The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Cry, my beloved country

    Cry, my beloved country

    Sam Omatseye

     

    THE southern protesters mourned those who died in the hands of vicious cops. The northern young battered the air over the rapine of bandits. The youths in both regions marched, but in different directions. One nation, two funerals.

    It did not matter that the cops acted like bandits and the bandits acted like cops. A competing impunity. But the drama reveals less the barbarity than how we cry as a people. This is a different kind of cry from the one Alan Paton patented in his novel, Cry, the Beloved Country.

    When a nation goes through pain and tragedy, we catch a glimpse of its soul. We find out how it grieves, and, from there, we know if they are one, or if its parts are apart. The #EndSars protests gave us such a peep, and our eyes pop at what we see.

    So, when the south was awash with reports of the banditry of SARS, the north watched like bystanders. A policeman raped a girl in Abeokuta, purloined an ATM card in Lagos, ripped apart families in Abuja, shot an expectant mother in Port Harcourt, disemboweled a merchant’s purse in Enugu, or beat a boy insensible in Warri. But the Kano or Borno youth has other concerns. The bandit has just raped a nubile in an uncompleted building in Kano, an old man’s first daughter had just been spirited away in Jigawa, a gang raided and razed a market in Katsina but the governor entices them with amnesty and loans. They want to clasp the goons back into the people’s bosom, to make them part of the society again. It is spoils for spoils. Boko Haram has dislodged another village, and a governor with more valour than temerity has just escaped death from the hands of a militant warlord. Divided grief, divided loyalty.

    When the south lamented, the north did not because it was not tormented. It wept over something else. So when the north said, they wanted SARS, it seemed insensitive to the south. But the southern youth did not include solution to Boko Haram or northern crime gangs on its menu. The north only saw the southern uproar as a platform to launch its own rage.

    But this is nothing new in Nigeria. When big men die, we see funerals in parts. When Awo died, I recalled it was a southern tragedy, but for most part a Yoruba tragedy. We saw quotes from across the country of big names showing condolences. They were technical mourners, not visceral. It was political obsequy without emotional depth. It was tears of caprice, tears as rhetoric. Awo was admired, but hardly loved outside the West. He attracted envy more than respect. The East did not love him much, and some even in the throes of Yoruba mourning, still remembered the Okporoko and second-hands clothing rhetoric and the civil war acts. What his kinsmen saw as genius, the East tucked away as betrayal. Not even Achebe glorified him, and he held the grudge for so long that he spilled it on his last Hurrah, There Was A Country. Some in the North also whipped the Ikenne sage.

    Ditto when Zik passed on. Not many saw the man, the greatest nationalist since Macaulay, as the death of a Nigerian as much as the passing of an Igbo icon.  He was the genuine Nigerian polyglot, who learned Hausa before his native Igbo. He was the rhetorician of first taste, whose tongue sweetened with Yoruba and soared with genuine zest among his fellow Yoruba associates and almost ended up as the Western premier.

    The one that pained this essayist was the passing of Maitama Sule, the southern media being the first culprit in giving it a coverage undeserving of his grandeur. Sometimes, though, we mourn jealously, disinviting by deeds and by gestural distancing. Soyinka was not allowed to mourn his fellow writer Achebe because of some vermin in social media. They invoked fictional feuds between Soyinka and the author of Things fall Apart. Gani Fawehinmi’s funeral became much more a statement of revenge than healing by the human rights community.

    Some commentators have asserted that the only time we unite is when we play soccer against other nations. But it is often a flash of joy, as though from a flimflam of fate. We weep tribe and bemoan for faith before we know what we feel. God and heath have foreclosed our kindred potential. They have made us heathens to each other. No one hears the other’s drumrolls. No one sees the other’s teardrop. We hear Yoruba sob, or see Fulani tears and are deafened by Igbo cry. We hardly hear the Nigerian lyric for the dead.

    When such discordant funeral notes happen, it means we don’t have a nation yet. It means we are just making a patchwork of unity. To grieve together is to feel together. It is only those who grieve together than can joy together. Grief is the fragile emotion. It tears into the sanctum of the communal being.

    It was amazing that when it was time to protest, the youth were divided. When the time came to plunder, the hoodlums acted as one. From Lagos to Calabar, to Jos to Kaduna to Adamawa, it was one Nigeria in looting. Just as the elite conspire in looting the treasury, the hoodlums did same in open theatre. CA-COVID palliatives became the excuse for a narrative of vengeance.

    But it is not essentially true that the elite steal in unison, although that is a myth.  You have to belong to the club first. Take the oil wealth, for instance. The oil states see their wealth as going more outside their elites than to the elites of their tribes. This brought out a recent drama. A northern leader Usman Bugaje went viral for once saying that the north owns the oil in the Niger Delta. He backed his view with a distorted reading of geography that questions who was his teacher and if his teacher should not disown him in public.  Not long after that revived video, we saw the news of Zamfara Governor Bello Mattawalle, who sold gold bars to the CBN in a somersault of the federal principle. Some Niger Delta youths erupted over violation of the Exclusive List that places mining squarely in the centre. Others can share our oil, but we are barred from gold. Where is Bugaje’s geographical pyrotechnics? So, the hoi polloi may steal as one, but the political elite are less generous.

    The tragedy is that we don’t grieve together, because we don’t think Nigerian. “They live differently who think differently,” noted political theorist Harold Laski. This is because from the days of our founding, our fathers were less Nigerian than the country they fought for. They were not Nigerian heroes but ethnic heroes. That was why we descended into the civil war not long after. That explains why today, the north and south have different concepts of grazing routes for herdsmen in the 21st century. And when they steal farms in Abia villages, few tears stain northern pillows.

    If we must share our resources fairly, we must mourn fairly. Our tears should be shed in equity just as the principle of sharing. Well, maybe not equally, but at least deep enough, like the mourning of your best friend’s brother.

    If we thought as one, we would develop as one. The United States and Britain grew from cooperative geniuses. The US built a myth of a melting pot. We cannot forget the assertion of the English admiral Horatio Nelson that “England expects every man will do his duty.” It was an instinct of patriotism. It is because they love their country first.

    We must note that even in both countries today, such fidelity is fading. The roach of decay is eating into the countries and they cannot be as great as they once were.

    It does not matter how well we play and how sumptuous our feast, we are not one until our tears fall on the same funeral floor.

  • The after-raft

    The after-raft

    By Sam Omatseye

    While we awaited the president to speak, I conjured the image of the last Romanov Czar before the monarchy fell to the Bolsheviks in the first quarter of the 20th century. Nicholas II was asked to speak to the crowd. They panted and surged and held their breaths. All they wanted was to hear his voice and a lyric of empathy.  The man was to choose between addressing his people and attending a party. An automatic decision became a Hobson’s choice. He chose vanity instead of emergency, the flattery of advisers over counsel, perdition over prosperity. His fall reminds one of the words of French philosopher Saint-Juste: “Monarchy is not a king. It is crime.”

    I was relieved when President Muhammadu Buhari materialized on television and gave a broadcast. At least, he did not act like the Romanov. He heard the cry and heeded. Yet, it was a speech less than a speech. It was long on symbolism, short on content. Some may say it was also long on contempt. He did well to say work was on to revise salaries of policemen, that he heard the wailings over SARS savagery, the list of policy initiatives, the desire for youth enfranchisement.

    The writer of the speech embarrassed speech writing in a time of crisis. Speeches of that sort are rallying cries, not policy papers. Policies should come across like candy to a child, in terms of endearment, not as seminar points; as persuasion, not justification. In spite of that, we hear them and even accept them. But we did not hear the president’s heartbeat, or imagine a tear drop, or the shadow of a hug in the about ten-minute delivery. It was presidential tedium couched in generalities and aloofness.

    The president may feel what we feel, but we need to know it. He may say the right things in private, we can’t hear them. He may have empathy for the people, but we can’t feel it. He has some good policies, but what of the optics?

    So, why is it that he gave a speech and left out the big tragedy? Why did he not visit even a victim, or show he plans to? Why has he not done that in Abuja or come over to Lagos, the epicenter of the boil? When will he come? Time ticks.

    The speech was expected on the coattails of the Lekki episode. Who were the miscreants in uniform who opened fire on the innocent? The impulse at the beginning was to push the onus on Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. But within 24 hours, the yarn changed. He gave his own perspective. He did not invite the soldiers. As Professor Wole Soyinka noted, soldiers don’t come in a federal arrangement unless the governor invites. The Nobel Laureate confirmed he did not invite them. What happened, the governor said in an Arise in interview, will be unveiled in an inquiry afoot. He imposed a curfew, but did not call in the soldiers. Who was the barbarian soldier who thought harmless youth should suffer and die when the ragtag boys of Boko Haram made mincemeat of them?

    Allegations filled the social media? Some newspapers ran away with unsubstantiated body count. Some in their tens. Some alleged eyewitness accounts said it was over ten, some others said twenty. The Governor went from hospital to hospital, and the inventory eventually confirmed a couple at the time of writing. Some said they saw the CCTV camera being removed? He said it was a camera belonging to the Lekki Concession Company and it was to monitor vehicular tags. The CCTV is intact and it will aid investigation, he said. He also added in the interview that he would ensure it is not tampered with. The panel should illuminate finally why the lights were turned off.

    Some have said the soldiers evacuated the dead. That will be really sad. But the camera will have to expose that, too.  The governor said he confirmed an injured person who eventually gave up, and another body with gunshot wound that they wanted to trace where he died. “One death is a tragedy,” noted Stalin. “One million deaths are a statistic.” Every single soul matters. There have been names and bodies bandied in the social media. A few have come up to deny that they died. I think the families of those who have lost their youth should show up. That is one way we can have closure on this matter. Many were injured. Not acceptable. Lekki was made to look like the land of Lecqui, the flint-hearted slave owner after whom the place was named. We need inventory of the night. We need to know who passed. We cannot speculate people into the grave. We cannot morph whims into corpses. We cannot mourn phantoms. We cannot know the truth unless the process is open, accountable and transparent.

    Again, why did the president not return the governor’s calls, and promptly? How can such a sad episode occur and he is not in dialogue with the state’s chief security officer? It is still difficult to understand.

    What also came out of the governor’s interview is the countervailing narrative of the army. Why would the army deny it? Who were the soldiers? The governor said plans were for police to be there about 10 pm. The incident happened hours before then. Curfew was not called to carve coffins.

    There is also the narrative of the youth. Last week this essayist warned over a wasted opportunity. The raft should not capsize in the storm. The peaceful protests, in their grand gaiety, fell into the hands of goons. It was like the gecko that comes before the snake. When the snake of hoodlums came in, the #EndSARS euphoria came to an end.

    They burned and looted. Even political gangsters and opportunists turned arsonists, stoked fire, took revenge, and exercised envy. For the masses, looting became a metaphor of hidden rage, a gap between predator and victim. The predator was now on the other foot. The masses stole as revenge. They burned as anger and with anger. They stole the way the political elite stole from them, without shame and with impunity. They stole as celebration of excess. It was a bazaar, if a magnificence of savagery. Hard work has rewarded indolence. But the palliative warehouses became emblems of the people taking back their own.

    They also became arsonists of self-waste. Why burn the buses that you need? The rich don’t need the buses. They have their cars. Even their cars you burned they will replace. Why burn to make the army of the jobless swell?

    We saw also the north-south divide? North says it wants SARS, the south says no. Both have failed to listen to each other. It calls for dialogue, not mutual condemnation. More of us in the south suffer from it than up north. In the peaceful days, while the south youth protested against SARS, the north railed at bandits and kidnappers. About two years ago, four SARS men, gun in hand, entered my car uninvited and bullied me. But the north has fewer roadblocks than Lagos-Benin expressways. It brings up the north-south debate over state police. The state of police will make us rethink this matter. If police were a state matter, each state will decide whether or not and how they want it.

    We shall still have to combat robbers, kidnappers, herdsmen, etc. The regular police cannot do it. That is why the youth protest must reinvent itself. It cannot go into silence. But they must now understand how naïve they were to not have leaders. Some posed as leaders in the comfort of their twitter and instagram pages while others sweated on the streets. Even Lagos has a panel and asked them to bring a rep, they said they wanted two. There is no revolution without its elite. The Governor consented. No one name has come up at the time of writing.

    When J.P. Clark’ play, The Raft, drew some flak, Femi Osofisan recalibrated it with his play, Another raft. The youth needs a new raft, with ballast and captains against the storm ahead. And we wait. We hope, unlike a certain speech, they will rise to the occasion. We hope it will end like the words of Gbede in Osofisan’s Another Raft, “My duty is ended, which is to lead you through the hidden channel in the wave of history to the turning edge of knowledge.”

  • SARS as metaphor

    SARS as metaphor

    By Emeka Omeihe

    A grave risk exists in the thinking that the disbandment of the Special Anti- Robbery Squad SARS on account of its excesses will ease off public disenchantment with the police establishment.  As contentious as this reasoning is, it has already begun to shape the actions of the police leadership in the new measures to fill the gap created by the dissolution of SARS.

    While directing those to be deployed to the new Special Weapons and Tactics unit (which replaced SARS) to undergo psychological and medical examination to ascertain their fitness and eligibility, the police leadership had promised that none of the defunct SARS operatives will be absorbed into the unit. But they have equally been directed to report for debriefing, psychological and medical examination.

    Ordinarily, there should be nothing inherently wrong with these measures designed to ensure those charged with the duty of law maintenance and enforcement are of sound psychological and medical health. But that is as far as we can go as the directive is fraught with its own contradictions.

    It amounts to medicine after death to require such tests from the disbanded SARS operatives after much harm has been done. Though it could be argued the essence is to aid proper redeployment, the fact that such tests were not done before their last assignments is a measure of the yawning gaps in the recruitment process of the police force. And that may have contributed to the dismal outing of its operatives, displacing public goals with their self-serving interests.

    No matter how the poor outing of SARS is viewed, selfish interest is behind it all. And in this, there is everything to suggest, either they had the backing of their superiors or their bosses were negligent in their supervisory duties such that the excesses got out of hands. Whichever way, they are all vicariously liable for the current image and credibility crisis into which the police institution has been enmeshed.

    This reality has also put to serious question, the propriety and efficacy of such tests solely for new entrants into the SWAT and defunct SARS. The impression conveyed is that once new entrants into the SWAT are of sound psychological and medical health, they will not repeat the inexplicable invasion of the privacy of innocent citizens and other infractions for which the disbanded outfit was notorious.

    We are also faced with an added danger in the assumption that once all is well with these two sets of operatives, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the overall efficiency and improvement in the image problems of the police force would have been satisfied. That assumption is neither here nor there. There is the further dangerous presumption that other police officers and men including the highest echelon of the leadership have no reason undergoing psychological and medical tests to re-assess their current state of health.

    Yet, they were the ones supervising all the ills of the defunct SARS operatives finding nothing wrong in them. They were the ones that came out before now to announce a purported reformation of the operations of the squad assuring citizens of change that never materialized. This set of leaders need psychological and medical tests more than those they lead. What seemed to have emerged from these is that the evils of SARS are a good measure of the rot not only in the police institution but the Nigerian state.

    SARS is the verity of a metaphor for all that is wrong with the police institution. It is a systemic challenge that can only be realistically addressed holistically. Thus, to isolate operatives of the defunct SARS or recruits into SWAT for medical tests or any forms of re-orientation to the exclusion of the entire police force (low and high) would amount to a reductionist perspective of the challenge. And it is bound to prove futile.

    The buck for the excesses of the police established stops at the table of its leadership. What accounts for the current impression that the Inspector General of Police IG, the DIGs, AIGs et al, should be exculpated from the social malaise that infested a unit under their collective supervision?

    What is therefore required is a total overhaul of the police force such that would align operatives to the dictates of modern policing in a federation. Good enough, President Buhari has reassured that the disbandment of SARS is the first step to comprehensive reorganization and reformation of the police force. He also promised to bring to justice all those responsible for misconduct and wrongful acts.

    The investigation must go beyond the SARS unit to unravel why all their sordid deeds including mindless extortions and alleged extra-judicial killings went on for that long with the police leadership feigning ignorance of their prevalence. All the same, it is heart-refreshing that for once, the government appears to have taken public opinion seriously. This is in sharp contrast with the disposition of the current federal leadership to genuine complaints and demands from citizens.

    But for the resilience and doggedness of the youths who have severally taken to the streets to protest SARS excesses, we could have trudged on as if all is alright or castigate them as a band of anarchists or trouble makers. The reality is that the demonstrations have exposed all that is wrong with the Nigerian Police Force. Incidentally, the police institution is not the only agency of government where such concerns have been genuinely expressed without any positive step from the Buhari regime to address them.

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC under the leadership of Ibrahim Magu was severally accused of political witch-hunting and corruption. Even the DSS posted a damning verdict on his suitability for the job, yet the president continued to force him on Nigerians until recently when the bubble burst.  Much has also been said on the retention of the current service chiefs in the face of the debilitating insecurity across the country but to no avail. Do we need public demonstrations to gauge public opinion on some of these issues?

    More fundamentally, the problems assailing this country, hinge more on the vexatious issues of our federal contraption. Nigeria is perhaps, the only putative federal order that still maintains a unitary police formation courtesy of the imperfections of the 1999 constitution. All efforts to have the country operate as a truly federal order through the variants of power devolution, true or fiscal federalism and restructuring have consistently met brick walls in the hands of the current federal leadership. And as long as we refuse the reality of tinkering with this structural bondage, so long will this country continue to falter.

    Even then, the disposition of President Buhari to this critical issue does not give hope there is respite in sight. In his 2018 New Year message, he had said “when all the aggregate of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure”.

    At another time, he described calls for restructuring as parochial and laced with interest, hence discussions and arguments on the matter failed to capture his attention. Yet, a fortnight ago, he said his government will not succumb to threats and take any decision out of pressure while reacting to mounting calls for restructuring. Where do we factor in the ultimate sovereign in a governance framework that shows consistent disdain to genuine public pressure?

    If the disbandment of SARS and the promise to reform the police force do not amount to succumbing to the public pressure, what else do we call them? Do we need to tell the president that the problems of the police have more to do with the imperfections of a federal order that still runs a unitary police? That is part of the larger issues encapsulated in resurging demand for restructuring. Should we wait for public demonstrations or occupy Nigeria protests to do the needful?

  • The raft

    The raft

     

    It is a story of stories, a raft of anecdotes. It is the small stories that rise, wave after wave, volume after volume, before we see the flood, the crowd as they surge. But this is a crowd like nothing we have seen before. Not during the June 12 imbroglio, or even the famous Ali mungo. Those crowds had a menace of the exterior. They pre-announced their purpose as warriors of conscience, a sort of judgmental ferocity about them. The authorities felt a sense of righteous revenge to deploy soldiers, to distort and minimise their moral authority, to condemn them and quell their onslaught.

    This time they disarm with the small stories. The fellow who was frog-marched to death by crackpots called cops, the virgin who was cracked and popped in a hotel, the mother who saw her son die, the father who was asked to pay to see his son in a parade of corpses, the laptop seized, the ATM heist, a certain officer Nwafor who was impatient to play god, money and victims parted ways, families parted ways between life and death. The bullets unleashed, the insolence of bravado, the finger trembling on a trigger. The settings, like the acts, were arbitrary: in the car, in the home, at hotels, before your family, at the barracks, mosque, church, at the beach. SARS was like the air: ubiquitous. It became, like the air, a presumptuous necessity. The authorities said it was our oxygen for safety. But the air was poisoned. And many people, like the Chenobyl disaster in Russia decades ago, inhaled and died. SARS started as adhoc but morphed into a pseudo-institution.

    The internet sprung up with a vengeance, like we saw with the Arab Spring, the French Yellow Vests, in Lebanon, in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, et al. The young came forth. They started as though a soap bubble. But the lather outlasts anyone’s thought. Were they not the type the President derided as lazy, the bunch that did no good. They were defiant, able-bodied, insistent. They said they wanted one thing: they wanted SARS to go. Once this essayist witnessed the crowd, and even watched them close, I knew this was a different kettle of fish. These people were not Ali Mungo, or June 12. They were young men and women who had been bearing their anguish for a long a time. They were the young who wanted to eat, but begged although they could work. They applied for jobs but the jobs went to their age mates who were children of the well-feathered class. They had their degrees in UK and landed a job in Shell or became SA to a minister without experience. They were the whiz kid with brilliant ideas who watched their mother die because they could not afford a surgery. The boy who saw a girl get a job because he was not a girl. Or a girl of virtue who did not get a job because some starry-eyed fellow wanted to make a virtue out of her.

    It is the class divide. The young man who is the victim of SARS is not likely to be the son of a senator or governor or minister or commissioner or permanent secretary or a CEO, because he will be in the UK or the USA, or some posh environment immune to the impunity of the SARS men. #ENDSARS is their demand, but it is not their goal. Sorosoke that means speak up, does not mean the young have small ears. They are saying “address the injustice in the land.” Police are often the face of injustice among the people. When the police misbehave, they see the larger bastardry of the elite.

    So, it is about #EndSARS but it is about unemployement. Obasanjo warned not long ago that the army of the jobless could foment a revolution. Are we there? Those who say we should reopen the universities as distractions are mistaken. Schools are more potent engines of revolt. They have organised themselves in a way many have not. Ali Mungo had leaders. June 12 had rallying points. This is an amorphous, amoebic rage on  the streets. Replacing SARS with SWAT was like swatting a housefly. It was called a naming ceremony, and a miserable one without food or drinks or a newborn. The boys who were eating and drinking on the streets, dancing and swinging were not part of the sacrament. They were having fun at the government’s expense.  They loved to party. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive,” crooned Poet William Wordsworth on the French Revolution. “To be young was very heaven.” They loved to protest, and who is going to stop them without consequences?

    Many of them come from seedy homes like the one painted in Festus Iyayi’s Violence, or the home drawn of a lodging home in Balzac’s Old Goriot about condition during the French Revolution. Some struggle for food, or board. Others are what Balzac described as “joyous youth condemned to drudgery.” Some had parents and elders that the French writer saw as “old age lying down to die.” Such persons will be happy to remain there day after day. It is an alternative party, the sort Odia Ofeimun invited the masses to in one of his poems.

    But in spite of the ideal of this movement, some have called for the protest to stop, for the youth to pick a committee, and sit at table for a talk on their demands. They have said they do not trust the government. They have seen governments come and go, and promises come and go, and they are not ready for popcorns too pretty to be sweet. They have seen promises in the recent past. They were promised the NDDC scandal would be resolved, but it is going into silence. Recently, billions of Naira for school feeding was found in private pockets. No dice after promise. They have reasons to doubt.

    The youth don’t want assurances. They want example. They are at a crossroads, though. They are at their ideal stage. They have to bring everything to reality. That is the critical point. Movements and revolutions are beautiful until they create what political philosophers call the revolutionary elite. We saw that with Robespierre, Danton, Abbe Sieyes and how the joy turned into turbulence. The English conservative Edmund Burke predicted that it was going to end in the hand of a strong man. He was right, and Napoleon arose to emblematise what Sieyes called for: “Power from above: confidence from below.” We saw that, too, in the Arab Spring. Egypt now crawls under a tyrant. Revolutions often die in the hands of its leaders.

    But it is not enough for the government to say they have met their demands. We need the president to address them. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, ever a quintessential leader, played shuttle messenger from youth to president. He became a charioteer of the people’s dream. Others followed. Wike prosecuted an about-face, and joined. Taraba, Osun. Makinde did a false equivalence giving a million to victims’ families and N100 million to rebuild a feudal monument.

    It is not just for the president to say he has met their demand. He needs to stoop with empathy, and speak with them and not to them, and in their language. He has youths around him. He should couch the tone and diction, and address them and meet with them. That is the call of the moment. It is not about policy. This is the politics of the real polity. It will be nice for the president to visit a victim’s family in the way Governor Sanwo-Olu did.

    The youth have energy, but they need the soothing conciliator in the president. It is then he will understand that they don’t want just SARS to go, but inequality, ethnic favours, malignant hypocrisies, electoral lies, jobless hemorrhage. They were already convening the national conference that the old have not been able to hold in their gilded halls in flamboyant brocades with palates sweetened with cakes and tea. Theirs is already advancing without rancour on the streets of Enugu and Lekki.

    This moment for the young, as for the nation, resembles J.P. Clark’s brilliant but maligned play, The Raft. Will the young fall over and drown, or will they survive the fog ahead? They have to navigate the crossroads, and my heart is with them.

  • The fabulous fourth

    The fabulous fourth

    Sam Omatseye

    I REMEMBER as kids when Jimmy Carter visited Lagos. We were only awed by the optics of colour, dignity and the starchy bravura of the head of state. Carter was white and upbeat. Obj was infected all over with the lofty brio of a host. Our gratitude was the momento of their joyride through town. Today we know it was more than that. When we cut a path through the Lagos waters, we invoke his name. It’s Carter Bridge.

    We also have Eko Bridge. For all the shadow of June 12, IBB may have memorialised his name with the glory of the Third Mainland Bridge. The gap-toothed fellow scored that for the hearts of the Lagos commuter as the monument for a mobile city.

    For the fourth time, Lagosians have been waiting. It looks like the time is coming. They will not have to linger like the old man in Hemmingway’s short story who would not proceed from the foot of the bridge. Lagos seems set to begin the loop, and leap from island to mainland all the way to the far-flung Ikorodu. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is set to make it a signature project. With the coil and majesty of a python, the Fourth Mainland Bridge will make interlocking presence in Lekki/Epe, Arepo, Lagos-Ibadan Express way. Names of streets and villages will jump out of obscurity.  Ado Badore, Bayeiku, Igede, Isawo et al, will bump into royal dialogues. The project hopes not only to reconnect the city but to recast its landscape.

    As the governor has noted, “The project allows for the first time ‘direct access’ from the large suburb of Ikorodu to the Island and the Lekki Free Zone area.” It is a three-part affair: Island, lagoon, mainland. At a recent stakeholders meeting, it was revealed that it had reached an advanced stage for take-off. The partners have dialed in. We can draw the outlines in our minds. We can paint the picture for our eyes. Sources say in the past, partners often suffered cold feet. The train is about to move.

    For Nigeria’s essential city, it is not only good news, it is a hope for relief. Bridges of this nature are not mere projects. They are the items of transformation. To move a city from rural to urban. They raise the stakes of prestige and prosperity. The make the city dwellers not just move, but want to move. They can move in the morning for the joy of labour. In the sunshine blaze, they can cruise and watch the water shimmer beside as the sky presides. At night, they can take in the crystal dark and serene path on asphalt.

    It is not just the bridge. It is the economy. To make a bridge is also to reinvent commerce. It starts with huge outlay to get it done. The billions will mean bringing in sand, steel, iron, blocks, cranes, etc. it will be a feat of engineering. It means going deep into the lagoon, dredging, remapping. It is labour, and salaries and sub-contracts, and men hawking wares and the women selling akara and bowls of eba and egusi soup. It is like building   town. When David McCollough wrote his famous book of rigour, The Great Bridge, he unveiled engineering detail. It was not just about connecting two great towns –Manhattan and Brooklyn – it is a story of politics, a family that devoted its life to a lifetime project, even living at times under the water, about those who labored, loved, caught a disease and died.

    The Fourth Mainland is a story of immense devotion. As the Trojan of works minister Babatunde Fashola noted, it is expected to beat Cairo’s long bridge in length. I don’t know how long it will take to complete it, but it is a project for a generation. A project in endurance. It has to start and then it is up to the city to bring it to an end. IBB started and finished the Third Mainland.  But the Fourth Mainland is a long, winding behemoth, the longest on the continent. It will change the lives along its path. Real estate value will rise. Status of people there will rise. Lifestyle will change. It will redesign the architecture, the business model, how they wake up and sleep, how they worship, who they bow to, who to vote for and against, where to party and where to die.

    And what way to raise their children. It will tell which gods will fall and what myths to ignite.  The story went that a river deity resisted a bridge during the construction of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the Obasanjo era. A white man drove into it as sacrifice. This new bridge may weave its own tale. Schools will have to reflect the new status of the place. It is not about the flyover or the trajectory of the loop, but the loop of their lives. The Nobel Prize-winning novel, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, details how travel is in everything we do, even when we eat.

    We have had bridges across the country. Even in Lagos, the Lekki Bridge is not just a bridge.  It is now a Nollywood icon, a lover’s tryst, the jogger’s flexing point, where Mark Zuckerberg’s caught his breath. We remember the Asaba Bridge during the civil war. Biafran artillery paralsysed Murtala’s army, almost like Hemingway old man. In Port Harcourt, we have seen trophies and atrophies, projects ended and others abandoned. In the east, some colonial bridges remain prostrate since the civil war. A bridge is also a segue between from one world to another. Of course, to go to Ikorodu from Lekki is an astral trip, like landing in a new dimension. In Japanese top writer Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84, a man enters a new dimension of the city just by walking out of a traffic jam on a bridge.

    We hope, in the words of Prophet Isaiah, we shall see in the Fourth mainland a highway for the wayfarers of holy intentions who will make the city a place of refuge and growth.

     

    Grand master and two other plays

     

    IT was such a cheer to hear that former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala clinched the WTO job. This is the second person from the Jonathan administration to be so honoured by an international agency of prestige. The last one was former agriculture minister Akinwunmi Adesina, who stared America in the face and rode back to the glory of his job. It is an irony that these two individuals who did not perform well as ministers could flex as champions on the world stage. I am, nonetheless, happy for them.

    NOI ran an economy as Nigeria’s “prime minister” that teetered. Adesina promised a piece of bread that we did not see. But I supported their victory. Their grand master Goodluck Jonathan is seeking a second act, it seems, although this column has shut down the kite being flown by the so-called Buhari Boys. They want him to be a sort of Buhari third term, so that the north can say the south has had its share. Therefore, the north can begin another eight-year berth. It is also a snare for Jonathan. They know Jonathan’s record, so they can blackmail him on what they know to skew any attempt at an assertion of strength. But that is not going to work.

    I know some Jonathan diehards want him back. They want another footloose reign. They want to enjoy a slave’s holiday before the servitude kicks in. If they want someone, as I noted last week, they can get other candidates from the south-south. After all, I will be happy to see somebody from my region become president again. But that is not how politics works. Let the people decide.

     

     

     

     

  • Fashola’s progressive roadworks

    Fashola’s progressive roadworks

    Developing Nigeria requires developing and maintaining its infrastructure. Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola has a significant role in the infrastructure renewal, expansion and development programme of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

    It is a responsibility that demands, in Fashola’s words, “an expansion mentality.” His work and the passion he brings to it highlight the connection between infrastructure development and economic development.

    When Fashola visited Lagos last week to inspect federal bridges in the state, he was reported saying more than 50 bridges were undergoing repairs and renovation across the country in line with the Federal Government’s national asset maintenance programme.  The ongoing bridge maintenance and rehabilitation programme in Lagos is part of the big picture.

    It is noteworthy that there are 524 ongoing road projects across the country. Each state has at least three ongoing road projects, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja. At least 80 of the 524 projects are scheduled for completion in 2020/2021.

    Fashola was quoted as saying when he updated the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on the ongoing road and bridge construction/ rehabilitation nationwide: “The projects on completion will bring about reduced travel time, lower vehicle operating costs and improve the comfort of road users as well as improve the ease of doing business in the country and ultimately boost the Nigerian economy.”

    The roads include Lagos-Ibadan-Ilorin-Jebba-Kotangora-Jega-Sokoto-Niger Border; Warri-Benin-Lokoja-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano-Daura-Niger Border; Port Harcourt-Aba-Umuahia-Okigwe-Oturkpo-Makurdi-Akwanga-Jos-Bauchi-Maiduguri-Gamboru; and Calabar-Ikom-Ogoja-Katsina Ala-Jalingo-Yola-Bama-Maiduguri.

    Others are the Lagos-Otta-Abeokuta-Ibadan; Onitsha-Ihiala-Owerri—A.3 Junction at Umu Uyo; Chikanda, Kosubosu-Kaiama-Kishi-Ilorin; Mayo Belwa-Ganye-Serti-Mayo Selbe-Gembu; and Jibiya-Katsina-Kano.

    These federal roads connect states, including the FCT, link cities with high economic activities and carry the majority of heavy vehicular traffic en-route to different parts of the country.

    Roads with heavy traffic, roads leading to ports, roads sponsored by counterpart funding, roads that connect border communities, roads leading to agricultural areas and roads within tertiary educational institutions are considered first in deciding on road projects to execute.

    Under roads leading to ports, there is the construction of Agaie-Katcha-Barro Road in Niger State and the construction of Baro Port to Gulu Town in Niger State.

    Road intervention projects within tertiary educational institutions show that Fashola’s roadworks are not limited to inter-state and inter-city roads.  At University of Benin, work is ongoing on the rehabilitation and asphalt overlay/construction of Reinforced Concrete Drains and Kerbs and Asphaltic Surfacing of three Car parks of 1.1KM Internal Road.

    Also, there is rehabilitation and asphalting at Bayero University, Kano; Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Ekiti State; University of Maiduguri, Borno State; Federal University, Lokoja; Federal College of Education, Katsina; Federal University of Technology, Owerri and the University College Hospital, Ibadan.

    Others include Kaduna Polytechnic; Federal University, Gashua internal roads, Yobe State and rehabilitation and asphalt overlay of 2.3 km internal road at Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State.

    Bridges are important too.  Four bridges are listed under priority projects: the construction of Ibi Bridge across River Benue connecting Taraba and Plateau states, completion of construction of Chanchangi Bridge along Takum-Wukari Road in Taraba State, construction of Ikom Bridge in Cross River State and emergency rehabilitation/maintenance of Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos.

    “The Second Niger Bridge is at about 46 percent completion. We hope to commission the project before the end of our tenure in 2023,” President Buhari said when he presented the 2021 Federal Budget Proposals to the Joint Session of the National Assembly. This bridge connecting Asaba in Delta State and Onitsha in Anambra State is perhaps the biggest ongoing bridge project in the country.  The project is progressing under Fashola’s supervision.

    Buhari presented road plans, saying his administration has “awarded several contracts to rehabilitate, reconstruct and construct major arterial roads, in order to reduce the hardship to commuters and increase economic activity.”

    It is significant that Fashola will oversee the execution of these road projects. His record of performance is reassuring.  The projects are in good hands.  He will be aided by the Buhari administration’s “innovative financing strategies to pull-in private sector investment.”  The president recently approved an Infrastructure Company, an “infrastructure development vehicle, wholly focused on making critical infrastructural investments in Nigeria.”

    This Infrastructure Company, according to Buhari, “will raise funding from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, the Africa Finance Corporation, pension funds as well as local and foreign private sector development financiers.”

    Fashola’s work will also get a boost from the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme. Under this scheme, the federal government is “undertaking the construction and rehabilitation of over 780km of roads and bridges, nationwide, to be financed by the grant of tax credits to investing business.”

    Ongoing projects under this scheme include: Construction and Rehabilitation of Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba-Ilorin Road Section II (Obajana-Kabba) in Kogi and Kwara states;  Construction of Apapa-Oworonshoki-Ojota Expressway in Lagos State; and Construction of Bodo-Bonny road with a Bridge across the Opobo Channel in Rivers State.

    I saw Fashola at work in January during his two-day tour of Niger State to inspect federal highway and housing projects.  It was serious business carried out in a business-like way. He had emphasised the concept of “road economy” or “the economy of road construction,” pointing out how the road projects have a ripple effect economically.

    It’s one thing to develop infrastructure, it’s another thing to maintain infrastructure.  Lack of maintenance is at the core of the country’s infrastructure problem. Fashola had told four journalists who travelled with him about his ministry’s approach regarding the issue of maintenance.  “In each state, every two weeks, a controller must tour all federal roads under their control to detect failures and take action,” he said.

    It is clear, as Fashola observed, that an improved road network will improve interconnectivity and boost economic activities. Throughout the tour, he emphasised the importance of infrastructure as “the key driver” of development. “A nation’s wealth is also measured by the quality of its infrastructure,” he stressed. He spoke with conviction, and it was obvious he was driven by conviction.

    Developing and maintaining infrastructure requires effort and takes some time. There is no doubt that Fashola is making progress progressively. His roadworks are testimony to his concentration on his responsibility.

  • Justice for Citizen Favour

    Justice for Citizen Favour

    Emeka OMEIHE

     

    The death of an 11-year old girl, Favour Okechukwu gang-raped by some hoodlums in the Ejigbo suburb of Lagos State, has again elevated to the fore the vexatious phenomenon of rape in our society.

    Reports had it that the poor girl who was sent on errand by her mother, was lured into a nearby house by some bad boys who took turns to rape her. Unable to bear the pains of man’s inhumanity to his fellow human being, the girl was said to have given up the ghost in the room of one of the accomplices.

    Fearing that the long teeth of the law will catch up with them, the five-man gang hurriedly fled and disappeared into the thin air. All this while, the mother of the victim who had been thrown into confusion by the inability of her daughter to return, had kept hope alive that by divine providence she would come back.

    But it was only after Favour’s father Dickson Okechukwu returned from the day’s work that they began to search for her as it was getting dark. The search took him to all her classmates living around but to no avail. Parents of her classmates joined him on the search but it could not yield any positive result.  Apparently confused, Okechukwu did not give up even when he did not have any clear idea of where else to look for her.

    Hear him: “I started walking like a mad man asking everybody I saw about her whereabout. I saw a man who lives with me on the same street and asked him if he saw my daughter. He told me he had to close early because a little girl was raped to death in a building close to his shop”.

    Okechukwu then decided to go to the scene of the incident to find out whether it was her daughter that was involved and was quickly accompanied by the said neighbour. When he got to the place, he met three people outside and on telling them his mission, they pointed at the room where the incident took place. He was shocked to the marrows to find his daughter naked with her lifeless body covered in blood all over. All efforts to resuscitate her proved futile as she lay stone dead.  And that was how that promising Junior Secondary School girl was sent to her early grave by some demented men.

    Some other accounts had it that when the rapists found out that Favour’s health had degenerated due to the body injury inflicted on her while the ordeal lasted, they procured the services of a nurse to resuscitate her. But all to no avail as the damage had already been done. It was also reported that the gang involved in this murder is notorious in the area and that was not the first time they would rape someone in that building.

    The gang, said to be notorious in smoking Indian hemp and all manner of crimes around the area had for long been a nightmare to residents as they operate as if they are above the law. The incident is as callous as it is despicable. It is one rape and murder, too many!

    In May this year, a 100-level student of the University of Benin, Edo State, Uwaila Omozuwa was raped and killed inside a church where she had gone for some church activity. A week later, Barakat Bello, an 18-year old student of the Federal College of Animal and Production Technology, Moore Plantation Ibadan, Oyo State also suffered similar fate.

    Three armed men capped this devious record in Ekiti State when in June, they gang-raped a 17-year old street hawker at Oja-Oba market in Ado-Ekiti. Elsewhere in the country, it has been the same sad story with the media awash with all manner of rapes resulting in all manner of fatalities. The furore generated by the development was so much so that serious calls arose for more stringent laws to make rape a dangerous enterprise.

    It was in the wake public outcry that the Kaduna State House of Assembly passed a bill which has since been signed into law by Governor Nasir El’ Rufai stipulating stiff penalties for those convicted of rape. That law provides for surgical castration for those convicted of raping children under 14 years age. Anyone convicted for raping of a female who is more than 14 years of age has a date with life imprisonment.

    The Kaduna State Penal Code (amendment) Law 2020 also prescribes bilateral Salpingectomy (removal of fallopian tubes) for females convicted of raping children under 14 years of age, Though that law was received with mixed feelings on account of its inherent shortcomings and contradictions, its enactment underscored how bad the situation has become in this country.

    It was a verity of desperate response to a degenerate situation. But the solution to the rampant cases of rape in and around the country does not really lie on the absence of extant penalties in our laws to debar prospective offenders from the illicit act. Our laws are surfeit with stringent punishments to discourage prospective offenders.

    But the problem has been more with the inadequacies of our justice and legal systems. Even where victims muster sufficient courage to shun the social stigma associated with coming up openly to challenge those accused of raping them, the difficulty in proving such cases as required by law has also not helped matters. This is more so given the peculiar nature of rape cases and the difficulty in getting witnesses for an act committed secretly and by force.

    That is where the judicial system has a serious role to play. It is not enough to enact new stringent laws to stem the tide. Neither is the absence of such laws the real issue to contend with. Those charged with the dispensation of justice must begin to factor in the peculiar nature of rape cases in arriving at judgments without compromising the imperatives of fair hearing.

    So many people are reluctant to go to court on rape issues because they believe it is difficult to secure justice. And when this is paired with the stigma associated with the incident, one can then imagine why rapists have been on the prowl. All these challenges must be taken into account in ensuring that our justice system does not constitute an impediment to the war against rape in our society.

    Favour’s father is seeking justice. I watched him weeping in a video clip calling for help from whoever is moved by the callous murder of his daughter to enable him secure justice. Ordinarily, that should have been taken for granted. But not on these shores! Favour’s murder is no doubt a very peculiar case that must not be allowed to suffer unnecessary delays given that the evidence for diligent and successful prosecution is overwhelming.

    But what manner of justice will he get that will bring his daughter back to life? That is the sad question. He knows that his daughter is dead and may not come back to life. He is not oblivious of the fact that no amount of punishment can bring his daughter back to life. But he wants the penchant by all manner of criminally minded persons to murder innocent girls in the guise of rape to be made a very dangerous enterprise. He wants the police that have arrested the criminals that murdered Favour to hasten the process of investigations and prosecution of the case for the culprits to face the raw teeth of the law.

    Fortunately, the murder took place in someone’s apartment. The identity of the owner should not be in doubt even as he is said to have named his accomplices in crime. The Lagos State Police Command must act swiftly and decisively by not only publicly parading the suspects but must hand over the case to its experienced personnel for diligent prosecution.

    It is a test case that should be used to gauge the commitment of the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to public disenchantment with the increasing spate of rapes culminating in the senseless murder of victims. Good enough, our extant laws have sufficient provisions when enforced would act as sufficient deterrent to offenders.

    Favour must find justice. Those who had hands in this criminal and despicable murder must be made to pay heavily for it. We are watching!

  • A royal ruse

    A royal ruse

    By Sam Omatseye

    Goodluck Jonathan has always counted himself a lucky man. He became deputy governor, governor, vice president and president without ambition or prayer, without a campaign or mass appeal, without money or structure. He rode nature’s express. He floated on the wind of fate. He washed up ashore to a feast of kings. He was even better than the character in Jerzy Kosinski’s immortal novel Being There, about a fellow without quality. From tending a garden, he suddenly was, by popular acclaim, going to be the president of the United States. A nondescript soul morphed into the sole monk of the enclave.

    Only the paths of royals are so oiled. So, Jonathan must thrill to the moves of Buhari loyalists who are plotting to make him a royal again. They want him to be president and succeed President Muhammadu Buhari. They want him to be not Nigeria’s royal, but theirs. They want to make him a president after the northern heart. It is not because they love Jonathan. It is because he can be their boy and buoy; their sweet heart and southern beau. In a headline report from ThisDay newspaper on October 4, they are saying that Jonathan is a good man and that qualifies him to be president again.

    They said, “He handed power peacefully and nursed no bitterness against anyone and therefore will not be a threat to the interest of the north.” It is not only a machination of a hegemon, it is also naïve. When did Jonathan, in the eyes of this same group, become a saint? They are trying to canonise a man who, they told us, had supped with the devil.  “Saints preserve us,” noted French writer Balzac. But how do you radicalise a devil into the holy one for Nigeria? Was he the one they campaigned against? The target of their adjectival invectives: They described him as clueless, incompetent, and corrupt?

    They rode on his back to the presidency. He was the bogeyman and also the victim. Jonathan fell to them. The clueless man became humbled. I was there at the Eagle Square at the handover. Jonathan put up a brave and sunny front on the day he expected to begin his second act as president. He waved his hand feebly, smiled often and benignly, spoke less, but his body language was subdued. Melancholy draped him.

    Buhari gave a hint of embrace. He said Jonathan had nothing to fear about him. He was right. Jonathan has not fallen under his radar, if his minions sometimes have. Recently, he has been a darling of the presidency. He became an ambassador of peace and democracy on its behalf and embarked on a shuttle diplomacy over a coup in a West African neighbour.

    Maybe they see him as a pliant soul, a man they could cudgel about. Hence they are seeing him as a better person than an unknown figure who may erupt from the south to give them a headache. They may look at their tenure without pleasure and torpedo any effort by the north to reroute its way to power after another Jonathan term, since he will not be able to run the country for more than four years. He fulfilled a mandatory four-year term in his first coming.

    The Buhari loyalists have been out of their depth over who succeeds him in 2023. The clamour has been it should come to the south. The north has had its share of eight years. They also have seen the futility in the mathematics about how many years the north has had the seat since 1999. It is a mischief of numbers. They also are not at peace with the appeal to the northeast. They are therefore in a geopolitical trap. They have to come south, and if they do it must be a person of their choice. Jonathan they think they know. So Jonathan should have it. They think by doing so, they can coalesce the Jonathan followers, the Azikiwes in the southeast, the militants and their kin in the south-south and the southwesterners who saw a shoeless hero.

    The move is a patriarchal pandering to zoning. It is zoning without zoning. They want to put Jonathan there, so he may keep watch for them until they return. They want to come like a thief in the night. But we don’t have to watch and pray because we already know the day and the hour. We have seen the signs of the times, and we know that they want to make Jonathan the Judas of the south to betray his people. They want him to be the Uncle Tom of Nigerian politics. By making Jonathan their point man, they believe they are giving the devil his due. That is, if it’s the South’s turn, we will give you but on our terms.

    There were two main objections to the Jonathan era, and they account for why he lost in 2015. One, he ran a corrupt government. Two, he ran the war on terror with a supine hand. Today, are the Buhari loyalists saying they want to hand over power to a man who did not run this country with clean hands? Are they saying they have given up on the war on corruption? Many have accused the administration of looking the other way on major issues of corruption. Is it the NDDC probe that seems to have gone into abeyance? Or the series of allegations against mainstays of the administration that now slide into memory? Even it was because of the Jonathan mess that Buhari noted that if we don’t kill corruption, it will kill us. Was it mere opportunistic rhetoric? Is it a surrender of the war on corruption? Are we saying Jonathan should continue where he left off in that department? So, did we vote him out in 2015 then?

    The war on terror had initial hope in 2015, and even the administration’s glib spokesman said it would end that year. It is worse today, threatening to make a martyr of a dauntless governor. The chief of army staff has become a sort of buffoon in the fight, with his men dying and mocking him on social media and deserting the force. Billions of Naira flow into it but blood buckets gush out. Jonathan had famously said that Boko haram could be in his kitchen. We are not winning the battles, so the campaign now seems out of reach. To give the Otuoke man another chance is to imply we fell into a “one chance” in 2015 and 2019.

    The root of this is to say that it is not about vision, but about power. So, if the Buhari loyalists see power as the only dividend of democracy, so why make such grandiose claims about ending terror and killing corruption? They may even be mistaken about Jonathan. Jonathan does not bow to godfathers. Remember the story of Obj, who turned against Jonathan and made a public show of tearing his PDP card. The Owu chief is too ashamed to queue for another card. He did not de-register from the party. He only tore it as an act of a geriatric impresario. Jonathan did it to Obj, who can he not do it to? If it works out for the Buharists, they will be surprised how the Otuoke man will execute an about-face. They say he has learned his lessons. They may be surprised what lessons he has learnt after he smacks them in the face.

    Let who succeeds Buhari be about virtue, not clique; about democracy, not calculating roguery. We are not running a democracy in the guise of feudalism. It is consensus, not caste, that makes a modern state. Jonathan may try his luck if he wants. It is his right as a Nigerian. No one should foist him on us. Not least the same people who disgraced him. If they think Jonathan is the right man, let them not do it in the shadows. Let them come out openly and explain and also answer the questions I have posed here.

    To try to foist Jonathan is to see the south and the country as a plaything for a hegemon’s ego. To see democracy as a ruse to use for narrow goals.

    Succession goes through a long process. Let the country go through it, not by fiat but by agreement. If they want somebody from the south-south, they can work the process and there are quite a few who can do it from the region. But to stick to one man, and say it is their royal choice makes us feel used. As a writer said, “crowns tumble hourly.” Let no one take the people’s will for granted.

     

  • Yakubu’s INEC: matters arising

    Yakubu’s INEC: matters arising

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Why did the recent governorship election in Edo State turn out a success in reflecting the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box? Was there anything novel in the organization and conduct that had been lacking in previous ones, especially since the tenure of the current leadership of that electoral umpire?

    Or, do we attribute the outcome to a combination of the huge deployment of security agencies, the determination of voters to take their destiny in their hands and a possible resolve by politicians to play by the rules of democratic engagement? The impact of these intervening variables requires serious interrogation for us to get a clearer picture of all that shaped the outcome of that election.

    This inquisition is further dictated by the unenviable record of the Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC in organizing what has come to be generally known as inconclusive elections. So, beyond the euphoria of the success of the election which the government, INEC, the winner and the general public are celebrating, what strategy did the magic?

    It is vital to unravel what factors saw to the success of that poll because in them, we may find a clue to the constraints that had overtime stood on the way to free, fair and credible elections especially since after the 2015 outing. It would however, seem a remote possibility that indication can either be found in the huge deployment of security agencies, the determination of the electorate to have their votes count or a change of orientation by the political class to play by the rules.

    In the first set of off-season polls conducted by the present INEC in Bayelsa and Kogi states, heavy security presence was in place, the voters were also poised to have their will prevail but its outcome was compromised by the process as some of the technological innovations that were introduced in the 2015 election which gave it a large measure of success were criminally discarded by the INEC. In those two elections, card readers were not used for finger authentication, thus depriving them of the concomitant technological innovations that would have guaranteed the sanctity of votes cast. That paved the way for rogue politicians to embark on all forms of electoral infractions including the alteration and falsification of results before they get to the collation centres. The use of card readers provided for the snapping of result sheets and direct transmission of same to the collation centres to stave off alterations. This did not happen in those two elections. The inability of INEC to effectively deploy that technology in those two elections is evident from the rancour that trailed them resulting in their inconclusiveness.

    It was not surprising that the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Bayelsa State, Baritor Kpagih had to declare that the “election was substantially marred by violence, ballot snatching, hostage taking of election officials” and therefore had it cancelled. The last governorship election in Osun State also suffered the same predictable inconclusiveness. These outcomes took serious toll not only on voters’ confidence in the electoral process but the capacity of INEC under Yakubu to organize free, fair, credible and conclusive polls.

    So what made the difference in the Edo election that it became a substantial departure from the fumbling and wobbling of the past?

    Though mono-causal explanations may be of limited value in accounting for all that shaped the outcome of the Edo election, experts attribute the success to the efforts made to deploy some form of technology to the exercise. They cited the introduction of the Z-pad to complement card readers and fast-track transmission of results directly from the polling units to a central server where they are readily available for public view. Yakubu also corroborated this view. That left unscrupulous politicians, thugs and sundry characters with devious skills in ambushing and doctoring the results before they get to collation centres helpless.

    This reality throws up questions as to the sudden realization that available technology could make the difference many years after the permanent voters’ cards and card readers were deployed to enhance the credibility of the 2015 elections? Why INEC under Yakubu allowed the technological gains recorded when Jega superintended over the 2015 elections to regress to the point of foisting a discredited and embarrassing culture of inconclusive elections on the polity remains a moot issue?

    Whatever the case, it is a big statement on the performance and credibility of that electoral body that over the past four years, it failed to improve on the technological gains of the past to the point that confidence in the electoral process took a serious nosedive. Yet, free, fair and credible elections constitute the lynchpin on which the wheels of the democratic order revolve.

    Curiously also, just last week, Yakubu sought to impress the country by flaunting what he called virtual demonstration and screening for the use of electronic voting and collation of results with over 40 ICT firms. Ordinarily, that should have been the proper path to tread. But it strikes as a puzzle why INEC suddenly woke up from slumber to the realization that technology is the way to go barely a month to the expiration of the tenure of its current leadership.

    Matters are not made any easier by available figures from election observers which indicate that the success rate of the card readers in the 2015 election was above 54 per cent.  But, in 2019 it dipped to 19 per cent and 16 per cent in the Nassarawa election. This has left us with the embarrassing contradiction of the technology deployed to shore up the reliability of previous elections regressing instead of improving. What this meant in essence, is that under Yakubu, the nation lost serious grounds in some of the technological advancements recorded in the conduct of the 2015 general elections.

    The controversy that surrounded the pulling down of the central server in the 2019 elections did not speak of an umpire with sufficient courage and commitment to call into decisive action the powers conferred on it by section 160 of the 1999 constitution as amended. That section stated inter alia, “in the case of the Independent National Electoral Commission, its powers to make its own rules or otherwise regulate its own procedure, shall not be subject to the approval or control of the president”.

    Another indication of the loss of confidence in the process can be gleaned from the rise in election litigations. This is a measure of public dissatisfaction with the election process and conduct. And since free, fair and credible elections constitute the salt through which the taste of representative democracy is gauged, the inability of the electoral umpire to satisfy these basic conditions casts serious legitimacy slur on our democratic engagement.

    We are at the crossroads with our democracy standing the risk of being imperilled if something urgent and far-reaching is not done to shore up public confidence in the electorate process. Already, it is seriously assailed by a crisis of relevance on account of its serial failure to properly reflect the collective will of the electorate. It is vital to re-build the confidence of the general public on the sanctity of their powers as the ultimate sovereign. This can only happen if their inalienable rights to choose their leaders are neither abridged nor circumscribed by acts of omission or commission by desperate politicians or the electoral umpire to satisfy predilections of questionable hue.

    No doubt, the role of INEC is pivotal to the nurturing and survival of democracy in this country. With the tenure of the current leadership of INEC coming to an end, the question that should worry us, is the kind of individuals that should head that agency to restore public confidence in its capacity to live up to its statutory mandate.

    The time to re-jig the commission ensuring that competent, neutral and non-politically exposed individuals are appointed to manage its affairs is now. We are cruising on borrowed time with little room for experimentation and rhetoric given the crisis of relevance assailing democracy on account of compromised elections.

  • The return

    The return

    By Sam Omatseye

    Governor Godwin Obaseki’s cheeks should bloom in his election victory. It is his supernova hour. The people illumined it, gave him their word, and beatified it in their vote. No one on earth has a ground to begrudge him. The voice of Edo people is the voice of God. The people lined up, breasted the tape for him, appended their choice, INEC attested, and the tally anointed him the people’s ally.

    If even this essayist was not, and is not, his fan, the majesty of democracy must take its course. Some have questioned the turnout. Few people came to the polls. But those who came conquered. It does not matter that one person, or a million, showed up. Democracy or a democratic constitution does not compel choice. If you want to vote, it is your right. You have the right not to use your right. It’s thumbs up for those who thumbed down. Those who did not vote gave power to those who did. Democracy is about numbers. Numbers legitimise a vote, superior numbers. It is not about eligible voters, but men and women who defied rain or sun or wind and spoke with their first fingers.

    Democracy is about what is, and not what might be. Some assert that Pastor Osagie Ize Iyamu might have won, if all voted. That is speculative. You don’t count imaginary ballots. This malaise has afflicted democracy for decades. Trump won because blacks who gave Obama the edge shrank into their homes on polling day.

    It has led many to question democracy as a form of government. No one has come with a better idea since Greece. It is still the best form of popular persuasion. Democracy is about rights, not who is right. The majority may be foolish, as philosopher John Stuart Mill has asserted in his On Liberty, but they are entitled to their foolishness. After all, since the Greek century, democrats have voted out democracy in exchange for tyranny. We saw it in Spain and Italy and Germany in 20th century. Even in the guise of democracy, we still vote in tyrants, like Trump, Duterte and Erdogan. Democracy thrives more on culture than reason. Just as in Edo, we cannot rule out sentiment over enlightenment in the popular will. French philosopher Rousseau enshrined the concept of popular will. Tyrants like Robespierre, Danton during the French Revolution and later Napoleon exploited it in the name of the people.

    So, in Edo the people won. But this is a time to rejoice but not to gloat. Governance is no party but work. Rather than radiate the humility of victory, Obaseki still reflected the bitterness of a fight. As Winston Churchill noted, “In war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity; in defeat, defiance.” Rather than open a tent, he was looking askew at his opponents. He saw triumph not as grace, but as triumphalism. He started jabbing at what he called godfathers and how their positions are not tenable in the constitution.

    It was a moment in hypocrisy. He did not rile at godfathers when Adams lofted his arm four years earlier and pivoted Edo voters to make him governor. He snuggled under Adams’ shadows like a new baby. Now that Adams turned against him, godfathers are sinners overnight. When he came with his fellow governors like a thief in the night to seek Asiwaju Tinubu’s support for the APC ticket, he did not know it was extra constitutional to be a national leader. Welcome, Mr. Godwin, to knowledge in the 21st century Nigeria.

    If anyone should condemn godfathers, it is not Governor Obaseki. Has he not been playing godfather in his state? When he started strong-arming local government chairmen, did he not act outside the constitution. Was he not wielding the autocratic powers that all governors bask in? Did he not reject the Edo nominee to NDDC? Our governors have almost monarchic muscle over their state? Was it in the constitution to ask Adams to seek permission from him to enter or leave Edo State?

    A democrat does not foreclose about two-third of lawmakers voted in by the people for years from exercising their rights. Strongmen bend the law to suit their democracy, and not the other way.

    If we all should squelch godfathers, we should not cherry pick the autocrats we like or hate. It is not in the interest of democracy. Yet, we lie if we deny that some individuals of certain skills and influences can ennoble democracies. Obama’s candidacy drew momentum when men like Ted Kennedy endorsed him. Charles De Gaulle amassed his personal charisma to rally his people against the Nazis and French democratic leaders.  After all, democracy is made for us, and not us for democracy. Strongmen can sour it, too. In her opus, the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wondered how democracies in Europe gave birth to colonialism and Jewish autodafe, and how power elites bond with the mob. Democracies can be dangerous. It calls for vigilance. Hence the Russian writer Maxim Gorky wrote that the only people who deserve liberty must be ready to fight for it every day. When it fails, democracies yield tyrants and yield to them.

    Even the APC was not vigilant within. It went into battle a divided house, a prefigure of its 2023 fortunes. Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal had hinted that the Edo fortunes would declare the state of the APC. He was probably right. If elections were held today, PDP might win. They are a better coalescence than the APC house of cards. The next year will give us hint whether the party will become like a broken car where PDP will fish for spare parts. The party has to look in and re-tie its knots. President Buhari  has the time to repair.

    Even in Edo State, I foresee those who defected to APC may start moving back ‘home.’ In our politics of mobile whores, everyone is looking for a room with a view.

    In the final analysis, Governor Obaseki is now alone with Obaseki. He has no Adams or Ize-Iyamu or Tinubu to bark at. No #EdonobeLagos bogeyman. Edo State is now his responsibility for the next four years. He was not voted in because he performed so well as chief helmsman. He will not have Wike from Rivers or the APC wheel horses who backed him on the sly. They will not provide security or jobs for his people. Columnist Azubiuke Ishiekwene praised him for improvement in WAEC. But education reforms don’t bear fruits in WAEC until years after. If anyone should take credit, it is Adams. After all, Obaseki, who stumbled at the debate, did not really do much of education reforms.

    Edo State is in a bad state. The education, economy and infrastructure need him. When Lincoln won election to the presidency, he told reporters, “Boys, your troubles are over. Mine have just begun.” Obaseki’s  began four years again.

    He had a great career in the private sector. We need that expertise in government. He vilified the Lagos where he made his mark and earned his daily bread. It is the lot of Lagos that hides the failures of this federation with its success. Yet those who fatten on Lagos come back to bite it. Obaseki has to unite his state. It is still divided in spite of his solid vote. He won not because voters love Ize Iyamu less, but because they love Edo more. He must turn Edo love into progress.

    As a former investment broker, he should follow St. Paul’s words, “as poor, making many rich.”