The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Okon to convene his own conference

    Ever since President Jonathan , in a sudden Damascus-like conversion, decided to convene a National Conference, the entire country has been agog with intellectual and political excitement. The presidency must be enjoying itself. It is like throwing a scrap of meat at the whippersnappers of change and asking them to get on with the feral scrape or get lost.

    Pundits have been moving from one television station to the other. Nobody now seems to remember the Indian origins of that word. Of great concern to an ageing snooper is how some of these chaps always manage to arrive at the station in the early hours without appearing bleary-eyed even as yours sincerely battles with insomnia. It doesn’t add up, or do the stations have five-star suites? This is what George Lukacs, in a famous swipe at Theodore Adorno, calls the Grand Hotel Abyss.

    But while snooper is wallowing in self-pity, you can trust the irrepressible Okon to cotton in on the latest road show in town. The boy has been assembling a truly historic cast of rogues, ragamuffins and other riff-raff on the margins of society for what he called a Conference of Real Ethnic Minorities of Nigeria, CREMON. One morning, the affable crook , drunk with self-importance, walked up to snooper.

    “Oga, we wan start. As dem fly dey chop madman, madman fit chop fly too”, the mad boy crowed.

    “Start what, and where?” snooper snarled.

    “Dem conference of dem real people of Obodo, all dat one wey dem yeye Yoruba lawyers dey blow grammar na wetin Fela call dem army arrangement. We no dey for mala magomago and dem Yoruba monafiki”, Okon calmly submitted.

    “I see. Have you obtained Police Permit?” snooper demanded.

    “Oga, we don get dem Learners’ Permit from dem license office.” Okon snorted with criminal relish. Before snooper could respond to this outrage, an irate Ibo who had been stomping and stamping around with a scowl suddenly exploded. “Nna, make we begin to fire now, now. If not for dis confluence I for don sell ten tires for Ladipo since morning.”

    “Stupid Ibo man. Na so, so money, money, money”, one man spat with contempt.

    “Watch your tongue. I come from Onitsha and I no be Ibo man”, the man screamed. A call to order suddenly rang out amidst the din. It was James Henshaw, the old Calabar aristocrat and hell-raiser ,who claimed to have seen action as a submarine crew during the Second World War. He had arrived on the premises a day earlier with a retinue carrying his fresh supply of crocodile and hippo meat. When he was not reading old newspapers or sniffing from an enormous pouch of snuff, he was eyeing everybody with a supercilious frown which could be quite unnerving.

    “I hereby declare the conference open. The mistake of 1914 is that the Brits didn’t make Calabar the Federal Capital. We will sue them for reparations”, the old bandit declared. A burly Ijaw man with rippling biceps suddenly jumped up.

    “I am not a Nigerian, and I don’t speak English, period”, he announced in English and with a ferocious scowl. The Ijaw stalwart then ordered his aide to translate what he said for the benefit of everybody. As the chap started speaking in some ancient Old Testament tongue, there was pin drop silence.

    “Kai, this is what they call Lingua Fracas”, Baba Lekki rumbled from the depths of slumber. Pole-huggingly drunk as usual, he had fallen asleep on the sofa while claiming to take minutes. It was at this point that an old Godogodo soldier who had been watching the proceeding with barely concealed irritation let go a brisk volley from a concealed revolver which sent everybody scampering for safety.

  • Seventy salutes to the people’s admiral

    General ignorance should not be an excuse for the ignorance of generals. While majority of Nigerians, disoriented by poverty and the trauma of worthlessness, are being programmed to celebrate fake and phony heroes, one of the greatest products of the Nigerian military, Admiral Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu, recently turned 70. In keeping with the man’s modesty, humility and self-effacement, the day passed quietly and without any funfair or futile fireworks.

    A longstanding friend of column and columnist, Kanu is wonderfully cerebral and even his most casual thoughts are marked by painstaking rigour and analytical sophistication. As they say, it is not where a man stands in times of comfort that attests to his true worth but where he pitches his tent in times of discomfort. Twice in his lifetime, Kanu has turned his back on the very institution that produced him, and at grave personal peril and discomfort. The small measure of freedom Nigerians enjoy today and the return of professionalism to the military are due to the quiet labours of many unsung military heroes. Snooper salutes this illustrious son of Ovim and Nigeria and wishes him many more years of heroic services to the fatherland.

  • Anambra poll: An opportunity missed

    Anambra poll: An opportunity missed

    The forces malevolently interested in the November 16 Anambra governorship poll were much stronger than the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could withstand or manage. No matter what INEC did, the election was bound to fail; for the stakes in that poll were so high that even if the electoral body had mustered enough administrative acumen and integrity to superintend the election, the political dynamics in both the state and the country had already spawned too many sinister factors capable of undermining the poll.

    Much attention has been paid to INEC’s failings in that election as an explanation for the almost comprehensive failure of the governorship poll. Because of this failure, the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, has himself been described as a failure. In addition, many have called for the cancellation of the poll since it could not be guaranteed that the pollution and manipulation noticed in some polling areas had not affected the entire process. Professor Jega himself acknowledged that in some parts of the state, his men sabotaged the election. He was thoroughly disappointed, he said, that in spite of all the preparations for that poll, the election still miscarried badly. And though he didn’t quite say it, it appeared that the sabotage he talked about was aimed at the feisty All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Chris Ngige.

    The Anambra poll miscarried for two main reasons. But before considering the reasons, it is important to make one or two observations about the election. First, I think it was unwise of Professor Jega to have drafted so many top level INEC staff to supervise the poll, and also encourage the overwhelming policing of the same poll. By taking these extraordinary steps in the hope that he would deliver a near perfect election, he robbed himself and his commission of the opportunity to know how they would have performed were the 2015 polls to be held all over the country on November 16. In 2015, it is evident that neither the commission nor the security agencies would have the benefit of the number and stature of the officials deployed in Anambra for the inconclusive governorship poll of two Saturdays ago. The poll should have been used as a dress rehearsal for the 2015 polls. Second, by now Professor Jega and the frustrated electorate will have realised that it takes more than an INEC chairman’s well-meaning disposition and the deployment of overwhelming force to deliver a free and fair election.

    The failed Anambra poll can be explained in two ways. First is the simple fact that the Jonathan presidency has no interest whatsoever in ensuring a free and fair poll, notwithstanding its repeated homilies on the sanctity of the electoral process. Judging from the spectral silence of the presidency on the obvious and deliberate sabotage of the poll, and the effusive and exuberant praise of the same poll by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it was clear that from the perspective of the Jonathan presidency, the goal of the election was to defeat Dr Ngige, not to ensure fair poll or give victory to the PDP candidate. The obsession against Dr Ngige is in turn informed by the overall strategic interest of the ruling party to checkmate the rising profile of the APC and stall, if not completely weaken, the opposition’s increasingly shrill and critical voice. This explains why the PDP was eager to endorse the misshapen poll and give the impression of being detached from crass partisanship, though its candidate lost in questionable circumstances.

    As part of this strategy of weakening, stalling or reversing the power of the APC, the PDP will next year attempt to take at least one state from the APC in the Osun and Ekiti elections and ride that momentum towards the 2015 polls. Two main factors underscore the strategy against the APC. One is the fact that Dr Jonathan himself lacks the intrinsic depth and vision to remake the country as a virile, progressive and pacesetting nation. Two is the fact that deliberately or accidentally, Dr Jonathan has managed to assemble a group of Machiavellian advisers and close aides who have gross loathing for principles. They are adept at reading the lips of the president and sabotaging every law and constitutional provision militating against the president’s re-election. Therefore, between Dr Jonathan’s surrender to devious politics and the energetic enthusiasm of his aides to foment trouble, everything, including the laws and constitution, not to talk of elections in particular, is fair game for subversion.

    The second reason the Anambra poll miscarried is the connivance of the state’s elite. No one denies the atrocious manipulations that undermined the integrity of the poll. But to remedy these atrocities, INEC plans a supplementary election slated for the end of this month. While there are calls for total cancellation of the poll from among a not-so-substantial number of Anambrarians and an overwhelming number of non-Anambrarians, the state’s elite have indicated the poll is not so irredeemable that a supplementary poll cannot correct. In media comments and television discussions, as well as jurisprudential expositions, the said elite have struggled to justify the poll and denounce the APC, its candidate, and any other person bold enough to dismiss the election as a sham. It is not surprising that such connivance offers endorsement for the electoral chicanery of two Saturdays ago and also provides adequate grounding and philosophical underpinning for the subversion of the electoral process.

    One of those philosophical underpinnings was the incredulous argument that Dr Ngige represented the face of the Southwest’s expansionist agenda. The state’s ruling party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), was the only surviving Igbo party that must not be humiliated, they said. It no longer mattered that APC’s Dr Ngige was their son, or that he had ruled the state meritoriously and can probably do much better than his rivals, or that his competence could not be doubted at all. The unabashed suggestion that Dr Ngige represented outsiders harked back to the Yoruba/Igbo rivalry of the 1950s and 1960s, and gave the impression that little progress had been made in Southwest/Southeast relationships. To these conniving analysts and amateur philosophers, it does not matter how the APGA candidate wins.

    But such dangerous reasoning carries equally dangerous drawbacks. It shows that the Southeast has learnt nothing, forgotten nothing, and has all along been an impassive observer of the changing dynamics of Nigerian politics and geopolitics. Even though Dr Ngige’s candidature was the best opportunity for the Southwest to build a credible and durable bridge to the Southeast, it was even a much better opportunity for the Southeast to expand its reach nationally and also break the implacable iron curtain that has seemed to divide the Southwest and the Southeast. For a region desirous of winning the presidency in the years ahead, it is strange that the lessons of MKO Abiola’s victory in the 1993 presidential election are lost on them.

    It is also surprising that they fail to understand that while the Southwest intelligently preferred Olu Falae in the 1999 presidential election, Olusegun Obasanjo enjoyed the better crossover appeal which propelled him into Aso Villa. More crucially, it must be understood that the seeming consensus that appeared to produce a Yoruba president in 1999 could not be divorced from the 1993 presidential election annulment. Such a consensus is unlikely to be built again, and each party and ethnic group will have to explore sensible and multipronged strategies to win the presidency.

    If the partial results already sanctioned by INEC are taken into cognisance, and given the way they are skewed against the APC candidate, it is hard to see Dr Ngige winning. If he loses, it will not be because he failed to run a credible and efficient campaign, or because the electorate didn’t vote for him. It will be because he ran against a manipulative and amoral federal government, an unscrupulous Governor Peter Obi who pays only lip service to democracy, a short-sighted and parochial elite anxious to protect imaginary boundaries, and an unconscionable public who can’t seem to understand the fuss over an unfair electoral process or the principle of fighting for and defending truth and justice.

    It is also quite remarkable that some of those who denounce the APC in the Anambra election and turn a blind eye to the corruption that accompanied it come from the Southwest. Their reasons are totally unrelated to the noxious details of the electoral manipulations observed in the Anambra poll by everyone. Indeed, the unusual Southwest support for injustice is merely a reflection of the divisions that have now become integral to Southwest politics, one in which everyone defines progressivism according to his taste and embraces it according to his whim. The bitter political struggle in the Southwest, which always spills over to other parts of the country, will continue for some time to come, for it has become burdensome and discomfiting for those who had associated with Obafemi Awolowo in the First and Second Republics, and long ago passed themselves off as progressives, to mollify the pangs and reproof of conscience triggered by their betrayal of democratic principles.

    Those who suggest that the Anambra debacle presages a catastrophic 2015 are right. The Anambra poll failed because there are fewer people today in the country with the character and principles that conduce to good electoral behaviour. Anambra has probably sealed its fate. But the buck-passers of INEC, the vicious and amoral presidency of Dr Jonathan, and the shallow and sentimental analysts crawling all over Nigeria with spurious logic will guarantee that this long-suffering country, not just Anambra, inexorably moves closer to meeting its fate in two years’ time.

  • Oduahgate, a hesitant president and Gov Amaechi

    Oduahgate, a hesitant president and Gov Amaechi

    Nearly one month after President Goodluck Jonathan set up a panel to probe the scandal surrounding the two overpriced bulletproof cars allegedly bought for the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), and more than one week after the panel reportedly submitted its report, the president has not said a word. No matter what his aides say about his fidelity to both the truth and the anti-corruption war, Dr Jonathan is clearly reluctant to act on the matter, for Ms Oduah is said to be a favoured minister, one quite important to the president’s election in 2011 and his re-election plans in 2015. But act he must, notwithstanding speculations that he seeks a way out for the embattled minister. This column has no inkling what the panel’s findings are, but whatever happens, and given what we already know, the president will be demonstrating unparalleled audacity not to give Ms Oduah more than a slap on the wrist.

    As far as Dr Jonathan is concerned, and in spite of his often buoyant sermonising in speeches and in churches, his presidency has formed a pattern of never meaning what he says, and of damning the whole world when his critics become too impassioned against his puny virtues. To be fair to him, he has not been inspiring in waging war on corruption, but he at least gestures in that direction and frequently pretends to be earnest in facing the problem squarely.

    As if to reinforce the perception of the moral aimlessness of the Jonathan presidency, his Special Adviser on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, last week explained why Dr Jonathan turned down the invitation by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to deliver a keynote address at its Sokoto retreat. According to Alhaji Gulak, the president turned down the invitation because he did not recognise the NGF led by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State. The president, he said unashamedly, recognised a faction of the NGF created and led by Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State.

    In May, the NGF had conducted its leadership election in which Mr Amaechi emerged winner with 19 votes to Mr Jang’s 16. Many observers saw a direct and uncomplicated election; but the president chose to recognise the loser who was his candidate. Other than the 16 governors who recognise Mr Jang as NGF chairman, no other sensible person does. But what does the Jonathan presidency care? He sees no paradox in lending presidential weight to open indiscretion. If he finally and reluctantly chooses to punish Ms Oduah for her errors and lies, it will not be because he thinks it is the right thing to do; it will be because he has no choice. As for the NGF, don’t ever expect him to recognise the truth, no matter what loathsome impression it creates of his presidency. He abhors the upstart Mr Amaechi too much to give a damn. After all, in these parts, the impression presidential aides have of presidential power is that no president must ever lose an argument to anyone, let alone lose a deathly political struggle with a lowly governor. In their view, democracy endows a president with far more power and glory than a monarchy or outright dictatorship.

  • ‘Now you can go to court’

    ‘Now you can go to court’

    There are very few options for redress open to victims of electoral rape of the variety that just played out in the botched Anambra gubernatorial poll. Through the years people have come to see that lashing out in anger by torching the homes of opponents and offices of the bungling Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is counterproductive.

    That leaves just one route open to democrats: the courts. INEC officials have been quick to remind the All Progressives Congress (APC) and others calling for the cancellation of the election to take their agitation to the tribunal.

    Those who think things are going their way have also quickly endorsed the shambolic election as exceptional, cynically advising the aggrieved to “go to court.” On the face of it this sounds like reasonable advice. But it is cold comfort to the traumatised.

    We keep moaning about how expensive our electoral processes are, yet we never stop doing things that make them more costly. Justice anywhere in the world is not cheap. When candidates set out to retrieve their stolen mandate they know only the best and most senior legal minds would do. That battery of Senior Advocates hunched over court pews never comes cheap.

    Another of our singsongs is about how corruption has eaten up the society. But we remain blinded to how the incompetence of the electoral umpire creates a lucrative litigation industry and keeps the wheels of graft turning. How?

    Corrupt politicians who spend a fortune to win in the courts will recover their outlay from the system one way or the other. Even those who are not venal will look for creative ways of recouping their investment – like awarding themselves salaries and allowances that will make you eyes swim.

    Those who are quick to point the disappointed in the direction of the courts are not really interested in truth, fairness or justice. They are only concerned with sustaining their power grab by any means.

    They know that, in a sense, the court is like a cul-de-sac. It is like telling people to go to hell because, truly, wading through our judicial process can be hellish – sometimes cases take years to resolve.

    Even the introduction of the 180-day time limit for resolution of electoral disputes is no guarantee that a candidate will get justice. Occasionally mandates are restored but in lots of cases justice is not done. Technicalities and the sheer difficulty of putting together compelling evidence often get in the way.

    The judiciary is no better or worse than any arm of government or institution in this country. The same shortcomings you find in the executive and legislative branches are replicated in the justice system. If people say ministers and lawmakers are helping themselves to the nation’s wealth, judicial officers are equally being accused of corruption.

    In the end we are stuck with the judicial system that we have – its condition notwithstanding. Those who have grievances would have to take their chances and hope that their fortunes would be similar to those of Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers and Olusegun Mimiko in Ondo State.

    But should we continue to tolerate the crimes and incompetence of INEC just because we have the option of the courts? Why can’t we just conduct proper polls like Ghana, South Africa etc?

    Time and again it is the same complaint: irregularities, logistics chaos, late starts, dodgy voters’ register and the like. It was that way in 2003, 2007, 2011 and will be so in 2015. The Anambra election was an exercise in just one state. Even if the elections were held in a ward these same issues would be thrown up.

    It is curious that our people show so much competence and ability in other areas of life, but when it comes to organising elections even the best of us end up looking like dummies? We all know that conducting these polls is not as complicated as building a nuclear reactor. So what on earth is going on?

    On June 12, 1993, Nigerians voted in elections superintended by Professor Humphrey Nwosu’s defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC). Till date that remains a watershed in our history – hailed as about the freest and fairest polls ever conducted in these parts.

    They were successful largely because Nwosu introduced innovations that emphasised transparency. The Open Ballot System allowed people to see how candidates had performed. They readily accepted the outcomes because the results were declared before their very eyes.

    However, we know that no matter the arrangement you put in place, there are Nigerians who will always try to subvert things. In Anambra a senior INEC official has been undergoing interrogation for colluding with unnamed politicians to rig the polls.

    Such characters keep popping up election after election because they never get punished for their crimes. Until the prosecution of electoral cheats is well celebrated, and people realise that there’s a steep price to be paid they will keep trying to game the system.

    The other leg of this is our continued acceptance of the incompetence of electoral officials after every disastrous outing. Were some of these people to be working in the private sector they would have been fired long ago. You don’t compensate failure with long service award. Those who presided over the logistics disasters of the last two electoral cycles need to be shown the door for the health of the system.

    When we begin to pay a price for our actions our elections would be transformed.

  • Our wanton, wayward ways translate to national rascality

    You and I know where rascality will lead so I implore you, let us take ring-side seats and watch in discontent

    Anyone who says that life is a school has never met an earthquake, a volcano or Nigeria. Listen, I am whistling and mopping my brow as I tell you this. Nigeria has this powerful, schwas buckling, rodeo-rider life style that takes the breath away from the rest of the free world and proves to all that it does not necessarily need to learn a thing. And I am talking about both living and governance styles. Seriously, any observer of events, natural occurrences and manipulated natural occurrences around these parts will whistle and conclude that every Nigerian is a moving volcano and is completely detached from history. A volcano is never aware of its history; never tracks its own course; and does not ever, ever remember swallowing up anyone. No volcano ever goes ‘I do remember flowing down this path before; it certainly won’t do to flow over this village again.’ Thoughtless, that’s what it is; and unfortunately, that is also what Nigeria is. Nigeria has never once said to itself, ‘wait; we don’t think we should do this again because we did it before and lost so much.’ Oh no; it’d rather go, ‘this is so wrong; how come it feels so good?’

    Just look at the news as they have unfolded lately. First we heard that the funds conned out of our already impoverished pockets by the federal government in the name of fuel price increase had been kept in an account to grow mould and become nothing but filthy lucre which they call SURE-P! It sure rhymes. Anyway, tired of seeing it sit there all day many days doing nothing, some clever fellow had gone and dipped his filthy hands in the filthy lucre and suddenly, eighty billion, nay, fifty billion, nay, only eight billion was said to be missing! Phew! For one minute, I actually feared they would say the bank was missing!

    That only proves the point Nigerians have been making all the while. The government has never needed to increase fuel prices because it has never needed the money. The subsequent pilfering of those funds have certainly shown that the government did not have plans for the funds before gathering them and has been too hazy to sit at the drawing board to fashion out any judicious uses for the funds afterwards. Now, look, those funds are sitting out in the sun moaning off siren music, beguiling passing itching fingers and luring them to their doom.

    Then there was the news that it hath pleased some people in one of the security outfits to amass properties unto themselves with the funds of the said body. And I thought, come, how old is that body that it has settled so easily into the Nigerian system? Anyway, clearly, Abuja, we have a problem. How is it that the entire nation cried foul when a woman beat all men to the game and acquired over a hundred houses illegally within the first half of her lifetime and we still feel compelled to repeat that rascality? Why can’t Nigerians ever repeat the wanton ‘mistake’ of the person who discovered penicillin or waywardly tested anaesthetic gas on himself for the sake of humanity? Why is it that, at the first sign of success, it is money we feel compelled to wantonly help ourselves to? Oh yes, I forget; we also steal votes too.

    Now, one of my favourite persons is Prof. Jega mainly because he manages to keep his cool even when everyone else is poking their dirty little fingers up his academic nose. But I don’t think I want to be him right now. I think I’d rather keep my skin mostly because everyone who has done anything wrong in the Anambra elections is looking for someone else to blame. You guessed it; their favourite person of blame is the poor ol’ professor. I’m sure many of us are even blaming Jega for Jonathan’s win at the last presidential election, even though we all near-massively voted for him – you know, young blood and all. I think it’s mostly because we are so disenchanted with the guy now. My point? – it is only convenient to let Jega be our fall guy right now.

    But let us look at our antecedents before we cast stones carelessly. I honestly do not know what right Nigeria has to conduct any election in Anambra State when she has not solved the debacle created over the Governors’ Forum elections. Heaven only knows I have no iota, drop or gout of interest in any governor or their antics. Yet, principles must be allowed to be principles. If any ol’ body of people get themselves together and conduct that kind of election in the name of democracy, then all observers must be helped to understand the results. Till now, the presidency has not informed the rest of the known world why sixteen is greater than nineteen, making the part to be greater than the whole. Oh yes, there is a world that understands that election but you and I don’t live in it. Obviously, when the governors were voting, and when all of us were watching, we were all under the illusion that the person with the greater number would win. Now the presidency is acting out its own belief by recognising the lesser number as the winner, leaving the rest of us eating the bottom of our pens in perplexity while gazing at the greater number.

    The same federal government that has trouble recognising numbers is now conducting elections in Anambra State. Now, tell me, what are we expecting from there? Clearly, not much, and indeed, we have got ‘not much’. Not only are we told that all kinds of anomalies pestered that election, no one can believe the results. All the excuses – voters’ register being incomplete, voting materials arriving late or not at all, agents being manhandled – point to one thing. Nigeria is not ready to let go its rascally ways. Have you noticed? Only those who understand the country’s rascally ways become politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. So, with so many such rascals – politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. – interested and involved in the Anambra elections, how do we come to expect miracles from the professor?

    Clearly, there is a great deal wrong with the Anambra elections but calling for the head of the INEC chief is nothing but scapegoatism which, in itself, is a symptom of escapism, a very grave disease. Escapism gets one nowhere. Nigeria is to blame for those elections, and with any other elsewhere in the country. There has developed a tendency to see a post as a winner-takes-all ticket to wealth in this environment of impoverishment; and this in turn has tended to wake up the disorder gene which is normally dormant in all humans. Sadly, this will continue until Nigeria is able to look itself in the eye and agree that somehow, it has over the decades, donned the garb of a wayward, wanton and schwas buckling rodeo rider in the way it conducts everything – business, government, traffic or politics. And that garb speaks nothing but thuggery and gives fine colours to rascality.

    As a country, Nigeria must make a successful and conscious u-turn and agree to embrace order in every way. Since you and I have an idea where rascality can lead and we certainly do not want to go there with those who insist on going, let us then, I implore you, take ring-side seats and watch in discontent as the wanton and wayward lead the country on or off, depending on what’s in the charts. Do please bring an ice-cream along to offset both the boredom and gripping fear as we watch and learn in this hard school of life.

  • Carey’s dirge

    Carey’s dirge

    Former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rt. Rev George Carey, recently bemoaned the fate of the Church of England over which he once presided. He predicted that unless something drastic was done it would be history within the next generation.

    His worry was that young people were deserting the CofE. That is bad enough, but perhaps he should be more concerned about death by compromise. A church that once took the Christian message to the far corners of the globe is now turning into a caricature bogged down with battles over gay clergymen.

    It is actually a very simple matter. The church in large parts of Europe and America is falling over itself to be more like the world. This is not a hostile takeover that is coming: it is the willing surrender by the church of its distinct, God-given identity. What a scandal!

  • Foreign accounts

    Efforts by Nigerian politicians to clean up their act took a bizarre turn this last week in the House of Representatives. A bill that proposes to allow everyone from the president to local government chairmen to operate foreign bank accounts scaled through second reading.

    Promoters of the bill actually believe it would enhance accountability and eliminate graft because something called the Code of Conduct Act requires public office holders to declare their assets before assuming and after leaving office.

    Nothing could be more ludicrous. Suggesting open ownership of foreign accounts would help is like saying a thief would park a red hot stolen car in his garage when he knows the police are on the prowl searching for that same automobile. Our politicians are too smart to warehouse loot in their own accounts. What are fronts for?

    Rather than waste time and taxpayers resources on this joke of a legislation lawmakers should investigate why countries that disallow officials from retaining such accounts continue to allow the law in their statute books.

  • Nwoye gets reality check

    Nwoye gets reality check

    Everyone but Tony Nwoye, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate at the botched November 16, 2013 Anambra gubernatorial polls, knew his party was not keen on contesting. Until the last minute intervention of the Supreme Court even his candidacy was not on the cards.

    Had the courts not meddled in the PDP’s strategy of backing their ally, Gov. Peter Obi’s candidate and sitting out the governorship contest – in return for a similar favour for President Goodluck Jonathan come 2015, no one at Wadata Plaza, Abuja would have shed a tear.

    So it was not surprising that while Nwoye and other aggrieved candidates were calling for cancellation of the sham of an election, his party’s spokesman, Olisa Metuh, was hailing the same as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    An angry Nwoye was forced to ask Metuh: “Who are you really working for? Which party do you actually belong to, PDP or APGA?” That is one question we’re certain will not get a response.

    But we sympathise with the naïve candidate who is only just coming to grips with the Machavellian ways of his party’s leaders. Back in 2007 the powers-that-be wanted anyone but Senator Ifeanyi Ararume as PDP candidate for the Imo governorship election.

    Instead of taking a hint and dropping out, he stubbornly pursued his claim to the Supreme Court. There he won a pyrrhic victory because the PDP promptly expelled him. The party sat out the polls, choosing instead to help install Ikedi Ohakim then of the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA). The rest, as they say, is history.

    Perhaps Nwoye would turn out to be one of those fellows who learn from history. Alternatively, as he contradicts the Abuja high command he should remember that PDP is the same yesterday, today and forever.

  • Anambra: President Jonathan’s ‘Ondo Model’ fatal flaw

    Anambra: President Jonathan’s ‘Ondo Model’ fatal flaw

    Did the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?

    Somebody once called him a snake. The more you look at President Jonathan the more you are amazed at his ability to distant himself from activities he inspired; the Anambra fiasco being only the latest of so many. What is playing out, before our very eyes, whether in the Delta Senatorial bye election, the Edo Local Government election or now in Anambra, is nothing but a test run for the 2015 presidential election. It started with the re-election of Governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo State. I have written about this in the past, but let me recap the basic ingredients of the ‘Ondo Model’. It starts with a massive sexing up of the voters’ register into which hundreds of thousands of fictitious names are imported. If in the Ondo case the other candidates didn’t get to know this early, in Anambra it was a complicit INEC Chairman, who ‘promised to clean up the voters’ register, but which he deliberately never did. When then he said a single INEC official sabotaged the election, I merely laughed. Did the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?

    Jega should please show Nigerians some respect.

    The compromised register secured, the next is ensuring that security agencies are primed for rigging the president’s preferred candidate to victory. This, of course, as we also saw in Ondo State, is never the official PDP candidate which I described elsewhere as caricature, but that of either the Labour Party, especially, or of whichever other marginal party is equally programmed to do some dirty electoral job, come 2015. This, then, is their authority for police men thumb printing ballot papers, and providing cover for ballot box snatchers, multiple voting and sundry other illegalities. This has, in fact, worsened since the new Chairman of the Police Service Commission came on board and the Nigeria Police transmogrified into a gun-bearing wing of the PDP.

    This should not surprise us since the Nigeria Police, long before the present Inspector- General, have become more than attuned to slave-like labours. You only have to remember Obasanjo’s use, and misuse, of that outfit which saw one of its leading lights end up in jail.

    But the army?

    I am completely flabbergasted by the reported involvement of men of the Nigerian Army in anti-democratic incidents for three main reasons. The Nigerian Army is a truly distinguished service which lost men and limbs but fought gallantly to keep this country together. Here is an army that continues to demonstrate incredible discipline and expertise in the many international peace-keeping exercises it has participated in since the ’60s, beginning in the Congo. Thirdly, the Nigerian army today parades, amongst its retired top echelon, some of the most patriotic Nigerians and here, I have in mind, the T.Y Danjumas, the Alani Akinrinades, the Y.Y Kures, to name a few. But I have a troubling fear. If current leaders of the service will not be able to resist the anti-democratic uses to which it is currently, egregiously being pushed into, the time will come, much sooner than later, when soldiers from civilised countries will refuse to participate alongside Nigerian soldiers in any peace-keeping exercise.

    While Governor Adam Oshiomhole decried the ignominious police role in a mere LG election, the army was accused both in the Delta Senatorial Bye Election and the Anambra, of being used for illegal electoral duties.

    There is a myriad other ways the ‘Ondo Model’ is consummated; from non delivery of election materials at all or ensuing they come very late, to opposition strongholds. Of course, as APGA Chairman Umeh confirmed, writing election results far away from voting centres has always been the trend in the South-East. This too must have been put to work in the Anambra election.

    All these would have been tolerable if limited to a money-driven state like Anambra, with its thousands of competing billionaires, but from what is fast becoming the norm, PDP is furiously spreading bile, anguish, even insecurity, all over the country. In Ekiti State which, in the past three years of the Fayemi administration, had been widely regarded as one of the safest and most peaceful states in the country, we have seen the results of their crookedness. Having forsaken its 23 aspirants for a consensus candidate from outside the PDP, it has now become the style that aDid the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?nytime Opeyemi Bamidele comes to town, or his Bibire micro group is having any event, there must be a massive breach of peace most probably to confirm that he is such a big fish .

    The fact that PDP routinely abandons its own candidate to line behind another, on a different party, has outrageously played out in the same Anambra conundrum when, like a programmed robot, Olisa Metuh, its Publicity Secretary, peremptorily started praising not only INEC, but the president, for doing a great job at a time his own party’s now abandoned candidate, Tony Nwoye, was boycotting the rescheduled election and joining two other candidates to denounce the shambolic election. I hope the presidency knows by now that it no longer matters a thing whether the APGA candidate is declared winner a thousand times.

    The Anambra fiasco has also demonstrated the awesomeness of God. It has shown that God cannot be deceived by puny man. He has made mincemeat of any ‘erusalem Accord’, just as He did Ahitophel’s counsel.

    Somebody should please inform them of the Yoruba saying that you can deceive a woman to have intimacy only once. We have seen their hands nearer home in Akure and we wait patiently to see what shenanigans they intend to unfold in both Ekiti and Osun, the REAL targets of all these serpentine schemes. Ekiti is a state of eggheads, not money bags, and we wait to see how they intend to manufacture supporters for their consensus, non PDP candidate.

    In the meantime, all the 23 aspirants from the party have been whipped into line and you no longer hear a single one of them breathe a word of his gubernatorial ambition about which they almost shattered our eardrums a few months ago. The enforcer, Chairman Tukur, must have seen to that. Of course, the party is nowhere on ground in the state as recently confirmed by none other than Olatunde, its State Vice-Chairman, when he said candidly, that ‘there was no way the PDP can dislodge Governor Kayode Fayemi in 2014’.

    And it is a certainty that once PDP makes its choice of a candidate in Ekiti public, a deluge of unprecedented proportion will hit the PDP. In the meantime, former governor Segun Oni has pitched tents with the New PDP and it sounds quite logical to suggest that APC will be the party of choice for aggrieved PDP members rather than team up with an imposed, outsider.

    Without a scintilla of doubt, the ‘Ondo Model’ will be DOA -dead on arrival- in both Ekiti and Osun.