The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Presidential anarchy

    Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that appears the case.

    It is nothing short of criminalising the presidency. But how much of this impunity can the civil order bear before something terrible gives?

    The especial tragedy of the Jonathan Presidency is, with reckless regularity, it repeats history as farce.

    But neither the first Nigerian president to boast a PhD, nor his hyper-educated aides, seems fazed by this roller-coaster cascade into infamy. Such is their total gobble of the sweet poison of naked power – powers they don’t even have, had they not chosen to criminalise the presidency, if they ever bothered to read between the lines of the 1999 Constitution, warts and all!

    Take the latest trigger in the contrived crisis: the Rivers House of Assembly mayhem of July 9. Now, between the Goodluck Jonathan and Rotimi Amaechi battling camps, there is enough villainy to gift a multitude, with some left-over.

    How can an immaculate, fiery and all-conquering mace-battler, with the moral ardour of some bathetic Christ clearing his father’s house of worship of a den of thieves, morph into a sanctimonious victim, nestling in a hospital bed; and peeping at millions of sympathisers, from the vantage point of the lead photo, on the front page of a national newspaper?

    But before you condemn that battler, meet his victim: an apparent constitutional criminal, one of the G-5 renegades who, backed by some subversive federal power, felt they could impeach the Rivers Assembly Speaker and, like some tragic-comic pantomime with voice-over, were already on the subversive ritual, seconding motions, suspending imaginary legislators, voting, getting “elected” and giving “acceptance speeches”!

    Must Nigerians be assaulted by such power lunacy?

    To apologists or self-proclaimed purists, who insist “constitutional criminal” is jumping the legal gun, since no one has been tried and found guilty, this riposte: if the courts had serially voided such legislative banditry in Oyo, Plateau and Anambra states, during the Obasanjo-era presidential anarchy, can it be less culpable now because Jonathan-era legislative lunatics are repeating the farce?

    And here really lies the crux: if Obasanjo could grandstand that Nuhu Ribadu was undermining the Constitution to get rid of allegedly thieving politicians, what noble cause can the current rascals attach to their own subversive activism?

    Those who nail Governor Amaechi for “invading” the Rivers legislature to clear the mess miss the point. Yes, a governor should be a gentleman. But with a president that tweaks rules for illicit gains, that could be fatal.

    If you doubt, ask Rashidi Ladoja, the bitter-sweet former governor of Oyo State. He shunned President Obasanjo’s diktat that he surrender his gubernatorial authority to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s beloved Ibadan garrison commander, only to holler in the cold for no less than 10 months, victim of an illegal impeachment.

    To those who still want to play the ostrich, pushing “law” without factoring in the lawless temper of its operators, the odyssey of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, under this same Jonathan Presidency, is instructive. Salami did his duty by law. But to the lawless in government, that was near-capital crime, for which the no-nonsense president of the Court of Appeal is paying.

    Yes, the Judiciary saved Ladoja; and voided the allied legislative rascality in Plateau and Anambra states. But with the Salami experience, it is doubtful if that judiciary had not melted into Heraclitus’s state of flux, no thanks to a hostile Jonathan Presidency.

    Amaechi certainly was not pretty, “storming” the legislature to nip in the bud the putative coup against his office. But he did the needful to preserve his position in an emerging presidential anarchy. For all you know, if the coup against him had succeeded, he would now be shrieking, Ladoja-like, from the wilderness, while his traducers would be mouthing “due process”! No society thrives under such cynical manipulation.

    But it is instructive how this Jonathan-era rascality empties into the Obasanjo-era mother river, even if Jonathan’s bumbling, to use Malthus-speak of basic economics, is “geometrical” while Obasanjo’s “original sins” now appear “arithmetical”.

    Talking about “original sin”, the dramatis personae of the current crisis appear to have cleanly forgotten the first outrage of 10 July 2003 (the Rivers outrage followed almost 10 years after, 9 July 2013!), when some Abuja-backed criminals tried to unseat controversial Governor Chris Ngige. It was the classic malevolent godfather’s challenge, before the plague of illicit impeachments based on “simple minorities”, which the latest Rivers jokers essayed with devastating consequences.

    What happened to the ring leaders back then: AIG Raphael Ige, the apparent Abuja viceroy in the crime, Tafa Balogun, then sitting IG, and even Obasanjo himself, the sitting president who, throughout the crisis, pushed the theory of plausible deniability?

    AIG Ige, the apparent fall guy, suffered abrupt retirement (even if his retirement time was close) and later, sudden death. Mr. Balogun suffered eventual humiliation, though his role, beyond being the Police IG was unclear; and his comeuppance was not directly linked to the Ngige saga. Even Obasanjo has continued to suffer progressive devaluation, to the point of irrelevance, since his presidential glory days.

    Do all these speak to Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police deep in the Rivers crisis, given his inappropriate conduct and reckless utterances? There are always spiritual consequences for political rascality that hurt the silent and innocent majority.

    Festus Eriye, editor of The Nation on Sunday, in his penetrating piece of July 14, described President Jonathan as Pontius Pilate, in a piece he headlined “Pontius Pilate strikes again”. That was a brilliant metaphor because before Jonathan, there was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, and Pontius Pilate I of Nigeria’s troubled political horizon.

    Sir Abubakar launched political insurrection at the Western Region, with his suspect proclamation of state of emergency, after a contrived crisis in the Western House of Assembly, just to cripple Obafemi Awolowo.

    Jonathan, Pontius Pilate II, is doing the same, in what would have been the old Eastern Region, although this time, against a party mate; but with no less partisan bile, despite his aides’ comical denial. Jonathan court historians should check their history books and tell their principal how the Balewa gambit ended.

    Which brings us to the Jonathan denial ensemble: two “doctors”, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and a Gulak, who obviously thinks everybody’s thinking faculty is, as his own, locked in Jonathan’s gulag!

    Ahmed Gulak, sounding every inch a power brat, told Prof. Wole Soyinka to be “responsible” (a counsel his principal ironically needs more than anyone!), because of Soyinka’s stance on the contrived Rivers crisis.

    Well, Gulak should check his history books. When Balewa was being led astray or even Obasanjo, Jonathan’s political creator, was leading himself astray, Soyinka was there, an ever consistent voice of reason, which nevertheless is the proverbial harsh hunter’s whistle, to the hearing of a doomed dog.

    Those who engage in double-speak, let them. But true friends of Goodluck Jonathan must tell him to withdraw from his Rivers misadventure.

    It is a wide and merry way that leads to infamy.

     

  • Rivers: Time to stop the slide

    Rivers: Time to stop the slide

    Not a few Nigerians, both at home and in the Diaspora were disturbed by the recent turn of events for the worse in the escalating political crisis in the Rivers State chapter of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    Not only were they disturbed, they were equally surprised and disappointed at the orgy of violence that attended the legislative session of the House of Assembly last Tuesday and the show of shame put up a day later by the Police which barricaded the Government House in Port Harcourt for close to three hours, firing tear gas into the premises.

    And most Nigerians are now not just ashamed of what politicians are turning this democracy into under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, but are also afraid that the 4th republic is in peril if the Rivers crisis is allowed to fester and spread to other parts of the country. They fear the Egyptian scenario could play itself out here if care was not taken. They could be right.

    In Egypt as we all know, the military had just kicked out the elected government of President Mohammed Morsi when the country was sliding into seeming unending chaos, replacing it with an interim civilian administration. The chaos though, is continuing and the military (mis)adventure looks unlikely to restore peace, stability and sustainable democracy any time soon.

    This is the path the Rivers crisis seems to be taking Nigeria. Remember we travelled this route before twice with disastrous consequences. The political crisis in the western region in the first republic over disputed election got to a head when opposing lawmakers fought one another in the Parliament building at Agodi in Ibadan, using chairs and other movable furniture as weapons. The photographs of members of the regional parliament escaping through the window are there in history books to remind us of that period.

    The rest of Nigeria practically looked on as the Western Region literarily burnt as supporters of rival political  parties engaged in arson and killing in what was known locally as “Operation  Wetie”, that is, wetting the subject or object with fuel before setting in fire. They thought it was a Yoruba problem, but they were wrong as the failure of the federal government then to contain it drew the attention of five Majors in the Nigerian Army who staged the first military coup in the country, thus terminating that democratic experience.

    And our politicians certainly did not learn anything from that experience as the south west again burnt in the second republic when disputed election in Ondo state in 1983, led to similar arson and killing which together with other political mayhem and similar crises elsewhere attracted the intervention of the soldiers and our second attempt at democracy was halted on December 31st 1983.

    Those who could recall these two past experiences have been drawing the attention of the political class to their similarities with today’s crisis in Rivers State and the need to avoid that path, but it does appear they are talking to the deaf.

    The crisis that culminated in the free for all fight inside the chambers of the Rivers State House of Assembly last Tuesday has its roots in the plans by rival political camps within the ruling PDP in the state to control the administration and resources of the state after the tenure of Governor Rotimi Amaechi in 2015. While the Amaechi group is intent on him seeing out his second term successfully, it also aims to produce his successor and therefore sustain his legacy of good work, performance and delivery of ‘dividend of democracy’ to the people.

    The other camp led by a former Amaechi ally and now a member of the federal cabinet Nyesom Wike, wants to be in charge and seems not willing to wait till 2015; it wants the governorship now and appears ready to do anything and everything that could bring about this. And it has found a willing ally in the wife of the president, Dame Patience Jonathan, an indigene of Rivers, who not only wants to build her own political followership in the state but also produce the next governor preferably from her Okrika ethnic group. Together they have sold the idea to Jonathan who has lent the federal might to their project with the selfish belief that that is the only way to guarantee him the two million or so votes from Rivers state in the 2015 presidential election.

    Both of them are using the presidential support differently. Wike, with ears of the president, is manipulating the party structure and with the help of a contentious court order has been able, for now, to wrestle the control of the PDP in the state from the Amaechi group, the intention being to either use the party to compel its members in the Assembly to impeach the governor and provide a window for the group to sneak into the Government House or deny Amaechi the party ticket in case a court invalidates his election and orders a rerun. They attempted to push through the impeachment and the outcome was the mayhem witnessed last week at the Assembly.

    The First Lady on her part has been using the security agencies especially the police to intimidate the state government to either run the governor out of office now or weaken him so much as to be unable to produce or influence his successor in 2015.

    The governor is expectedly not keeping quiet. In the face of the federal onslaught both against his government, his supporters and even the larger society in Rivers state, Amaechi has been fighting on all fronts to resist the other group and still be able provide leadership to his people and continue to deliver on his promise of good governance. This must be a tall order because the federal might arrayed against him is indeed awesome and powerful.

    To the chagrin of his opponents, the majority of the people of Rivers are with him, so also are most of his colleagues in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum where he remains the chairman, the presidency’s attempt to polarize the forum notwithstanding.

    But the effect of the ‘war’ is beginning to tell on the people. Security situation in the state is getting worse, no thanks to the Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu who seems to be more interested in playing along with the First Lady rather than working with the state governor. Militants, cultists and their likes that were driven out of town five, six years ago are back on the prowl, working for the anti Amaechi forces and terrorizing the people. Kidnapping we are told is on the increase, so are other crimes, but CP Mbu is unperturbed as long as ‘Madam at the top’ and the Minister are happy. He seems to be answerable to no one but the First Lady, not even the Inspector General of Police.

    In all of this the president is behaving as if all is well or Amaechi must be brought down to his knees and thought a lesson even if Rivers will burn. This is unfortunate. If Jonathan continues to fold his arms and allow events in Rivers to degenerate further to the point where things would begin to fall apart the blame would be on his head and nobody would cry for him. If truly he is the leader of his party, then he should be able to call all the warring groups in PDP in the state, including his wife to order in the interest of not just this democracy but also the country. He knows who and what is causing the crisis in Rivers state, he also knows the solution. He should stop playing politics with us. It is time to act as leader of the nation that his position has conferred on him He should resist the temptation to press the self destruct button. Nigeria can’t afford to travel that road again. NO.

    While this is not an attempt to justify Governor Amaechi’s actions or exonerate him from whatever blames he deserves, President Jonathan bears the greater responsibility to ensure the survival of this democracy and the country as a united entity.

     

  • Truths, lies and my EFCC days

    I read Mahmud Jega’s Daily Trust column a fortnight ago, with the title “Gra-gra versus softly-softly”.  It was composed in his characteristic meticulousness which also touched a nerve that concerns all.  It also involved me, personally. It involved me because the piece was not only about anti-corruption struggle, something I came to be more identified with in the course of my career, but also because I was mentioned, or referenced to, many times in the piece. In the piece, Jega repeated several erroneous notions about my work at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). But to be fair to him, those insinuations were far from being his concoctions. They have been held for a long time by a section of Nigerians who were largely misinformed about the modus operandi of the EFCC I headed or about me as a person. I therefore thought it a duty to correct some of the wrong impressions people have about what we did, for the sake of future and the reading public.

    I must, however, appreciate many of the positive things about our operations and modest achievements at the EFCC highlighted by Jega. Those were things we achieved largely because of our resolve to form a strong and professional agency, from the outset. Strong institutions are at the base of whatever things to come out of a system. This was a major focus for us. There were deliberate steps at capacity building that would prove extremely advantageous for the work we did in the five years I was there. I use “we” because the work was never a one man job. EFCC was beyond Nuhu Ribadu, or any individual for that matter. It was a team work. The patriotism, esprit de corp and professionalism exhibited by the team were the secrets for our successes.

    But as I always insist, success of anti-graft efforts is hinged largely at the leadership level, especially the political leadership. We were lucky to have the cooperation of the leadership at the time. To the credit of President Olusegun Obasanjo, he let us do the work even at a time we were going against some elements that were extremely close to him. It is therefore amusing when I hear people these days charge me of “selective justice”. Well, perhaps those charges could be passed as the example of what Wole Soyinka called “our collective amnesia”. Take a comprehensive list of high profile people EFCC brought to justice, majority of them were people that could be correctly tagged “Obasanjo boys”. Even though some of them suddenly turn around the moment they found themselves in trouble with the law, as a way of buying public sympathy. Unfortunately, many people don’t strive to stretch the facts to reveal this truth. One largely neglected pillar of our work was the Judiciary and the criminal justice system generally. We had the support of other people in the justice administration chain. Without the will of incorruptible judges and other law enforcement officials, all our modest effort would have come to nought.

    However, the main thesis of Jega’s essay, which was also made clear from the title, was that the EFCC I headed was something of a gra-gra agency – a body that is peopled with exuberant officers eager to arrest suspects in order to hit the headlines. This is a flawed assessment of it. It is also something that people come to believe, largely on account of the agency’s portrayal in the media. EFCC was, and is, never about arrests. In fact, arrest was just a fraction of the entire work. But because arrest is what makes the news, the myriad of steps and processes we follow before and after arrest are mostly overlooked.

    Every step in administration of a corruption case is carefully outlined and has its rigours and identified procedures. A lot of work would have to be put in from the point of accepting a petition or starting a case, analysing it, identifying the key issues and persons, investigation, sourcing documents, obtaining arrest and search warrants, preparing charges and then arrest. We tried to work on each of the steps in a very meticulous manner. It is a little surprise therefore, that throughout my period there was only one person who took me to court challenging his detention by the EFCC. He also lost the suit. The reason was simple: we followed the law and therefore had to do our homework before we pick anybody. Similarly, to point to the meticulous nature of what we did, it is in record that the EFCC recorded a world record of over 90 percent convictions on all the cases we prosecuted. I don’t think gra-gra would yield these results.

    It is also incorrect to say that EFCC didn’t pursue preventive measures as regards corruption. We fully appreciated the fact that the twin strategy of prevention and sanctioning must always go together in law enforcement in general and fighting corruption in particular. The preventive measures of the EFCC were often overshadowed by the news selling headlines about arrests but EFCC took a lot of preventive measures. Major ones include the establishment of the Training and Research Institute that has been carrying out studies on corruption prevention in both public and private sectors. The institute is in the lead in training of detectives, public servants, bankers and so many others in Nigeria today. The establishment of Financial Intelligence Unit is one of the most important steps in preventive measures of controlling corruption globally; EFCC has done it for Nigeria. EFCC also worked to establish international networks and linkages, notably with the United Nations, FBI, Metropolitan Police, German BKA, and West African anti-money-laundering group, GIABA, among others.

    We also worked closely with many departments of governments, civil society groups, religious organisations and schools, on public enlightenment to stem corruption in the society. EFCC also engaged the National Assembly to amend laws, the judiciary on corruption prevention and justice delivery, the customs, the FIRS, NPA and many states and local governments. In fact, many of the arrests made by EFCC arose out of whistle-blowing efforts through these mechanisms. By the way, arrests and prosecutions are also very powerful tools of preventive measures, because they do send a strong message that one cannot get away with corrupt practice, no matter how highly placed.

    The article also mentioned the impeachment of three governors allegedly influenced by the EFCC. I try as much as possible not to be personal by commenting on such cases but the fact that it is suddenly gaining currency, makes it only sensible to clear the misconceptions. The EFCC did not and could not have impeached any governor or force legislators to do so. It will be unfair to deny the legislators the credit of doing their constitutional responsibilities. The EFCC did its part of the responsibility of investigation and submission of findings to the various state assemblies all over the nation. Some state assemblies had cause to act on such reports, others did not. But we certainly did not force anyone to take any action. My understanding of events then was that two out of the three former governors got arrested in London with millions of Pounds. They absconded from justice there and that triggered chain of events that culminated in their loss of political control of their states and thereby resulted in their impeachments. The former governor of Ekiti State had his own local issues. He lost out with the elite of the state, his political party, and other stakeholders. His ordeals had nothing to do with the EFCC. In all the cases, it was obvious that the governors lost out with their political parties and therefore the assembly members were more than willing to act on the thorough investigation reports of the EFCC. The reports were the extent of EFCC’s involvement in those impeachments.

    As a proviso, I want to state that all the actions we took while at the EFCC were taken with the purest of intentions and based on available facts before us at the time. But it is understandable that in everything we do as humans, we are bound to be misunderstood. However, fear of being misunderstood should not be an excuse for not moving to salvage our country. As citizens, we all have the civic responsibility of playing our part in healing the country of its myriad of maladies and guiding it to the coast of prosperity.

    • Ribadu is the former EFCC chairman

  • IBB: A tormented mind at work

    IBB: A tormented mind at work

    Former military president General Ibrahim Babangida’s greatest fear, I gather from some persons who see him from time to time, is that despite his many accomplishments, he will be defined by a single event: the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election.

    That fear would seem to explain why, over the past five years, he has been labouring desperately to re-write the very public record of the crucial events of the time, and to latch on to anything from that era that could soften what is sure to be history’s harsh judgment on him.

    Irony of ironies, he has seized the very election he annulled with such brazen casuistry as his path to redemption.

    He was back peddling that line the other day, in an interview with ThisDay, on the 20th anniversary of that election.

    “Well, it has come and gone,” he said of the poll. “Whatever I feel about it, at least, Nigerians agreed on one thing, that we, the administration, succeeded in holding one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country.”

    Then, this:

    “I can say I feel proud. We may not have achieved the objective but at least, we conducted an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence, an election that is still being referred to in the country.”

    In case he has forgotten, here, in his own words, is what he said in his June 24, 1993, national broadcast justifying the annulment:

    “ . . . Even before the presidential election, and indeed at the party conventions, we had full knowledge of the bad signals pertaining to the enormous breach of the rules and regulations of democratic elections.

    “But because we were determined to keep faith with the deadline of 27th August, 1993 for the return to civil rule, we overlooked the reported breaches. Unfortunately, these breaches continued into the presidential election of June 12, 1993, on an even greater proportion.

    “There were allegations of irregularities and other acts of bad conduct leveled against the presidential candidates but NEC went ahead and cleared them. There were proofs as well as documented evidence of widespread use of money during the party primaries as well as the presidential election. These were the same bad conduct for which the party presidential primaries of 1992 were cancelled.

    “Evidence available to government put the total amount of money spent by the presidential candidates at over two billion, one hundred million naira (N2.1 billion). The use of money was again the major source of undermining the electoral process.

    “Both these allegations and evidence were known to the National Defence and Security Council before the holding of the June 12, 1993 election. The National Defence and Security Council overlooked these areas of problems in its determination to fulfill the promise to hand over to an elected president on due date.

    “Apart from the tremendous negative use of money during the party primaries and presidential election, there were moral issues which were also overlooked by the Defence and National Security Council. There were cases of documented and confirmed conflict of interest between the government and both presidential candidates which would compromise their positions and responsibilities were they to become president.”

    Then, the coup de grace:

    “It is true that the presidential election was generally seen to be free, fair and peaceful. However, there was in fact a huge array of electoral malpractices virtually in all the states of the federation before the actual voting began. There were authenticated reports of the electoral malpractices against party agents, officials of the National Electoral Commission and also some members of the electorate.

    “If all of these were clear violations of the electoral law, there were proofs of manipulations through offer and acceptance of money and other forms of inducement against officials of the National Electoral Commission and members of the electorate.

    “There were also evidence of conflict in the process of authentication and clearance of credentials of the presidential candidates. Indeed, up to the last few hours of the election, we continued, in our earnest steadfastness with our transition deadline, to overlook vital facts.”

    But Babangida was not done yet.

    “For example, following the Council’s deliberation which followed the court injunction suspending the election, majority of members of the National Defence and Security Council supported postponement of the election by one week,” he continued. “This was to allow NEC enough time to reach all the voters, especially in the rural areas, about the postponement.

    “But persuaded by NEC that it was capable of relaying the information to the entire electorate within the few hours left before the election, the Council, unfortunately, dropped the idea of shifting the voting day. Now, we know better.

    “The conduct of the election, the behaviour of the candidates and post-election responses continued to elicit signals which the nation can only ignore at its peril. It is against the foregoing background that the administration became highly concerned when these political conflicts and breaches were carried to the court.

    “It must be acknowledged that the performance of the judiciary on this occasion was less than satisfactory. The judiciary has been the bastion of the hopes and liberties of our citizens.

    “Therefore, when it became clear that the courts had become intimidated and subjected to the manipulation of the political process, and vested interests, then the entire political system was in clear dangers. This administration could not continue to watch the various high courts carry on their long drawn out processes and contradictory decisions while the nation slides into chaos.

    “It was under this circumstance that the National Defence and Security Council decided that it is in the supreme interest of law and order, political stability and peace that the presidential election be annulled. As an administration, we have had special interest and concern not only for the immediate needs of our society, but also in laying the foundation for generations to come.

    “To continue action on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election, and to proclaim and swear in a president who encouraged a campaign of divide and rule among our ethnic groups would have been detrimental to the survival of the Third Republic.. . .”

    My apologies, reader, for drawing so copiously on Babangida’s broadcast formally announcing and justifying the election annulment. A paraphrase would not have done justice to it, I fear. Nor would it have shown so starkly the irreconcilable differences between Babangida’s 1993 evisceration of the poll in question and his desperate bid to canonize himself for conducting what he now advertises as a model and a signal achievement, if not his crowning glory.

    The ThisDay interview raises anew the question: When did Babangida know that the election he denounced so forcefully was indeed “one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country?”

    When did it occur to him that it was “an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence?”

    If he came to that judgment before his broadcast and yet annulled the election, history will charge him with perfidy and grand perjury. If he came to it after the broadcast but chose not to correct the record, history will hold him accountable for the tens of thousands who lost life, limb, livelihood and estate in the struggle for the validation of the election.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Danger signals from Rivers

    Rivers State House of Assembly played host to a theatre of the absurd last week. Five errant lawmakers in a 32-member assembly, apparently emboldened by support from ‘above’, hatched a devious plan to impeach the speaker and elect one of theirs as the new speaker. The planned resumption of sittings which the assembly had communicated the Police commissioner and the Army commander to provide adequate security turned out the undoing of the speaker and majority of the law makers.

    Unknown to them, the five dissenting legislators who take orders from Abuja had perfected plans for a showdown by importing ex-militants and thugs into the assembly complex preparatory to acting out a script crafted for them. In arriving at this suicide mission, it never occurred to them that both in terms of numbers and extant constitutional requirements, they were heading for an impossible task. But they trudged on apparently buoyed by recent events at the Nigerian Governors’ Forum election where a minority has since laid claim to its leadership with the full support of the presidency. If the five legislators had come to the conclusion that they could as well pull a surprise despite the heavy encumbrances on their way, it should not surprise any one. Basking on the backing or anticipated indifference of the law enforcement agencies, they made good their plan to stir trouble on the floor of the assembly. Curiously, five of them succeeded in instilling fear into 23 legislators loyal to the Rivers State governor to the extent that they had to scamper for safety. This further spurred them to the point of purportedly electing a new speaker. It took the intervention of Governor Amaechi for order to be restored after the ensuing confrontation. The assembly subsequently sat and approved an amendment to the 2013 budget presented to it by the deputy governor. That amendment was the main purpose for which the speaker summoned the assembly.

    Events in the assembly have generated condemnations from a broad spectrum of the Nigerian people. Not only are they irked by the seeming indifference of the police, accusing fingers, for good reason, have been pointed at the presidency for simulating the crisis in that state. The confrontation is generally viewed as a continuation of the crisis in the NGF since the dramatis personae has not changed. As was the case in the NGF crisis, the presidency has washed its hands off that show of shame. In a tepid statement hurriedly put together following its fingering for tacitly supporting the dissenting lawmakers, its spokesmen put up futile efforts to deny complicity from Abuja. Not many believed them anyway. It was a rehearsal of the same stale denials that hallmarked the crisis in the NGF until Jonathan openly roped himself into the matter by publicly recognizing the losers as winners. So if the same presidency is again denying vicarious culpability in the latest crisis, no body will take it serious. Not with the purported recognition of the so-called new ‘speaker’ by the Peoples Democratic Party PDP. Since it is the same enemy that is involved, the warring five may have come to the conclusion that any thing is possible in this country including an insignificant minority impeaching and having its way over the majority? After all, this will not be the first of it in our recent political past. We saw such a charade in its worst form during the regime of Obasanjo. We are all witnesses to the abduction of former Governor Chris Ngige of Anambra state by a band of marauding buccaneers bent in sucking the state dry.

    Yet, nobody was punished for that odious conduct except perhaps, the AIG of police in charge of Zone 9, late Raphael Ige. The same impunity played out in Bayelsa and Plateau states where officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC used a few lawmakers to impeach the governors in the most kangaroo manner. It was the impeachment of the governor of Bayelsa State where Jonathan was the then deputy that opened the door for his meteoric ascendancy to power.

    So if Jonathan is now seen to be taking the footsteps of his mentor in a very cruel manner, we can understand him. In a previous article in this column titled ‘Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way’ we had drawn attention to the observed inclination of Jonathan to the undemocratic pranks of Obasanjo. We had predicted also that the logic of self preservation will drive him into such frenzy that he may soon become an ardent apostle of those anti-democratic tendencies that marred Obasanjo’s regime.

    Successive events have borne out these predictions. Today, Obasanjo has been effectively sidelined in the PDP in the same manner he did to those who were instrumental to his release from prison and subsequent drafting into that party. Nemesis one may wish to call it!

    More fundamentally, all these anti-democratic tendencies are neither being spurred by public good nor in the interest of our floundering democracy. At the centre of them all, is the lure of primitive accumulation of power, influence and capital. We saw Obasanjo manifest this in his obnoxious third term ambition even as our constitution has no room for such a self-serving contraption. Jonathan’s is manifesting in the desire for another term despite the dire straits the nation is currently passing through. He may be within his rights to desire another term. But his current posturing that seeks to cut down anybody or processes seen to be standing against his ambition is potentially dangerous and may spiral a chain of events with dire repercussions for this country.

    It is very hard to exculpate Jonathan from the chain of embarrassing events that have been the lot of Rivers these past days. It is a big shame that the deputy governor was ambushed and cars in his convoy damaged by hired thugs. Equally inexcusable is the report that teargas canisters were hurled into government house even as soldiers there have been withdrawn together with the armoured personnel carrier. Why these are happening in very quick succession can only find explanation in a subtle attempt to simulate anarchy so as to declare a state of emergency.

    Or how else can we rationalize the effrontery of the five legislators despite their incapacitation on account of numbers? Obviously, they were responding to drum beats from those who control the instruments of coercion?

    If it took Amaechi to personally intervene before order was restored in the assembly, then we can better understand all that has been said about the bias of the commissioner of police, Joseph Mbu. If not for connivance, how on earth can five people intimidate and overpower 23 others to the extent that they had to scamper for safety? These are some of the issues to ponder. Even then, why was the initial screening at the assembly’s gate relaxed such that thugs had to enter with dangerous weapons? This question is pertinent for us to locate what must have spurred the recalcitrant five to take on their colleagues despite the futility in so doing. In all, both the five law makers and Mr. Mbu should take responsibility for the sordid outing of the assembly that day. They prepared for trouble and were the purveyors of the fight that ensued. They stand condemned in very unequivocal manner.

    Mbu has lost the confidence of the Rivers people and must not be allowed a day longer. His continued stay has become a big liability and clear evidence that some body somewhere kept him there for some odd job.

  • Feeding the monster

    Feeding the monster

    The recent news of uproar in the creeks of Delta State reminds me of my days in secondary school. I often looked forward to my holidays with my grandmother in my village in the Niger Delta. I preferred it to Lagos. We had no light, no cars, no pipe-borne water, no paved roads. I thrived on the predictable staple of eba and starch and yam. Lagos offered the glitzy contrast. I bustled with what Americans call jungle fever. My only trepidation as a teenage boy was the prospect of wild beasts, especially snakes. Against them, I had no skill. But I loved the enchantment of the terrain: the arboreal beauty of the forest, the limpid glow of the rivers and the mysterious destiny of streams. They deleted any phobia. In vain, I craved the naïve facility of the country bumpkin. But I shivered with the joy of what South African novelist Peter Abraham called a dumb townie, a city boy out of sync with the primitive sweetness and sensuous peace of the village.

    The city like Lagos where my parents domiciled belonged to the wild impulses of civilisation: armed robbers, political corruption, teenage delinquency, the pull of filthy lucre. In the village, wild meant simple: honesty, unadorned clothing, innocence of lucre. The other wild of the village belonged to the animals that imposed a rhythm of noise and silence to the forests, the pops and serenities of streams, the stir and stillness of the foliage.

    When I taught journalism in the United States, critics of editors often cited a naivety among newspapers that stereotyped rural residents as innocents and the city dwellers as the poison tree of modernity. The rumble of Delta State between the Itsekiri and Ijaw spilled blood on the quiet streams and statuesque beauty of the forests in the region at the time. I cited the far-flung example to my students to show the other side of prejudice. Innocence does not always drape the simple.

    That thought came to me when the news broke of the fight between the two ethnic groups around the Warri North Local Government in Delta State. I must state, as it is obvious from my name, that I am an Itsekiri man, and if that betrays any bias, I take responsibility. But I will state my point as my conscience propels me.

    The reports show that a group known as Egbema Radical Group had been jockeying for some elective positions in the local government, and that matter brewed even as advertisement in newspapers. In the midst of this, some radicals first launched an attack on the house of an Ijaw man. The culprits did not secure the attention they desired. They stepped up the ante, and attacked Itsekiri villages. This gave the incident the flavour of inter-ethnic feud. Newspaper reports also fed this motif, and all over the region and the country, men and women in high and low places worried. They saw the return of the incubus of the old conflict. The mermaid of blood and death had risen out of the waters.

    This writer imbibed that impression until I probed. It became clear from some more critical reporting like the one from our Southsouth regional editor, Shola O’Neil, and conversations with some insiders. It became clear that this was conflict as intimidation. Some boys who had been left out of the amnesty largesse had fought back with a vengeance. These young men wanted to take advantage of the flimsy agitations of the Egbema Radical Group’s call for representation by stoking up a conflict. The ERG wanted to feed off that tragedy to advance its positions.

    Shola O’Neil’s report showed how brutal the killings defaced the villages that had enjoyed peace for close to a decade when the crisis ended. Whole families were wiped out, and ironically the Itsekiri were not the only victims. Some Ijaw also fell. Bullets spill blood but recognise no kin.

    The perpetrators attacked for intimidation. They wanted to railroad the state government and the Federal Government for attention. Hence Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan warned that he would not concede to them and would not act under duress. He noted that the positions the ERG wanted were elective positions and if an Itsekiri won, it was not his doing. The Governor noted he was an Itsekiri man and he understood the sensitivity of the issue. Sources say the boys want to have their own opportunity to bunker oil. They are learning from the futility of the amnesty programme, and they are trying to take advantage of a subdued tension between the two ethnic groups. They betray envy of the big boys fattening on contracts from the president.

    The perpetrators want to follow an old script: levitate selfish and parochial interest by exploiting familiar grudges. This is dangerous, and Governor Uduaghan understands this and he has shown why caving in would amount to feeding a monster. The irony is not lost for most of the beneficiaries of the amnesty programme are Ijaw. We have seen how the Jonathan administration has lifted these former brigands to be caretakers of our patrimony. Now, he should see that the same ethnic group is insatiable. It is a parable of the failure of the amnesty programme. It is the President’s action that made a group to call for an Ijaw region to cover other ethnic groups like Urhobo, Itsekiri, Isoko, etc. This is because, increasingly, Jonathan cannot distinguish his role as an Ijaw man and his position as President of Nigeria.

    He has not addressed why the problem of violence persists. Bayelsa State has witnessed bursts of violence and Governor Seriake Dickson, his son governor, has been weeping impotently in public over the menace. The same groups are terrorising Rivers State to the extent of lobbing teargas into the Government House.

    We all know the bloodletting that the Itsekiri-Ijaw conflict wrought in the region. It changed the landscape, wiped out the ambition of some of the youths for a generation, decimated families, destroyed businesses, and the state, in spite of the long spell of peace, still bears scars of that sanguinary era. Governor Uduaghan ensured peace in the state even before the so-called amnesty. In his new book Transatlantic, Irish author Colum McCann noted that peace is harder than war. Those who want to rekindle the inter-ethnic war are obsessed with “half-remembered fragments of some enormous receding and impossible dream,” apologies to Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. But the Federal Government owes it a task to the country to address the source of the problem. We must replace greed with work and opportunities. We cannot continue to feed the monster, or the Niger Delta will default to its old theatre of blood thirsty goons with flamboyant lifestyles.

     

     

     

    Mimiko: Whitlow of west

    Newspaper correspondents and labour leaders in Ondo State must love Governor Segun Mimiko very much, so much so that they would not report that the man they so gleefully serenaded in the last election has been owing salaries of the civil servants and local government workers for months. Where is the people’s money? In the five fingers that represent five state governors, Mimiko has earned his place as the whitlow of the west. He cannot say his master Jonathan is not paying him allocations, because good lackeys and lapdogs deserve sweet bones. The Iroko should not fatten at the expense of those who give it nutrients.

  • Rivers’ lawless five

    Rivers’ lawless five

    The President should call his goons to order instead of denying things that even angels cannot convince Nigerians about 

    How will former President Olusegun Obasanjo be feeling now, seeing the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency struggling to surpass his (Obasanjo’s) record in infamy? That is the question on the lips of many Nigerians who have been watching the nauseating developments in Rivers State. At the speed the presidency of his estranged political godson is travelling on the highway of impunity, it may beat his (Obasanjo’s) record before the 2015 election. President Jonathan has told us he is not Pharaoh; he said he is not Nebuchadnezzar either; but what he has not told us is who the son of man is. Perhaps he wants us to find out.

    Many of us are yet to know him; the best we can say of him is that he is a president who does not give a damn! At least that came, as they say, from the horse’s mouth. We also know him as a president who exalts figure 16 over and above figure 19. That is also a statement of fact. Till tomorrow, many of the our primary school pupils keep asking their parents and teachers about this jigsaw puzzle because, in their innocence, they want to take anything and everything coming from the president as the gospel truth. Poor kids! They are learning fast; even if it is the wrong values that they are being taught by those who should be transforming the country.

    By now, it is clear that the enemies of Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State will stop at nothing to remove him. Many times they had missed the ball and went for the leg. Such was the situation on Tuesday when the state house of assembly was thrown into chaos when five members of the house wanted to impeach the Speaker, Otelemaba Amachree, and 26 others who are Amaechi’s loyalists. The personal intervention of the governor prevented the ‘lawless five’ from concluding their illegal mission.

    One might then ask: why didn’t Amaechi and the majority other lawmakers in the House allow the five members to luxuriate in their illegality and then go to court after to challenge their action? The answer is simple: we must have lost our sense of history to do that. Rashidi Ladoja did that and he regretted it; ditto Ayo Fayose, among others. I guess that must have been the reckoning of the five and their sponsors; unfortunately, again, they miscalculated. By now, the authentic speaker would have become history if they had trod that path; perhaps Amaechi too would have ceased to be governor. He would now be busy assembling a retinue of senior advocates that would fight the matter in court; mind you, not in his capacity as governor again but as ‘Simply Mr’. By the time the case is over, elections would have fallen due. Of course, if you remember the case of the two women that threw up King Solomon as a very wise king, you will also see that Amaechi’s opponents have nothing to lose if the five law breakers had been allowed to have their way; as a matter of fact, they would be profiting from their illegality now. And, you know what? They would have gone to church today to celebrate the ‘impeachment’, with some men of God blessing them too, apparently after being ‘blessed’ to conduct the thanksgiving service. The PDP is notorious for such celebrations and thanksgivings.

    That is what the Obasanjo presidency has taught us; and it is what the Jonathan presidency too wants to bequeath to us as legacy. A chip off the old block, you would say? But when a child has learnt the art of dying, the parents too must master the art of burial. That was what has happened in this case. Both Obasanjo and Jonathan have taught governors whose guts they do not like that they (governors) must get wise before and not after the illegal act. So, we are now having a culture of impunity begetting impunity.

    This is rather unfortunate. And to think that the presidency is being (even if remotely) associated with this makes it the more disheartening. The office of the president is an exalted one. But that office cannot be dignified more than the occupier wants it to be. It is sad that everything happening in the state now had been predicted; that is people want to cause enough chaos to warrant the imposition of a state of emergency in Rivers. This is a reflection of the desperation of people who truly do not give a damn. What is most annoying is the Presidency’s serial denial of involvement in the developments. Perhaps it is apt to let the presidency know that Nigerians feel more and more insulted when such denials are made; and this in turn diminishes the prestige of the presidency.

    Those who have ears and know that they hear with them should listen to the voice of wisdom. The crisis in Rivers State is one (as I have always said since it became a public issue) no one can predict its end. Those who are after the state governor and think they can remove him by hook or crook might all end up rendering themselves jobless and throwing the entire country into crisis, if history is to be our guide. We all know how governors can be removed because it is stated expressly in our constitution, which is the grund norm. Jonathan’s presidency is culpable in this matter because it provided the impetus for the ‘lawless five’ who wanted to impeach a lawful speaker and replace him illegally. They would not have been that emboldened to embark on such a shameful voyage if the president himself had not given his failed candidate in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, Jonah Jang, a heroic welcome after the defeat. If the president said 16 is greater than 19, how come those who see themselves as doing his bidding will not take the joke too far by wanting to impeach their speaker with only five in a 32-member house of assembly?

    This Rivers matter is particularly distressing because the common man cannot reap any tangible benefit from all the troubles being caused in the state. Here was a state where all manner of hoodlums once held sway but Amaechi reined them in. Now, in Port Harcourt, the ancien regime has returned, with people now having to raise their hands on the streets to show they are no criminals. If lives have not been lost yet, it is certain lives will still be lost in the course of this crisis with the audacity of the desperadoes to have their way, backed by the ‘federal might’. How then are they and their sponsors different from the ‘political’ Boko Haram that the government is fighting, because the fight in Rivers is all about political power just like that of the ‘political’ Boko Haram?

    Rivers State is sitting majestically atop enormous resources. The PDP, because of the way it has mishandled the crisis is probably afraid Amaechi might dump the party and is therefore bent on being in charge of the resources, with the 2015 election in view. Whatever PDP spent to prosecute the 2011 election is going to be a child’s play with what it would require to prosecute the 2015 polls. The election that brought President Jonathan in in 2011 was a walk-over; for sure, the next won’t be. That much is clear with the handwriting on the wall.

    But the president must be careful. It is a powerful statement that his side could not muster the simple majority required to win the 36-member NGF election, even though that was none of its business until he joined the fray. How then can a presidential side which lost at the national level hope to make it at the state level? The president should resist the temptation to use brawn where brain would have been sufficient because the result may be catastrophic. The fact that Obasanjo got away with that is no guarantee that President Jonathan will.

  • Pontius Pilate strikes again

    Pontius Pilate strikes again

    I read an online reaction to a story on the political crisis in Rivers State that went something like this: ‘If you have a quarrel with your wife, blame Jonathan; if your dog falls sick, blame Jonathan.’ The implication is that President Goodluck Jonathan is being unfairly criticised for his perceived role in fanning fires threatening to consume the state.

    Picking up on this, the Presidency issued two statements distancing it from the storm. One by Jonathan’s spokesman, Reuben Abati, said in part: “There is absolutely no factual basis for suggestions that some of the politicians involved in the current dispute are acting at the behest of the President.

    “President Jonathan certainly did not instigate the crisis in the Rivers State House of Assembly and as President of the nation he will never support any actions that negate his avowed commitment to the rule of law.”

    Is the president taking undeserved flak for the show of shame in Rivers? I don’t think so. I will add that anyone expecting a video showing Jonathan at the head of a mob descending on the assembly, or hoping to hear some tape recording of the commander-in-chief giving marching orders to Joseph Mbu’s men, will wait in vain.

    But this is politics and the president’s acts of omission and commission, his wife’s ungainly stamping on the Rivers political terrain, have left indelible fingerprints of the presidency all over the crime scene. Supporters know better than to expect a written script. They simply decode their leader’s body language and utterances to decipher where he’s headed.

    That is the reason why till today former President Olusegun Obasanjo swears he never ordered anyone to prosecute a Third Term Agenda on his behalf.

    But millions were squandered in pursuit of the goal; his henchmen in the National Assembly actively pushed the idea, and never once did he denounce the project with the vehemence that would have stopped the jobbers. Is it any surprise that Obasanjo’s disavowal of the plot continue to ring hollow?

    Let’s examine Jonathan’s denials in the light of what we know. Months before the May election that re-elected Rotimi Amaechi as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), the president let it be known he wanted the incumbent out. He called governors individually and made his pitch. That was how signatures on that piece of paper endorsing the president’s choice were collected.

    After the spectacular failure of presidential might to deliver, Jonathan quickly issued another statement distancing himself from NGF intrigues.

    His denial could have amounted to something if he hadn’t revealed his partisan interest in the matter thereafter by recognising the losing candidate, Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang, as NGF chairman at an Aso Villa event!

    The man received only 16 votes out of 35! Aside from further entrenching the diabolical Nigerian trait of never accepting unpalatable electoral outcomes, his endorsement of Jang only got him mired deeper in the quicksand of NGF politics.

    From the moment Amaechi decided – against Jonathan’s wish – to run, hitherto cold relations became glacial. When the courts sacked the state Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) executive friendly to him, the new gang loyal to Abuja made it clear they were out to execute a hostile agenda.

    Things that have unfolded in recent days have been the object of speculation in newspapers. Shockingly, both the outlandish and the illegal have played out as projected. Despite an overwhelming numerical disadvantage, the Evans Bipi-led Gang of Five pressed ahead with their power grab in an assembly that sits 32. What could have given them such courage than comfort in powers greater than a governor’s? Check the chain of events in the preceding weeks.

    State Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, who reports to the president’s appointee, Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, had just been engaged in a public slanging match with Amaechi. Among other things he called the governor a ‘despot.’

    Did this civil servant get even a slap on the wrist for his outrageous conduct? No way! How else will anyone interpret that episode than to conclude that the police chief had the backing of higher powers to go toe-to-toe with the ‘heady’ governor?

    While Ameachi was still digesting that helping of humiliation, Her Excellency the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dame Patience Jonathan, swept into town. Interestingly, she had come to play the role of ‘Mother of the Day’ at the wedding of Mr. Bipi – leader of the Gang of Five.

    In the course of those celebrations, the Right Honourable First Lady fired off a couple of political missiles in the direction of Amaechi. Among other things she said Port Harcourt which used to be a pleasant place to visit under former governors had degenerated under the incumbent. She them went on to heap praise on Amaechi’s nemesis, Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike.

    Later that day, she met with the ‘Gang of Five’. The following morning virtually all newspapers were agog with reports that madam had come to tidy up the impeachment of Amaechi.

    Although, her spokesperson denied that her visit to Port Harcourt had anything to do with piling more woes on the governor, anyone who knows the formidable dame would have taken the explanation with a generous helping of salt.

    Mrs. Jonathan has redefined the role of president’s spouse. She was never going to be a glamour puss – content with parading in pretty clothes, doing good works. She has taken things to another level: now we have a First Lady who is both political partisan and enforcer.

    The dame has been credited as one of the major pillars behind the president’s rise. She has not allowed a little thing like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) clearance stop her from flagging off her husband’s 2015 campaign. Whatever she was doing in Port Harcourt was certainly advancing those interests. And someone will say the president’s not involved.

    I have watched the horror video of last Tuesday’s events at the Rivers State House of Assembly. At some point, Bipi is enveloped in a friendly embrace with some unidentified individual who appeared to be trying to calm him. After hearing out the peacemaker, the warrior-lawmaker could be heard muttering: “But why must governor came (sic) here to supervise beating up of my colleagues; why must he insult the president; why did he insult my ‘mother’…”

    Is the president involved? In Bipi’s words you have your answer. Jonathan may not have been physically present but what is going on is all about his personality and political clashes with the governor.

    Back in 2011, in a moment of exasperation with his critics deriding his laidback style, the president declared he was neither Pharoah, nor a lion or general. I agree that given the package we were sold in that election year, the man Nigerians voted back then would not fit those descriptions.

    However, in the light of what has happened over the last few months, and the constant of denials of the obvious, I think a more appropriate comparison would be Pontius Pilate. He released Jesus Christ to a baying mob and thought that by washing his hands with water he could free himself from blood guilt. How wrong he was. Jonathan’s name keeps ringing in this Rivers matter because he’s involved.

    He can show that his hands are clean by doing what Obasanjo failed to do in the face on the Third Term accusations: denounce in clear, unambiguous terms every unconstitutional attempt to unsettle Rivers State.

    A few days ago the Federal Government denounced the street-instigated military coup in Egypt. To keep silent in face of similar underhand tactics in the president’s backyard would be height of hypocrisy.

  • Mr President know-nothing of Nigeria

    Mr President know-nothing of Nigeria

    ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me twenty times and I keep believing you, call me a Nigerian’-Rotimi

    “You need foolproof ways to lead your people to achieve outstanding results, especially in challenging times’ -Brian Tracy, in HOW THE BEST LEADERS LEAD. Breaking this down further, the celebrated author lists the following as the minimum desiderata for success in any organisation: setting and achieving goals, fostering innovation, problem-solving and decision-making, setting priorities, setting high standards and leading by example; inspiring and motivating others and, finally, performing and achieving results.

    Were President Jonathan’s spokespersons remotely aware of these ingredients for achieving success in any given leadership position they would not be ever so eager to declaim his knowledge of things happening in a country where he is the undisputed numero uno. Had they known how clueless they make the President look with their jejune disclaimers on behalf of the president, they should have become fully aware what damage they do to his image as Nigerians now regularly ask what exactly their president knows. No wonder cluelessness has become about the most used word in describing the Jonathan presidency just as he had, in fact, been likened to the snake.

    We need not delay ourselves enumerating the countless instances supposedly highly educated presidential spokespersons have titillated Nigerians with stories to the effect that the president heard of events like you or I, or even via newspapers, that you begin to wonder if what we have at the helm of affairs in the country is not actually a sleeping president. Unfortunately for them, they deceive only themselves as Nigerians know only too well that the president is either the sole beneficiary or has the most to gain from these events they attempt to shield him from by resorting to their spurious spins.

    They succeed in deceiving nobody else because Nigerians are already acutely aware that their president is not exactly on top of too many things even if he claims to the contrary. When, for instance, he claims to be on top of the citizens’ security concerns and that his government is on top of the situation, a statement Nigerians now know by heart, it is obvious what the people believe. When his government promises improved electricity at some target date that now gets routinely changed, Nigerians know they had better go acquire new generators. It can only be most uncharitable then, if from these extant circumstances, the president’s own men would still continue to cast him in the mold of a know-nothing president who is, like forever, ignorant of events which ordinary Nigerians, without the luxury of an access to intelligence reports, know only too well. For the sake of our president’s image, local and international, I think Nigerians must advise these obstreperous media aides to desist from their obsequiousness.

    The latest of these disclaimers concerns how innocent Mr President is about the goings-on in Rivers State, especially the attempt by five pro- Wike, and, ipso facto, President Jonathan-leaning legislators, to forcefully, and illegally, take over the House of Assembly even though two thirds of the 32-member House is required to successfully impeach the Speaker. Of course, since we are talking here of the PDP, this should be no news as it has become commonplace since the impunity-driven days of former President Obasanjo to forcefully remove even state governors as happened in Bayelsa, Plateau and Oyo states.

    But how uncanny can history get? On the very day that Senator (Dr) Chris Nwabueze Ngige, OON, was being joined by millions of Anambrarians to celebrate the 10th anniversary of what is now popularly known as the Anambra Liberation Day, July 10, 2003, PDP legislators, thugs etal, vainly attempted a repeat performance in Rivers State albeit, starting this time around, from the House of Assembly. Ten years earlier, similar knaves and all manner of mendicants, led by a detachment of heavily armed police mobile force stormed the Government House, Awka, disarmed security operatives and made their way to the office of the then governor whose phones they promptly seized before locking him up in the toilet. The rest is history.

    But in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, 9 July, 2013, Nigerians saw, via the UTube and on sundry television networks, at least one policeman beating up a legislator. And that was in the course of the five anti-Amaechi members and their accompanying thugs had turned the chambers into a theatre of war. It took the hurried appearance of the state governor to save the day. Meanwhile, pro and anti-Amaechi protesters have hit the streets of Port Harcourt.

    A complete dumb in Nigeria today knows that nothing will interest President Jonathan more than seeing the back of Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the evidence for that is all over the place. It had started with the whispering allegation that the governor was preparing to pair up with a northern governor to contest the 2015 presidential election; the same election for which everything is already being done by the PDP to present none other than the sitting president. For the Jonathan group, Amaechi’s alleged audacity deserves nothing but a fatwa, and at every point, Amaechi is daily made to feel the presidential heat especially as he is in no position to as much as discuss state security matters with the state Police Commissioner who, to all intent and purposes, answers only to his Abuja minders.

    Abuja first showed its hands when a case against the PDP Chairman in Rivers State was filed, not in Port Harcourt, where the congress in dispute held, but at an Abuja High Court. It was there in Abuja -where else – a judgment was delivered removing the Amaechi-leaning chairman for a man, we are told, who did not even contest the election. The new chairman quickly showed his hands, dissolving the party’s state executive , a point that was neither canvassed nor granted by the court. He soon came up with a series of diktats he expected governor Amaechi to live or die by; the type even their swashbuckling National Chairman, Alhaji Tukur, have not had the temerity to replicate in his Abuja imperium.

    If the Presidency could not be accused of procuring that change in the River’s State chapter of the party, certainly not so the election to the Chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum which, in spite of governor Amaechi’s drubbing of his opponent, governor Jang of Plateau State, the president still clings to the totally ridiculous position that the man who scored 16 votes is his NGF Chairman over the one with 19 votes. A more invidious situation will be extremely difficult to find. And if any further evidence of presidential collusion, indeed instigation, was needed, President Jonathan’s hosting of governor Jang at the Villa as the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum more than provided that.

    The Jang defeat so rattled and unsettled the presidency that our ‘unknowing presidency’ promptly saw to it that Amaechi was suspended from the party by alleging some other spurious reasons. All manner of PDP elders from the state have since visited the Villa to rave and rant at Amaechi and for once, former governor Peter Odili resurrected. Since a court literally declared he was no longer on terra firma, stopping the EFCC from prosecuting him till the second coming of Christ, mum has been the word from the otherwise charismatic politician who, but for Obasanjo’s convoluted and serpentine politics, might today have been much more visible in our political history and who you would therefore have expected to be talking peace. However, knowing how desperate the president is about the Amaechi project, he has chosen to become an equal opportunity protagonist on the side of the president. A battle against a single individual does not get more pitiful.

    It has equally been suggested that the First Lady’s four-day sojourn in Port Harcourt during which everything, governance inclusive, was reported to have shut down, was to attend the wedding of the man now claiming to be the speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly. It doesn’t get more scary.

    It will be extremely grotesque, however, if the president’s wife was in Port Harcourt in furtherance of this macabre plot. But the height of presidential collusion in the crisis would come later during the week when on Friday, 5 July, 2013, the trio of President Jonathan, Dr Odili and Nyesom Wike asked Amaechi to quit the PDP. It can now be safely assumed that because he did not quit as quickly as they wanted, thugs were sent after the House of Assembly where he obviously has his strongest supporters in order to teach him a lesson.

    May God forgive those presidential spokespersons who are keen on taking Nigerians on a merry go round of lies, claiming Mr President knows nothing when the truth really, is that our president is the all-knowing hand behind most, if not all, of our travails as a nation.

  • Another season of anomie?

    Another season of anomie?

    Why should anyone be annoyed when outsiders say that Nigerians are not capable of sustaining democratic culture?

    At 52 years of age, Nigeria is experiencing another troubling season of anomie. The first season came at the hands of a civilian government; the second and third at the instance of military autocrats, and the current one under the watch of a civilian president whose mission or motto is transformation.

    The title of this essay is a partial borrowing from the title of Wole Soyinka’s book on the politics of evil that led to the Nigerian civil war. Granted that the events described in Soyinka’s book are more gory and scary than what Nigerians are expecting currently, there is no doubt that the state of normlessness that prevailed in Soyinka’s book, A Season of Anomy, is rearing its head again in our own time.

    During Nigeria’s first season of anomie in 1962, some individuals in the federal government and their cronies in the government of Western Nigeria were bent on removing politicians who they thought were not ready to play ball with them by joining the ruling party. In pursuance of this goal, some lawmakers in the Western House of Assembly in Ibadan were induced to play thugs inside the hallowed chamber. They broke the mace, threw chairs at other legislators to draw blood from their heads, etc. Alhaji Tafawa Balewa’s government quickly declared a state of emergency in Western Nigeria. Balewa’s reason was that he needed to prevent Nigeria from sliding into anarchy as a result of mounting political differences between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Ladoke Akintola. Balewa chose his friend, Dr. Moses Majekodunmi, to function in the place of the premier of the region. What started as a regional or state problem then festered until it became a nation-wide problem, which culminated in a political experiment that later brought Nigeria to decades of military autocracies, and the rest is history.

    The second season of anarchy came in 1966 after the first coup d’etat that removed the elected government of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa. During the first six months, Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi introduced the second unitary government in the country, after the one introduced by Lord Frederick Lugard. In July1966, another coup d’etat came to undo the rule of Ironsi, leaving in its wake a major crisis principally in the Northern Region. Igbo men, women, and children were killed in large numbers by angry northerners, to the extent that Lt-Col. Emeka Ojukwu called the killings genocide or pogrom. This led to the civil war, and the rest is history.

    In 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida fomented another crisis that was bound to lead to anomie, by annulling the freest and fairest election in Nigeria. General Sani Abacha came to flush out the interim head of state installed by Babangida to calm the Yoruba or Egba area that made it possible for Abiola to be a Nigerian citizen. The struggle for restoration of Abiola’s mandate by NADECO, NALICON, and other pro-democracy organisations in Nigeria and abroad created a situation of instability in the country. Abacha ruled with brutality and prepared to become a civilian president at the end of his tenure as military dictator. The tension pushed the country close to the edge, and the rest is history, part of which explained how the country came to having elected president, governors, and legislators in the saddle today.

    Nigeria is now at the entrance of another door to anomie. Five lawmakers were reported a few days ago to have imported thugs to the House of Assembly of Rivers State to collaborate with them on a thuggish project: terrorise and replace the duly elected speaker of the State’s House of Assembly. In the process, the five lawmakers (out of a total of 32) sacked the speaker of the assembly and replaced him with one of them. The newly selected speaker had started functioning before the arrival of majority of members of the assembly. A brawl ensued between lawmakers on the side of respect for the constitution and five legislators on the side of abuse of the constitution. The act of terrorism thrived in the state assembly in Port Harcourt, as if law and order had broken down in the city or in the country. There were no security officers to prevent the disorder that brought embarrassment to the state in particular and to the country in general.

    It is not clear at the time of writing this piece what the motives for the action of the five lawmakers who attempted to violate the constitution of the land were. As expected, the Inspector-General of Police had promised to investigate, in order to find out who broke the law and recommend what to do to such persons. It is not clear how long the investigation is to take, but the result of the probe promised by the IGP is worth waiting for, given the enormity of the violation that took place in the Garden City three days ago and given the disruption and instability that similar acts in the past had caused the country.

    Most patriotic citizens would not have expected that the country would come again to its present low in relation to the rule of law. Not after what it took many citizens to bring democracy back to the country. Not after the death of so many people in the process of wresting the country from military dictators and restoring democracy. Not after the gloomy prediction that Nigeria could disintegrate by 2015. Not after the life of the country had been endangered for about two years by Boko Haram. To be repeating what happened in Ibadan 50 years ago is tantamount to remaining on the same spot since 1962 in terms of political morality and progress. With such evidence of stagnation, why should anyone be surprised if foreigners predict doom for our country? Why should anyone be annoyed when outsiders say that Nigerians are not capable of sustaining democratic culture?

    There is a saying among the Yoruba: When one’s neighbour chooses to eat vermin, one must warn him or her about the bad consequences, not only for the sake of the eater of vermin, but also for the peace of the neighbour, as the coughing and sneezing would not allow the neighbour to sleep at night. Some of the lawmakers in the Rivers State House of Assembly are metaphorically eating a vermin and the consequences, if the act is not properly and quickly addressed in a legal and constitutional manner, be too serious for the entire country to deal with.

    Given the current state of Egypt just two years after the coming of civil rule and democracy in that country, Nigerians need to call their rulers to order. In particular, the President and the National Assembly need to act fast and right, to prevent the country from descending into another political abyss. Such intervention should be in addition to the investigation promised by the IGP. Such intervention is needed urgently, in order to prevent the rascality or banditry in the Rivers House of Assembly last Tuesday from ballooning into a national crisis, such as similar misbehaviour in Ibadan in 1962 did.