The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Back as One big, happy family!

I know that there are many Nigerians who will swear that the implosion currently rocking the Peoples Democratic Party of President Goodluck Jonathan is the long-awaited divine response to the anguished prayers of Nigerians for freedom. After 14-years bondage in the hand of a party sworn to serve citizens the cup of affliction till kingdom come, it seems that not even our prayer-addicted but by now traumatised fellow citizens would have anything left in their arsenal of good wishes for the party.

Going merely by indications at the weekend, it seems that those in the business of prayers still have a long way to go as far as the quest to rid the nation of the PDP yoke is concerned. I start with the so-called resignation of the treasurer of the Baraje-led faction of the PDP said to have been procured at the villa over the weekend. While the matter of how the nPDP treasurer, Malam Tanko Isiaku Gomna, found himself in the lion’s den would remain a matter of conjecture, it is good grief that the lone unwilling (?) guest at the villa didn’t have to suffer the pains of losing life or limbs. At least he was given the option to either resign from his beloved nPDP or forfeit his company’s contracts with the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency and the Federal Ministry of Works. Oh yes, he resigned with gusto –followed by a treatise rationalising his Pauline somersault with a pledge of allegiance to the Bamanga Tukur leadership and a clarion call on all party faithful to do the same! That was one down. I hear from the grapevine that many more surprise resignations are on the way.

That was however, merely one part in the two-part play staged at the weekend. Elsewhere within the same precincts of the Villa, a “ceasefire” was in earnest between the group of seven “rebel” governors, President Jonathan and the leadership of his faction of the PDP. By late Sunday night, a communiqué which suggested that the feuding parties may to have resolved to let Nigeria be, emerged. By the terms of the temporary truce, the parties are expected to sheathe their swords in the understanding that the issues in dispute are not necessarily irreconcilable. And just like that?

The army of volunteers and the not-so-well-wishers drafted into the party’s turf wars would by now be licking their wounds for their exaggerated expectation that their predicted implosion would create a reformed PDP. And this applies to those who have long sworn that things will never be the same again for the party; it is apparent that not only did they rejoice too soon, they suffered terrible underestimation of the power of the patronage machine in Abuja to force behavioural change. Nigerians have between now and October 7 to see how many would be left of the nPDP members when the machine is fully deployed as it would surely be.

Of course, the war was never about us in the first place. This was the point so beautifully made by my colleague, Segun Ayobolu in his illuminating back page column of last Saturday. It’s not about fixing our unworkable federal contraption much less about addressing those age-long economic strictures that continue to hobble the nation’s capacity to renew itself. It is not about the rot in our educational system that has left 10 million kids out of school; an educational system that continues to churn out barely literate graduates. It is not about defining Nigeria’s place in the sun among the mass in the 21st Century and beyond. It is not about advancing the cause of our collective security or such nobler goals.

It is none of those.

It is about the office of President and who occupies the office in 2015. That is what is tearing the PDP apart – for which Nigerians – treated as unknown equation by the PDP, have now been drafted to the role of cheerleaders.

The G-7 wants Goodluck Jonathan out. That seems fine, and it is entirely their business – not ours – at least not at this time. I believe they have done well in seducing Nigerians into taking sides in their bitter family squabble. In this, one must give it to the leading lights of the “rebellion” for their profound mastery of social psychology of the ordinary Nigerian – particularly his instinctive penchant to rise in defence of the underdog during moments of unrestrianed use of power as we continue to see in Rivers where the governor and his loyalists are under siege.

However, beyond the attempt by the G-7 to play the spoiler, where is their case for a different PDP that is less arbitrary less contemptuous of the people?

The prospect of a shrunk presidency in the event that President Jonathan decides to run is however more frightening. The issue clearly isn’t so much about the right of President Jonathan to run in 2015 but whether in the current circumstances, it is in the nation’s interest for him to run. I must say here that part of the unfortunate consequences of the PDP’s war of attrition isn’t just the diminished aura of the most powerful office in the land but also the diminution of its moral authority. Surely, the squandering of the pan-Nigerian mandate of 2011 for what is now a full-blown Ijaw Presidency is the stuff of which anti-heroes are made.

The bitter truth remains that those expecting the PDP to go the way of the fictional Humpty Dumpty are in for a rude shock; the party will pull back with or without Nigeria and Nigerians. As for Jonathan, he will run; the inexhaustible gravy in Abuja will ensure that every opposition to his running will be smothered just in time to ensure he enjoys his smooth sail. Win or lose; it does not really matter, at least not with the vote-harvesting PDP machine primed to deliver. Whichever way it goes, out nightmares can only continue.

It is something for those seeking to pray the PDP out of existence should ponder over. Didn’t the scriptures say that heaven helps those who help themselves? Who says that the battle to retrieve the dignity of the citizens from the PDP taskmasters could be achieved by wishing the party dead? And this in a multi-party democracy?

Nigerians ronu!

September 17, 2013
Awo: the unlearned lessons

September 11, 1963 was, for Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987), programmed to be the beginning of the end. That was the day, 50 years ago, he was sentenced to 10 years gaol, with hard labour, for treasonable felony. But instead, it turned the end of the beginning for Awo’s political traducers.

If it had ended that way, it would have been just as well. Unfortunately, that patent injustice, with its integral core of destroying Awo as a person and as a potent political force, has sentenced Nigeria to unending political wilderness from which, even with 53 years of flag independence, it is yet to emerge.

The result: political retardation, economic stagnation in real terms and cumulative underdevelopment, with its all too glaring mass poverty bordering on penury, mass anger, mass disorientation and mass alienation.

But even with all the meltdown, portraying Nigeria as a country in perpetual crisis of nationhood, like the Heraclitus state of flux, the first lesson from Awo’s political persecution and eventual triumph has remained unlearned: that political persecution and brazen attempts to destroy political opponents are ill winds that blow no one no good.

Indeed, Nigerian leaders would progressively appear combatively proud of their patent lack of a sense of history – particularly that segment that avails them the tragic results of past partisan political crimes; and therefore arms them against falling into the same trap.

In his My March Through Prison (Adventures in Power, Book One), Chief Awolowo told a chilling tale of a twin attack on him, at a cocktail marking Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s appointment as Nigeria’s governor-general, by two key officials of state: Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Adetokunbo Ademola and Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Both attacks belied a shocking contempt for the office of Leader of Opposition, a creation of the Parliamentary Constitution at independence.

In the alleged attack, Awo quoted Sir Adetokunbo as dismissing a certain villager (read Awo) who opposed for opposing sake until he had nothing left to oppose; and lost the sympathy of his fellow villagers. Sir Abubakar, on his own part, pummelled a certain brat, “who called himself Leader of the Opposition”!

Just imagine the constitutional travesty of the Head of the Judiciary (CJN) and Head of Government (Prime Minister) dismissing with scorn, in the presence of the Head of State (Governor-General) and other dignitaries, local and foreign, a constitutional creation, just because they did not like the face or the guts of the then occupier of the post!

At that very beginning, it was the making of a bandit state! Though that banditry torpedoed the civil democratic order, condemned, for donkey years, the polity to military rule and now presents an uncivil civilian administration posing as a democracy, the ruling political mindset would appear not at all cured of that banditry!

For starters, how was the Adetokunbo Ademola-Tafawa Balewa partisan rage different from the Jonathan brazen constitutional infractions in Rivers, the latest of which is the reported Police blocking the Rivers governor’s path into the Rivers Government House in Port Harcourt – just because the Jonathan Presidency neither likes the face nor the guts of Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the sitting governor?

Now, if the “ancient sins” of high officers of state in the 1st Republic sentenced us to subsequent military and post-military political paralyses, what constitutional torture is the present Jonathan Presidency consigning the future generation to by its umpteenth constitutional recklessness in Rivers?

Is Nigeria then fated to be the proverbial barber’s chair, painfully going round and round on a spot? And how long will that go on – already it is on for 53 years! – before something tragically gives?

So long for reckless political behaviour! But that does not exhaust the unlearned lessons from Awo’s political troubles.

This second segment comes with a thesis: that both the old Northern and Eastern regions, for political expediency, ganged up against Awo’s Western Region to subdue a perceived constitutional irritant in Awo and establish political suzerainty over his peacocky people – with collaboration, of course, from the old Yoruba conservatives (at loggerheads with Awo’s social welfare ideology and progressive politics) and perfidious former Action Group (AG) elements in the wake of the party’s schism.

But even if this thesis is generally debatable, the creation of the Midwest Region in 1963 lends it credence. As at that time, agitations were for the creation of minority regions: the Middle Belt in the North, the COR (Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers) in the East, the Midwest in the West.

But the coalition of Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) collaborated to deliver Midwest Region; and also collaborated to forestall the creation of a Middle Belt Region in the North and a COR Region in the East, even as every regional government was, in principle, opposed to creating minority blocs from their regions.

So, courtesy of political expediency, only the Western minorities in today’s South-South (Edo and Delta states) secured a region in the 1st Republic. The Eastern minorities (today’s Cross River, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Akwa Ibom states) did not.

Even after the 15 January 1966 coup (that threatened the North-East power cohabitation in perceived favour of the East) and the 29 July 1966 counter-coup (that re-established North’s hegemony), the 2nd Republic still followed a North-East collaboration, with Alhaji Shehu Shagari as president and Dr. Alex Ekwueme as vice-president, though the dominant Eastern party back then was the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP). As in the 1st Republic however, NPP formed a federal alliance with the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

A politically weakened post-Civil War East (read Gowon-era East Central State, now the five Igbo states) appeared to have found its salvation in the centre, whoever is there. That tradition appears on course, with its sympathy for the Jonathan Presidency, even as the polity buzzes with alignments and realignments.

For the first time in Nigeria’s history, however, there appears on the horizon an alliance between the old West and the old North. That appears the new political map in which the All Progressives Congress (APC) is birthed, with today’s South West going with today’s North West and the North East, seeking allies in part of the Middle Belt, part of the South-South and part of the South East, in that order.

That appears to fulfil Awo’s post-1983 presidential election prediction of a progressive-conservative thesis, antithesis and synthesis theory, resulting in new political alignments in the polity.

To the extent that nothing is permanent and the old political alignment had been basically ruinous, the brewing development might just be a thing to cheer.

But that is only if the new arrangement is used to forge, across the board, a fair and equitable new deal for every segment of the country.

The APC must therefore guide against any political gang-up to dominate persons or subdue any part of the country. Otherwise, it too would have fallen into the Awo era grand mistake still plaguing thispolity.

September 17, 2013
The Nigeria Police Force

Sometime in 1998 as preparations reached top gear for the return of democracy to Nigeria after decades of military rule interrupted midway by General Ibrahim Babangida’s failed third republic, a certain businessman in Ikeja, capital of Lagos State called a press conference for his office at midday. My colleagues and I were there.

As he was into selling of exotic cars, we were looking forward to him unveiling yet another of such cars into the Nigerian market as was his practice. But we were wrong or rather shocked when we arrived at the imposing glass house structure that was his office and found nothing to suggest that an unveiling of a next generation car was in the offing. Nothing of sort was planned; the Chief from Ijebuland had other ideas.

As he welcomed us into the press conference he launched into the reason for gathering the media into his office that mid afternoon:Nigeria, yes Nigeria, our dear country was on his mind. The incoming democratic dispensation was troubling his mind and he wanted to share his thoughts with Nigerians on how to make the 4th republic better.

He was an elderly man and we listened patiently to his wisdom. Out of all the problems confronting our country then he singled out the Nigerian police as one problem, if solved, that could solve most if not all the other problems. Why, we asked.

He noted that Nigeria’s problem is essentially maintenance of law and order or rather lack of it. If our laws were enforced to the letter by the police in particular and other law enforcement agents, he reckoned that Nigeria would not only be better but also prosper.

He reckoned that if the Nigeria Police Force is well funded, the officers and men properly trained and catered for they would be willing and even expected/compelled to ‘serve with heart and mind’, as our national anthem says, Nigerians and the nation and not the leaders who pay the piper. We couldn’t agree with him less.

As he later became a close confidant of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and even a strong member of his kitchen cabinet, we expected that the Nigeria Police would fare better under that regime and serve Nigerians better. You all know the outcome of the NPF under Obasanjo.

As the drama of the ongoing power struggle in Rivers State between the State governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the Commissioner of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu reached a head last Thursday with the latter prevented from accessing his official residence through his normal route by policemen acting on the orders of Mbu, the question came to mind as to whether the police force as it is today is actually Nigeria Police Force or Nigeria’s President Police Force.

And whoever has been following developments in Rivers State since Governor Amaechi contested and won the chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum for a second term against the wish of President Goodluck Jonathan can not but (in good conscience) conclude that the Nigeria Police Force as it is today is working for and in the interest of Mr President. And this is unfortunate.

It is not as if the situation had been different in the past, the NPF had always been serving their master’s voice, whether under the military or civilian government. But the appointment of Mohammed Abubakar as Inspector General of Police had raised hopes that with an officer and gentleman, at the saddle at the Force Headquarters Nigeria would finally have a police force to serve the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

The IGP actually started well and the Force could be said to be doing well but for the problem of the Rivers State command and CP Mbu. Abubakar’s order dismantling police checkpoints across the federation has not just brought so much relief to the people but has also left criminals confounded as to where and when they could encounter a police patrol. This has brought the elements of surprise and unpredictability which are essential to fighting crime.

The Force has been engaged in some laudable things but which the politics it has enmeshed itself in in Rivers State could rubbish altogether. If the IGP does not know it, CP Mbu is damaging the Nigeria Police and he is a bad advertisement for a professional police force that Nigeria crave for and which we expect Abubakar to give us.

Let us leave the politics of what is going on between President Jonathan, his wife Patience on one hand and Governor Amaechi on the other hand aside. Why should the police under the guise of enforcing law and order prevent a state governor from moving freely on any route in his state, especially the route that leads to his residence? What is that security situation that the governor does not know or should not know about that would warrant him being denied access through a particular route/road in his state? If there was such a situation and it happened suddenly as Mbu’s apologists may want to argue, why wasn’t the governor informed immediately and advised accordingly? And assuming the policemen around did not know the governor was the one coming with his guests, why wasn’t his convoy allowed to pass through once their identities were established if the police command was not playing politics?

There are so many ifs and whys here begging for answers, but the truth is that irrespective of whatever Governor Amaechi had been or could have been doing wrongly in the current political crisis rocking his state, the police in particular and every other organ or agents of government anywhere in Nigeria for that matter, should give him the honour and respect as the elected governor of Rivers State. It is not necessarily about him, but about that office and the Nigerian constitution which the police are duty bound to respect and uphold.

The argument that there was an alternate route he could have taken and chose that particular route just to give solidarity to the recently opened state headquarters of the new PDP which he belongs does not hold water. Even at that, when has that become a crime and what business has the police got in sealing off the headquarters of the new PDP in Rivers State? More shocking ad disgraceful was the fact that the team that sealed off that party office and forcefully brought down both the flags of Nigeria and that of the party was led by a deputy Commissioner of Police. What a shame? What kind of officers are these? These are the kind of things that bring public disrespect to the police. When the people see naked partisanship like this by the police, absolute partiality, they lose respect for the force. If President Jonathan had been on the other side of the party, say a member of the new PDP, would the police have prevented his faction from opening it’s office or even the president taking the road in front of the party office to wherever he wanted to go? When the Nigeria Governors’ Forum was factionalized and President Jonathan decided to back the minority faction why didn’t the police say NO? Why didn’t the Force send policemen to seal off the office of the Jang faction of NGF? Going by the police logic on the new PDP, Jang faction of NGF is also operating illegally, so, why not apply the law on that group. Was it because the president is involved? This is the kind of inconsistent application of the law by the police that tends to promote crises and anarchy in the land. This is the kind of things that the IGP should prevent if the Nigeria Police Force are to be respected by Nigerians. The truth today is that Nigerians have more respect even for the Civil Defence Corps than a policeman or woman. It is that bad. And it is politicians in uniform like CP Mbu Joseph Mbu that promotes this kind of low esteem and contempt that most Nigerians have for the Nigeria Police Force, in spite of the efforts of such gentlemen officers like IGP Abubakar and most of his officers and men, including some that had served meritoriously in the NPF in the past.

Back to the Rivers issue, IGP Abubakar, apart from the image of the Nigeria Police, has his own personal integrity to protect in this matter and should not allow one incompetent CP acting at the behest of his paymasters outside the Force, to tarnish his own reputation and taint his tenure as IGP. Abubakar should resist the temptation of allowing the NPF under his watch to be used as the militant wing of the ruling party the way one of his predecessors Sunday Adewusi deployed the police in the second republic to serve the interest of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). We all know the place of Adewusi and the NPF of that era in Nigeria’s history today, IGP Abubakar should not travel that road. He has a name to protect. Nigerians are watching.

September 17, 2013
Amaechi at barricade: a witness account

Dusk amassed over the old GRA in Port Harcourt, but it preceded a darkness more profound and virulent. I was in a bus in a convoy of the Rivers State governor along with speakers of state houses of assembly across the country from 1979. One hundred and two of them rode in the convoy.

It had been a grueling day, and my mission was to assess for myself the average day of Governor Rotimi Amaechi amidst the turmoil of today’s politics. The theatre has taken its toll on a discomfited nation. Jonathan versus Amaechi. Dame Jonathan versus Amaechi. Northern governors had visited Amaechi and hoodlums threw stones and cracked windows. APC versus PDP. New PDP versus PDP. State assembly imbroglio with an upstart and subversive minority soiling the dignity of a quorum by attempting to oust the legitimate speaker. Kidnap of a cleric. Reports of a city losing its halcyon ego to the barbarities of militants when Amaechi took office.

I visited to understand how Port Harcourt, Rivers State and its governor held their own against this brimstone. The things I saw I did not prepare for. I did not know the governor had invited former speakers, he being an alumnus. I wanted to see if he still governed and how, or was I going to write in this column about paralysis in Rivers State?

Once I arrived, I was poised to observe. So I joined the convoy at a model primary school. That tour took us several hours through his marquee projects from the morning until our return to the city and to another development I did not expect: the blockade at dusk.

After spending a whole day hopping off and on the bus, climbing, walking, standing, taking notes, propounding questions, interrogating answers, studying the body language of the governor, and interacting with the right honourables, the last anyone expected was a blockade by the police. It began when the whole convoy made a precipitous stop at an interception.

Initially, I chalked it up to a few snafus like a security breach by an unguarded civilian. But when it tarried, the reporter in me woke up, and I left the bus and walked about 50 metres to the front of the convoy. Then I learned that the police had sealed off the road, the governor’s favourite entrance to the Government House.

I also learned that the New PDP secretariat was located on that road and it had been sealed off earlier on a court order. So, I wondered aloud, if you seal off a building, what has that got to do with the road? The road did not only accommodate the secretariat, but also residences of many private persons, including some expatriates, who were seen walking through the barricade having abandoned their vehicles. It also hemmed in denizens of the Port Harcourt Club and, more importantly, the state’s general hospital known as Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital, and I wondered what happened in the case of an emergency.

I walked to the barricade and I saw three police pickup vans parked end to end across the road. I saw aides of the governor trying to persuade the police officers at the post to open the road for the governor. We had spent close to 20 minutes at the spot. Suddenly, one of the police officers flared up, and said, “How can I take orders from a civilian? I cannot take orders from a civilian.”

It became obvious that the men would not budge. A few minutes later, Governor Amaechi walked to the scene and since the officers recoiled from engaging him, he told a press corps, “You can see for yourselves. They don’t want me to enter the Government House on the instruction of the president and the commissioner of police.” He strode off to one of the buses and the convoy made a detour to the other entrance to the Government House.

It was a frenzied evening, putting in perspective the crisis between the governor and the president. Ironically, the governor had received the president at the airport and had told me he planned to see him later in the day. I doubt if it happened. After the incident, I asked the governor if the commissioner of police had called him or if he had any conversation with him on the barricade. He said no.

How come the chief security officer of the state fell in the dark about the barricade of his own road by the security forces in the state! That is the savage irony of the crisis, and all the shameless denials from the PDP offices cannot blot out what I saw.

If they wanted to seal off a building, it was fine. But why the road? The military never lapsed to this primitive level. They sealed off many buildings in their draconian days, including my newspaper house. But the roads remained inviolate.

Senator Olorunimbe Mamora, also an alumnus, summed it up when I spoke to him in the Government House: “It is the height of impunity and overzealousness.” Enough said.

September 16, 2013
The Olu and the gods

Nothing reflects the conflict between ancient and modern like the hoopla coming from the Warri Kingdom, or Iwerre land. The king, Atuwatse 11, unleashed a sandstorm of faith, and the throne was rocked to its 1480 origin. The Olu said he had found Christ, thus tossing the god of his ancestors into anachronism. He said he would rather sever than serve Belial – or Umalokun, the goddess of the sea.

He had renounced the traditional name Ogiame because it showed allegiance not to the God of Isaac but to his fathers who are now dust. He wanted to replace the anthem, and other rites and rituals of the throne.

The development is a dream of poets and novelists. What the Atuwatse has done hallmarks a perpetual battle in the modern soul. How do we serve the God of heaven and abandon the god of the earth, or sea? He must have read parts of the Bible that said, “woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea, because your adversary, Satan the Devil, has been cast down…”

But it would have been more potent if the Olu said he was not going to change his mind. But now that he has apparently bowed, what do we make of him? A Saul who became Paul and fell back to his vomit and became Saul again?

Can two walk together except they agree, asked Prophet Amos. That is the conundrum. It is the collision of the gods, a classic that plays out in our lives every day, a contest of identities. Today the Christian God works when we shout hallelujah, the next day the god of Belial works when we don’t get that job or we can’t subdue that ailment. In our syncretic way, we have brought traditional observances into Christian or Muslim worship. It comes to high relief when a man on a high throne is ensconced in the conflict.

Now, can we say the Olu has become a better Olu and a lesser Christian by this recantation? He alone can answer this, but what is clear is that you cannot serve the God of Abraham and that of Umalokun on the same throne. They are both jealous. He should have kept his worship to himself.

If this shows the power of the kingdom, it also shows the limit of the modern king. Remember Mongo Beti’s novel, King Lazarus, when a born-again king of 23 wives had to renounce his wives and choose one?

Even though the Atuwatse 11 has recoiled, the question remains if he did it for his own peace or the kingdom’s. If it is for the kingdom and not from his conviction, then we can say of him Shakespeare’s words from his greatest play about kings, Hamlet: the king has not left the throne, but the throne has left the king. But Auwatse 11 will determine that by his actions.

September 16, 2013
Restructuring versus power shift

Those opposed to the compelling imperative of restructuring through a national conference, must now have cause to reason to the contrary. Contemporary developments in the country have shown very unmistakably that we can only continue to postpone this idea at our own peril. Events regularly underscore the need to engage the distinct groups in this country to fashion out safe routes out of the nation’s unresolved problems of existence.

The war of attrition in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party PDP and efforts to recruit leaders from all sections of the country to resolve it can in a way, be regarded as PDP’s version of a national conference. What the party is currently passing through is a crisis of confidence among leaders due to failure to evolve acceptable templates to nagging issues of our federal order.

One of it is the location of power at the centre and which of the geo-political divides should have control over it. That there is constant and very bitter struggle for power among the various ethnic groups to control the centre is no longer news. The fact of this inordinate struggle underscores the point that we are yet to arrive at an ordered way of circulating power between and among the various interest groups.

But more than anything else, it clearly pictures the mutual suspicion and mistrust among these cleavages regarding the use to which they intend to deploy political power.

Its logical corollary is that the struggle for power is fuelled by general thinking that those who hold it do so largely for the interest of their primordial units and members of their immediate families. That is what foremost Afro-American political scientist Richard Joseph referred to as prebendal politics. Or how else do we rationalize the inordinate domination of primordial sentiments in the current agitations for power shift? The fact that sections of the country are threatening fire, lime and brimstone should they fail to capture power come 2015 is a sufficient signal that all is not well with the power matrix in this country. It is a clarion call for all to sit down and address the power equation and all the issues that constantly breed suspicion and mistrust among our diverse peoples. If there are no problems with our federal order, such issues as which section of the country the president comes from would not have assumed the dangerous dimension it has now taken. It is obvious that all is not well with us as a country. It is also no less obvious that a way has to be fashioned out to resolve these recurring deficits and fault lines if we are to record any genuine progress as one indivisible country. These sore points include rising insecurity, increasing slide to primordialism, fiscal federalism; devolution and rotation of power and resource control.

Scepticisms on the capacity of the federation to give hope to its constituents and the slide towards centrifugalism have been in the upsurge of recent. They got to such a point that two former rulers of this country, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida had to issue a joint statement lamenting that even (those they referred to as) patriots are beginning to question the basis for the continued unity of this country. Both personages should know what they are talking about. Embedded in this statement, is the current mood of the country.

If after 53 years of independence and nearly 100 years of coming into being of this amalgam, patriots are still questioning the basis for our continued unity, then the frustrations of millions of ordinary people whose hopes this country has dashed can be better imagined. Our leaders must fashion out the right atmosphere to tap into the temperament of the citizenry. Information gathered will be a veritable tool in fashioning out policies and measures that will catalyze co-habitation and launch the country on the path to peace, progress and development.

Before now, the ruling party had been under the illusion that all is well with us. This has resulted in the rebuffing of genuine agitations for restructuring through a national conference. Because a parasitic class monopolized the apparatus of governance and deployed it to self-serving ends, the impression had been conveyed that as long as they hold tenaciously to power, safety nets have been evolved for the nation’s political stability.

That accounts for recurring references to the limitations imposed by the constitution against such a conference. But erudite constitutional lawyer, Professor Ben Nwabueze who spoke for the patriots has said there is a way out if the leadership is committed to the idea.

For him, the 1999 constitution is a product of decree 24 of 1999 and once we repeal that decree, all impediments to full blown national conference by the 390 nationalities to fashion out a peoples’ constitution would have been removed. He therefore does not see any reason for official ambivalence to get the federating nationalities on a conference table especially now the controversy over power shift is upbeat.

Good enough, President Jonathan told the nation a fortnight ago, that his regime is not averse to the conference. As a matter of fact, he said his administration was reviewing the possibility of a national conference among Nigeria’s various ethnic nationalities. The only snag he noted is that the constitution appears to have given that responsibility to the National Assembly.

But Nwabueze has offered a way out through the repeal of the decree giving authority to that constitution. The fact of that decree is a potent reason that constitution cannot approximate the wishes and aspirations of the Nigerian people as they were not party to it.

The question now is the propriety of the current negotiations within the PDP on power shift in 2015 when it is just a mirror to the systemic infractions that have held this country down over the years. Are we not about to fritter away a golden opportunity to redress all nagging issues of our federal order by confining that negotiation to power shift within the PDP in such an unstructured manner? And to what extent can whichever way the matter is resolved assuage the feelings and aspirations of the multifarious ethnic nationalities that also desire a shot at that office? These are the issues to ponder.

The current negotiation within the PDP is limited in time and scope and therefore inherently deficient in charting the path for sustainable peace and progress of the country. It is incapable of addressing the fears, mutual suspicion and mistrust that propel bitter struggles for power among constituent units. What is now required is for Jonathan to set the stage for a national conference where the nationalities will brainstorm on various issues of our federation including but not limited to power rotation. This will not only save him the heat generated by raging agitations for power shift but more importantly, chart a roadmap for power sharing in a more ordered and sustainable way. The matter could also be resolved by diluting the concentration of power and financial resources at the centre through devolution. These are the real issues that must engage the minds of all those who do not desire the disintegration of this country. And only agreements reached by the federating nationalities hold the key for the peace, progress and development of the country. Jonathan has a golden opportunity to take advantage of the crisis in the PDP to transform this country for good through this conference. His contentious ambition to run again is also better resolved through it.

September 16, 2013
It turns out CP Mbu is actually governor of Rivers

Since the officious Rivers State police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, began to lend himself for political uses, neither he nor victims of his insubordination have slept peacefully. His career seems fated to crumble like that of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Raphael Ige, who in 2003 led the abduction of Chris Ngige, then governor of Anambra State, but what does he care? He is inured to history and its harsh lessons. He boasts a high level of education from reputable schools, but in all his doings in Rivers State, he has shown nothing of the learning and character required of an educated officer and gentleman.

But Mr Mbu, we all appreciate, could never on his own summon the courage or the recklessness to undermine the person or office of the governor of the state as he did last Thursday when he blocked the access of the governor and his august visitors to the State House. And like many of his colleagues, there is no incentive in the police conditions of service, nor flexibility in their training, to equip them with the character required to resist unlawful orders or to call their souls their own. Except I err gravely, I do not also think the urbane Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar, would give Mr Mbu orders to disrespect the Rivers State governor. If anything, I suspect that if it came to the crunch, the two, or any other police officer in their shoes, would simply and safely second-guess the presidency.

But whether they were ordered to disrespect and subvert the elected governor of Rivers or not, or they second-guessed the presidency with intent to curry favour or secure promotion or not, the important thing is that Mr Mbu has acted and presented himself as the real, not even alternate, governor of Rivers State. He proves increasingly that he has more real power than the governor, and could even ruffle the feathers of the governor, if not singe them altogether, if provoked. That we elected the defiant Governor Amaechi, not the snivelling and grovelling Mr Mbu, is, to the police officer, a small theoretical inconvenience. Given the way he speaks whenever he crosses path and arms with the governor, it is obvious that Mr Mbu has assured himself that what obtains in the state, and in which he is not disadvantaged at all, is what historians describe as contrapuntal paramountcy. Cheeky analysts may even describe the balance of terror in Rivers State as a sort of dual mandate, where Mr Mbu draws his insidious and destabilising power from Abuja, and Mr Amaechi draws his legitimate power from the long-suffering and sometimes confused electorate. To our collective dismay, we know that the real power resides in Abuja, not in some vague and indefinable electorate.

Someday, however, we will have a bright patriot as president. He will know what to do, and he will do them well. That day, alas, is not here yet.

September 15, 2013
Education and democracy: training the future generation 2

It is clear that the power of a properly educated and trained citizenry to increase the competitiveness of Nigeria in the comity of nations cannot be ignored without devastating consequences for the country and its citizens.

Following the conclusion to last week’s piece, today’s column will be devoted to fuelling public debate on how to address the failure of the education sector in the country. Today’s emphasis will be on ideological underpinnings of education in a ‘federal democracy.’ Efforts will be made to spell out what should be done to bring education back to the front burner, not only in terms of policy making but also in terms of school/college effectiveness.

Given the dismal statistics about low learning outcomes in WAEC and NECO, it is safe to assume that the foundation for higher education in the country has been compromised by the failure to create effective primary and secondary education culture in the country. The failure of the education sector is similar to that of the energy sector which provides electricity for less than 25% of the population less than 25% of the time. The decline in education should be worrisome enough for the federal government to declare an emergency in this sector. But lessons learned from declaring an emergency in the energy sector years back are too clear for the federal government to take a similar risk with education. The provision of electricity has been getting poorer since the declaration of an emergency in the sector. But no problem goes away by itself. There is a need for human intervention in any institution created by human beings.

The major problem facing the education sector is how to achieve and sustain quality and equity at the same time. For example, ongoing efforts by the federal government to achieve quality in secondary education has led to the abandonment in a democracy of the principle of equality of opportunity for all citizens. With about 100 Unity Secondary Schools across the country, the federal government has for decades believed it is possible to provide quality education that can bring about what W. E. B. DuBois once characterised as the Talented Tenth that moves society to higher achievements. Admission to Unity Schools has, as Femi Folorunso observed in a recent lecture in Lagos, generated suspicion and resentment on the part of southern Nigerians whose children with higher scores could not get into the same Unity School that children from the north with far less points than their southern counterparts easily got admitted to, on account of keeping Nigeria united.

As bad as that situation is for achievement of a union of affection in the country, another related problem is that it is generally only children of the middle class that get admitted to Unity Schools. Where the admission policy or process does not openly endorse discrimination, exclusion of children of the working class or under class have no access to even sitting for entrance examinations to most of the Unity Schools. Most of such children have been restricted by material poverty and lack of access to middle-class influence peddling to neighbourhood primary and secondary schools, most of which may not even appear on the register of schools in the federal ministry of education.

In addition, efforts at the private level to provide quality teaching in primary and secondary schools have resulted in mushrooming of private or fee-paying schools in the nooks and corners of the country. Again, it is parents with material resources that can afford to send their children to private schools. Thus, the children of majority of Nigerians are left to choose among neighbourhood primary and secondary schools funded through a combination of efforts by the federal, state, and local governments. If there is any noticeable quality being offered in the private schools, the exodus of children of middle-class background that go to Ghana every year for primary and secondary education, (not to talk of those who go to the U.S., U.K., and now U.A.E.) does not show any durable confidence in the education provided by most of the fee-paying schools in Nigeria.

To say that the country is at a cross-roads in terms of education provision is an understatement. With about an average of 40% success rates at the end of secondary education and a university system believed by many federal ministers as producing unemployable graduates, the country is in deep trouble that can affect its foundation, not necessarily in terms of disintegration that has become a popular bogey in the mouths of politicians and cultural leaders from the north and the Southsouth in recent years, but in terms of not transcending its present status of the world’s dumping ground for all goods from pasta to plasma television. Any further lowering of the competitiveness of the country will be enough to make the country import more than it can pay for, even now that oil is enjoying the benefit of a seller’s market. The situation will be worse for Nigeria when oil in the next decade or two becomes an item in the buyer’s market with the resultant falling of oil price.

It is clear that the power of a properly educated and trained citizenry to increase the competitiveness of Nigeria in the comity of nations cannot be ignored without devastating consequences for the country and its citizens. Like everything else, organising provision of education to respond to the fear that allowing states and regions more freedom to determine how to refine their culture and advance their development, is not likely to achieve anything more than the organisation of the Nigeria Police Force has done: inefficiency and ineffectiveness. It is indeed safer to believe that encouraging all parts of Nigeria to develop ways of providing quality education to citizens without excluding any group or class directly or indirectly has a higher chance of enhancing the country’s unity than holding parts of the country down from getting imaginative about how to solve the problem of education provision for citizens.

What is needed is for the federal government to leave the running of schools to local governments, as Folorunso recommended in the lecture referred to earlier. This will allow states and local governments to collaborate on curriculum development and inspectorate system. The current system of allocating funds to states and local governments from the revenue from rents collected on oil and gas may need to stop, to allow local governments and states to collect taxes from citizens and in the process create a bond or contract between the two sides about how to solve the fundamental problem of training children that can keep Nigeria going beyond the decades of oil.

What the federal government needs to do is to work out in conjunction with the federating units a vision of what type of Nigeria we plan to create. The present mantra that Nigeria is being prepared to become the 20th largest economy is too vague to base an education development strategy on. Whatever number Nigeria occupies at present in the ranking of economies has not come from its efforts as much as it has from the oil in the womb of its soil. Now that it is becoming clearer by the day that the century of hydrocarbon may be coming to an end, the preparation for the century of knowledge as the source of wealth and employment requires that the current system of a big federal bureaucracy directing national education for the purpose of keeping the appearance of national unity will be unable to face the challenge of designing an effective education provision for all citizens. Since most citizens attend public primary and secondary schools, it is no use pretending that the problem of quality and equity will go away by either sending children abroad or allowing private vendors of education to operate with little or no monitoring from the governments with jurisdiction over their locations.

To be continued.

September 15, 2013
As PDP unravels, where is Ekiti PDP?

If Ekiti PDP has always been fractious, its problems have now quintupled as the falcon can no longer hear the falconer.

It the best of times, it is the tradition of the Ekiti PDP to have no idea about any matter, however serious, or pedestrian, until they have visited Ota. Even at a time when former governor Gbenga Daniel gave Obasanjo, even as President, no quarters whatever in the affairs of his native Ogun State PDP, our friends in Ekiti would still first visit with Baba or, at the very worst, divine his innermost cravings. Thus, at a point, it became impossible for Ekiti to nominate a candidate as federal minister on its own; and once, when they went beyond their bounds and nominated Dayo Adeyeye, it only took President Obasanjo enough time to remember that the prince was his nemesis as Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, and so, promptly collapsed the party’s temerity and Adeyeye’s earnest hopes.

These were the thoughts running through my mind this past week as I posed the following question to the ekitipanupo web portal: Wither Ekiti PDP, as the ‘largest rally in Africa’ unravels?

As I tried to sketch above, at no point in time had the party in Ekiti being as free as you found in Oyo, Osun, Ondo or in Gbenga Daniel’s Ogun. The few times President Obasanjo busied himself with state matters, any of Bode George, the late Baba Adedibu or Senator Omisore took charge; took as much contracts as he wanted or arranged charter flights for the current governor, however transient. Indeed, when matters came to a head, our dear governors were not unknown to have run to a paramount ruler outside the state to help out. An instance was when an overbearing chieftain of the party was going to overawe the state governor with his relationship with a top Abuja government official to get a seat on the National Executive Council of the party and the governor had to dash to Kabiyesi for succour.

It must be said though, that at that time, all Southwest chapters respected the former president as it predated the current Buruji Kasamu’s suzerainty which has seen leading lights of the Obasanjo group shoved aside, even from posts to which they were elected.

No thanks to a combination of President Jonathan and a rambunctious Chairman Tukur.

Therefore, with the Presidency reportedly of the view that Obasanjo is behind the present crisis ravaging the party, whither Ekiti PDP? Kasamu’s desire to add Ekiti to his Ogun conquest must have informed his boast to spend a billion naira on the Ekiti election, knowing full well that once his PDP people hear about money, all sense is lost.

So what exactly is their permutation; which of the Tukur /Baraje groups offers the best for their chimerical hopes, for 2014 in Ekiti? This is the problem that must literally be eating them up now and I won’t be surprised if all manner of diviners, soothsayers and marabouts are already smiling to their banks. It becomes worse when one remembers that there are no less than 16 wannabe governors within their ranks.

Writing in answer to the question was Wale Adeoye, a brilliant journalist, and Senior Special Assistant in the Fayemi administration. I shall quote him at some length. Wrote Wale: ‘The Ekiti and South West PDP are in a fix. It is unlikely they will come out unscathed. The Tukur faction, by crook and arm-twisting, will dominate the scene. The two sides are not fighting any ideological war. The Tukur faction wants the President, probably because he has paid his material price for the bidding or the pudding. The Baraje group, in turn, wants power so as to enhance the diminishing influence of the northern (Hausa-Fulani) oligarchy. Neither Tukur nor Baraje has told us that the battle is informed by the interest of Nigeria or Nigerians; neither has either disagreed with the ruinous economic policies of the PDP at the national and local frontiers. The devil is split in two: one is a rattle-snake, the other a scorpion. None is useful to mankind, not even for the eating, except to isolate and kill them before they finally pour their insidious venom on society. The Ekiti and South West PDP are split along the two divides: OBJ is an opportunist, trying to exploit the crack to full advantage. In reality, he is a vocal, devilish authority, but in praxis, he lacks any compelling political structure. Atiku, the knight of treacherous adventures, is using the PDM as a platform to destabilise the setting; to pave the way for his personal ambition or, at worst, to ensure the emergence of his crony as the next president. OBJ is not comfortable with Atiku, but for the plot against the President, he needs to surge at the hawk first, before he could chastise the rebellious, back-stabbing musketeers on his heels. This crisis has exposed the barrenness of the PDP, its lack of tact, its destructive antics, its lows, its self-seeking man-oeuvres and the imminence of its collapse as one of history’s most heinous political institutions.’ He then warns: ‘Let the progressive forces be aware: we need a movement; a movement in alliance with labour, students, workers, seafarers, haves and havenots, rich and poor, dregs and royals, to rise up and agree on the need to stop the PDP in all its deceitful shapes, come 2015.’

If Ekiti PDP has always been fractious, its problems have now quintupled as the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. If the Oni group can be said to have been weakened by the vicissitudes Obasanjo suffered in the hands of Buruji Kasamu working as a Jonathan/Tukur hireling, the Fayose/Olubolade group, which won its rancorous convention, has uproariously atomised, with both men sparing no lurid word in publicly describing each other. While Akin Omole of the Oni group, who lost the chairmanship election, has since been in court asking it to send packing the incumbent state chairman, Makanjuola Ogundipe, on the grounds that members of the state executive committee came in through a manipulated congress election, as if rigging is not their party’s middle name, Ogundipe has, in turn, threatened to haul Omole before the enforcer, Chairman Tukur, for anti- party activities.

Things have gotten even worse. There had been serial mutual suspensions of party chieftains, including both Fayose and Ogundipe. Fisticuffs, cutlasses, guns and charms have also been brought into play with a former Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly a major victim. Abuja has, as expected, done its usual abracadabra; rescinding Fayose’s suspension while tenaciously holding to the consensus arrangement which is the very reason Fayose is fighting to the death. In the meantime, the Oni group has been further affected by the publicised exit of Professor Lola Borisade to energise the PDM which is guaranteed to be Atiku’s next platform to confront the Obasanjo/Lamido group. And that will be the duel! Therefore, even if the Oni group, which is the single most cohesive group, joins the new PDP in the meantime, the romance will most likely be short-lived as most of the 16 aspiring to win the guber slot are likely to tilt towards the Jonathan group which, with power behind it, will most probably thump the new. But, in the meantime, fearing a mass defection into the new PDP in the state, the President will most probably go back on his erstwhile support for his Police Affairs Minister who, of course, has nowhere else to go besides the president’s group.

That exactly is where the Ekiti PDP is today; their jigsaw puzzle, in no man’s land, marooned and, literally leaderless. Even then, in the most unlikely event that the party resolves its many problems, national and state, where is the PDP going to start from in Ekiti? Is it from its dismal failure to attract any meaningful federal project to the state in 14 years of their party’s stranglehold on the country? Is it in the federal government’s pernicious marginalisation of the Yoruba in the affairs of the country such that you cannot count a single Yoruba man in the topmost 10 jobs in the country? Is it the fact that nothing of substance stands to the memory of PDP’s seven years of locust in Ekiti? Compare that miserable record with the exploits of the Fayemi administration which, in under three years, has touched every nook and cranny of the state, having a minimum of at least one project in EVERY town, village or community; continuously impacting every segment of governance and very positively presenting the state to the world as a caring government via programmes like the monthly stipends to the elderly and the multi-birth care, to mention but a few.

So to the question, I answer: Ekiti PDP is certainly in the doldrums.

September 15, 2013
Jonathan goes for broke

Last Wednesday, President Goodluck Jonathan suddenly and unexpectedly axed nine of his ministers, all of whom, it appeared, were appointed through those now ranged against him in political battle. It is instructive that when the president was finally persuaded to substantially reshuffle his cabinet, he did so in defence of private political objectives and in ways that baffled presidency watchers. We do not know whether Dr Jonathan appreciates the irony that dogs his presidency; but to many of us it is clear that whenever he projects power it is mainly to advance ignoble causes. Indeed, I add that anytime the president yields to his often overpowering inclination to do wrong, it is in spite of the loftiness of the cause before him and to the detriment of his imposing and outsized office. It was with characteristic surliness, for instance, that he deployed the military to crush the January 2012 nationwide fuel revolt when all he needed to do was placate the electorate and gain political capital as he grudgingly reduced the price of a litre of fuel from N145 to N97. In last week’s cabinet reshuffle, Dr Jonathan adds imprecision to surliness.

Perhaps tired of being punched and wrong-footed by his enemies, Dr Jonathan finally felt compelled to respond in a way that has left his aides struggling to rationalise what is obviously a baffling political move. Except newspaper reports quote presidency sources wrongly, it is known that the president and his aides are still negotiating with the Group of Seven governors and others sponsoring or inspiring them into intra-party revolt. But by moving against the G-7 nominees in his cabinet, it is not clear which the president values more: to root out those he suspects are disloyal to him; or to reconcile with the G-7 and restore peace and order in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His priorities, however, seem already self-evident. It is obvious he intends to continue indulging his counterproductive pugnacity, a contentiousness that has been given fillip by the gerontocrats surrounding, captivating and seducing him to war. The president has enormous powers, they say, and it is both presidential and fitting to use them in such a manner that no one will be left with the mistaken belief that Dr Jonathan does not understand the nuances of power.

Dr Jonathan does not interpret the grievances of the G-7 governors as proceeding from their exasperation with the leadership style of the PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur. Nor does he think those grievances, even if they were substantial or potent enough, were genuine. Indeed, with the presence of the intrepid Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State in the ranks of the so-called rebels, the president is sufficiently persuaded to believe that rebellion, rather than grievances, was the bane of the party. The president also gives the impression, without saying so, that the rebellion is driven by a combination of irreverence (some call it rudeness), opposition machinations and deliberate contempt for his person and ability, all of which are summed up in the unflattering and insulting opinion that he is unfit to rule. But rebellion, as he and his aides also secretly hold and whisper in pianissimo tones, should be crushed rather than mollified.

When political battles are cast in military terms and symbols, such as Dr Jonathan and his brash aides have done, it portends danger for both the state and the combatants. For even harmless feints, which former President Olusegun Obasanjo is besotted to in his uncalculating and continuing obsession for relevance, can easily become a gritty test of wills from which it is impossible to climb down. Dr Jonathan has faced many tests since he assumed power some four years ago, but none of those tests has produced in him the maturity, reflection, astuteness and perspicuity great leaders acquire after passing through trials. On the contrary, every notable test he has faced and every dubious victory he has achieved has made Dr Jonathan more intransigent, less contemplative and given to romanticising brute power. Having thus allowed himself to be persuaded that he faced war against the rebel governors, and after having cast himself obliquely as a war leader who needed to take decisive and powerful steps to rein in dissent, Dr Jonathan has decided to go for broke.

While it is incontestable that the many haphazard and unthinking policies of Alhaji Tukur spurred rebellion in the party, and while the president was more careless in overseeing the affairs of the party than he has deliberately courted trouble and disaffection, it is fair to say that his current temper is a reaction to the impertinent goading of the G-7 governors. By coming out with an alternative power structure on the day the PDP held its special convention in Abuja, and doing so with such secrecy as ridiculed, if not humiliated, the presidency and its coercive agencies, few failed to notice that the G-7 governors had also gone for broke. Given the stiffness of their conditions for peace in the party, it seems inconceivable that the rebellious governors left room for any peaceful settlement now or in the future.

There is little doubt that the aggrieved G-7 governors drew first blood, and the president had to respond whether he liked it or not. What is in dispute, however, is whether in the circumstances the president has reacted with the decorum becoming his office and the restraint and circumspection he has claimed for himself for so long. By any standard, sacking nine ministers in one fell swoop is not only excessive and inexcusable, it is indicative of the president’s poor judgement in cabinet selection. It is also doubtful whether Dr Jonathan can convince himself, let alone the country, that the ministers he sacked were either incompetent or underperforming, or whether they were the only guilty ones. More crucially, even if he wishes to assemble a war cabinet for Poll 2015, as some now speculate, it is hard to see from where he would recruit those field officers who can deliver the easy victory he covets and who would not succumb to the rabidness and thoughtlessness of his man Fridays. Yet, it is well known in Abuja that it is his leadership style, not to say his lack of visionary depth, that predisposes his presidency to repeated mishaps, humiliation and crushing defeats.

Any rebellion, such as the one triggered by the G-7 governors, is not strange in politics. In fact many established democracies, which run the parliamentary system, have witnessed the kind of political rebellion that is making Dr Jonathan froth at the mouth with rage. There will, therefore, always be rebellion, and presidents and political leaders must have the common sense and moderation to tackle it when it arises. Sadly, Dr Jonathan has approached the rebellion in his party with unseemly and demeaning comportment. Because he and his predecessors unwisely personified party leadership and have accreted enormous party powers to the presidency, it has been difficult for him and his predecessors to confine party disagreements to party boundaries. Instead, they have formed the bad habit of transferring disagreements to the presidency and foisting a needless crisis on the country, thereby threatening not only good governance, or indeed governance of any sort, but also peace and stability.

Encouraged by sycophants, jobholders and some insensitive South-South political leaders and herdsmen of jaundiced votes, Dr Jonathan has embraced a fanatical and unyielding style of crisis management. We always knew he was not a democrat, nor, like Chief Obasanjo, can ever be, but his ham-fisted manner of conflict resolution and his monarchical approach to general politics have so polluted and prejudiced the atmosphere that for the first time, this column has started to fear that the foundation of Nigeria is threatened. The threat, it must be reiterated, is not because there is crisis at all, but because the men in power lack the reasoned agility to respond in ways that will reassure everyone that those in power are rational, patriotic and civilised people. One of the variables in the crisis is the 2015 presidential poll. Dr Jonathan, of course, has the right to contest in 2015, and that right can be advanced and defended intelligently; but his opponents also have the right to discourage him as much as they can without being subjected to unconstitutional, not to say autocratic, measures.

I suspect that no one but fate itself can restrain Dr Jonathan. He will fight everywhere and every person, and he will spare nothing, not even the constitution, in waging his self-inflicted war. Democracy and its spinoffs are dispensable to him, for after all, he has never shown he understands what they mean. He has a vague notion of the greatness of the country he presides over, but that notion does not include its peace, stability, growth or superiority over other African nations. He knows a thing or two about what the presidency stands for, but his perception is coloured by the traditional African system of hero-worship, superstition and idolatry. This was why, for instance, he and his men took umbrage when his opponents described his style as kindergarten. So, let us brace ourselves for the worst or be prepared valiantly to reclaim our democracy, or what is left of it, from the hands of charlatans. Dr Jonathan, it is clear, is incensed by the seemingly harmless effort to limit him to a one-term president. He will do everything to destroy his opponents, and if need be, the country, not only because he has taken the fight personally, but also strangely because, for a 20th century man, he views politics and leadership from an antediluvian prism.

September 15, 2013