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  • Yusuf and his ‘near acquittal’

    Yusuf and his ‘near acquittal’

    The Nigerian judiciary, through the decision of Justice Abubakar Talba of an Abuja high court on January 28, on the police pension scam case, has sent a clear message to ‘future offenders’.  acquittala Director at the Police Pension Office, was charged to court for criminal misappropriation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, under section 309 of the Penal Code Act, Cap 532, Laws of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria, 2007. He was charged alongside seven other members of the Pension Office whose cases are still pending in court.

    Yusuf, who originally pleaded not guilty to the charges, turned around to plead guilty to three specific charges for which he was convicted. The change in his plea came after a session with the prosecution lawyers led by Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, where plea bargaining purportedly took place. The actual terms of the plea bargaining remains unclear. Yusuf was sentenced to two years imprisonment for each of the three counts to which he pleaded guilty, to run concurrently and with an option of fine, set at N750,000. This, he paid off, with the swiftness of one who had prior knowledge of this outcome.

    This judgment sparked a lot of outcries from within the legal profession, the media and, of course, amongst the populace. Before Nigerians forget their recent history, Bode George was similarly convicted a few years back, after a plea bargaining session with prosecution lawyers. George got two years concurrent sentences on all counts for which he was found guilty. Then, Nigerians lauded the judgment. But in truth, he got off easy as well. The option of fine in Yusuf’s case seems like a world of difference, but really, it is not. Section 309 of the Penal Code, under which Yusuf was sentenced, reads thus: “Whoever commits criminal misappropriation shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine or with both”.

    Now, there are a few issues to be addressed in the scenario. First, what options did the prosecution have in prosecuting Yusuf? Apparently, the Penal Code was one option. Another option, considering that the prosecutors were the EFCC, would have been to bring charges for offences under the EFCC Act. Section 17 (1) of the EFCC Act provides for offences in relation to economic and financial crimes. Section 17 (2) specifically states thus: “The penalties for offences under sub section (1) of this section shall be imprisonment for a term not less than fifteen years and not exceeding twenty-five years”. In addition to this, section 18 of the EFCC Act was clear in sub section (1) and (2) thus: “(1) The Federal High Court or High Court of a State has jurisdiction to try offenders under this Act. (2) The Court shall have power, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other enactment, to impose the penalties provided for in this Act.” A rational prosecutor, who wishes to set an example as a deterrent for future offenders, will not be at a loss as to which of the two enactments (Penal Code or EFCC Act) will serve better to charge the accused.

    Secondly, if the Penal Code’s Section 309 was really all that was before the court as a guide to the punishment of the accused, why did the judge give an option of fine which is clearly within his discretion to insert or withhold from his judgment? Alternatively, Section 309 also provides the possibility of a fine and mandatory imprisonment running together. And since the judge had given the accused an option of fine, why N750,000 for misappropriation of a figure in excess of N23 billion? While the section does not specify the amount of fine to be set, where applicable, the judge, in the exercise of his discretion, is to be guided by the principles of fairness and justice and, in special cases, public interest. Although, in defence of the judge, N750,000 is a fair fine for two years imprisonment, judging by the similar proportions of terms of imprisonment to fines, where specifically provided. The public interest vote on this particular decision should have outweighed the others in the mind of the judge, as this is a special case with immense national significance. He was within his rights to set that fine as he would have been if he had gone much higher.

    Third, is the issue of plea bargaining. To start with, plea bargaining, in itself, is not a destructive mechanism but rather a constructive one. Its essence is to expedite the process of justice and clear the court’s desks to make way for the tons of litigations flooding the courts. The simple process involves an accused pleading guilty to some or all of the charges brought against him/her in return for a reduced sentence. This saves the court the task of a full-fledged hearing and even clears the prisons by keeping convicts incarcerated for a relatively shorter period. It is practised in many developed countries and, today, is a key part of the United States justice system in terms of effective dispensation of justice. Although it is not specifically provided for in the Nigerian legal system or in any of the laws, there have been calls for its integration in the laws along with alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. The reality is that, in our recent experiments with the procedure, it is the Cecilia Ibrus, Bode Georges and other billionaire offenders that have the privilege, while the common man is sentenced to five years imprisonment for stealing an item worth less than N100.

    Though a copy of the charge sheet is yet to emerge for public scrutiny, it is not unlikely that the charges were brought both under the Penal Code and EFCC Act, as a seasoned legal practitioner would not be so absent minded to overlook such disparity in sentences. It is possible that it was during the plea bargaining that the Penal Code Section 309 was adopted and the EFCC Act Section 17 was abandoned. Whether there was communication by the parties and acquiescence by the honourable judge also is yet unclear. What is clear is that the public feels exposed and vulnerable after what seems like a slap on the wrist for a crime that should not have been taken lightly.

    At this point, different theories of the events leading to the judgment will be passing around in the minds of the people. Was there a conspiracy by the judge, prosecution and defence to blindside the public and pull a judicial manoeuvre that resulted in the ‘near acquittal’ of the accused? Or were the hands of an impartial judge tied by the rusty binds of old statutes that predate that country as we now know it by almost half a century? The Penal Code and the Criminal Code are a 1916 ordinance and, as the current president of the Nigerian Bar Association put it when commenting on the sentence, “It is obvious that the law is inadequate and so the sentence is inadequate”. Since 1960, only Lagos State has ever amended its criminal laws, including criminal procedure rules. And that was done quite recently.

    Yusuf may have also forfeited 32 houses in the FCT and Gombe as well as N325million, which the EFCC said were proceeds from the crime. But Nigerians are not thrilled by forfeitures in a system where there have been rumours of ex-offenders repurchasing their ‘forfeited’ properties and forfeited sums vanishing into thin air. Nigerians need to be sated with landmark judgments that will show that the judiciary is not caught up in the power politics of the executive and legislature. The people are not calling for burning at a stake or beheading; they simply ask for public officials to be accountable for their actions and for the justice system to apply commensurate punishment for crimes. After all, following a plethora of judicial authorities, justice must not only be done, justice must also be seen to be done!

  • Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (III)

    Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (III)

    Finally, this year’s dialogue. The reader will recall that in the second part of my review of Trust’s annual dialogue last week, I concluded with a couple of examples of how the Nigerian media often allowed partisan politics to get the better of its professionalism. This was in illustration of the consensus of last year’s dialogue which was on “Politics and the Media.”

    The chair was former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. The panellists were Senate President David Mark, represented by Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, the minister of Information, Labaran Maku, represented by his Special Assistant on Media, Dr Kingsley Osadolor, and Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, the radical scholar and one-time head of Ahmadu Bello University’s Political Science department.

    In his opening remarks the chair, it seemed, could not resist having dig at the minister who, as a student union leader, led violent demonstrations against the general’s increase of petrol price in the eighties. Wasn’t it ironical, the general observed with a knowing grin on his face, that several years on the minister would transform into one of strongest defenders of President Goodluck Jonathan’s unwanted New Year “gift” to Nigerians on January 1, 2012 of more than double the hitherto subsisting price of the commodity?

    The reader will recall that I quoted Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the Edo State governor and one of the most regular participants of the dialogue, of accusing the media of often writing fiction. On that occasion the comrade governor was angry with the media for publishing a story that five mosques had been burnt down in Benin, his state capital. This was at the peak of the sectarian violence that had engulfed the country. He said when he confronted the reporter of one of the newspapers that published the story, the reporter disowned it and said it was his editors in Lagos who rewrote it based on information they got from a foreign news agency.

    All three panellists shared Oshiomhole’s concern about the integrity and professionalism of the Nigerian media. And all four barely stopped short of accusing the media of lack of patriotism. Among the four, Dr Mohammed’s criticism was strongest. Over time, he said, the media “have subjected this country to a sustained barrage of attacks like no other country in the world that is not at war.”

    The Nigerian media, it seems, is a paradox of sorts; most Nigerians acknowledge that it’s been a bulwark against tyranny and misrule in the country, going all the way back to our colonial past, but at the same time it has been widely accused of being too negative about the country. It’s difficult to deny the existence of both virtue and vice in the character of our country’s media.

    For me, however, Nigerians themselves are more to blame than their media. The media may often malign people and distort events in society. They may often even fabricate events. But if our media appear to harp more on the vices of our country than its virtues it is simply because our vices outweigh our virtues. In other words, the fault is less in our media than in our selves.

    So if Nigeria is yet to become a nation that its entire citizens can be proud of almost a century after its amalgamation in 1914, we should blame ourselves more than we blame our media – all its shortcomings notwithstanding.

    For its dialogue this year Trust could not have chosen a more appropriate topic than that of the challenges of nation building. Likewise it was hard to pick a more formidable panel than that of Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Mr. Femi Falana, Ms Ann Kio-Briggs and Dr Sule Bello, all of them accomplished figures in their various fields of religion, law, human rights and academia.

    All four expressed unhappiness with the state of the nation but Ms Briggs stood out of the lot for her pessimism about the country’s future. “There is nothing to celebrate (about the country’s centenary),” she said, and in effect added that it may yet break up if the part of the country she comes from which produces oil as the main source of public revenue is not allowed to continue to lead this country after 2015 even though she admitted that President Goodluck Jonathan has been a big letdown as leader from her neck of wood.

    If Ms Briggs stood out of the panel for her pessimism, Bishop Kukah stood out for his optimism. All the widespread talk about revolution coming to Nigeria, he said, were just that – talk. “No revolution,” he said, “will take place in Nigeria.” He also did not believe the country will break up.

    I do not share Bishop Kukah optimism about this country’s future, even though I pray all the time that it never breaks up but neither do I share Ms. Briggs pessimism. To say, as she did, that there is nothing to celebrate about Nigeria is certainly untenable. If nothing else there is something to celebrate about the country’s unity. Several countries like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, and closer to home, Sudan and Somalia, which seemed more united and more stable than Nigeria at the time of our independence 50 years ago, have since collapsed.

    We also have a lot to celebrate about our resilience and liberty. Few countries in the world, including Britain the oldest democracy, enjoy the kind of freedom that we do. That we take such freedom for granted is itself a cause for celebration.

    However, for Nigeria to become truly a nation-state its citizens can be proud of we need more than the unity and the freedom that we enjoy and the resilience that is so much part of our character. Of all the other we need, for me the most important is individual introspection about our responsibilities to our communities and to society at large. And the time for that introspection is now, as we begin a year-long celebration of our centenary.

    All too often we blame our leaders for the mess we are in. We are, of course, right to do so. In doing so, however, most of us hardly stop to ask ourselves how much of our own bit we have contributed to help our leaders do what is right by our society and by our country.

    The reader will pardon me if I get rather preachy at this point. But in my own reflections about the ills of our society, I have never found a better solution than the words of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) about the concept of shepherd-hood which has its Christian equivalent.

    “Everyone of you,” he is quoted to have said by some of the greatest narrators of his tradition, including Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud, “is a shepherd, and everyone of you is responsible for his flock. The Imam is a shepherd, and he is responsible for his congregation. A man is a shepherd among his family and he is responsible for his flock (his family). A woman is a shepherd in her husband’s home and children, and she is responsible for them. A servant is a shepherd over the wealth of his owner and he is responsible for it. Lo! Everyone is a shepherd and everyone is responsible for his flock.”

    Each time we blame our leaders for the mess in our society, have we ever stopped to ask ourselves if we have done our own little bit in our own little world we control? When we jump queues in traffic, for example, are we not violating the time honoured principle of first come, first served? When we dump refuse in our gutters instead of properly disposing it are we not violating our responsibilities as shepherds over our environment? And so on and so on.

    We cannot hope to transform our country into a land of peace and prosperity that we will all be proud to identify with if we do not think seriously about the saying that a country gets the leaders it deserves. This is staple food for our thoughts as we celebrate our centenary which comes up next year.

     

     

  • Ekiti PDP politics of desperation

    Ekiti PDP politics of desperation

    The dictionary defines propaganda as “information, ideas, or rumours deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation.”

    No doubt, propaganda has become a useful tool in the hands of many, especially in politics and business and going by the definition above, it can either be a force for good or bad depending on the intention of those who use it.

    The word ‘propaganda’ originated in Rome. Back then, as it is now, it denotes the spreading of rumour, information, ideas and allegations to further one’s cause or to demonise or damage the reputation of opposing forces.

    Propaganda has always been part of politics and the corporate world. It may be surprising to some to know that its use also extends to journalists, salespeople, fake prophets, advertisers, amongst others. It is so easy to think up dirty words or images when the term “propaganda” is mentioned, but propaganda is not all about maligning people. It is used to draw attention to good causes, especially if such could be or are being attacked by malcontents or opposing forces who would stop at nothing to revile a good cause, even if it benefits them.

    Figures like Adolf Hitler and Stalin readily come to mind when bad propaganda comes to mind. Hitler was so adept at it that he turned Germans against peace-loving and innocent Jews, but even his Minister of Propaganda and successor as chancellor after he committed suicide, Joseph Goebbels, reputed for saying “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” insisted that propaganda had to be truthful. This doesn’t mean he did not lie, but he knew that for propaganda to last, it had to have an element of truth.

    As former Lagos State Commissioner of Information Dele Alake put it at a lecture he delivered in Ondo town recently: “Blowing your trumpet without performance is pure crass propaganda; blowing your trumpet while delivering dividend of democracy is publicity” (not his exact words). If there is anyone who understands what it takes to be a government’s spokesperson in Nigeria, it is Alake. So by saying it is not propaganda if a government publicises its good works, Alake was on point, since in this clime, no one blows your trumpet for you if you do not blow it.

    From Alake’s submission, (bad) propaganda is putting something on nothing, which, of course, would be very foolhardy and wouldn’t last, as it would also be foolhardy for a political party that had seven and a half years in the saddle, but achieved almost nothing, save for cosmetic endowments and the introduction of an alien culture of thuggery.

    This, today, best describes the situation in Ekiti State where the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) had its chance for almost eight years but totally flunked it. The last was Segun Oni who flunked out, having been sacked for rigging by the Appeal Court, but still hopelessly hoping against hope with his protest against the “red biro judgement”.

    Seeing the works of the present administration in the state and knowing that it was going to be almost impossible to beat the incumbent in an election, the PDP quickly activated a propaganda cell, which mostly has made the social media its operational base. Since the youth make up a larger percentage of the voters’ register, using the social media definitely is a good move for them.

    Like all propagandists, they use persuasive allegations, messages, ideas, opinions, statements, accusations and exaggerations with the main purpose of influencing, and, if possible, manipulating, the minds and emotions of the public or of those at which they are directed.

    They try to manipulate unsuspecting indigenes to jump to illogical and baseless conclusions. Typical examples of this were the reforms carried out in the local councils. NCE holders who were stagnated in the councils and were to be redeployed to teaching were convinced by the PDP that they were to be sacked. Same goes for non-medical personnel who were drawing salaries of medical personnel at the local councils. PDP went to town with the lie that 4, 000 local government workers had been sacked by the government. When asked to produce just one sack letter, it went on lying in the face of confounding evidence. One expected that they should have responsibly evidenced their claims.

    Another of their tactic is name-calling, which is also one of the tactics of propaganda. They associate good things or personalities with negative words or images to make unsuspecting people shrink from the thought. An example of such is the newly formed party, APC which they had already nicknamed armoured personnel carrier without thinking for a second that it could backfire on them. Now that the opposition is saying the Armoured Personnel Carrier is to shoot the PDP down, one can only wonder what they’ll come up with next.

    The good thing is that more often than not, PDP’s lies have been exposed by the public and rather than responsibly admitting their miss, the party’s members shamelessly continue to insist on the lies. This is seen daily on the social media as most of their tutees and recruits, most of whom use pseudo names on the social media, insist on hugging ignorance right after they have been corrected or confronted with the truth.

    The crumbling of their house of cards (should I say house of lies) has gradually driven them to desperation. One may not want to blame them as time is not on their side and Governor Kayode Fayemi has also uncovered their political and organisational deficiencies by showing them how governance is done, but allowing desperation to take over reasoning is dangerous and not healthy for Nigeria’s democracy. It is so bad that in Ekiti there is nothing the PDP cannot come up with. Don’t be surprised if tomorrow they say “Fayemi is broke! He now drinks garri with sugar and epa” or “Fayemi has bribed Obama to support him for second term”. Don’t be shocked! It can come from them. It is nothing but sheer lack of ideas and the shock they are suffering from Fayemi’s unrivalled performance and prompt delivery of dividend of democracy.

    • Daniels writes from Ado, Ekiti State

  • After AFCON: Getting back to basics

    After AFCON: Getting back to basics

    It is just as well that the euphoria that swept the nation following the victory of the national team, the Super Eagles, in the African Cup of Nations soccer competition, has almost run its course. At least, it is being tempered somewhat by a return to the harsh realities of life in Nigeria.

    While it lasted, nothing else seemed to matter.The bestial murder of three Korean doctors in Yobe, hard on the heels of the drive-by murder of eight nurses administering vaccines to infants in Kano, passed off as just another grim statistic in Boko Haram’s macabre harvest

    The kerfuffle generated by plans to spend N2.2 billion Naira to build a banquet hall in Aso Rock “befitting” the formerly shoeless boy who now lives there, and N9 billion over and above the projected cost on the vice president’s official residence, might well have occurred in an era long past.

    Even the request for N4 billion to build a headquarters for an aberration that calls itself the African First Ladies Peace Mission no longer seemed a grave provocation in a country where police officers are trained and housed in hovels.

    “Peace mission my foot,” millions of Nigerians might well be saying in indignation.

    What peace missions hasthis unelected and unaccountable conclave of freeloaders undertaken? How many of its members can locate Darfur, Timbuktu, or Potiskum on the map? How many refugee camps in strife-torn countries have they visited? How many peace talks have they initiated or staged?

    How many peace missions has their host and leader who should set an example — how many peace missions has she led to Yobe and Borno and Bauchi and Jos, or for that matter to those communities just outside Abuja that have been ravaged by Boko Haram terror?

    To echo novelist Chinua Achebe in another context, they came, they ate, and they went — the so-called First Ladies, that is. And now the Nigerian taxpayer is being asked to finance what is at bottom a monument to the vainglory of their host.

    That such a proposal was ever presented before the National Assembly is at once a comment on its mover’s overweening sense of entitlement and utter lack of a sense of proportion and propriety on the one hand, and the gutlessness of the officials who should have told her that the whole thing was flagrantly indecent, given the country’s circumstances.

    Maybe that was the Patience Jonathan of a bygone era. The new, resurrected Patience Jonathan should withdraw the request.

    The National Assembly will be legislating itself into infamy if it approves this unconscionable proposal. If the proposal clears the Assembly and President Goodluck Jonathan assents to it, he would be saying to Nigerians that gratifying his wife’s delusion of grandeur that seems woven inextricably into his, rates higher on his Administration’s scale of priorities than providing relief for a burgeoning army of jobless university graduates, to cite just one group, in need of urgent remedial action.

    While the euphoria lasted, the farce that the National Assembly has been carrying out in the name of constitutional review drew scant notice. A thoroughly unreliable poll purportedly reflecting the views of Nigerians on the matter was doing the rounds. So were documents purporting to be a “collation” of the views purportedly expressed by Nigerians at consultative conferences that lasted just several hours during which befuddled attendees were asked to vote yes or no on a narrow range of proposals they played no part in formulating.

    Those who crafted that instrument also took it upon themselves to “collate” the results. “The people”for whom and in whose name the Constitution is being prepared were virtually shut out of the process.Even the British enforcers of the imperial order in Nigeria, the centennial of whose subjugation of our peoples Abuja is now planning to celebrate on a prodigal scale, accorded their colonial subjects far greater respect than that.

    All this, and much more, was swept off the front pages and the headlines and the discussion platforms by the euphoria, the delirious jubilation unleashed by Nigeria’s crowning as Africa soccer champions. It had been 19 years since the national soccer quad last won the trophy. The celebration was therefore understandable.

    Reward in cash – in the resilient U.S. dollar and the anaemic Naira- has followed bounteous reward for the players and the coaches who groomed them and the supporting, crew, and so has reward in kind. Members of the team now own choice land in Abuja worth hundreds of millions in Nigeria.

    By the time the shower is over, the players will each have amassed from their epic outing a huge and complex property portfolio that nothing has prepared most of them to manage. Some of them may spend much more time thinking of how to handle their fortune than they devote to sharpening their skills. The fortune could turn out to be more of a distraction than an incentive, and some of them may end up wishing it had not happened, at least on that scale.

    There is example for it. About two decades ago, The Mac Arthur Foundation’s so-called genius award, designed to free recipients from financial worries so that they can concentrate on their cutting-edge work, went to a young man just out of his teens, a computer geek.

    After several weeks, the young man returned the award, worth some $200,000. He said he was spending so much time thinking about what to do with the money that he could no longer concentrate on his work.

    To return to the euphoria and the orgy of celebration: To the extent that it gave honour to whom it is due, a rarity in Nigeria, it was unexceptionable.

    But it should have been tempered by a sense of proportion. In the excitement of the moment, the Minister for Sports and Youth Development, Bolaji Abdullahi, was reported to have said that if the Super Eagles won, they would be the first inductees in the projected Hall of Fame.

    What of those who came before them? I am thinking of Tesilimi”Thunder” Balogun and Elkanah “Ballington” Onyeali who made their mark in professional soccer in England decades before the current stars and even their officials were born. I am thinking of the team that won the gold at the 2nd All-Africa Games in Lagos in 1973 and the team that won the Olympic gold medal in Atlanta, not forgetting the teams that had won the African championship in two previous appearances.

    If the team were to win the World Cup in Brazil next year, the nation would have to give each player an oil well. And that would be just for starters. Then the government would rush to appropriate the feat in every conceivable way as proof that the system works and that all is well with the nation, and those who claim otherwise be damned.

    This was why, in the time of the dictators and usurpers, a good many of our compatriots were indifferent about the outcomes of soccer competitions in which the national team was a strong contender. They wished the boys would do well for the sake of their own playing careers. They did not want to see Nigeria disgraced.

    At the same time, they did not grieve it the team lost, because the government would have conscripted the victory to create the illusion of progress and to serve other dubious ends.

    In the time of military president Ibrahim Babangida, cup-winning outings of the nation’s soccer teams were advertised as gains of the doomed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The debauched Sani Abacha wasted no time in advertising Nigeria’s soccer gold in the Atlanta Olympics as proof, were any still required, that he was the person Nigerians had been yearning for.

    Time to get back to basics, then, before the Jonathan Administration pivots the AFCON victory as a dividend of the Transformative Agenda.

     

     

  • If Pope Benedict were to be a Nigerian

    If Pope Benedict were to be a Nigerian

    When I got the news flash on my BBM that the Pope Benedict XVI plans to quit the post of Bishop of Rome and spiritual head of the 1.2 billion catholic faithful around the globe by the end of February, my mind immediately pointed at fraudsters at work. What won’t this 419 people do, I asked?

    With more than six weeks to April 1, the world acclaimed “Fools Day” I was in no doubt that this was no April fool and mischief makers are somewhere trying to pull our legs or planning to make money out of the Catholic Church. So, I ignored the message and moved on even though the sender of message is well known to me as a credible source.

    The reporter in me told me to suspect the information first but go ahead to verify which I did some few hours later when I went on the net and was confronted with details of Pope Benedicts decision to quit the highest office in the Catholic church.

    Whaaat! I screamed. This has never happened before, I told myself, but upon further research I discovered that in the year 1294, Pope Celestine V resigned because he could not cope with the physical demands of that office and wanted a simpler life. And as recent as 1415 Pope Gregory XII left office to save the Church from disgrace as there were two Cardinals laying claim to the papacy. So Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as he was before he became Pope Benedict in April 2005 at age 78 was after all not doing what no Pope had done before, as I had thought, just that he was the first in about 600 to quit the papacy.

    So, why the decision to quit? I am sure you know the rest of the story but for the sake of emphasis and to quell all conspiracy theories, the Pope said his failing health at 85 would not allow him to, in good conscience, discharge his papal duties as he ought to and so he would be stepping down later this month, in time for a new Pope to be chosen and consecrated before Easter.

    On reflection, I asked myself if this Pope were to be a Nigerian would he offer to quit such an exalted office even if he is unable to discharge his duties to God and the Church. An office in which he is expected to remain for life?

    Well, without casting aspersions on the integrity of the Catholic Church in Nigeria and the Cardinals that have emerged from among the faithful here, this is a very difficult question to answer even by Nigerian Catholics. And the reason is not far fetched. Leaders find it very difficult here to quit office even when they are on tenured appointment. They look for one excuse or another to extend their tenure and the Church is no exception. And I am sure if one digs deep enough, one could find some Islamic leaders who would rather die in office instead of relinquishing their positions even when they are no longer up to it.

    The argument here is not even about any sit tight religious leader but rather our political leaders who would want to hold on to their positions even when it was apparent their health was not good enough to continue in office. We all know the story of our late President, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Governor Chime of Enugu State just came back home after several months outside the country to treat what we now know to be cancer of the nose. While he was on hospital bed wherever he went to seek cure for his ailment, Chime refused to hand over the reins of power as if it were a personal property. It took a lot of efforts and months to get the Taraba House of Assembly to empower the Deputy Governor of the State to act in the absence of Governor Suntai who is on a sick bed somewhere in Germany receiving treatment for injuries he sustained in a plane crash. A badly injured Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State had to be rushed back to office even when he had not fully recovered from the injuries he sustained in an auto crash, just to prevent his deputy from acting as governor, as the Nigerian constitution demands, while he treats his injuries. Nobody seems to be talking again about the long absence of Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State from office. The man has been away for some time now to treat himself of yet to be disclosed ailment and he is still holding on to power. Why did the constitution make provision for a deputy Governor or vice President if the boss so to speak, could hold on to power even when he is dying? You might want to ask. Even if the deputy is a ‘spare tyre’ as we are wont to say here, why would the driver continue with a punctured or flat tyre when the spare tyre is ok? The ride will definitely not be smooth. So why put everybody in the car through that horrible ride when the spare tyre could have come in handy?

    For too long Nigeria has been unlucky to produce selfish leaders who see and parade themselves as messiahs. Obasanjo believed he is the only one that could lead this country well and onto the Promised Land such that even after eight years in office, he wanted to manipulate the constitution to get another term. Yar’Adua and his handlers including wife, Turai saw Nigeria as their personal property and could do as they wished. When the President was evidently dying they still held on to power until the man could no longer be sustained by life machine at a Saudi hospital. They tried to hoodwink us into believing that the ailing President had signed that year’s appropriation bill even when sources told us the man could hardly recognize anybody not even his wife. Nigerians were deceived for months and taken for a ride for so long until Yar’Adua died.

    Pope Benedict and/or his handlers/close associates could have chosen to deceive the Catholic Church by manipulating the health certificate of the ailing Pontiff presenting to the faithful a picture of a healthy Pope, as Yar’Adua people did to us, and remain in office and enjoy the pecks of office until death takes their man away. But out of fear of God and love for the Church they chose not to. This is the way honourable people and people of conscience behave. Do we have such people in Nigeria?

    Maybe the Catholic Church is lucky as their priests are not allowed to indulge in the affairs of the flesh, so the Pope has no wife to influence his decision or biological children to think of before acting. No wife or children that would want him to remain in office till death even when he is weak, tired and unable to continue, just to have access to the enormous wealth of the church and the privileges attached to the office.

    We have seen most Pentecostal churches in Nigeria turned into a family business where the GO and his wife are sole signatories to the Church’s account and the wife taking over on the death of her husband. Was this the way Christ intended his Church?

    Away from the Church, we have seen Presidents and their wives running the country as a family business, where the wife as First Lady assumes the powers of her husband the Commander-In-Chief and go about terrorizing the rest of us; spending state’s money on anything that catches their fancy. The same scenario is replicated at the state and even local government levels. With our leaders invested with so much power, power of life and death, unlimited access to loot our treasury and with impunity, none of them would want to leave office even if they are dying. None of them has the heart and conviction of Pope Benedict. The beautiful ones are not yet born.

     

  • Anambra 2014 and zoning

    Anambra 2014 and zoning

    Alex Zitto the half-Ghanaian, half-Nigerian crooner had in his second album, a hit song which he dubbed as ‘Walakolombo’ depicted the lamentations of a man who had been ripped off by an alluring woman who having conned her latest victim had wickedly left him in his misery. The song being a hit track naturally ruled the airwaves for quite sometime even as it was played in several occasions and events where people simply bopped to it that eventually the word’ walakolombo’ became a part of our informal lexicon used to indicate when someone had pulled or attempted to pull the wool over his fellow man or woman’s eye.

    Today, the Anambra State, is presently witnessing a walakolombo-like song all in the name of zoning of the office of governor to a particular area. Before I delve into that, it is worthy to note that since the inception of the Peter Obi administration, Ndi Anambra has been subjected to deception.

    The Obi administration would claim to have built schools when all it has done is to build ugly looking classrooms, digital libraries when it has only renovated a house, hospitals when it has built mere cottage clinics, hospitals that couldn’t carry out autopsy on the bodies recently retrieved from the Ezu River, and roads when he has only been constructing future death traps.

    And when not engaged in puerile matters, the Obi administration is much engaged in the absurd, playing to the gallery much to the consternation of Ndi Anambra, who by and large are frustrated about the failure of this government to meet even the smallest of the fundamental needs since the administration rather prefers using the huge funds allocated to it to hire spin doctors and propagandists.

    Today, Governor Obi is on another pathetic mission, which is his inordinate desire to impose a stooge as governor on the people of Anambra come November 2013. Naturally, this shouldn’t be an issue as it is his right to say that he prefers a particular candidate from a particular zone in Anambra. But to want to impose a particular candidate on Ndi Anambra in a democratic society or setting is an indication of total dictatorship and a tyranny of one man which cannot be accepted by the ordinary Anambra man who ranks high in terms of being politically astute. Furthermore, it is imperative to state that all over Anambra, the talk of a governor coming from a particular zone remains a hard sell owing to the peculiarity of the state’s politics. Are we then to forfeit our critical faculties and democratic power of choice imbued in us since the days of our republican fathers to the whims and caprice of one man? Are we now to barter merit and proficiency on the altar of mediocrity? Or does Mr. Obi think that we are like Caesar’s soldiers who on the blast of the trumpet marched across the Rubicon? Are we robots or zombies to do as Emperor Peter decides?

    Funny enough, as the zoning argument seems to be falling apart like a house of cards, Mr. Obi has refused to call it quits while he still has some time to reverse himself; rather he keeps on committing more fallacies. The first is his attempt to link the controversial issue of zoning in Anambra State to the holy agitation of Ndigbo for the presidency in 2015. To the undiscerning people, this would have been a fine argument but before we fall victim to the devious lyrics of this walakolombo song, let us recast our minds back to the August 30 visit of President Goodluck Jonathan. Thence, Governor Peter Obi made the declaration that since Jonathan got 90% of the votes cast in Anambra in the 2011 elections, come 2015, he should be prepared for 99% support this time around.

    Now adding two plus two, that is Obi’s agitation for zoning in Anambra and his reference to the legitimate demand of the Igbos for the 2015 Presidency as similarities, we would find both difficult to merge when pegged against his declaration of support for Jonathan’s second term to the detriment of Ndigbo who have never governed Nigeria as an executive leader, or is our president now an Igbo man?

    On the other hand, the next stanza of this walakolombo music has seen the advancement of a theory that argues for the much work he claims done in the state, he wouldn’t want a buccaneer to become governor of the state and fritter away the so called achievements of his administration. This however would have been true if Governor Obi had dedicated himself to work. To think that his wobbly roads, faulty policies and governance existing only on billboards and propaganda are legacies, I am then forced to wonder if the word legacy has a dual meaning. Again, is Mr. Obi saying that it is only from a particular

    zone that we can find men who may protect his legacies?

    Let us for the amusement delude ourselves that indeed Obi has left legacies, can guarantors of such a legacy not come from any of the two zones which he wants to excise from the politics of Anambra, zones which boast of more credible candidates than any of the lackeys Obi has lined up?

    One is however not at a loss on why the governor is seriously agitating for the zoning of the gubernatorial position to a particular zone, with his eight-year tenure expiring and his political future in limbo. Obi’s call for zoning is a last gasp attempt to ensure his

    political survival. A false move as such gives him room to make deals with many who are ready to sell their souls. The zoning clamour is nothing but a bargaining chip and a ruse.

    Finally, it is my plea to my governor to repudiate this idea of zoning but rather channel his energy to the business of governance, which the people of Anambra State are yearning for. He should let Ndi Anambra in the spirit of democracy choose their next governor since they are the custodians of democracy and have utterly rejected his walakolombo music on zoning or as the garrulous K. O Mbadiwe did once quip “We have zoned to unzone”

    • Arinze writes from Awka

  • Wages of National Assembly overreach

    Wages of National Assembly overreach

    Last week, the spat between Abdularasheed Maina and the National Assembly finally hit the home stretch. On Thursday, a reluctant President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to issue a directive to the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Alhaji Isa Bello to commence disciplinary action against the embattled chairman of the Pension Reforms Task Team (PRTT). An Abuja court also removed the remaining obstacles setting the stage for his possible arrest.

    From the look of things, the prospect of being hauled before the self-appointed magistrates at the Red chamber would seem a far worse prospect than the civil service noose of possible dismissal for absconding from duty.

    Check out the rules of the Civil Service to find out why the latter option would be preferable. It is no accident that the civil service is described as the bastion of due process. There, anything goes! Whereas some members of the political class enjoy the privilege of immunity – (whether conferred or not), the civil service has something of an equivalent in their turgid rules of General Orders and due process which comes close to making their class invincible. The point may have been missed by the distinguished senators in their self-righteous anger. That may yet prove fatal to their cause(s) in due time. And trust Maina; he should know one or two tricks in the GO to make things work his way! Had the distinguished Senators realised this early enough, it’s mostly likely they would be wary of starting a war they could never hope to finish!

    Now, let’s get back to where the hoopla started from. Sometime in March last year, the Senate committee on Pension held a public sitting. In the course of that exercise, a Chief Superintendent of Police in the Police Pension Office, Toyin Ishola, accused Maina and his PRTT of fraudulent activities.

    He told the committee that the task team, headed by Maina, “unilaterally opened three accounts in different banks without recourse to extant financial rules and approval from the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Minister of Finance”.

    He claimed that one of the accounts domiciled at the Abuja Central Business District branch of Fidelity Bank, operated by the younger brother of the embattled Maina had a fixed amount lodged with monthly interest of over N100m. Another N3bn was said to have been deposited in UBA with no proper documentation. The PRTT boss was also acused of spending N240m on the biometric exercise of 20 retirees.

    As it turned out, that was only a tip of the mountain of scam. The Senator Kabiru Gaya-led panel would later discover from the records of the Accountant General of the Federation, huge discrepancies between pension releases and the actual funds spent totalling N195 billion.

    Could the Senate have handled the Maina saga better? Note that the issue here is an alleged scam in the pension office – not a contest of egos.

    Let’s start with the Senate inquiry. I do not think anyone questions the powers of the Senate to undertake any inquiry under the sun, more so from the official of an institution charged with the onerous responsibility to administer the pensions. Indeed, anyone that has followed the probe of the PRTT could not have failed to recognise the deliberate stone-walling and open defiance of the authority of the parliament from the government appointee, in this case Maina. Agreed, it comes with the territory that the subject of an investigation will try stall for time. In the case of the PRTT boss, his overall conduct somehow gave him out as an individual with something to hide.

    But so also is the sack order by the Senate on Maina a case of legislative overreach. Obviously, the Senate could not draw the line between the disrespect shown to the institution by Maina (a misdemeanour) and the crime of heist said to have been committed. Whereas the Senate may impose punishments in a manner it deems fit and consistent with its rules in the case of the former, the punishment for crime is altogether a different matter.

    Was the President right when he artfully parried the demand for the big stick by going for a more probable offence of AWOL governed strictly by the applicable rules of the service? Whether those baying for Maina’s blood recognise the presidential directive as face-saver or not, it seems unlikely that they will have the final settlement on their terms anytime soon – that is, if ever they will. In any case, only the high minded Senate could have contemplated the summary trial and sentencing of a public officer without reference to applicable rules of engagement. What the President did was find a way out of the dilemma even when it came by way of substituting the serious charge of stealing with the lesser charge of AWOL at this point in time. As it is, the prospect of administrative punishment, which again is most likely to be contested in courts, seems the price the nation would pay for what is said to be a crime of heist.

    Earlier, I raised the question of what the Senate could have done differently. The answer seems obvious: the Senate ought to have called in the anti-graft bodies the very moment it sniffed crime. After all, the institution is no court of law; and no matter how painstaking its efforts at fact findings are, the exercise cannot substitute for a due process of trial in the courts. The drama of Maina-chase, other than stoke excitement across the land, has neither advanced the cause of institution-building nor offered a pathway to restitution. And, given the judiciary’s unknowable ways, it would be dangerous to speculate on the direction in which the pendulum will finally swing.

    And the lesson for all concerned? There can be no wrong path to a good intention.

    Is the matter therefore settled? I do not think that it has even started. N195 billion seems too hefty to vanish without trace. Now that the drama has ended with the Presidency officially declaring their man AWOL, it may well institute its own inquiry to determine where the money went. That should offer some balm to the sore egos of our distinguished Senators.

  • The APC challenge

    The APC challenge

    It mocks us as well as it embraces us. It is the ultimate judge, and its verdict can either bruise or boost us. But it is inevitable. It is history, a perennial guest at the contemporary dinner table. Whether or not we agree to fete it, its appetite gravitates avidly to our feast.

    Nothing evokes the undying quest of history more than the move by different political parties to coalesce into the All Progressive Congress (APC). It is the feast of the day, a blend of personas, tendencies, ambitions, geographies, ideological flavours. For some, it is poison. For others, it is mother’s culinary genius.

    As the news breaks, we see a tension in some parts of the political society, especially in the peacock ranks of the PDP. For them, including the serpentine President Goodluck Jonathan, it is poison in the woods. But this is nothing new. We have seen alliances of this sort through our history, and that is why, this time around, the burden is great. It is time to deliver the killer mouse to the slithering host hibernating in Aso Rock.

    Moves such as this make Nigeria’s political history to simultaneously fascinate and imperil. We cannot but admit that the task before us as a nation mounts monstrously with poverty and disease and ignorance hitting the stratosphere. The Jonathan administration has become a consistency of naiveté, a tragedy of errors and missteps. It is dooming us to destruction as a people partly from ignorance, partly from a provincial world view, and partly from surrender to low expectations.

    This is not the Jonathan Nigerians hoped for when they voted for transformation. The mass voted for geographic and ethnic change. It has proved fatal. Next time, I hope Nigerians will learn that elections embolden us to high quality of life, good education, health care, security of lives and property, pervasive infrastructure, all redounding to what utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham calls the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

    The story took a more potent turn when the governors, 11 in all, came together in a media coup to announce their coalition in support of APC. The debonair Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State, read out the communiqué. With audacity and finesse, he stressed the urgency that Nigeria is on the verge of salvation. My investigation showed the speech turned the Presidency into a mouse and Jonathan and company lost composure at the news.

    We have travelled this path before. The conservative governments at the centre jittered in the First and Second Republics, and they wheeled the democracies into rut, then chaos, then bloody disasters. That is why I say that the task before the governors and party wheel horses behind the mergers must pray for history not to prey on the nobility of the idea.

    In the First Republic, the Northern People’s Congress held sway and formed the government at the centre. It embarrassed everyone who wished the young nation well with brinkmanship, labour turbulence, deepening inequality all wrapped up in a petrifying lack of vision. To oust the Balewa government, a coalition came into being known as the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). It comprised Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens, Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union, Joseph Tarka’s United Middle Belt Congress, among others. The NPC formed the Nigeria National Alliance (NNA), which lapped up malcontents across the regions, including the Samuel L. Akintola’s Nigerian National Democratic Party of the Western Region.

    The election was turbulent, and the NPC had held its own fraudulently against the alliance until the elections in the Western Region that held the prospect of giving UPGA victory and therefore control of the senate. The NPC bigwigs tooled the quisling of the west, Chief Akintola who was premier, to rig the elections. That exploded into a series of violence and lit the tinder of the west in what was called we tie. The result was the rat-a-tat of soldiers that sounded the death knell of that democracy.

    In the Second Republic, the Shehu Shagari administration presented us with another drama of buffoonery. It was the first time that Nigeria would witness graduate unemployment. So dire was the polity that another alliance was born, the Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA). Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria launched a divide-and-rule strategy in the loose-knit PPA. Zik’s Nigeria People’s Party and Kano’s People’s Redemption Party reeled under divisions, with factions emerging and some merging with the NPN. Awo’s Unity Party of Nigeria was impregnable as the north star of the west.

    The ensuing elections were rigged, and it was so brazen that the NPN swept elections even in the strongholds of the East and West, like Anambra, Bendel and Ondo, although Ondo was taken back by the UPN. The NPN fraud swathed the nation in foreboding. The Shagari government had employed police with such brutal flagrance that Sunday Adewusi, the police chief, ordered “shoot at sight” at civilians. Wole Soyinka fought back by saying, “you are not God.” Professor Yemi Ogunbiyi had called him deputy president in his column in The Guardian. Awolowo, in a deadpan tone reflecting the ennui in the land, warned that Nigeria would never see democracy again in his lifetime. He also harked back to the days of Kwame Nkrumah when the Ghanaian leader introduced the preventive detention act that crushed dissent.

    The chill was a prelude to the second coming of the army. Ironically, the soldier was Muhammadu Buhari, whose mien of winsome severity ushered in another era of the gun. Buhari, now a born-again democrat, is a principal player in the APC move.

    Today, unlike in the first and second chapters of our democratic experiments, the North controlled the vortex of power in the centre. The alliance often arose from the hegemonic hubris of the Hausa-Fulani. The Jonathan victory of 2011 was a protest against it. Now, the alliance pits itself against a southern minority who, by deceptive humility, swept the votes in the Southeast, his Niger Delta region, the Middle belt and the Southwest.

    Now, the APC plans to encircle the serpent within his Niger Delta and Southeast, which will make victory an uphill proposition for the PDP in 2015.

    But it is a challenge that the APC must embrace with courage and patriotic zeal. In the First and Second Republics, it failed due to internal wrangling as well as the deployment of the apparatuses of state, including the armed forces and the electoral umpire. The alliance of progressives can win, but it will come down to solving these riddles. The choice of its flag bearer may even be more important than the ideological clarity of the union. Ideological purity is a luxury in times of fragile flux and change.

    For a good example, we must look back to the days of Babangida when M.K.O Abiola won the fairest election in history. It is the best scenario for the APC challenge. The Social Democratic Party purred as a coalition of the progressives against the National Republican Convention. It was the army that sullied that high noon.

    History beckons. Although some scholars believe that we will always replay our past, we can seize the noon. In his doctrine of eternal return, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wondered whether there was a mathematical certainty that we will repeat the past, a sort of abiku? Some mathematicians who veered into philosophy agree. But exponents of the concept of rational choice have questioned this premise. So should we. If everything that happened in the past happens again, then we will become victims of what Nietzsche calls amor fati, that is love of fate. It is surrender to our misfortunes.

    We have the example of the SDP, and that is the challenge. A candidate can come from the North or South, but he should have the gravitas to roll out a drumbeat against the ineptitude at the centre. It is also a challenge to Nigerians to decide for progress rather than suffocating sentiment. It is also a challenge for humility: the players should be a head ahead of their parochial interests.

    “To stumble twice over a stone,” writes Cicero, “is a proverbial disgrace.” Who deserves disgrace but the PDP gang in Abuja!

  • Tukur’s APC phobia

    Tukur’s APC phobia

    Even with the hurried congratulatory message by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), it is becoming clearer by the day that the PDP is very uncomfortable with the unprecedented and surprising fusion of these political parties. Though a shred of this discomfort was latent from its caution on the APC not to heat up the polity, there is now, every thing to indicate that the leadership of the ruling party is jittery at the success of the new party. Perhaps, this phobia stems from the disbelief that these parties could possibly agree to dissolve into one, more so with all of them commanding credible regional influences. It must have therefore taken the PDP by the storm to have woken up one morning only to learn that a new mega party is born.

    Or how else can we rationalize the indecent haste with which sundry PDP chieftains and characters have been predicting doom for the new party just a few days of its birth?

    Its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metu, former Oyo state governor Adebayo Alao-Akala and sundry leaders of the party have overnight turned into doomsday prophets. They are either predicting a collapse of the new party, asserting that the PDP will still win the 2015 elections or simulating imminent rancour in its leadership when it comes to the sharing of offices.

    But by far the most curious of these jittery statements was the one by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, PDP national chairman. He had said last week that the APC is a collection of individuals driven by selfish ambition and not national interest and they will be torn apart when elections come.

    Asserting that the PDP is a national party that can hold the nation together, Tukur threw a challenge “Let the APC tell Nigerians their stand on issues of national unity. What is APC stand on the unity of the country? What is the manifesto of the APC on issues that bind us together?

    And that is where he runs into trouble. By raising these posers, the impression is being conveyed that the APC’s commitment to the unity of this country is cloudy. If he had no doubt on the commitment of the new party to this irreducible decimal of our federal order, his question would then have been absolutely unnecessary. Asking clarifications on this, presupposes that there might be some other things he knows of the new party that is not yet available to the public. And for someone of his stature, he would have done the nation well if he avails us the information that led him into this doubt. If he has none, then he must be a very big disappointment not only to the party he leads but the entire nation. We say so because it is inconceivable that a party seeking to lead the country is being taken to task on an issue of this nature. Moreover, all the parties to the amalgamation have been around for quite sometime now. There has been nothing either in their conduct or activities to suggest that they are against the unity of the country unless there is something Tukur knows that is not available to us.

    As a matter of fact, sacrificing their differences and unconditional resolve to float a mega party is a testament to their commitment to rescue this country from the rudderless drift into which it has been steered by the PDP. If any party should be taken to task on this singular issue, it is definitely the ruling PDP. Leaders of the APC have said time without number that their goal in collapsing into one party is to rescue the country from inevitable slide to the precipice. By this, they have in mind the worsening corruption that has reduced our citizens to hewers of wood and drawers of water in spite of the enormous resources available to this country. They have in mind the worsening security situation that has threatened the very foundation of this country. Ironically, the heightened insecurity that has raised parochial and centrifugal tendencies to an all time high has been linked to the last presidential primaries of Tukur’s PDP.

    If there is therefore any party that should be taken to task on the matter, it is definitely the PDP. Where is the evidence of the claim and pontification that PDP is the only party that can guarantee the unity of the country? Today, the PDP is largely, a fragmented party. This division derives in the main, from the anticipated ambition of President Jonathan come 2015 and those of other vested interests in that party.

    It is no longer a hidden matter that should Jonathan run in the 2015 elections, that party will be further polarized. This would have dire repercussions for the same unity which Tukur wants the APC to state its position on. The coming together of the parties under the canopy of APC is therefore to provide an alternative source of hope and choice for our people to take their common destiny in their hands. Nothing can be more nationalistic than this sacrifice.

    The question Tukur wants APC to answer is redundant given that that principle has been the driving force for the merger. They have said time without number that the merger is not about individuals, not about ambitions but the overall interest of the nation. That is why all discussions have been without any precondition from the coalescing leaders. That to me is a very big sacrifice that ought to attract the commendation of any well meaning Nigerian. It is an effort to deepen democracy in this country given the dangerous slide to a one-party state in the face of the festering culture of impunity, rigging and falsification of results that have before now, eroded people’s confidence in the ballot process. Those who wish this country well must be pleased by the enormous sacrifice that has been made by the parties in the merger. What they need at this time is encouragement not unnecessary scepticisms as to whether they will quarrel in the sharing of offices or when the elections draw nearer. Such negativism gives out PDP’s discomfort in seeing a credible opposition emerge in the nation’s political chess board.

    But then, these worries about the APC are even misplaced given that Tukur himself had a few months ago, predicted the emergence of a credible opposition if PDP fails to put its house in order. Inaugurating an eight-member reconciliation committee, he had raised alarm over what he called the depletion in the ranks of their members across the country. He then warned that “if members fail to resolve their differences across the country, it will lead to an onslaught of the opposition parties in 2015”.

    As I write, the differences in the PDP have taken a dangerous dimension with no prospects of abating. Is it not a self-fulfilling prophesy that APC emerged at this point in time? So those signs Tukur saw a couple of months back which led him into this visionary prediction have come to pass. Who says Tukur is not a political prophet? So, he has no cause grumbling since he saw it coming. Since he saw it coming and could not avert the looming danger, he should lick his wounds.

  • Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    ‘Those who aspire to political leadership must on no account be sheltered from the hard knocks which a political career in a democracy inevitably entails’ –AWO. 

     

    While linguists are thematic in explaining phenomena and the scientist advances knowledge by formulating a question, collecting data and then testing a hypothesis, a historian, like me, prefers the use of epochs in analysing historical events.
    We therefore proceed to address today’s topic from epoch to epoch in the hope that it will serve as a guide in making our choices in the series of elections that will commence in the region, come 2014, long before the general elections of 2015, God keeping Nigeria intact. I begin then with what I call:
    AWO’s GOLDEN ERA
    Awo’s golden era in Yoruba land did not come on a platter. And to prove this, we need not re-invent the wheel. Rather, we take sanctuary in AWO -THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO, from which we shall quote at some length. He wrote: ‘I fully recognise that the healthy growth of a democratic way of life requires the existence of an enlightened community led by a group of people who are imbued with the all-consuming urge to defend, uphold and protect the human dignity. At the very beginning, wrote the Avatar, ‘ in the region, outside Lagos, democratic practices were unknown. At the local government level, many Obas and Chiefs were autocrats with legislative backing. Native courts, where justice were expected to be administered, were dens of corruption and instruments of tyranny and oppression. ‘As things stood, we knew on which side we should be: the poplar side, the peoples’ side’. But we wanted to try to carry the Obas and Chiefs with us though, for them, it was going to be a sudden transformation from the ancient to the modern. Awo, through tact and great seriousness of purpose, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in doing precisely that.
    ‘But,’ he continues: ‘there were the other freedoms –freedom from ignorance, freedom from disease and freedom from want which would, doubtless, encounter towering problems of an intractable character’. But he did not flinch. The government promised to introduce the following people-friendly policies before the end of its five-year term. 1. Free, universal primary education for all children of school age; 2. Free medical treatment for all children up to the age of 18; 3. One hospital each for each of the 24 administrative Divisions in the Region which did not yet possess one; 4. Improvements in agricultural technique and higher returns for farmers; 5. Better wages for the working class; 6. Improvement of existing roads and bridges and the construction of new ones; 7. Water supply to urban and rural areas.’
    To accomplish these, Awo and his colleagues were determined to blast their way through whatever problems, and compel the force of any adverse circumstance to serve their will’. This was because, in his words, they ‘had put in long and hard preparations to meet the challenges and they had evolved elaborate plans which they were ready to launch at a moment’s notice. What is more –I quote Awo again –‘we had an abiding, flaming faith in the soundness and practicable-ness of our plans. We regarded ourselves as crusaders in a new cause, and as eminently qualified for the pioneering role which we had imposed on ourselves’. All these, if nothing else, demonstrate that Awo saw governance as serious business; not the same way some gold-chain adorning, skin bleaching governors did in their time.
    With such preparations, many times going far into the nights when some of his political opponents were busy carousing with women of easy virtue, his millennial achievements which have continued to make the SouthWest a primus inter pares, should not be a surprise. The fact that, in addition to free and universal primary education, the region had colour television long before some European countries, that the Liberty Stadium was built or that Cocoa House, then arguably Nigeria’s tallest building, erupted, not out of oil, but cocoa money, could only have been expected from such single-mindedness.
    THE MILITARY YEARS
    The least said of those years of the locust the better. It was a long period during which soldiers, total strangers who had probably never heard of an Awo and what economic miracles he wrought in the region , were foisted on us and did with us as they deemed. As for the few of them, Yoruba, today’s parlous state of Cocoa Industries, Ikeja, remains an unforgettable testimony to their stewardship.
    PDP’s STERILE 8 YEARS
    One of Obasanjo’s main reasons for railroading the Southwest into the PDP was to compete with, or probably, overshadow Awo, the man he had earlier derided as never achieving the Nigerian presidency which he, in turn, got on a platter of gold. But that chimera fizzled out only after eight years as the people soon banished the pretenders to political Siberia. It was even short-circuited in Ekiti via an inchoate impeachment and declaration of a pre-meditated emergency rule. When I write about the PDP the way I do, it is not out of disrespect. Rather it is because of the laisser-faire, and thoroughly unserious manner in which they take governance. They want power solely for its perquisites but never for its huge responsibilities. While I know, for instance, that both Rauf Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi are students of Awo and I am aware, on good authority, that Fashola carries Awo’s books he is reading even into his rest room, barring perhaps Gbenga Daniel, which of the then Southwest PDP governors ever opened a rigorous book by Awo? How then could they have been motivated by the man they all love to claim as their own too? How could they have learnt from the many problems which confronted him both from within and without? How could they have realised, like Awo knew then, that the people must be the focus of government policies, indeed, its raison d’être, such that they would not indulge in those things in government which they could not afford through their own personal means? Obviously without reading Awo’s thoughts and getting to know the philosophical underpinning of his socio-economic policies, Regional Integration would never have meant a thing to those gentlemen even if they served as governors for their entire lifetime. I have conscientiously sought, but in vain, for one single mention of Regional Economic Integration during those 8 years.
    It never surprises me that all we remember of PDP years in control of the Southwest are decayed infrastructure, run-down education, mayhem, total neglect of the elderly among us and a complete absence of pan-Yoruba peace which the present regime of peace daily brings into bold relief.
    THE A C N YEARS OF HEALTHY COMPETITION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
    At first glance the above looks like a contradiction in terms. But it is not. While the I’s of Regional Integration are being dotted and the serious work required for its proper formulation are being undertaken by the DAWN Commission under the absolutely patriotic and determined leadership of its chairperson, Hon Wale Oshun, the governors, in turn, are learning from one another and assiduously replicating the good plans they have for the people.
    In Education, the governors are equipping pupils and teachers with computer hardware and paraphernalia; schools are being rehabilitated as Ekiti has done for all its 183 schools; Osun is more than doubling up on agriculture, urban renewal and roads are progressing admirably in Oyo and Ogun states respectively while Lagos remains simply unbeatable. I recently listened to Dr Femi Hamzat, Lagos state commissioner for Works, on the Opeyemi Agbaje T.V Programme, and I was completely stupefied at what the Fashola government has done in the area of transportation infrastructure in the state and its plans even for the next 25 years. Such brain work you never found in the PDP which is really what pains any serious observer of our polity and the very reason I always argue that our politicians are not all the same. There is, indeed, a world of difference because, after all, the governor currently making waves in Akwa Ibom is of the PDP. But in the Southest, we never one day saw them rule for the well being of our people. It was all about self. Granted that the tenure of A C N governors is still largely a work in progress, I haven’t a scintilla of doubt that they will all leave their names in gold, since morning, as they say, shows the day.