The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Beneficiaries of terrorism

    Beneficiaries of terrorism

    The lamentations of the governor of Benue State, Fr. Hyacinth Alia, and that of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, must have reached the ears of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), who was recently in Katsina State on a state visit. The president had promised to reclaim the communities now occupied by terrorists, who invade and then occupy communities when they think the coast is clear. PBAT made the promise while addressing elders and leaders of Katsina State at a dinner held in his honour.

    While the forests of Katsina and other north-western states are in the throes of attacks and occupation by terrorists and armed bandits, their experience is slightly different from Benue and Plateau states. There, the nation is on war footing with the bandits who are holding up in the vast forests as the war rages on. The bandits remain legitimate targets to be neutralised, anytime they come in contact with our gallant soldiers, and they cannot under any guise become legitimate occupiers of the forests they are fighting from.

    But there is a difference from the situation in Benue and Plateau states, where after the attackers have wreaked havoc with their AK47 and AK49 rifles, the beneficiaries saunter in with their cows and packs, and sooner than later become legitimised occupiers. This writer urges the Federal Government to treat all those who are illegitimately occupying the communities of other people, whether as bandits, terrorists or armed herders, as the same. Those who are seeking to occupy, or are occupying communities, after their surrogates had done the fighting, should all be flushed out, for peace to reign.

    This writer was excited when PBAT promised to use technology to flush out these occupiers, who have turned Nigerians into internally displaced persons in their country. It is absurd that while the owners of the land are living as IDPs, herders are living in the abandoned communities, on the pretence that they are different from the invaders who chased the owners of the land away from their land. The latter-day beneficiaries may be the recruiters of the terrorists.

    PBAT was on point when, according to his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, he said: “investment is cowardly, and it will not go where there is banditry and terrorism.” I urge the affected governors to join hands with the president to deliver on the promise: “we will invest more in technology and take over the forests. Security is a national issue, not just at the local or regional levels. If we need investment in Nigeria, we must address insecurity.”

    The governors of Benue and Plateau must gird their loins, and stop lamenting like the biblical Rachael. The claim by Governor Alia that the invaders may have come from Mali does not disavow the fact that the beneficiaries are localised. Has the governor never heard of hired mercenaries? Governor Alia had said: “But these folks (the attackers) are coming in fully armed with AK-47s and 49s. They do not bear the Nigerian look. They don’t speak like we do. Even the Hausa they speak is one sort of Hausa.” He continued: “It’s not the normal Hausa we Nigerians speak. So it is with the Fulani they speak. There is a trend in the language they speak, and some of our people who understand what they speak give it names. They say they are Malians and different from our people. But they are not Nigerians—believe it.”

    While the governor may be correct in his analysis of the invaders who are terrorising Benue, clearly the local herdsmen benefit from the fallout of the attacks. In neighbouring Plateau State, Governor Caleb Mutfwang said of the terrorist attacks: “We have not less than 64 communities that have been displaced and their lands have been taken over by these terrorists.” And these shenanigans had been going on well before PBAT took over from former President Muhammadu Buhari. Without hesitation, those who are now on the land should be sent back to where they came from so that the owners of the land can return to their homes.

    Mutfwang described the modus operandi of the terrorists thus: “When people are dislocated from their villages and they have to run for shelter, now we are struggling to provide shelter for these people that have been displaced and dislocated from their communities.” He went on: “If they stay away from those communities for a sustained period of time, the terrorists would come in. As I am talking to you today, in Riyom Local Government Area, in Barikin Ladi Local Government Area, schools have been occupied by these terrorists for almost a number of years now.”

    It is strange that while the national army fights to displace the bandits and terrorists who have forcefully occupied the forests, those who have taken over the communities of our compatriots in the middle-belt states seem to be treated with kid gloves. They should be treated as accomplices to the mayhem and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by these terrorist invaders. The longer they are allowed to stay in the communities, the more complicated the situation becomes, and before long, the claim that they have become indigenous to the area will gain traction.

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    The nation cannot have peace if the same disease with the same symptoms is treated differently. PBAT should be encouraged by all well-meaning Nigerians, despite the distraction by political opponents, to hearken to the cry of Rev. Alia that his state is under siege. The governor said: “These terrorists are everywhere. We are under a siege. These people just come and hit and kill and run back. Where are they running to?” He provided an answer: “The terrorists have their own havens in Taraba, Nasarawa, and in border regions of Cameroon.”

    He said the attacks are well coordinated and the communities that share borders with Cameroon are very porous. Clearly, the nation’s army is getting more stretched. New frontiers of war are opening by the day. To further compound the challenges facing our country, and other poor nations, US President Donald Trump is doing every unreasonable thing within his power to precipitate another round of economic recession in the world, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionist agenda is stoking world economic distemper.

    If Nigeria’s political elite could come to their senses, they would join forces to stem rising terrorism across the country that can upend our democratic journey. Governor Mutfwang ironically captures the need for collaboration. He had said: “Under the last regime, the feeling among people in Plateau State, particularly the victims of these terrorist attacks, is that it looks as if the terrorists were given official government backing to be able to terrorise them because little or nothing was done to repel these attacks.” So, what about now?

  • Torpedo Atiku

    Torpedo Atiku

    Not a few have tagged the current PDP blowout and death-in-slow-motion as Hurricane BAT.  Maybe.  In politics, there is often no smoke without fire.

    But no one needs any smoke to see the clear fire Torpedo Atiku poses to the former federal ruling party.  Desperate for personal glory, Torpedo Atiku waits, with bated breath, to blast into smithereens, whatever remains of the unmourned PDP.

    It’s the umpteenth mirage of a presidential dream — abortive and aborted since 1993 — calling again, in 2027!  For that grand cloud-chasing, Atiku won’t blink an eyelid to further rip the storm-ravaged umbrella. 

    Which explains why the most excitable Atiku rabble, on X and FB, are already piping Atiku-Obi as a sure-bet new deal for 2027 — a certified failure beaten black-and-blue in 2019; a cross-failure that cleaned out each other, on mutual power greed, in 2023!

    Hey, it’s a democracy!  Folks are entitled to own democratic delusions!

    Still, Atiku and PDP fit each other pat — neither person nor corporate is capable of sober self-x-ray, talk less of galling home truths.  Which is why both would likely roil from crisis to crisis, until they mutually self-destroy.

    Nigerian politics would be much better for such. Anyone with Atiku’s crass insensitivity to a North-South political balance of 2023, yet seems willy-nilly set for a terrible encore in 2027, is well and truly beyond redemption.

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    The same goes for a party that, for 16 years, led Nigeria to perdition.  Now, it feels by weaponizing the current challenges it would, open sesame, charm its way through as a voter darling, in a national emergency.  More deluded than hitherto thought!

    But again, it’s the grim PDP tale that hardly ever changes: no thanks to its leaders — coarse and rough power dealers — that crudely over-reach themselves.

    As former President Olusegun Obasanjo worked tooth-and-nail to banish PDP into the power Siberia — with his raw and nasty power projections — former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, is working extra-time to be its undertaker-in-chief, with his insensate power manoeuvres.

    Even to the obtuse, it is clear that Atiku is the Alpha and Omega of PDP’s present bind — and terminal trauma.

    It was he that pushed northern solidarity — euphemism for Arewa  clannishness — to rubbish a North/South rotation understanding.  By that, he won the PDP presidential ticket.  But he also severed PDP from its traditional southern satellites since 1999.

    In that, he had a deputy wrecker-in-chief in Peter Obi who, with brilliant foxtrot in the cynical gaming of “Christian” votes and total mop-up of clannish Igbo votes, wiped out the PDP from much of the South East and South-South. 

    Yet, on the opportunistic platform of the Labour Party (LP), Obi ultimately laboured in vain.  It’s that tragically self-neutralizing, mutually destroying, ultra-selfish ticket of 2023, that empty dreamers are dusting up for 2027!

    But back to Torpedo Atiku, and his northern agenda for raw personal gains.  If a giddy northern — let-the-rest-of-the-country-go-to-blazes — agenda was not clear when wily Aminu Tambuwal, ex-Sokoto governor, stepped down for Atiku to clean out Nyesom Wike from the PDP ticket, the aftermaths left little doubt.

    Instead of throwing some fobs to placate the hurt PDP southern wing, by sacrificing Dr. Iyorchia Ayu as national chairman, Atiku decided to ride the storm, insisting that the Ayu issue would be addressed after he had been elected president!

    That was Atiku’s sweet dream.  But in harsh post-2023 defeat, Atiku has not only become flotsam, and Ayu jetsam, the PDP ship itself is battered by the storm!

    Now, aside the huge cost of Atiku’s hubris turned awry, what of the question of Wike as vice-presidential pick, and the resultant G-5 (the five PDP dissenting Governors) rebellion?

    Well, in fairness to Atiku, it’s only one stricken by political lunacy that would pick Wike as No. 2!  The ever-boisterous Wike is either No. 1 or nothing.  He has proved that with stellar performance as Rivers governor and FCT governor-like minister. 

    So, let no one blame Atiku for looking beyond Wike as No. 2.

    Still, how do the Greeks put it: those the gods want to destroy they first make mad?  As much as dropping Wike as No. 2 made eminent political sense, it fitted perfectly into the sundry comedy of errors that plagued the Atiku-Ifeanyi Okowa ticket — on which ex-Governor Okowa just shed penetrating light, after the Delta PDP sink into APC.

    Even after that, Atiku would unabashedly proceed to brand himself the “northern” candidate, who must vacuum-clean the vote of the “North”.  That, from the results, did not work out too well.

    Which makes it extremely rich that the unapologetic “northern” candidate of 2023 is now busy coupling a so-called pan-Nigeria coalition, if not dream merger of political forces, for 2027!  It’s a Teflon Atiku classic!

    What’s more?  The same Atiku thought so little about brandishing PDP as the core to gather that coalition and possible merger — the same PDP Atiku had scattered, with insensate power dream and greed? 

    And for nothing beyond a personal dash for 2027, for which he ruined the same party in 2023?  What presumptuousness! Talk again of Torpedo Atiku! Little wonder, the PDP governors gave him the cold shoulder! 

    It’s clear PDP is considerably more weakened, no thanks to Atiku’s soulless gambits.  That’s driving a fresh elite power pacting en route to 2027, the most spectacular of which has been the Delta PDP meltdown, which might yet repeat itself in Akwa Ibom, and maybe shake up LP in Abia — who knows, given the frank, though double-speak, interview Governor Alex Otti just granted Arise TV?

    Now, with all of these excitements, is President Bola Tinubu’s re-election a done deal, even with the president not attaining mid-term until May 29?  Hardly!

    Yes, the elite re-pacting would greatly reshape the election-time dynamics in 2027, radically away from what obtained in 2023. So, those busy misguiding themselves, and thrusting Atiku-Obi, based on 2023 election stats, know they only blow hot gas.

    Yet, the Tinubu government would have to account for its tough policies. 

    Indeed, Governor Tinubu of Lagos (1999-2007), that charmed everyone with his “pragmatic democratic welfarism” (to borrow a Tatalo Alamu coinage) — and started the payment of students’ WAEC fees, later copied and mainstreamed by other states, across party lines — has returned as President Tinubu with hard (many would insist: harsh) neo-liberal policies!

    Sign of the tough times that need equally tough remedies?  Maybe — and in fairness, the stats from the economic front tend to show the patient is “responding to treatment” to borrow that medical cliche.

    Yet, to the masses, it hasn’t quite trickled down — which is why the Atikus, the Obis, the el-Rufais etc, of this polity, would weaponize current anguish and position selves as emergency saviours.  They are not.

    But it’s the president’s heavy cross to either explain the delayed trickle-down — and good luck on that, with empty pockets and rumbling tummies! — or ensure the trickle-down bursts into a manna-like torrent to sate the hungry and tame the angry!

    As for the PDP slow death, blame Torpedo Atiku, and less Hurricane BAT!

  • In defence of Okowa

    In defence of Okowa

    I sympathise with former governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State who has suddenly become the poster child for PDP’s self-inflicted afflictions. He is today going through great stress and strain for hearkening to the call of his people for a change of direction after 26 years of faithful marriage to PDP.

    The April 23 divorce train was led by Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, his predecessor and PDP’s 2023 vice presidential candidate Ifeanyi Okowa, his deputy, the elected national and state house of assembly members as well as elected local council officials.

    The justification for the mass defection was well articulated by various stakeholders. First was the Delta State Commissioner for Works (Rural Roads) and Public Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu, who explained that the decision to jilt the PDP was born out of “the need to align with a political platform that would better serve the development goals of the state and the interests of Deltans.”

    There was also the pioneer PDP Chairman in the state, Senator James Manager, who reminded critics that “when a ship is sinking, you don’t stay onboard out of sentiment,” adding, “we had extensive consultations, and today marks the climax of those discussions, what we have now is a collective and unanimous decision to chart a new course.”

    And for OKowa , the one receiving various diatribes from PDP members who rather than put out the raging inferno in their own house engaged in a two-year game of intrigue over sharing of political offices, the defection to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was “a bold and strategic move to change their path for the common good of the people; it was not about the governor, but the fact that there is the need for us to connect to Abuja… that resource of which Delta State is a large contributor, there was a need to connect to it.”

    And perhaps no one explained the defection better than Governor Sheriff Oborevwori himself. “Ten years was too long a time to be in opposition,” he bellowed to an excited crowd of defectors. He was right. Peoples of Niger Delta have always been mainstreamers since the run up to independence in 1960. We will come to that shortly.

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    Okowa shouted himself hoarse explaining it was not about him but about his people. But there has been no respite from his disconsolate PDP former family members who shouted in anger: “You too Brutus”? They have accused him of betraying the body that has given him everything to become relevant in Nigerian politics. As a former secretary to government, a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and a two-term governor of oil rich Delta, where leaders spend money like water, and finally as vice presidential candidate of PDP that had after its truncated 16 years in power hoped to reign for another 60 years, what else does Okowa want, they asked with uninhibited contempt.

    At war with Okowa is a formidable group of his former PDP members who are unfortunately tarred with the same brush.  Former Senate President Saraki who in the guise of “some people” first accused his former APC party of disingenuously designing “A one-party state which will not augur well for a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multicultural, multi-religious… society like ours,” went on to tell Okowa that “it is unbecoming and shocking for the running mate to the standard bearer of a leading party to abandon ship to join the ruling party.”

    Senator Abba Moro, the minority leader of the senate, has said picking Okowa who could not deliver his state in the 2023 election, despite having lobbied for the slot, was “a political miscalculation.”

    But Okowa, drawing his conclusion from Atiku’s statement, insisted the VP slot was foisted on him, without first seeking his consent, by PDP oligarchy at the centre. But as it turned out, Atiku who said Okowa’s choice was based on PDP’s recommendation was also being economical with the truth. Evidence now in the public domain showed that, of the 17 PDP stalwarts that participated in the VP selection process, 14 voted for Wike. Atiku’s calculation for picking Okowa was probably informed by the expectation that the governor of an oil-rich Delta, who earned in one month what some states earn in a year, would be able to bankroll his (Atiku) campaign expenses the same way Ibori was said to have done for Yar’adua in 2007.

    And this unfortunately was the reason Okowa’s travails started long before the current toxic divorce of Delta PDP from its suitor of 26 years. Indeed, long before the 2023 election, Pa Clark, the leader of Pan Niger Delta Forum, (PANDEF) and Southern and Middle-Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF), had in a letter dated February 2, 2023, accused Okowa of betrayal for reneging on southern governors’ resolutions that no politician from the South should accept to be running mate to a northerner.

    Pa Clark alleged Okowa was using Delta State money to fund Atiku’s campaign. But since it was Pa Clark who also told us that Ibori funded Yar’adua’s election, why was it difficult for Pa Clark to understand that poor OKowa was merely following a tradition? And if, indeed, Okowa actually used part of the 13 percent derivation to build a university in his village the same way Ibori deployed the same facility to build a university in Oghara village, I don’t think Okowa owed Pa Clark any apology.

    And finally, Pa Clark, in June 2023, alleged that Okowa as governor of Delta misappropriated the state’s derivation fund amounting to N1.760trillion.

    But If I have to make a choice between Okowa and Pa Clark, I will settle for the former. First, until EFCC proves its case against Okowa, he remains innocent. Secondly, Pa Clark is not an impartial arbiter among his errant children some of whom in the guise of struggle for distributive justice engage in criminal activities against the state.

    In any case, Pa Clark, while alive, knew the word corruption did not exist in the Niger Delta lexicon. It is not on record that he contradicted Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida’s deputy, when he declared that “diversion of resources meant for development was not corruption but “misapplication of funds.” We similarly don’t have any evidence that Pa Clark, as self-appointed “father of the President,” ever faulted President Jonathan’s assertion that “stealing government funds was not corruption.”

    For Deltans, allegations against or even indictments of leaders who swear by their names for financial malfeasance only endear them to their leaders. If there were people complaining, they were not short-changed Deltans but must be meddlesome interlopers.

    Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed seized some ill-acquired properties of Diete Spiff, who became governor of Rivers at 25. He is today a leading traditional ruler in Bayelsa. Obasanjo chased Diepreye Alamieyeseigha around the world, haunted Odili until he was saved by the judiciary, and after failing to secure the conviction of Ibori by Nigerian courts, took the battle to London where he ensured his conviction for 10 years by the British judiciary.

    Unfortunately, his impoverished Deltans were not amused. All those desperate efforts did not stop those whose battle Obasanjo was waging from worshipping Ibori, their hero.

    In fact, Ibori was welcomed back to Nigeria after serving his jail term by a tumultuous crowd of his enthusiastic people. There were close to a dozen Bishops in the jam-packed Otefe-Ogara village church during the thanksgiving service for his safe return from prison.

    And now let us return to Delta pre-independence resolve to remain ‘mainstreamers.’  Rather than persecution, Okowa deserves only accolades for resurrecting the dreams and aspirations of his people The truth is that Delta has since 1963 never been in opposition.

    Having experienced persecution and marginalisation from their more aggressive and more diplomatic Igbo and Yoruba neighbours, they opted to become ‘mainstreamers,’ aligning themselves with the dominant ruling NPC party from the north.

    While the Binis and Itshekiris, because of their cultural affinity with the Yoruba, found more accommodation with Awo’s AG, with the NCNC victory after the 1952 regional election and its takeover of Midwest after its creation, the Urhobos, the Ijaws, Isokos etc. found themselves “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” With the advice of minority rights agitators like Pa Clark, they chose to cast their lot with the ruling majority.

    Critics must, therefore, understand that Delta’s marriage to PDP between 1999 and 2023 was not out of altruism. It was because PDP provided a fertile ground for their cultural demand and even their licentiousness. What Oborevwori and Okowa are today saying is that Deltans are not obliged to make further sacrifices.

  • Julia and her sons

    Julia and her sons

     In his story in The Nation on Sunday, Olatunji Ololade writes a story about Hurti, one of the villages that saw plunder and death from their neighbours who are not Nigerians.

    And I was drawn by the story of Julia.

    A mother of two, she could not take his children with her when she ran to safety. She might have chosen her life instead of her own offspring.

    From the bush, she looked at her home while the goons slaughtered both children.

    “There lay her sons, still and scorched, flies buzzing over their carcasses…” writes Ololade of Julia taking inventory of the butchery of her family.

    This is the sort of choice that a parent should never make.

    That is what these marauders have wrought in Plateau.

    No one can justify this. Shall we blame the mother for staying alive?

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    Now, what kind of maternal conscience will be left of her?

    Should she have died with her kids? Shouldn’t she have died with her kids?

    This is what is called Sophie’s Choice, based on William Styron’s novel of that title.

     It’s a story of a mother who must decide which of her kids she must surrender to the Nazis and which one she should keep. If there was no holocaust, the choice would not come. In the novel, the question is asked, where was God?

    And response is, where was man? Styron poses this question, but it was first propounded in Harper Lee’s novel, To kill A Mocking Bird.

    The implication is that if God is in man, why is man – all of us – failing God and ourselves?

  • Anyaoku’s true federalism alert

    Anyaoku’s true federalism alert

    The urgent need to institutionalise true federalism in the country resonated last week in Enugu during the 14th Chief Emeka Anyaoku Lecture Series on Good Governance.

    Speaker after speaker took turns during the lecture titled, “The Imperative of Good Governance: Nigeria in a Global Comparative Perspective,” to draw attention to the link between the practice of true federalism in a plural society and political stability. Anyaoku took the lead by renewing his appeal for Nigeria to adopt true federalism with a warning that the country risks disintegration if it continues its current centralised structure.

    Drawing parallels with other multi-ethnic societies that collapsed under similar strains, the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth and elder statesman said only a new democratic constitution that reflects Nigeria’s diversity can save Nigeria from such fate.

    “Other multi-ethnic countries that failed to address their pluralism through federalism have since disintegrated. Nigeria must not continue along this part,” he warned.

    The line was also toed by former Foreign Affairs Minister Ike Nwachukwu who said Nigeria’s centralised system is fundamentally flawed. Nwachukwu said it was for this reason he has been “advocating the restructuring of Nigeria into a proper federation.”

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    For him, state autonomy is critical as it brings governance closer to the people, enabling them to harness their local resources for development.

    In his keynote address, Nigeria’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, called for a radical rethinking of governance, starting with structural changes.

    “There is an urgent need to significantly devolve power to the people through restructuring,” he said even as he called for a rejig of the leadership recruitment process, retooling of the state to serve as a guarantor of security and unity to foster new elite consensus.

    There is a common thread around the issues raised by the three speakers. They revolve around a new constitution that reflects Nigeria’s diversity to save it from disintegration, diluting the centralised system of government and power devolution through restructuring. They speak of the same challenge from different angles. But the issues are not entirely new.

    Agitations for restructuring to guarantee true federalism both in its spirit and practice have been a recurring decimal in the country’s political journey over time. They were intense during the early years of Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999 and have further been accentuated by events of the recent past and the present. And they will continue to be so, assuming dangerous dimensions until they are realistically and genuinely addressed to the satisfaction of the constituents.

    The response of former president Obasanjo to agitations for restructuring and true federalism was the setting up of the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) in 2005. Its purpose was to strengthen democratic institutions, and address issues of national unity and stability.

    The conference made far-reaching recommendations in the area of political party reforms, decentralisation of election management and integrating technology for transparency in election management. Other recommendations included state creation to ensure parity between geo-political zones and ensure the stability of existing ones and power rotation for executive positions at the federal, state and local government levels.

    Equitable revenue sharing process, the establishment of constitutional courts to handle presidential election petitions and serve as an appellate court for gubernatorial, national and state assembly elections were also some of the highlights of the recommendations.

    These recommendations could not be implemented before that administration wound up. It is speculated that events surrounding the purported tenure elongation moves of the Obasanjo administration were largely responsible for the non-implementation of the high-minded recommendations of the NPRC.

    The tempo of agitations did not abate when the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administration came on board such that Jonathan, after the death of his boss, inaugurated the National Conference (NC) to address the contentious issues of our federal order and advance Nigeria’s unity, progress and development.

    The recommendations of the NC included the scrapping of the 774 local governments in the country with states granted autonomy to establish their own local government structure, a modified presidential system, power sharing and rotation (rotation between the north and the south and among the six geopolitical zones), a reduction of the federal government’s share of national revenue with a corresponding increase for states and reversion to the old National Anthem.

    Jonathan was unable to implement the recommendations before he left office. He rationalised his inability to implement the conference recommendations, blaming it on mass defections in the then national assembly. According to him, the mass defections led by the then speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, made it impossible for him to send the report to the national assembly. This may be correct.

    As could be seen, all administrations since the return to civil rule in 1999, except that of Muhammadu Buhari, empanelled national conferences to address nagging issues of our federal structure accentuated by the way the constitution heralding civil rule was put together by the military. These agitations were also very potent as Buhari held sway.

    But he had a different attitude to them even as some of his policies which were heavily skewed in favour of the north did a lot to reinforce the imperative for true federalism and restructuring.

    Today, the issues are still as potent as they were when Obasanjo and Jonathan organised conferences but failed to implement their recommendations. All the key issues – revenue allocation, devolution of powers, state creation, electoral reforms, power rotation between the north and the south and among the six geo-political zones – are still with us. As a matter of fact, some of them have assumed such dangerous proportions that they now pose serious threats to the nation’s corporate existence.

    These can be located in the cascading insecurity across the country with some of the non-state actors professing weird ideologies that do not make for national cohesion. It can be seen in mass defections to the ruling parties at both the federal and state levels. It is more pronounced at the federal level because of the huge resources at the command of that level of governance and the lure to share from it.

    It is evident in the increasing slide to prebendalism (the struggle to capture political power for members of one’s ethnic group and his family). Prebendalism is reinforced when allegations of nepotism and skewed appointments at the federal level are freely traded.

    Dearth of serious opposition and intolerance to dissent leading to increased fears of a slide to a one-party state and the fad of gravitating to the party in government so as to ‘belong’ are clear evidence of the inability of our leaders to manage diversity. It therefore serves no useful purpose to leave issues fundamental to our national existence to the whims and caprices of leaders without constitutional safeguards.

    Even then, allegations on the flouting of such constitutional issues as the reflection of the federal character principles in appointments have overtime been freely traded. All these point to the inevitability of a new democratic constitution that truly reflects and guarantees the diversities of the constituents.

    The recommendation that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south and among the six geo-political zones is reinforced by rising accusations of nepotism and favouritism in appointments. It is a key constitutional change that will stabilise this country. Let it go around! By the time all sections must have had a taste of it, maybe the right lessons on how to manage a plural society would have been learnt.

    What the country requires now is not the piecemeal and largely uncoordinated amendments of the constitution which the national assembly is currently into but an entirely new constitution that properly reflects the diversities in the country through true federalism.

  • One party hysteria

    One party hysteria

    It was a month of realignment. A quake, or just the beginning of it.

    A month when a party and its bigwigs failed and fell.

    Poet T.S. Eliot would have a take on the month of April in Nigeria.

    He called it the cruelest month in a poem he called The Wasteland.

    For the APC, it was a plum hour, a harvest.

    But for those who disavowed the Delta State transplant of the PDP to APC, it was a quake.

    They damned the defectors as rakes in public.

    In private, they quail. To borrow from Eliot, they may even call it a murder in the cathedral, since they see the move as corrupting the holy of holies of our politics.

    The Sheriff of Delta calls it not just a move but a movement.

    The same people who, a few weeks earlier, boasted with rhapsodies about the virtue of coalition.

     The same people who held a meeting of fiasco in Ibadan about turning PDP into a formidable opposition.  They wanted to stretch the umbrella into a tent.

    They wanted to do a copycat of the APC and how it embraced others to dethrone the PDP.

    Suddenly, it is a sin to embrace, and have a bearhug with others.

    To make a big tent is a threat to democracy.

     It is the beginning of the end of the republic. It is the sign that Tinubu is an emperor, or the seeds of an imperial presidency.

    What aches this essayist is the convenient hypocrisy of it all.

     Also, the intentional blindness of commentators who have woken up with a loss of memory. They also have forgotten the mechanics of politics. They have made opposition into a sacred vestry that brooks no blood of fowl from the child of iniquity.

    When they bond, it is bound to be right. When others do, it is a taboo.

    Is politics not a game of influence? Is it not an enterprise of power? Is it not a platform for the aggregation of interests, and the flowering of dialogues and streamlining cacophonies into voices of conquests?

    If APC did it right with the Sheriff, why are they complaining? The hypocrisy is the claim that APC was doing what had never been done before, What history? Many need to read their history books. PDP is no Roman history. Were we not here when it controlled 28 states? Who spoke of a one-party state then. APC controls 23 states and so Tinubu is crushing the opposition!

    It is not the job of the ruling party to feel sorry for an opposition. It is not in the DNA of democracy to ask parties to share meals in equal measure. You take what you can so long as you do not break the law. It is Hobbesian licence of democracy.

    Some have asserted that it was a blackmail on the PDP in Delta State? Some have even asserted that it was because of Okowa? Okowa is not a hectoring former governor. It is not possible for one man to strong-arm the party in that manner.

     The governor had, before the Okowa love affair with the EFCC, given a hint with his sympathy for the president and Tinubu’s support for his administration in Delta State.

    When we have no answer, we create a question. That is the excuse. Let us not forget that coalitions did not begin with this republic. Did we not have it in the First Republic? Did we not have it in the Second Republic? Why shall we become sinners if we do it in this Republic?

    But it was not so bad until the wrong people do it.

    It is only good when we do it. It is like the West that believes no one should have nuclear options but themselves.

    In the First Republic, one of the big advocates of coalition was the icon of the progressives himself: Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    He wanted a coalition to win, but he just did not possess the cunning and opportunity to pull it off.

     Was Awo not the soul behind the United Progressive Grand Alliance )UPGA) and it comprised Awo’s Action Group (AG), Zik’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and Joseph Tarka’s United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC).

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    The other was Nigeria National Alliance (NNA) that combined the renegade Akintola’s Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) with Balewa’s Northern People’s Congress (NPC).

    Was it not in the First Republic that Awo at the electoral deadlock called Zik to blend with the AG with the offer to become prime minister and he would serve as finance minister? Awo, unlike how he is made to look, was not always a political stiff neck. He had instances of strategic flexibilities.

    In the Second Republic, Awo wanted to fight Shagari and his National Party of Nigeria (NPN), and he went into an alliance to form the Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA) that included the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) under Awo, the Nigeria People’s Party (NPP) under Zik, the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) under Aminu Kano and Great Nigerian People’s Party (GNPP) under Ibrahim Waziri of the “politics without bitterness” fame.

    The coalition ran upon the rock, but we cannot blame Awo for not trying, and we cannot say Awo was averse to pragmatism.

    So, those who twirl ideological purity about the Awo cast him as a naïve and doctrinaire straitjacket.

    Ideological purity is a myth. Not even the Marxist in the heydays could exercise it without consequence.

     Lenin easily backtracked and gave Russia its New Economic Policy, mixing Marx with Adam Smith. Mao tried with his cultural revolution until the system collapsed under the compulsion of the laissez-faire impulse of which China’s Xi is a new apostle facing down the Americans.

     Meanwhile, ideologues like Pol Pot, who saw Mao as model ruined their country in blood.

    Today, conservatism has put on a new look under Trump, while the  family Bush and even their favoured icon Reagan are now anachronisms.

    To be Republican was to be hawk in the world.

    Today, they recoil. Ditto the Brits. Conservatives of the past would have loved to trade with Europe.

    They doomed England to Brexit. Conservative philosophers like Hayek, Willam F. Buckley and Edmund Burke are being racked, rewritten and updated before our very eyes with tribal flavours.

    If any party beats another with great majority, it is called a landslide. Landslide is democracy’s language. So, it is no autocracy. If the other beats you, dust up your coat and get ready for a rematch.

    That is the character of democracy.

    The complainants are acting like sore losers even before the game begins. They are shouting foul because they sniff not just a defeat but a humiliation. They have seen a compass error in their flight.

    For the so-called detached pundits, they have to look back and look into their books on the philosophy of politics.

     I don’t want to recommend books.

    That will be condescending. T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland also mused about “mixing memory with desire.”

    But theirs is a desire without memory. When there is no memory, there cannot be memorials.

    Without it, how can we go forward? It means a lack of what is call historical consciousness.

    Let not envy rid us of our power to remember.

     Let’s replace hysteria with history.

  • Nasir el-Rufai’s vitriol, logic

    Nasir el-Rufai’s vitriol, logic

    There is little any one can do to expunge former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai from the front pages of newspapers or deny them prime mention on social media platforms. As the opening stages of the next election cycle get heated, they will say or do things that will get them good coverage, even if that coverage ends up undermining their political goals. While the former vice president has found it difficult to cobble together the coalition of his dream, Mallam el-Rufai has blissfully rolled out verbal incendiaries guaranteed to get him good mention in the dailies. And while both politicians now try to anchor their hopes on the underperforming Social Democratic Party (SDP), they have had little success in reining in the wild broncos of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP). So far, few notable politicians have openly associated with them, preferring to be tentative about the idea of a coalition, and averse to the brinkmanship that typifies Alhaji Atiku’s and Mallam el-Rufai’s unappeasable, self-centred politics.

    Meanwhile, the former Kaduna governor has developed a unique kind of politics, one that sees him oscillating between fawning and self-abnegation on the one hand and displaying meanness and dispensing vitriol on the other hand. He does not have many political leaders to fawn over at the moment, particularly in the opposition, except perhaps Alhaji Atiku; but there are dozens of hard and soft targets in the Bola Tinubu presidency, particularly the president, at whom to take potshots. And he will shoot without scruples, for he is a wounded lion. In the past few weeks, he has ladled out vitriol, copiously and remorselessly. Backed by the famous abjurer, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who was until recently a special adviser to the president, Mallam el-Rufai is a keen verbal marksman. Unprincipled like Alhaji Atiku, but more profligate with words, it matters little to him what side of the divide he is at any time: he will defend or excoriate either side with equal venom and plausibility, unconcerned with how his constant groveling or contradistinctive iconoclasm is interpreted.

    But Mallam el-Rufai has his head in the clouds. Speaking in Kano days ago, he referenced his consultations with SDP leaders amidst efforts to build a party that would not be owned or dominated by one man, such as the All Progressives Congress (APC) has done, or the PDP that had, in his words, become a spent force. Ignoring his own atrocious record in Kaduna State, where he denounced, alienated and oppressed dissenters, he spoke glibly about ensuring internal democracy in the SDP and eliminating ‘godfatherism’, his bogeyman. Alluding to the Delta State defections which have riled many politicians like him, he averred that sitting governors have one vote and can lose elections, citing his own example in the last presidential election when as APC governor he lost Kaduna to the PDP. He also cited the example of the president who lost Lagos, partly because, as he put it, ‘Lagosians don’t vote.’ Full of theory, disconnected from reality, including his own mordant reality, the domineering and meddlesome Mallam el-Rufai spoke of the SDP appeal as a party that geared towards resisting domination from anyone. He is of course untruthful.

    Fortunately for the country, the newsmen who interviewed him in Kano also asked him what kind of zoning arrangement the SDP would adopt in view of the present political realities of Nigeria. The party had not reached that bridge yet, let alone crossed it, he said. When they get to that point, the party would take a decision, insisting that they were looking for members at this point, people with which they could build the party, not ambitious politicians. Seriously? From Mallam el-Rufai, his imperial majesty and ambitious and grandiloquent politician? But he could never restrain himself for long; that is why he is a reporter’s delight. Sooner or later, regardless of his irreverence, he revealed where he stood. He is often too frank to dissemble. He, therefore, expatiated on the zoning thing; and here is what he said: “This country is facing an existential crisis. We may not have a country for you to contest for president if we continue the way we are going or if things get worse. So for me, I don’t care where the person comes from. But I want a candidate and a ticket that will do two things: that will offer solutions to Nigeria’s problems. Number two, who will excite Nigerians enough to come out and vote and defeat the APC government that is taking Nigeria backwards. So I don’t care if that person is you or anyone, I will support it. I don’t care. I can say it because we championed power shift. But where did the power shift take us? Should we stick to that even though the whole country is falling apart and things are not going well and the people in government are not listening and everyone is struggling other than those in government? I will no longer stand for the ‘president-must-come-from-here’ syndrome.”

    Put simply, Mallam el-Rufai, the closet Fulani exceptionalist, has no patience with propping up a southern candidate. This time, he wants a northern candidate, obviously because he anticipates that the SDP would mostly likely appeal to northern politicians and members at this point. Yes, they will do their best to expand both the base and reach of the party, but given the mood of the country and the suspicions convulsing the body politic, not many southerners of influence would stake their future on the SDP or Mallam el-Rufai’s theories, especially not after former Delta State governor Ifeanyi Okowa spoke ruefully about zoning and the mistakes that undid the PDP. Whether Mallam el-Rufai likes it or not, even if they manage to build the SDP to a fairly noticeable height, the party will come to grief on the Golgotha of presidential ambitions and zoning. Established parties had found it difficult to transcend the zoning crisis, and the APC barely managed to overcome it in 2023, while the PDP came unstuck. Even if they find the money, the SDP is unlikely to find the magic wand to placate its members when the ambitions of their leaders confront them.

    Read Also: El-Rufai: SDP not interested in merger, high profile politicians

    It is inescapable that campaign 2027 will be downright nasty. It will be brutal, tangled, ethnic, and bigoted. While the SDP will struggle to reach the critical mass its leaders intend for it, the party will not lack waspish defenders unafraid to plumb the depths of bitter and corrosive abuse to incite, inflame, and provoke conflagrations. Alhaji Atiku is implacable; he will do his damndest to portray his opponents in putrid light, but his efforts will probably be smothered by his unfulfilled desire to get a platform on which to run. Neither the PDP nor the SDP would avail him half the chance. But the wily, pretentious and equally ambitious Mallam el-Rufai will at the right time demonstrate that the former vice president is dispensable. He will go into alliances within the party and instigate revolts, if necessary, to position himself for rich pickings. He does not possess half as much altruism as he ascribes to himself and his politics. But if the defections the former Kaduna governor scorns continue to advantage the APC, Mallam el-Rufai will be left with the grim and daunting exercise of testing his theory about how many votes a governor can really command. However, in 2027, the governors’ influence will be consequential to the outcomes of the polls, regardless of how bitter and regional the campaigns turn out to be.

  • Delta eruptions: Rethinking Atiku’s 2023 defeat

    Delta eruptions: Rethinking Atiku’s 2023 defeat

    The massive defections enacted in Delta State by elected Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) officials on April 23 have inadvertently triggered the rethinking of former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s 2023 presidential election loss. Immediately after President Bola Tinubu was declared winner of the election, the PDP candidate and many of his supporters cried foul, swearing that their party lost unfairly by an indeterminate stratagem orchestrated by the APC candidate and his supporters. The PDP candidate, not to say the Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, anchored the loss on the APC candidate’s alleged lack of integrity and academic qualifications. Ignoring the argument that pre-election matters could not vitiate an election victory, the PDP went ahead to spend inordinate amount of resources and devoted huge social media, advertisement, and legal campaigns within and outside the country to prove that the APC lost. They pilloried the judiciary, stridently called for a coup d’état, while protesters and labour unions orchestrated industrial unrest and intensified a massive movement for unconstitutional change.

    For more than 15 or 16 months, there was no let up in the effort to stir up a national revolt. Despite the clear statistical import of the voting outcomes, in which the PDP and LP split the votes, not to say the PDP which was split into three factions going into the election, the exponents of the protests appeared convinced that there was no way the APC candidate could have won. They simply ignored statistics, and even tried to rewrite constitutional provisions undergirding the polls. Unperturbed by, or perhaps unaware of, the eerie danger of reenacting the 1993 presidential election with all its unpredictable and attendant tragic consequences, former president Olusegun Obasanjo weighed in by calling for the abortion of ballot collation. But shortly after the electoral umpire declared the winner, he called for mass action. He was also convinced that the APC did not win. However, nearly two years later, the same Chief Obasanjo began calling for a coalition of political parties to defeat the APC, suggesting that the balkanisation of the PDP led to its loss, and a merger or coalition of parties would do the magic.

    The man at the centre of the massive legal and social media challenge to the poll outcome, Alhaji Atiku, also recanted and began to campaign for a coalition to unseat the APC at the presidential level. The former PDP candidate’s pursuit of a powerful or mega coalition presupposes that he has finally succumbed to the logic that his loss was a result of the factionalisation of the party on which platform he contested the poll. He has not openly admitted that reality, but his actions indicate it. If he thought his loss was unrelated to the size and unity of his party, which he is projected to abandon soon for giving him cold shoulder on the coalition subject, he would not be advocating for coalition partners to unseat the APC. His search for a coalition, which he is pursuing without getting a consensus from the PDP, has, however, put him at cross-purposes with his party. His fellow party men, including many of the party’s governors, had whispered but are now saying it openly that they lost the 2023 poll, not because of any rigging by the APC, but because over the years, and unknown to their standard-bearer, he had become jaded and unelectable. They decry the idea of a coalition, and insist that had they reformed their party and respected their own zoning arrangement, they could have won. It has taken the Delta defections to welcome some of these reappraisals.

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    No one voices this new reality so powerfully like former running mate to Alhaji Atiku in the 2023 poll, Ifeanyi Okowa, a former Delta State governor. In a remark last week, he asserted that Alhaji Atiku lost the poll because the party violated its own zoning arrangement, a violation he claimed he now regretted because he did not realise it was so overwhelming during the poll. According to him, “Even when we were campaigning, I realised our people were not interested in having another northerner come into power. But the decision had already been taken at the federal level by the party, and I had been nominated. Still, in retrospect, I now believe I should have gone with the will of my people.” He attributed this alienation to the loss of his state during the presidential election and the regaining of the same during the governorship poll.

    Senate minority leader Abba Moro did not dispute the PDP’s loss of the election in his response to Dr Okowa’s recrimination. Reflecting on the new reality suffusing his party, the PDP, from top to bottom, Sen. Moro instead argued that it was in fact the selection of the former Delta State governor that caused the loss of the party’s presidential bid. He was unsparing: “It’s unfortunate today that at his level, having been a senator and governor before on the platform of the PDP, I think it’s uncharitable for him to be expressing regret about being the party’s running mate. He was not forced. He asked for it, and he was given…With the hindsight that we have now, some of us think that the party would have won the election if another candidate — other than Okowa — had been picked as the vice-presidential candidate from the South…I think there was an error of judgment on the part of everybody that was involved in the choice of Okowa as the candidate.”

    It has taken nearly two years of massive shifts in the polity, including defections and factionalisation, and the final realisation that no amount of threats to the republic would cause the collapse of the government, to compel opposition party leaders to accept their loss, whether they like President Tinubu or not. They have also slowly begun to accept the need to re-examine their methods and tactics, which failed them in 2023. It has taken the Delta defections to unearth uncomfortable truths many PDP leaders knew but were reluctant to voice out. But more than 15 or 16 months of living in denial, not to talk of the rebellion they irresponsibly tried to foment, the PDP thankfully failed to provoke anarchy, fracture the country, and orchestrate the collapse of the country in a replay of the 1993 tragedies that cost hundreds of life, birthed two dictatorships, and set the democratic clock back by decades.

  • Burkin Faso’s malevolent propaganda

    Burkin Faso’s malevolent propaganda

    Of the three military officers who forcefully took over the reins of office in the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic, Ibrahim Traore, an army captain, has run the most effective propaganda machine built on what his supporters describe as Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist ideology. At bottom, however, he has merely substituted Western hegemony with Russian hegemony. The latter is operated by Russian Africa Corps, a rechristening of the notorious Wagner Forces. Banded together in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), the three countries kicked out France and the United States, and delinked from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which had denounced the sacking of democracy in those countries.

    Capt. Traore’s propaganda exaggerates or fabricates economic development and social conditions in Burkina Faso, with most of the country’s economic indicators showing no sign of improvements. Even the main coup goals of solving the refugee crisis caused by insurgency, rebuilding the economy, and curbing the jihadist insurgency that has tripled death toll since the coup, have remained intractable. Instead, civil rights have been abridged, and democracy, suspended in 2022 after the coup, has been put on the backburner. Last Wednesday, less than one week after Capt. Traore claimed to have exposed a coup plot, thousands of demonstrators observing a ‘global day of support for Capt. Traore’ marched on Western embassies in London, Paris, Accra, Ouagadougou, Kingston, and other African cities to compel ‘imperialist powers’ to hands off Burkina Faso and the AES states. Some of them even threatened to burn down London should Capt. Traore die of natural causes. Let them try that with President Donald Trump.

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    The demonstrations, like the propaganda support for Capt. Traore, were reportedly inspired and funded by Russia which has sought to expand its turf wars with the West to the African continent. They have been effective, even if conditions on the ground in the AES have deteriorated. It is a mark of the specious reasoning assailing Africans, their love for showmanship, and their inability to take the long-term view of their future that they have once again embraced dictatorship and submitted and committed to an even more reactionary Russian tyrant. It is a sign of the poverty of thinking that Capt. Traore’s oppressive rule and malevolent and Russian-inspired propaganda have drawn applause from some Nigerians.

  • Between apotheosis and Apoti Osi

    Between apotheosis and Apoti Osi

    As the wave of defection from sinking parties and upended dugouts approached the scale of a furious tsunami, there is a feeling that the APC has arrived at its apotheosis, a moment of divine beautification when everything seems possible, when a political party carries all before it, and when every potential opposition appears to have crumbled. Its leading lights are wearing a smirk of self-satisfaction. They are justified. Never in the history of the nation has a party capitalized so mercilessly and benefited so profitably from the structural and ideological debilities of its rivals. And never has a single party become so dominant that it looms so large in the horizon. The only remote comparison one can think of is the PDP at the height of its glory when the party became a Leviathan sweeping all before it and brooking no opposition in the ordinary sense of that word. Its hierarchs boasted of a sixty-year Reich during which it would rule the roost uninterrupted and unchallenged.

      As things stand, the APC has bested its most formidable rival in all its hegemonic possibilities. The entire country has been reeling with shock and surprise. It is purely uncharted territory. Never in the history of the country have the citizens had to contend with a one-party state. As if to underscore the scary portents, a group of leading civil rights campaigners came out during the week, vowing to oppose every inch of the way any attempt to foist a one-party state on the nation because of its multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious polarities. It was like drawing a line in the sand. Dear readers, there are moments when the analyst feels that history repeats itself with such a wounding acuity and that truly the more things change the more they remain the same.

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    Exactly ten years ago after its historic triumph over the PDP, this column issued a travel advisory to the APC asking it to immediately put certain things in place if it were to avoid the dismal fate of its most formidable rival. This is what we are republishing this morning and even to the writer himself, it reads chillingly like the chronicle of an overreaching boa constrictor foretold, with the horns of an impala it had ingested sticking out of its own ruptured abdomen. But before we go, it is appropriate to leave with a delightful vignette from the nation’s history.

      After a historic rally in a notorious enemy territory, the late premier of the old Western region, the urbane, witty, mentally alert and most perspicacious Samuel Ladoke Akintola was hailed by many as having achieved an impossible political feat. A leading pro-government columnist of the time called it the apotheosis of SLA and his party the NNDP as the liberator of the Yoruba race. When his confidant, personal assistant and troubleshooter Adewale Kassim,  an Ijesha prince who was later to become a notable sovereign in his rural idyllic domain, drew Akintola’s attention to this and signposted it as a sign of  a major shift in political fortune, the master word-juggler and exemplary verbal duelist chuckled and then noted with wry cynicism: “ ‘Dewale, apotheosis ko, apoti osi ni.”