Category: Sam Omatseye
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Wrong, Haruna, wrong
Columnist Muhammed Haruna took on Bishop Matthew Kukah last week and took exceptions to his views on Islamic practice in the North. I am not interested in wading into the issues he raised. But I just want to make a correction. Haruna admitted that Muslim women are forbidden to marry unbelievers, including Christians. He wrote this in response to Kukah’s praise of the Yoruba pious liberalism. But Haruna remarked wrongly that Christians, like Muslims, are not allowed to marry outside their faith, because Paul said Christians should not be equally yoked with unbelievers. A mischievous allusion!
Paul said that with regard to sin and works of darkness. Neither Paul nor any true Christian would call a Muslim work of darkness, even if they share a different faith. Christ said let the wheat and tears dwell together. On marriage, Paul made it clear in 1st Cor. 7: 13 and 14 that a Christian man or woman can marry an unbeliever if they are pleased to do so, and they can even be sanctified by it. So there! Haruna should read his Bible before erring on sacred matters.
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Nnewi Holocaust
I wonder what Chinua Achebe would say if he were alive to see the holocaust at Nnewi last Christmas season. Not much of a poet, Achebe mused on the bitter paradox of tragedy at Christmas in his poem, Christmas in Biafra.
Bedevilled by adjectives, Achebe’s poem made its point in irony. God and disaster. Solemnity and profanity. Festivity and fragility. Tears to the dearest. That was Biafra in which a child pruned to bare bones could not find the strength to hail Mary. No one could extract native joy from bombs.
Fast forward, December 2015. A different kind of unkindness. Chicason, a company whose services routinely warmed the homes and bellies of its customers, met tragedy. The victims might have visualised many scenarios at Christmas: cookouts, parties, family reunions, laughter, jokes, music, dances, frothy moments of alcohol, swagger. Especially in the Southeast where the Christmas season lights up every village and hamlet into a carnival.
Yet, many marked their Christmas season like the woman who had sent a housemaid to get some gas. The maid was recruited only three months earlier. The boss was not sure where she was. She only knew she had lost the poor girl and wondered what she was going to tell her parents. At the Christmas party, she would not be there. Her seat vacant, staring and ominous. It would be the story for all those who either died or were hospitalised. Their seats were empty, their presences only imagined. It was inevitably an absurd moment. It calls to mind the absurd play titled ‘The Chairs’ by Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco. An old couple receive invisible guests at their homes, and they all are seated in chairs expecting an orator to address them. The audience does not see them. Only the hosts. That is how the relatives will mark both Christmas season and New Year.
The problem, as Ionesco’s play shows, is that imagination will not bring the guests alive. No one could wish them on their seat in flesh, fork in hand, plates of rice and chicken in front of them. We cannot see the victims of the Nnewi disaster. They have retreated into memory. All kinds of stories were invented to fill the void, just as in Ionesco’s play. For what we cannot see or explain, we invent fillers. Some said the Chicason group had fallen victim of its sacrilegious prosperity. It had expanded into the province of the goddess of the Mimili Ele River. The goddess in its fury had slithered into the gas plant and fiddled it into a leak. A spark ensued. Death, disaster. This was a big agony. But the Chenobyl disaster in the 1980’s where a nuclear plant leak obliterated whole Soviet communities warns us that gas can be man’s great enemy. If you read Svetlana Alexievich, the Nobel Prize-winning journalist’s account of that incident in her book, Voices From Chenobyl, we should never take care for granted.
Others said a prayer session had happened earlier and a pastor had forewarned of a disaster. So, are the gods to blame, a la Ola Rotimi? We give prophesies flesh after the facts. When they don’t happen, we give ourselves credit. The prophets do no wrong.
No one was able to say what Chicason did to offend the gods or the Lord of Christmas. It offended neither law nor man, but fire came in its fury. No one wondered why a big commercial hub like Nnewi could thrive without a major fire station.
Few could tell us how, in the whole of Anambra State, only one major fire station thrives. Few have lamented that fire is a special corollary of development. Not a place like Nnewi should be allowed a second without the full gear to fight one of humanity’s major foes. Nnewi has a variety of businesses from cars to electronics to food to pharmaceutical. It is seen as an epicentre of the Igbo inventiveness. Many turn profits out of bonfires, whether it is the Chicason company, or the cell phone makers, or car battery firms. A fire begins with a spark. The spark in this case comes from neglect, the failure to provide the infrastructure of safety. As Robert Herrick notes, “A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.”
The reports had it that the fire department came all the way from Awka, Anambra State capital. It took about two hours to arrive at the scene of the holocaust. Too late. The pictures are scary. Fumes darken the air. In brilliant omens, fire burns structures while human bones pop and flesh singes. Many scurry away in fright. Bodies fall and the bush, as in the war that lasted 30 months in the 1960’s, become refuge.
Is this tragedy a story of complacency? As one of the city dwellers said, if the disaster happens today, Anambra State is still not ready. It is like the apocalypse. Earth residents know it is coming. They cannot prepare. They cannot pray. They cannot run away. They can only develop stoic reserves and hedge themselves with fatalistic resolves. The day comes and disaster will happen. As Thomas Hardy wrote in his novel, Tess of the Durbervilles, ”The people down in those retreats will not stop saying in their fatalistic way: It was to be. There lay the pity of it all.” That is what Nnewi, Anambra, is subjected to. That tragically is the story of Nigeria.
They can learn from Lagos, where every local government hums with state-of-the-art fire equipment. In spite of the plethora of fire incidents in Nigeria’s largest city, fire hoses spout water and the men respond in good time. That does not mean tragedies cannot happen. Fire does not wait for anyone. Like water, it is a good servant. But to quote a line from the Aesop Fables, it’s a “bad master.” Corporate firms are now asking the Lagos State government to help them in establishing fire-fighting systems.
When fire of this sort happens, individual companies anywhere have inadequate facility to fight it. That is why anywhere in the world, fire stations are nearby. In the United States, every county has one. When it is a mega fire like the Nnewi case, they get help from other counties. That can happen in Lagos. But in a place like Anambra State, where one station can only limp, the situation calls for urgent attention.
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Mustard Seed
Not many Nigerians have heard about her. But everyone should absorb the heroics of Maggie Doyne, a 28-year-old woman from a little town in New Jersey, United States. She has dramatised, in this age of subversive youth, that we can raise the young on love and not on guns.
Her story also should instruct the wealthy among us as well as our flowery churches that money does not have to be much to do much. Doyne started as a regular American who wanted to excel in life and soar to success as defined by folks around her. Go to university, get a good job, get married and have children, retire and die. She thought all that was all fluff as glitz. She abhorred routine glory.
One morning, she unbuttoned her dreams to her parents that she did not want to go to the university. She took a year off to see the world. On the wings of a programme known as LeapNow, she travelled to India. After much fun around the country, she wanted to volunteer for children. She heard of a home in northeast India. She helped take care of the kids on behalf of an absentee manager. But then her eyes opened to a developing nightmare. Children mushroomed into India from a neighbouring country called Nepal where a civil war raged. The children were specimens of tragedy: hungry, wiry, skeletal, illiterate, parentless. But their faces painted vistas of cherubic pleas. They needed help. Fate planted her from America, a velvet of opulence, onto a monochrome of want. She had to rise to the occasion.
But for the kids, merely arriving northern India, away from the turbulence and offal of war, amounted to salvation. Not for Doyne, who had befriended a Nepali woman. She accompanied her to Nepal during a ceasefire, and that was when her story of philanthropy began.
She observed a young girl among several who broke stones for a few rupees, about a dollar a day. Her humanity beckoned her. She had to help, and she adopted her and put her in a school. For all its breath-taking topography, mountains, valleys, lands of picturesque diversity, its children squeaked. Her soul squeaked with them. She came upon a land for sale, and she remembered that she had saved $5,000 in the U.S. as a babysitter. She called her parents to wire the money to her, and she bought the land. She wanted to build a home. She could not go far with the resources in her hands. She returned to New Jersey to work as baby sitter, so she could make enough to complete the home. She duelled in the summer but the money she made was barely enough. She organised a garage sale by picking up junk not only from her home but also from neighbours. She wanted to make $1300. She hit the target and completed the home for 50 children, although it started with 44 in 2008.
The place is called Kopila Valley Children’s Home. She cares for all of them. They are orphans and children of the abandoned. Her story resonated around northeast U.S. Some newspapers reported her heroics. Different persons and groups in the U.S. donated to her cause.
With donations, she started a primary school known as Kopila Valley Primary School. The school took on 220 students, basically of children who were either orphaned or destitute. Most of them were the first in their families to enjoy the virtue of an education. The school provided a meal a day and free healthcare. That is why the idea that Governor Ambode is about to start in Lagos with a meal a day in schools should gain traction here. Governor Rauf Aregbesola has been at it. But for it to start in Lagos with its massive population and expense will make it a flagship for education around the country. The Buhari administration will be a co-sponsor but the states will bear the torch and burden.
Doyne’s school children are totally bilingual. They learn in English and Nepali, and they benefit from a creative approach to education. Apart from the basic classes, they are awash in literature, art, poetry, theatre, music and sports. The primary school is a first-rate school in the country today. In 2012-2013 when its 8th grade students wrote their first national exam, all the students were in the top 10 per cent, while 50 per cent of them were in the top one per cent. It ranks first in the region.
Every year, an avalanche of applicants seeks rooms in her school, a testament to quality and fidelity to standards. Above all, it is a deference to her humanism. She came from elsewhere to breathe joy and life to a scorched and tormented landscape. She lifted the children, healed their bones, nourished their minds and watered their path to the future.
She is not rich, only her soul is rich. She, a foreigner, turned suffering into an alien for many. She planted a mustard seed in a place called Kopila Valley. Kopila means bud. The children are in bloom.
This contrasts with billionaires in this country who care only for family and more billions. It is not like the flamboyant churches who build schools for the rich or charge fees that crack the backs of the poor. In the beginning there was nothing. Today, Kopila Valley is a landscape of love bearing tomorrow’s genius.
We should not underestimate where good can come from. Doyne had parents who encouraged her sense of humanistic adventure. They disdained friends who wondered why they allowed their daughter to move 8,000 miles away. Today, she has raised money from different sources. When those over 350 kids eat, think, play and laugh, there is no question how it started. She, a muscular Mother Theresa in bud, saw a need and fulfilled it.
In his short fiction titled Model Millionaire, Oscar Wilde recounts the story of a millionaire who dressed like a beggar so an artist could draw him. A certain man who saw him took pity on him, and gave him the last money he had. The millionaire was impressed and learned later that the benefactor was poor and could not afford even his upcoming wedding. The millionaire surprised him by bankrolling his wedding with extra to start a life. There is a lot of wealth lying inside rags, like Kopila Valley. “Millionaire models are rare enough,” wrote Wilde, “but, by jove, model millionaires are rarer still.” We want model millionaires now in Nigeria. Too many poor sulk today. Let us take advantage of this season to start again, for good.
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FloodGate!
While the controversy festers over Sambo Dasuki and our so-called security money, I ponder the lives of Boko Haram victims. Those who lost limbs. Those who lost sons and daughters. Families hived and harried. The raided and raped. In the different camps of the internally displaced persons, or IDPs, hordes huddle in misery.
Last week, a news report had it that the IDPs are fertility clinics running rampant. Babies are bouncing out of wombs like ants out of hill. It may seem good news. Little miracles in the midst of misery. But it is the fruit of boredom, of lassitude and solitude.
It is also the lassitude of latitude, the fecund indolence of freedom. As novelist Scott F. Fitzgerald wrote: “The rich get richer, the poor get children.” It is even more tragic when the rich are fattening at the expense of the poor.
That’s DasukiGate. As I noted elsewhere, it is not DasukiGate, it is a floodgate. The roar and rush of the scandal are not discriminating. It carries the cargoes of big men. Big men in media, in politics, in business. It moves with a democratic quality of ferocity, treating no one with respect whether the arm of a tycoon or the belly of a former governor.
But they were stealing and storing our resources while individuals toiled and died. While on a daily basis, we lamented Boko Haram scorch earth after earth. Fathers fell. Sons either died or joined them. Daughters fell prey to their distorted vision of the marital bed. If, that is, they did not lose their virginal pride instantly. The Chibok girls, the other schools turned into vast slaughter slabs from stabbings and beheadings, whole villages sacked, their theocratic flags hoisted haughtily.
The scandal men fuelled the tragedy, so they could feather their nests. The horror brings to mind the work of Svetlana Alexievich who won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. She dedicated her life’s career writing about how ordinary people suffer while leaders mint money and enjoy the luxury of high office. She is the first journalist to win the big prize, but her work is not mere journalism. Hers probe beneath the layer of reporting. She probes, in her books, the depth of angst, desolation and tortured alienation during disasters in the old Soviet Union. She writes about the Second World, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Chenobyl disaster. She is a raconteur of the emotional abyss of pain and loss. Which is no different from the story of the Boko Haram tragedy.
So, while we spoke about billions, they might have averted the dismembered hand, the kidnapped belle, incinerated home, the disoriented family, the devout sublimity of the boy now recruited into the circle of an apocalyptic belief. There are many individual stories, a thing not well documented yet about the tragedy whose flames are happily on the ruin. Each story is a deep wound, and that was the project of Alexievich. “Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows,” said Bushy in Shakespeare’s Richard II, demonstrating that if many had griefs in northern Nigeria, we had a million shadows. Let’s go beyond the statistic into the emotion. “One million deaths is a statistic,” warned Josef Stalin who was never squeamish about a dying mother, “One death is a tragedy.”
The FloodGate is indeed telling. What bothers is the place of due process. The military operated the way the politicians acted. In carting away the money, they respected no due process or decency. The same way the Chibok girls were taken away without due process or decency. We saw the barbarity of high office executed by the barbarians at the Chibok gate.
In the NSA’s office, money came there via the Central Bank without respect to protocol. They took raw cash, bags of dollars crackled through the CBN portal. They came one after the other once it had settled at the ONSA vault. Dokpesi came. Bafarawa materialised. Obaigbena waltzed in. Etc. As they came in, our money flew out. It was a sleek and extravagant comedy. Enter with false dignity. Sign on a sheet of paper. The paper could say media embed, or energy or spiritual work, or whatever. Not arms or uniforms or food for the boys then awaiting court martial. Somebody heaves out and counts the stack of dollars, arranges them daintily in a bag. The dignitary receives in a flourish. Nods to the NSA. Smiles to the gate. Car takes him either to the hotel or Abuja palace or private jet when fleeing out of town. Our police, in short supply to protect the vulnerable, are gun-happy beside them as they sashay away.
That was the due process. Not your business BPE, or Senate. Contempt for open bidding. No respect for such things as certificate of incorporation, tax papers. That is suffocating protocol. Speak to the president, get his approval, walk to Dasuki, pick your loot and flee. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Go and enjoy yourself.
But the military operated no differently. Recently the report had it that over a hundred soldiers were buried in a mass grave. The army denied it. I ask, when was the last time they reported any dead Nigerian hero? In the United States, once a soldier dies, he is buried in dignified ceremony. His family is notified in a special visit. In the killings in Paris, all the victims of the recent tragedy were not only noted, they had their families notified. Later, they announced to the public with pictures and biographies. It is a ritual of respect, a homage to patriotism.
It is when we lack this protocol of dignity that our army runs the gauntlet of accusations of human rights abuse. No such deference for order. Hence many soldiers were paraded for court martial. Femi Falana, SAN, led the agitation for respect of those who fought for us. Barely a year ago, I wrote a column on Citizen Fahat Fahat, who enthused into battlefield and posted many gung-ho Facebook messages about his desire to despatch Boko Haram goons.
Yet many felt sorry when he posted he was being court-martialled for not fighting when no one stocked him with military hardware. I hope he is one of those set free by the military court. Alexievich laments this nightmarish paradox of service attracting punishment in her moving book, Zinky Boys, about soldiers brought home in zinc coffins.
The media fell prey to the same lack of due process. The newspaper proprietors collected drafts. No one asked for the cheques from the federal government. No one asked, why drafts and not NPAN cheques? No one asked for any official memo from the federal government on the agreement. No due process.
The newspaper proprietors were guilty of naivety, especially in an ambience of financial putrefaction. It is an excuse not of nobility, but of inexcusable innocence. Yet, they were robed in. Their hands were not soiled but boiled, but they were numb hands. They did not know how hot the water was.
So, they story was messy. No due process in government. No due process with Boko Haram. It was an epidemic of impunity from the tony majesty of Aso Rock to the scalding heat Sambisa Forest. Boko Haram and the Jonathan government had two things in common: impunity, oppressing the average citizen. The Boko Haram leaders also lived large, with money, women and barbarian glamour. So did the Jonathan’s men.
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Don’t bribe God
The story had it that Attahiru Bafarawa clucked with N4.6 billion for spiritual purposes. Quite a hefty sum for God, I thought. But it may have made sense if Jonathan won the election. Bafawara could have aped his Christian friends and yelled, To Allah be the glory. But the electoral loss means we could have spent the money well.
Look, for instance, at Lagos. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode spent N4.7 billion to protect 16 million Nigerians. He invested it in a series of helicopters, gunboats, fleet of cars and motorbikes as well as communication gadgets. We are feeling the impact in Lagos now. The devout will say Ambode spent his money on mammon while Bafarawa and Jonathan spent on God.
Mammon seems well now that their project has failed with Jonathan’s loss. The 16 million Lagosians will appreciate the money more than marabouts and other places where the money might have gone. Lesson: don’t’ bribe God. When the people rejoice, N4.6 billion as offering meets brick wall of heaven.
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To spoil a poll
The Bayelsa State guber poll conjured the image of the red-blooded male. He is not distinguished by height or girth, although it helps. His distinction lies in the journey of his muscles. When shirtless, his torso is a work of art, as well as his abdominal region. For the well-fed and well-exercised, the red-blooded male presents a picture of primitive warior. Regions of his skin line up like boxes that some call six packs. Each pack tics, throbs and crackles.
Above that vista of masculine ardour stands an unpredictable visage. It might look coy, retiring, menacing. The eyes may blaze or look fazed. The muscular message below tells the onlooker that the face may be deceptive and, like Shakespeare noted, “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Some have faces that explode with violence and the muscles act it. Some have satiny looks but hoist blood and death, and you do not know such men until they are in charge of things.
Unlike the puny case of Kogi State, you had to be a man in the electoral trenches of Bayelsa. But muscles were not enough. Guns. Bombs. Boats. They fed the red blood.
They may be cocks, well feathered, cawing in primal rhythms and glowing with machismo. But without weapons, such men are effeminate in the electoral wars of the “Glory of all Lands.”
When APC candidate Timipre Sylva gave a press briefing last week over the cancelled poll in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, he gave a hint of the boil in the Bayelsa waters. He said on a number of times, he had to place calls to the security forces to counter the goons ferrying ballot papers and unleashing mayhem. Waxing poetic, he said some of his calls died “like a candle in the wind.” His claim has not been denied. In Ekeremor, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobri, had to be rescued by security forces when thugs, apparently for the opposing PDP, barreled into his compound with guns and bombs.
When the results of Ekeremor Local Government were announced, an APC member rose to protest on live television. The INEC officer motioned him to sit. At the same time the PDP representative also made a counter-claim of violence. The INEC man noted on live television that there was another forum for complaint.
So, why did the INEC cancel the Southern Ijaw poll, and not Ekeremor, or Nembe or Sagbama? The law of course says an election can be cancelled in cases of violence and over-voting. If the election was cancelled on violence ground in Southern Ijaw, it was unfair to violence to respect it in one place and disrespect it in another. In the law, all violence is created equal, and should be punished accordingly. The law did not prescribe scale of violence.
The poll also provided a clear irony. The PDP – and Seriake Dickson – was ahead in six of the seven local government results, but he manifested not only anxiety but lawlessness. The snag was that Southern Ijaw could wipe out his lead and give the victory to his opponent, Sylva. He committed two wrongs that, in a normal society, he should have stepped out of the race or/ and be disqualified from the contest.
One, he visited Southern Ijaw’s capital and also the INEC office. The army, in its press briefing on Saturday, alluded to it, and claimed that his presence ratcheted up the violence in Southern Ijaw. The governor had no problem with the elections holding in his strongholds. When it got to Southern Ijaw, he quilted and turned into a lawless man in government house. He became a retailer of violence.
Two, the governor also went live on Bayelsa Radio to incite the people of the state against the Federal Government. If Nnamdi Kanu can be called a subversive for invoking Biafra, Seriake Dickson with his imperial swagger and walking stick, was Kanu’s counterpart in government. He provoked tribe, calling the Ijaw nation to rise against the plot by the centre to disenfranchise them. Indeed some people responded and came to the street, especially some women in the colour of mourning clothes. The police had to caution him and remind the people of the state that such a rally contravened the electoral law.
If Dickson were charged to court today, he would not escape the law. What he did was criminal and in contempt of the tranquil principle of society and the dictates of the Nigerian constitution. He acted the alpha male, the red-blooded goon in official toga. He exhibited the Neanderthal spirit of the ruffian in office. He was a governor as caveman.
Southern Ijaw, according to the APC, was their stronghold. Sylva claims he has won the election because he believes the votes from that densely populated area could wipe out about 30,000 votes that Dickson had over him in other local governments. In the United States, anytime a Democrat wins a presidential election, he often lags until the California numbers come in. That state can wipe out aggregate votes from the south. That was the scenario APC thought was emerging with Southern Ijaw. Why did the Resident Electoral Officer announce the cancellation instead of the returning officer? The returning officer was not reported sick, captured or fired.
The new INEC boss must avoid the image incompetent and bumbling umpire with inconclusive elections.
Elections are not supposed to be deathbeds of innocence or the celebration of red-blooded males. It does no glory to Bayelsa nor to Nigeria that in the 20th century, it’s not the vote of the hand but the hand of violence that determines the victor. It is even worse when the umpire presents itself without evenhandedness. Democracy is not for Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature, or for Nietzsche’s superman. It is for John Locke’s spirit of equity.
The red-blooded men are good when they guard us and foster our virtues with their strength. “Only the weak are cruel,” noted Leo Buscaglia, also know as Dr. Love. “Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.” They are not strong when they bully. Playwright Aristophanes moaned the Peloponnesian War and wrote a play in which the women withdrew sexual favours from their men in order to force them to stop violence. The play known as Lysistrata is not only good for Bayelsa but for Nigeria. To rein in the red-blooded male, take away his libido. It worked in Aristophanes in triggering negotiations about war. When a man needs weapons rather than words, he admits he has lost the argument.
In Bound to Violence, Yambo Ouologuem laments in his novel Africa’s fascination with waste and spoils. In his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams turns red-blooded Stanley into a mutant soul and rapist. We don’t want that in our election. But fair is fair. If INEC cancels the polls in one place, it has to do same elsewhere. If it tolerates it in one place as it has done in Yenagoa, Nembe and Ekeremor, its conscience should allow it accept the polls raked in at Southern Ijaw. Democracy fails when it is not fair.
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Borrowed robe
If I were Abiodun Faleke, I would head straight to the court. Now that the APC has finally won the guber poll in Kogi State, what shall we say is the contribution of Yahaya Bello to the mere 7,000 votes cast last weekend for his party? Shall we say he contributed merely 7,000?
The INEC says the APC attracted 6,885 votes, while the PDP garnered 5,363 votes. I am not a mathematician, but in my naivety with numbers, it is clear that INEC has shown it knows neither maths nor common sense in Kogi State. If maths mattered to the INEC, its vice chancellor resident electoral officer should have declared the election conclusive.
Maths does not matter to the umpire here. Neither does philosophy or morality. It is either that INEC was morally compromised or mathematically naïve. Neither is excusable.
We will get to that point. But we must lift two critical fogs. One, how do we define number of registered voters? Some have argued that INEC was right to put off the election because the number of registered voters was about 49,000. That dwarfs the about 40,000 votes with which the Audu/Faleke ticket nudges out the Wada opponent. Therefore, it was only naturally right to order a supplementary poll.
But then we come to the question of PVC. Why has INEC not stated the number of PVC issued for this election? The argument that only the number of registered voters matters invalidates the PVCs. But if it is only with the PVCs we can determine a legal vote, then the PVC registration amounts to the authentic source of the number of registered voters.
Elections do not soar in the abstract. They are about people. They are about election campaigners who woo. They are about the voters who absorb agendas and decide with their ballots. In this dispensation, it is folly to refer to the old registered voters’ list when the PVCs are the ones that matter. If PVCs are not the authentic registered voters, then they are illegal. But since we have elected the president, governors, senators and house reps on PVCs, they are the bona fide documents of the vote.
If we go by that impregnable premise, then it was obvious that the PVCs were less than the 40,000 margin of the Audu/ Faleke ticket victory over Governor Wada. That makes the election conclusive and the supplementary poll superfluous. It was not only superfluous, it amounted to a big act of mischief, a disservice to the majesty of democracy and a violation of the principle of natural justice. That makes Bello a superflous candidate.
It is a shame that a party like the APC that prides itself on the change mantra can scoop out the worms of injustice already familiar to us. The worms of impunity. The worms of highhandedness. The worms of manipulation.
The other point refers to the constitution. If the constitution says a governor-elect will, at death, surrender to the deputy governor-elect, it implies that if the election was conclusive, Faleke automatically becomes the governor-elect.
This is an issue because some people do not want Faleke to be governor. It is not because they love the law. It is not because they want what they call party supremacy. It is simply because the presidency has decided to play the game of the aloof tyrant. The presidency acts as though not interested, but it has poured poison in the pool.
The party chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has shown himself a disgrace to the concept of leadership. In the Bayelsa APC primary, he also turned the contest into a farce of insular interests. He projected his selfish motives onto the grand stage of party principle. He was defeated by the simple logic of internal democracy he railed against.
He needs to immerse himself in the literature of political shepherds, those who turned parties into arrowheads of social transformation. He is not alone, though, in this game of putrescence. The INEC will still have to explain itself to the court.
It has been reported that President Buhari did not want Audu as governor, and that explains why he did not go to Kogi to campaign for the ticket. So, the death of the APC candidate was a sort of morbid relief for Aso Rock. They did not want him dead. But how could they mourn whom they did not love? How could they shed tears for whom they did not want there, on the throne? So, as they would say privately, they did not kill him, providence did. That means providence had opened an avenue. It has compelled them to act now that the big elephant has fallen.
They decided to pick a candidate, who worked against the party. Yahaya Bello suddenly is benefiting from a fight in which he did not deliver a blow.
This is worse than even the providence of Jonathan. At least, the Otuoke man staked his powers in the election with Yar’adua. In this case, Bello was on the other side. They corralled him into favour. The presidency is rewarding the disgruntled, inspiring the rebel, saluting the ingrate, fanning the flames of the flouter of the principle of esprit de corps. With its hierarchy, it has applauded impunity.
It is an opportunistic logic shown here. It wanted the party to stay off in the Saraki matter. Now, we want party supremacy and the presidency is suddenly interested. Faleke comes from the Okun part and he is a Christian. Some in the party hierarchy believe this to be a double jeopardy. Was that not the case with Jonathan?
Did Nigerians not embrace him until he fell far short of his pious promise? Why is the microcosm defying the larger canvas? On Kogi, we are highlighting the politics of hubris in the worship of the idols of tribes and faith.
Bello is, however, a true Nigerian. We love to reap where we did not sow, and later go to God and thank him for a miracle. There are many miracles celebrated in mosques and churches that the devil blames God for. Satan makes it happen, and God is given the credit. Lucifer must be very patient. Well, maybe the father of demons may even like it, and allow us the illusion of righteous reward. By attributing our dubious success to God, we continue in the path of flamboyant folly.
The Kogi State imbroglio was created by law and it will be resolved by law. Until the courts pronounce, let us keep mum. Bello may live for now in the borrowed robe of governor.
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Audu’s ghost
Abubakar Audu is dead. Scratch that. Abubakar Audu is not dead. The fellow with an aristocratic bearing sits astride in Kogi. He is not buried. He is not quiet. His spirit, like that of Shakespeare’s Banquo or Hamlet, is walking the night of Kogi politics.
Like novelist Mark Twain noted, stories of his death have been greatly exaggerated. It has roared out of the decision of INEC to call the election inconclusive. It snorts in the APC’s order to foist Yahaya Bello on the ticket. In the fulmination of Audu’s ethnic loyalists. In Abiodun Faleke’s rage at being wronged. In the fiery pros and cons of lawyers.
“Oh dead who have always refused to die,” lamented Leopold Senghor in one of his poems on his ancestors. Audu will not sleep. He will howl and rage until justice is done in Kogi State.
It all began when the umpire missed its step. It declared the election inconclusive based on the voter’s register of 49,000 persons. This must be an INEC without memory. In their last round of elections, did we base the process on registered voters or PVC voters? The resident electoral officer knew the PVCs were far fewer than registered voters. The difference between Audu/Faleke ticket and Governor Wada was about 40,000 votes.
On the average across the country, the PVCs were far less than 70 per cent of the registered voters. INEC has not denied reports that the 91 remaining units account for about 25,000 PVCs. That makes the election conclusive and a victory to Audu/Faleke ticket. And on account of Audu’s death, we should have shed tears for Audu and shed the state of crisis. Faleke would be governor-elect, and we will be looking forward to Bayelsa State where the imperial, baton-wielding policeman Governor Seriake Dickson is sweating over the bulala of defeat that awaits him December 5.
So, why did he declare the election inconclusive without disclosing the PVC facts? The returning officer was no illiterate but a professor and vice chancellor? What kind of vice chancellor would show such a lag in logic and imbecility on the public space? The whole hoopla in town now would have been averted if he just did a scintilla of research.
The word quagmire has haunted the process. INEC did not ease tension by asking the APC to substitute Audu and fixing December 5 for a supplementary election. It has bad legal advisers, so did the APC brass. INEC wanted to quickly get out of the morass. No law tells us how to substitute when more than 80 per cent of the election has happened. If the party is to substitute, the party must conform to the law. And the law says that a 21-day notice must go to INEC before primary. But the election will hold only December 5. Even at that, it applies only to elections that have not taken place. Here, only 91 units are left. The election has been concluded. INEC has no power to cancel it because the constitution gives only two conditions to cancel an election. That is, when there is violence and over-voting. None of these conditions apply.
If the APC makes Bello its candidate, it will fall into the hands of the PDP because Bello did not abide by the rules of 21-day notice. They will invalidate his victory. He might have been second in the primary, but he was not part of the election. The APC is overthrowing the principle of justice by bypassing Faleke. Audu chose him as deputy. The principle of the constitution allows the deputy to take over in case the governor candidate cannot continue either by reason of death or any other kind of incapacity before the election, as governor-elect and governor. The unlegislated period was about 24 to 48 hours before the declaration of result. That lapse in concentration by the law drafters precipitated the crisis.
Otherwise, the deputy is successor. The law always asks the deputy to take over to affirm the unity of the ticket. If Audu won the primary, the law empowered him to pick a successor. And if the law asks him to pick his deputy before and after the election, it means the constitution has moved the ticket beyond the primary. Once one leaves, the next fills in. It is a simple principle of justice. That explains why the deputy campaigns with the governor candidate as a joint proprietor. But the law omitted the election time. Hence Edmund Burke quipped that “bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” And Henry Thoreau said, “the law never made anyone a whit more just.”
When the law fails, we call for justice. But lawyers often forget that the law was made for justice and not for egos. Hence they play strict constructionist, when convenient, by seeking the letter of the law and not the spirit. They forget the intention of justice rather than the vanity of the written text.
If the party ought to pick the candidate, the party must abide by law and justice. If Faleke was a part of the elections so far, some have argued that it does not matter because the law recognises not candidate but parties. The law here contradicts itself. It cannot give rights and roles for candidates and subsume them conveniently under the party banner. The law that asks deputies to succeed the leader cannot wipe out the candidate. The contradiction can only be resolved when the candidates negotiate with the party towards a resolution. While it still poses a conundrum, the constitution clearly shows that the candidate matters. The Amaechi example is sometimes interpreted out of context.
But the matter will eventually be resolved in court. It will decide that the election was conclusive and Faleke should have been declared governor.
Part of the problem lies in the Jonathan syndrome. Faleke comes from what they call the Okun in Kogi as against the Igala. Jonathan’s succession to Yar-adua was resisted because he was no Hausa-Fulani. The Otueke shoeless man gained nationwide sympathy and hence he became president. We have a miniature play of that politics in Kogi. Justice is the victim. But just as Bob Enyart noted, “It is not a justice system. It is just a system.”
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PMB and MEGAPHONE
President Muhammadu Buhari said in Teheran that some of the stolen loot have returned to our treasury. Two things were wrong with this. One, he is in the habit of playing megaphone outside the country. His lips are sealed at home.
Abroad, he becomes announcer in chief. He is president of Nigeria, not diaspora. Does he love the outside world more than where he has legitimacy? We learnt abroad of ministers as noise makers, that he would give priority to those who voted for him, that we are broke. What shall we learn at home?
Second, I thought we ought to know through what process the looters are returning the loot. This is a democracy, and we have the right to know the looters. Is it not the courts that should bargain with these people? How much have they paid? We have a right to know because it is our patrimony. This is not a monarchy. The rule of law is the best way to handle corruption.
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