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The creeping despotism in the land

Between my Chinua Achebe obituary in this column on March 27 and last week’s piece which reviewed the third annual Arewa Media Forum lecture on the problem of the failure of leadership in this country, I have received well over 200 reactions in texts and emails. Today, I have decided to reproduce a few of the more thoughtful ones.

Before then, however, I’ll like to say a few words about the increasing despotism of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration which is dangerously creeping into the polity. So far eight instances of this despotism can be easily identified, virtually all of them have to do with the President’s thinly disguised bid for re-election in 2015. There are probably more, but each of these eight is enough cause for great worry. And each of them is one good reason why no one – probably not even the President’s own spokespersons – believes his persistent denial that he has made up his mind to seek re-election two years hence.

First, was the crude manner the authorities harassed a former minister of education, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, over her claim a few months ago that President Jonathan blew the $67 billion foreign reserve she said her principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo, left behind in 2007. Given the monumental corruption that went on in her time in spite of all the rhetoric about “due process” in carrying out government business, Mrs. Ezekwesili’s claim may sound holier-than-thou. Still it is instructive that officials of the administration are yet to pick her up on her challenge to a debate over her claim. Instead she’s been set upon by a half-hearted move to investigate her tenures at the education and solid minerals ministries.

Second, was the ban by the National Film and Censorship Board of a 30-minute documentary by one, Ishaya Bako, on corruption in the oil sector, titled “Fuelling Poverty.” Reminiscent of the famous documentary on the same theme titled “The squandering of riches” by the broadcaster-turned musician, Onyeka Onwenu (One Love), Bako’s documentary sought to raise questions about corruption and impunity in the oil sector going up to the highest levels of government. He sought the censor’s permission in November to screen it locally. He was denied the permission last month. Instead, the censors accused him of producing a documentary “that was highly provocative and likely to incite or encourage public disorder and undermine national security.”

Predictably the ban has proved futile; the documentary has since gone viral on the internet.

Third, was the Gestapo-style invasion of Leadership newspaper last month by the police over its story that the President has issued a directive that every means, fair and foul, must be used to stop the new opposition party, the putative All Progressives Congress made up of the country’s three leading parties and dissenting groups from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, from emerging. Four of the newspaper’s staff were whisked away into detention before two were released on the same day. The other two were held incommunicado for days for refusing to disclose the identity of the sources for their story until public outcry forced the police to do what they should have done in the first place; charge them to court within 48 hours.

The two have since faced prosecution for allegedly forging the President’s signature on the document the newspaper published as its evidence for the veracity of their story, following its denial by the Presidency.

Fourth, is the invitation of the former governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmed Sani Yarima, by a security agency for interrogation over his statement in a phone-in a programme on a Kaduna-based radio station that there will be mass protests in the country if APC is refused registration.

Fifth, there was the ridiculous N1million fine of Liberty Radio in Kaduna by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, again for airing the opinion of a listener who said the country’s projects assessment tour by the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, was a waste of public funds.

Sixth, there was the initial suspension of the spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency, Yushau Shuaib, for writing an article which accused our super minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, of carrying out an ethnic agenda in appointments in the parastatals under her finance ministry. The suspension was said to be at her behest. Not-so-inexplicably, the otherwise suave minister took the cue from her principal when she seized the opportunity of a public lecture late last month to say she did not give a damn what anyone thought of how she ran her charge.

Seven, there was the recent suspension of the chair of the FCT branch of petroleum station workers arm of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Aminu Hussaini, for petitioning the National Assembly against the presidential pardon granted the former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepriye Alamieyesiegha and the former Managing Director of the collapsed Bank of the North, Alhaji Bulama Shettima. The suspension was handed down by, of all people, the NUPENG leadership. Wherever he is, I am certain Mr Frank Kokori, the fire-brand former secretary general of the union, must be wondering what has become of his union which was in the forefront of the fight for democracy under the military.

I can go on and on with other examples including the recent grounding of the Rivers State governor’s aircraft by the aviation authorities on the strange ground that it is an “illegal immigrant” when everyone knows there’s no love lost between Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the President. However, I’ll end my list with only one more. And this is the most dangerous of them all. These were the remarks Kingsley Kuku, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, made at an interactive with senior officials of the American State Department in Washington DC late last month.

“If,” he said among other things, “we allow anything to hurt the peace in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s economy will be endangered and energy security in Nigeria and even America will not be guaranteed. The attention and interest of the U.S. in Nigeria must remain the stability of the Niger Delta and the easiest way to ensure this is to encourage President Jonathan to complete an eight-year term.”

His earlier remarks were even more categorical. “Permit me,” he had said, “to add that the peace that currently prevails in the zone is largely because Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who is from that same place, is the President of Nigeria. That is the truth. It is only a Jonathan presidency that can guarantee continued peace and energy security in the Niger Delta.”

For sheer brazenness as an egregious piece of blackmail, this is hard to beat. It also clearly explains why Nigeria is in so much trouble; the only thing that matters in the eyes of the Kukus, who have been in charge of this country since 2011, is not your performance but where you come from.

God help us all.

And now to the few of the reactions to my columns since March 27.

On Achebe

Good piece! Achebe is the greatest, he gets to our soul. (Professor Wole) Soyinka writes for the literati only. Content should be form. We are all tribalists.

+2348182052349

This piece on Achebe is by far the best among your series in a long while. Let your Yoruba accusers know that you are an Ibadan (Mokola) son.

+2348037040304

Achebe is a story teller while Soyinka is a lecturer. We all love story tellers because they put you in the middle of the stories while you read along.

+2348034372555.

On amnesty for Boko Haram

Sir,

My advocating for a high ranking Muslim officer to take charge of the operation is because of its sensibility and the nature of the operation that requires good intelligence which by and large has to come from the local community. So when you have the ‘son of the soil’ in-charge people will be more abiding and willing to cooperate. You will also neutralise the element of sabotage from miscreants in the security setup itself. A lot of the atrocities committed are by these people.

aagummi@gmail.com

Sir,

I stand by Gumi: no amnesty for these creatures! If they are given amnesty, believe me we will have to fight them ourselves. The killers of Sheikh Ja’afar will NEVER know peace. I am ready to die fighting these lunatics.

As for Soyinka and the southern press, no words to waste.

+23480 66771572

May 1, 2013
Bamigbetan: Nigeria’s boiling cauldron!

When the unfortunate news of his kidnap broke recently, not a few of us who are close to him felt it must have been an error of judgement on the part of his captors. This was because Kehinde Bamigbetan, the second-term chairman of Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, ELCDA, has built a reputation over the years of activism, honesty and simplicity. So, to have picked on such a person appeared to be a grave misnomer. It is not that it is right for kidnappers to pick on anybody at all for that matter. Far from it. But it is widely expected that such an individual should have been spared the nasty ordeal he went through.

Anyway, by the second day, his house at an innocuous part of Ejigbo town had become a Mecca for all manners of people –relatives, friends, politicians, journalists, et al. That day, when I got there in the company of Bisi, my darling wife, we ran into a frenetic prayer session being conducted impromptu by Lady Abimbola Fashola, wife of the Lagos State governor. When the prayer session was over, we all sat down quietly, all motionless except for some little hisses here and there.

There was this aura of humility that played around Mrs. Fashola as she sat quietly but occasionally whispering to Fatimah, Bamigbetan’s wife’s ears. She was damn too simple – no earrings, no ‘mascaras’painting, no make-up, no flamboyance of any nature.

As she prayed earlier, I noticed the constant refrain, “May God banish this evil deeds from this our state!” to which the‘congregation’ chorused a loud “Amen!” all the time. Right there, the journalist in me silently took over. I started wondering why God should single out Lagos State for all evil cleansing and not the whole country. But not until the prayers were over, even then I could not easily place the face until she made to leave. It was then I confirmed what had rung through my mind as I sat gazing at her direction. While her entourage sat on the modest sofas in the room, she sat on a plastic chair brought in as ‘reinforcement’ or attachment to accommodate the crowd of people. Such was her simplicity.

After the exit of Mrs. Fashola, we all sat there bemoaning the great calamity that has befallen the nation – the rampant and incessant cases of kidnapping for ransom. Somebody raised the issue of the late Dr. Chidi Nwike, former deputy governor of Anambra State, who was recently murdered by his abductors after three gruelling weeks in their captivity. Even the two couriers who took the N5 million ransom money to the kidnappers were killed along with him. It was such tragic news. I told the gathering there that Jane, Nwike’s wife, was my schoolmate at the famous but now defunct Federal School of Art and Science, Ondo, FSASON. In fact, the old students are meeting this weekend to see the role they can play in the burial of the former national Vice-Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, South-East zone. People talked so much, so positively about his life and times as if death should have spared him.

In a sober gathering like that, all manners of sad reminders usually come up. So many past cases of kidnapping were raised. Some were mere newspapers’ rehash while others never got mentioned at all in the press even for once. Some were solved through divine intervention while others paid ransom. It was generally put in prayers that God shall manifest his handwork in Bamigbetan’s case. And He did.

The prayers went on non-stop for the six days he was in captivity. Journalists and their various news medium did not help matters. Some wrote out of context. It was lazy and pedestrian journalism at work. Many of the stories were never cross-checked before hitting the headlines. Many were abstract; many obvious fabrications. Many assumptions, innuendos, rumour mongering, fallacies and all that – it was as if some of the journalists were working for the kidnappers. Many reported that he had been released when he was still under torture. It was then I realized the magnitude of professional misjudgement and miscarriage of news going on in our much-cherished profession. That is a matter for another day.

On Sunday morning, six days after he was abducted, newspapers carried the news that he might have regained his freedom. Earlier the previous night, I had seen the news scroll on AIT. I called Fatimah, who said the rumour had been on since Friday. I remember early on Friday morning, when Musibau Sulaiman, sent me a text message from his house in Mushin ‘congratulating’ me for the news of Bamigbetan’s release, which he claimed he picked on “Koko Inu Iwe Iroyin”, a news headlines programme in Yoruba, on a particular radio station. So that Sunday morning, I called his wife’s phone but she did not pick it. Then I asked my wife to call Idowu, Bamigbetan’s younger sister, who was my wife’s kid mate, who confirmed the news. I immediately dashed down.

The whole house was in a joyous mood in contrast to what it was four days earlier when I first visited there. Bamigbetan’s narration was heart rendering. His bloodshot eyes and bruises on his face, nose and all that underscored the intense torture and inhuman treatment meted out to him by his captors. He was brutalised, starved and denied all access to comfort. Thrown on a stack carpet on the night he was captured, the bare carpet was to be his bed, his sitting position all through his ordeal. His hands were tied, so also were his legs.

His captors spoke impeccable English. Some of them claimed they were Engineering graduates from Nigerian universities – I do not know whether kidnapping was part of their Engineering courses while at school. They also claimed that they had paced the streets for more than six years until somebody introduced them to the lucrative but risky business of kidnapping for survival; That their parents and guardians suffered untold hardships to train them, but here they are, they could not even lift a finger to reciprocate the good gesture. How will they be able to set up their own families and train their children when the society has no plans for them? They could not understand why one person could be richer than the whole country when there are many people who cannot get even a single meal a day.

One of them claimed he had gone to Cambodia, one of the poorest Asian countries in the past. That as poor as the people were, their international airport was marvelous unlike the poultry called international airports in Nigeria. That there, the standard of living was better but he fell on the wrong side of the law and was deported. I quickly told myself that that chap is still on the wrong side of life and might be consumed by the law in no distant time.

By the time they knew that Bamigbetan was a local government chairman, they accused him of being part of the rotten system that has pauperized everybody. He defended himself. Trust Korky, as he is fondly called, gave a good lecture to them on his student union days, his social activism, the achievements of his administration as chairman –scholarships, free meals to school pupils etc. Surprisingly, while he was in their dungeon, some of them came to do espionage on the LCDA Secretariat, asked a few questions about him and so on. Everybody they spoke to had one or two good comments about his character and humane nature. That, perhaps, was his saving grace. And of course, there was real divine intervention. God manifested Himself and secured his freedom.

The lesson here is that Nigeria is sitting on a boiling cauldron which might turn over at anytime. And it is not if, but when it turns over, nobody will be spared. Those who have ears let them hear this now and start doing something positive to douse the gathering tempest!

May 1, 2013
Aregbesola: Raising the bar in governance

As the 2014 gubernatorial election draws closer in Osun State, the signs are that it will not be business as usual for political gladiators jostling for the gubernatorial seat currently occupied by the incumbent governor Rauf Aregbesola. Not only has the governor shown that he is a leader that makes things happen, he also discovers resources in places one thought were barren.

The truth of course is that Aregbesola continues to create opportunities in places where many cannot imagine exist. He takes something average and makes it exceptional. Rather than make excuses, he always finds a way to make things happen by his numerous programmes that have lifted Osun to the best among the states in Nigeria. A state that was noted for poverty and underdevelopment has since climbed the topmost ladder among the states that have reduced poverty among its citizens, coming first in terms of environmental friendliness, and leading among the states that were involved in rural development using the six point integral action plan as compass.

Former President of America President Bill Clinton once declared in 1983 at his gubernatorial inauguration that “education is the key to our economic revival and our perennial quest for prosperity. We must dedicate more of our limited resources to paying teachers better; expanding educational opportunities in poor and small districts; improving and diversifying vocational and high technology programs…. Without competence in basic skills for our people cannot move on to more advanced achievement.” The governor obviously took the charge to heart when at the inception of his administration, raised primary school basic funding grants from N74 million (spent by the ousted regime for eight years) to N424million a year

Today, the Aregbesola administration feeds over 250,000 elementary pupils daily with about N400 million monthly. Secondary school funding grants has been raised from N117million to N427 million per year. Thirty percent tuition fees reduction for tertiary institutions were carried out to the appreciation of parents and students, indigene bursary award was raised from N3000 to N10,000. Additionally, 98 UNIOSUN medical students were sponsored to Ukraine, just as 750,000 pupils were kitted with school uniforms free of charge. A number of state of the art elementary, middle and high schools are being built all over the state, in various stages of completion. Tablet of Knowledge (Opon Imo) is on its final practical test in three schools in the state, to be ready for distribution to 150,000 students and teachers in all the senior secondary schools in the state free of charge.

The implication of these achievements for would be gubernatorial candidates and their political parties is that the benchmarks already set by the incumbent will have to be met and those who aspire to defeat him will not only promise to do what he has done but demonstrate the capacity and record of achievements to surpass him.

The second huddle that the aspirants will have to clear is ability to create employment opportunity to surpass that of Aregbesola who has now employed over 50,000 youths from the state. Numbered among these are the 20,000 employed within his first 100 days in office. Of the number, 18,000 are now fully engaged. The second batch of 20,000 youths came on board this February, while about 10,000 others were recruited into the state civil service either as teachers, doctors’ engineers and other professionals. Those aspirants must be ready to go beyond rhetoric but meet their promise with action it is then that the people will give them a consideration. It is important to recall that this OYES has earned the state an award by the World Bank which also recommends the scheme to the federal government.

The third huddle to be scaled by the other gubernatorial gladiators is in the area of agriculture. Governor Aregbesola has shown that the land is fertile enough not only to feed the state but the nation. It is no longer news that the agricultural revolution in the state has started yielding results. The farmers and their friends will forever remain grateful to the governor for providing them with N1billion support for the cooperatives. Indeed, 1,765 hectares were cleared for farmers to make farming easier, 28 cooperative groups were supported to plant 17 kilometres stretch maize, 10,000 capacity cattle ranch were established at Oloba, Iwo and has also been recognized by the World Bank. Bee- farming, the first of its kind is already on at Oyan.

The farmers that benefited from these projects and assistance will not want to lose the governor that supports them, and the aspirant that will defeat their friend will not only promise but must have been tested and trusted by the people.

On road infrastructure, the previous government of Oyinlola Olagunsoye built 553 kilometres of roads in 90 months. Governor Aregbesola in 24 months has done 513 kilometres of roads, apart from the 218 kilometres being done by the local government authorities in the state. The people will not compromise on the man that has opened up rural areas and has since received the recognition and backing of the World Bank as the best among the four states under the supervision of the World Bank supported Rural Access Mobility Programme (RAMP).

In the area of peace and security, it is on record that no security outfit existed until this government came on board. The administration successfully set up the Swift Action Squad (SAS), equipped them with initial five Armoured Patrol Cars and 25 Patrol vans, state-of-the art multi-force, security control centre, mega police stations and community policing network.

The social ethos of Omoluabi is transforming the state from the violence-prone state in the pre-Aregbesola era to a peaceful one to underscore the fact that the virtuous status of the state is not mere rhetoric but the ideals that has unified groups.

Today, the aged, especially those who have no relations to cater for them are being taken care of under the administration’s social welfare programme. The critically vulnerable elders, numbering 1600 are on monthly allowance of N10,000. Some are being looked after in the hospitals in the state. Others receive home-based medical care. The mentally challenged are not left out as some of them are now restored back to normal health and returned to their communities. So those who want to serve Aregbesola a quit notice should be reminded about these benchmarks. For no matter the tirade and negative propaganda, issues that benefit the people will be the basis for success at the polls and not cheap lies, diatribes and blackmail. Aregbesola has given the people of Osun the dividends of democracy. It is for his opponents to show their stuff and their antecedent to let the people make their choice. This is the hallmark of democracy.

• Obaditan writes from Osogbo, Osun State

April 30, 2013
Much ado about NGF

Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970), the American psychologist, spoke of a hierarchy of needs.

While basic needs (breathing, food, water, sleep etc) occupy the base of the pyramid, self-actualisation (the creative swagger of a man/woman who has made good) perches at the summit.

Between these two extremes are safety (innate security), love/belonging (family confidence and security) and esteem (societal appreciation and respect): and you need to climb through these rungs to gain the summit.

This is, of course, no psychology exposé. But linking Maslow’s hierarchy to the twin main dramatis personae in the raging storm over the impending Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) election is rather revealing.

Performance-wise, one has attained self-actualisation in his elected office. The other is languishing at the base, still fumbling over basic needs. But both are angling for future tours of duty – or, in any case, reportedly so. That accounts for the raging war over an otherwise innocuous election!

Enter Rivers Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, sitting NGF chair.

As far as performance goes, two-term Governor Amaechi, who nevertheless would end up spending less than eight years prescribed by law because of his delayed assumption of office (25 October 2007 instead of 29 May 2007), appears to have garnered enough swagger to aim for higher office.

Remember former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperious diktat that Amaechi’s gubernatorial nomination had developed a “K-leg”; and also the legal challenge that eventually reclaimed the governor his seat, even if his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had brazenly replaced his name on the ballot with his cousin’s, Sir Celestine Omehia?

Despite these setbacks however, Governor Amaechi has enough on ground to show (in model primary and secondary schools, healthcare, infrastructure, sports and security: ridding Rivers of the militants’ terrorist threat in kidnapping), to justify a future political ambition. He therefore appears made, with or without a second NGF term.

So, why this contest-and-be-damned mentality in his camp? The NGF chairmanship, with its attendant networking, keeps alive Governor Amaechi’s reported vice-presidential ambition, a ticket media reports claim he hopes to share with Sule Lamido, the Jigawa governor. That sure does not sit well with Governor Amaechi’s political traducers.

Enter then, President Goodluck Jonathan. He appears fixated with crushing Amaechi: and the controversial grounding of the Rivers government airplane would appear the latest indication.

But between Governor Amaechi and President Jonathan, the contrast is stark.

The one would spend less than eight years as governor; yet has an ample lot to show. The other, if his second term bid gels, would likely spend nine years as president – more than the required eight – but may have pretty little to show, if the morning shows the day, from his parlous performance so far.

However, Dr. Doyin Okupe, with his presidential public affairs staff in tow, on a visit to The Nation the other day, believed it was only a matter of time before President Jonathan started dazzling Nigerians with tangibles.

It would appear, therefore, a titanic (?) tussle between a clumsy “Oga at the top” and a nimble lower fry in the Nigerian Animal Farm (apologies to George Orwell), particularly with the president assuming the Obasanjo-era almighty president and “party leader” – a thorough and thorough corruption of the American presidential system.

Yes, over there, the sitting president by convention is party leader. But that deference comes from reverence to the presidential office, which incumbent is no insufferable power brute, but a meek lamb of the constitution, created, nurtured and completely directed by the rule of law, never by brazen arbitrary power.

In President Jonathan’s case, that misguided role is double jeopardy. The more fixated he is with crushing Amaechi, the more distracted he is from scrambling up Maslow’s pyramid by superlative performance, and the more he damns himself as unworthy of the 2015 presidential en core he clearly covets.

But the president and his handlers appear for now too irate to think clearly.

That explains the “Judases” metaphor of the rather tactless Godswill Akpabio, Akwa Ibom governor, on being made chair of the no less tactless PDP Governors Forum, a forum that could well destroy NGF itself. Like the Christ and Iscariot, the Jonathan presidential Judases are within, not without.

No thanks to them, for one, there are emerging talks of many opposition governors pulling out of NGF. For another, there is counter-talk of Jonathan’s gubernatorial storm troopers either plotting to scuttle the NGF poll should Amaechi secure the number to win; or walk out after losing to paint the election as some farce – talk of (un)presidential bad faith!

But in this presidential huffing and puffing, strategic thinking would appear to have taken a fatal flight. If not so, the president and his men ought to have carefully x-rayed the NGF power centres before plotting their moves. That apparent failure is all so reminiscent of the search-corrupt-and-destroy calamitous tactics of the Obasanjo third term gambit, as beautifully exposed by Nasir El-Rufai in The Accidental Public servant.

President Obasanjo listened to political and careerist witches and wizards who told him what he wanted to hear. The result was a spectacular collapse of his third term pipe dream and the well-earned disgrace, even if the former president continues to live in denial of the debacle by hiding behind the proverbial finger.

Is President Jonathan headed for the same ditch? That is hard to say, until you analyse the NGF power centres.

The opposition NGF governors’ camp would appear a no-go area, even if Anambra’s Peter Obi and Ondo’s Segun Mimiko might go with the president. Incidentally, Governor Obi was reportedly at the dinner, at which the president allegedly told the attendees to go for Amaechi’s jugular.

The PDP Governors Forum? That is a house divided against itself. Most of the president’s opponents are second-term governors who have less to lose than if they were seeking a second term. Besides, Governor Akpabio, the body’s chair, has been so tactlessly tactless it is doubtful if he can rally anybody for the president, beyond preaching to the converted (who seem to lack the number) and barking impotent threats at opponents.

The Northern States Governors Forum? The body language of Niger Governor, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the chair, speaks of a regal distancing from the president and his cause. In open balloting, how many of them would risk voting the Jonathan way, given how the traditional North feels about power in 2015? And how many, in secret balloting would, without prying presidential eyes? This is another house divided against itself but united by a primordial cause.

But even if the president vanquishes Amaechi, what does he prove – that Goliath has slain David? Big deal! But at what cost?

Really, all this furore over NGF election is much ado about nothing. It is a massive distraction all round.

The president bullying the governor or the governor slaying the president does not remove the quacking basis of the Nigerian state. After all the noise of battle, the hoop of victory and the puncture of defeat, let us hope the combatants would not find themselves buried under the rubble of once upon a country!

April 30, 2013
Understanding Jonathan/Amaechi family feud

In Nigeria, being good, upright, truthful and forthright could be a bad idea especially if you are in public office. It has also emerged in the past few years in our country that dictatorship, high-handedness, intolerance and vindictiveness can lice successfully with democracy, albeit, Nigeria’s brand of democracy. And where you have all these in abundance as is the case here, cronyism, nepotism, incompetence et al become the order of the day with corruption reigning supreme.

To understand what I am talking about, let’s take a look at the on going face-off between Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state and ‘Oga and Madam at the top’ in Abuja’ President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.

In between, throw a certain character called Nyesom Wike, who sits in cabinet with President Jonathan as Nigeria’s Minister of State for Education, but who in reality is a tool in the hands of Madam and does all the dirty jobs for the First Family, including trying to destabilise the Rivers State government to soften the ground for Madam, an Okrika from Rivers State, to have her boy installed as the governor of the state now or sometime in 2015. All these geared towards getting Rivers State and its two million or so votes in Jonathan’s corner in the 2015 presidential election.

Rivers votes have always been crucial to winning a presidential election in Nigeria. I recall as a teenager in the second republic how votes from the old Rivers State tilted the balance in favor of Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the then National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Glued to my father’s radio, I was monitoring the result of the 1979 presidential election state by state as being announced by the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO).

With most of the result out, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the then Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) was in the lead with over four million votes closely followed by Shagari, and optimism was in the air, especially in the old western region that Awolowo was on course to clinching the country’s presidency. But overnight the picture changed when the result from Rivers State was released and NPN got over one million votes and catapulted Shagari to over five million votes. That put paid to Awolowo’s presidential ambition that year and the result put Rivers State as a must win for any presidential candidate in Nigeria.

That trend has not changed as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the successor to NPN has consistently benefited from this solid backing from Rivers since the advent of this democracy, up to the 2011 presidential election that brought in President Goodluck Jonathan.

Rightly or wrongly, however, the Jonathan camp believes that could change in 2015 if Governor Rotimi Amaechi is not in their camp in the run up to the next presidential election. And it does appear to them that the governor’s body language is not in sync with their 2015 ambition. This, those close to the governor say is not true as Amaechi is totally committed to not just the PDP but also the Jonathan presidency both now and post 2015 election.

The problems they say are the people around the president (read my lips, Nyesom Wike & co) who would rather create a gulf between Jonathan and Amaechi for their own selfish ends. They say the President and Governor Amaechi used to be in the same corner right from Jonathan’s days as Vice President to late President Umar Yar’Adua. And amidst opposition to Jonathan elevation to the position of acting President when Yar’Adua took ill, Amaechi it was said stood by the man from Otuoke, and finally when he ascended the presidency and later ran for election in 2011, the governor delivered Rivers votes to the president. So, at what point did their “quarrel” start?

It is very difficult to say the two are quarreling as both have denied this, but it will also be playing the fool to say all is well between them. All that can be said about the unease between them is that it doesn’t bode well for Rivers State on one hand and our democracy on the other hand. While both have refused to acknowledge it, their seeming quarrel can not but be related to the 2015 presidential election. Jonathan believes rightly or wrongly that Amaechi plans to team up with a presidential candidate, most likely from the north, to challenge him in the coming presidential election. And the governor has vehemently denied this, both in private and publicly. He had even gone on the record to say Jonathan is a good man and means well for the country, but that the president is surrounded by some “bad” people.

This is what everybody close to the President seem to be saying, but not a few Nigerians are confused when they hear this as President Jonathan has not convinced them that he is nice or meant well for the country. And examples abound to prove their point.

Jonathan, apparently driven by determination to return to office in 2015, from recent events and actions of the Federal government, doesn’t seem to believe Amaechi. The governor it does seem from the point of view of the president must be muzzled or bullied to tow the line or punished if he refused.

If recent events are anything to go by, then the punishment option appear to have been taken by the Jonathan camp even when there is little or no evidence to suggest that Amaechi is against the President’s 2015 project.

Remember the on going feud between Rivers and Bayelsa States over disputed oil field along their border in the Kalabari area? Not a few in Rivers State believe this was punishment on the people for the “sins” of Amaechi. Similarly oil fields have been ceded from Rivers to Akwa Ibom State in what many believe to be compensation for Governor Akpabio’s support for the president.

Other punishments bordering on security and even economic matters have been meted out to Rivers all in a bid to show Amaechi ‘we have the federal might’.

Directly the presidency is fighting to ensure that Amaechi does not return as chairman Nigeria Governors Forum when the Forum elects new officers in a few weeks time. Why you may want to know?

Amaechi as Chairman of the Forum has been speaking the minds of his colleagues especially on the vexed issues of excess crude account, sovereign wealth fund, true federalism, fuel subsidy and so on to a presidency that doesn’t seem to want to listen. For speaking truth to power on behalf of his colleagues, the presidency wants him out as NGF chairman and have been using the Governors of Benue, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, expectedly Bayelsa states and to some extent Katsina State to cause trouble for Amaechi in the NGF.

We all know the story of the creation of the PDP Governors Forum, to frustrate the Rivers State Governor, even when both the PDP and Governor Akpabio, the PDPGF chairman, have denied it.

The story of insecurity of lives and property in Rivers State prior to the coming on board of the Amaechi administration is well known, so also is how the Governor has successfully restored peace to his domain. Part of the measures was to spend millions of Naira to equip the security forces deployed in the State. But while the security forces were grateful, their masters in Abuja appear less so. As we write, two armoured helicopters meant for security operations in Rivers state and environs, fully paid for by the state government have been denied clearance at the port in Lagos by the federal government who believe (wrongly) the choppers are meant for the so called Lamido/Amaechi 2015 project, which only exists in the imagination of the presidency. You can see how there minds work in Abuja. These are equipments that can be used to fight terrorism anywhere in Nigeria.

To cap it all, the war on Amaechi by Jonathan’s Federal Government has been taken to the ridiculous level of impounding the governor’s official aircraft for allegedly violating aviation rules and regulations.

Having covered the aviation beat for years, I know the powers invested in the regulatory authorities and as such would not pick issues yet with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) over their actions regarding that aircraft. But they had better be on solid ground else they would be dragged into the political mess by Jonathan and be disgraced.

Amaechi, we all know cannot be kept quite and will continue to say the truth. And as long as he continues to deliver the dividends of democracy to his people, he will always triumph, no matter the odds. He has gone through this before and emerged victorious. His current travail this will not be an exception. He should be patient.

President Goodluck Jonathan is however advised to beware of his latter day friends, the Nyesom Wikes of this world.

April 30, 2013
Baga: A postscript

Just when the appeasement template described as amnesty for the Boko Haram seems given, the nation woke up to a dramatic escalation of hostilities in Baga, a fishing border town in the North-east between the men of the military Joint Task Force and the Boko Haram. At the end of the confrontation, the casualties were numbered in multiple scores depending on who did the counting. The military high command put out its own figures of the dead at 36. The leaders of the community also gave their version as between 185 and 200.

But then, it is not only the number of casualties that is in dispute, even the day the hostilities broke out and the series of events that led to the skirmishes have since been contested. While most accounts gave the weekend of April 19 as the day the hostilities broke out, some accounts actually point at an earlier date of April 16. As if to further compound the puzzle, the military couldn’t be sure – days after – whether it was the multinational troops in the JTF that engaged the insurgents or exclusively Nigerian troops.

Of course, the only area of broad agreement is that civilian lives were involved. The JTF said six civilians were killed – the rest 30 were alleged to be members of the Boko Haram.

And as for those to be held responsible for the mayhem, again, it is a matter of who to believe. Whereas the commander of the multinational force, Brigadier General Austin Edokpaye, puts the blame squarely on the door-steps of the Boko Haram who he accused of using civilians as human shield while firing on soldiers, what the locals saw was the heavy hand of soldiers in the mission to avenge the death of one of their men. Some accounts actually blamed the extensive destruction which followed on the house-to-house search embarked on by the soldiers after which the residents were chased out and their abodes set on fire.

It doesn’t help that attention has since deflected from the murderous activities of the Boko Haram sect to the role of the guardians drafted to keep the peace. Today, the military is the one on the spot – accused of deploying excessive force against the insurgents thereby causing heavy collateral damages. It seems a case of the military providing fresh ammunitions for those who see them as the problem and hence are pressing for the withdrawal of troops from the North-east.

No doubt, the point cannot be sufficiently made that the death of one innocent soul to the raging insurgency is one too many. Whether it is one lone service man mauled in the course of national duty or the dozens of innocents caught in the middle of the raging fire between the security forces and the Boko Haram. However, just as the use of excessive force by the military must be deplored, and hence the need for thorough investigations to establish and bring to book those individuals found in breaches of relevant services rules, part of the problem isn’t just the tendency to jump into conclusions before the full facts are established but to see the servicemen as expendables.

How many people died? We do not even know at this point. The one that we know for certain is that an officer of the JTF died. But then, does the number really matter? Are these fellows not Nigerians with dreams and aspirations? The point is that every life must be seen to count; whether we are dealing with one life or dozens, the difference must be seen only in terms of the multiples of avoidable tragedy.

In all of these however, the greater tragedy must be the predictable, knee-jerk response to a foreseeable outcome. Most predictably, the response has been superficial – the same standard blame game: the military must be blamed for the multi-layered problem they didn’t create. I struggle to find the required due sensitivity accorded the task force in the rather difficult operating environment and the sacrifices they are called to make, more so in an environment where the next individual standing by may well be a terrorist waiting to lob yet another IED. I find none. More palpable also is the lack of resolve to confront a common threat by those who should assume the role of drum majors for peace.

At this point, I do not want to delve into the argument as to whether or not the military by its well known record of brutality against unarmed civilians is not wholly responsible for the way the ordinary citizen perceives them. Neither do I want to venture into the debate as to whether the nation can afford to defang the military simply because a few serving personnel exceeded their brief. In the same vein, no one questions the right of citizens to demand acceptable standards of conduct from our servicemen whether in combat zones or among the civil populace.

The issue is whether we are not looking in the wrong direction for solution to a general malaise. First, I do not think that anyone should misunderstand the job that the military is called to do; theirs is to find and fix the insurgents wherever they may be found using all available instruments including force. Secondly, I do not also think that anyone should suffer the illusion that the military is anything but a facilitator in the search for peace. Just as it seems inevitable that mistakes would be made in the course of duty, it is precisely the job of the civil society to call them to account. I do not think that the civil society has failed in this duty – whether it is Odi, Zaki Biam and now in Baga.

The problem is the attempt to amplify the failings of the JTF, and to present it as the problem. They were not the problem in the Niger Delta any more than they will be the problem in Borno and Yobe. In both situations, they were drafted in to deal with the specific problem.

Does anyone imagine that the only reason anyone is talking of amnesty today is because the Boko Haram has not succeeded in overrunning the vast territories of the North? How about imagining the North-east without the JTF in the current circumstances? Surely, the federal government does not seem to have exclusive monopoly of bad faith!

I conclude by re-affirming an earlier thesis that there can be no such thing as an imposed solution to the Boko Haram problem. The problem is fundamentally for local authorities – working with the federal authorities – to solve. Even if the federal government succeeds in smashing the infrastructure of the insurgency, the issue of the fundamentalist ideology behind it would still have to be addressed. That, for me, is the only ground on which the proposed amnesty can stand – or make sense!

April 30, 2013
Anarchy at the gate

Nineteen years ago, in February 1994, The Atlantic magazine published an article with the apocalyptic title “The coming anarchy,” in which its national correspondent, Robert Kaplan, advanced the thesis that poverty, overpopulation, disease and crime would conflate in urban areas of West Africa – and ultimately in other parts of the Third World — to set the stage for the meltdown of civil society.

Nigeria, Guinea (Conakry) and Sierra Leone had furnished the raw material for Kaplan’s prognostication. Liberia was already being convulsed by a barbarous civil war.

Fast forward to 2013; add to Kaplan’s toxic brew corruption on a scale almost beyond belief, massive and growing youth unemployment, free flow of firearms of every description, syndicated kidnapping, serial sectarian violence of which last week’s carnage in Baga, in Borno State, is only the latest installment, as well as degradation of the environment in oil-producing areas.

Exacerbated and unaddressed, any of these factors could drive Nigeria to the edge. Together, they constitute a potent potion for disaster. Anarchy, it now seems clear, is not merely coming; it may well have arrived at the gate already.

But the authorities seem all too distracted to notice it, or they notice it all right but do not give a damn, persuaded that they can ride the storm and live happily ever after Sometimes they even appear to be wringing their hands out of sheer helplessness, if not abject surrender.

When they think at all about ameliorative measures, it is all in the future. By baking bread from cassava flour instead of wheat flour, the public was assured about a year ago that some three million jobs would be created. Some N4 billion that would have been spent importing wheat flour would be pressed into more productive use that would generate still more jobs.

But well before a steady stream of the cassava crop has been assured, contracts had been awarded for purchasing and installing cassava-processing plants all over the country. The much-advertised bread has thus far been reserved for the breakfast table at Aso Rock. The jobs are yet to materialise.

The same strategy has been applied to rice. Growing and processing the stuff locally will save billions of naira in foreign exchange and create thousands of jobs. Ahead of an assured and sustainable harvest stream, industrial-scale rice mills are being purchased to process rice for the local market and perhaps even for export, to earn foreign exchange. Meanwhile, the projected jobs remain just that.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of young men and women armed with degrees and diplomas for the universities and other institutions of further learning are released to the job market to swell the ranks of those who had graduated three, perhaps or even five years earlier but are still pounding the streets looking for jobs that are just not there.

Yet every year, the Federal Government and the states routinely establish more universities and institutions of further learning, most of them ill-provisioned, to produce yet more graduates destined to suffer the fate of those who had graduated much earlier.

Not too long ago, a university degree was the passport to a career that was rewarding and full of promise. In Nigeria today, a strict cost-benefit analysis will lead the hard-headed to regard it as a disinvestment.

The business mogul Aliko Dangote placed an advertisement to recruit university graduates as truck drivers the other day and could not cope with the deluge of responses, a good many of them from persons with higher degrees, including doctorates. Since I commented on the natter, hardly a week passes without my getting an inquiry from a graduate about the method of application, and whether I could provide a recommendation.

Entertaining no illusions about what awaits them at the end of their service year, many youth corps members, now assure themselves a second term in the schemed and its anaemic pay by deliberately under-performing.

The Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, pivoted her ill-fated campaign for president of the World Bank on a promise to create jobs for the world’s youths. Why can’t she devote her abundant energies to doing just that on a national scale? Rarely does she mention the subject these days, though it once ranked high on the “Transformation” agenda of the Jonathan administration.

Epileptic power supply has ruined small-scale businesses that served as a cushion against poverty for millions of Nigerians. Poverty is as visible as never before, just as hunger stalks the land as never before. Crime is just around the corner, and insecurity is a constant companion.

This conjuncture ought to concentrate the minds of our policy-makers as never before and move them, if only out of a healthy instinct for self-preservation, to devise measures to stem what is clearly shaping up as a slide into ungovernability.

Instead, they are focusing all their energies and resources on the general elections scheduled for 2015, frantically instituting measures to cripple potential or wholly imagined challengers, and scheming to impose a new Constitution on the country through the back door, in the process eviscerating yet another opportunity – some say it may well be the last one – to design a healthier union.

The kidnapping saga of Kehinde Bamigbetan, the dutiful and unassuming chair of the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, in Lagos, ought to serve as a wake-up call to all of them.

The syndicate that abducted him was on routine reconnaissance, looking out to seize anyone for whose freedom they could obtain a hefty ransom. Bamigbetan seemed that kind of person. He was being chauffeured in an SUV, not in itself a sure sign of affluence in most Nigerian cities, but some indication that the fellow in the “owner’s corner” is not exactly a pauper.

As the stalkers overtook his vehicle, a shot rang out from their Kalashnikov assault rifle. His driver jerked the SUV into reverse gear and tried to change course but hit an electric pole and stopped. More shots rang out from the AK-47, narrowly missing the driver who somehow opened the door and fled.

Bamigbetan was now effectively in the hands of his abductors. They bundled him into their car, blindfolded him, and drove furiously toward Badagry. But not before they had kicked out of the car a captive who, they told Bamigbetan chillingly, had just been ransomed with hard cash.

The kidnappers, numbering seven, split up into two groups. One group comprised “hardened” individuals, according to Bamgbetan. This was the group that administered the beatings and the blood-curdling threats. The other was more “humane.”

It says something of the sophistication of the syndicate that they sent “spies” to mingle with the staff of Bamigbetan’s office and monitor what they were saying about their abducted boss. Their report apparently moved their principals to settle for a reduced ransom, and to release him after one traumatic week in their custody.

Bamigbetan was lucky. Several weeks earlier, a former deputy governor of Anambra State, Dr Chudi Nwike and a chieftain of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) was killed by his kidnappers after they had collected a negotiated ransom.

Now, here is the point that should set our policy-makers thinking: The kidnappers, Bamgbetan said, “seemed to have been forced into criminality” by the prevailing circumstances. Many of them are graduates but had been unemployed for years. They could not understand “why we budget billions of Naira and graduates cannot get jobs.”

So, they took to kidnapping as a way of registering their anger against “the system.”

Continuing on the present trajectory and hoping to muddle through somehow is not a public policy option. If policy makers could summon just one tenth of the creativity they employ in enriching themselves and their cronies and apply it to devising sustainable employment schemes for the burgeoning army of restive young persons, they may yet stave off the looming prospects of anarchy in those parts of the country that have not been overrun by Boko Haram.

For Funmilayo Olayinka: A Postscript

Funmilayo Olayinka, the deputy governor of Ekiti, whose remains were buried in the state capital last week, was an uncommon public figure. Abjuring the pomp and circumstance that went with the office, she was unpretentious through and through.

Gracefulness – suavity, to employ a more evocative term — perfused every step she walked, every word she spoke, and every gesture she made. She battled the ravages of the cancer that ultimately claimed her life with great dignity and continued until the end to complement Governor Kayode Fayemi in devoted service to the people. She gave public service and politics a human and humane face.

We are all the poorer for her passing. May her soul find peace. Her family will take pride and consolation in the outpouring of grief and affection that attended her passing. Her example inspires and ennobles us still.

April 30, 2013
The indispensable state

About 200 years ago. This was a coastal town. That was a coastal town.

Both seemed, at first, improbable to soar. This, like that, seemed forever sleepy and clung wearily to joyless traders. But salvation came from outside, from a remorseless greed for strangers. That was an outpost like this one. Because they embraced others, they expanded. Appetite became destiny, and so they grew. As their girths widened, their breadths became so breath-taking that they became cities.

Both bustle with pride, so this is a superpower and that races at a supersonic speed. This is Lagos. That is New York. To pitch these connections was the man in charge of this. That is, Lagos. The journey began for Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, in New York City itself, what its habitués, with a measure of proprietary hubris, call the Big Apple.

The Governor of example was hosted by Goldman Sachs in one of its sessions of a conference it tagged a summit of growth. Governor Fashola was to speak of the other city, the one he shepherds, with its sprawling cityscape, its surging population, its infrastructural demand, cultural mélange, its educational challenges and its ability to turn a fidgety city to a magnet of investment.

Here, the audience was principally non-Nigerian. From his answers to a number of questions posed by the boss of Goldman Sachs who shared the stage with him, the impression is inescapable: where Lagos goes, so goes Nigeria. He spoke about the infrastructural layout of Lagos, the roads, the management of power resources, the environment, financial engineering, water provision, houses being built at furious pace, hospitals, education. From his tone and the audience, the reference to the larger Nigerian canvas seemed implied.

The audience had a sense of the city in which they lived. New York is America’s indispensable city. That was where everything began, from its search for political thralldom to economic prowess, to technology acme to cultural pride. Did Hollywood not start with Edison and company in his days in the Big Apple? So when he spoke of this – that is Lagos – they wanted to know if that is Nigeria. But that was conundrum. He is governor of Lagos.

But it was when Governor Fashola swiveled to the capital, away from that city of lights and money, that he articulated in greater depth the meaning of his assignment as the governor of Lagos. It was at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.

He spoke of one of the great gifts of Lagos: people, especially people from elsewhere. He gave an anecdote about when he was given a diplomatic treatment at the immigration port as he entered the United States. Somebody yelled out, “Why should these visitors go through before me? This is my country.” It was a woman who did not understand that the country she called hers was not supposed to be hers if those who gave birth to her and those who gave birth to those that gave birth to her, etc did not enjoy the accommodation of strangers.

Governor Fashola deployed this example to tell the story about the power of diversity, and why greatness of any country or people cannot come without leveraging the high gifts of others.

He noted that the population of Lagos was about 2 million in the 1970s. Those of New York and London were higher then. But today with a population of about 21 million, Lagos bests the combined figure of the populations of the city of Winston Churchill’s courage and the economic capital of the world. The prosperous countries are those who can keep their immigrant populations, he posited. So where would New York be without its immigrant populations? What would Lagos be without all the throngs of tongues and voices coming from all parts of the country? Lagos is the city of the talented, of the adventurous, of the innovator. It is Nigeria’s hive of progress. The originality of Fela, the fortitude of the Fawehinmi and the mercantile acumen of the Ibru brothers, the track ingenuity of a Mary Onyali and the political pyrotechnics of an Azikiwe, or the organising zeal of an Awolowo. All of these could not have blossomed in any other city. That is why Lagos is Nigeria’s indispensable city.

Yet, it is a beauty and burden simultaneously, especially if you have to steer matters in this city within the constraint of centrifugal negatives from the centre. The governor of example referred to the now familiar theme of a suffocating federalism, where the centre takes a big chunk of 52 percent of the money, while the states and local government scramble over what is left. Yet, he notes that while a state like Lagos has over 6,000 roads, the federal government has far less than 200 in the state, and the states with fewer revenue streams have to do more. Yet the little the centre should do falls in the lap of the generous doer to accomplish while the big, fat centre luxuriates impotently with its largesse.

Of course, questions were asked, and the Nigerians in Diaspora, apparently moved, asked to know what the incentive was to return home. They spoke with latent frustrations over life in God’s Own Country.

“Home,” says Fashola, is the big incentive. They should dare to return and learn to prosper over adversity, and the resources are here to tap but with courage. He said he never had any reason to go abroad while all his nine siblings did. One of the questioners unknowingly embarrassed herself when she said she witnessed a flooding when she visited and was amazed that others walked through it while she struggled. Suppressing his impatience, the governor lectured her on the fact that floods occur everywhere, whether in New York or China, and the important thing is that it drains away when the rains stop, as it happens in Lagos.

The air of Lagos after Fashola was palpable when he spoke about the foundation he built on. “One must not underestimate the power of foundation,” he said. He noted that it is one thing to have a good foundation, and another to do well with it. “It is cold comfort,” he explained, “one must not squander an inheritance.” As a writer, I envied that metaphor. I recall also when his predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, marked his 60th birthday. The Asiwaju was overwhelmed by the tributes of his (Tinubu’s) gargantuan stature in Nigerian politics and government. He took a sober moment in the party at Eko Hotel to note that if Fashola had failed him, a lot that he enjoys would have run into a problem. Nothing frustrates like a wasted foundation. Hence this writer noted at his 60th birthday last year that, perhaps, the greatest decision yet of his public career was backing Fashola as the governor of Lagos and his successor. As for the Asiwaju the future has just begun.

Goodbye to a great woman

She left us but not wholly. Mrs. Funmi Olayinka, the stately woman who Governor Kayode Fayemi described as his co-pilot, was rare in our politics. She was brilliant but not puffy, well-heeled but not extravagant, beautiful but not showy, always showing up without superciliousness. The few years I knew this woman, I always marveled at her comportment and public discipline.
It is sad that death exercises arbitrary wisdom and we are shown to be none the wiser when it picks persons like her and we have nothing to say but accept. Many women with half her gifts scramble for vain glory and superficial headlines. Not Mrs. Olayinka.
Yet I was scandalised that the Presidency could go so low as to bring its malice with Governor Rotimi Amaechi to hallowed area of the dead. His plane was grounded for all of two hours, and it took the wise intervention of Speaker Tambuwal for the plane to be released. Now they have grounded the plane for opportunistic reasons. Politics in an ambience of funeral sobriety? What does that tell us about the desperation of the oga at the top? What desecration. What shame!

April 29, 2013
Amaechi’s many troubles

It has become obvious that Rivers State governor, Chibuike Amaechi is in for serious trouble. Not only is he dogged in a battle of survival to retain his current position as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum NGF, the rug is about to be pulled off his feet in respect of his control of PDP party structures in the state.

Already, the PDP has formed its version of the governors’ forum and is assiduously working in concert with the presidency to ensure that Amaechi does not return to his seat when the governors elect their chairman next month. Series of meetings are reportedly being held at the presidency to whittle down the support which Amaechi enjoys not only among PDP governors, but also others from the opposition. As things stand, it will only take a miracle for Amaechi to emerge victorious when that election comes up. As if that is not enough trouble, a high court sitting in Abuja last week sacked the Chief Ake-led state executive committee of the party considered loyal to Amaechi and upheld his rivals led by Felix Obuah as the duly elected state executive committee of the party. Yet the Ake-led executive had emerged victorious at the state congress of the party held about a year and half ago. And immediately after that court decision, the national chairman of the party Alhaji Bamanga Tukur hurriedly inaugurated the rival state PDP executive committee in Abuja.

If there was any shred of doubt regarding those behind that curious court judgment which has been largely spurned by stakeholders in the state, that inauguration gave clue as to where the drum beat was coming from.

And to cap the suspicion that the new executive was on a vengeance mission, no sooner had they arrived Port Harcourt than the new chairman issued an order that they will probe the leadership of the state including all other elected and appointed officers of government. According to them, at the end of the probe, they will issue certificates of clearance to those they find nothing against while the indicted ones will be referred to anti-graft agencies for further investigations and trial.

The same Obuah-led executive is also spoiling for war with governor Amaechi and the state assembly over the sacking of the leadership of the Obio/Akpor local government council. It has issued an ultimatum for the sack order to be rescinded threatening fire, lime and brimstone. As things stand, there is palpable tension and fear of threat to law and order with allegations that some unseen hands are simulating conditions that will precipitate the declaration of a state of emergency in the state.

Curiously, the tension in River state is the making of the ruling PDP. This is a party that has of late, been going round the country preaching peace and reconciliation among its factionalized members. At a time, both Tukur and Anenih the BOT chairman were involved in such parallel peace moves ostensibly because of their genuine desires to repair their umbrella torn by lack of internal democracy and brazen acts of impunity. Incidentally the peace Tukur and Anenih offered with the right hand, they are now taking with the left hand. So who says that the chameleon can ever change colour? That is the PDP for you.

At the centre of the raging crisis is the scant regard by the party to internal democracy. That has been the main source of disenchantment by aggrieved members of the party. Those who have left, have series of stories to tell in this regard. If with all these, the PDP still conducts business as usual, then its avowal to free and fair polls cannot be trusted. What is all the fuss about the control of party structures if the sovereignty of the electorate as expressed in the ballot will be respected? What difference does the control of party structures make if votes will count? These posers have been raised to underscore the point most poignantly that there is yet to be a change of attitude by the PDP to electoral matters. And the crisis in Rivers State is necessary to the extent that it will help the PDP to capture the state come 2015.

The crisis in Rivers is all about 2015. Governor Amaechi is said to be enjoying wide support among his peers. They want him back as the chairman of the governor’s forum. But Jonathan does not want to see that happen. His touted ambition to run as a vice presidential candidate with Sule Lamido of Jigawa state has not gone down well with the presidency and everything must be done to cut him to size and teach him a hard lesson.

The ruling of the Abuja high court that ousted the state executive committee loyal to him is seen as part of the plot to clip his wings. It also fits into the character of the ruling that ousted erstwhile national secretary of the party Olagunsoye Oyinlola and some other leaders of the party in the South-west. Those axed were ace loyalists of former President Obasanjo who was also involved in a battle to control the soul of the party. Since that deadly blow courtesy of the judiciary, not much has again been heard of the all powerful Obasanjo in the calculations of the party. Incidentally also, all these fit into the devious strategy adopted by Obasanjo when he held sway. Off course, the outcomes of elections conducted under that regime were anything but free and fair. It is obvious that Jonathan is going the inglorious path of Obasanjo even with the armada of opposition against his running in 2015.

In all these, the role of the judiciary has been anything but inspiring. The impression is fast gaining ground that the judiciary is increasingly lending itself to ease of use by the executive to settle political scores. And that is the greatest danger to our democracy.

It is issues like this that the US must have taken copious note of when in its 2012 report, it posted very negative verdict on the Nigerian judiciary. The report spoke of monetary inducements and the increasing loss of confidence in the capacity of the judiciary to serve as the last hope of the common man. These are the issues to watch. The judiciary must begin to take a serious view of its increasing perception as being amenable to manipulation by the ruling class in order to settle political scores. For now, that appears to be the reading of events that led to the sacking of the national secretary of that party and the state executive committee of the Rivers State chapter.

Allowing such an impression to fester will be counter productive in our quest for a stable political order. We should be wary of lending the judiciary to Marxian postulation that sees it as part of the structures that exist to serve and sustain the interest of the ruling class. If that happens, the predictions that the Nigerian state will soon fail, would have taken the pattern of that vividly captured by Karl Marx.

The posturing of Obuah since the judiciary armed him with the contentious leadership of the party in that state is something to watch. All of a sudden, he has emerged from the blues to arrogate to himself all manner of powers issuing sundry orders. It is obvious that he is on a vengeance mission which sooner than later will snowball into a crisis of unimaginable proportion in the state.

With the state assembly disowning his so-called leadership and vowing not to have anything to do with him, it is clear that danger is lurking in the air in that state. He must be restrained from turning Rivers state into a battle field.

April 29, 2013
Re: Salvation on earth: Two exemplary paradigms (1)

Your concluding part makes you sound like a man in confusion. The Pentecostals in Nigeria are nothing but a bunch of docile elements being marooned by opportunist charismatic leaders. The tragedy therein is that the congregations are becoming so docile to a dangerous point of imbecility, to the extent that a Rev King could resort to burning members for submitting to his order though the law has taken its course. They pay tithes and sow countless seeds willingly even when they live below poverty line which is antithesis to the American model. And yet, the GOs and pastors display affluence and fly in private jets. It is tragic. – Omooba

In contention, I hold that the revolutionary ferment of the Americas cannot be ascribed to being a reaction to the brutality of their conquest. My thesis: Iberia in its earlier incarnation as Al Andalus was a melting point per the all inclusiveness of Islam. The conquistadores, driven by greed and Christian fanaticism, didn’t hold themselves as a race apart, mixing sexually with Indian and Negro alike. To wit, the Umayyad era had accustomed the Iberian to unity of race. No such mixing occurred in the Anglosphere where the Aryan Briton held himself to be culturally and racially superior. The effects of which are to persuade the non- Briton about the inferiority highlighted and terminally dissuade him from seeking parity. Second refutation: the Caliphate and Borno were empires recognising that they had been vanquished by a more powerful empire, the protagonists of which they merely thought of as clever. How is it that since they had not taken on the hobbling baggage of religious and cultural inferiority they did not emerge as leading lights of modernisation in post-colonial Nigeria if your thesis holds? – Obinnna75

Brilliant piece and the reason that I supplement my reading of the good book with the works of intellectual men of God from the early Christian intellectuals like St Augustine of Hippo (An African), his confessions, which I’ve just read, is brilliant reading and quite innovative thinking for its age; St Augustine of Canterbury, then fast forward to the reformation age, the two Martin Luthers, Martin Bucer, Jonathan Edwards, our own very Ajayi Crowther, Dientrich Boinheoffer to mention but a few. Unfortunately, apart from Bolaji Idowu no other contemporary clergy in Nigeria comes close in intellect, though credit must be given to Bakare, Akinola, Okogie and others in their application of the gospel to challenges in our society. However, the new age preachers, the bane of this article, don’t even come any close in intellectual rigour in how they preach the gospel – those described paraphasing MLK as intellectually light and failing to relay a consistent, constant message in the face of societal challenges where the church is in mission. As we learn from the history of the church our good leaders from whom we draw inspiration were never in the art of leadership for cheap popularity contests. In fact, they were renowned mainly for their vision, intellect, courage, bravery and the ability to recognise and articulate issues from a high ethical and moral compass supported actively and sustained by the Gospel. This unfortunately is what is lacking in the church in Nigeria today. – Omoba Oladele Osinuga Esq.

Religion, especially the Pentecostal hue, has come to replace everything political independence promised and failed to deliver. It now fills the void left by the incapacity of the post-colonial state to fulfil its social contract to the people and so, in the words of Pius Adesanmi, “Religion has become the second great euphoria after the first euphoria of Independence.” Unfortunately, this euphoria too has not yielded the promised result of prosperity. Like Tatalo has eruditely outlined, organised religion whether it is the Judeo-Christian hue or the Trans-Saharan Islamic variant, form part of those social formation imported and inserted into the African milieu, but were emptied of the moral and philosophical content and foundation in this new environment. Coupled with their close dalliance and flirtation with the state, they have been unable to play the transformative role like we witnessed in Latin America. Like their counterpart in the various state houses, most leaders of religious houses have also cashed in on the misery and wretchedness of the mass of the people to feather their personal nest. For the suffering masses therefore, it is an unpleasant scenario of head you lose, tail you lose. – Ashindorbe Kelvin

What bothers me most is the gentleman – in tie and ironed pants, chanting some personal liberation ryhme of “It is well”, “God bless you” – thief that adherents of the Pentecostal/ prosperity doctrine has become. To me, they destroy the country more than Boko Haram. They say “if I don’t take it, others will”. Paying tithe from the stolen money will sanctify the money. – Sola

April 28, 2013