The Nation Newspaper

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The real coalition

At last, the cleric as governor, Umo Eno, made good his word. He echoed the spirit of late Tony Anenih at the SDP convention in the 1990’s.

Politics still crawled under the shadow of IBB’s transition programme. Anenih described M.K.O. Abiola as talk na do. But in the ethereal rhetoric of a pastor, an Eno would evoke Christ, not Anenih, the swashbuckling ex-police chief. Eno would rather go to the New Testament, and say “let your yea be yea, and your nay nay.”

So, he did. He was no longer promising. Not for him again the dithering or keeping the nation on tenterhooks.

He was in earnest about his move. He described his party – his then party – the PDP as a picture of the apocalypse. He might say it is a shipwreck; a plane headed to a crash.

It is a fuddy duddy dizzy on a cliff’s edge, a hoary end. It is careening out of control. It is falling from the twilight into the dark. Goodbye PDP. Welcome APC. A swansong is not always an ending.

For Eno, a new window opens. A new testament.

Some in the PDP see it as betrayal. He walked through the governor’s portal as a PDP stalwart, and he changed garment. As he himself might say, the scripture sees the garment as the emblem of the heart. The outer appearance has no value if the interior has value. It is the heart that matters, not the hype or harp. Paul says in scripture that circumcision or uncircumcision does not profit, unless you circumcise the foreskin of the heart.

Those who see it as a traitor’s act may invoke what Winston Churchill said in the days of parliamentary turmoil in post-war Britain. “It is easy to rat,” said the boisterous statesman of letters, “But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”

The great Chief Obafemi Awolowo was enamoured of that quote since the First Republic Western Region legislature boiled over with such a tempest of movements.

Eno’s ingenuity lies in the way he did it. He promised and he delivered. As the poet Samuel Coleridge wrote, “anticipation is more potent than surprise.”

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He was not like a stealth bomber that strikes without prophecy. He fulfilled his own. He was a B-2 bomber. He announced with a roar from afar; he struck and hit a homerun.

His is different from that of the governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori, who struck like the F-35 bomber. No one saw it coming. Yet, it was not a one-man action. He consulted obviously.

The lawmakers were in. The party hierarchs were in. Ditto the local government authorities and the grassroots. As the story is told, even the non-indigenes were also consulted, and that accounted for the groundswell of solidarity when the party dumped the umbrella for the broom. How Governor Sheriff enacted the manoeuvre without a leak should be a stuff for not just historians, but a study in political science, mass psychology and sociology. Elias Canneti, where art thou? Max Weber, wake up.

If I described the move of the Sheriff as a transplant, then that of Eno is a transfusion.

“Many people change their minds in politics. Some change their minds to avoid changing their party. Some people change their party to avoid changing their mind.” That was Winston Churchill. But both Sheriff and Eno changed their party after changing their minds. With the people in PDP, they are changing their minds to avoid changing their party. Hence, they were in sync with Abubakar Atiku, but then they changed their mind about moving to a coalition. That hurt the Adamawa chieftain, and he sulked into Osun State recently.

He still sulked for breakfast in a now viral video when he opted to team with a pariah with a profane tongue whereas he could lock step in a dance with the premier of the state.

It is the poverty of Atiku. The man does not know how to play politics. He plays with malice. He projects an often dour look that chimes in with his lack of cheer or animation.

He had no humour for Wike when he conjured the PDP ticket for himself in the last minute in 2022 primary. Rather than humour the Rivers State citizen. He would not call him, or placate him, or strive for a common ground. Rather he held his ground with bilious insistence and let the party divide under him. He stuck with Iyorchia Ayu, a man who never had a job where he was not fired, including the job Atiku wanted him to hold. He held it at their mutual peril.

The blind led the blind. He is playing humour of dark harmony with those who have no humour like him. Like Nasir El Rufai, who is now tumbling from party to party having been shooed out of his homestead in Kaduna State. Like Rotimi Amaechi, who makes humour from being hungry. He does not even know that you cannot be hungry when you make a bash costing tens of million of naira. It is what playwright Samuel Becket calls risus purus, a laugh laughing at itself. The tragedy is that the former transport minister is not laughing. That is the laugh.

We can only say coalition is a will to activity. A mere whirligig. They have to act so as to seem to act. It is a coalition of the losers as I had written a few weeks ago. It is the coalition of the aggrieved. It is the consequence of interior pain. They are not happy that they lost.

They did not exercise the spirit of sportsmanship. It is the spirit of malice, which the scriptures described as self-corrupting. Atiku likes to act as such because he wants to be in the news. He is ready to do a coalition of people who have no real structure.

Atiku ran on a structure that had been established, and it is that of PDP. Now he wants to form his own coalition from the air, from nothing. He is supping with people he likes but who, like him, have pockets of followers.

For instance, how much levers can El-Rufai pull in Kaduna State. He packed up his suite case and looked back at the yard to wave goodbye. No one waved back. No after-wave, so he left in his own waves, soundless.

Or is it Namadi Sambo, former vice president, who is, to all intents and purposes, almost retired. He is a nice guy. Nice does not win votes.

Or is it my good friend Amaechi, who has never pulled more than 15 percent of votes in Rivers State except when he sought his second term as governor.

So, what we have is a parade of chieftains who want to make anger a strategy, apologies to Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN).

But theirs is a shadow coalition. Pat Utomi may draw some humour here. They are a shadow coalition in that they are not real. They cannot agree on a party. They cannot agree on the members. They cannot agree on a leader. They cannot agree on a platform. They cannot even agree on humour.at least, not yet.

Atiku is dour. Sambo is quiet. El Rufai is a boor. The Osun guy’s dance is poor and Amaechi is hungry. It is the stage and state of their coalition. “Most men die of their own remedies, not of their own diseases,” wrote French playwright Moliere. So do organisations and even civilisations. Coalition is their remedy and graveyard.

But their foe that gives them the quake is making his own coalition without noise. Not long ago he had Delta. Then Akwa Ibom. The PDP is begging its men not to go. Even Fubara, who is at war with Wike, is being urged by some of the allies to move to APC. In the south-south, the APC is the dominant party.

The battle is just starting, or is it? They were the first to start the move to 2027, and they have not even moved a step. Some of them are accusing the APC of starting the move towards 2027 whereas they did not allow the dust of defeat to clear from their homestead before they inaugurated their trot. They are spoiling for a fight. The terrible thing is that they want spoils first. Remember the Kaduna guy already has decided who will be minister from APC’s cabinet.

They are like what the poet Okigbo describes as the coming and going that goes on forever.

June 9, 2025
SNAPSONG 257I

Total rulers command

They never obey

The only summons they heed

Is the swing of the dangling prey

I I I I I I I I

Of the blind and snarling Braggart

The only thing he sees

Is the world beneath his foot

The Tar the tar the tar Tariff-King

Ariff ariff, a riffraff riff

Tar the world to death

Riff away their ribs

In this brave new world

Of Tit-for-Tat

My Tit is a billion times

Bigger than your tiny Tat

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Let the Big eat the Small

So the Small becomes the smaller

A Mimic Fuhrer is back in town

Decreeing the world to kiss his ass

Season of Cruelty, season of Darkness

But crueller rains have fallen before

And the noontide Sun has scorched their scorpions.

It is Humanity’s eternal blessing that Evil is not immortal

June 8, 2025
Trump, Elon Musk meltdown

Last week’s spectacular, predictable and messy falling out between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire businessman Elon Musk has riveted the world like no other subject in the past one year. Nothing compares to it. Now, seedy details of drug addiction and titillating mention in sex dossiers are flying around on Mr Musk’s social media platform inappropriately named X (formerly Twitter). The businessman reportedly spent about $250m to help get Mr Trump and a majority Republican congress elected. In return, in addition to heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) programme, juicy federal contracts have continued to flow into Mr Musk’s space and electric vehicle projects. Beyond the surface frills, it is clear that Mr Trump’s inner circle exasperated by the boisterousness and obtrusion of Mr Musk had won the day. It is not clear yet how the fight would go down, but there are precedents elsewhere where billionaire businessmen close to the seat of power became too big for their britches.

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In China, Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce giant, Alibaba, also ran his mouth in 2020 against state-owned banks which he described as having ‘pawn-shop mentality’. The repercussions were swift and damaging, including the cancellation of his $34.5bn stock market flotation of his Ant Group fintech giant, and presaged a general crackdown on China’s tech industry. When Russia’s Vladimir Putin kick-started his fight against the Russian oligarchs in 2000 and 2001, most of whom rose into financial prominence under former president Boris Yeltsin, it quickly degenerated into a brutal struggle. First to be hit was Vladimir Gusinsky who built his wealth from scratch, including owning a television station that skewered Mr Putin. The president ran him out of town. Next was Mikhail Khodorkovsky who bought the state-owned oil giant Yukos for a pittance. In 2005, he was jailed for nine years and then forced out of Russia. Considering his irreverence and abuse, there are already talks of forcing Mr Musk back to South Africa. Would Mr Trump go whole hog?

June 8, 2025
Military chiefs and the Sahel fire

Gen. Michael Langley, Commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), warned last month in Kenya that terrorists might be eying Nigeria and the West Africa coastline. According to him, “Attacks are resurging in the Lake Chad region as well, and extremist groups are growing more aggressive. The recent attacks in Nigeria and across the Sahel are deeply concerning. The scale and brutality of some of these incidents are troubling. So we’re monitoring this closely. One of the terrorists’ new objectives is gaining access to West African coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking, and arms trading.” He was not exaggerating. Nigerian military chiefs have also been warning about the fire in the Sahel spreading southwards. It is now clear that it is not just about jihadist goals, it is also about the region’s coastline and the economic advantages it confers.

In May, while visiting Yobe State, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant-General Olufemi Oluyede, told Governor Mai Mala Buni that the “fire from the Sahel region will consume Nigeria if urgent steps are not taken…We have no choice but to curtail insecurity, because if we don’t, at some point, we may not have a country to live in.” In the same May, while addressing State House correspondents in Abuja after a security meeting with President Bola Tinubu, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa, confirmed that “What has happened of recent is that there’s a global push by terrorists and jihadists all over the Sahel area, and that pressure is what actually came into Nigeria because of the nature of our borders.” As Gen. Langley confirmed, the Sahel is on fire, and Nigeria is vulnerable. The situation requires urgent attention, especially with the brutal Wagner Group of Russia taking their leave of Mali almost at the same time as jihadists have started a major push southwards in Mali with deadly attacks on military bases.

The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger may in fact have underestimated the jihadist crisis unfurling before their eyes in the Sahel. They assumed that their crisis revolved around the exploitative French who have been kicked out of the three countries, or around the meddlesome Americans who kept sentry on jihadist activities in the region but who have now also been kicked out in favour of the Russians. The crisis, however, transcends the struggle against neocolonialism or imperialism, as the AES states naively argue. Having forcefully taken over the reins of government in coups d’etat years ago, and disagreeing with ECOWAS on the restoration of democracy in their countries, and denigrating Nigeria and the rest of West Africa as neocolonial stooges of the West, they have nevertheless been unable to curb the fiery march of jihadists southward. Nigeria has two major headaches it must now contend with after hearing the warnings by the three military chiefs quoted above. First, it must find a way to get ECOWAS to respond to the jihadist push, regardless of the naivety of the AES states. The regional bloc last month announced some initiatives in that direction, but it must reassess whether what they are proposing and implementing will be adequate to respond to the massive scale of the challenges before them.

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Second, President Bola Tinubu needs to urgently put Nigeria on a war footing, necessitating massive recruitment of soldiers. Fortunately this is not an election year which could prompt the opposition to accuse the president of trying to militarise the polls. The elections are still nearly two years away. But, meanwhile, the northern borders of the country remain inefficient, porous and still vulnerable, causing Gen. Musa to suggest that something other than just the clash of arms, including perhaps the fencing of Nigeria’s northern borders, should be contemplated. In his view, “the Sahel is heating up, and if it falls, it is Nigeria that they are interested in.” Unfortunately, the northern elite are oblivious of the looming catastrophe, and have continued to trifle with Nigeria’s grave existential challenges in their careless deployment of religion and ethnicity to achieve social and political agenda.

But it would cost a tidy sum to fence thousands of kilometers of borders; and while this may deter some illegal migrants, it will not deter determined attacks by jihadist forces. The Maginot Line experience of France during World War I and II comes in focus. The defensive and so-called impenetrable French fortifications were breached in an instance by Germany’s blitzkrieg through a flanking manoeuvre in Belgium. The Nigerian border fence, even if built, would be paperweight compared with the Maginot Line fortifications.

June 8, 2025
Coalition: dancing naked before the North

It will take a little more time before the leadership of the political coalition being formed to unseat President Bola Tinubu properly crystallises. But for now, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, former governors Nasir el-Rufai and Rotimi Amaechi are mentioned as belonging to the first tier of coalition leadership. First, there was talk of the coalition fusing into the Social Democratic Party (SDP), but the leaders postured too arrogantly to be welcomed warmly. Then they began talking glibly about moving en masse into the African Democratic Congress (ADC); but here, too, they met with some resistance and unnerving preconditions. Now, they are actively thinking of setting up a new party, where they can have the freedom to do as they please. It will undoubtedly cost a pretty penny, and a lot more arduous and sleepless nights to develop the rubric of a new party, but in the end they may have no choice. Whether they set up a new party or fuse into an old one in their desperate attempt to find a shortcut to power, they will go through many painful and sleepless nights, and they will spend a fortune.

Meanwhile, in their urgent quest to take the presidency in 2027, and regardless of whether they have found the vehicle and the drivers to take them to the promised land or not, the coalition has begun to agitate for change using two methods. First, they believe that casting the Tinubu presidency as either irreligious or too religious would be effective; and second, they think belittling the administration’s record in the fight against insecurity, including accusing it of being anti-North in appointments and policies, would impress sceptics. Their allegations fly in the face of evidence, but they recognise that they are appealing to illiterate northerners incapable of deep reflections or envious southerners consistent in their resentment toward the president, all of them united by the pains and hunger they have been made to endure as a result of the ongoing economic reforms. They begin with the implausible proposition that without the North, no southerner could win the presidency, ignoring the equally salient inverse that no northerner could win the presidency without southern support. Unsure whether this illogic about regional influence would fly, they have begun to suggest that the North – for the amorphous coalition is essentially inspired by northerners – would repudiate support for President Tinubu if he could not find a solution to insecurity in their region.

Former vice president Namadi Sambo is the latest proponent of the insecurity caveat. Mallam el-Rufai, despite being accused of predisposing the North to insecurity by his bigoted support for herdsmen and Fulani militias, has also been mouthing the subject of insecurity as a critical factor for denying President Tinubu support. Insecurity, especially in the North, may seem intractable, but it is hard to explain why any northern politician or leader would use that as an electoral weapon, especially considering that they have been accused of inspiring it, while the present administration has put them entirely in charge of reining in the madness and chaos in the beleaguered region. The coalition, when it finally crystallises, will, however, not be discomfited by logic or common sense. They know the people they are targeting: the talakawas susceptible to the twin emotional appeal of hunger and insecurity; and the core North ravaged by banditry, Boko Haram/ISWAP, Lakurawa, and now Mahmuda terror groups.

It is hard to understand why northern political leaders, whose derelictions engendered and entrenched poverty and insecurity in the North, are politicising the conjoined issues of mass hunger and insurgency. They will, of course, be cross examined at the campaigns; but even if they think they can explain their complicity in the tragedies and disasters afflicting the North, they may find themselves being nudged into responses certain to make their coalition inchoate or malformed. In late May, the National Political Consultative Group (North) invited the coalition leaders to address them on their plans for 2027 and the issues affecting the region. The itinerant Peter Obi, former Anambra governor and presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the last poll, made a presentation where he assailed the Tinubu presidency for neglecting the North. Sucking up to the North, and deploying his usual Asian Tiger developmental statistics in addition to Nordic sprinklings, he praised the region, describing it is a sine qua non for Nigeria’s development and renaissance. He would rewrite the region’s trajectory, he fawned in the presence of Alhaji Atiku and Mr Amaechi seating at the front row. It is not clear what the coalition aurochs thought as Mr Obi pontificated, but they wore glacial expressions as they ruminated on their own pending presentations. They probably knew that they must still argue their programmes before more northern groups in the months ahead as they frantically hope to retake office which they had incompetently deployed for decades to the mass impoverishment of the region.

But they are all barking up the wrong tree. First, despite his political peregrinations and pell-mell financial donations, Mr Obi, either as presidential candidate or running mate, will still have to address the conundrum surrounding his candidacy in the last presidential election when he described himself as the Christian champion in a race he characterised as a religious war. It is not clear how he will navigate or drain the swamp he walked into by his opportunism, but it is clear he cannot be persuasive. Second, the coalition leaders obviously hope that the old Nigerian political dynamic, influenced by decades of military rule monopolised by northern military officers, can be restored and would need northern political leaders to organise or inspire. Alhaji Atiku had hoped to ride on that wave in the 2023 poll but was shocked by how ancient the idea proved to be. He had obviously learnt little from the Muhammau Buhari years. In his speech before the northern consultative group, Mr Obi clearly and amateurishly tried to ingratiate himself with the North, believing, as Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, a former presidential assistant, recently argued, that the North could single-handedly determine winner of the next presidential poll. The coalition, when it finally takes form, may discover to its dismay that it is trapped in the past. President Buhari broke the mould, and President Tinubu proved beyond reasonable doubt that new dynamics are at play.

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Passion has cooled considerably in the run-up to the coalition formation. In March, after a few months of fancy footwork, Alhaji Atiku, Mallam el-Rufai, and Mr Obi spoke elegantly in Abuja about the coalition to unseat President Tinubu. Since then, Mr Obi has hemmed and hawed, sometimes insisting that, to him, what mattered was good governance, not simply winning the presidency. He was of course simply throwing a red herring. His presidential campaign in 2023 and his insular team and ideology proved beyond all doubt that he valued power more than any other thing, especially seeing how clearly he anchored his every statement on the stump on moral exigencies and abstract statistics than on the existentially germane issues of federalism and secularism. His politics is, after all, one of paternalism, as his Obidient movement hinted by their unrelenting and unorthodox methods of browbeating dissenters.

Since that fateful March too, Mallam el-Rufai has vacillated between one fringe party and another, between a high today and a low tomorrow. He has even gone ahead to assume the coalition’s victory in 2027, has formed the cabinet in his mind at least partially, and indicated that the campaign that would procure success for them would rest on both the alleged inability of the Tinubu presidency to rein in insecurity and the mass misery in the country. He has, however, not been as cocksure as before about the fulcrum of the coalition, whether it would be the SDP which he rhapsodised in Kano very freely or the ADC which some of his coalition leaders muted in private discussions. Just as those who surround United States President Donald Trump clipped the tempestuous Elon Musk’s wings, even before the opposition coalition is fully formed, Mallam el-Rufai’s wings have suffered damage. Yes they will need an unprincipled and loquacious and eloquent speaker who could argue both sides of a position fluently and persuasively, but they fear much more his recklessness and the considerable baggage his Kaduna governorship might bring to a party that seeks to overthrow a behemoth.

A critical mass may already be forming in the North around the idea that four more years of President Tinubu, given the increasingly positive effects of his reforms, will not harm the country. There is hardly any governor, across party lines, who does not view the reforms positively, seeing how their swelling state coffers have enabled them more latitude to reengineer their finances and embark on major projects. And there is hardly any knowledgeable analyst who does not see the reforms as more promising than the time-worn hypotheses peddled by the coalition leaders. More critically, opinion is hardening even among the northern elite that it would amount to insensitive promotion of northern or Fulani exceptionalism to want to abridge the eight-year tenure for the South barely four years after a northerner spent eight years in office. Like it or not, as unorthodox as the principle might appear, it has helped to moderate Nigeria’s power game and the contest for high office. Regardless of the malicious campaigns by any coalition, the North will allow sleeping dogs to lie, and do everything to sustain the formula. They will prefer to play safe rather than embrace either Alhaji Atiku’s self-centred plan to win office for only one term and cede a second term to Mr Obi or the revenge attack by the spurned Mallam el-Rufai still hurting from his exclusion from the Tinubu cabinet.

June 8, 2025
Soyinka, Amaechi and APC presidential primary

Speaking at the 60th birthday celebration of former Rivers State governor and ex-Transportation minister, Rotimi Amaechi, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was expansively humorous. In praising Mr Amaechi’s manner of pursuing his presidential ambition, the laureate said the former minister’s intransigence reminded him of the stubborn refusal of President Bola Tinubu (as Lagos State governor) to yield to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s political and financial pressures to abandon the creation of 37 extra local governments in Lagos. The laureate said he derived ‘rascally pleasure’ in seeing Mr Amaechi stubbornly refusing to drop out of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary in June 2022 when nearly every other aspirant was dropping out of the race. In a delicate, and perhaps eerie, extrapolation of that intransigence some three years ago, Mr Amaechi has sustained his adamancy and opposition to the same Bola Tinubu who defeated him in that race and went on to win the presidency the following year.

The bigger story of the 2022 primary is not of course the intransigence of any of the aspirants, or the concessions of the curious handful. What defined the primary and swung the votes was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary conducted barely a week earlier on May 29, 2022, over which former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike has continued to have an axe to grind with PDP leaders and electors who jettisoned his aspiration in favour of former vice president Atiku Abubakar. Unknown to him, instead of confining themselves to their party’s rotational principles, they anticipated the victory of APC’s Bola Tinubu in the ruling party’s primary a week later and were anxious to secure the services of a champion who could fight for the crown and give a good account of himself. They imagined that Mr Wike, had he emerged the PDP candidate, would be eaten raw by Bola Tinubu. So they gambled on the APC outcome by preemptively securing for themselves a deep pocket champion.

Meanwhile, APC leaders and electors who had spent weeks pussyfooting around Aso Villa and gallivanting between powerful interest groups around the country and APC governed states were greatly consternated by the PDP’s deft anticipation and calculations. Instead of leaving the primary to chance, in a sort of ‘may the best man win’, they borrowed logic from the PDP and resolved to secure a champion who could ‘outstrategise and outspend’ Alhaji Atiku. Mr Amaechi’s recalcitrance and Mr Wike’s fulminations meant nothing to the PDP and APC overlords. They faced a historic election, and they were sure that rather than engage in fancy footwork, they needed to put their best feet forward. And they did so, with brutal efficiency and ‘devil may care’ frankness. Had the PDP sustained their realpolitik to the campaigns, with Alhaji Atiku opting for the most savage and unfeeling methods to prosecute his election, probably his last, he would have found the ultimate weapon, financial or political, to placate the aggrieved Peter Obi, and unite the party behind him. In the end, he could not rejig the party’s formula for holding political offices, and then followed up by spitting on the political grave of the enraged Mr Wike.

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On the other side of the aisle, the more astute and unassuming candidate Tinubu, who had been humiliated and humbled for more than two years before his party’s primary and thus had no airs about him, did everything possible, political and financial, to mollify his APC opponents. Those who held out against his blandishments or mollification were then isolated and neutralised. The APC and PDP candidates thus went into the 2023 presidential election with contrasting styles, thereby losing or winning the poll even before the first ballot was cast. Despite the clumsy and hugely disruptive intrusion of the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, which turned the election into a three-horse race, it was all but clear who the voters and the dithering presidency thought was the frontrunner. Their inability to cut that frontrunner to size was not due to a lack of effort as it was due to a lack of tactical brilliance. Once he became the front runner and sensed it, and knowing that the country’s political dynamics favoured a southern candidate, he pushed his luck, said many a gaffe, but managed to prevent himself from propounding anything that would scare anybody. His refrain at every campaign stop was simple, almost inelegant, but decidedly poignant and provocative, embellishing the country’s political dictionary and arresting the people’s wandering and often jejune thoughts.

And candidate Bola Tinubu won. Of all the footnotes of the 2023 presidential race, Mr Amaechi’s was the least significant. That of Mr Wike, which saw him carve a significant slice of the votes from Alhaji Atiku, was far more impactful, second only to the seismic electoral effect the unreflective Mr Obi brought upon the poll. Next time, in the face of Nigeria’s notoriously compromised pollsters whose predictions are always way off the mark, pundits should scrutinise the primaries to find clues as to the underlying dynamics capable of tilting the outcome of any general election. They will find, in the kitchen midden of the primaries, enough clues as to who will win, sometimes by a huge margin in the event of a two-horse race. They should never allow themselves to be distracted by the wailings and moaning of the Amaechis and Wikes, as crucial as they sometimes pretend to be.

June 8, 2025
Wike and his extraordinary media chats

When he was governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike held court extravagantly, complete with itinerant minstrels whose sense of timing and cues were impeccable. The former governor never allowed the state to have a dull day – it was a joyous concatenation of barbs, brickbats, folk songs, clerihews and anything that would make the former governor and his people exhale. To, therefore, expect he would suddenly become reticent and colourles, simply because he has become a former governor and is now an appointee of a president, will be asking too much of him. He will continue to hold court, and entertain and excoriate.

His last Monday media chat delivered as much entertainment to his admirers as he ladled out pain upon his enemies. He was a bit restrained on the current Rivers governor, Siminalayi Fubara, but did not hold back on a number of other topics and personalities, including the remonstrating Bode George, National Vice Chairman of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whom he derided as a debtor in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

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More provocatively, Mr Wike said, jumping to another issue, he would lead President Tinubu’s campaign in Rivers State, despite being a leading member of the PDP. The president is APC. He was emphatic: “You have seen me here. I said I would support Asiwaju. The way we won other elections, that is the way we will win. I am not a liability. I am an asset. Whether you agree or you don’t agree, I am an asset. Whether you want to die, you don’t want to die, I am an asset. You may not like me; your likeness has nothing to make me. I am an asset to making sure that Tinubu wins second term.” Apart from demonstrating loyalty to the president, which some of his fellow appointees might find a little too forward and exacting, who would not look forward to his next chat, especially considering that he never disappoints in delivering frankness and entertainment, no matter whose ox is gored?

June 8, 2025
Phantom opposition and its discontents

Averting elite suicide in Nigeria

Two years into the Tinubu administration, the political society remains deeply polarized and bitterly divided. Some sections of the political class are still nursing the wounds of the last elections. Yet it is incontrovertible that before the current administration took over the reins of power, the country was on the verge of economic disintegration. All the indices were pointing towards a catastrophic collapse. But even if we ignore the countermanding chorus of hysterical supporters and hostile disapproval, not even Tinubu’s most virulent critic can deny the obvious fact. From his eclectic toolbox of orthodox and unconventional economic placebos sometimes so mutually exclusive and countervailing that they are supposed to cancel out each other, the president might have found the formula to stave off catastrophic economic collapse such as happened in Venezuela after the revolt against the ancient master-class, a development which sent millions of Venezuelans heading for the Colombian border or the apocalyptic fiscal meltdown that overtook Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe after the old Shona wizard went to work on the buoyant economy the colonial masters left behind.

It is a classic study in the management of mismanagement, and we must thank God for little mercies. Three generations down the line, Zimbabweans are still feeling the pains and pangs of the ruinous economic policies of their founding father. Only the discipline and resilience of a proud people and the bitter conundrum of having to fight to liberate themselves from their old liberator kept the nation together. It could have been worse. After the harsh and unforgiving Treaty of Versailles, the collapse of the German currency led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and opened the door to Hitler and the Third Reich and the nunc dimittis of the extant world order. But Germany is an organic country with its disparate sub-tribes and warring principalities forcibly welded together through “blood, sweat and tears” by Von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor.

   After two million souls have been lost to a civil war which failed to resolve the fundamental question, Nigeria is struggling to remain a single unified entity. If we are to witness the kind of economic meltdown occasioning a total currency collapse, the tenuous cord binding the entity together might snap irretrievably. The Tinubu economic programme with its “shock and awe” tactics reminiscent of an economic pacification of an already brutalized society is far from perfect. It has led to a fiscal distress for the most vulnerable sectors of the society, further polarization of the political elite and a rapidly expanding multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multipurpose underclass ready to do anything to stay afloat or to upend the entire system accordingly. The tragedy and bane of the current conjuncture of post-military rule in Nigeria is the dearth of coherent paradigms of alternative economic development and political pathway beyond ethnic sabre rattling and outworn shibboleths. If we can avoid a catastrophic currency collapse and ramp up local production which adds value to the export of raw materials while the government continues the tinkering with economic fundamentals, there may still be a lot to play for.

Virtually all those shouting themselves hoarse while angling to replace the Tinubu administration are tired and jinxed political jobbers who cannot come up with a single productive idea. Without any sense of irony, some of them even ape and regurgitate Tinubu’s economic policies or their main planks. When a major opposition figure rents a thirty million hall to celebrate his birthday and all he could come up with were shouts of hunger, you begin to wonder whether Kafka’s celebrated hunger artist is on a visitation to Nigeria. If this is the stuff the opposition is made of, what may be the staring the nation in the face is not a one-party system but the possibility of an all-party meltdown leading to elite suicide in all its dire consequences. It is this possibility that we must fear most and the story that follows should be quite illustrative of that possibility.

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In 2017 or thereabout, yours sincerely and one or two others accompanied Lieutenant General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, the respected and influential former Chief of Defence Staff, to Bayelsa State to deliver a lecture on restructuring and the National Question. It was a golden opportunity to visit the old province which was part of the old Western Region ruled by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. That was in the magical days of regional governments and competitive federalism. There was no viable airport in Yenagoa at that point in time, so we had to undertake the journey, first by air to Port-Harcourt and then by road to Yenagoa. Before flying out, the famed warrior and celebrated military strategist had informed one that the aircraft was going to be a one-engine fixed propeller plane, a revelation which froze the spine.

   As the plane dipped and banked perilously through the enveloping clouds on takeoff before leveraging into the clear blue sky, the general reassured that he had been through more precarious and dicey flights during the civil war. Reminding him that you were not enlisted as a soldier was a waste of time. Luckily after about an hour, the aircraft, after a steep descent, bumped on the runway and gamboled to a halt without any further trepidation. Our host this clear calm morning, the then governor of Bayelsa State, Henry Dickson Seriake, was already waiting for us in his office with his Deputy Chief of Staff, a Ms Ndiomu. Seriake, who traces his remote ancestry to an Ijebu woman named Bola, was as courteous, polite and welcoming in the best tradition of native Nigerian hospitality. After official formalities including a welcome address by the governor, we were rushed through breakfast joined by two notable Yoruba Nation activists who had materialized from an inner room. They were on a different mission.

The lecture hall was filled to the brim despite the tight security. It was a distinguished crowd that came to hear out the general as he pronounced passionately and with cerebral gusto about the desirability and inevitability of a major structural reconfiguration in a country wracked by ethnic, religious and cultural schisms. His global references were apt and his conclusions sharp and point-device. The audience listened with rapt attention. It was obvious that this was an issue very dear to the people of Bayelsa and the attendance cut across the partisan lines of party, creed and credo. Among them were top traditional rulers, notable politicians, retired military brass-hats and high-octane clergy. At the end of it all, the general got a standing ovation which lasted for about five minutes. The governor concluded events with a rousing speech which was a tour de force of hope and optimism for Nigeria.

In the intervening years, Henry Dickson Seriake has transited from the gubernatorial mansion in sleepy Yenagoa to the senatorial coliseum in Abuja. Last week, the hefty, imposing law maker with the embonpoint of a retired American heavyweight bruiser made a dramatic entry into the palatial venue hosting the sixtieth birthday anniversary of Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the former speaker of the Rivers State of House of Assembly, former governor of the same state and former Minister of Transportation in the underwhelming Buhari government. His intervention was no less dramatic and explosive. Bearing down on the august crowd which bristled with luminaries of state incapacitation and stars of national eclipse who were gathered in stiff opposition and conspiracy against the Tinubu regime, Seriake reminded them that that was exactly what some of them did about eleven years earlier with baleful consequences for the nation. He dismissed them as masters of perpetual conspiracies to unseat sitting governments but who lack the requisite skills, the political capacity and the mental magnitude to rule a vast and complex country.

It was a damning verdict on the phantom state of opposition in the country and the unenviable circumstances in which multi-party democracy has found itself in Nigeria. One or two of them was even regurgitating wholesale Tinubu’s subsidy removal regimen and deregulation package. Seriake’s Facebook wall page filled with admiring endorsements with one hailing him as the lion of the creeks but one sly sourpuss dismissing it as a gambit for the vice-presidential slot in a coming configuration. Meanwhile, the seminal contribution of the celebrant himself was to proclaim that he was hungry like everyone else, a clear case of post traumatic stomach disorder. If this is all the putative opposition against the Tinubu administration could muster, the leading lights of the regime can as well go to sleep with their two eyes firmly shut.

   But here lies the problem. The vulgarization of politics and the demise of a viable and functioning opposition bode ill for the entire nation. With discomfort slowly taking a firm grip and acute poverty spreading even if it is only temporary, the vulgarization of politics and the negation of its most sacred and noble ideals could push the masses and the vastly proliferating underclass in the direction of a revolt against politics and a ruinous de-marketing of liberal democracy itself. If that were to be the case, what is tugging at the undertow of the nation is not the prospect of a one-party state or all-party meltdown but the possibility of elite suicide in postcolonial Nigeria.

   As it is, Nigeria is prey to two major forces of destabilization. Both appear to be aided by significant sections of the elite bent on bringing the state to its knees. On the one hand are the shadowy activities of an ancient superpower which believes it could topple the nation into radical chaos and anarchy through massive propaganda and the relentless insinuation of AI generated pictures of paradise and el Dorado from a military-run, poverty-wracked landlocked African country. The other group consists of resurgent Islamic groups already operating within the confines of the nation bent on turning it into a fifteenth century medieval tyranny. Calls to arms are sprouting every day.

To spring the trap laid by these groups of enemy nationals, government must come to terms with some sobering realities. First, elite pacification is not the same thing as elite consensus. While elite consensus is a product of strenuous but free negotiations, conciliations and concessions, which conduce to national harmony and cohesion, elite pacification is often superintended by economic coercion and political cajolery leading to abiding resentments and hidden animosities which could find temporary truce in a one-party state but which is bound to erupt in open treachery in the nearest future. Second, government must improve on its political capacity building through open forums, interactive sessions with various stakeholders and brainstorming retreats with critical sectors rather than shadowy consultations and confraternity-like communing which sow the seed of doubt, distrust and discord in the wider populace and which revives echoes of an Ottoman presidency. Balancing the competing and often conflicting claims of various elite groups without harmonized values makes effective governance very difficult if not impossible. Despite all these, the balance of momentum and the possibility of critical success still lie with the former senator from Lagos who has many things going for him. The game changer may yet be his pluck, courage and capacity to change direction once it is obvious that he has taken a wrong turn.

June 8, 2025
Baba Lekki turns the table on June 12

To Gbayanrin and the upmarket Bantu Television Station where Baba Lekki was running rings around the main anchor of the station and his colleagues over the vexed issue of the annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election and the true heroes of the struggle to liberate Nigeria. It was a long time one had heard from the geriatric scoundrel after his last attempt to scam a nearby bank using AI generated images failed and he took to his heels. When he was finally apprehended, he claimed to be a ghost on spiritual sabbatical attached to a nearby church and everybody fled in turn. It is a scammers’ market and no one is sure of who is scamming who anymore.

“Sir, if I heard you very well, you just said it is June 23 that should be celebrated and not June 12. If my memory does not fail me, that was the very day the election was annulled”, the anchor asked the old man who was beginning to show signs of growing impatience and irritation.

“So, if you heard me very well, why are you repeating the question? Let your memory fail you that is your father’s problem. All I am saying is that June 23 is the real day or the McCoy. That is the day the soldiers finally overreached themselves and shot themselves in the foot. That is the reason we are enjoying this spell of democracy, otherwise they would have been back again with their gra-gra and this nonsense about I Brigadier Sukuniyan or Colonel Dodondawa”, the old man exploded. The entire hall in turn erupted in rapturous applause. A Lagosian-looking dandy in Edwardian bow tie and heavy parting inhaled his snuff with preposterous loudness which reminded one of an asthmatic baboon.

   “Wo, omo eleniyan, o ri yen so”, he shouted and fell back asleep with thunderous snoring. Okon, who had staggered in moments earlier reeking of cheap alcohol and periwinkles and eyeing everybody with tipsy self-importance, saw an opportunity for his usual mischief and hanky-panky. He had fastened his gaze on a huge self-composed lady who sat quietly behind the crew taking notes and passing suggestions. He staggered up, ogling the lady with wild relish.

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“Bia, bia, no be you I been they check out for Mafoluku before before, abi na for Akowonjo sef?” the mad boy drawled, rocking on his feet in a drunken haze. The lady, a no-nonsense disciplinarian, rose to her full, frightening height ready to pounce on the urchin but was restrained by the crew who might have seen her in action before. She weighed at six foot six with ample bulk to match. Rumour swept the hall that she was a niece of the famous Giant Alakuku from Mbala in Isuochi and could beat up ten men put together.

   “Idiot, I have been warning you, this is where you will meet your Waterloo”, Baba Lekki charged.

“Baba, water no dey for loo for Oshodi again”, the mad boy slurred and fell back asleep. The interview resumed.

“Baba, one last question and it is about this Amaechi fellow. How can a former minister say he is hungry in this country?” the youngest member of the crew asked.

“You have answered your own question. You see, government na wicked people. I used to like that boy. But when you suddenly remove the federal feeding bottle from an old man of sixty after feeding continuously for twenty four years, he is bound to develop some social psychosis known as Post Traumatic Stomach Disorder, a mad craving for anything ingestible.” The old man responded with professorial solemnity.   After that, a massive power outage terminated proceedings. Okon was the first to jump out through the window.

June 8, 2025
The rise, rise and rise of capitalism (XXII)

By 1930, the USA was in deep recession and had become a patently uncomfortable place where at least, a small majority of them went to bed hungry virtually every night. Soon after that date, the situation had crept around the world as quickly as it could until it had become a global phenomenon. Almost a hundred years later, there is virtually nobody left to give an eye witness account of what the Great Depression was really like. But I can give a reliable account of what it meant at a personal level because my father left a written account of his own experience of the Great Depression.

According to my father who was twelve years old at the time, the Great Depression arrived in Nigeria, it came in the manner of a thunderclap in the middle of the dry season. According to him my grandfather was a comfortable textile dealer, a typical Ijesa osomalo who was also a Railway contractor on the side. The economic turbulence which had gripped Britain from the middle of the twenties had progressively interrupted the importation of textiles into Nigeria, to such an extent that his osomalo business had taken a hit over time. He was however able to keep his head above the waves by also dealing in agricultural produce, especially yams. He lived in a small railway town just outside Ilorin and from time to time shipped yams to Kano on the railway. On his last trip, he had loaded up his yams as usual but, by the time he got to Kano, the Great Depression had hit and nobody had cash enough with which to buy the yams he had come to sell. The tubers quickly rotted under the heat. And that was the end of his career as a successful osomalo. He had to relocate back to Ilesa where he became a reluctant and not so successful farmer. At that point in time, it appeared that the light had finally gone out on capitalism, worldwide. To get a grip on the knowledge of what it was to live under the hellish conditions of the Great Depression, the fictional description of it in Grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck is worthy of consultation. A pithy paraphrase of the book is that it is a catalogue of examples of man’s cruelty to man as the big men consumed little men with unbounded relish. All part of the allure of capitalism.

My grandfather’s experience with the Great Depression was typical. It was not only personal but was also generic, as it was universal. All around the world people suffered without respite and without hope of amelioration of individual and collective conditions under which they toiled for little or no reward. It has to be said however that the practice of capitalism which had descended on the people, even those living in the most advanced societies of the world, was a far cry from what it has become.

The practice of capitalism in those days was described as laissez-faire, that is, just about everything and anything went. The rules governing capitalism were so loose that government was allowed to do no more than hover in the background as long as it did not interfere with whatever was going on. Even when it interfered however, it did so on the side of the capitalists. Under such conditions, the big man was allowed to get bigger by feasting on the legions of small men who did not even have the benefit of a safety net under them. For example, when the price of coal fell in Britain, the mine owners simply reduced the inadequate wages that they paid to their miners and compounded the situation by increasing the number of hours that the miners spent on the coal face. They were able to do this because a miner who lost his job simply starved to death as there was not even a shadow of social security. Pensions were non-existent and to retire was to be put to pasture. There to fade away and die in some considerable discomfort. People like my grandfather who lived in a colony on what can be described as the periphery of global civilization were simply lucky to be alive in any real meaning of the word. For them, capitalism was nothing but a force of nature, to be endured. From the point of view of most casual observers to the most fervid supporters of capitalism, it was clear that the system needed a hefty reboot. But that was much easier said than done, at least until the Great Depression arrived to force the issue. It was time to unveil the New Deal.

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There were presidential elections in the US in 1932, at a time when the country was in the grip of the Great Depression. The Democratic candidate was the Governor of New York, the patrician Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt had been a one time Republican President of the USA from 1901 to 1909. Before the election, he campaigned vigorously on the platform of what he called the New Deal and won in a landslide over Herbert Hoover, the incumbent president. In so doing, it was clear that he took office in 1933 with an obvious mandate to clean out the Aegean stables which the economy had become, by any means necessary. Furthermore, the situation he met on ground had become so toxic that Roosevelt did not have the luxury of time. He not only had to do something he had to do whatever was needed to be done very quickly. Fortunately, he had everything planned before taking over and so, he hit the ground running as soon as he took office. A review of his first one hundred days in office showed a healthy report card of activity and established the tradition of judging the achievement of American Presidents by what they had achieved or, not achieved after the first one hundred days of their term. To tell the truth, Roosevelt had so much on his plate that those first one hundred days in office could not but be remarkable. By that time, he had restored a good measure of confidence to banks whose vaults were once more filling up with cash which could be invested in new ventures to create jobs for many of the millions of people who had been jobless for far too long. These people could in turn contribute to the amount of money in circulation and in doing so, help to kick-start and stabilise the economy. There were successful moves to create jobs, many of them temporary but sufficient to put a noticeable dent in the number of those out of work and turn the government into a major employer of labour. In order to bring farmers in from the cold, food prices were increased and rural areas began to recover from the deprivation brought about by collapse brought about by farm closures. The most important achievement of those whirlwind hundred days was that the new President was able to pass no less than fifteen acts and seventy-seven laws through Congress. All were designed to build an enduring platform on which a new and improved form of capitalism could be built. This was done just in time to save capitalism from collapsing into wrack and ruin. The subsequent rise and rise of capitalism can be said to have been predicated on its reset at that critical juncture.

The effects of the New Deal went far beyond the limits of the economy as it also changed the social and political landscape of the USA profoundly. Some of the aspects of the New Deal were frankly socialist in nature, none more so than the act establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This institution was a government body which built dams in the Tennessee valley and not only supplied hydroelectric power to a wide area but was also responsible for the irrigation of extensive farmlands. This public corporation was set up in an area which lacked the most basic forms of social infrastructure and had to cope with poverty and neglect. Ninety years on the TVA remains one of the most efficient suppliers of electricity in the USA. It may be one of the most reliable power providers in the country but it is the only one such facility that is government owned. Roosevelt generated such tremendous political momentum that he remains the only President of the United States who won four presidential elections even though he died soon after he won his fourth term in office. He built up a large coalition of Democratic voters made up of labour unions, intellectuals, urban residents, ethnic minorities especially African Americans and whites in the rural South. This ensured that the Republicans were kept out of power until David Eisenhower broke their duck in 1952, to end twenty straight years of Democratic succession. There are still many social goals anchored on New Deal principles which are yet to be realised. But even then, the face of capitalism has undergone a fundamental change from what it was at the time of the Great Depression but there is still a long way to go before a truly human face can be attached to capitalism in the country which more than any other sets the tone for the practice of capitalism. The relentless growth of inequality within the USA is proof that over the last couple of decades, the poor have become noticeably poorer at a time when the rich are gathering virtually all the wealth unto themselves. This situation, like the Great Depression is being exported to other parts of the world and it is becoming an existential threat to the rise and rise of capitalism.

The Great Depression came long before my time but it has had a great impression on the trajectory of my life. It had such a devastating effect on my father that he turned his back on the world of trade and commerce into which he had been born and with the unwavering encouragement of his father became a teacher, a career path into which I was recruited as a matter of course. Without that background, I probably would not have been in the position to write this article.

June 8, 2025