The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Death penalty for fake drugs’ peddlers

A couple had cause to house a relation who had just secured a job at a medical facility in Lagos. After staying with his hosts for some months, the medical worker secured an apartment somewhere else and made the necessary preparations to move in.

But before he finally left, he went to a prominent mall in his area and bought an expensive bottle of hot drink as a mark of traditional appreciation for the generosity extended to him by the couple. He proudly presented this drink to his hosts in the customised grocery bag of the mall and thanked them for the favour done to him. His hosts were very appreciative especially given the symbolism of such gifts in their culture.

A day after he left for his new abode, the couple decided to have a taste of the hot drink gift. The husband opened it, took one or two shots, gave a shot to his wife and kept the remainder on the shelf.

After a while, the wife began to complain of stomach upset. This was soon to be accompanied by frequent and ceaseless stooling that she had to be rushed to a hospital. The husband suffered the same health challenge but the effect was not as severe as that of his wife.

One thing that continued to occupy their minds during this health encounter was the possible source of their affliction. They considered all possibilities including the food and other consumables they took in their house that day. They ruled out the ones they consumed with their children since none of them showed signs of stomach upset.

They narrowed down to the hot drink because it was the singular item of consumption their children did not take. Their suspicion was high that the hot drink may have either been faked or adulterated notwithstanding that it was bought from a reputable mall with franchise all of the major state capitals.

Buoyed by the suspicion of adulteration, the couple quickly went to the shelf, grabbed the bottle and poured its content away in the sink. They were lucky to have survived the affliction as no serious harm came their way.

Henry Ogan (not real names) was diagnosed of an illness that requires him to be taking certain daily drugs duly recommended by his doctors. He went to a nearby pharmacy and bought the drugs. After taking the therapy for a good number of days, he discovered that relief was not coming.

He was worried that the drugs were of no help in ameliorating his situation. A number of ideas began to run through his mind. After some time, he decided to see his doctor with the drugs. And on very close examination, the doctor asked him to discard those drugs because he was not just sure of their source. He then directed the patient to a particular pharmacy with samples of the brand.

Read Also: Fake drug: NSA, NAFDAC launch biggest operation against fake drugs in Onitsha, Idumota, Kano, Yaba

Ogan did as instructed. This time he paid higher for the drugs but he got the right ones. And as he began taking them, considerable improvement in his health was noticed. Ever since, he has learnt to buy drugs from reputable pharmacies.

The two accounts denote a tip of the iceberg in the mindless faking and counterfeiting of drugs, foods and assortment of consumables that go on in this country. Sadly, innocent citizens are at the receiving end. The people in the two encounters were lucky to have survived.

For many others, the reverse is often the case as they are dispatched to their early graves by the mindless quest of criminal elements to make illicit money at the expense of human lives. The situation is so critical and challenging even as efforts by relevant enforcement agencies to tame the menace have not achieved the desired results.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has been raiding markets and sundry manufacturing and distribution outlets to curtail the activities of fake and adulterated drug peddlers. In the last couple of weeks, it embarked on the sealing of open drug markets across the country considered the largest source of fake, counterfeit and expired drugs.

The Ariaria open drug market Aba, Abia State, that of Onitsha, Anambra and Idumota in Lagos State were some of the ones sealed by the agency. NAFDAC justified the simultaneous enforcement exercise in the three markets on the ground that they account for 80 per cent of the drugs sold in the country. That may well be even as they do not exhaust the list of markets such drugs are regularly sold to unsuspecting customers.

Before now, the agency had severally confiscated lorry loads of fake and substandard products in various parts of the country, burning and destroying them to forestall their being pushed back into the markets. But all these efforts seem to pale into insignificance in the face of the high volume of fake drugs, foods and consumables that still flood our markets. In a clime where all manner of people seek quick wealth through cutting-corners and fraudulent manoeuvres, the challenge can be really daunting.

The enormity of this challenge especially the mortal risks it poses to human lives must have so frustrated the Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye that she last week, called for death penalty for fake drugs peddlers. For her, only strict penalty can deter offenders especially when their action results in the death of children.

Hear her, “Someone bought children’s medicine for about N13, 000 while another person was selling it for around N3,000 in the same mall. That raised the alarm. Guess what? When we tested the medicine in our Kaduna lab, there was nothing inside. So, I want the death penalty”.

She succinctly captured the mortal danger posed by fake drugs when she said, “you don’t need to put a gun to a child’s head to kill them; just give them bad medicine”. That summarises the life-threatening risks fake, adulterated, expired drugs and consumables pose not just to the lives of children but the adult population as well.

Even with efforts by the relevant enforcement agencies to stem the tide, the enormity and lethality of the challenge should instruct that stricter measures be taken to discourage the quick resort to faking and adulteration for profit. The malfeasance is so pervasive that one begins to question how some of these substandard drugs and consumables get into the country. It is true that some of them are faked locally. Yet, a good number come in through our ports. The regular seizures and confiscation of such products at the ports of entry give credence to this.

Adeyeye was not unmindful of the limitations of NAFDAC in fighting the scourge. The conduct of other agencies of government at the various ports of inspection and entry must also be re-evaluated.

There is the need for stricter laws to make fake and substandard drugs’ peddling a very dangerous enterprise. The way things stand, it is clear that enforcement and extant punishment in our status books have not been able to act as sufficient deterrent. Little surprising the illegal business continues to boom.

During a recent sting operation by the agency in one of the markets sealed last week, Nigerian were shocked at the assortment of fake and substandard drugs, drinks, sachet milk products and consumable confiscated from there. Nobody is really safe as the public has no way of differentiating between the fakes and the genuine products.

It took a lab test for NAFDAC discover that the drug sold for N3,000 had practically no healing value. It remains to be imagined the number of Nigerians that would have consumed them and the harm done to their lives.

Adeyeye’s frustrations in routing for death penalty for fake drugs peddlers is understandable irrespective of its propriety as a necessary and sufficient deterrent to offenders. That prescription may also run into conflict with current concerns and diminishing lure of capital punishment. Bu the argument that those who take lives through unwholesome practices should be subjected to tame measure can only be ignored at our collective peril.

Legislations no matter how well framed, may not achieve the desired results if the judicial system is weak. That is why the integrity and independence of the judiciary comes into serious reckoning. There is the urgency to re-jig our laws to make for penalties strict enough to discourage offenders. The pervasiveness of the malfeasance suggests loopholes in extant laws and administration of justice that requires to be plugged.

It is also high time we addressed systemic and orientational dysfunctions that push our citizens to deadly trade practices in the name of making quick money. The level of moral decay in our society has become so alarming that some social re-engineering should be called into quick action to halt the slide to the precipice. But the starting point should be from the club of people the system throws up as leaders.

The scourge of fake and adulterated drugs and foods is a national emergency; a mortal threat to human life. It requires genuine action to tame the monster.

February 17, 2025
Kanu’s stop-start trial

A viral video captured the intensity of the conflict between Biafra separatist champion Nnamdi Kanu and Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja. “I do not recognise this court’s authority over me,” Kanu declared forcefully in court, on February 10. “I only honoured the hearing notice out of respect for the rule of law. The Chief Judge’s decision to return my case to Justice Nyako is unacceptable.”

The conflict is sustained by both sides: the detained leader of the proscribed separatist group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and the Nigerian judiciary. Kanu, in September 2024, had requested Justice Nyako to recuse herself from his trial, citing a lack of confidence in her handling of the case. Consequently, the judge had forwarded the case file to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, for reassignment.

However, Justice Tsoho seemingly complicated the matter by returning the case to Justice Nyako, on the grounds that she was best suited to continue handling the trial. Notably, he observed that two other judges were previously recused from the case. He directed that if at the next hearing of the case, Kanu still insists on recusing Justice Nyako, he must file a written motion on Notice, with an affidavit, stating all the grounds for requesting the recusal, for her review and determination, then she can make her decision. Justice Nyako’s earlier recusal was based on an oral application by Kanu and his lawyer.

Why didn’t she ask for a written request before deciding to recuse herself from the trial in the first place? Does her withdrawal following an oral application make it any less binding? Interestingly, after explaining at the resumed hearing that the chief judge had rejected her recusal, she directed Kanu’s counsel to submit a formal written application if they wished to insist on her withdrawal. She adjourned the matter indefinitely.

There are unavoidable questions: Following a written request for her recusal, could she reverse the decision she made based on an oral request? Wouldn’t such a reversal be suspicious? Can the chief judge compel another judge to continue the trial?

While Justice Nyako’s familiarity with the case dates back to its beginning, this is not a compelling reason to keep her on the case in the face of Kanu’s objection. To stretch the argument, if Justice Nyako was unable to continue the case because of incapacitation, for instance, the chief judge would have had to choose another judge for the trial. Perhaps her conscious recusal should have been allowed to stand, particularly because it helped to project her detachment.

Kanu himself must be aware that there is a limit to demanding a judge’s recusal. How many judges could he reject, even if allowed, before being ridiculed? His conduct suggests that he believes he has the right to decide which judge should try him. Indeed, his letter to the authorities, dated January 30, 2025, seeking that his case be moved to the Southeast, ahead of the continuation of his trial in February, demonstrated his unrealistic sense of entitlement. He needs to be reminded that he is facing a trial, and he is not in charge.

He wrote: “Since Justice Nyako’s recusal is binding, she no longer has jurisdiction over my case. Given that no other judge in the Abuja division is willing to take it, the only viable option is to transfer the matter to any division of the Federal High Court in the South-East, particularly since the alleged offences have an impact in the South-East (not Abuja). This gives the South-East divisions superior jurisdiction compared to Abuja.” Is it possible that he believes he would receive a favourable judgment   in the Southeast?

Read Also: Kanu rejects judge again, court adjourns case indefinitely

He was first arrested in October 2015 and granted bail in April 2017 in the course of his trial for “alleged offences of conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony and other related offences.”

He fled the country in September 2017 following “Operation Python Dance,” a military exercise in the Southeast during which “rampaging soldiers” allegedly invaded his house in Afara-Ukwu Ibeku, Umuahia, Abia State.

He had reappeared in Israel a year later, in October 2018. He had grabbed the headlines yet again with a tweet in January 2019, saying, “I am back in the UK to continue our excellent work to liberate #Biafra from the pit of darkness, Nigeria.”

He was re-arrested in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria in June 2021, about four years after he mysteriously disappeared from the country.

His group is known for using terroristic methods in its fight for an independent “Biafra land” made up of Nigeria’s five Southeast states, and parts of the South-south geo-political zone. In 2020, IPOB illegally launched its Eastern Security Network (ESN), which it described as “a vigilance group.”

But there are signs that IPOB has become a Frankenstein monster beyond the control of those who created it. This makes the group more dangerous. For instance, at some point, when Finland-based Biafra campaigner Simon Ekpa entered the picture there was strong evidence of divisions within the group as zealous enforcers ignored Kanu’s disclaimer, and violently implemented Ekpa’s controversial order that Southeast residents should stay at home from December 9 to 14, 2022.

It is ironic that some campaigners for Kanu’s release see him as a solution to insecurity in the Southeast. On February 5, some days before the resumed court hearing, members of the House of Representatives Committee on South East Development Commission (SEDC) called for his release. The committee’s chairman, Chris Nkwonta, at its inaugural meeting was reported saying his release would be “a step towards lasting peace and development in the Southeast.” Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, at the same event, also said his release “will ensure more security for our people and spring up development that this SEDC is going to bring.”

These campaigners and others want him to be released without concluding his trial. Some have called the approach “a political solution.” The solution must be justice-based.

From all indications, insecurity in the Southeast is mainly due to IPOB’s activities, and it would require a reformed Kanu to reform the group. The question of leadership and control of the group is critical. Ekpa’s activities showed that it should not be taken for granted that Kanu is in charge. So, it is uncertain that Kanu’s release will help to put an end to insecurity in the region. Ultimately, the authorities must demonstrate capacity to uphold law and order in the Southeast.

Kanu remains lawfully detained, contrary to his oft-repeated claim that his detention is unlawful. The Supreme Court had reversed his acquittal and the order for his release by the Court of Appeal. But his trial is taking too long.

February 17, 2025
El-Rufai’s disguised exceptionalism

No one should be fooled by Nasir el-Rufai‘s politics. Much of his politics as a former minister and one-time Kaduna State governor is contrived and convoluted. What is clear so far from his statements, actions, and endorsement of other people’s views in recent weeks is that, despite his strident denial, he has been unable to live down his exclusion from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cabinet. He will be relentless in badgering the administration in the hope that he would get some concessions; but if no concession is forthcoming, he would be willing, even eager, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No analyst has in fact been wrong about him in nearly two decades, for his politics and style are so deeply idiosyncratic that he has become quite predictable.

In the last two or three weeks, he has launched into a rhetorical and declamatory rampage that it is safe to conclude he has begun to feel like a cornered prey. Whenever he feels assailed on all fronts, he conjures a persecution complex and goes on to extravagantly announce to the public his ‘predators’ exilic plots against him. His enemies in government want to arrest, detain and torture him, he said self-importantly, dragging in the National Security Adviser’s office into the bargain. He and the NSA were once inseparable. Now he gives the lofty impression they have become immiscible, for it is hypothetically in ‘some dungeon’ in the office of the latter he claimed he would be ‘tortured’.

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Mallam el-Rufai is entitled to his brand of politics and his alliances, new, old or mixed. He can regionalise his views as much as he wishes, limit himself to close-knit friends, and speak untruths, half-truths, and outright mendacities. His audience and supporters are at liberty to doubt him or believe him. It is all politics. So far, there is nothing Mallam el-Rufai has said or done that is not permissible in politics. But there is also nothing sceptics have said or done against him that is not politics. He and his enemies or opponents are engaged in fierce psychological operations. Success will depend on how well each side has been convincing.

After his February 11, 2025 post on X (Twitter), no one should have any illusions about Mallam el-Rufai’s kind of politics. The post is probably the most revelatory of his recent posts, forged out of bitterness, exclusion from government service, and desperation to remain in the limelight and in the consciousness of the people. The post shows him up as a convinced northern irredentist who has for long anchored his convictions and politics on utterly false premises. This is bewildering. If he does not dismiss this piece as attacking him on behalf of the APC administration, he might find usefulness in it to reorder his politics, purify his views on national issues, and come out a better, less hysterical, and more balanced national politician who overcame regional prejudices.

Mallam el-Rufai has built his life and politics around the promotion of Northern (read Fulani) exceptionalism. He is so taken with what he claims to be the North’s herculean and central effort in national politics that he continues to denigrate facts and reality. Obsessed with what he termed the centrality of the North in the 2023 presidential poll, he claimed he cautioned the party ‘not to play with the North’, and concluded that ‘common sense prevailed, and we succeeded, unarguably and undeniably with the unquantifiable help of the North (the records of the election results prove so)’. Afflicted by tunnel vision, he didn’t say whether the same margin of ballot intervention from the South had not in fact helped enthrone Northern candidates in the presidency, whether in 1959, 1965, 1979, 1983, 2007 or 2015. It is often forgotten that no one from the South or North had ever won at the centre without the votes of the other region. But because Mallam el-Rufai built his analysis on an egregious fallacy, he surmised that ‘…Less than two years into the (APC) tenure, we are witnesses to how the relationship between the North and President Bola Tinubu or rather his administration is quickly deteriorating, driven by the words and conduct of, unfortunately, many from the President’s geopolitical zone and tribe.’ Of course, he assumes the North is monolithic.

Still indulging his obsession with the North’s role in national politics, he claims without substantiation that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 election because of the disposition of the South-South people to the North. Nonsense. Dr Jonathan fawned over the North, but alienated the Southwest which went ahead to strike an alliance with a Northern candidate. More, he lost because of insecurity, not because he ‘underestimated or disrespected’ the North. Paragraph after paragraph, Mallam el-Rufai inundates his publics with soaring stories of the North’s exploits, and insinuates that the region remains monolithic, can do no wrong, must be revered, and without it the nation could not breathe. Hear Mallam el-Rufai’s thunder: “While PGEJ lacked equivalent political gravitas and sophistication (with all due respect to him) as PBAT, he had the then formidable PDP behemoth which could have actually seen him through but for the grievous ‘political mistake’ of messing with the North. Love or loathe that fact, the North remains the kingmaker in Nigerian politics, at least, as of today. Any politician or political party that plays with that reality might pay a steep political price for it…”

But before that election, the ‘behemoth PDP’ had fractured, and was no longer the behemoth it had been many years before. But the former Kaduna governor had a leprous thesis to promote, and he must bring every argument and distortion into its service. All the historical rigmarole he launched into was designed to hint the Tinubu presidency that there are a few persons who personify the North and whose anger must be placated, and ‘condescending’ Yoruba officials whose sins must also be expiated. Since 2023, and in appointments and projects, President Tinubu has projected the interests of the far North (not el-Rufai’s monolithic North) probably more than the interests of any other part of Nigeria. What ails the former Kaduna governor is that he wants his enemies and prejudices to be inherited. It is right, in retrospect, that both the Tinubu administration and the current Kaduna government have rebuffed him, thus helping to expose the real and essential Mallam el-Rufai. The real el-Rufai has sadly not been inspiring; instead, he has been entitled, sectional, ideologically superficial, nasty when shunned, and vituperative when provoked. There is nothing anyone can say or do to mitigate his sense of entitlement. It is ingrained. The country has to live with that reality and continue to manage him at his inflammatory worst.

February 16, 2025
Atiku and Obasanjo as his political leitmotif

In 2019, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, perhaps ‘against his personal wish and desire’ endorsed the man he loved to hate, Atiku Abubakar, for the presidency. The bid ended futilely. In 2023, the former president also endorsed Labour Party’s Peter Obi for the presidency. The favoured and animated LP candidate came to grief. It is either the candidates are not what they are cracked up to be or the former president’s political antennae had been dulled by too much rancour and animosity. Two years before the 2027 presidential election, a number of former presidential aspirants, starting early and ingratiating themselves with the aristocratic Obasanjo, are again craving his approval. They know his electoral credibility and value are unproved, even by the standards of the 1999 and 2003 elections, but they would rather have him in their corner pissing out than risk his acerbic dismissal of their ambitions. They privately grieve that his political value cannot fetch them more than one vote, his vote, but they see his deep and abiding detestation of President Bola Tinubu as at least resonant.

Alhaji Atiku imagines that the 2023 presidential race will be his last, and seventh if previous attempts are counted, and for this urgent task he has consequently embarked on a feverish attempt to assemble a coalition. He may not have addressed the reasons for his previous failures, nor attempt a rational understanding of what he needs to do to get his futuristic coalition transformed into an engaging and effective organisation, but he is fixated on the race and fascinated by the enduring allure of the presidential office. But here, he exaggerates his ambition considerably. The 2027 race will not be his last; his last was actually the 2023 race, the one in which he stood the highest chance of winning, yet foundered because of his appalling choices, hubris, and disgraceful opportunism. As vice president to the same man his visits and rhetoric now ennoble, he provoked Chief Obasanjo into deep exasperation by his political restiveness and undisguised and fanatical desire to supplant his boss. In response, the former president loathed him so generously that it is still unequalled anywhere. That they tried halfheartedly to collaborate in 2019 is an indication of their noteworthy unscrupulousness, their lack of principles, their obsession with presidential office, and, together with Mr Obi, their overweening incompetence to build a political party from the scratch and run it with any discernible expertise.

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Chief Obasanjo renews his youth by giving all his visitors a hearing, whether he means what he says to them or not. In the past few years, he has indeed become the former vice president’s political leitmotif. On Monday, Alhaji Atiku visited the former president in Abeokuta in company with a number of PDP stalwarts, including former Sokoto governor Aminu Tambuwal and former Cross River governor Liyel Imoke. No one has given an indication what they discussed, whether 2027 political permutations as some sources said, or nonpolitical matters, as the former vice president tendentiously averred. What is clear is that given the urgency of the task ahead of the former vice president, not to say the high-powered delegation he took along with him, it could not have been a courtesy visit as he swore. Months before, Alhaji Atiku had met or spoken with anyone of enough political heft willing to be met or consulted, particularly a few former presidential candidates and sulking and disaffected leaders of the ruling party. Had the devil himself shown some dexterity in political mobilisation or influence, the former vice president would be willing to court him.

All Progressives Congress (APC) national secretary, Ajibola Bashiru, insists the ruling party is neither bothered by Alhaji Atiku’s consultations and merger talks nor worried that Chief Obasanjo could suddenly become an asset to merger proponents, especially given their political antecedents as repeated failures. Time will prove Sen. Bashiru right or wrong. At the moment, however, the PDP is destitute of a leading light capable of imbuing the party with resilience and character after years of discouraging and debilitating losses as well as championing the party’s reorganisation and renewal. These failings may explain the ruling party’s confidence that the opposition appears structurally and behaviourally incapable of transcending its weaknesses and ideological barrenness.

So far, the PDP has shown no desire to carry out the brain surgery urgently needed, permanent healing for its stultifying divisions and inertia, or the capacity to procure the perspectives and futuristic ideals capable of mesmerising the electorate. There is in fact no proof that the many angry rejects they are magnetising from other parties would not in the medium run become a burden too heavy for the party to bear. If Alhaji Atiku would make any political headway – a very serious doubt given so many considerations – it will not be because he had conferred with Chief Obasanjo. There is no presidential aspirant or candidate the former president endorsed who made hay while the ‘Abeokuta’ sun shone, especially when the sun is still standing still at ‘Gibeon’.

February 16, 2025
Nnamdi Kanu’s fulminations

Last Monday, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, put up a spectacular show at the Federal High Court in Abuja as he fulminated against nearly everyone, judge and advocates alike. He spoke as one who knew the law more than anyone else, and insulted and dismissed experienced and elderly lawyers as legal ignoramuses. To make the simple point that he would not be tried by the recused Judge, Binta Nyako, he embarked on prolonged legal histrionics that kept the court enthralled for many minutes. During his eruptions, he hesitated between insulting the trial judge and respecting her. He, however, reserved the full length of his tongue for the prosecutors whom he chastised as morons.

Unused to being interrupted when he was in full flight, as his own lawyers were chitchatting beside him, he poked a finger at the chest of one of his counsels, almost as if prodding some sense out of him, and slapped another in the back, reproving him for talking when the imperial Mr Kanu was gyrating in legalese. There is nothing to suggest that Mr Kanu is not deploying extensive melodrama to prolong his trial until everyone gets tired of the whole thing and in exasperation release him like they let go the equally dramatic Omoyele Sowore after they tired of his antics. It may work, but the credit and honour will not go to the government if they don’t release him before then.

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Mr Kanu is not as dangerous as the charges against him suggest. He is full of too much bombast. If allowed to give full rein to his displays, the booboisie he claims to lead will sooner or later get tired of his buffooneries. If the government is wise, they should prise tough pledges from the political and traditional leaders of the Southeast and release the IPOB leader into their care. Mr Kanu will find that ‘freedom’ more restricting and suffocating than the comical trial he is undergoing. If the public didn’t see through his court drama, if indeed he was serious about his cathartic eruptions, Nigerians would be worried about his tragic and dysfunctional personality. Alas, for the IPOB leader, the whole gay drama aligns with his pecuniary interest and farcical cause.

February 16, 2025
Adebanjo departs unobtrusively

Factional leader of the Yoruba socio-political group Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo has died aged 96. He lived exceedingly well and long by any global standard. Apart from his successful legal and political careers, he was also a principled and dogged fighter for popular and progressive causes. However, in his twilight years, he became more controversial than his age and ebbing strength should permit, while his summations, particularly on politics, also became more brittle than expected of so experienced and avid a politician.

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He was a stand-in Afenifere leader, but after running into needless controversies that rankled with the group, the substantive but tiring Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, 98, tried to retake the reins of leadership. Chief Adebanjo resisted, leaving Afenifere factionalised till he died. That should be one of his regrets. Though age did not temper his fighting spirit, it enfeebled his body, and sadly also rendered his judgement less perspicuous. He should have done everything to heal the divisions in the group, particularly by reaching accommodation with his compatriots, so that his departure, which he knew was imminent, could stimulate fond and lingering memories of him. He probably has his reasons.

It has, however, become the lot of Afenifere that its successive leaders over the years have attracted some disquiet than exuded lustre, perhaps because of Nigeria’s worsening political complexities and the dominance of self-willed national leaders who exploit national cleavages for private goals. It would be tragic if Chief Adebanjo’s faction let the divisions ossify.

February 16, 2025
SNAPSONG 244

A spelling test for Valentine

Love is a four-letter word

     An Equal Opportunity engagement

With two lean consonants

    And two voluptuous vowels

Its smile is longer than a mile

     It tears deeper than the deepest ocean

It strides into a midnight room

     And darkness bolts out of the nearest window

Its shout is a soft serenade

     Its whisper a friendly waterfall

Bees show them the way

     To their rarest honey

Soft and hard

     Hard, then soft

A thousand thrills and frills

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     A million moans and magic murmurs

Sweet, oh how sweet

     The summons of happy songs

Then sour and rudely rich

     The tenor of the pensive interlude

So shoot that arrow, Cupid

     Shoot it now, raw and rapid

In your crowded quiver

     Resides our quenchless fever

February 16, 2025
PDP’s war without end

Having lost three electoral wars in a row, and having had to contend with fierce internecine wars to seize control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders may now also seem to have postponed the definitive ‘war to end all wars’ that should ready it for the fateful and defining 2027 electoral war. The party has not produced a philosopher of repute or a lodestar to help chart and define its future, but if it continues to lack such resources in the months ahead, it could lose the 2027 badly and fracture irreparably. It is not certain that they sense the foreboding stalking their future, but as sure as day follows night, unmitigated disaster awaits them if they do not close ranks and fight as one man.

The problem with the PDP is that its leaders seem intrinsically incapable of fighting as one man. The party is populated by too many strongmen, politicians and adventurers pulling the party in different directions all at once. They have former vice president Atiku Abubakar and his petulant crowd; they have former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike and his redoubtable political family of intransigents; and they have the viceregal layer of battle-hardened veterans who swarm the second ladder of the party, men like party chairman Iliya Damagum, Board of Trustees chairman Adolphus Wabara, repentant and Janus-faced defector Peter Obi, and a host of other eager dupes and wannabees. Most times, the battle lines are faintly drawn or altogether invisible. But at some epiphanic moments, the shape of the frontlines becomes visible, with Alhaji Atiku at daggers drawn with Mr Wike, the garlanded Federal Capital City (FCT) minister.

Last week, the frontlines shifted back to the courts. There, Sunday Ude-Okoye, a former national youth leader, was affirmed as the PDP national secretary, a declaration spontaneously sanctioned by the party’s BoT to whom the development was a welcome relief from months of political tedium and anguish. In return, Mr Wike’s allies in the BoT chairman’s state of Abia simply gouged the eyes of the party by suspending Mr Wabara, ostensibly for endorsing the state’s governor, Alex Otti of the Labour Party (LP), for a second term barely five months into his first term, an act they summed up as anti-party. Underneath, however, suggested many observers and party apparatchiks, the suspension of the BoT chairman at the state level, which they hoped to escalate to the national level perhaps through the courts, was due to his concomitant affirmation of Mr Ude-Okoye of the Atiku camp as party secretary in place of Samuel Anyanwu of the Wike camp. Justifying Mr Wabara’s suspension, Abia State PDP chairman deadpanned: “If you are in this party, be ready to stand for it, work for it and defend it. We do not need passengers, we need partners in progress.” Almost immediately, however, the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), citing the constitution, voided the suspension, describing it as impertinent.

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The Atiku camp hopes that with Mr Ude-Okoye in place, it presents them a toehold in the administrative organ of the party, which is at the moment controlled by the Wike camp’s Ambassador Damagum. A battle royale may soon break out. The war front will henceforth continue to oscillate between the courts and the secretariat, and the jousting will retain its fearsome intensity. The Atiku camp will also be relentless, and the Wike camp will be unflagging. Neither side will give up easily, with the courts providing nothing more than corrosive intermissions. On the sidelines, aggressive efforts will be made to see whether one merger or the other could be cobbled, as three electoral defeats in a row have demonstrated that no single party acting alone, not even the former PDP behemoth, can unseat the ruling APC. The merger talks are for now opaque and indeterminate, with no precise idea of what they hope to birth couched in clear terms or altruistic leaders stepping forward to show just how much they are prepared to sacrifice for the common cause. For now, sadly, they seem all propelled by the single-minded desire to recapture power at the centre and to board the gravy train. Worse, none of the proponents of the merger has an idea what the merger would look like, whether it would be an expanded PDP or a mélange of desperate parties masquerading as special purpose vehicles available for hire and all kinds of political harlotry.

What is absolutely clear is that the PDP does not have time on its hands. Its leaders believe they are doing their uttermost to brew a vintage, but every political vintner of modest capacity in Nigeria suspects that PDP leaders are engaged in short-circuiting the process of building a great party or rebuilding a damaged party. The rebuilding will, however, not begin in earnest until the rage and disgust of angry party leaders and members are mollified, starting with Mr Wike who sustained the party when its renascent leaders played the harlot in previous years. Mollifying Mr Wike, however, is a bridge too far. Going by how bitterly some PDP leaders have tried to undercut him in Rivers, including the previously mendicant Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, not to say the unprincipled Alhaji Atiku, placating Mr Wike may be both theoretically and practically impossible. After all, the FCT minister has found rest in the cabinet of President Bola Tinubu, where he is untroubled by superficial and rancorous politicians.

Except a number of seismic juridical shifts occur, the stalemate in the PDP may in fact become calcified, and along with it, the endless internal war. Should they lose again in 2027 by a significant margin at the state, presidential and legislative levels, the party may become extinct.

February 16, 2025
Gowon and misplaced ECOWAS optimism

Former military head of state Yakubu Gowon has once again reiterated his belief in the survival of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed in May 1975 about two months before he was toppled. Considered one of the main inspirations behind the organisation, he is right to feel nostalgic about a sub-regional orgnaisation he could rightly claim to be his baby.

Speaking in Abuja at a roundtable organised by the Gusau Institute, a think tank, Gen. Gowon insisted that ECOWAS would survive its present schisms, especially the disaffection caused by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger which have, on account of military usurpation of democracy in those countries, broken away from the sub-regional body to form the Alliance of Sahel States. The former head of state suggested that ECOWAS should keep its doors open, continue to relate with the three countries, and hope they would return to the organisation.

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That return is, however, unlikely to occur under the leadership of the three military dictators still inebriated by their breakaway from France and their defiance against ECOWAS imposition of sanctions and threat of force to reinstate democracy. All ECOWAS needs to do is to rethink and reposition the sub-regional body to fulfill the mandate of its founding. They should not be burdened or feel agitated by the breakaway countries. Nothing says ECOWAS should remain 15 members. They can be fewer and yet pack a bigger punch if West African leaders produce the imagination needed to vivify the organisation.

February 16, 2025
Extreme colonisation and its consequences

The life and times of Sam Nujoma

Sam Nujoma, the founding president of Namibia, has died at the ripe age of ninety five at a time of widespread global anxieties and unease. Popularly regarded as the father of modern Namibia, the former freedom fighter is also credited with giving his country the relative peace and stability it badly needed to progress after decades of war with apartheid South Africa and the lingering trauma of German colonial atrocities in the old South West Africa. Without any doubt, he was the last of the Mohicans, a group of revered African titans who had physically fought for the liberation of their respective countries and whose words carried a lot of weight and clout on the continent and far beyond. The Namibian leader left at a point Africa needs these avatars to navigate the inclement weather and rough seas ahead.

As President Donald Trump tightens the economic screws on the global jugular, it is obvious that the world is on the threshold of new developments. The American president and his billionaire bouncers do not have what it takes to bend the world to their will, but they can be a major disruptive force particularly for vulnerable Third World economies and their stalled political momentum. Every dark silhouette often leads to light just as many highways end in a cul de sac. It is then left to human grit and ingenuity to plot the way out of the maze. Apocalyptic suffering and improbable miseries sometimes bring out the best in a people. It is like a furnace which purifies and makes them stronger. The leadership is energized and ennobled by the tumult and tempest.

   Although it is often said that there is no point arguing the order of precedence between a flea and a louse, or between two types of colonial dominion, it must also be noted that there is colonization and there is colonization. In one species of colonization, reliance on overwhelming physical coercion and routine physical liquidation leads to genocide. Genocide is described as the deliberate and systematic killing or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide has always been part of history and the human condition, depending on the stage the human capacity for self-elimination has reached. From the biblical annihilation of the Jews by the ancient Egyptians, the extermination of the native Indian populace by the Spanish conquistadors after the destruction of the Inca Empire, the ethnic cleansing of the American populace to the systematic liquidation of the of the original inhabitants of the old Kongo Empire around present day Angola by the Portuguese invaders, the world has grown accustomed to human inhumanity to fellow human-beings.

   As the very last colonial power to emerge from the bowels of rapidly modernizing Europe, the Germans fed themselves with the delusion that their historic tardiness and lateness to dinner was as a result of their attention to details, Teutonic proficiency and superior abilities. They had famously carped that while the Brits and the French only managed to behead their kings, they (the Germans) had decapitated a whole European intellectual tradition through a succession of gifted and brilliant master-philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Karl Marx. Despite the bombast and balderdash, the fact remains that at that point in time, Germany, compared to their European rivals, was a backward nation-state relying on the fabled firepower of their military machine but lacking in any template for humane governance of their overseas dominions and for a more just and egalitarian society.

In the event, they went after their colonial subjects in Africa with such gusto and brutality resulting in memorable bloodshed and genocide of the local populace in Namibia and old Tanganyika. Before the Germans were expelled after losing the First World War, the entire Namib corridor was foaming in blood. Many natives perished. Repeatedly massacred for refusing forced labour and the confiscation of their land, the Herero and Nima populace fled northwards and eastwards to join their ancestral cousins in Botswana and Angola never to return to their original homesteads. Even then it took another major global conflagration before America and the European masters could resolve the German Question.

   Unfortunately for the Namibians, it was a case of double jeopardy. The Apartheid apparatus that had seized the territory from the Germans was not any better position to rule with compassion and political justice and the situation soon escalated into a full blown war with SWAPO linking up with other forces of liberation and self-determination in the region. This was the violent and combustible crucible that threw up Sam Nujoma. Barely formally educated like Patrice Lumumba who had only four years of regular education before being thrown into the melee and political maelstrom, Nujoma pursued private education and self-improvement with vigour and vengeance until it became impossible.

Nujoma had to endure the private humiliation of working as a cleaner and sweeper in Windhoek. But with his unwavering commitment to the liberation and emancipation of his people, it did not take him long to establish his credentials as the natural leader of the new movement. And naturally too, it did not take the authorities much longer to come for him. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for three years. But he escaped to Tanzania where he was warmly welcomed by Nwalimu Julius Nyerere. Thus began for the future president, a long period of exile which was to last about three decades. His wife was only able to join him after spending two decades in the most humiliating and degrading of circumstances in Namibia. It did not bend or make Nujoma to waver. With his winning and winsome smile and the charismatic swank of a natural aristocrat, Nujoma was very prepossessing indeed. But his calm and friendly mien hid a ruthless streak which would not be lightly crossed. It helped very much that his mother was a princess of one of the most fabled clans in the land. His father was famous for his integrity and for saying it as it is. Shortly after his son’s incarceration, the elder Nujoma was also summarily impounded by the authorities who sent him to jail in Pretoria. He was later to die from tuberculosis contracted in prison.

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For this writer, the most iconic and enduring image of Sam Nujoma was of the hero of the Namibian struggle kissing the tarmac at Windhoek Airport in 1990 upon his return to his native land after a three decade exile. Moments later, he was to extend the same courtesy to his mother who had been part of a cheering crowd to welcome him. Mother and son had not seen each other in thirty years. Talk of the heroism and sacrifices at the behest of a beloved nation! It was not a surprise that Nujoma’s chronicle of his heroic exertions was titled, Where Others Wavered. Needless to add that in elections held later that year, Nujoma and his party, SWAPO, romped to victory. There was no need for rigging or vote-buying. He went on to rule his country for the next fifteen years, serving three consecutive terms against the constitutional stipulation of a maximum of two terms. But this did not alienate him from his compatriots who remained grateful for his selfless struggle for their emancipation and for the international prestige, political stability and relative prosperity he has brought the country.

The passing of this great son of Africa is an opportunity for reflection, particularly as Trump’s unilateralism and isolationist globalism unleash their contradictions. We are entering another epoch of colonization this time marked by extreme economic aggression against weaker nations. Nationhood will count for nothing. African countries struggling with stability and unable to feed their populace will have a hard time convincing Trump that the real estate should not be put to better use. The current travails of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has ceased to exist as an organic country with scant international attention is an indication how much the international community attaches to flag independence.

Perhaps this is the time to rediscover the visionary magic and political idealism of Africa’s founding fathers, particularly those who fought for the independence of their countries. As we have seen in Africa and the rest of the world, nations that start off with a coherent set of ideals and political goals often retain a residual discipline and cohesion long after they might have gone into ideological abeyance or the recession of radical vision. Even where political careers ended in failure, the architecture remains as a beacon of hope amidst the ruins of aspiration. Such countries tend to handle the politics of succession and the threat to stability much better. Perhaps this is the whole point of politics with conviction and parties with ideological foundation. African countries without such a core foundation will continue to roil in political instability and economic miseries until something gives. Nujoma should be commended for bequeathing a country to his people.

February 16, 2025