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As PDP implodes

PDP has imploded again. That cannot be news to Nigerians who have come to know that party like their palms. But then am not referring to last week’s fracas at the party’s National Headquarters in Abuja over which the member representing Ideato North/Ideato South Federal Constituency of Imo State and spokesman of the Coalition of United Political Parties, the once – expelled, Ikenga Imo Ugochinye, so praised one of the cruiserweights, you would think that one had just won a national wrestling contest.

The bruising contest had erupted when thugs from the two flanks of the embattled party emerged, fighting for either of the National Secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, and the former National Youth Leader Sunday Ude-Okoye – see the names, and mentally recall the unending imbroglio for the position of President of the senate in the Obasanjo years, and give yourself a good laugh. This cannot but be so as while in office, the U. S Ccommittee on Foreign Relations had long concluded that this is a party that thrives on rent seeking and clientelism. Giving Nigeria’s current challenges they are believing themselves as capable of winning elections in 2027, even without planning, without attempting a thorough cleasing of their Augean stable of a party.

Let them carry go!

Resplendent in their VIP seats as the war raged were the big guns, who never stopped deluding themselves, calling PDP ‘our great party’, rather than a hollow party – the BoT Chairman, Senator Adolphus Wabara, the Acting National Chairman, Ambassador Umar Damagum.

BoT Secretary, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, Hajia Inna Ciroma, Senator Ben Obi, Chairman of PDP Reconciliation Committee, Gen. Olagunsoye Oyinlola, and former Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu, among others.

The scene easily reminded me of what I wrote here recently in the tribute to my inimitable teacher, Dr Segun Osoba, to wit:”looking back now, one of the very important lessons I learned from him was the importance of understanding the past in order to appreciate the present, with a view to shaping the future. He taught us that history is not just a series of dates and events but a rich tapestry of human experiences, cultures, and traditions”.

So is it a tradition of the PDP to always implode?

Yes, of course, majorly because it have always been an ensemble of the same kind of people, united as President Obasanjo once said, by love of office, and patronage, or a fresh craving for office.

Unfortunately, even if this were not the case, the mere presence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the party would have been enough to set it into a tailspin as has been the case since he returned from ACN, and later, APC. When he exited the party for the ACN, it was for the sole purpose of wanting to emerge the Presidential candidadate of a party he did not found but which Ahmed Tinubu indulged him, and then went, solely on his own, to pick his VP without consultation.

He actually has never been able to invest the patience and intellectual depth needed to found a political party.

And that ambition to ride roughshod over any, and every, party to which he belongs, believing that money will make that a done deal.

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I enjoin Nigerians to watch out as the equally ambitious politicians like Obi, Saraki, El Rufai, Ogbeni and others he must be surreptitiously romancing now, will not lie low and be prepared to play the monkey.

Let us hear how President Segun Obasanjo situated this Atiku’s corrosive ambition on reliance on Marabouts.

He wrote in MY WATCH, Pages 31 – 32-

“What I did not know, which came out glaringly later … were his propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty, his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time, a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts , his lack of transparency, his trust in money to buy his way out on all issues and his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety truth and national interest”.

Had Atiku not sacrificed morality, he would have known how immoral it was to think that a Northerner should succeed President Muhammadu Buhari after completing two terms of 8 years. And to imagine that some myopic Northern leaders so supported him they bulldozed a frightened Aminu Tambuwal out of the race is insulting.

As a historian this leads me to my article of 16 January, 2011 titled:

AS PDP IMPLODES –

It reads:

It is a settled truism that a house built of spittle must, of necessity, collapse. So let it be with the Peoples’ Democratic Party which one of its unreflective past chairmen once said would rule Nigeria like forever. Since they do not read, he could never have heard about Hitler’s Third Reich. But then, we must not be deceived; for a dangerous game is afoot, and Nigerians, especially those in both the ACN and the Labour party, two parties currently receiving hordes of departing decampees from the PDP, and therefore, the obvious gainers from the demise of the party, must show themselves much smarter than either the manipulators within the PDP or the miserable cast of individuals now jumping ship in droves, determined only to go out there to prostitute, profit and then promptly return to their vomit. Therefore, they must be understood for who they are, and must be kept at reasonable arm’s length.

They must be made to campaign for the presidential candidates of their new parties, whoever it turns out to be.

We said it long ago that the party’s Chairman, Board of Trustees will lead it to its demise.

The hour has come and even with the very best of intentions, it is now beyond the PDP to save itself. But we must ensure that Nigeria does not go down with this ‘biggest rally’ in Africa.

I haven’t the slightest doubt that those now decamping are on a mission to go and find an avenue for their political ambitions whilst leaving their supporters for the would-be PDP presidential candidate. In which case, the parties now receiving them in droves may actually end up being used and subsequently dumped. They must not be allowed to eat their cake and at the same time, have it.

The scenario building up before our very eyes is one more reason why the Almighty God must always be given His full due of thanksgiving in all circumstances, as the holy writ enjoins us. He uses anybody, or anything, to accomplish His words and desires. He appears ready to use a once, all-conquering, Obasanjo to set this country free. God in His infinite mercy is about taking plan – lessness, dubiety, profligacy and kleptomania out of our body politic. He is setting us on the right path, in a way that Nigeria’s traducers would no longer blaspheme that God gave us abundant resources but fools for leaders.

The implosion of the PDP must be celebrated like the Israelites did the unprecedented parting of the red sea. Or where today is Nigeria after 12 years of outright rudderless – ness in the hands of a manipulating, and thoroughly unfeeling PDP? What is the status of infrastructure stock, energy or security in a country that received, in the last 12 years, an unprecedented quantum of petro – dollars?

As you read this in the year of our Lord, 2011, twelve years into PDP’s stranglehold over the country, you do not have a dedicated road from Lagos to the nation’s capital, Abuja.

In my view, nothing better illustrates the complete irresponsibility of the PDP than the state of our roads; not even the equally parlous state of electricity after blowing 16 billion dollars? How can PDP, buoyed together only by patronage, be so acutely bereft of a plan to genuinely move this country forward, not as in their slogans, but genuinely, for the sake of today’s, and even unborn Nigerian generation? What exactly is that party doing to ensure that our young ones do not graduate into unemployment or into paving the streets, selling cheap imitation goods from China and Taiwan under the scotching sun?

Should Nigerians, whether in our collective un-wisdom, or cruel trickery, allow the victory of the PDP come the next elections, then we would truly deserve our servitude, condemned as we would then be, to four more years of the same.

What was true of the PDP in 2011, is true today, 14 years after, as Alhaji Atiku Abubabakar’s purpose for it has not changed one bit.

He sees it as a Northern political party to be used solely for the benefit of the North.

February 2, 2025
Martin Luther King Jr and the revolution of values

There is often the risk of getting carried away by the eloquence of the Reverend (Dr.) Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), the African-American civil rights Baptist Minister, so much that a significant part of his profound thoughts gets missing. MLK had taken it as his bounden duty to shine a guiding light on public morality. In a 16 April, 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” MLK wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Moreover, in his famous 28 August, 1963 “I have a dream” speech, MLK declared: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Though a Christian Minister, MLK was conscious of the use of religion to service segregation and oppression. In a 25 March, 1965 speech titled “Our God is Marching On!” which he delivered in Montgomery, Alabama, he said: “If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow [the metaphor for racist and anti-communist hysteria]. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. … And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”

On the persistence of the struggle for freedom and justice, MLK said, in the same speech: “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now. The wanton release of their known murderers would not discourage us. We are on the move now. Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.” MLK then exhorted the audience passionately: “My people, my people, listen. The battle is in our hands.”

On the Vietnam war, MLK remarked, in his 4 April, 1967 speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence,”: “The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence … in 1945 … after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. … For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. … After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem.”

Furthermore, MLK noted, in the speech: “These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.” Agreeing with “a sensitive American overseas official” who said in 1957 that America was on “the wrong side of a world revolution,” MLK recalled the words of the late US President J.F. Kennedy: “Five years ago he said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’ Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”

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According to MLK, “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

He continued: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’”

Furthermore, he remarked: “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

He also contends: “This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. … We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.”

Moreover, MLK asserts: “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. … This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing – embracing and unconditional – love for all mankind. … We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”

On the question whether progress was being made in the struggle for justice and freedom, MLK responded in an 11 January, 1968 speech at Ohio Northern University: “I think in answering the question we have to avoid, on the one hand, a superficial optimism. On the other hand, we must avoid a deadening pessimism, because a superficial optimism says in substance that the problem is about solved now and we really don’t have much to do, while the deadening pessimism tends to conclude that the problem can’t be solved and that we’ve only made minor strides in the struggle for racial justice. I would much prefer following what I consider a realistic position which combines the truths of two opposites while avoiding the extremes of both. The realistic position would agree with optimism that we have made some meaningful strides, but it would also agree with some aspects of pessimism in recognizing that we still have a long, long way to go. … We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go.”

On the value of hope and patience, MLK said, in the speech titled “Our God is Marching On!”: “Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets … be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?’ … ‘How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’ I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’”

The ultimate value which MLK himself acquired was to conquer the fear of death, and given the inevitability of death, that was the best thing any human being could do. So, he ended his 3 April, 1968 “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech as follows with respect to information on threats against his person: “What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. … But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. … And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. … And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The next day, he was assassinated at the age of 39.

February 2, 2025
The Afe Babalola/Dele Farotimi saga

Early last week, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi II, led five other traditional rulers in the Southwest to placate Afe Babalola, legal icon and educationist par excellence, over his disagreement with activist Dele Farotimi whose new book allegedly slandered the founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti. After stalling for weeks, and after withstanding the interventions of former president Olusegun Obasanjo and a few other highly placed Nigerians, Chief Babalola announced that he could not turn deaf ears to the obas’ pleas. He announced an end to the litigation against Mr Farotimi.

But that was as clear as Nigerians could possibly have of the case. Too many questions were, however, left unanswered. One of the reasons for the legal icon’s intransigence was the refusal of Mr Farotimi to apologise and withdraw the book from circulation. In this latest instance, there is no indication of any apologies or book withdrawal. Without book withdrawal, which would imply the repudiation of its contents, whatever the author wrote would stand as uncontroverted for all time, also suggesting that the contents will be held to be true.

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Uncharacteristically too, Mr Farotimi, who had earlier insisted he was not going to apologies, and had indeed not sent anyone to beg on his behalf, has kept mum. So, what does he think of the case? Is he standing pat or caving in? And at whose instance did the monarchs, all six of them or so, travel to Ado Ekiti to beg Chief Babalola? Such high-powered subversion of litigation is uncommon, especially in a highly litigious society like Nigeria.

Finally, what will happen to the other litigants and non-litigants whose reputations have been allegedly injured in the book, including nearly all the eminent jurists, up to the Supreme Court, who received dishonourable mention? Would the traditional rulers rely on Chief Babalola to also importune the offended lawyers and jurists simply because his fury had been conciliated? Mr Farotimi has been loquacious and bold; might he be persuaded to speak up and shed light on these mysteries? Whatever happens, it does not seem Nigerians have heard the last of both the case and the vexatious book.

February 2, 2025
Between Obasanjo and Orunmila

Speaking at a luncheon in Abeokuta recently, former president Olusegun Obasanjo lamented the relegation of traditional beliefs and values in the face of so-called modernism. He went on to angrily denounce those who promote Western cultures to the detriment of Africa’s rich and authentic cultural heritage. It is hard to fault him or get riled by his trenchancy or desperation. His politics may be faulted, and his social views suspect, but when it comes to Africa’s cultural heritage, Chief Obasanjo has often been incomparable, and his avid promotions unexampled.

“I am a Christian; I have been to two churches today, but whoever says Ifa Orunmila is nothing must be a bloody fool because Orunmila has been with us before the advent of Christianity or Islam,” he said without any equivocation. “Culture is the totality of who we are, unfortunately, we have relegated some of our culture to the background, our food, our language, our dress and so on. They even say Yoruba is vernacular; that is not right, Yoruba is Yoruba, it is the authentic and we must learn to celebrate what belongs to us because that’s the authentic.”

If his thesis is not patiently examined, it would be erroneously surmised that he was by his remarks promoting syncretism or polytheism. Privately, he has been quite discrete in his religious observances, with many analysts quite unable to determine just how expertly and deliberately he draws a line between his public show of Christianity and his respect and almost total reverence for traditional African beliefs. As president between 1999 and 2007, he was unapologetic about his Christian faith, even going as far as correcting the calculated refusal by his predecessors to erect a church building at the presidential Villa when a mosque had been erected long before his assumption of office. But whether despite all this he lets his respect for traditional African beliefs lead to some form of abjuration of his Christian precepts is difficult to say.

It is not clear why the mere disparagement or seeming repudiation of traditional beliefs provoked his fierce anger, why he considered those who denigrate Ifa Orunmila as bloody fools, or why he laid emphasis on the order of precedence between Christianity and Ifa. But overall, he seemed to insinuate that his Christianity has been a logical progression from conventional wisdom which frowns at anyone but a Christian or Muslim at the State House, not too different from the American experience which for a long time precluded Catholics from the White House. It may never be known what really goes on in Chief Obasanjo’s mind. The country must, therefore, satisfy itself with the public convictions and statements of the former president. He says he is Christian, and had been to two churches on the luncheon day in question. Going by his public statements and his precedence, it must be assumed that he is indeed a Christian. And who is anybody to judge anyway.

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Chief Obasanjo is, however, correct to say that the essence of a people is the totality of their culture, and even more correct to denounce any reference to a people’s language as vernacular. These are all unfortunate indications of the Eurocentric interpretation of African history. But the former president was unable to offer any analysis on the dynamism of culture, one that sees a previously Muslim or pagan country or empire transforming into Christianity, and vice versa. The histories of Rome, the Maghreb, and Ottoman Empire copiously illustrate these dynamic transformations. Europe before the advent of Christianity was encased in various forms of religious practices. Today, the continent is largely Christian. Human history is not static; so, too, religion.

Instead of angry denunciations, it would have been far better and more productive had Chief Obasanjo anchored his otherwise sound arguments on the need to treat Nigeria’s religious diversity with the respect enunciated in the Nigerian constitution. Had he vigorously defended the constitutional provision that enshrines Nigerian secularism, and opposed with all vehemence the efforts by some states to impose state religion, his conclusions would have been unassailable. But typical of his frequent hyperboles, he took the route of making direct comparisons between the religions and dismissing anyone who diminishes another religion as a ‘bloody fool’. He should have spared his fierce anger for the law enforcement agents in many northern states, including Kwara, who abet the open and embarrassing mistreatment of other religions in a misguided contravention of the constitution and national cultures. What remains is how Nigeria, and indeed other African nations caught in the same web, should preserve the sanctity of their new religions, while at the same time treasuring their traditions and cultures and ensuring they do not die. Chief Obasanjo was obviously overwhelmed by that dilemma; no true African, including the largely Pentecostal Nigerians, is immune from that conflict of interest.

February 2, 2025
The smouldering volcanoes of Eastern Congo
- Open fractures of the nation-state paradigm in Africa
Eastern Congo, a peripheral part of the inter-lacustrine region(among lakes) of highland Central Africa, is an achingly beautiful chunk of tropical Africa. Its enchanting and alluring landscape ought to be the nearest thing to a Garden of Eden on earth. Surrounded by majestic lakes and a range of dormant and active volcanoes with its rich and alluvial soil feeding off the volcanic nutrients, it is capable of growing anything. Beneath the soil are what can only be described as an embarrassment of mineral riches making the Democratic Republic of Congo potentially the richest country in the world. But never in the history of humanity has such potential and putative wealth been accompanied by such appalling human suffering, such biblical horror and such existential miseries.

Since flag independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 and since the gruesome murder of its founding president, Patrice Lumumba on January 17th, 1961, in an open western conspiracy, the people of Congo have never known any peace or happiness. The Congo is a vast and open concentration camp of unbelievable atrocities and man’s inhumanity to man stretching far back to the nineteenth century when King Leopold seized a huge chunk of tropical Africa for himself and his family naming it with oxymoronic bravura as “the Free Congo State”.

Several decades later after the monstrous tyrant was forcibly divested of his holding, the “freedom” had cost the people of the Congo a third of its people either amputated or summarily executed for failing to submit to forced labour. Never in the history of humanity and modern capitalism had the world seen such a penal colony. It is a vision of hell which is still engraved in the memory and imagination of the Congolese people, a people known for their docility, joyous hedonism and animist submissiveness to fate.

To enhance analytical integrity, the historical canvas ought to be expanded. It has not always been like this. When Portuguese adventurers arrived at the ancient Kongo Kingdom around the middle of the fifteenth century, they met a thriving, prosperous society far superior in political organization and social cohesion to the rudimentary, semi-feudal kingdom they left at home. They searched for the mighty military force that underwrote the sophisticated structure. Alas, there was no army worth the name but a ragtag military unit brimming with ill-assorted hunters.

The Iberians could not believe their luck. They proceeded to decimate the African kingdom and over several decades virtually the entire populace had been enslaved to be transported to the new colony of Brazil via the slave port of Luanda. In the course of formal colonization, the old kingdom was to suffer three different types of colonial rationalizations: Belgian, French and Portuguese. One can then imagine the kind of intellectual disorientation, cultural schizophrenia and spiritual deracination people who once belonged to the same organic political kinship have been forced to go through.

Last Tuesday as hordes of alienated and de-civilized humanity rampaged through the empty battle-weary streets of Goma looting everything on sight even amidst blazing guns, one began to think the unthinkable and question the unquestionable. Is the Democratic Republic of Congo as it stands—or is not standing—simply too big, unwieldy and chaotic to remain as one unified country? Nations are made for people and not the other way round. As it is, the stricken enclave is not a passable democracy, if you remove the force that underwrites the travesty in Kinshasa. Neither is it a Republic nor an organically unified nation. Between Goma and Kinshasa are three thousand miles, most of it impenetrable jungle punctuated by anarchic mining enclaves ruled by the law of the gun. Between Kinshasa and Gbadolite, Mobutu’s former fortress and redoubtable retreat on the border with Central African Republic, there is another thousand miles. A modern country with a well-heeled army, a vigilant citizenry and the most sophisticated security and surveillance network would be hard put to manage this, not to talk of a patchwork country that cannot even boast of a durable military force.

   It was a top Nigerian military kingpin who once famously admonished his compatriots that he did not know about a country that has survived two civil wars. Let him come to the Congo and see African wonder at work. In its sheer mellifluence and catchy refrain, the old Congolese music is an enchanting balm for the soul. But so is the chaos and horror that course through the history of the place which must remind one of unfinished business. There have been at least a dozen civil wars since the dawn or din of independence, and still counting. In living memory, Goma itself has changed hands so many times that one can be forgiven for thinking that its capture or conquest is an alternative military academy test for rebel commanders specializing in asymmetrical warfare.

Now, it has changed hands once again this time with the rebel M23, openly aided and abetted by Rwandan forces, heading for the scenic and beautiful city of Bukavu. Earlier, it was reported that demoralized and defeated elements of the Congolese Armed Forces who had fled from the fighting were driven back on Lake Kivu by units of the Rwandan army ordering them to go back and surrender to the rebel force. It doesn’t get more tantalizingly postcolonial and African to the bargain. All the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, could offer was that he would not sit down to negotiate with Rwanda.

Whoever told the poor fellow that Rwanda wants to sit down with him? It reminds one of a historic footage of a stricken and cancer-ravaged Mobutu still insisting that he was the legitimate president of old Zaire while being helped to his feet by a bemused and elderly Nelson Mandela as a quietly indignant Laurent Kabila watched with mischievous relish. It was taken on a frigate moored off the Atlantic Ocean in Angola as Kabila’s forces surged through the outskirts of Kinshasa. In a question of days, the old morbidly corrupt dictator would be history.

Ever since 1996, or more appropriately since the Rwandan genocide, Paul Kagame has been the big elephant in the Congolese living room. It is useful to note that while the armies of neighboring countries appear to have gone into serious decline as a result of internal national contradictions, Kagame has gone on to build a prime, punitive military machine which has transformed into an unchallengeable terror for the whole region. This is in addition to building a modern prosperous economy. The fear of Rwanda is the beginning of wisdom. For those who might have forgotten their history, it may be useful to remind them that it was the Congolese that first drew blood. For decades, the two countries lived together in peace and harmony sharing kinship ties and organic cultural amity until the Congolese authorities, in a feat of harebrained opportunism and spiteful condescension suddenly woke up one day and expelled all the Congolese Tutsis with the war-cry: A tree trunk does not become a crocodile simply by spending time in water. This was in addition to serving as a haven of destabilization for retreating Hutu rebels that have lost out in the apocalyptic meltdown of the Rwanda state after the genocide. Kagame, a tested insurgent, accepted both insults with his miserly grin, organizing cross-border raids into the DRC until the rump of the Hutu army was decimated and render hors de combat. The Kabila uprising presented Kagame with an opportunity to try out new tricks from the playbook of state decapitation. There was no need for an inch by inch contention to conquer the moribund Congolese postcolonial state since in a cruel policy of deliberate re-forestation of his country to prevent his paradise being overrun, Mobutu in over forty five years of inhuman predation never built any passable road, the rebels simply airlifted themselves to the precincts of the capital after capturing the main cities. There is an iconic picture of the younger Joseph Kabila brandishing his assault rifle after liberating Kisangani.

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Almost thirty years after seeing off the monstrous Mobutu, Paul Kagame stands triumphant over the volcanic debris of the entire region. He appears unchallenged and unchallengeable as the new emperor of the Eastern Congo. Nothing is standing in his way. There is a new boldness and contemptuous clarity in his current moves; a hunger for annexation which he can get away with very easily. And here is why. The AU is in dire straits and cannot pass any military muster. The UN is fighting for its own survival in the hands of a rampaging American president who does not care a hoot about what Africans do to themselves. The less the merrier. Having lost several peacekeepers of South African origins in recent days, the UN is wisely refraining from joining a nasty African fray it cannot hope to win.

   We are at the threshold of a new international order. Having been repeatedly snubbed by both Russia and Israeli and having been steamrolled into compliance by America’s virtual withdrawal of strategic fiscal support, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is taking it all in the chin with a wince and a grimace, the wise Iberian nobleman that he is. He might have recalled that an earlier UN Secretary General, the equally respected and well-regarded Swede international diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, was killed in an air crash on 18th September, 1961 while brokering peace for the selfsame Congo. There is only so much a single person can do in a world out of joints.

It is now hard to see how Africa can avoid a Pax Rwandan in the Eastern Congo. It is hard to see an African statesman with the possible exception of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a fellow former guerrilla chieftain, that Kagame truly respects or has regards for. The withering putdown of South Africa and its president shows the extent of Kagame’s disdain for contemporary African leaders. Yet a way must be found to bring him to the negotiating table. If Africa had been blessed with truly visionary statesmen, they ought to have found a way of addressing the Congolese Conundrum, that is unwieldy, unviable and chaotic African nations imposed on the continent by imperialist fiat with appalling human suffering and bestial dehumanization. The Congo should be at least three countries. But it cannot be done by hostile interlocutors without throwing the continent into millennial chaos. The problem with the forcible annexation of an African nation as proposed by the Kagame Doctrine and its rampart militarism is that it will blow the lid off a veritable Pandora Box. The original crisis in post-independence Congo signposted the crisis of the postcolonial state and nation in Africa. Sixty five later we may be witnessing its apocalyptic denouement.
February 2, 2025
Aregbesola’s controversial APC exit

Last week was a momentous time in the political career of Rauf Aregbesola, a former Osun State governor on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Interior minister. His group, the Omoluabi Progressives, sensing impending expulsion from the All Progressives Congress (APC), had resolved last Sunday to exit the party. News of their exit was published on Monday. Three days later, the APC wielded the big stick, disregarded the voluntary exit of the Aregbesola group, and expelled them. Whether voluntary or compelled, Mr Aregbesola is now in limbo. Soon, however, he and his group are expected to berth in another political party, for he is still determined to have the last laugh over his opponents whom he has continued to excoriate.

Mr Aregbesola occupied a commanding height in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu political family for about 15 years, seemingly unable to put a foot wrong in the eyes of his political mentor. There was of course no foundation to his prominence, not ideological, though he pretends to some amorphous form of socialism, and not even private or public principles, for he was incapable of both. But he was mildly charismatic, voluble, self-absorbed, and capable anytime of promising more than he could ever deliver. His mentor, however, trusted him and canonised him. For eight years between 1999 and 2007 he was a commissioner in Lagos State, and worked quite well under supervision. But as governor of Osun, again for eight years between 2010 and 2018, he floundered badly, subjecting the state to all kinds of sophomoric Cuban-style regimentation, and strewing the state with half-baked social organisation experiments.

If his mentor and party began to doubt his administrative capacity and temperament, they did not betray their suspicion. But the boisterousness of his youth and his appointment as Interior minister for eight years soon led him to the idiosyncratic overreach that plagued his past, revealing the speciousness of his philosophy, the indiscipline that permeated his governorship and politics, and the wild assumptions that persistently undermined his judgement. In 2018, he was determined to impose a successor as Osun governor, but failed for a number of reasons that were not beyond his feeble ability to manage had he possessed the right temperament and judgement. In 2022 he also aligned his political group with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to prove the point that he was a force to be reckoned with in the state. But his characteristic impatience made his victory Pyrrhic.

By 2022, his fate was sealed. There was little he did in the past, including his contributions to the APC presidential election victory in 2015, that was capable of sustaining his self-confessed prodigious talents for political mobilisation. But circumstances propelled him forward and upward until he climbed the dizzying height from which he has now plunged to earth precipitately. Believing he had an unbreakable hold on his political group, and assuming that his popularity in Osun had not waned as much as his enemies imagined, he took on his mentor with the thunderous blather about how God abases the proud. Said Mr Aregbesola with inflated pomposity: “As it was in Lagos yesterday, so shall it be in Osun today. What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. Only God can terrify us, not man. Go and tell them wherever they are, we own this party. We own this Afenifere group. We own this people-loving group started by our patriarchs, Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige. This was Elder Akande’s group before he temporarily left us. That was how it was in Lagos at a time; a governor derailed and the party members unseated him using the ballot boxes. We exalted him beyond his status and he turned himself to a god over us and we had sworn to ridicule anyone who compares himself to God. God has no competitor; He is enough to be God.”

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The problem was not that he disagreed with his party or his mentor, or that he insulted everybody who did not kowtow to him. The problem was not also that he felt genuinely aggrieved that he was stripped of any significance in Osun, and castrated in Lagos Alimosho local government politics. The problem was not even that it was despicable that he looked his mentor and party in the face and imperiously cautioned them about their political choices. Mr Aregbesola’s problems are two-fold: his impatience borne out of his hubris, and his poor judgement borne out of his lack of depth, contrary to the impressions he had created since 2010 when the courts validated his election as Osun governor in place of the usually somnolent former governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Regarding his feistiness and impatience, they were intrinsic to his mental constitution. No surgery could help him, and no shrink could mollify his moods. As for his superficiality, he needed it to bamboozle the impressionable youths of the Osun backwater. He made casual allusions to Marxism and Fidel Castro’s Cuba to which he was unquenchably besotted, but without contextualising his beliefs within the global pushback which that ideology was experiencing. And to worsen his plight, he menaced the state and everyone with his closet fanaticism, leading the state’s intelligentsia to feel wearied by his propensities.

Having fallen from his Olympian heights, and disdaining wise counsel to stop struggling when trapped in quicksand, Mr Aregbesola must now ponder his future. He could not conceivably jump into the PDP, for that major opposition party is itself engaged in a titanic struggle to stay afloat and remain politically relevant following the schisms that have skewered its administrative organs. The former governor had helped the party take Osun to prove a point, and would be tempted to cavort in it for the coming 2026 governorship election; but he cannot seriously see a pathway to any continuing relevance in the state through the PDP. Not only that, the PDP governor in the state, Ademola Adeleke, apart from being fundamentally incapable of ruling anything, has formed the atrocious habit of elevating trivia into a governing art and dancing the day away in the heat of competition among Nigeria’s governors. Osun has always been regicidal, but it is hard to imagine that they are also impervious to the national ridicule they are been subjected to on account of their governor.

Mr Aregbesola is not endowed with significant administrative acumen. To opt for the PDP despite that party’s troubles is to believe he possesses the magic wand capable of affecting the fortunes of the party positively or bathing and salving its wounds. As large as his hubris is, it is unlikely the former governor can be so optimistic. Worse, PDP leaders, though temporarily distracted by in-fighting and sloppy politicking, are unlikely to see a largely diminished Mr Aregbesola as an asset. To join the PDP would also mean adopting the frolicking Governor Adeleke as his party leader in Osun, a prospect so galling to even a fake communist that he has probably never contemplated it beyond using the party as a tool to exact revenge on the APC. Some media reports suggest that the former governor and his group, knowing full well that they must berth somewhere, might be considering an association with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) led by Shehu Gabam. Indications are that some key PDP leaders, including former vice president Atiku Abubakar, disaffected Labour Party (LP) leaders such as Peter Obi, and even New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) leader, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, might be eyeing the SDP if reconciliations in their parties proved intractable. But the fringe party also harbours a few acolytes of the late Gen Sani Abacha.

The choices facing key opposition leaders regarding how to proceed politically in 2025 and 2026 are obnoxious. For Mr Aregbesola, they are horrendous. Not only would he go into the SDP, if it came to that, a very diminished man without party and shorn of reputation, the other party leaders who might saunter into the party would keep a wary eye on him and cast furtive glances at him. They would wonder whether he could be trusted, considering how close he was to President Tinubu but did not bat an eyelid in denouncing him violently and persistently. Unfortunately, once a politician acquires the reputation of a betrayer, rightly or wrongly, fairly or otherwise, it is hard to reignite confidence in him. Every step Mr Aregbesola takes will be dogged by his now sullied reputation. His new party may relish his role as an attack dog, especially against the president, but as reckless and ruthless and boastful as he has become, he would feel demeaned being turned into a feral beast. He would like to be rated fairly and highly, but there is nothing in him or about him to indicate that his new party leaders and associates would not prefer to see him through their own cautious lenses.

What is certain about Mr Aregbesola is that he does not have a political party at the moment. It is inevitable he must find one very soon, where he can probably feel comfortable. But he is condemned to joining other aggrieved politicians united by their common animosity towards the APC, and perhaps by their common detestation of President Tinubu. With his long years of unprincipled politicking, Alhaji Atiku is now fated to be lumped together with other waspish firebrands like the inconsiderate Rotimi Amaechi, the intransigent Mr Kwankwaso, the stormy petrel el-Rufai, and the immoderate Mr Aregbesola. There are some associations in which one must never be found, and ideas one must never be associated with. It is the humiliating irony of life that all these eminent men started out well in their political career, but, given their famous lack of prudence, are now condemned to joining a motley crowd of jaded politicians united for the common cause of taking the presidency in 2027.

February 2, 2025
Trump angles for third term, already

Deeply mortified Americans may soon discover that in voting Donald Trump as president last November, they bought a pig in a poke. They thought they knew him, but they failed to really and cogently inspect the commodity they have now installed in the White House as the 47th president of the United States of America. President Trump utterly lacks circumspection. He was barely two weeks in office when he began to suggest a third term for himself, adjudging that his second term would be insufficient to transform or remake America in line with his dreams. As he put it while addressing the 2025 annual conference of the House of Representatives near Miami, Florida: “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure. Because I don’t know, I think I’m not allowed to run again. Am I allowed to run again?”

It is unlikely that the worst of African leaders could, less than two weeks in office, begin to campaign for an unconstitutional third term. The US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment makes it impossible to get a third term, except the constitution is amended. To amend the constitution, both the House of Representatives and the Senate would first have to pass an amended bill by two-thirds majority. That would mean 290 agreeing to the amendment out of 435 House members, and 67 out of the 100 senators. At the moment, there are only 218 Republican representatives, and 53 Republican senators. But it gets worse. To complete the amendment process, 38 state legislatures will have to approve the change. However, the Republicans have a majority in 28 state legislatures. President Trump, however, appears willing to defy the odds, convinced that since he defied the odds to win a nonconsecutive second term as president, he could reorder the galaxies.

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President Trump, it is turning out, in case anyone still doubts, to be much worse than any African president. Still feeling euphoric over his election and inauguration, he assumes that his party would clear the mid-term elections and one way or the other go on to cobble a coalition to do the job of entrenching him as president for a third, or as he joked in November, fourth term. In addition, after failing to learn a thing or two from President Joe Biden’s sudden disintegration, he assumes that he would still be cognitively sound and physiologically agile to run another campaign after four years. Talking about and flying the third term kite is overall a waste of time, perhaps to keep Americans preoccupied with fruitless debates.

What is more remarkable is that no sooner President Trump flew the third term kite than Republican representative Andy Ogles of the State of Tennessee took up the battle cry. President Trump, he said, “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal…To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd Amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.” Flattery, it is sadly clear, is not limited to ‘shithole’ countries. It is a human failing, and it is universal. Both President Trump and Representative Ogles ensure the continuing demystification of America. The US may be militarily powerful and economically dominant, but many of their leaders are as ordinary, if not more deplorable, as any third world leader most of whom would never dare this effrontery.

February 2, 2025
Needless uproar over Sharia in Southwest

The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) completely misread the apprehensions of the Southwest over the attempt by some individuals in Oyo and Ekiti States to establish Independent Sharia (Arbitration) Panels or Sharia Courts. The apprehensions are well grounded, and it is not surprising that NSCIA can’t seem to grasp that probably the most secular region in Nigeria wants more secularism rather than any genuflection to anything that proposes more religion. There is no judicial system that is intrinsically unqualified to mediate disagreements and conflicts, but in a country where religion has become so badly politicised and even weaponised, and at a time when the country is immersed in unending insurgencies, some of them inspired by religious fanatics, it is unhelpful to accentuate religious differences.

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Contrary to the impression the NSCIA gave in its public statement of January 29, the groups advocating judicial status quo in the Southwest are a mix of Christians, Muslims and other indigenous religions. They remember how in the name of Islam, the traditional authorities in Ilorin, Kwara State, attempted to unconstitutionally suffocate indigenous religious worship and observances. They also recall and indeed worry that Sharia courts and panels in the North have been unable to stanch the flow of blood in that region, let alone promote tolerance for other religious practices. When it comes to intolerance, the Southwest advocates for secularism allege that the North appears to be the guiltiest.

After decades of bloodletting in different parts of the world, everyone yearns for more inclusiveness, tolerance and secularism, not the birthing of more religious organs. When about 12 northern states opted for Sharia law during the Olusegun Obasanjo years, beginning with Zamfara State, few expected that the region would become convulsed with mayhem. The Southwest is right to be apprehensive. That apprehension is neither intolerant nor discriminatory; it is instead precautionary. Better not go down a slippery road whose gradient and culmination are unpredictable, especially in a region that continues to remain the enviable bastion of peaceful, harmonious and inclusive living in Nigeria.

February 2, 2025
SNAPSONG 243

Who is afraid of the Tree*?

Who is afraid of the Tree

     The forest’s green glory

Skyscraper and loyal carpet

     Robe and sash that never fray nor fail

Who is afraid of the Tree

     With roots deep down in earth’s mysterious basement

Where tangled toes renew the union of mud and matter

     And the merry murmurs of sober soil

Who is afraid of the Tree

     Whose mothering shade embowers our blessings

The philosopher’s evergreen crown

     Rousing roost for the poet that stands and stares

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Who is afraid of the Tree

     Who doctors our lungs

And un-chains our nerves

     Whose canopy is our cap and crown

A song winds through the woods

     Echo from the hills

Magic to the ear

     Eternal fun for the laughing leaves

Sheathe that machete

    Un-tooth that chainsaw

Remind the timber merchant of their prodigal greed

    Plant tomorrow, un-desert our dreams

*Ask the ecocidal chainsaws of University of Ibadan’s Heritage Park

February 2, 2025
FCCPC’s ongoing rejuvenation

Established to provide speedy redress to consumers of products and services whose rights have been breached as well as protect and promote the rights of consumers and hold producers and service providers accountable among its core functions, not much had been heard in the public domain about the Federal Consumer Competition Protection Council (FCCPC) until the appointment by President Bola Tinubu of Mr Tunji Bello as the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the agency on July 25, 2024. Ever since he assumed office, Mr Bello has swung into action, hit the ground running and commenced the repositioning of the organization to fulfil its mandate with a greater sense of urgency and responsibility. Now we regularly hear the voice of the FCCPC as an agency that actively puts providers of goods and services on their toes as it strives to protect the interests and rights of consumers.

For instance, following the recent 50 per cent increase in tariff rates by telecommunications companies, the FCCPC moved quickly to remind affected service providers of the need to ensure that the quality of their services reflected their enhanced revenues as a result of the increase. In a statement by the agency, it noted that “The NCC’s approval of a 50% adjustment, which is lower than the over 100% increase initially proposed by operators, demonstrates a thoughtful effort to balance industry sustainability with consumer protection”.

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Stressing that the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the FCCPC and the National Communication Commission (NCC) emphasizes a joint commitment to ensuring robust consumer protection, fair competition and the eradication of exploitative practices in the communication sector, the FCCPC warned that “It is non-negotiable that telecom operators must prioritize visible and measurable improvements in network reliability, speed, accessibility and customer service as part of any tariff adjustment”. It will be recalled that as part of its resurgent vigilance, the FCCPC that in December last year, the FCCPC launched enquiries into widespread consumer complaints against leading players in the banking, telecommunications and aviation sectors. The companies engaged in the process were Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), MTN Nigeria and Air Peace Limited. The agency stated that the enquiries would provide these companies”a platform to address consumer concerns, clarify business practices and enforce compliance with regulatory stipulations.”

February 1, 2025