The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • No regrets

    No regrets

    The terrible thing about IBB last week was that we allowed him to be Maradona again. The headlines last week said it all. They said the former military president regretted his actions in annulling the June 12 poll.

    If you read the book, A Journey In Service, An Autobiography, and if you heard his short speech at the book presentation, Ibrahim Babangida never once said or even suggested that he regretted it. He described it as regrettable, which means we ought to lament his shameless action. That does not amount to a personal regret.

    He also said: “The nation is entitled to expect my impression of regret.” A tongue-twister. That does not mean he regretted it. The expression was a trap, and editors, reporters, commentators and even the political class fell into it. He indeed conned journalism.

    For you to regret, we expect remorse. There was no remorse in the diction and tone of his delivery. It was a cold-blooded offering. You need remorse to apologise. To regret is to be unhappy about what one has done to oneself. Remorse means you are pained for hurting others. He did nothing of that. We climbed a high moral pedestal believing he asked for mercy. He asked for no such thing.

    IBB was Maradona again, and he conned many with his rhetorical rigmarole. I don’t like him but I admire the man. He came to laugh at the nation, and at the end of that dark cackle, he carted home a profit. If he said, we are “entitled to expect my impression of regret,” he merely said it is your right to ask me to say I am sorry, but it is my choice not to say it. I cannot give you the throat to gloat, to wrest judgment, to humiliate me as a groveling sinner. I will never flatter your moral superiority.

    He boasted that he conducted the best election. That was his point. He knew Abiola won. His opinion was worthless. Buhari has declared it, and M.K.O. Abiola has earned GCFR. IBB gave us a meal, a poisonous meal, but no mea culpa. His confession adds nothing to the June 12 value. It was just a saga of a man – IBB – trying to be heard, when all ears were deaf.

    Ten he said he took full responsibility. He said, he would do it differently, if he had the chance again. How differently? Many, including the reviewer Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, implied he would have allowed Abiola be president. The same Abiola he said in the book would not be a good president? The same Abiola he paraded Yoruba topmen, including the Ooni of ife, to see his contracts with government, his government? The Ooni yelled, “Ohun nikan la s’aiye fun ni?” Was the world made for him alone?

    Doing things differently surely did not include Abiola restoration. After that assertion, he said he did it in the best interest of the country. It means annulling June 12 was in the best interest of the country. Restoring it was not. It was a binary choice? He chose the path of perdition. He just told us that, in June 1993, the best action was to annul. He even gloats that his action was right because democracy has prevailed over disintegration.

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    If you read the book, you could hear IBB’s voice. For those who were alive when he was president, and listened and studied his speeches, there is nothing different now. The writers then may be different from the editors like Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi and Dr. Chidi Amuta, yet the voice is inescapably IBB’s. In his style, he projects the air of the learned, but that is because he knows how to pick brilliant men. Who would go wrong with Amuta, Ogunbiyi, et al? But he has a native cunning, an earthy brilliance, a street wisdom, and an ability to appear to grasp concepts like a sponge. We saw it when he was military president. We see it now. He was a dangerous man and he exploited the air of macabre augury around him.

    Some have called him a coward when he blamed Abacha.  He cannot defend himself. Maybe his people can. Even if they do, it will all be speculative. Sophocles wrote. “The dead will never testify against a burial.” Cowardice is an elementary, if naïve, charge. A dictator is, by definition, a coward. Such a claim says nothing new. History has a list of such despots. Pol Pot, Mussolini, Kurunmi, Caligula, Nero. They are impotent without arms and state power. But Babangida is a special kind of coward. It is a special kind of coward who stakes his life in coup after coup. It is a coward who was shot at during the civil war, flown to Lagos, rejected a surgery, recovered and was not afraid to return to battle. It takes a special kind of coward to go upstairs in a radio station in Lagos to meet with coup leader Buka Dimka without any arms. His boss T.Y. Danjuma ordered him to return and flush him out.

    He did not fear court martial as implied in Alabi Isama’s book, The Tragedy of Victory. Isama wrote that IBB asked Dimka to drop his weapons and run. IBB writes that he “inescapably” escaped. It takes more than a coward to dare Idiagbon with a coup attempt. It took more than a coward to sit at his office on the top floor of the  Defence Headquarters in Lagos when virtually every soldier was running for their life out of the building over a bomb scare but IBB remained ensconced and unfazed in his office. This is not his story, but Debo Bashorun’s account in his anti-IBB book, Honour for Sale.

    One thing I wanted to read was his use of decree two. He gave himself plaudits for abrogating Decree 4 but says nothing of Decree 2. Four was a subset of two. Rather he undertakes a phony intellectual rollercoaster trying to frame a human and democratic system. He says nothing about the deaths he piled up during the June 12 turmoil, the hounding of radicals, the many dead on street protests, the long disruptions of life, the destruction of the economy, the high-profile deaths like Kudirat Abiola, Bagauda Kaltho, etc.  There was no mention, not to say regrets or even a funereal tone on the deaths he unleashed.

    The health challenges that ultimately took the lives of Gani Fawehinmi and Beko Ransome-Kuti derived from jail times under his gulag. I remember as the managing editor of the Concord Newspapers’ Abuja bureau, I was sitting on my desk when our Villa correspondent Mohammed Adamu walked in with what looked like a scrap of a paper. It had no letter head, no signature, no government insignia. He told me Chief Press Secretary Nduka Irabor gave it to him and other correspondents. I read it, and its writing bore IBB’s serpentine style. It did not say directly that the election was annulled, but it implied it. I called the editor of National Concord, Nsikak Essien. He asked me to call the editor-in-chief, Dr. Doyin Abiola. She asked what it all meant, as though she did not understand it. I explained that the election had been annulled. As the wife of the winner, the hope of a life in the villa held the prospect of a fantasy. She became angry with the messenger, and said I should have scooped this earlier.

    I was in the joyous halo of my birthday, but history decided to mock. IBB says, it was Abacha’s men who did it. We need Nduka Irabor to let us know if his boss Admiral Aikhomu did not know about it. IBB said Aikhomu was taken aback by the letter.

    IBB said he knew nothing about Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) that mobilized a circus for annulment. He did not know about Justice Ikpeme’s decision about the June 12 poll. He felt helpless about stopping the group, yet he banned newspapers, hounded human rights group like CDHR and CLO, and the Campaign for Democracy and NUPENG’s Frank Kokori. He locked up Beko and Falana, and I remember seeing them in court and even following them to know where they were kept until a soldier pointed a gun and asked me to go back. IBB and his men did not even stop his SSS men from following me around Abuja, I did not know until Abiola’s  first aide Olu Akerele hinted me that two cars, a Jetta and 505, took turns following me about town. The same IBB who boasted as though inebriated that “we are not only in office but in power.” He knew when now President Bola Tinubu, Olisa Agbakoba, and editors of The News and Tell magazines, were staked out day and night. Fearless reporters like Alex Kabba were hunted out of the country. Yet, ABN puffed on the streets and IBB could do nothing?

    The most fascinating was his telling of his life at 14. His father died, and he was so distraught that he wanted to join the army. The now orphan boy was dissuaded by his relations. But for a boy whose mother lost child after child, including twins, and only he and his sister survived, and to lose his father and want to join the army? That was an early flirtation with suicide. That was the beginning of his cruelty.

     In his The Rebel, Albert Camus demonstrates how tyrants kill others because they won’t kill themselves. He saw deaths in spades too early and may have wondered why he did not die when his mother was losing several of his siblings. But just like he survived all of that death scare, he survived coups and even a coup against him.

    Many are angry that the donations to set up a library was obscene. Bigwigs donated the fat of the land to evil, and he once called himself the evil genius. No problem, so long as the library is set up to include all the evils of his brutal reign, the death, the air of funeral parlor, the rhetoric of augury, the state of fear that characterised his army with a state rather than a state with an army, a la Bismarck. Those who have nostalgia for military rule can learn. Just like the Nazi Museum in Berlin, with all the madcap personalities and incidents.

  • The reunion

    The reunion

    Atiku Abubakar calls it a courtesy call. The history between him and his host, the Owu chief, his former boss and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has had everything but courtesy. They smile at each other but wiles contour their faces. They gladhand because they are not glad. They hug but might wish to choke each other. As a former soldier, OBJ may wish that the most, but Atiku is taller and heftier. Obj may prefer to reach for his legs and plot a pinfall. But his octogenarian energies may end the encounter in a dark, hospital comedy. So, the wiles and smiles should do.

    This invokes the phrase from Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembene in his short story, Her three days, about the malignant affability of wives in a polygamous home. They cloak an undertow of a warrior ethos with effusive joy. Sembene describes such affections as “the perfidy of words and the hypocrisy of rivals.”

    So it might have been at Ota when Atiku returned, his second coming.  Recall he did the same in October, 2018, ahead of the 2019 polls. He did not wish Buhari well. He gave him a witch eye. He who had called the Katsina titan the father of the nation after he became the president, typically played judas and abandoned the party. He had lost in the primary. He saw no way forward and went to his vomit. Vomit is a delicacy for the Adamawa chieftain. It is a familiar palate. So, he wanted to lock horns in 2019.

    He was in Ota, with Obasanjo. There was an episcopal touch to that visit, as he had pulpit men, two bishops from different divides of Christendom. Oyedepo and Kukah wanted Buhari out. We know how that turned out. This time, Atiku did not want any holy of holies this time. No amens or hallelujahs. He poohpoohed the pulpit. He came with men of his own class and cassock. Tambuwal, Imoke, Ningi.

     Maybe he thought Kukah and Oyedepo sullied his journey with the holy spirit. Or maybe he felt the holy spirit was angry with the men of God for accompanying the wrong candidate for an amen.

    So, this time he wants no holy distractions. However, both men were haunted by their sins in the same week they were hugging and backslapping. The news came from 2005 from the work of Atiku when he was vice president, and stripped government agencies. One of them was Aladja Steel. The present director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Ayo Gbeleyi, announced that the Aladja Steel worth $700 million at that time was sold off for a mere $30 million.  Has any reporter investigated who bought it? What an advertisement for their time as stewards of our resources.

    We also know that actions like that led OBJ to plot the prosecution of Atiku as vice president. He planned to rip him of his immunity, so he could give him the pinfall over corruption charges. The pinfall he cannot give today, he wanted to give in 2007 but failed. If they can fight with muscles today, they can look for another kind of collaboration: the muscle of elections.

    Was that not why, as this essayist narrated last week, OBJ set up a panel with his favorite sons and daughter then to ban him for six years? Were the favorites not Bayo Ojo, Nasir El-Rufai and our own Oby Ezekwesili, two of whom are noisy today about the rule of law and decency? Did the media not call the panel a kangaroo? Did then Governor Tinubu not save Atiku with the legal fireworks of Wole Olanipekun (SAN)? How did Atiku show gratitude? With turncoat. Even today, the ICPC is asking OBJ’s favorite son, as he then was, to account for N1.3 billion allocated and disbursed for Kaduna Light rail, but no rail is whirring on the streets and arteries of the city.

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    Was this not the background to their public spat then when OBJ uttered a comedic jest, “I dey laugh o”. In his lack of vituperative imagination, did Atiku not reply with “I dey laugh too o?”

    So, you can understand why their laughter cannot be a laughter but a mockery of it, or what playwright Samuel Beckett designated as Risus Purus, a laugh laughing at itself. A mirthless, soulless laughter.

    Even while they were meeting, two party men of the PDP had just gone to blows at Asaba. Maybe Obj wished one of those blows landed on Atiku’s jaws. Or maybe Atiku wished the same of his host. But they are elders, although some may call them oldies instead.

    Obj is not an official member of PDP, but he is still with them in spirit. He is not like Atiku who jumps from ship to ship. OBJ is more ethereal. He jumps in spirit. Thou canst see me jump and live. Atiku is better in this regard. He would not be a hypocrite. OBJ loves the pharisees in the Bible, except that the pharisees never jumped to the side of the Lord. So Obj is PDP in spirit. Things boomerang for the Ota titan. Remember detention centre called Inter Centre? OBJ set it up for his enemies when he was head of state. Abacha, no humorist, sent him there as victim. In his engrossing new book, The Adventures of a Guerrilla Journalist, Femi Ojudu – sees it as a comeuppance. Ojudu was also Abacha’s guest there before he was moved to notorious Awolowo Road, Ikoyi.

    Obj endorsed Obi and not Atiku. You could not accuse  him of treachery. He did not bear the party card. We also saw him make a public theatre by tearing up the party card, the card he brandished when he was president, the card as emblem of party supremacy. The party he wrecked, the party that gave him the air of a democrat.

    So, why did Atiku visit Obj when he knew what came out of it was to back his enemy?  He probably thinks ObJ would not back Obi this time, even though the thin-voiced maestro is still crooning alone and has foresworn any alliance. His Obidients would skewer him.

    But then, we know the same party is in crisis today. The loss of the 2023 polls is a tragedy in the PDP house, and they are like a family trying to come to terms with a death in the family. People grieve differently, so do families and so do political parties. In the novel, The Discomfort of Evening, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld shows how a Dutch family contends with the drowning of their loss that even involves constipation, incest, madcow disease and fantasies about a Nazi concentration camp in a basement. Grieving is like madness.

    Today, they don’t have an idea in PDP who is the chairman or secretary, and how and when to hold a convention or speaks for the party, or how to approach a court verdict. They know one thing, though: how to visit a dinosaur general who also does not understand why no one has invited him to dinner at the Aso Rock in a generation.

  • The parting of Adebanjo

    The parting of Adebanjo

    When a public figure breathes his last, we forbid ourselves to speak ill of the dead. It may console the friends and family but may not be fair to history or society. It defrocks the society of its integrity. Ayo Adebanjo’s passing has enacted worshipful praise across all platforms. This was the man only recently who was in the political doghouse of his opponents.

    Newspapers should not fall for this entrapment. We can call him an early Awoist. He also went to jail over treasonable felony. He deserves his plaudits for his personal sacrifices. But it was also true as Richard Sklar wrote in his Nigerian Political parties, on the formation of the Action Group that the AG was an amorphous amalgam of the faithful, loyalists and strangers, ideological turncoats, warts and all. We must applaud Adebanjo as a chieftain of NADECO. All fought for the enthronement of democracy and the rule of law, and no one can take that from him, no matter how little. But like many humans, some people go past their prime, and veer off course.

    What shall we say about his role during the military when Bola Ige was detained and he went to Ikenne, and he saw Baba Adebanjo on a table with him. Ige, ever boisterous, declined Awo’s offer to sit at table with him. He said it was Adebanjo and his friend Olaniwun Ajayi who gave him away to the soldiers. This is in the autobiography of Bisi Akande, My Participations, who was Ige’s deputy as governor of Oyo State. The story was confirmed by Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, in his autobiography, The Road Never Forgets. Here is how Ogunbiyi renders it without naming him, but did not deny when I interviewed him for TVC. “Uncle Bola looked across the table, and as he sighted some of the seated guests… he stiffened himself up in anger and refused the offer of a seat from Chief Awolowo…he bellowed and screamed relentlessly! “My Leader, I would not sit down with you for dinner with these (pointing across the table) traitors! No. I would not do that. These are traitors, My Leader. They should not be here with you.” Ogunbiyi and his wife, Sade, were at the table, too.

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    Adebanjo never ran for an office, and Akande and others have said it was because he lacked grassroots credibility. Akande described him as “organizing secretary”, a term for political hustlers during the Action Group and UPN days. He became a bitter man, and it was not for love for Peter Obi that he endorsed him. He did it out of spite. He became a fringe heckler of his own ethnic body, Afenifere, and a sullen, distracting agitator unbecoming of a nonagenarian.

    But people are free to eulogise him. After all, Shakespeare says, in a moment of rare mushiness, that “he who dies pays all debts.” Maybe hence the poet, Heinrich Heine wrote that “death does not separate us. Death unites us.” But let not the sentiment separate us from the facts of a life lived. Socrates knows about debts of the dying. “I owe a cock to Asclepius,” pleaded the philosopher. “Do not forget to pay it.”

  • Pep talk to northern ministers

    Pep talk to northern ministers

    In my recent essay, Tinubu’s northerners, I had gingered northern members of the president’s cabinet to rise up to engage the north. They, apart from a few like the Vice president who is always in the news, have been quiet. Pate has also, though he has not focused on political economy. Since that piece, a few have found their voices, including the information minister. It turned out the north-based minister have been asked to join the train to sell the programmes of the government in sync with the content of my essay. The Punch headline: “Northern ministers get marching orders to defend President as opposition grows,” is in line with the context of my essay.

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    As I stated, they are the government’s missionaries in the north. But they should not make it a riotous outburst. They should coordinate their voices so as to reinforce each other. They should also organize platforms for engaging both high and low, partisan or laity, urban and rural in the states. There is a lot to say. Who is talking about the ascendant naira and the gradual taming of inflation? Who is talking about the retreat of bandits and peace dividends, in Nasarawa, Kaduna, Plateau, Kogi, etc? Who is talking about the fellows with student loan, a higher percentage of them coming from the north? Who is telling us about those returning to farm after years of fear and trembling in the hearts of farmers?

    Nobody, north or south, in a cabinet deserves their seat if they cannot tell the story of their government.

  • How Tinubu saved Atiku from OBJ, El-Rufai

    How Tinubu saved Atiku from OBJ, El-Rufai

    Somehow, the fiction has gone around that Nasir El-Rufai backed Uba Sani to be governor. El-Rufai has allowed this untruth to fester for a number of reasons.

    One, he wants them to call Governor Sani a traitor, so people who know El-Rufai’s biography of about-face would not focus on him, El-Rufai. Two, he wants to divert attention from the raft of questions over his handling of Kaduna State finances while he was governor. Three, he wants to make N150 billion bigger than N428 billion. It is his mathematics of duplicity.

    That is his foul strategy. As a man who likes attention more than a god, he started this when he sat beside a man, Atiku, he first betrayed in public life. And, for irony, he was talking about loyalty. But on that panel, he emitted disloyalty. That is because he was too angry to know he was contradicting himself. It is the Shakespeare quote in his play Tempest: “I am vexed; bear with my weakness.”

    To start with, Governor Uba Sani never enjoyed El-Rufai’s support to be governor. He won the primary in spite of him, just as President Tinubu won the APC primary in spite of Muhammadu Buhari. But this did not force Governor Sani into fury. As Churchill wrote, “in war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity.” That explained why he has never thrown any invective against his predecessor since he became governor. Last week, he described his relationship with El-Rufai as “cordial.” It turned out to be a bullet rather than an oil of gladness to the mallam. He fought back, rather than exchange the courtesy. For him any act of civility is dubious. Fight is better than nice.

    It was then he threw a charge that the Tinubu government has given Kaduna N150 billion, and hence his successor has been in sync with the president.

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    Governor Sani has not confirmed the charge. My investigation shows the mallam does not have the facts. But Governor Sani has decided to give El-Rufai an arm rather than an ammunition.

     But El-Rufai loves turbulence more than tranquility. He is not the sort who loves brotherly love. He must be very angry he has heard nothing from his successor. Maybe Governor Sani would respond tomorrow. I don’t know. But up to the time of writing, he has chosen the path of Michelle Obama. “When they go low, we go high.” El-Rufai does not know much about height.

    The charge of N150 billion is a clever-by-half ploy to divert attention from the over N400 billion , comprising projects he has not accounted for. For the sake of argument, if the state received N150 billion from the Tinubu government, should El-Rufai not be happy.

     They are trying to clean up after his mess, yet he is angry. He is angry that Kaduna people are going to get a relief? Is it not strange that someone wants to save your people and you are up in arms? Is he so insensitive to the people? Is it not the same governor that is uniting the state after El-Rufai drove a wedge between north and south of the state, between Muslims and Christians, between rich and poor? Is he angry because he has worked to beat down prices? Is he angry at the peace dividends in the state? Is he boiling because Birnin Gwari is now calm?

     What he is doing is the great betrayal: of his own people. Is he not the one betraying is successor by his claptrap tongue?

    But he is now in the same boat with Atiku, and pretending he is still in the APC. That is pharisaic.  It is an act of cowardice not to state where he is. With his tongue he draws himself to APC but we can decode his own heart from his lips. Maybe the nation’s memory is short about El-Rufai’s past.

     The social media is circulating a quote on how the Owu chief or OBJ characterized the former Kaduna State governor in his memoirs.

     But let me show how even the same Atiku was saved by then Governor Bola Tinubu from Obj’s clutches who was using El-Rufai as his point man.

     Atiku was vice president and was at war with President Obasanjo, who took him to court to rid him of his immunity. Obj wanted to nail him for abandoning the PDP and moving over to the Action Congress.

     Tinubu’s AC had penciled him down to run for president against Obasanjo’s pick, the late Umar Yar Adua.

    With Tinubu’s backing, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) defended Atiku showing that OBJ had no reason to undermine his immunity as vice president as guaranteed by the constitution. Those were the days that everyone accused OBJ of “overheating the polity.”

    The Supreme Court ruled in Atiku’s favour. Miffed, Obj set up an administrative panel on Atiku, and who were those on the panel? Attorney general Bayo Ojo and, you guessed right, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who was then the FCT minister. For Obidients’ information, our own Oby Ezekwesili was a member.

     The panel recommended the banning of Atiku from public office for six years. But they made a mistake in the panel report. They nailed OBJ’s old friend turned adversary, Oyewole Fasawe, for financial impropriety, after deploying its EFCC to arrest him.

    With Tinubu’s backing again, Chief Olanipekun took up the gauntlet and shredded the case against Fasawe as a way of discrediting the whole administrative panel’s report. The court upheld Olanipekun’s brilliance and threw away the case against Fasawe and the whole recommendation of the report, including the six-year ban on Atiku. It was a blow to OBJ. Tinubu saved Atiku and made it possible for him to run for president. Or else, the Adamawa chieftain would have sulked in limbo – as he is now – until the election cycle of 2015. So, we can see how much ingratitude flows in Atiku’s blood.

    I recall in the period, during a book launch in Lagos, Atiku described Tinubu as more than a friend but a brother. And on the podium, Tinubu nodded. It was the same time, after securing the AC ticket, that he picked Ben Obi as his running mate to defy the man who saved him. Some people are not worthy of their salvation. Of course, that ticket was an electoral disaster. The rest, as they say, is history.

    But at this time, El-Rufai was still OBJ’s boy, though it was Atiku, who nominated him to high office and the graces of the then President Obasanjo. For a man like El-Rufai, he likes the life of the moment. When Atiku was his man, he could have groveled before him and drooled with the Shakespearean phrase: “how fine my master is.” He would say the same about OBJ later. I wonder if he is not saying the same about Atiku today. Atiku could not accuse him because his own record of pirouettes are as sordid as the former Kaduna State governor. He probably wants Governor Sani to say same to him and he is upset the governor is not bowing. He wanted what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience.”

    Even the issue of the over N400 billion he has not accounted for was unveiled because, according to the governor and an investigation I conducted, the labour union wanted to shut down the state with industrial action. He had to show them the books, and explained the lack of finesse of his predecessor with the state’s resources. The labour leaders said so to this writer and was part of an over 5000-word expose in this newspaper last year. Governor Sani’s reluctance to cry out initially was part of his generosity to his friend and predecessor. But Mallam always has other ideas. Loyalty and conciliation are not part of them.

  • The suicides

    The suicides

    In a fine moment, Nasir El-Rufai was Atiku’s boy. Until he became Obasanjo’s boy and started to throw potshots at Atiku.

     The moment was no longer fine enough. Moments later, when he became anti-Obasanjo, he ran to Atiku’s bosom until he nearly bit off the man’s nipples. He was thrust out again, neither for Atiku nor Obasanjo.

    You can call it a pirouette or an about-face, but the former governor of Kaduna State will tell you that both are his name, if he is sincere.

    But he is only conditionally sincere.

    Truth to him is not about beauty but utility. Sorry, Poet John Keats, who proclaimed that “truth is beauty/beauty truth.” If truth is not useful, El-Rufai can do with another option. He abides by his Machiavellian impulse. It comes naturally to him to switch from master to master, from idea to idea, from play to fray.

    When he sat with Atiku on a panel last week, about-face sat side by side with pirouette. It is called political harlotry, and what better duo to play it in the public arena. He seemed to rhyme with the Adamawa chieftain again. In the pathology of politics, your past sins are forgiven so long as, today, we bear the same insignia.

    So, they are both bedfellows. And the reason they are swooning as one is the president of the federal republic of Nigeria: Bola Tinubu. He gives them nightmares when awake in daytime. They gathered together because some so-called democratic non-profits put them together, and called it “strengthening democracy.” How do you strengthen democracy by corralling only one voice. Maybe it was terminological handicap. They were grasping for the appropriate language. Or else, they would have said: “strengthening the opposition.” All they amassed in the building was a cacophony of contrarian voices, including Kayode Fayemi and Rotimi Amaechi.

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    Nothing they said in that meeting was about strengthening democracy. Is it what Atiku said? He griped about democracy and judiciary. He lamented the power of the courts in determining elections. Pray, was it not the same Atiku who gallivanted all over the world shopping for judgment about certificates of the president? Was it not the same man who wanted the courts to help him win the election? Is it because he suffered the “O lule” syndrome that he has now changed his pose about the courts? He forgets that he had certificates that conflicted with certificates in his school, if he did attend them.

    Then without evidence, he said the government was giving his men N50 million. He needs to show proof. So, if the people said they collected N50 million, did he ask them to return the money? Can he name names please? If they collected, and they are still with him, does it not show that he has no reason to condemn corruption? He should have spat those who told him the story to either return it or stay out his squeaky-clean politics. He said no such thing. Rather he accused the administration of arresting Prof. Yusuf Ahmed, and described as muzzling critics and opposition. The prof was arrested for contract corruption, and awarding them to his family members. Obnoxiously, Atiku sees nothing wrong with that. Was he not the same fellow, I mean Atiku, who made the term SPV – special purpose vehicle – a household word? A vehicle for corruption. The term was innocent until the Adamawa chieftain spewed it into the public space. This man has been looking for the position of president since 1992, when he was a Customs officer of some degree of integrity, and now he is a near octogenarian. He wants to occupy the position in his 80’s so he can impose a Trump-like senility of anxiety on all of us.

    He said he has lived his life, and all he wants is power. That is deception. It happens to some men who have acquired wealth. They focus on one desire: conquer their fellow humans. Hence Epicurus wrote: “If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires.” The man, however, still craves wealth at close to 80, and the people are not giving him the desire.

    But the lighthearted moment was when Rotimi Amaechi stood up. I wish he just sat and watched. How could he say he has been in politics because of poverty. Is he poor now? He has been in power for 24 of the 26 years, and he was always in sync. Just two years out of power, he is angry? Maybe he was under the spell of Jesus when he said the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. Amaechi’s version? Steal, maim and kill. It was a memorable assertion against all the speakers since he did not excuse all his fellow travelers. So, how are they the alternative? Shall we now elevate those vices as models of governance?

    Nasir El Rufai is the comic figure, although he may not be the sort of comedian for the hour. He said he did not want to be minister. Haba. As Reno Omokri wrote, why did he spend all that time in the Senate. Just for show? He dressed well, prepared notes and ideas about power, and he was not interested? Hence, I wrote earlier that he has a Machiavellian attitude to facts. Even before he appeared before the Senate, he had embarked on a pilgrimage to Europe with his friend Jimi Lawal, and explored deals with firms on electricity. He should not lie to the public. Such lies do no respect to the Nigerian people.

    The president wanted him to be minister. But he was not popular with the top brass of the party, including those who had worked with him. So, the president had to reconsider. I read a few posts from Joe Igbokwe about the man’s value. I don’t know where Joe got that idea. He should go to Kaduna, where some of his associates are behind bars, and they are finding it difficult to defend the findings of the  House of Assembly on how he spent the state funds, including about power projects that went kaput. That Kaduna is standing and its Governor Uba Sani is earning accolades is a boon after El-Rufai’s era of error.

    He also confessed on the panel that he could also oppose the government if he served. So, there. Someone once told me that he asserted that he loves to attack big men, so as to get attention and bring them down. It is the practice of some persons – not all of them – of a certain relationship with the earth.

    All of them on that panel  indicted themselves. It shows they are not looking at the clock, and what it is saying about today. They forget that, in the market, dollar is gradually peeping down from its peak. Inflation is high but prices of tomato, beans, dry fish, etc, are losing altitude. They forget that over 600,000 students are now benefitting from the student loans. They cannot see what happened in December. How many Nigerians came home and how much did they enjoy their country? El-Rufai, who failed to bring peace to Southern Kaduna must be marveling over how much calm has come as balm to the streets and heaths. He must wonder at the return of Birnin Gwari. The panelists did not see that the roof of their party, PDP, is on fire. Two hench men going to blows in public in Asaba. Did they not see that? Those who say they are still in the APC only exhibited a loose tongue.

    What it shows is that they are suicides, looking at the backend of their political profiles. It is like the novel, Suicides, by Argentine writer Antonio Di Benedetto. The protagonist is a reporter who is reporting three suicides. He describes their profile this way: “There is terror in their eyes. But their mouths are grimacing in sombre pleasure.” Tells the story of our men on the panel.

  • The Ballad of Bala Mohammed

    The Ballad of Bala Mohammed

     Nyesom Wike has been a generous man. In spite of all his acts of grace to Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, he never said a word about the good he did to him. If former speaker Yakubu Dogara did not issue a statement, we may never have known that he once knelt and bowed to the same Wike for money.

    Dogara’s writing is like a ballad over a bad act. It is not Bala’s kneeling that bothers this essayist, it is his ingratitude. He is also making a drama of his moral purity by calling Wike a traitor.

    By the whole story, it was Wike that made him a governor. He is guilty of what psychologists call a fear of gratitude. Generosity elevated him, and having risen, he got too dizzy up there to remember he was once below and beggary.

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    He is a caricature of the desperate politician.

     He is also a creature of moral failure. The man who you did not give land in Abuja as FCT minister and you gave all others in the cabinet, the man who came to your office for office space request and you kept him waiting for hours but didn’t grant his request.

    That same man helped you out in your quest for office. And he granted it. Bala may think he stooped to conquer. But he was a buffoon of a winner, and that is the definition of a loser. No wonder he has had no good response to Dogara’s revel

  • Tinubu’s northerners

    Tinubu’s northerners

    No one begrudges Bala Mohammed his right to rise, especially now that he eyes the presidency. But he does not have a right to lie. We just need a few morsels of truth from his mouth about some jibes from Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar, who has acted as a frontline minister and an avenger of a bigot.

    He needs to account for two stewardships. One before, and the one now. He needs to cleanse all the charges against him.

    Is it true that in May 2017, the former Minister was in Kuje Maximum Security Prison, facing charges of graft and breach of public trust after an EFCC investigation? Was his son, Shamsudeen, tackled by the EFCC for seizing 10 mansions, many plots of land, and a twin plaza in Wuse Zone 3 when Bala was Minister. Did he award fantastical contracts worth N1 billion? Did he allocate 12 choice plots of land to his son? Did he facilitate a N1 trillion Abuja land swap deal?

    Tuggar is not sparing the man even now in Bauchi where he is governor. Tuggar implies Bala Mohammed is a  land wanderer who goes about scooping up land from the poor. It is his version of Cyprian Ekwensi’s disease for wanderers known as Sokugo in his novel, The Burning Grass. In fact, he has wandered from the poor to the sacred. Now, he is accused of collapsing even a mosque to build a property for himself. He is a bulldozer, just like his Kano counterpart. He does not respect his God. How would he respect the people Allah made?

    Tuggar has exposed the foul farts of a pharisee of a governor. Bala has taken it upon himself to be the voice of the north. But he is a phony voice. He is accusing the president of causing hardships by removing subsidies. Yet, he was on a television show saying that he had asked Buhari to remove the subsidies, even adding that the beneficiaries told him they were tired of benefitting from the scam. He was Abuja minister then, where his successor is making an exhibition on how to govern the city.

    He should be quiet today, unless he goes to doff his hat to Nyesom Wike for repairing all his damages as the chief steward of the FCT. What Tuggar has done is to take Mohammed head-on. Mohammed once said the northern borders should be open because those coming through are his kinsmen. If that is the case, we should do same in the Southwest and Eastern borders and turn Nigeria into a dumping ground. Bala does not care about safety or security. He is an empty, noisy barrel who hears titillating rhythms from his coarse voice. It means he is an irridentist and bigot, a mind closed to the soothing symphonies of fact and social harmonies. A feudal upstart, Bala Mohammed loves the life of plenty without empathy, power as ally of contempt, rhetoric without reason, a cynic in mien and speech with the flamboyance of a man of politics even while he desecrates the house of worship.

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    Men like him, Kano governor the bulldozer and his shadow master Kwakwanso , have been erring. Tinubu’s ministers need to emulate Tuggar. What the foreign affairs minister did was to use a medium that spoke to the people: the radio. It is the ear and sounding board of the talakawa.

    This essayist has, in the past, drawn my readers to the strategy of President Bola Tinubu appointing ministers from the north in the critical areas of the region’s pain and fragility. Recently, Senator Shehu Sani did same, although the areas he focused were security, agriculture and education. But the breadth is even wider.

    We have for security the Minister of Defence, Mohammed  Abubakar Badaru,  Minister of State Bello Matawalle. They will also work with Chief of Defence Staff from Southern Kaduna, General Chris Musa. The Minister of Police Affairs is Ibrahim Geidam. At the head of the security architecture is the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.

    Before Alausa was moved to education, the minster was from the north. But the Minister of State is Suwaiba Ahmad, also a northerner. Another critical area is agriculture, and the minister is Abubakar Kyari and the Minister of State is Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, both from the North. The third critical part is Health, and Muhammadu Ali Pate is the well-known minister in that forte. If all these people do the hard part, the soft and gentle touch is from the Humanitarian Minister and the person in charge is Imaan Suleiman, a northern woman.

    The president has never conveyed it as strategy to tackle the problems of the north. But he does not have to. The men and women ought to take on that task themselves. They are the northern missionaries of the north from the Tinubu administration. They are to feed the poor, heal the sick, guard the weak, illumine the dark regions of the young mind.

    Their tasks are not for the north alone. But they know that, in all the indices, the north lags by a mile behind the South. Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State has been at this from the very beginning, asking his region to wake up from its slumber. He is urging his region to rise from its feudal somnolence and turn a kind eye to the poor. He is doing his task as governor.

    But the ministers do not only have to work, they have to act like Tuggar and Governor Sani, and jump in the ring. This is so because of strident voices from that region who want to twist the narrative. They want to give a tendentious lie to the vision of the head of their cabinet.

    They do not always have to contend in battle. They can do with a charm offensive. They can start by trying a northern summit, in which the cabinet members engage with critical stakeholders and organisations, and they can hold meetings to raise and answer questions. It is a northern town hall meeting. The street can fume there, and so the elite can explain to soothe. It should be a platform of understanding rather than rancour.

    Dialogue supersedes demagogues. It segues from bitterness to a listening ear, from that to sympathy, and from that to empathy, and from that to action. As Fredrich Nietzsche wrote, a will to truth leads to a will to power. We have to know first before we act. Every actor of ignorance believes he knows the facts, hence ignorance is expensive. That is why dialogue predates action better than the bitterness that fuels rage.

    The Information Minister, Mohammed Idris, is also a northerner, and he has the machine to roll the idea into a momentum.

    Already they have a lot to say. On security, many need to know, even if they don’t know so well, how much has happened in the last year. How come Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State is back to life after over a decade of deathly fear. Many places that ran into ruins are alive again, including sour spots in Nasarawa, Zamfara, Kogi, etc. Ribadu and his men have a lot to exhale about and a lot to promise.

    We have same in agriculture and health care, and Ali Pate has been doing a lot to tell his story. A story told together in various voices often reinforces itself. They will not just talk, they will also hear. And that is why a town hall or summit will help not only the cabinet’s cause but the north.

  • Afe’s gaffe

    Afe’s gaffe

    Afe Babalola loves controversy, and that is the least quality you expect from the proprietor of a university. Especially when he says things that are not only false, but seem intended to distort and mislead for self-interest. A baba should not make gaffes in public, so much so that the facts can be easily unearthed by his own students. It recalls Fela’s line, “teacher don’t teach me nonsense.”

    He delved into the age limit controversy, and he says universities should be free to admit students at any age.  Many picked apart the bones of the issue when former education minister pegged it at 18. But JAMB under Oloyede says it is now 16 as minimum and it has been so stated in the law since 2013. The old man in Ekiti says we should defy it, and he lies or speaks out of ignorance that it is free in such education powerhouses as United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, Australia, etc.

    But that is not the case. In fact, some Nigerians in diaspora who are below 16 who could not gain admission at 16, came to Nigerian universities to do one year, so they could secure direct entry in Canada. Nigeria enables backdoor crooks in education.

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    “To me, the issue of age is a matter of discretion for the university and let me say that we have been doing it here. We have students who came to ABUAD at 15 and graduated with First class at the age of 19 and we will continue to do it,” Babalola said

    He cited individuals, some of them unknown names like Isaac Bari, Yasha Asley, etc. He also referred to former Oyo State governor Omololu Olunloyo as gaining admission as teenager. This is not true. But the cerebral baba gained admission to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland at the age of 20.

    The old man should check his facts. Many universities traffic in age because it is profitable.  There is a growing illusion that exaggerates the idea of a child prodigy. How many child prodigies invented, or discovered, or disrupted the world for good? Not the Bill Gates, or Warren Buffets or the Tina Turners or the Mandela’s or the Shakespeare’s or Achebe’s. As a writer wrote, “genius is a long patience.”  As Maxime Lagace noted, “hard work combined with patience is a superpower.”

    Just as one of those cited by Afe Babalola said: “I am glad that I did not go to college once I graduated because the years I have spent in that interval have helped me mature. I can say I have discovered myself.” This was Ezeunala Ekene Franklin, who could not get into the University of Lagos at 15 even though he scored 347 in the UTME of 2019. He entered Columbia University at 17.

     “Maturity is earned from training the mind, not from aging?’’ said Babalola, but babies spill milk, adults make them.

  • Southwest politics

    Southwest politics

    Two episodes last week show how politics in the Southwest sets it apart from other parts of the country. They are the ouster of the Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa, and the enthronement of the new Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Owoade.

    Both incidents happened without incident before they looked like an accident to the losers after they fell flat. Then the defeated with broken jaw and mouth agape wondered at their lack of vigilance, or naivety. They are like the goal keeper who did not see the suave swerves of Haruna Ilerika until he put the ball in Yakubu Mambo’s feet and the ball was behind the net.

    In Lagos, Obasa was in the United States but he was beheaded in Nigeria. In Abiola’s favorite proverb, they shaved his head in his absence. He did not know he was bleeding until they told him his head was off. When Romulus Augustulus, Roman Empire’s last king was told that Rome had fallen, he said. “I just fed it a few minutes ago.” He named his peacock Rome and he thought they were referring to the bird, not his fallen state.

    In Nigeria, it was Monday. In the US, it was Sunday when Obasa’s calabash broke. He was defeated not only by his fellow lawmakers but also by time. Technically, if he was impeached on Monday, it was Sunday in the US. He was still speaker. That is the illusion of time. Once he stepped across time zone, he had stepped into zero. The reality was that he was speaker no more.

    Thirty-two lawmakers had converged on the assembly. No headlines about a plot. No claims or counter-claims about the hubris of the man who kept a governor in the lurch for hours just because he wanted to submit a budget, or a superlative claim about being better than anyone, including his godfather. No newspaper bullies or street protests. No omens. Just an amen at the end. Within five minutes, the men and women came together, wielded the sword and lopped off the man who had been the Capo or, shall we say, capstone of the House. It was the intrigue of silence, or the silence of intrigue, at least something of each. We can call it a ritual of violence minus the blood, or a bloodless coup. The impeachment came on the sly. We can call it a sly slam.

    The same applies in the fight for the revered throne of Oyo. Oyo goes way back in that sort of theatre. It invokes some of the 19th century battles on that throne and the ferment of the Yoruba Wars. It had palace intrigues, egoism of a powerful man, the collision of altars between temporal and spiritual forces, as well as the intrusion of the north and its faith. There was the Oyo Mesi, just like the days of Bashorun Gaa, or the 1840 Battle of Oshogbo when the horsepower of an invading army fell to the spies and wiles of a Yoruba resurgence. In today’s case, there were stories of Islamic evangelists on a spree in Oyo. There was the corrupting power of money, or an allegation of it. There was not much money in those days, but the influence was as potent as money. As Oscar Wilde asserted, “all influence is corrupt.”

    Of course, Governor Seyi Makinde was at work, under the shadows. The others, including the Oyo Mesi thought they had it wrapped up. Until they were wrapped up. Now, the governor speaks of EFCC. Of course, Prof. Wande Abimbola played the role of the mystic and power. It is moot point whether it is the triumph of the spiritual over temporal, especially since the Bourdillon Constitution and house of chiefs. The traditional authority has been subordinated to the political.

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    Oba Owoade has mounted the throne, and the others are just waking up to the faecal dust of their humiliation. The Oyo story recalls the opening chapter of Charles Dickens’ A tale of Two Cities set in the turmoil of the French Revolution. “There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face on the throne of France…Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period…”

    In this case, spiritual revelations favoured Owoade through the ifa to the Governor. Prof. Abimbola said the Oyo Mesi has affirmed the inviolable verdict of the gods. Go figure.

    That is a picture of Southwest politics. In Lagos and Oyo, it was politics as clinical acts. The victims had fallen flat before realizing they were no longer on their feet.  The acts were fait accompli before the opponents knew their fates. It was politics without noise, or politics to defer the noise. It has voice but articulated in whispers. The winner claims the crown before acclamation. It is a politics without boast but it is a defeat of bluster.

    This is a contrast to what we see in other parts. For instance, the battle between Sim Fubara and Nyesom Wike takes place on the rooftop. Everyone has a ringside seat, popcorn and drinks in generous supply. Each side knows the other side’s strategy. It’s a battle of press releases, of interviews, of jaw-jaws and war-war, and claims and blusters. The dirty linen is so dirty, everyone ogles the pig fight. There is no courtesy, no party, no hugs, no drinks or cheers, no public laughter together. It is what the Yoruba call Ija igboro. Someone calls it mutually assured destruction.

    We are seeing it in the north as well, like the agonized outcry of Emir Sanusi, who said “I don’t want to help this government.” He gloated that he would watch the movie as the government “stews.” The only conciliating thing he said was that the government measures were “a necessary consequence of decades of irresponsible economic management.” But it was by no means said in a tone of praise. He was trying to echo his own support, without saying it, for the collapsing of the foreign exchange regimes and removal of fuel subsidies that he had advocated for about a decade now. He relented later by trying to unsay what everyone heard. He said critics took a paragraph out of context. But all he said is not more than a paragraph. He was apologizing without remorse.

    We are also seeing the battle of the throne in Kano, between him and Ado Bayero, and it is no more than an open brawl. It is a battle of a big throne and a small throne, with two big egos with atavistic bloodlust. Unlike the Dickensian tale, they are not in two countries but only in one kingdom: Kano. Someone calls it mutually assured destruction.

    It was the same case with some noisemakers about the tax bill, who said they did not read it, and would not read it. Now, they are backtracking. They read the document after speaking, and they realise that communication is better than noisy and extravagant poses.

    The Yoruba style comes out of the concept of Omoluabi or what the Greeks call paideia. It enjoins respect for the elderly, restraint of temperament, kindness to strangers and, in a grievance, dialogue first even if you know your case is just. When all fail, look for the target of opportunity. Patience is virtue. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) said, “anger is  not a strategy.” Yorubas often shy from foul language or rhetoric of the frustrated. Ambush is better than open fight. The noisy rabble rousers of the tribe are the distractions the real power brokers need to go for the real McCoy.

    This is why Yoruba history intrigues. Sometimes they can be misunderstood when they say a thing, and the uninitiated would not understand they are saying something else. When Awolowo asserted during the Nigerian crisis that if the East is allowed to go, the West would as well, Ojukwu and his men did not understand the nuances of the man. How could the West secede when it had no army of its own. The officer corps of the Nigerian Army was dominated by the East, but the men were from the North and Middle Belt. The northern soldiers had occupied Yorubaland. How could Awolowo, in spite of any grievance, urge rebellion?

    Hence, he engineered a meeting attended by Samuel Mariere, Ojukwu, Aluko and a few others. He tried to tamp down Ojukwu’s rage. If Awo shared secessionist sentiment, it was a goal without wherewithal. He tried to dissuade Ojukwu from war. In Wole Soyinka’s memoirs, You Must set forth at Dawn, he said after the meeting, Ojukwu met Awo in private and said the East was going to war anyway. Awo thanked him for his honesty, but asked Ojukwu for a favour. He should give him a notice before announcing it. Ojukwu didn’t. After he announced, Awo joined the Gowon government, and the war was essentially won by officers from Yorubaland, especially the third Marine Commando. No one knows why Awo asked Ojukwu for that favour. But it is on record that Awo resented northern soldiers in his homeland and asked Gowon to evacuate them. After some resistance, Gowon obliged. History will always have its mysteries.

    Awo acted the methodical Yoruba, privileging result over fuss. When it comes to such clear-eyed battles, they remind one of the words of the notorious colonel in Garcia Marquez’s immortal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude: “The best friend a person has is the one who has just died.” It is politics in the clinics of a go getter. That is also the temperament of the world’s great powers of history: The United States and Great Britain. Harry Truman said: “If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.” Lord Beaverbrook, Churchill’s friend and associate, once said, “a man with a will to power can’t make friends.”

    This is how the Southwest is when it is provoked. But when you play friends, they are friends. It is like Shakespeare’s assertion that “Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee.” The Yoruba saying encapsulates it this way: “Iku n’de Dede, Dede n’deku.” Dede is a man. Translation: Dede baits death and death baits him.

    Awo learned it and played it until he himself lost that cunning as he grew old, so his politics did not give him the meaty prize of his ambition. It was not the Awo who won the war, or who spearheaded the cross-carpeting of the First Republic that cost Zik the premier in the Western Region. Awo has passed on the baton.