The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Uduaghan and sports

    Uduaghan and sports

    Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan’s administration is synonymous with success, having embarked on a sports revolution aimed at returning the state to the leadership position which the former Mid-West region was known for.

    In recent times, hardly any major international or national sports event has occurred without an impressive and dominant showing of Delta State sportsmen and women.

    We are all witnesses to the brilliant performance of the Super Eagles at the just concluded Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa. The team led by the Delta State-born Stephen Okechukwu Keshi brought home the gold trophy that has eluded this country since the past 19 years.

    The deciding goal in the final march against Burkina Faso players was scored by the home based Sunday Mba of the Warri Wolves in Delta State.

    Delta state has a rich history of producing Nigeria’s sports ambassadors. This is made evident by their consistently impressive showing at very major sports event. The laurels and acclaim won by Delta athletes proves their worth and prowess as exceptional athletes.

    Though the country did not bring home any gold medal, it is of noteworthy that 12 out of the 78 athletes that represented Nigeria at the 2012 London Olympics came from Delta State, making the state the largest single supplier of athletic talents. At the 2011 All African Games in Mozambique, athletes of Delta state extraction who were on scholarship abroad won six out of the 10 gold medals won by Nigerian athletes

    At the national level, at the recently concluded National Sports Festival, ‘Eko 2012’ Delta state mesmerized sports lovers by their impressive performance. Athletes from the state won 116 gold, 97 silver and 75 bronze medals to beat the last champions Rivers state to the second place with 76 gold, 71 silver and 71 bronze medals.

    Out of the six National Sports festivals held recently, Delta has won four providing and grooming athletes for the country and making preparations for the next Olympics in Brazil.

    During the National Sports festival of 2009 ‘KADA Games’ held in Kaduna state, Delta emerged winner by winning a total of 110 gold medals to beat Edo and Ogun states to the second and third positions respectively.

    It should be noted that all these victories would not have been possible if not for the dogged commitment of Governor Uduaghan with his human capital development policy.

    The governor disclosed that his administration was exploring sports as a strategic area of creating employment, peace and building a state beyond oil.

    He explained that he was committed to developing the state through sports by positively engaging the youths while adding that the power of sports helps to discipline the society, reduce criminality and promote unity.

    And to continue achieving this success in sports and in line with the agenda, the government went into heavy investment in the provision of quality sports facilities, equipments and professional coaches so as to have a conducive atmosphere for competitive training purposes.

    The quality sports facilities built by Uduaghan in the state especially Warri could not fail to gain FIFA’s approval when they visited Warri.

    Because of the state of the art equipment’s and facilities available at the sports centre, many international sporting events have been hosted by the state including the Confederation of African Football (CAF), women championship. Not just that, the governor went further by planning and making provisions for the retirement period of the athletes. According to him “the decision to give cash rewards is because of the pitiable conditions some athletes who had represented the country and won laurels at international competitions found themselves after retirement”.

    Governor Uduaghan has been pivotal to the success of Delta in sports and he has special relationship with the athletes and does a lot to motivate them.

    When the Delta victorious team won in the KADA Games, to encourage and motivate the athletes and display appreciation, the governor gave out a cash reward of N500,000 for each gold medal, while silver and bronze medalists got N3000,000 and N200,000 respectively.

    Each of the coaches whose athletes won gold was rewarded with N500,000, silver N300,000 while bronze received N200,000.

    The governor also doled out N500,000 for each team event. The sum of N100, 000 was given to each athlete that participated but could not win a medal among others.

    Scholarship to study abroad and in Nigeria was awarded to some of the athletes while automatic employment was awarded all medalists who were not on the pay roll of Delta State.

    This display of appreciation led the victorious team to surpass their performance in the KADA games at the 18th National Sports festival at the Eko 2012. The Delta contingent emerged overall winners at the games, with a total medal haul of 288.

    Uduaghan being the motivator he is, rewarded the team with about N291.98 million. At the ceremony held at the events centre, Asaba, he said that Delta had never had it “as good in sports as we did in Lagos”. The cash awards, he said, was for the athletes to invest positively to avoid living in poor conditions when they must have passed their active years. Adding that “we cannot pay the athletes enough for their great performance and the honour they have given to us”.

    Awards of scholarship abroad and within Nigeria was also given out to the athletes while majority of them were given automatic employment in the state.

    Toeing the line of President Goodluck Jonathan, he hosted the Super Eagles for their recent performance at the Nation’s Cup, giving out various rewards in cash and landed properties to the football players and their coaches.

    He called on sports heroes in the country to give back to the society through mentoring programs and development of sporting talents of the teaming youths of the country.

    The Governor who is leaving no stone upturned to see that Delta state wins the forth coming African Youth Athletics championship holding in Warri has already inaugurated an 11-man local organizing committee to successfully organize a hitch-free competitive championship.

    Tagged ‘Sapele 2013’, the competition is aimed at promoting sports from the grass root, identify young talents, nurture and expose them to the world.

    Delta State had already begun preparations for the next National sports festival tagged ‘Paradise Games’ scheduled to hold in Calabar, Cross River in 2014. “At the Games, we will change our strategies” boasted their governor.

    “We are determined to encourage them and from the plans we have, we will have gold medalists from Delta at the next Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016” said Uduaghan.

    At his level of commitment and at the intensity at which he is building new and budding athletes in the Delta State, there is no doubt the state will produce gold medalists at Brazil in 2016.

    • Fidelis is an engineer based in Asaba

     

  • In this season of absolution

    In this season of absolution

    In another clime, the Council of State would be the repository of the nation’s collective wisdom and experience, a custodian of its most cherished values, a fount of inspiration, comprising men and women who, having given of their best to their country, would stay splendidly above the fray and would never again seek elective office nor descend into the pit of partisanship.

    I suspect that it is that kind of body the framers of the 1979 Constitution in which it was first consecrated had in mind; hence its composition: the President and the Vice President, all former presidents or heads of state, all former federal chief justices, the president of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, all state governors, and the federal attorney-general.

    Hence also its mandate: To advise the President with respect to his duties on a wide range of subjects in general, and on issues relating to the maintenance of public order in particular “when asked to do so.”

    It would be the body to turn to when the country is buffeted by strife and uncertainty – the very kind of period Nigeria is going through now.

    If it has not lived up to that expectation, it is partly because the high-mindedness that lies behind it is vitiated somewhat by the constitutional stipulation that the Council advises the President only “when asked to do so.” The Council, it follows, meets at the pleasure of the President, to discuss only such issues as he places before it. However expressed, its advice is non-binding.

    But even on the few occasions it has been convened, the Council has acted more as a rubberstamp that as an advisory body, endorsing decisions already taken – such as hefty increases in the pump price of gasoline under the pretext of ending a bogus government subsidy— rather than helping to formulate public policy.

    Aside from a few honourable exceptions, the Council of State is in its higher ranks a conclave of officials who failed when they had all the opportunity and resources to set Nigeria firmly and irrevocably on the path to progress, prosperity and respectability, if not greatness.

    For the most part, they fended for themselves and their cronies. When they thought at all about the people in whose name they claimed to rule or to exercise whatever function was delegated to them, they thought of how to rob them of their voices and their votes and their freedom; they thought of how to deny them justice, to subjugate and stultify them in every way, forgetting that with little men,” nothing great can be achieved.

    The state governors, majority of them from the ruling party and subject to its whip and other constraints, hardly depart from the official line.

    In effect, the Council’s composition is also partly responsible for its near-irrelevance.

    At any rate, it has never complained that its name was taken in vain, without corresponding adherence to its values. After perfunctory discussions, the members collect their “sitting fee”and collateral benefits, pose for the cameras, and then go their various ways until it pleases the President to invite them down again.

    By all accounts, that was what happened again last week. The Council dutifully rubber-stamped a fait accompli that President Jonathan Goodluck placed before it. By the time the business was over, the convicted money launderer, holder of a vast portfolio of property acquired with funds of dubious provenance, and a fugitive from British justice, deposed Bayelsa State Governor Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha, had been washed clean of all transgressions. All that remained was formal canonisation.

    To create the illusion of even-handedness in this curious enterprise, Dr Jonathan threw into the list of beneficiaries of his prerogative of mercy the late General Shehu Yar’Adua, the late General Abdulkareem Adisa, and General Oladipo Diya, all of whom were convicted of coup plotting by a kangaroo military tribunal set up by the loathsome Sani Abacha but had been officially pardoned back in 1999.

    As a sop to the North, he also threw in Shettima Bulama, a former chair of the defunct Bank of the North who had been convicted of corruption.

    They forgot to add General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was granted state pardon in the same executive act of 1999 along with the persons Dr Jonathan now purports to pardon all over.

    And when he is caught in this duplicitous act, his spokespersons strive mightily to outdo one another in sterile hairsplitting.

    Did the members of Council of State attending – four of the more prominent members stayed away – did they not see through this transparent subterfuge? Were they blindsided or otherwise inveigled into endorsing it?

    Presidential spokesman Dr Doyin Okupe surpassed his own reputation for boisterousness when he claimed that Alamieyeseigha had more than earned his pardon by working quietly to end the insurgency in the Delta, and that this has resulted in the quadrupling of oil exports.

    If that is indeed the case, it would be a powerful argument for dissolving with immediate effect the Amnesty Commission for the Delta or whatever the body is called, and replacing it with Alamieyeseigha as sole administrator. It would also mean that recent appeals to the British Government to help police Nigeria’s waters to curtail oil theft, amounting to 50 percent of total production by some accounts, were misdirected.

    Why turn to the Brits when Alams is more than equal to the task?

    In endorsing the pardon, Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) lived up to his reputation for brute legalism, utterly bereft of a sociological imagination. Nobody has said that Dr Jonathan acted outside the law. The charge, as I understand it, is that he acted on the basis of his own narrow political calculations, without giving a damn about the larger social and political ramifications.

    For once, I find myself on the opposite side of the learned senior attorney, Professor Itse Sagay, a stalwart of the progressive movement in Nigeria. His endorsement of the pardon is entirely out of character. He must have some principled reasons. I do not believe that he would take this troubling position based on regional solidarity alone.

    As Alamieyeseigha’s attorney, Professor Ben Nwabueze deserves nothing but praise for representing his client to the best of his great ability. But when our own Lord Dicey and Lord Denning rolled into one confers sovereign status on his client and argues that British police were in effect putting Nigeria in chains when they handcuffed his client at Heathrow Airport, it has to be said, with the greatest respect, that he is overstating his case.

    The Vienna Convention governing relations among nations does not cover the kind of criminal activity for which his client was detained even if the said client is a diplomat but the act occurred outside his official remit. Alamieyeseigha was no diplomat. At the time of his arrest, he was not on an errand for Nigeria. And he compounded matters by fleeing from justice.

    The word in Dr Jonathan’s corner, as always, is that there is no going back. But since he is in such an expansive and forgiving mood, he should widen the amnesty.

    I understand that Chief (Dr) Olabode George, the PDP chieftain convicted of contact- splitting at the Nigeria Ports Authority, has since completing his prison term been working quietly to rehabilitate those pesky “area boys” and other categories of social miscreants in Lagos. As a result, business has been booming in areas they ruled by terror, and every Lagosian now sleeps peacefully at night.

    How about a comprehensive pardon and clemency for the Chief?

    While at it, Dr Jonathan should not forget James Ibori, the former Governor of Delta State, now serving time in British prison for larceny on a scale almost beyond belief. I understand that he has been an exemplary prisoner and a most worthy ambassador of Nigeria.

    Surely, a complete pardon for the Ogidigboigboi of Africa would not be amiss in the weeks leading up to celebration of the Ultimate Redemption.

     

  • Before Alams blow

    Before Alams blow

    The race for the presidency in 2015 has already begun, and if you are in doubt you only need to take a look at what is happening inside the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and what President Goodluck Jonathan is doing with the presidency.

    For a start the PDP is in disarray, no thanks to Jonathan’s ambition of a second (or is it third) term in office. Against common sense and good political acumen the President has picked quarrel with the soul of the PDP in the south west and is also at daggers drawn with party leaders and some state governors in the south-south region where he hails from and which is supposed to be his home base. His support in the north is tilting towards zero while nobody could say for sure on whose side the middle belt would be in 2015.

    And as if these are not enough problems for Jonathan, the President is also picking quarrel with the international community over the stupid decision of the National Council of State to grant state pardon to those who stole public funds like his benefactor and former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.

    The United States in particular has spoken against the decision to pardon Alamieyeseigha, expressing deep disappointment at the decision describing it as a setback in Nigeria’s fight against corruption. The pardon announced last week and which covered alleged coup plotters against the military regime of one time Head of State, the late General Sani Abacha, also drew a lot of flak from the general public in line with the US criticism.

    Jonathan or rather his presidency, displaying a new found nationalism saw the American position as an undue interference and meddlesomeness in the internal affairs of Nigeria, since our president was acting within the confines of Nigerian laws by the granting of the pardons. What a stupid argument. The Presidency even had to call in the US deputy Chief of Mission James P. MacAnulty to protest the US position which came via two short tweets published by the American embassy in Abuja.

    Now the Americans with their zero tolerance for corruption and related activities, we are told, are considering a whole range of actions to be taken against the Jonathan government. These could include US visa denial to some key officials of the administration and may be their families too. This could spark tit for tat retaliation from Nigeria and before you know it, the cordial relationship between both countries could be put into jeopardy with the likelihood that Nigeria could become a pariah among countries that matter around the world if care was not taken. This could throw us back to the Abacha era when Nigeria was virtually ostracized because of the policies of the then Federal Military Government. Do we need to travel this route again?

    If one may ask, why should Jonathan risk all the goodwill that Nigeria is beginning to garner around the world just to free his godfather and benefactor from a self inflicted injury? I am sure in the United Kingdom where Alamieyeseigha jumped bail the matter has not been forgotten. So if tomorrow the man finds himself in the UK or any country with extradition treaty with the British and he was apprehended and flown to London to face the law, what would be Nigeria’s reaction?

    Jonathan may have satisfied and discharged his obligation to his kinsman but his action is a terrible blow to Nigeria’s quest to be among the best countries in the world where no one is above the law.

    As expected, his court jesters have stoutly defended the action and one in particular likened it to the state pardon granted Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, both of blessed memories by the Federal Government. We all know why Awolowo went to jail and Ojukwu picked up arms against the Nigerian state. None of the two stole public funds or impoverished their people; Alamieyeseigha did, and the law court said so.

    Now the argument that Alams as he is fondly called was instrumental to the bringing about of peace in the Niger Delta region is neither here nor there. The fact remains that he stole Bayelsa’s money, jumped bail in the UK and thus impoverished his people and also embarrassed Nigeria. These are criminal acts which I think all his efforts at helping in restoring peace to the Niger Delta are not enough to erase. He knew what he was into when he was filling his pockets with public funds and knew the repercussion. It is bad enough that Alamieyeseigha is not in jail like James Ibori, his co-traveller, but Jonathan has added salt to the injury by pardoning him, thus erasing all his sins and leaving him clean and fit to hold public office again in future if he so desires and his people approve.

    Don’t be surprised if the President goes the whole hog in Alams rehabilitation project by appointing him a Minister of the Federal Republic, say Minister of Petroleum or Niger Delta Affairs for instance. The PDP Senate would surely confirm him, after all what would the Senators give as their reason for rejecting him if he was nominated by Jonathan. Could this be where Jonathan is headed? And if yes, what would be the reaction of the international community? I am sure the hawks in the Villa will tell him not to mind America and the rest of the western world, after all if the US and co say no, China and Russia are there to support us. But tell me which country had the support of these two nations and survived the onslaught of the rest of the civilized world if and when it comes?

    Before the Alams blow and the hammer falls on Nigeria, somebody had better call Jonathan to order and rein in all childish and clannish tendencies because if and when it comes all of us will suffer for it.

    But wait a minute. May be there is something we are all missing in this Alams pardon issue. Could this be a sign of a man unsure of his political tomorrow? Like a friend pointed out, may be Jonathan is beginning to see the handwriting on the wall that project 2015 might not be after all and now that he still has the power to pardon his benefactor who stole public funds and was so convicted, he had better do it, even if it is morally reprehensible, because no other Nigerian president, except may be another Jonathan (God forbid) would do it. Can you see what I am seeing?

  • NYSC: National Youth Slavery Commission?

    NYSC: National Youth Slavery Commission?

    The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme was created in a bid to reconstruct, reconcile and rebuild the country after the Nigerian Civil war. It was established by decree No.24 of May 22, 1973 which stated that the NYSC is being established “with a view to the proper encouragement and development of common ties among the youths of Nigeria and the promotion of national unity”. The purpose of the scheme was to inculcate in Nigerian youths the spirit of selfless service to the community, and to emphasize the spirit of oneness and brotherhood of all Nigerians, irrespective of cultural or social background.

    In the months of March, July and November, Nigerian graduates are mobilized and sent to any of the 36 states and the federal capital territory to obey the clarion call of lifting their nation high under the sun or in the rain with dedication and selflessness. Then the suffering either begins or continues.

    There is usually a mad crowd at the point of collection of call-up letters in the various institutions. The queue at this point sometimes turns out to be the shortest in the whole of the service year. At the entrance of the 21 day incarceration camp called NYSC orientation camp, prospective corps members, as they are called, queue to be searched and before going in to begin their term and from then it becomes ‘Every man for himself, God for us all whoever is slow let the soldier take’. Depending on the local arrangements made by individual states, prospective corps members are registered, accommodated and kitted. At 4p.m the first parade is held, 7p.m dinner is served and 10p.m lights out.

    At 4:30a.m the soldier’s bugle is blown and the sound it makes is interpreted to mean it is you that finished schooling so you brought this yourself. At least if you didn’t graduate, you wouldn’t have to serve! Devotion, parade and drills are followed by a poor breakfast; long and boring lectures followed by a poorer lunch and by the time its dinner the poorest of meals is expected. However, miracles sometimes happen. The camp clinic usually receives a number of visitors in the first few days because of the ‘new food’ and paramilitary exercise but in no time the body acclimatizes and life goes on smooth and steady. The orientation programme gets more interesting as the days go by and when it is getting to the peak, the 21 day term comes to a rude end. Letters are handed out once again, but this time around it is either a posting letter or redeployment letter and fresh bouts of sobs begin for some people.

    Posting ought to be done based on the discipline of the corps member but preference is usually given to corps members who distinguished themselves during the orientation course, personal favourites of resident NYSC officials, and soldiers alike and those who arranged their posting with corporate bodies beforehand. Every posting letter has the name and address of the corps member’s place of primary assignment. It also carries a short note appealing to the prospective employer to offer necessary help to the bearer among other things. Some employers however ignore this note because they see corps members as national slaves and therefore sap them of all they can with little or no incentive; once again the tune of the soldier’s bugle comes to mind.

    To correct some of the abnormalities that characterise the ‘posting exercise’ as expressed above, a new posting policy was proposed. The policy is said to be aimed at making the scheme more responsive to the development needs of the country and this new posting policy seeks to post corps members only to four key sectors of the economy namely; agriculture, education, rural health, and infrastructure. As always, (a common Nigerian factor) the government did not prepare adequately for this causing the rejection of many corps members in these sectors across the country because they do not have enough to bear the burden of paying corps members’ stipends. Now, more corps members are roaming aimlessly about the streets looking for a place of primary assignment if only just to get their clearance form monthly but to no avail.

    Gone are the days when Corpers Beatitudes read thus: Blessed are you when you are posted to a bank for your account will be fat; Blessed are you when you are posted to a school for you’ll have students at your beck and call; Blessed are you when you are posted to a village for foodstuff will never be your problem; Blessed are you when you are posted according to your discipline for you have hopes of being retained.

    Now the closest it can be is: Happy are you when you are accepted in the village health post for many others were rejected; Happy are you when your school goes on break for you can run home to refill; Happy are you when wake up early to report on the farm, at least you have somewhere to go to; Happy are you when you maintain your country’s roads, bridges and buildings for many prayers would be offered for you.

    Even the service year that was once a year of learning on the job and knowing other parts of the country among other things is now a year of slavery and undue suffering. The National Youth Service Corps should not be scrapped but it should at least be transformed from a slavery commission which it has grown to become one that fulfils the basic aspiration of the nation’s youths.

    • Ms Omotayo, an ex-Corps member, writes from Ibadan

  • Niger Delta, Boko Haram amnesty

    If anything, the recent visit of President Goodluck Jonathan to Borno and Yobe states has raised the propriety of amnesty for the Boko Haram religious sect to the vortex of public opinion. This renewed interest followed the outright rejection of that proposition by Jonathan as earlier canvassed by the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar and corroborated by Borno elders at a town hall meeting with the president.

    Jonathan had anchored his objection to amnesty on the ground that promoters of the sect are ghosts and it was inappropriate to grant amnesty to an under cover group. But many, including the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah had charged that Boko Haram was no longer faceless as they had been addressing press conferences and issuing statements. As if to give credence to this, the splinter group led by Sheikh Muhammed ibn Abdulaziz came up with a press statement repudiating the claim that they are ghosts.

    Abdulaziz could not understand why anybody should still take them as ghosts when they have been holding meetings with the Borno State government and a delegation of the northern governors’ forum. They also faulted a recent statement in which their overall leader Sheikh Shekau was said to have disowned their group. They claimed that those statements were not made by Shekau and that he was the one that promoted Abdulaziz to his current commanding position.

    But this claim goes with a credibility overhang given that Shekau is the only fit and proper person to enter a refutal if he is not a ghost himself. Abdulaziz cannot be speaking for himself and Shekau at the same time and wants to be taken seriously. If Shekau really exists and Abdulaziz has the kind of links he bandies with him, the minimum expectation would have been to get him corroborate or refute those claims. The inability to do that casts serious slur on his credibility and leaves us with no other choice but to believe that the voice we heard was that of Shekau. And this also puts to serious question the credibility of the ceasefire agreement he claimed to have entered into with the Borno State government. It is an uncanny irony that the effect of that ceasefire agreement is yet to be felt in Borno where he claims to be holding forth.

    Beyond these, is the rational for according Boko Haram amnesty in the same fashion it was extended to the Niger Delta militants? Can we possible marry the two groups by way of solving both problems through a common approach? In other words, is amnesty the therapeutic response to Boko Haram insurgency in the same manner it was applied to militancy in the Niger Delta? What of the philosophical and ideological motivations of the two groups? Do they have things in common or prompted by disparate and contradictory desires or belief systems? There is also a territorial dimension to both agitations. These are the issues that will come handy in resolving the controversy arising from the prescription of amnesty as the necessary and sufficient condition for taming the Boko Haram insurgency.

    For one, there are marked differences both in ideological and philosophical motivations of the two groups. And as the spokesman for the presidency, Doyin Okupe pointed out Niger Delta militants were piqued by the despoliation of their environment by oil producing companies and wanted greater share in nature-endowed resources at their backyard. They wanted the oil companies and government to be more caring and responsive to the sensibilities of the oil bearing states. They took up arms quite alright. But their target was largely expatriates working for the oil companies whom they saw as oppressors. At any rate, agitations for fair share in resources accruing from oil by host communities is as old as the Nigerian nation. Curiously however, the government did not deem it fit to attend to the peculiar circumstances of oil bearing communities despite the stupendous wealth accruing from that resource and the squandering of same by sundry buccaneers masquerading as leaders.

    For another, the ideological motivation of Boko Haram is essentially faith-based. They want non Muslims in the north to leave; the president to convert from Christianity to Islamic religion and the conversion of the country to an Islamic state. Above all, they are abhorrent of anything that is western including education. It is ostensibly for these reasons they have unleashed mayhem unto the country leaving in its trail the killing of innocent souls through indiscriminate attacks on Christian places of worship.

    When therefore the Sultan and some northern leaders came up with the idea of amnesty, the first set of resentment to it came from Christians in the north that bear the brunt of these unprovoked and senseless attacks. They could not comprehend why criminals should be rewarded for the reckless destructions that have trailed their activities. They found it hard to understand why arrested criminals should be released in the name of dubious amnesty without accounting for their misdeeds.

    The fate of families sent to their early grave without justification was another issue that polluted the air at the mere suggestion of amnesty for the insurgents. And given our experience with amnesty for the Niger Delta militants, acceptance of such a proposal would see the government rehabilitating the insurgents in the same fashion it did to the militants. In effect, they will not only get away with the heinous crimes they committed but rewarded handsomely for their acts of lawlessness. To worsen matters, those proposing amnesty for the sect were amazingly silent on the fate of Christians in the north who suffered heavily from their acts of lawlessness. This fact went a long way to expose the hypocrisy in that prescription. It is not surprising therefore that the idea could not fly on account of inherent contradictions.

    There are contradictions in constructing parity between Boko Haram and Niger Delta militancy as they differ very substantially both in ideology and doctrinaire motivation. And whereas the demands of the militants could easily lend themselves to easy handle, that much cannot be said for Boko Haram.

    Granting them amnesty when they have not repudiated their ideological leitmotif is nothing but a recipe for anarchy. Moreover, Boko Haram has an international dimension. It has been linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalists in the Maghreb. Their escapades extend beyond the shores of this country as shown by their taking into captivity of a French family in Cameroon in protest against Nigeria’s participation in Mali. We are also privy to how a faction of the sect killed some Nigerian soldiers preparing for the Mali assignment. The sect is not only concerned with events in this country but outside of it. There is no guarantee that issues concerning their associates outside our shores, will not provide the ground for them to strike again. So it is not only a Nigerian but global problem.

    Being an arm of an international terror group, amnesty as a solution to terrorism is bound to fail. There is for now, no record of that as a panacea for taming the global phenomenon. Insisting on amnesty for the sect also conveys the impression that there may be more to their activities than ordinarily meets the eyes. The impression is festering that the whole idea is to get the government commit its resources to rehabilitating insurgents and sundry criminals the same way militants were treated.

    But the challenges facing amnesty in Niger Delta even questions the propriety of that exercise again. Today, it has become a platform for sundry characters and criminals to make dubious financial claims on the government. The situation is bound to worsen if Boko Haram is accorded that undeserving treatment. Then, the gesture would have emboldened criminals and evil minded groups to take up arms against the government.

  • From spirit to flesh

    From spirit to flesh

    In different ways, the resignation of the old pope and the philosophy of the new one indicate one thing: that popes are human after all. They may bubble with the spirit from on high, but they are specimens of blood and flesh. Even Jesus, when he sojourned as the inaugural martyr of the spirit, showed in his last days that the tug of the flesh was powerful. Hence he wept and even begged God to let the cup pass.

    When Pope Benedict XVI relinquished his high office, I told myself that the Bishop of Rome had revealed a quality that the church had veiled for centuries: the fallibility of the supreme pontiff. The Roman Catholic Church after the reign of Pope Pius XII had established as a dogmatic reality what it termed the infallibility of the pope. The pope could do no wrong in matters of faith and virtue.

    Infallibility of the spirit did not imply the infallibility of the flesh, but a pope that is infallible of spirit should have fought to the finish in the battle of the waning of the flesh. He would not have capitulated to the prompting of the flesh by worrying about its effect on his work. By resigning, the flesh had a say.

    For the new pope, it appears to be a triumph of the poor in an age of material obsession. This also takes away from the perception of the papacy as out of touch with the commoner, a papacy of the people. Hence, the new pope named himself after the saint that some psychologists and historians described as the saintly fool, a man who emphasised the dignity of poverty over the frills and grandeur of the high throne of the priest.

    Both pontiffs have shown that the pope is one of us. I see both developments as good not only for the Catholic Church but also for the human race. Pope Benedict’s resignation has been located in the tumultuous eight years of reign, especially the eruption of sex scandals that unveiled the hypocrisy of priests and questioned the moral authority of the church. But that oversimplifies it. The papacy is coming to terms with an age of rampant materialism and invasive agnostics. In the past century, we have witnessed burgeoning waves of technology, the rise of individual ethos, the collapse of traditional authority, the flowering of prosperity and the retreat of the fear of God. When German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed God is dead, he did not mean that He existed in the first place, but that humans killed him in their hearts where He was born. Blasphemy has become one of the truculent undercurrents of the modern age. It is because of these factors that the West has called for a doctrinal revolution in the church, including the ordination of women as priests, the acceptance of homosexuals and gay marriage, the abolition of priestly celibacy among others.

    The calls for these doctrinal reversals do not take cognizance of the church as a spiritual, and not human institution. If Christianity did not have a text, it would lie in the hand of the priest to say what is right. Christianity is nothing without the Bible. But those who call, for instance, for the acceptance of homosexuals want the church to discard the Bible. If you do that, you open the gate to a flood of permissive reversals and, in the end, Christianity becomes a church, not of Christ, but of the human. That is why some critics do not accept the concept of papal infallibility because it places too much power in one man. As for the ordination of women, scripture frowns at it, and even Jesus did not pick a woman either as an apostle or among the 70 disciples to teach. Many women condemn St. Paul who firmly condemned it in his epistles to Timothy and Corinthians. We cannot cherry-pick scripture. We cannot choose what we want to be God’s will.

    But women were accepted to play leading roles in the Bible only when men failed, including when Mary Magdalene visited Jesus’ grave, when Deborah judged Israel and when Miriam played a leader. That can be a Biblical justification for women to be priests today since the Catholic Church admits to shortage of priests when some women can play the role. It will be a capitulation of men as indicated in the book of Isaiah who condemned men who allowed women to dominate them.

    But in the case of celibacy, the church has no Bible support. It is a convention, not an instruction. Even Paul, a Bishop who never married, urged the Bishop to be “blameless, the husband of one wife.”

    The resignation of Benedict represented his inability to persist in this battle, and he has surrendered it to Pope Francis. By resigning, we see the pope come down from the lofty pedestal of the spirit, where he alone had the authority to speak to God more than any other. He has become one of us.

    We should not forget that even St. Peter from whom the Pope allegedly springs was not perfect either before the death of Jesus or after the day of Pentecost. He was human. He died in the battle of the spirit. He is regarded by the Catholics as the superior apostle, but Paul, who rebuked him once, did not accept it as he said he was not behind any of the apostles.

    Those who praise Pope Benedict for not hanging on to office only look at the institution as a human one. In democracies, we expect leaders to step down.

    If Peter was human in spite of his spiritual office, how did we expect the pope not to be the same? The former Pope only made the office connect with the common man by accepting that flesh matters even if the spirit is supposed to be superior. By resigning and becoming pilgrim, he has shown that you can be spiritual and human, and the pope’s humanity makes it easier for the flock to see the spiritual as attainable.

    The ascent of Pope Francis reinforces the point as he wants the papacy to remember the poor. I particularly love this as the Pentecostal variety has tended to overplay the material. In Nigeria, pastors have not soared to God until they ride, not on the chariot of the Lord, but on private jets.

    This is in a society where the poor beg for funds to afford danfo to the same churches. If the idea is to evangelise, why not buy helicopters that can take them to the poor in the villages and creeks, where their jets and limousines are forbidden. They also use the money of the poor to set up schools for the rich.

    Pope Francis’ down-to-earth theology reminds one of the history of the papacy when it was simple. But Pope Benedict’s resignation shows a time when the papacy was human. At one time, the pope, to quote my history teacher Professor Femi Omosini, “became extremely worldly. He wined and dined with secular authorities and bargained openly for the expansion of the papal territory.” One of the notorious was Pope Alexander VI who ran a papacy like a mafia don and was said to be “flagrantly addicted to wenching.”

    The reason the church came up with a number of austere rules was to revamp it as a moral and spiritual force. The celibacy of the priest was to stamp a moral grandeur; the Petrine succession to give it the backing of scripture; and infallibility to invest it with a power that transcends all things earthly. Both Benedict and Francis are beneficiaries of these rules.

    Those were extreme. It is high time the papacy recognised that all doctrines be based on scripture and elevate the word above the world while not leaving it behind.

  • Ex-convict in our hearts

    Ex-convict in our hearts

    In a time like this, Nigerians will always remember the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. If Fela were alive, he would have dedicated a special album to the uncommon presidential pardon granted Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the former Governor of Bayelsa State, on March 12. Chief Alamieyeseigha, for the record, is an ex-convict. I guess the lyric of Fela’s release would be something like this:

    Fela: Alams, you jumped bail;

    Alams: Yes, I jumped bail;

    Fela: Alams, you be thief;

    Alams: Yes I be thief, but the government say I no be thief;

    Fela: Alams, you corrupt;

    Alams: Yes, but the government say I no corrupt;

    Fela: You disguised as a woman in the UK to jump bail;

    Alams: em.. em.. that one get as e be, but em … em… e no be true, etc.

    Never mind the fact that Fela is now dead, the truth is that he left behind powerful messages, some of which have proved him to be one of the greatest prophets Nigeria never anointed. Fela was a prophet. He died August 2, 1997, that was 15 years before. But we should not forget his ‘Government magic’. President Jonathan’s pardon for Chief Alamieyeseigha is one such magic. Since we cannot analyse the pardon because it defies logic, the kind that only the President and his colleagues in the National Council of State (NCS) understand, then it must eminently qualify as magic; precisely, government magic.

    Of course, Chief Alamieyeseigha was not the only ex-convict pardoned by the President; he only happened to be the most celebrated. And we should understand why. Chief Alamieyeseigha is not only from the President’s home state of Bayelsa, he is also President Jonathan’s ‘political benefactor’. So, we cannot put him in the same category as Mr. Shettima Bulama, an ordinary former Managing Director of Bank of the North. Other ex-convicts pardoned included Gen Oladipo Diya, the Chief of General Staff during the reign of military dictator Gen Sani Abacha, former Managing Director of the Bank of the North, Mr. Shettima Bulama, who was also convicted of fraud; former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, the late Gen Musa Yar’Adua; former Minister of Works, the late Maj.-Gen Abdulkareem Adisa, who was also found culpable in the alleged coup that landed Diya in prison. Others included ex-Major Bello Magaji, Mohammed Lima Biu and former Major Segun Fadipe.

    As we know, even ex-convicts have category. An ex-convict Bulama would put his mouth in what a friend calls ‘permanent position of shut up’ when his senior ex-convict in the person of Chief Alamieyeseigha is talking.

    But my understanding of presidential pardon is that it is usually for prisoners of conscience or political prisoners. But to grant such to common thieves similar to the one on the left side of Jesus on the Cross is, to say the least, disgusting. This was the same Alamieyeseigha who jumped bail in the UK where he was held for alleged money laundering. He ran back home and expected to triumphantly return to his seat as governor but for public outcry. Those saying he did plea bargaining and forfeited most of the ill-gotten wealth to the government missed the point. Alamieyeseigha did not do that on his own volition; he had no choice at the time he did. At any rate, it was not as if he was penitent; he even said he did not want to contest that decision then because age was no longer on his side. In other words, he never admitted he stole. So, why are they now ‘calling dog monkey ’ for us, as if we were not all living witnesses to this shameful episode? Indeed, this is the reason why I am pained. The President did not have to explain why he pardoned Alamieyeseigha; after all, he once told us that he did not ‘give a damn’ about his declaration of assets!

    It is unfortunate that Doyin Okupe, the President’s special assistant on public affairs, confused us the more, rather than convince us, when on Wednesday the government found its voice, through him, to defend the indefensible. He spoke about the President taking the decision alongside the NCS as if the people in the council are not Nigerians that we already know. Whenever we talk of the NCS and try to make an issue of it, I laugh. I laugh for the same reason that Okupe gave while defending the presidential pardon, that the council consists of some of the country’s ‘most distinguished personalities who could not have been mistaken in its action’. The question I have always asked myself is, why are we like this if really these people taking these essential decisions on our behalf are truly ‘some of the country’s most distinguished personalities’? If they are of impeccable wisdom as Okupe and others like him want us to believe, they all would not have slept facing the same direction on a matter as contentious as the one under consideration. The very fact that the matter has generated this heated debate nationwide is enough dent on the wisdom of their decision and it probably shows that we have always overrated them, or they have always overrated themselves.

    So, how is what the President did different from the judiciary which frees high profile criminals in the country only for them to get their comeuppance abroad? If government could set Alamieyeseigha free, why do we blame people who invade our jail houses with the intention of setting free those held there? Has President Jonathan ever considered the effect of this particular pardon on the country’s image abroad? Now, government officials would be blaming journalists and people who see nothing good in the country when the backlash comes, without being honest enough to accept that it (government) is responsible for the negative image because of these kinds of decisions. With a decision as this, how would President Jonathan feel in the company of world leaders when next he travels out? This is the same President who said he cannot grant amnesty to ghosts, but is now granting presidential pardon to common thieves. Does that tell us anything about the government, and by extension the ruling party? Remember, just about three weeks ago, one of their anointed who should know said their party harbours more Judases than genuine disciples. Isn’t this a vindication of that assertion? The same President Jonathan who is now compassionate when the matter affects one of his own has kept a judge of repute out of his office for months for no just cause, even after the National Judicial Council that rightly or wrongly took the matter to him has said the man is without blemish.

    I can live with the pardon granted those accused and convicted of coup plotting. After all, coup plotting can only be illegal in a democratic setting. The Abacha government that Diya and others were accused of plotting to overthrow was in itself an illegality. In case we have forgotten, a court pronounced its precursor, the Interim National Government, that much. At any rate, many of us were sad about the coup, phantom or real, that they said Diya and others planned, for the simple reason that it failed; thus denying Nigeria the noble service of terminating a government that was unwanted at home and distrusted abroad.

    All said, if this is what the PDP wants to continue doing and still hope to return to power in 2015, then the party has a lot to contend with. As I have always noted, a fowl that is excreting in a pot is merely spoiling its final resting place. President Jonathan might have had his way on the pardon for Alamieyeseigha, but we will continue to have our say. Chief Alamieyeseigha remains an ex- convict in our hearts. And that is what is most important.

  • The wages of arbitrary rule

    The wages of arbitrary rule

    It is a normative freefall in Nigeria. When a society experiences a combination of anomie and normlessness, the captive denizens exhibit a certain numbness of feeling and weariness of the soul arising from sheer ethical disorientation. There is a growing effrontery and shamelessness emanating from the seat of power and governance. A feral compulsion is abroad as the state of nature returns. And since the normative grid around which human societies cohere and coalesce has collapsed, everybody is openly hunting down everybody. It is called social cannibalism.

    The ongoing erosion of the templates of democratic rule in Nigeria bodes ill for the former British colony. Arbitrary rule has become the norm in the nation. The dangerous but sure fact about arbitrary rule is that it often provokes its own dangerous and arbitrary reaction. As general arbitrariness takes on specific arbitrary rule mutual cancellation often results. We are not there yet, but we are slowly creeping towards it. When and if the current democratic experiment collapses, it is surely going to take Nigeria as we know it along with itself. This is the danger of democratic rule superintended by a non-democratic elite.

    As the societal rot and official corruption accelerate, and as arbitrary and despotic rule takes firm roots in the nation, it is now as clear as daylight that the dominant Nigerian political class can no longer avoid a historic retribution. No one is sure of how and when this will come about. But one thing is now very clear. As it happened in the First and and Second Republics, the national contradictions thrown up by the dissolute and feckless nature of the political class can no longer be solved or resolved under the rubric and template of “normal” democratic rule without some extra-constitutional tinkering with the current structure and political configuration of the nation.

    There is an urgent need for a national referendum about certain nation-disabling fundaments which have hobbled Nigeria’s march to authentic nationhood and rendered governance at the centre very amenable to despotic arbitrary rule and the tyranny of jungle justice. Why is Jonathan behaving true to type and like all Nigerian civilian and military despots despite the much rhapsodized pan-Nigerian mandate that swept him into power?

    Jonathan’s personal imprimatur in the current phase of the national crisis has been very disturbing, marked as it is by a feckless and reckless disdain for consensus building and the childlike relish with which he seems to delight in cocking a snook at the nation’s dominant power blocs. It may be that Jonathan probably knows what many do not know that Nigeria is an unviable proposition. He has detonated quite a few explosives, and he is not done yet, probably until Mount Vesuvius arrives in Abuja. A product of arbitrary and whimsical messianic delusion, he has shown remarkable courage and consistency in exposing the hollow hubris of those who foisted him on the nation. They will be licking their wounds for a very long time.

    As this column never tires of insisting, Jonathan is not the problem. We must move beyond individual manifestation of national contradictions if we are ever to arrive at the real source of our problems. Take the case of the state pardons that have once again exposed the ethnic, ethical , political and economic fault lines of the nation. The fact that four prominent former rulers of Nigeria stayed away from the Council of State meeting at which Jonathan steamrolled his pardon request ought to tell its own story. But the president was not going to be fazed by the subtle blackmail of his predecessors.

    The irony, however, is that this black market convening of the Council of States does not give the highest advisory organ in the nation the dignity and gravitas it deserves. It also exposes a dangerous dysfunction in the body which cannot endear it to fellow citizens or commend it as a group of revered arbiters. Had General Abdulsalaam attended the meeting, he would have been able to throw light on the precise and specific status of General Diya and co and helped to resolve the legal conundrum. Jonathan would have saved the state much public ridicule and scorn.

    Ordinarily, state pardons ought to reflect certain guiding principles which promote core national values. The whole exercise must be informed by a drastic objectivity and impersonal rigour which promote the institutionalisation of the rule of law and social justice. They must not be informed by personal consideration, disdain for the moral health of the society or by political clientelism.

    On several fronts, Jonathan’s pardons fall far short of this. Yet we must learn to disentangle the good from the bad and ugly. In several respects, Jonathan ought to be commended for showing courage and statesmanship in granting state pardon to the victims of the 1995 and 1997 purported coups against the government of General Sani Abacha.

    Some of these illustrious officers paid a terrible price for merely daring to speak truth to power, particularly in the wake of the annulment of the June 12 presidential election. A few of them were merely the victims of professional rivalry and envy and of General Abacha’s vengeful brutality and dark paranoid furies. Today, many of them remain walking shadows of their former selves, hobbled forever by the excruciating physical torture and mental torment they were subjected to.

    An army that lost its way in the political jungle is a monster indeed. This pardon ought to have come much earlier as a culmination of the process that led to the Oputa Panel and an act of national closure to an inglorious epoch of military rule. But for some inexplicable reasons, both the process and the outcome were aborted by their initiator. It would appear that General Obasanjo’s judgement and sense of justice were beclouded by vengeful animosities and personal vendetta.

    The problem with this inability to rise above petty animus to a statesmanlike enunciation of national principles is that it is also a function of arbitrary rule. There is covert and overt dimension to arbitrary rule as we have seen in the Justice Salami saga. An arbitrary ruler may decide to keep quiet in the face of strong social and political currents in the society, thus hoping to profit from the ethical chaos of a country he ought to provide leadership for. This kind of arbitrary rule sets the template for future arbitrary rule and the reign of anomie.

    If we are looking for the wages of arbitrary rule, we need not look very far. There is a way in which the immediate past always returns to haunt the present. The Alamieyeseigha saga is a classic instance of political nemesis arising from arbitrary rule. Here is a man who has been sinned against as much as he has sinned against his own country and people. Whatever his economic crimes and as heinous as these might have been, Alamieyeseigha ought not to have been removed from office by a kangaroo assembly.

    It was setting a marble template for arbitrary rule. The former governor of Bayelsa State ought to have been allowed to serve out his term as stipulated by the letter of the constitution before being arraigned, provided his economic crimes and the international embarrassment he caused the nation were the real reason for the furious animus of the powers that be. The problem with putting down durable institutions is that it does not allow personal sentiments to get in the way of social justice, nor does it permit private grievances to pursue public rectitude and order.

    As this columnist cautioned Malam Nuhu Ribadu then, the kind of noble relief he sought for the nation against economic predators was only feasible in a genuine revolutionary situation and not under a democratic dispensation with entrenched guidelines and legal stipulations. A phantom revolutionary situation has a way of provoking genuine counter-revolutions, consuming its starry-eyed idealists in the process.

    But the poor Malam was too far gone in this drastic miscognition of subsisting reality. In the event, Nuhu Ribadu himself was to become a victim of arbitrary rule, hounded out of his job and eventually out of uniform with his former patrons utterly powerless to do anything about it. For a moment, Ribadu himself became an absconding fugitive from his beloved fatherland. The problem with arbitrary rule is that once it is set in motion, it becomes an impersonal fascist terror guillotine which cannot recognise its original owner; an equal opportunity decapitator.

    There are more ominous ironies in the air, and those who have ears let them hear. It was the arbitrary and unconstitutional removal of the former governor of Bayelsa that paved the way for Goodluck Jonathan and provided him with an unstoppable momentum to the nation’s presidency. Now, the falcon can no longer hearken to the falconer; the monkey marionette has become his own monkey. Arbitrary rule is the name of the game and you cannot blame Jonathan for sticking to a winning formula.

    So far so good. By granting pardon to his benefactor and former godfather, Jonathan has also set himself up in the jungle of arbitrary rule. Jonathan is mixing politics and grim political calculation involving personal gain with public order and social justice. His outburst and unpresidential diatribe against the perceived enemies of his former boss show how desperate and arbitrary things have become in the country. In the face of public obloquy Jonathan ought to have maintained a dignified silence.

    The political reality is that Jonathan needs the former Squadron Leader to secure his home base in the looming and inevitable showdown with Nigeria’s dominant power blocs and its fractious factions. Whatever his economic infractions, Alams remains a local hero among his people for his sterling contribution to Niger Delta emancipation. The traditional kingmakers of Nigeria have their back to the wall on this one. Before the current reign of arbitrariness exhausts its possibilities, there will be a lot of wailing and caterwauling in the land. Those who set the template for arbitrary rule and their acquiescing godsons will receive their comeuppance in the fullness of time. That is the iron law of the post-colonial jungle.

  • The Alamieyeseigha pardon

    The Alamieyeseigha pardon

    I do not expect President Goodluck Jonathan to reverse or revisit the executive clemency he granted his former boss, former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, last week. He will ride out the storm of controversies generated by the pardon and other pardons; and he will likely grant a few more, equally or surpassingly controversial, before his time in office is over. So, let us ignore the controversies surrounding the pardons, such as the presidency’s poor recordkeeping that led to the late Gen Shehu Yar’Adua being pardoned twice, or the controversies swirling around the list of the pardoned, which we all know was expanded probably as an afterthought to legitimise the main beneficiary of the Jonathan pardons. Let us instead focus our attention on the pardon granted the former Bayelsa governor and the undue emotionalism surrounding the issue.

    It is a given, as former United States president Bill Clinton argued in 2001 when he tried to defend the 140 pardons he granted on his last day in office, that “The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial.” I, therefore, do not expect that Jonathan would grant pardons without eliciting some controversies or attracting attacks, some of them vicious. Nor do I expect that considering the general nature of pardons, they would be extended only to less grievous offences or less recognisable individuals. I have no problem with the lawfulness of the pardons Jonathan has granted, though it is a different matter altogether whether he adhered to the rules and regulations governing the exercise. But whether the president followed established procedures or not, he has the constitutional right to grant pardon, irrespective of the nature of the crime, and whether it is murder or fraud.

    Unlike the United States that has a copious history of controversial pardons and commutations, Nigerian leaders have been fairly laid-back, even stingy like Preisdent Barack Obama, in granting pardons. Surprisingly, it is the same US that first took potshot at Jonathan’s pardons. According to a twitter posting by a US embassy spokeswoman in Nigeria, Deb Maclean, the US was deeply disappointed by the pardon granted Alamieyeseigha. This was followed by another terse statement from a US State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, who warned ominously that the pardons could cause the US to reassess the kind of assistance it granted Nigeria in the latter’s anti-corruption war. She, however, stressed that no sanctions or punitive measures were being undertaken against Nigeria. However, Nigeria has in turn deplored the meddlesomeness of the US in its internal affairs and even invited the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Abuja to receive the Nigerian protest.

    Interestingly, the Alamieyeseigha pardon is not even half as controversial as some of the pardons and commutations granted by Clinton. In the case of Clinton, and with references to the clemency granted the oil mogul, Marc Rich, and the commutation of the sentences of 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist organisation, FALN, who set off bombs in New York and Chicago leading to the death of six people and maiming of dozens of others, a bitter US Congress investigated the pardons but found no wrongdoing. Marc Rich had been jailed for tax evasion to the tune of $48m and 51 counts of tax fraud. Like the Marc Rich case, the Alamieyeseigha pardon is without prejudice to any ongoing investigations or future fraud cases the authorities might bring against him.

    But as Clinton wrote in 2001 in his defence of the pardons he granted, “The reason the framers of our Constitution vested this broad power in the Executive Branch was to assure that the president would have the freedom to do what he deemed to be the right thing, regardless of how unpopular a decision might be. Some of the uses of the power have been extremely controversial, such as President Washington’s pardons of leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, President Harding’s commutation of the sentence of Eugene Debs, President Nixon’s commutation of the sentence of James Hoffa, President Ford’s pardon of former President Nixon, President Carter’s pardon of Vietnam War draft resisters, and President Bush’s 1992 pardon of six Iran-contra defendants, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger, which assured the end of that investigation.”

    I have no doubt that Jonathan acted within his powers. However, he was not as altruistic as his aides seemed to suggest. His prime objective, it seems to me, is driven by both political calculations for 2015 and the fact that Bayelsa and a large swathe of the South-South are covered by an ethical fog influenced by Niger Delta militancy and decades of appalling degradation of the oil regions. Both the ethical fog and the environmental degradation suffered by the oil regions, as well as the contumaciousness that these have unleashed, all but guarantee that the definition of financial cum political morality in Nigeria will vary from one region to another. Expectedly, Jonathan is not immune to the influences of his background, nor has he been able to extricate himself from the sometimes narrow and short-sighted uses of presidential powers and the even narrower cultural confines and prejudices of his adolescent years.

    Critics have slammed the president for pardoning Alamieyeseigha, thereby jeopardising his government’s anti-corruption war. But the criticisms ignore two important facts. One is that the former Bayelsa governor, who is sometimes referred to as governor-general of the Ijaw, is immensely popular in his region. Jonathan is not unmindful of that popularity, and he apparently seeks to take political advantage of it. Even in the days when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo troubled Alamieyeseigha, militants came to his rescue by denouncing the rest of the country and the media for singling out their hero for abuse. He had not done a fraction of what others did, his supporters grumbled.

    Second is that, except I err gravely, the Jonathan government has never really embarked on any anti-corruption war, whether in part or in whole. He has not even verbally campaigned against corruption, partly because he is not as hypocritical as the Obasanjo government that either selectively campaigned against corruption, using his enemies as case studies, or believed that corruption was something others, particularly non-PDP members, indulged in. Unlike Obasanjo who could defend good and bad with equal passion and plausibility, Jonathan is realistic enough to appreciate that the present configuration of Nigerian politics does not conduce to a corruption-free society or any high-sounding moralising campaign. His boyish innocence makes him fundamentally uncomfortable with any anti-corruption sloganeering.

    Neither the political uproar nor the moral outrage that has visited the Alamieyeseigha pardon will produce presidential contrition. The reason is not because the constitution is defective or that it grants more powers to the president than he can judiciously use. Indeed, it is for people like Alamieyeseigha that the clemency provision is interred in our constitution. If not Jonathan, then some other president will use the provision on a hypothetical tomorrow to achieve some controversial ends. The reason the president will not be contrite is also not because his natural tendency is to underpin his policies and actions with questionable ethics, for he seems altogether shorn of any ethics, preferring instead to moralise on the minor political and constitutional issues of the day while dodging the great issues capable of defining his presidency.

    Rather than seethe with anger on an anti-corruption war the president has shown absolutely no inclination to fight, seeing that no one could imbue an inexistent war with a grand notional purpose, the country should instead concentrate on the more nuanced national crisis that the pardons have seemed to underscore. That national crisis centres on the poor judgement Nigerian presidents have exhibited over the decades. Jonathan could have waited until the closing days of his presidency, whether he wins reelection or not, to grant as many controversial pardons as pleases him, but he chose to do it now perhaps because of political desperation or pressure. The 2015 polls will show whether he has shot himself in the foot or not. He has been accused of half-heartedly waging war on corruption; but by pardoning his former boss, he goes beyond half-heartedness to confirming he has no interest in any war except one that would furnish him victory in the polls at all cost.

    I see no point in all the uproar over the pardons, except to note the depressing fact that it manifests the president’s poor judgement and perhaps incapacity to take great decisions. In this controversy of state pardons, Jonathan will conveniently and excusably hide behind the constitution. It is in fact those who rail against the president’s pardons that inadvertently give the impression they are vengeful and unforgiving, and confirm why Nigeria’s penal system and penal institutions pursue a criminal to his grave rather than reform him. The uproar also shows that Nigerians have only one view of a criminal: that once he is crucified by the law or by public emotions, his soul is forever damned. If the president has good PR managers, he will turn the table against his critics. But if the critics emphasise the point that the president’s choices are nearly always fallible, they may not be saying anything new, but they will be reiterating the sombre view that whenever Jonathan displays firmness and shows initiative, he unalterably fails to rise to the occasion.

     

  • Nigerian-Lebanese relations take a new leap

    Nigerian-Lebanese relations take a new leap

    The bilateral relationship between Nigeria and Lebanon has taken a new leap with the scheduled two-day state visit of the Lebanese President, General Michel Sleiman to Nigeria, beginning today.

    It is a historical visit because it is the first of its kind by any Lebanese president to Africa’s most populous country Nigeria, despite the age-long close business ties between the two nations.

    Ever since Nigeria formally opened a diplomatic mission in Beirut in 1973, relations between both countries have witnessed tremendous progress especially where there are convergence of interest in terms of eradication of colonialism, apartheid, support for the promotion of new world economic order, peaceful settlement of the Arab – Israeli imbroglio and more recently, reformation of the United Nations Security Council.

    The history of the Nigerian Lebanese communities in Nigeria dates back to 1885 when Ilyas Khoury, from Northern Lebanon, emigrated to Nigeria on a business adventure. Since that first step of Khoury, the population of the Lebanese community in Nigeria has grown in leaps and bounds with remarkable Lebanese business empires in Lagos, Ibadan and Kano where many of them had inter-married.

    Records of the Nigerian immigration service in 2008 put the population of Lebanese in Nigeria at 30,000, many of whom are third generation Lebanese-Nigerians who now hold the Nigerian passport.

    “The high-powered delegation of the Lebanese top-ranking cabinet ministers and prominent businessmen expected on the entourage of President Sleiman underscores the “high-level” diplomatic classification of the visit,” said the Nigerian Ambassador in Lebanon, Ambassador Oluwole Idowu, on Thursday in Abuja.

    According to him, there is bound to be a remarkable surge in economic collaboration between Nigerian and Lebanese businessmen after the visit. For the purpose of this visit, he said, more than 90 Lebanese businessmen, technocrats and financial experts recently obtained Nigerian visas in Beirut.

    Citing the exploits of the Lebanese-Nigerian Friendship Association (LENIFRA) since he assumed office in July 2011 in Beirut, the ambassador noted that there had been a remarkable improvement in the socio-economic relationship between citizens of the two nations.

    Besides the array of bilateral agreements expected to be signed by the two nations during the visit in Abuja, President Sleiman will also visit Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos where the breath-taking multi-billion Naira Eko Atlantic Project, which is being undertaken by Lebanese Chagouri and Chagouri Construction as a socio-economic joint venture with the Lagos State Government.

    Community development services are not new to the Lebanese community in the country with signature projects like the legendary Idumota Clock Tower in Lagos and the Kano Polo Club.

    Their business interests, which began with cocoa, hide and skin merchandising in the early 20th Century, had gravitated into the oil and gas, tourism/hospitality, construction, food and manufacturing industries in Nigeria.

    Nigerians, however, need to spiritedly adjust the current trade imbalance between the two nations through exports into the Lebanese economy.

    The president’s visit will also elicit the show-casing of many major corporate organisations with Lebanese controlling shares in Nigeria. Such companies include SETRACO construction, DUMEX, Seven Up, Manimpex Holdings, Ideal Flour Mills, Mouka Foams, Amigo Super Market chains, M. Saleh & Co Ltd (Generators and Equipments) and Eko Hotels to mention a few. They all occupy prominent planes in the Nigerian economic landscape.

    Wassim Ibrahim, the Charge d’affaires in the Embassy of Lebanon, Abuja described the visit as crucial to greater economic collaboration between citizens and governments of the two nations.

    He said that the Lebanese community in Nigeria was mobilising fully to accord President Sleiman a rousing and befitting welcome in Nigeria from next Monday.

    The Chairman of Manimpex Holdings Ltd., Mr. Nasrat Mansour, said that Nigerian and Lebanese flags had been produced in thousands for use by the Lebanese community in Abuja during the visit.

    Mansour, whose company built the famous magnificent Ilorin Central Mosque about 30 years ago, described the growing bilateral relations between Nigeria and Lebanon as phenomenal.

    Sources in the Nigerian Foreign Affairs ministry said that the key areas of engagement during the visit are the agriculture and food manufacturing, air services, security collaboration and political collaboration toward Nigeria’s bid for a permanent seat in the United Nation’s Security Council.

    Ambassador Idowu believed that Nigerian businessmen have a lot to learn from the Lebanese tourism and hospitality industry, especially, given the globally recognised exploits of Lebanon in that sector. According to the Lebanese 2012 Annual Review, the nation boasts of 300 hotels, 21 of which are five-stars.

    According to him, Lebanon records more than four million visitors at its numerous tourist locations annually. Although its economy is, like Nigeria’s, import-oriented, its export bill of such things as fruits, vegetables, manufactured food products, bottled water, chemical and light machines totalled US$2.294 billion.

    One of the mainstays of her economy is remittances from about 14 million Diaspora Lebanese which constitutes about 25 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$18.83 billion per annum, according to the 2012 Lebanese “The Business Year.”

    A Nigerian diplomat, who craved anonymity, at a recent dinner in the Embassy of Lebanon in Abuja in preparation for this state visit stressed that increased collaboration between citizens of the two nations will also reduce the current trade imbalance between them, noting that the odds are currently in favour of Lebanon which 2007 population estimate is 3.9 million.

    In what can be described as a regional diplomatic shuttle, President Sleiman is also scheduled to visit Ghana, Senegal and Cote D’voire before returning to Beirut.

    General Sleiman assumed office as President on May 25, 2008. He was elected as an independent and unifying candidate following the Doha Accord that settled the Lebanese internal political crisis in 2008.

    Prior to that, he had served as the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. .