    He explained that the so-called rerun could “only be conducted between and among those who participated in the first senatorial election of May 27, 2022.” Akpabio did not participate in that senatorial primary.

    According to Igini, the 2022 Electoral Act is a game changer, and “the report of the Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District APC primary as submitted to INEC headquarters in Abuja is final.”  He advised politicians to “go and study” the new Electoral Act “very well.”

    It’s an untidy situation. The APC, Lawan and Akpabio need to urgently sort out the mess. But they are temporising.  This is not to the party’s advantage, and they should all know.

    ”The implication is that as of today, the APC does not have candidates in those two constituencies,” Okoye pointed out. It is unlikely that the candidates that emerged from the validly conducted primaries recognised by INEC would agree to have their names replaced with the names of the unrecognised would-be candidates. In the circumstances, that is the only way Lawan and Akpabio can become genuine candidates recognised by INEC. The rules are clear enough.

    Party supremacy, which the APC seems to be relying on in this matter, does not give it the power to break electoral rules, which are supreme in this case. The party should not give the impression that it is prepared to disregard the law to satisfy the would-be candidates.

    This situation is inspired by individual and corporate egos. But this is not an ego game. Lawan and Akpabio consider themselves too big to be sidelined, even when they are responsible for their exclusion. The party leadership also thinks its authority is unchallengeable, even when it created room for the challenge and the challengers.

    The question is: Is the party ready to lose the chance to possibly win the senate seats in question because it undemocratically presented unrecognised so-called candidates to INEC?

    Why does the APC find it so difficult to do the right thing in this situation when it is clear what the right thing is and why it should be done? Failure to do the right thing gives the party a bad image, pure and simple.

  • The bandit

    The bandit

    To define a bandit may come easy to most Nigerians. He is the fellow with guns, sometimes in hoods, often in the hunt, utters swear words and threats, hoots in forests, snorts in huts, kidnaps boys and girls, looms over schools, is a bigot, brings down planes and derails trains, darkens highways with hails of bullets and corpses, skewers the police, razes down prison walls, snarls with blood on his hands, defiles the nubile, casts his shadow on the presidency, browbeats senators, governors, generals and ministers and commands a huge haul of cash to the bargain.

    But it is too simple. It is giving the bad guys a bad name to excuse the others. For bandits are everywhere. There is one near you. He might wave at you out of that SUV and emit a benign smile. He might even hand your son a lollypop. He may control guns but cannot shoot. He does not utter swear words or threats. He is no forest habitue and has no liver for the theatre to duel the cops.

    But he is even more dangerous than the familiar bandit. He inhabits a palace, holidays in Dubai or south of France, flies a private jet to say hi to a son or daughter in Harvard, flies again to Germany to ascertain his blood pressure, another plane plops down for him to chair a wedding in London when it is not an excuse to give a lover a furtive kiss. But he is apparently without harm.

    He may direct the way of bread and butter in the land. He may be a perm sec, a minister or a top army officer. He condemns the bandit of the familiar definition. But he is the real McCoy. He kills but has no blood case to answer. He steals but no jail awaits him. He upturns justice, but he recommends the law.

    When the bandit in Zamfara known as Ado Aliero fanned his wings like a peacock to be turbaned, it was not different from an upper-crust citizen getting a chieftaincy title. His was announced, and so is the glamour bandit. Aliero came with about a hundred bandits. Our other bandit strolls in with jets, limousines, soldiers and police and a retinue of fellow bandits puffing ahead of hangers-on. Those who argued that the BBC documentary glamorised them are not sincere.

    What glamour? Theirs is clipped beside our other bandits. Ours would cook a storm. They didn’t even cook on a stone. Ours flaunt wealth. They go back to their spare forests and huts. They have no TV, or settee, or rugs or even air-conditioners. They are spare but oppress. Ours flourish in plenty.

    So, it is in the other bandit’s place to squelch over N109 billion, to spend food money in billions for schools when students are not in school, to spend a trillion naira a year on security and the only those secure are the other bandits. ASUU strikes. Doctors strikes. They however strike out on their own in luxury and cynical pleasure. A state governor is not a bandit when he gets N270 billion through a state house of assembly without debate?

    These glamour bandits gave birth to the forested ones. We cannot forget that Boko Haram grew from abandoned election foot soldiery. The Niger Delta goons had the same origin. The glamour brutes gave us the crude. Don’t just blame the crude oil. Blame the managers. Recently we learned that we lose 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day to thieves. But the goons are not spirits. They bring ships standing in broad daylight on the high seas waiting to get crude oil. Soldiers know. Police know. DSS knows. The political elite profit, preen and let us bleed. The locals have no water, schools, hospitals. It is the ‘better’ bandit at work, who carts the money to furnish an iniquitous lifestyle.

    But they are not the only bad ones. We have them in the church and mosques, bandits in the name of the father and the son and the holy ghost. They fulfil the words of Christ that the thief and robber is the one that enters the sheepfold through any way other than the gate. They used to wait for the humble and generous giver. Now, they invite politicians. Now, they advertise seminars for a fee even when Jesus said to come and take the word freely. These are spiritual bandits. They are the Pharisees in our midst.

    As we enter the era of the hustings, the churches are quick to welcome the tithes and prophet offerings. They are not in the game of holding the congregant’s conscience to the fire, to the scrutiny of fear and trembling. They embrace them and turn the pulpit into a spectacle of prayer rather than private solemnity. It is the hour of sanctimony instead of sanctity. They turn gradually into pulpit bandits.

    They are, like the Nollywood mavens, in the thespian world. A Nollywood stalwart fell for exploiting a nubile. In the church, another one did a similar thing but thrives. He may belong to God’s dog-house. Lechers in high places.

    We also have them as corporate bandits. They are the men in suits in alliance with the men in agbada. Agbada steals it, suit seals it. It is the high style of the sty, the combo for the office jumbo.

    Nor are so-called intellectuals immune. We have bandits of the mind, bandits of theories ill-baked. They hide behind high-flown facades to unleash positions of the absurd.

    We deplore the bandit of the forest, the killer who took boys in Nigeria’s version of the great trek through the Katsina forest, the ones that ferreted away school students in Niger State, the ones who made a little Leah Sharibu into a woman, the ones who swept the Chibok girls into world headlines and stained our map. They are torturing Kaduna today. They are the ones who have made Zamfara emir to bow to a bandit and larked him as Sarkin Fulani. The ones who defied the banning of markets, the appeasement from Katsina governor to build them shops and homes, the ones who circumvented the wireless networks when it was shut down and blew up our Bastille in Kuje. Our incompetence has made them to walk on water.

    Aliero or Dogo Gide has no time for a luxury lap on Miami Beach or for the foppish pastime of a colourful tie or shoe from Marks and Spencer or Gucci. As they lust for guns and blood, so our glamour bandits lust for lucre and leisure. They both enjoy their peculiar vanities. They are partners. They fear each other, look differently, speak differently. One defines the other by being refined. But the victims are the same: the Nigerian masses. They are brothers who cannot inhabit the same room. One gave birth to the other, which in biology will be a cruel joke.

    The softer bandit is to us like Cain and the rest of us are Abel. The righteous man has no colour or charm, hence Satan arrested the reader of John Milton’s Paradise Lost than yawning grandeur of Christ. In his enduring novel, The Fisherman, Chigozie Obioma delineates how a duel of brothers can turn a family into turmoil. Obioma invokes the spectre of Cain in his masterpiece to unveil Nigeria’s fratricidal impasse. Cain must go down as the first bandit in recorded time.

    But the bandit has to go, whether the security threat in the forest or the purse-string threat in high places.  If literature has its bandit yarns like Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, so does the holy writ. Saul of the Old Testament was a colourful brute, making mincemeat of his anointing.

    The forest bandit may feel equal to the other bandit. What they want they get. If the governor has his state, the bandit has his territory. They may even nourish a delusion of grandeur like the American bandit Jesse James who said: “We are not thieves — we are bold robbers. It hurts me very much to be called a thief. It makes me feel like they were trying to put me on a par with Grant and his party. We are bold robbers, and I am proud of the name, for Alexander the Great was a bold robber, and Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Sir William Wallace — not old Ben Wallace — and Robert Emmet. Please rank me with these, and not with the Grantites. Grant’s party has no respect for anyone. They rob the poor and rich, and we rob the rich and give to the poor.” If we are dealing with creatures of such a mindset, we need a clever man to banish the bandit.

    Stamping them out, whether beautiful or damned, is the challenge of this election cycle.

  • Beyond rhetoric

    Beyond rhetoric

    President Buhari had cause recently to reminisce on the Nigerian civil war. He had after the 26th Commonwealth Meeting of Heads of States written in his verified Facebook, “I visited Kigali Genocide Memorial this afternoon. I took two lessons from this sobering tour. One, Nigerians must continue to be tolerant of one another and two we have a responsibility to preserve our own history from the Nigerian civil war.”

    And last week when he met with former chairmen of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), he warned Nigerians not to allow the civil war of 1967-1970 to repeat itself even as he blamed self- centeredness for that war. But the president was optimistic that “we are Nigerians, God willing we remain Nigerians and Nigeria shall remain one”

    It’s been 52 years since that war ended and a few months to the termination of the eight-year tenure of the current regime. The fact that events of that war have continued to resonate in the speeches of the president and other Nigerians is indicative of one or two things. It is either suggestive of enough lessons not yet learnt or that there are signals pointing to the same foreboding direction or both.

    None of these possibilities is something to cheer for a country that lost immeasurably both in human and material capital during the course of that war. The president estimates that about one million lives were lost in the war he attributed to what he called self-centeredness. That may be part of it even as opinions have largely been divided on what actually brought about that pass. But one thing that remains incontestable is that elite dissonance or disagreement on the direction of the emerging state had serious consequences on the chain of events that were to follow.

    The founding of the modern Nigerian state was not immediately followed up with a deliberate act of wielding together the disparate and variegated entities that made up the country. Soon, schism set in as it became difficult for the then leaders to effectively manage the challenges arising from the new union.

    St Augustine said: “We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace” So each time the president warns on the dangers of a repeat of the civil war, the impression conveyed is that the country is not at peace. That is correct.

    But how did we get to this point? The civil war ended with the slogan ‘no victor no vanquished’ in the hope that reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation would be the guide for political action. It was envisaged that if these three programmes were faithfully implemented, Nigeria would be on a steady march to a progressive and prosperous future as a united nation. Then also, events that brought about the civil war would have been effectively stymied.

    What seems obvious from constant reminders from the president on the imperative of avoiding a repeat of the events that led to that war is that there are palpable signals of a repeat performance.

    The signs are there. They can be felt from the raging insecurity that has almost pushed the country to the brink. They are visible from the cracks and divisions within the Nigerian polity such that at no time in our political history have our people been as divided as they are currently.

    The Nigerian state is embroiled in stiff competition with primordial units and sundry non-state actors for the loyalty of the citizens with the latter seemingly having the upper hand. Law and order have been so assailed that the government seems to be losing control.

    How did we get here? What happened to the post war policy of the government of Gowon meant to unite Nigerians and forge a common sense of national belonging and identity? And why do we seem to be at the same pass 52 years after?

    The answer can be rightly located in the failure of leadership. Leadership failure and incompetence is largely responsible for the monumental corruption in public offices; it also accounts for the manipulation and exploitation of religion and ethnicity to keep the people down and impoverish them.

    These mundane and sectional appeals are the constant language of a tribe of elite that feeds fat from the misery of the toiling poor. This language is called into action each time this parasitic class finds itself losing out in the scheme of things. Unfortunately, the down trodden and the wretched of the earth are quick to swallow such baits hook, line, and sinker.

    So it is not just enough for the president to remind us of events of the civil war. Neither will much be achieved by constant resort to such hackneyed terms as the unity and indivisibility of the country. Desirable as these goals are, they can only have real meaning when the leadership takes concrete and sustainable measures to provide both the necessary and sufficient conditions for them to germinate and flourish.

    So the president should really be addressing the leadership and in this context, he is primus inter pares. He should be giving account of the impact of his policies and programmes in eliciting inclusiveness in the government he leads. It will be good to hear why religion, ethnicity and other primordial promptings have assumed dimensions never recorded in Nigeria’s history.

    These are the real issues to contend with. So if the signals of war are visible in the atmosphere, they are clear signs of the mismanagement of our diversities. They are clear evidence of failure of the government to inculcate in the citizenry the culture of national identity such that they begin to see themselves first as Nigerians, rather than members of their exclusive units.

    It is a failure in citizenship building; the reciprocity that should exist between the citizens and the government. The government must be able to offer something for it to command the loyalty of the citizens. If that reciprocity exists, the constant recourse to pontifications on the civil war, the unity and indivisibility of the country would have been patently needless.

    The leadership must walk the talk or take the blame for our collective anomie.

  • Corrupted pardon list

    Corrupted pardon list

    It is the character of corruption to expand to as many places as possible, and to corrupt as many people and things as possible. This may explain why three persons allegedly corrupted the 2022 presidential pardon list. But it does not excuse their alleged corruption.

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is reported to be ready to prosecute them for allegedly altering the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy (PACPM) by including the name of a jailed former managing director of a bank, whose case was never considered by the committee.

    The agency’s report, based on its investigation, had alleged that a senior official in the secretariat of the PACPM and an Assistant Chief State Counsel in the Federal Ministry of Justice received money from an agent of the jailed ex-banker to put his name on the list.

    The probe followed a letter from the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation (OAGF) requesting the investigation of members of the PACPM for alleged conspiracy, abuse of office, bribery and corruption.

    The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, had explained after the Council of State meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari, on April 14, in Abuja: “In the exercise of the powers on the granting of pardon, precisely on August 28, 2018, the President put in place a committee known as the Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy.

    “It was saddled with the responsibility of visiting the country’s correctional facilities and making recommendations to the President on the exercise of his power of mercy and compassion, to either grant pardon to those that had been convicted, clemency, or some other form of concessions by way of reduction in sentence and term.”

    He added: “162 convicts were presented for the President’s consideration for pardon and mercy… 26 of the inmates were recommended for a presidential pardon, 85 surviving ex-convicts were recommended for a presidential pardon, and one deceased person was recommended for a posthumous presidential pardon.

    ”27 inmates were recommended for presidential clemency, 13 inmates were for a review of their sentences or prison terms, 10 inmates were presented for a reduced sentence from death to life imprisonment.”

    Three of the 162 people presented for consideration were rejected, he had said. They included the jailed ex-banker, who was convicted of stealing more than N25bn. Regarding the ex-bank chief, “the reason for seeking pardon was because of life-threatening illness,” the minister had explained.

    It was later discovered that his case was not considered by the committee, and his name should not have been on the list presented for the President’s consideration. How did his name get on the list? Who included his name in the list? It was a case of using corrupt methods to try to set a corrupt convict loose.

    A former governor of Taraba State, Rev. Jolly Nyame, and a former governor of Plateau State, Senator Joshua Dariye, were listed among the 159 people the presidency announced it had granted pardon and clemency based on the approval of the Council of State following recommendations of the PACPM.  It was curious that the Council of State considered the ex-governors worthy of pardon. It was also curious that the PACPM had recommended them for pardon.

    Understandably, the ex-governors had attracted public attention because of their former status and the fact that their conviction had been seen as a plus for the Federal Government’s war against corruption. There were more questions than answers following their unexpected pardon. Predictably, the action was criticised by many Nigerians, and described as unpardonable.

    They were two-term governors from 1999 to 2007.   Nyame was serving a 12-year jail term, and Dariye was serving a 10-year jail term.  “Both men were jailed for criminal misappropriation, diversion of public funds, and criminal breach of public trust and misappropriation of public funds,” the EFCC had said in a statement.

    They were not expected to be set loose without completing their prison terms. But the unexpected happened.  At the time, presidential spokesmen Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina struggled to defend the government’s action.  Shehu had argued that “the president would have come across as insensitive were he to have ignored compelling cases recommended for pardon because someone is a former governor.”  Adesina had explained that “The reasons adduced for those two former governors were age and severe ill health.”

    The two ex-governors are in their sixties, and are not too old to be in prison. So, age is a non-issue. When convicts are ill or in poor health, the prison authorities and, by extension, the government should be responsible for their treatment. Or such convicts should receive treatment not as free men but as prisoners.  So freeing prisoners ostensibly to allow them seek treatment contradicts their imprisonment.

    If they indeed had severe health challenges that necessitated their pardon, why were they not released immediately after their controversial pardon? They were eventually freed about four months later, on August 8. Did their alleged poor health improve or worsen between the time they were pardoned and when they were set free? Or was it a lie?

    Since their release, they have not shown any signs of “severe ill health” publicly. They have not shown any need for urgent treatment publicly. Indeed, it is doubtful that they have “severe” health challenges.

    Malami had said the jailed ex-bank chief had sought pardon based on alleged “life-threatening illness.” The claim that his case was not even considered by the committee, and that his name was corruptly included in the list for consideration by the Council of State and the President, raises questions about the process leading to presidential pardon.

    Essentially, how does the corruption of the ex-banker, for instance, differ from the corruption of the two ex-governors?  Also, why were the ex-governors pardoned on health grounds, but the ex-banker was not considered for pardon on the same health grounds?  The government may well be guilty of double standards.

    It is puzzling that the defenders of the indefensible pardon of Nyame and Dariye failed to see that it was ultimately counter-productive. It sent the wrong message to those who occupy high office that corruption-related imprisonment is not to be taken seriously, and can always be cancelled by the powers that be.  The Buhari administration boasts that it is waging a war against corruption. The corruption-friendly pardon exposed the so-called war as a lie.

    The allegedly corrupted presidential pardon list is yet another proof that the so-called war against corruption is far from having a deterrent effect.

  • The grudge match

    The grudge match

    A very generation has a knack for throwing up men like Nyesom Wike. Without him, we will yawn and yearn like disappointed moviegoers. He has all the ingredients of a movie star. He can make you laugh, smile, gripe, curse, keel over your seat in either praise or rage. He at once can play comedian and Doctor Death. When he makes you laugh, you will take an inventory of your ribs after the quake. When he drives you into temper, you will clasp your blood pressure monitor. You want to hug and choke him at the same time.

    When you want to watch a video clip, you are tempted to get a glass of beer or fruit wine and a doughnut. It is entertainment without charges. But then, you know the man is not joking, and that is why he tickles some and taunts others. He is not like a few comedians we have had in the past. Not like the man in Benue, who lay down on the floor in supine veneration. Not like acts like Fayose and his neck brace. Not like the fellow who fainted over money charges in the national assembly. Not like Barkin Zuwo’s appropriation of government house for government money. Those were one-and-ashy moments. The episodes popped and expired.  Samuel Ortom might have competed but his act looks opportunistic and corny. Hence, he would rather befriend the master than be one. Recently, Ortom turned spiritual over Wike on Atiku and retreated into a holy of holies before coming out for air.

    We had men like K.O. Mbadiwe, but even he was more for effect than substance. He had no executive power, no brawn on street and boardroom. Other than that, K.O. was Ok. Wike is a quintessence of humour and action, and a lot more.

    We are seeing that now in his PDP and Atiku Abubakar. The man is not happy but somehow he finds a way to amuse. And annoy. Even his silence was like a thriller after the man complained of unrequited love at the PDP primary. Many wanted to hear more. And see more. He said nothing. He did silence. Nothing, happened. Nothing became substance. The theatre moved from the actor to the audience. It was not the Rivers State governor who took over the stage. It was a blend of what the German playwright Bertolt Brecht called alienation effect and Ola Rotimi’s concept of theatre as religious ecstasy or Aristotelian catharsis. But no ecstasy came, and the alienation was not even clear-cut. It was his foes and allies playing and saying. Wike was angry. Wike was leaving the party. Wike was in Honolulu. Wike was already working with the APC.

    Then we saw the man materialise at the Port Harcourt airport, and the egg broke. He was trim. Not the Wike of old who combined big girth with big tongue. He looked healthy and earthy, his goggle dark with omen, his gait straight and rhythmic. He had a roughneck dignity, at once a fighter and peacemaker, being something of each. Then he spoke. His scratchy voice and defiant mien emphasised the sobriety of the hour.

    He lashed out, and Atiku became a butt of his fury. We knew that all was not well with the PDP because all was not well with Wike. We now saw that it was a duel of brothers. Atiku had granted an interview in which he implied that Wike could not deliver. That he preferred Okowa, who bludgeoned over N200 billion from a moronic state house of assembly without a debate. The same man who is leaving the state without an enduring legacy other than few roads of no consequential power for quality of life in the state. The man whose party members are running because fire is gutting the rooftops. The same who asked his men to abandon a gentlemen’s pact that the president must come from the south. He played quisling to his region for a mess of vice-presidential porridge.

    Atiku did not know how to speak. He dented the man rather than amend. He did not help matters when he said later that his party would win without Wike. Yet at last, they broke the ice. Both men met. Breaking the ice does not mean the parts of the ice will melt. If the temperature is still low, the men will still live with glaciers in their hearts.

    Some say Wike was acting out of self-interest. Others say he was acting out of principle. There is always self-interest in principle and principle in self-interest. The matter is sometimes reduced to fighting egos. That is possible. But Wike has given the party conditions. One big sore thumb may be the resignation of Iyorchia Ayu as chairman, a man who has always been fired from any job he had since he was senate president. Is he about to be fired as a septuagenarian? But Wike also complained that the party was too north heavy, including its Board of Trustees. One would wonder how a party that cannot keep a pact with itself keep a pact with a nation. It was that lack of faith that led Atiku to win the party slot against its zoning policy. Atiku has always been a man seeking the sweet pie anywhere he sniffs it.

    Wike also was part angry because he was the southern Christian candidate close enough to win. He blamed Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal less than his southern colleagues who made it possible for Tambuwal to give the decisive vote. As political historians from Taciturn to Gibbons have shown, the outsider cannot get you if the insider does not pave the way. In his The Prince, Machiavelli said the outside powers invade and thrive because insiders sell out.

    The Christian Association of Nigeria did not see their hypocrisy when they fought for a Christian Vice president from the north in the APC when Wike, as a southern Christian for President, was rigged out by his fellow southern Christian delegates. They wanted to be the bottom instead of the top unlike Moses’ prophetic injunction in the book of Deuteronomy. CAN should spend more time reading the Bible and inspiring their folks to holiness than touching the unclean thing.

    The party must make peace with Wike. If they say it is his personal ambition, he has a right to it and a right to fume for being abandoned at his opportune hour. That is where principle meets interests. Don’t forget that many benefitted from him, and they used to call PDP Wike Inc. He was aware of this when he dismissed Tantalus-chasing Edo PDP chieftains as “tax collectors.”

    It is time not for tuneless bray at the man. They should, in the words of Greek playwright Euripides in his play Alcestis make him a herdsman in their pastures, “piping to your flocks over the sloping hills tunes to stir their hearts to wedlock.” However, I don’t see any wedlock in the offing. I see more of the defiance of the wedlock of the gods, apology to playwright Zulu Sofola. The best scenario is odd propriety of a cold war, an air of adversarial politeness. Novelist Sembene Ousmane calls it “the perfidy of words and the hypocrisy of rivals. Wike has dared them by asking the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Tambuwal’s foe, Aliyu Wammako to inaugurate projects in his state. It is a grudge match.

     

     

     

  • Battle line

    Battle line

    The two major parties now have their campaign councils, and we seem set for the battle of the elephants. The choice of Simon Lalong pits against Seyi Makinde as the possible point man. Lalong’s choice embraces competence, but it also points to an assuaging of the Christian thirst in the north. Where is Babachir Lawal? Where is Yakubu Dogara? They wanted vice president and lost it and then lost their heads. They now have neither VP nor DG. They created a phantom body, Northern APC Christians that is neither known to law or even the APC. Where is their registration certificate? Where are their meeting minutes? It was opportunism. Lalong has track record of democratic battles. He was speaker of the State House Assembly when he and his colleagues duelled Obasanjo to the death to uphold the constitution against the days of presidential bully. He also dethroned two generals. In his first bid he faced an Air commodore, that is David Jang. In his second term bid, he trounced General Jerry Useni, who has switched his jeremiad to Jang where they are fighting to be party lord. The Plateau State PDP is going to battle with a divided House, thanks to the martial prowess of a lawyer named Lalong. Makinde, and some say Oyinlola, will be trying to win in a southwest where Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a commanding presence.

    The choice of Festus Keyamo, Dele Alake, et al will be against Dino Melaye and Daniel Bwala. It is a battle between a clinical, cerebral, hard-hitting lawyer against a fighting comedian, if sometimes in love with barbarian hubris. Keyamo beats him. Bwala is amusing as someone who is like his master Atiku swinging from party to party looking for the elusive sweet pie. He left APC when he was defending the party before his sudden about-face. Like his master, he is playing politics without roots.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • N1.1bn SUV gift to Niger

    N1.1bn SUV gift to Niger

    When a few years ago, the federal government approved $1.959 billion for the construction of a rail line from Kano State to Maradi in Niger Republic, there was public apprehension on the propriety of the project.

    Questions were raised regarding the justification for the project when rail transport facilities are virtually inexistent in most parts of the country. Why build a rail line largely for another country when rail transport facilities are virtually not available in most parts of Nigeria?

    But then Minister of Transport, Chibuike Amaechi rose in stout defence of the 248-kilometre rail project. According to him, poor road network, security challenges and harassment from various government security agencies which discourage individuals and businessmen from other African countries from exporting through Nigeria were some of the justifications.

    He said the project will grow exports as it would encourage Niger which largely exports through Benin Republic to use the direct rail services to Nigeria ferry her goods without encumbrances. Not many were convinced about the appropriateness of the project given debilitating economic challenges the Nigerian economy was mired.

    Insinuations were rife that primordial considerations of clannish hue must have weighed heavily in influencing the project. But that did not stop anything.

    There is little information on the progress of the project since then. But the same government that committed itself to building a rail line for Niger was at another level negotiating a $5.851 billion EXIM Bank loan from the Chinese government for what it called nationwide rail modernization project.

    Curiously, the so-called nationwide rail modernization project had the eastern corridor completely shut out. Fiery senator, Enyinnya Abaribe had in a motion titled “omission of Eastern Corridor Rail line in the request for approval of federal government 2016-2015 External Borrowing (Rolling Plan) faulted the exclusion.

    With Abaribe’s intervention, tepid explanations were offered that Aba and Onitsha both in the southeast were included in the plan. There were also further claims that negotiations were on to find a financier for a more inclusive eastern railway project. All said, it was obvious that that part of the country was not really in their calculations.

    The rail modernization project was to be embroiled in intense controversy and subsequent withdrawal of funding by the Chinese government. That much was revealed by Amaechi who said the federal government was seeking alternative means of funding the projects.

    There is paucity of information on the progress made in the rail modernization project. It is also not clear whether alternative funding sources have been found. But two things stand out distinctly from the initial conception and current state of the project. The first is the air of uncertainty that now surrounds it with high prospects of turning out a pipe dream. The other which is a logical consequence of the first is the contradiction in undertaking to build the rail line to Maradi in Niger Republic when the country is sweating, scouting for funds for its internal rail network project. A country immersed in such financial stress would have first deployed available funds to connect its citizens before playing the big brother.

    Since it has come to scouting for loans, are we now also going to borrow to fund Niger? And what will be the commitment of that country to the loan repayment since their citizens stand to gain immensely through increased export of goods and services when the rail line comes into fruition?

    These questions resonate given the disclosure last week that President Buhari had also approved N1.1billon worth of Sports Utility Vehicles as gift to the government of Niger Republic. The transaction had been kept under wraps until exposed by an investigative reporter. Expectedly, and like in the Maradi rail project, its rationale has not gone down well with the discerning public.

    Not when our universities have been shut down for more than five months now over funding and ancillary issues. Not with the biting economic conditions that have further reduced our citizens to the poorest of the poor. We may not have to solve all of our challenges before helping out a needy country. But the instant case does not fit into such extenuating circumstance where our immediate needs have to wait for us to uplift a needy neighbour.

    It seems inconceivable that a country like Niger cannot afford to buy such vehicles for whatever reasons. Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed said the president has the right to make such assessment and act and that Nigeria has been supporting its neighbours. That is beside the issue. The president acts on behalf of Nigerians and his actions or inactions must come under the prying eyes of the public in terms of how they conform to overall interests of the constituents.

    So it goes beyond the matter of right or practice. We are dealing with its justification especially given where this country finds itself now. Perhaps, the explanation that it is to enhance their capacity to protect their country and vicariously Nigeria could pass. This is more so given the humongous security challenges pushing the country on edge.

    Incidentally Niger is one of the countries from where foreign herders largely responsible for the insecurity in the country flock into our shores. It remains to be seen how the vehicle gift will be of help in the fight against insecurity in the country.

    But the cost of the 10 vehicles appears outrageous. Each would go for more than N100 million. Is that the cost of such vehicles within our shores? Someone needs to respond to this poser.

    The interest served by Buhari’s regular goodies for Niger Republic is getting suspicious given the affinity of people of that country with sections of the Nigerian population.

    Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the list of six Nigerians awarded national honours by that country for their roles in promoting better relations between Niger and Nigeria. All of the six recipients come from one of the nation’s geo-political divide. Does that say something?

  • Obi-tuary

    Obi-tuary

    Suddenly, it is all quiet on the eastern front. No street heckles or flag waving or mooning over a yellow sun, no hooting or baying in public. The rabble no longer raves. Few wonder what happened to the Nnamdi Kanu crowd. Some may wonder if they are withering?

    The answer is before our eyes. The Biafran babblers are alive and well. They just swapped icons, rechristened the shrines and rewrote the rites. They left the prophet for a secular priest. They have had a switch of battle gear.

    Maybe it is not quiet. We can hear and feel the cacophony. The chants and caterwauling are everywhere, especially on the phones. The twitter bees, the Instagram grimes, the Facebook freaks. They are alive and well, but they have not been at war at the side of their icon, who is griping in detention.

    It’s farewell Kanu. Welcome Obi, at least until the new priest peters out. They are at his worship. They embrace it because it does not, for the first time in years, feel like they are outside the mainstream. They are not falling foul of the law, not howling from the fringes. They have Peter Obi as their man. He is mainstream. He belongs, not to the MASSOB, or Kanu’s assembly called IPOB. They can say they have a legitimate tribe and rhetoric. They may pretend to love Nigeria. They may claim to embrace INEC, cling to a political party no one in the police or DSS will harangue.

    But that is where it stops. They have transferred the temperament of their former master into the new. And they have not spared any incoherence, any lack of finesse, and threats and tantrums, any show of rabid, primitive cants, or any ululations. They have abused, cursed, thrown imprecations. They have hugged lies about their candidate. They have pelted lies about others. They have distorted material.

    Obi has turned out to be an excuse for even closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it. This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd.

    Obi knows this. He is happy to be their catharsis, to be their excuse for unfurling their bile at the system, for acting like revolutionaries. He is playing to it by acting as though he is the saint of Nigerian politics. Perhaps the purists of the Biafran cause are unhappy, and they unleashed a past video clip of Kanu on the social media. In it, Kanu lashes out at Obi as governor and stated what this essayist wrote about him over building a NEXT supermarket while still the governor of Anambra State. The video clip referred to him as a sort of sexual being on the fringe. You can imagine an Aso Rock sweltering with romps of the evil flesh. His so-called Obidients know this. But it counts for little.

    They also know that this is the same Obi, whose emissaries were intercepted, while a governor at Apapa, by then police chief Marvel Akpoyibo with over 200 million cash. The matter became a cause celebre  with impeachment dangling until the timid state house of assembly was on the take. This is the man they call stingy because he dared to spend on himself and his family, his wife being accused of spending N1.5 billion on tours. The man that admitted he placed Anambra money in his family account, and was not ashamed to confess when confronted. He did not follow due process. This is the man who is speaking from both sides of his mouth for maintaining an offshore account while a governor. This is Obi, who claimed he saved money, while pensioners were looking desperately at their graves.

    I can excuse those who think that being stingy is good for the economy because they are looking at how they run their family and personal finances. But no economy works in history by saving money. It stifles the economy. He has not been able to tell us how he will do it, and whether he has done it. We have no landmark in Anambra State to attribute to him, no enduring legacy.

    But this essayist can understand why Obi knows that the crowd that adores him will not question him. He is therefore using religion as a bait. He is now on a weekly pilgrimage to churches. Jonathan did the same. The pastors, ever opportunistic, see him as a darling. He is visiting a sectional hue of pews. This is the man who divided the church in Anambra State in his time between Catholics and the others. He is trying to push himself as the Christian candidate of the south while his messengers foul the air with sanctimonious growl about Muslim-Muslim ticket. I am sure Kanu will chuckle in his cocoon, especially when he contemplates what he alleges as his sinful romps in hotels.

    There is a divide here. He is pushing himself as a southern candidate. His core followers are advancing him as the Igbo candidate. But how do we reconcile the Biafran with an Obi, who even MASSOB, has denied has anything to do with them? Obi is taking a Machiavellian attitude to the matter. If Biafran impulse will propel him, he will take it. The Biafrans on board believe Obi is their best revenge on the Nigerian state. They can take over the zoo by acting as members of the zoo.

    But this psychology is nothing new. The private man and public man may not always cohere. In their huts, they are Biafrans. On the frontlines of battle, they are Obi. It is like Mr. Mani in A.B. Yehoshua’s novel who calls himself a Jew but does not believe in Jehovah. He embraces the culture but renounces its mystery. One of 20th century’s top philosophers, Hannah Arendt, obsesses over this schizophrenia in his opus, The Origins of Totalitarianism. The Obi followers accept Biafra but reject Nigeria. They abandon the mystic of the cause, Nnamdi Kanu, and have followed Obi, its inauthentic saint. It is the pragmatism of the cause. Kanu is the unarmed prophet, sulking behind bars. Obi is out in the open, a bird in hand. Machiavelli warned against the unarmed prophet, who fights without power. Elijah was armed against his foes. So was Jesus until he was crucified. They see Obi as armed with electoral quest. It is their own version of the Trojan War. Obi is the Greek Gift that they will ride in the battle for conquest.

    They have now evangelised others from outside the southeast to give a regional legitimacy to their cause. They call themselves Obidients but they obey only one call: the sound of the east. Those in south-south have been seduced as by the cooing of Obi’s voice as by evangelism of the Biafrans. Mind you, they have not abandoned Kanu. But their icon has no power for now. Obi is like Zik, Kanu like Ojukwu. One is a flair, the other a flare.

    While Obi hops from church to church and beclouds the hypocrisy among political pastors, the nation watches as his sectional army taunts and harangues others. But Obi will do nothing to restrain his rabble because he knows they are doing a good job in keeping the faithful within their own bubble where they reinforce their own self-delusions. That will last until their last call at the polls. This is not the time to properly interrogate in details the false intimations of Obi’s agenda and hypocrisies. But it is safe to say one thing. Before he peters out and hurtles towards an electoral Obi-tuary, the country knows the content of the crowd and its origin. They are a caterwauling group trying to seduce, without much success, those outside its ethno-religious tent.