The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ogochukwu Ikeje

  • Restructuring ignores bad leadership

    There is a hit song on the airwaves and it is called restructuring. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar croons it with the passion of a Marvin Gaye. The Alaafin of Oyo Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III lends royal gravity to it. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka intones it with a finality, in fact saying that virtually everything can be negotiated or, in another word, restructured. Eminent writers and commentators have nearly sung themselves hoarse. Such is the currency of the song that, at the rate it is being belted out, the 2019 presidential campaigns will be completely colourless without the ‘r’ word.

    The mission of the restructuring orchestra is clear: to knock it into the heads of those in authority and make them see the necessity and urgency of rejigging the country. They point out that rather than going forward, the country is in fact in retreat, that federal authorities are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that infrastructure is suffering, as are security jobs, national cohesion, and virtually everything.

    The other day Southwest governors who gathered in Abeokuta were looking back nostalgically to the days when their states were once one region, when they managed their own resources and built institutions and infrastructure, some of which still endure till this day. Restructuring will do them a lot of good, I imagine.

    To their Southsouth counterparts, who in fact have kicked up more dust over the matter than anyone else, no music is sweeter than that of restructuring. Such is the fever that a wide-brimmed hat favoured in the region was christened ‘resource control’, which their leaders often wore as they harassed federal authorities for more oil cash.

    Let’s stop the restructuring lullaby for a while and consider its inherent dangers. First, it gives governors the impression that the problem with their unflattering states is first and foremost failure to restructure. This is false. Second, it also absolves them of culpability in the underdevelopment of their states. Ask them how much their states get each from the federal purse, how much they, themselves, personally get in security vote, how much their states make in taxes and levies, and what they do with all of it. Ask the Niger Delta state governors, who often cry over oil cash derivation, what efforts they have made to develop several other resources in their states. Ask them to honestly declare their daily, weekly and monthly expenditures, so that we might have a fair idea what their priorities are, whether their hearts are really in governance, and not in travelling or unsettling their political opponents. Has it not been reported that governors not only buy expensive  bulletproof vehicles for themselves but also for their wives? Which one of them has a heart for governance?

    The governors should provide the development plans they drew up for their states and their people over a decade. But don’t ask them what they have done, because they will mention a few roads they repaired, a bridge or two they are building, three or four classroom blocks they are rehabilitating or some soft loans they gave to a few widows, all of which count for pretty little. It is doubtful if any governor has a development plan for their state. When they hear the restructuring song, especially from such reputable individuals as Prof Soyinka, the governors get a sense that the trouble lies elsewhere, that some man in Abuja is in fact their number one enemy. Former President Goodluck Jonathan even asked President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the report a national conference held before Buhari took office, hoping to score an inconsequential political point.

    Much as rejigging the country is good, there is something else that needs to be rejigged first: the process that produces pretenders to the throne. Several governors clearly misgoverned their states, and many are still doing so. There is little we can do about those who wrecked their states and went away; not even jailing them or getting them to vomit what they stole will do justice to their atrocities. But we can ensure that pretenders do not go near the state house again. Voters can shun their campaign rice, reject their monetary offers, and cast their votes for the candidates whose backgrounds are checked, cross-checked and certified good. The electorate can also refuse to be distracted or deceived by the restructuring song and ponder on the character and motives of some of the singers. When they say they want restructuring, will they stand aside and watch a crop of young people take over the reins of power? Are the restructuring crooners not merely scheming to worm their way to power?

  • A tough time to be Acting President

    NOT too long ago the Vice President was not much better than a conquered sidekick. He had too little to do, and much less clout to call his own. From time to time he tried to reassure himself that he was not that individual once uncharitably described as the spare tyre. How times have changed. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is in a different realm. As Acting President, he has his work cut out. A minister of the gospel, worry is not the word, but, every day, he must spare a thought and prayer for his boss, who is in faraway London with the doctors. He must invest his energies and resources in the work his principal left behind, in addition to his own. Before him is a sprawling country of diverse ethnicities and tongues and just as diverse interests and proclivities. Nor is it just about diversity. Prof Osinbajo’s job entails managing a country grappling with recession.

    The Naira has such little purchasing power that every trip to the market brings back dampening confirmations of just how low the currency has sunk. Many have no work, and those who do, bicker about low pay. And oddly enough, as if the foregoing profile is not hurting enough, even some professionals are committing suicide. All of this prompts questions. Why is the economy is tatters? When did the Naira begin to lose its touch? Where are the factories which once provided jobs for the citizens? Isn’t there anything to live for? On June 12 Prof Osinbajo made history, becoming the first acting president, at least in recent memory, to sign the national budget estimates into law. But it was no feat even he could celebrate, simply because the principal was away on health grounds. If there was anything to celebrate in the signing of the projected expenditure document, it was that it was signed at all. Only a few years ago, our very own Goodluck Jonathan, then Vice President, was prevented from functioning in the capacity of acting president even when the principal was gravely ill. A special band of folks designated as a cabal made sure that Dr Jonathan would not come anywhere near that office of president, whether in acting capacity or not. In the reasoning of the cabal, it was immaterial whether the president was incapacitated or not, or whether he was in the country or in a Saudi hospital.

    What was important, it was argued, was that the commander-in-chief could attend to even urgent national issues, and could dispatch files as soon as they got to him anywhere he was. To the cabal, the relevance of information technology could not be overemphasized. With it you could walk on water. How times have changed. Prof Osinbajo cannot only act as president but can also sign the budget. Lest we forget, a few highly-placed individuals did indeed try to reenact the old days of the cabal by bypassing the acting president and flying to London to present some files to the ailing boss. But President Muhammadu Buhari saw through their schemes and told them to their faces to return the files to Nigeria, and to the man in charge. Unwell or not, President Buhari will not brook a split presidency, or giving Prof Osinbajo the cheek. Even the President’s critics will not begrudge him some applause on this one. Yet, as Prof Osinbajo was signing the budget, an infamous and dangerous eviction order served on the Igbo in the North was barely six days old.

    On June 6, at the iconic Arewa House in the equally iconic city of Kaduna, a brood of northern fellows, who preferred to be strangely called youths, told the Igbo, in no uncertain terms, that they had until October 1 to leave the region or be forced out. Much has been said about the reactions that followed that unfortunate declaration, including the fact that the regional governors condemned it. It has also been reported that Ango Abdullahi, a former vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, and exminister of the federal republic, backed and applauded the Arewa youths’ pronouncement, even chastising the governors for daring to condemn it. For the record, the northern youths said their declaration was a reaction to the agitation by some Igbo people for a state of Biafra, and the sit-at-home directive by IPOB on May in commemoration of the original Biafra. Had the Arewa youths any right to play Government? It is equally on record that some agitators in the Niger Delta likewise ordered northerners in the Southsouth to vacate the region, and for northern holders of oil blocks to give them back. This is the country which Prof Osinbajo now runs as acting president.

    It seems safe to assume that he must be praying everyday and night that the country must not break up under his watch. A man of peace, he has been meeting tribal leaders and stakeholders across the country, telling them to keep the peace and ensure that those they lead do the same. Where appropriate, Prof Osinbajo has squeezed in a few tough words, saying those who break the law must be dealt with according to the law. No one, however, has been arrested or questioned, to say nothing of being prosecuted, ever since. As Prof Osinbajo holds the fort, in these interesting times, it is clear that his approach is a mixture of discretion, diplomacy and a whiff of firmness. Still, if the elderly Prof Abdullahi, the Arewa youths’ backer, cannot be questioned for his intemperate and hatefilled speeches, how long will it take to keep others like him from popping up and setting the country on fire? The acting president sure has his work cut out for him.

  • Enduring Lagos

    THROUGH the pages of history you see Lagos and its people’s first as victims of manipulative, mercantile and imperial invading powers. But peer harder and you also see Lagosians, in the midst of their troubles, fighting fiercely to assert their identity and not be pushed around by anyone. The Portuguese, probably the first of European adventurers to arrive, saw a promising island and promptly named it after the lagoon.

    It did not take too long before the British stopped by also, in the early 19th century, to enforce the abolition of slave trade on the Lagos Island, but once this mission was accomplished, they soon settled down to figure out what else to do with the island which had become a popular trading post. Thanks to the enterprising Oba Akinsemoyin, who had made Lagos Island a thriving trading centre, the British could easily batter their gunpowder, tobacco and salt for the islanders’ palm oil, palm kernels, and cloths sourced from sundry parts of the hinterland. The British wanted more. Having successfully bombarded the island in 1851, seizing upon a royal dispute between Akitoye and Kosoko, they annexed Lagos and turned it into a British Colony.

    Things moved fast. In 1861, a dodgy treaty was signed and the island was effectively Crown property to be administered the best way Crown officers knew how. Obas who once governed their people without much qualms were now practically employees of the British authorities, their meagre salaries determined by the new kids on the block. If an oba disagreed with the new masters, he was sanctioned, his salary stopped, and could even be exiled as a few of them were. Though some were cowed and easily manipulated by the colonial administrators, the people proved they were nobody’s plaything. One Oba damned the consequences and protested the water rate imposed by the British authorities. Hebert Macaulay, then Private Secretary, braved it and issued a statement in London that was judged to be contrary to the position of the ruling authorities.

    This was when the colonial administrators took over a parcel of land without paying compensation, an infraction for which Alhaji Ahmadu Tijani, the Oluwa of Lagos, sued the authorities. All of this and more came from the well-researched paper presented at the Eko Hotel & Suites at the 50th anniversary of Lagos State by the eminent scholar Hakeem Danmole, a history professor and Dean, Faculty of The Humanities and Social Sciences, Al- Hikmah University, Ilorin. A former professor of History, University of Ilorin and Lagos State University, Danmole’s presentation was on the topic: Lagos: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. Prof Danmole also captured resolute Lagosians resisting being lumped together with the Western Region, preferring to be left alone. It was the same Lagosians that Prof Danmole, peering through history, recalled fighting to be separated from the Gold Coast, under which the colony had been put.

    Such was the seriousness and currency of the protest that the Lagos press joined in, eventually forcing the colonialists to reverse the policy, in 1886. Professor Danmole was in good company at the Eko Hotel & Suites. Discussants included Senator H.A. B. Fasino, first Town Clerk, Lagos City Council, Alhaji Femi Okunnu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Minister of Works, Justice George Oguntade, a former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Olusola Hunponu-Wusu, a former Judge of the Lagos High Court, and Asiwaju Olorunfemi Basorun, former Secretary to the 1st Civilian Government in Lagos State.

    The moderator was Prof Fagbohun, VC, Lagos State University. In the audience was Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, alongside his deputy Dr Idiat Adebule and past governors and military administrators of the state. Governor Ambode spoke of Lagos being a melting pot of diverse cultures and traditions. Prof Fagbohun spoke of a land of opportunity, freedom and unity. Chief HAB Fasinro hailed the developmental trend in the state but for him there is no resting on one’s oars. Keep moving, he charged, achieve more, looking up to respected global city-states. He said his dream is for Lagos to become a smart city where vital services are provided without stress. Alhaji Okunnu stressed that Lagos is home to a wide mix of peoples including, to mention only two, the Nupe and Tapa. He also said the state came to being off the efforts of a notable number of people, including Banji Braithwaite, Prof Ganiyu Jawonda, Ade Thomas, Musbau Danmole, Barrister Talabi, Femi Ayantuga, Simi Johnson, Teslim Olawale Elias, and himself, of course.

    Prof Danmole refreshed minds. Alhaji Lateef Jakande it was, he pointed out, who straightened up the education sector in the state, which was then operating shifts in schools, some pupils in class in the morning, others resuming in the afternoon. All that was abolished, and the system reverted to normal. A visionary, Jakande soaked up the accommodation pressures in the state arising from the influx of people, by building medium and low-income housing estates across the state. His transportation intervention was just as visionary. But Lagos would not settle for past glories, so, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in his time as governor, laid out a plan, beginning with mixing up politicians with technocrats, with a view to getting more out of the state’s governance.

    The agencies he created not only provided jobs but also earned money for the state apart from performing such functions as straightening up traffic and medical emergencies. Who will forget choosing Babatunde Fashola, who succeeded him, proving to be a farsighted leader. The current governor, Ambode, has equally left no one in doubt that Lagos is for greater heights. Nigeria’s first capital city has endured but has quite a lot to teach other states, especially, as Prof Danmole said, if it can keep reinventing itself, looking for areas to improve upon.

  • Sue, Jonathan, sue

    At the rate he is going, former president Goodluck Jonathan may soon be asking to be crowned the best leader Nigeria ever had. The thought alone is unfortunate. On April 8, in this space, in an article entitled ‘Jonathan finds his voice too early’, I expressed my dismay at Dr Jonathan’s penchant for self-praise and sweeping condemnation of his successor. While conceding to him his right to free speech, I thought it was impertinent for him to be applauding himself and his administration so frequently, and carrying on as though Nigerians made a huge mistake by voting him out in 2015. I also felt that given the weight of accusations hanging over some of his principal officers, a good number being prosecuted, that Dr Jonathan should have refrained from much public speech-making until the investigations and court processes were exhausted and the accused cleared.

    But that was not to be. The former president has been speaking, and very loudly, to just about anyone, casting himself as the great leader that was rudely turfed out. Now this week he grabbed the headlines again, lashing out at President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he portrays as his family’s chief tormentor.

    Let’s quote him: “I feel sad about the way my family is being hounded,” he says in a book ‘Against The Run of Play’ written by top flight journalist and presidential chronicler Segun Adeniyi, chairman of ThisDay editorial board. The timing of the release of the book, on Friday, is arguably a clear bid to fortify Dr Jonathan’s quest to lend himself to the Nigerian public by not only exonerating himself of blame but also dismissing President Buhari as perhaps little more than a non-starter?

    From its fairly lengthy excerpts, the book also offers the former president a platform to spin a bizarre conspiracy theory of international proportions, with the United States, Britain and France cast as co-conspirators in what should now be regarded as a coup that robbed him of reelection. Dr Jonathan also accuses a former chairman of his party, and the police chief at the time of working against him, and the INEC chairman of superintending over what he regards as a fraudulent election. And the media and civil society of joining the siege against him.

    This is bizarre because Dr Jonathan fails to flesh up the allegations, leaving them laughably sketchy and incredible. He does say America, Britain and France perceived from his body language that he was supporting corruption, and mounted a campaign to scuttle his reelection bid but this proves nothing. Nor does he suggest why even his own appointees would betray him, too.

    Dr Jonathan who has been criticised for saying what was termed corruption was no more than mere stealing, also finds the book a good medium to teach President Buhari how to better fight graft.

    “Society,” he says, “is like a building. You build it one block at a time. If every president decides to go in to dismantle what his predecessor did, society will never make progress. I expected President Buhari to correct whatever mistakes I may have made and then carry on from there. But a situation in which people go into exile for political reasons is not good for us.”

    Dr Jonathan’s argument is hard to place, even harder how he fought corruption. He does not explain why people would go into exile if they have nothing to hide, but rather hints at highhandedness in President Buhari’s style, portraying himself as a true democrat.

    He would have had a point there, but for that little incident on a weekend in the middle of 2014 when the military under his watch raided leading media distribution centres, seizing or destroying the day’s copies, threatening distributors and charging journalists with “publishing and selling falsehood.”

    Now who in his family is being harassed? If the EFCC thinks his wife Patience should explain the origins of over N1b allegedly found in her bank account, how does that amount to harassment? If the quintessential democrat thinks anyone is breaking the law by harassing his family, he knows where and how to get justice, doesn’t he?

  • Another Chibok anniversary

    ANNIVERSARIES come with memories, and for Chibok, a small town in the north of Borno State, April comes with the grimmest. It was in that month and in that town that 276 girls were kidnapped from their school by the Islamist group Boko Haram. Another anniversary is upon us, and Chibok will be haunted yet again. Not only Chibok. Nigeria and the human race will be haunted again. Last year the horror of that abduction and of the cluelessness of the Jonathan administration was the subject of my write-up in this space entitled “Two years without the girls”. This week it is yet another year, the third, since the girls were gone.

    The torment endures but the last one year has not been without hope. In October 21 of the girls were freed thanks to Red Cross and the Swiss government, and the Buhari administration which seems to have the appetite to bring the girls home. This week President Muhammadu Buhari said negotiations were on to free the remaining girls. Considering that six months ago 21 of the girls regained freedom, it won’t hurt to believe that some more can still return. But President Buhari will do well to know that all eyes are on him to see if he will succeed where his predecessor failed. Some of those eyes are those of Chibok parents who last year viewed a video footage of their daughters in captivity. I reproduce here, marginally edited, part of that piece written on the second anniversary of the abduction: “Time does wonders. But in Chibok, its magic of healing wounds may well have disappeared or, at the least, waned. On the gloomy anniversary of the abduction, grief surged through mothers’ plagued bodies afresh, clouding their eyes. One woman grabbed her head with both hands, moving her upper body in a split second of downward jerk. It was a gesture with a clear message, one of something too hard to bear. The women were before a computer screen on which was being shown a video recording of some 15 hijabclad girls believed to be among those abducted two years before. It was a CNN scoop.

    The women peered intently. One pointed to an image, as though saying, that’s her, alright. Another reached out and touched the screen, appearing to draw momentary comfort from virtual contact with her beloved daughter. That footage has been beamed to the world in what has been dubbed the hope of life, almost in the same manner as the image of such celebrities as Michelle Obama clutching BringBackOurGirls placards were viewed globally in those ineffectual days of the Jonathan presidency. From Europe to America and beyond, and before world leaders and entertainment icons, such as Wesley Snipes, Nigeria was making all sorts of hideous headlines. How did the then president and commander-in-chief respond? He responded with an emphatic I-do-notbelieve- it, a disposition that would last for nearly three weeks before he set up a committee to determine if it was true or not.

    Before the committee turned in its report, which in any case confirmed the obvious, it was a good one month since the girls were taken away, in which time hope of rescue was all but foreclosed. If Dr Goodluck Jonathan realised that he had lost valuable ground, that the missing girls were as tormented, wherever they were, as were their parents, and that the eyes of the world were on him, he did not show it convincingly. Thus, when he was dressed up in some illfitting military battle gear and headed for the Northeast, then stomping ground of the sect, he could only draw a hopeless sigh from the people over whom he presided.

    When he announced languidly on national TV that the military had combed the much-trumpeted Sambisa forest and found nothing, even he knew that he could not in all honesty expect even the obligatory applause. As the nation and its people resigned to fate on the abducted girls, to say nothing of Boko Haram’s other atrocities, Dr Jonathan would kick off such an ambitious reelection campaign whose funding schemes may yet go down in the country’s history as the most bizarre. And while we struggled to come to terms with all that, the Office of the First Lady or OFL came alive with some reverse entertainment, especially on the Chibok issue. If Dr Jonathan lost his reelection bid simply because he failed to prove his leadership bona fides, his handling of the Chibok matter did him little good. His super minister Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has reportedly said her boss had no will to save money, a failing the Buhari administration is now paying for. It is also safe to say Dr Jonathan blew the opportunity to rescue the Chibok girls, leaving his successor with quite a mountain to climb.

    Two years after the Chibok and other abductions, and about 11 months into the Buhari presidency, the Boko Haram profile has thankfully diminished but the sect’s horrors endure. That much was clear at the screening of the Chibok 15 video in Abuja. Chibok parents are no longer keen on talking to reporters or showing up for protests. All they want is seeing their daughters again. Can President Muhammadu Buhari pull it off? Yes, but probably not with military efforts. The sect seems to want a negotiated release.

    The government should negotiate, but be sure with whom it is negotiating. The administration before it had little discretion in this regard and the nation was the worse for it. One last word. Some have said the whole abduction thing is a scam designed to throw Dr Jonathan out of power. If it is not all faked up, they ask, why has none of the captured Boko Haram fighters volunteered any information on the missing girl’s whereabouts? Supposing the captured insurgents have such information and do share it, is it now being contemplated that the full complement of the military should risk swooping on their location and expect to safely ship out all 219 girls? Perhaps only credible negotiation leading to the safe return of the girls will heal this two-year-old wound.”

  • Jonathan finds his voice too early

    FORMER president Goodluck Jonathan’s recovery is amazing. About two years ago he had little cause for cheer and few words to mutter. Beyond the fact that he wisely conceded defeat in the March 28 election, and was praised by some, including yours truly, for doing so, there wasn’t much to lift his spirit. On a personal note he became the first incumbent president in these parts to lose a reelection bid. On a national scale, his failure at the polls captured a nationwide frustration with his many deficits while in office. Such a reality would silence anyone, anywhere. But there were other reasons Dr Jonathan kept mute. The Buhari administration came after prominent members of his government. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or EFCC, inspired by the new government’s anti-graft drive, put the heat on Dr Jonathan’s principal officers and soon started to publicise what it claimed were their stinking records in office especially what they allegedly did with public funds. Billions of dollars were quoted to have been either pocketed, mismanaged or simply wasted by these individuals. That was enough to keep the ousted commander-in-chief quiet. But there was yet another reason for Dr Jonathan’s low profile.

    There was some talk that perhaps it was unfair to merely go after these individuals without inviting their boss for a chat over some withdrawals which only he as the C-in-C could authorise. As yet, that invitation has not been extended to the former president, partly because, as some have reasoned, it would, as they say, heat up the polity, something the Buhari administration would not quite like. Part of that heat could come from some of Dr Jonathan’s diehard supporters, a good number of whom are believed to have the capacity to blow up a few things. Perhaps, this emboldened Dr Jonathan to come out of his shell and chalk up some courage to make public pronouncements as often as he pleased. He may also have been buoyed by some marginal calls to stage a comeback in 2019. Add to that the fact that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is also just as fractious as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which it knocked out of power.

    And throw in too the other little matter that the economy is not in the best of times, though it remains a subject of debate as to whether you should put the blame on Dr Jonathan for wrecking it or on President Muhammadu Buhari for not fixing the faults as quickly as he came in. Whatever the case, Dr Jonathan has since waxed lyrical, in my view too lyrical. He has been speaking here, there and everywhere. He has spoken to the British and to the Americans, to Nigerians and other Africans. His submission, in the main, is that he and his party did quite well, in fact creditably well, as he put it, and that he is not half as bad as being portrayed. For instance, he once said that he could not have handed over an empty treasury, as President Buhari has said repeatedly, asking where his successor got the funds to bail out cash-strapped states. But Dr Jonathan seemed to have ignored, or was probably unaware of, the fact that such funds could be sourced from anywhere.

    At his Abuja house in February, Dr Jonathan expressed his excitement at plans by some of his party members to regain power after a “temporary setback”, as he put it. While playing the unifier on Thursday before a divided crowd of PDP stakeholders in the same city, Dr Jonathan reportedly said Nigerians still believed in his party. He also credited his administration with “purposeful leadership” through which “we reformed our institutions, rebuilt the nation’s confidence, regained international goodwill and rekindled hope in our people.” Pray, what purposeful leadership was he talking about? Which institutions were reformed and what confidence was rebuilt when he held sway? What international goodwill was regained under him, and what hope was rekindled locally? So far, Dr Jonathan has been left alone by those who should have asked him a few questions, and who can begrudge him his peace? But it leaves me utterly breathless that a man who presided over such waste and plunder of such a consequential country as Nigeria has found his voice so early as to make such wild claims.

  • Things presidents do

    THE world’s cruelest tricks may be the ones presidents play with their health. A late 19th century United States president Grover Cleveland had a reputation for good breeding and integrity though these attributes could not help much when the country he led was in depression and workers were frequently on strike. There was more trouble. While brushing his teeth one morning, Mr Cleveland felt a lump on the roof of his mouth. He summoned his physician and together they assembled a full medical team, complete with a dentist and a head-and-neck surgeon.

    In the dead of night Mr Cleveland and company stole away on a private yacht on which a cancerous growth was removed from his mouth. The American public knew nothing of the condition that afflicted their leader, nor of the operation that he underwent to cure it. All they were told was that President Cleveland was out fishing. The truth of what happened on that boat did not surface until at least one and a half decades later, according to one account.

    A few decades later, as 1919 was drawing to a close, another US president Woodrow Wilson suffered a very bad stroke. His poor health was not a secret. What the American people did not know, or were not told, was how bad Mr Wilson’s health was. This was deliberate. Only the president’s wife Edith, his chief of staff, and personal doctor had access to him. Those privileged three brought the issues of state to the ailing commander-inchief.

    In fact, Mrs Wilson was reported to have claimed credit for running the country as her husband battled for his life. “I don’t know what you men make such a fuss about,” she was quoted saying, indignantly. “I had no trouble running the country when Woody was ill.” France’s president Francois Mitterrand broke his transparency promise as soon as he made it. Coming to power in 1981 promising an open presidency, he told his physician on the first day in office that his prostate cancer had spread to his bones. He followed with a caution: “We must reveal nothing.

    These are state secrets.” The Yar’Adua episode is too fresh and unfortunate to bear repeating here, but no one has forgotten how sad the manipulations were. There was a mortal man, though president he was, battling with his life, and all his minders could come up with was a web of lies spun by a selfserving cabal who had no interest of the nation whatsoever. One day, they said, the president’s health had so improved that he recognised his mother. On another occasion, the president was seen leaping up the stairs leading to the presidential library.

    On yet another occasion, the president could run the country wherever he was, thanks to the magic of modern technology. It was so sad, so cheap, so unnecessary. President Muhammadu Buhari did not put us through that sort of agony as he flew to London on January 19 on a 10-day holiday to treat himself. Unlike President Cleveland, President Buhari did not disappear under the cover of night without a clue as to where he was headed or what he would be doing there. He did not flout any law either. Before his departure, the president wrote to the National Assembly, as required by law, notifying the lawmakers of his trip.

    He also informed the parliamentarians that his deputy, Professor Yemi Osinbajo would act in his stead. That is commendable. The president is in fact quite consistently transparent with information on his health. Early last June he put out the word that his ear was aching badly and needed attention overseas. The federal lawmakers were duly informed and Prof Osinbajo seamlessly stepped into the number one office. Leaders in older and advanced democracies have kept the fact and details of their indispositions to their chests or, at best, shared them only with a handful of inner caucus persons. So why did President Buhari’s health generate so much interest, especially of the negative sort? Two things are to blame. One, the things his critics, political rivals and sworn enemies did with what they heard or did not hear.

    Some said he had died, a piece of rumour that would be sweet music to the ears of longstanding attackers of the president, a few who misguidedly ventured to say he would die in office, if elected. Where the death information came from is hard to see; why they did not verify it is even harder to fathom. Even when such public figures as Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun, Senate President Bukola Saraki and House Speaker Yakubu Dogara visited President Buhari in London, with photographs to show, some cooed: they are all old pictures.

    There is a second group, beyond the one to whom President Buhari can do nothing right, who also complicated the health information of the number one citizen: his media team. We have heard from them, and some others, what amounted to no information, if not outright misinformation. At some point it was said there was nothing to worry about the president’s health and that he was fit as a fiddle.

    At some other point, under pressure from reporters, it was said only the president could say whether he was fit or not. When is he returning to the country? Soon, they said. Such evasiveness means no information, and no information breeds rumours, all of which is unhealthy for a nation battling a raft of other challenges. Besides, frailty is part of mortality, irrespective of the height of office. If the health status of leaders of the developed world is such state secret, as Mitterrand put it, Nigeria should point the way forward by cutting out such unnecessary tricks.

  • Obiano vs Okorocha

    THERE is no respite for people of Southeastern stock who have been agonising over the Igbo Question, thanks to two men who govern two of their five states. By the way, the Igbo Question, among other things, contemplates the place of the ethnic group in Nigeria, when an Igbo will be president, and why it seems so difficult for them to attain the office. Since the end of the Civil War, which, by the way, ended very badly from their perspective, the farthest they got to the highest office in the land was the vice presidency, and that was in the 80s. Some who have pondered the plight of Ndigbo blamed their selfishness, lack of cohesion and political naivety for their low profile.

    For all of the week, all three factors were at play as Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano and his Imo State counterpart Rochas Okorocha slugged it out. Since the Owelle, as Okorocha is called, reportedly said three of four Southeast governors were in talks with him over plans to defect to the All Peoples Congress (APC), both governors have dug deep to find the dirtiest adjectives and phrases with which to bury each other. We have heard of militant. We have heard of governors who should keep quiet when their serious colleagues are talking. We have heard of noisemakers and thrash-talkers. How can we forget motor park governors, and governors who had better publish their scorecards if they have anything to show for their years in office? What did we not hear from both men? Were we not told of someone’s dodgy past and of his pre-governorship poverty and of his suspect humanitarian activities?

    For a while, it looked as though United States President Donald Trump had met his match. During the primaries late last year, Mr Trump distinguished himself in the curious art of insults and demeaning political opponents. Standing in a long line of fellow Republican Party presidential aspirants, for instance, Mr Trump once turned to the man standing next to him on one side and said, “This one is a choker,” then turned to the other side and reported, “This one is a liar.”

    The world has been reeling in shock since those insane days, and even since Mr Trump won the White House.

    For obvious reasons, some have been choking too since Mr Obiano and Mr Okorocha chose to take each other out in the manner they did. A greying man of 54, you expected a bit of restraint from the Owelle. And what do you say of 61-year-old Obiano, a traditional chief, whose great care has kept his greys out of sight? Apart from demeaning and reducing themselves in the eye of the public, both governors have done great disservice to the office they occupy, in the same manner Mr Trump was a telling scandal in the annals of US presidential politics.

    That was not the only thing that hurt in the Obiano-Okorocha duel. Both governors hurt the Igbo Question. They seemed consumed by the desire to position themselves as the best thing to have happened to their states, if not the entire Southeast, but this silly quarrel has exposed them. Neither governor could sense the danger their fight posed to the cohesion of the region, neither could they discern how deep it sank the aspiration of Ndigbo in mainstream national politics.

    Both governors’ aides, who clearly had the blessings of their principals, laboured to put up their masters’ achievements, mentioning roads and bridges, schools and hospitals as though they have in one fell swoop ended the era of impassable roads in their states, and closed the chapter on poverty and poor health in their domains. Mr Okorocha has run for president before and failed but that does not foreclose any further attempts. It is hard to see how this unnecessary confrontation with a fellow governor in the region and of the same ethnic stock will help his case if he intends to run again for higher office. At the end of his first term Mr Obiano, who already fancies himself as an achiever, would sure like a second spell in the Government House, but how does such ridiculous fallout with a regional brother help his ambition? It is even clear that neither Mr Okorocha nor Mr Obiano realises that they are on the fringes of their region’s politics, the former alone in the APC, the latter all by himself in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and as such both wield little influence in the Southeast.

    Why do Igbo leaders hardly resist the temptation to confront one another so unduly instead of focusing on the main challenges before them? Whatever the justification, the earlier faceoff between Mr Obiano and his predecessor Peter Obi was unnecessary. Mr Obi had set the tone in governance and was praised for his discipline and frugality and it was expected that his successor would be inspired by such strengths and get on with the job. But the picture in Anambra especially in the early days of Mr Obiano in office was that of a very frosty relationship with Mr Obi. Why do the Igbo cry marginalisation? Why do they huff and puff about what others are doing to them, and not bother about what they are doing to themselves?

  • Who’s an American?

    I almost lost it Tuesday night when television cameras found the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the crowd at Chicago’s Grant Park and I saw the tears streaming down his face. His brio and bluster were gone, replaced by what looked like awestruck humility and unrestrained joy. I remembered how young he was in 1968 when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., moments before King was assassinated and hours before America’s cities were set on fire.” Those were the opening lines of Eugene Robinson’s column in The Washington Post on November 6, 2008. The article was entitled Morning in America. That Tuesday night, to which Mr Robinson referred, Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was projected to be the 44th president of the United States. It was surreal for Americans especially African-Americans who have faced intense racial-kind hostility since their forefathers left the slave ship. Rev Jackson knew how tough life was for the blackskinned American in the 60s. For he was part of the civil rights movement which Dr King led and in which Dr King was chopped down. That Tuesday night as he witnessed history being made, emotions got the better of Rev Jackson. Tears of joy ran down his face. Seeing Mr Obama mount the stage to give his acceptance speech, Mr Robinson, himself an African-American, also could not hold back the tears of joy. He lost it, as he put it. Exactly eight years later, and on yet another Tuesday night, tears of agony ran down American cheeks. Reason: Donald Trump had just been elected president, to succeed President Obama. It was another surreal night but one of anguish except for racists and the Ku Klux Klan white supremacists, to whom Mr Trump’s victory was the best thing to happen since Mr Obama moved into the White House.

    For a year and a half, Mr Trump, a billionaire businessman, ran a vigorous, if bigoted, hate-filled, exclusive, divisive, arrogant campaign. He talked down on African- Americans. Mexicans just across the border were up to no good. All they brought to the U.S. was drugs and crime, he said relentlessly. What to do? If elected, he would build a wall high and strong enough to keep them out. And guess what? He would have them pay for that wall, OK. Mr Trump was not just reacting to foreigners taking over citizens’ jobs, an issue politicians usually make a meal of across the world. He was simply asserting his pathological hatred for people of other races. He once called a Venezuelan beauty queen Miss Housekeeping because some of her compatriots went to the U.S. to do domestic chores. Also, Mr Trump said he did not think Trump University could win a court case in which it was a defendant because the judge, who was born in America, had Mexican ancestry. Mr Trump attacked Muslims as though every single one of them was a terrorist, urging that they be banned from the U.S. until someone could “figure out what the hell was going on.” An uncouth chauvinist, Mr Trump took on women “like a bitch”, to use his own words.

    A bully, he attacked journalists as though they were standing in his way. He gestured mockingly about a disabled journalist whose questions he did not like. He said Mr Obama was clueless in government, even though the president’s approval rating was at an all-time high. Mr Trump concocted all manner of lies about the American economy just to discredit Hillary Clinton and make her victory Mr Obama’s third term in office, something he laboured to depict as a nightmare. Yet, that November 8 night, Mr Trump won, defeating Mrs Clinton who ran an inclusive, detailed and credible campaign. Why? Because, some have said, he is a nationalist and patriot. Really? Who is a nationalist or patriot? These election seasons, those two words have been working wonders. In France, Marie Le Pen, who wants to be president, fancying herself a nationalist, has been railing against foreigners. Months ago, in Britain, Brexiteers prevailed in a referendum vote to exit the European Union because they wanted to take back their country. Mr Trump led what he called an American movement to take back their country. But the question is, take back their country from whom? From Mr Obama and immigrants and all they represent? Let’s not kid ourselves. Whatever charm or merit took Mr Obama to the White House, America’s white supremacists and their offspring cannot stomach him and his family anymore, his high approval ratings notwithstanding.

    Even as America’s first family, the Obamas endured racist slurs. When an ape popped up on social media with a cigarette in its mouth, a commenter said he thought Michelle Obama was not a smoker. Two women, one a mayor, expressed their relief that a white woman was finally moving into the White House as first lady. Those are Mr Trump’s people, the nationalists and patriots of America. Only time will tell what face of America the world would see under the Trump Presidency. In the immediate term, though, the face visible does not look good. Minutes after Trump’s victory became inevitable, the phone at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline rang 660 times, reported The Washington Post. “People were scared — for their rights, for their safety, for their children,” the paper said. Across the states, protests broke out lasting days. Trump is not their president, they said.

    There have been other troubles. Immigrants and African-Americans have been attacked by characters believed to have been inspired by Mr Trump’s campaign rhetoric. The president-elect has been trying to be nice since his victory. He once looked into the camera and told his supporters who were attacking people to “staap it”. At Thanksgiving Day, he mouthed off words apparently intended to unify Americans. How can he unify Americans? Stephen Bannon, one of Mr Trump’s first appointments, is a white supremacist. The Ku Klux Klan, a killer racist organisation, and its former grand wizard David Duke have hailed Mr Trump’s victory as well as Mr Bannon’s appointment as his chief strategist.

    Joseph de Maistre, a French writer and philosopher of the 18th and 19th centuries, said every country gets the government they deserve. If Mr Trump’s divisive and racist dispositions could prevail over America’s heterogeneous realities, perhaps America deserves him. Germans endured their Hitler. Ecuadoreans lived with a certain President Abdala Bucaran, who cultivated Hitler’s moustache and reportedly celebrated his stunning electoral victory with a stage dance accompanied by scantily-clad ladies. Nigerians had Abacha, and the Ugandans Idi Amin Dada. Americans must live with Trump. Mr Trump is not a true nationalist or patriot but Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are.

    You are not a nationalist simply because you trumpet that all immigrants must go. America is a rainbow nation, home to everyone driven by the American dream. Mr Trump’s grandfather hailed from Kallstadt in Southeast Germany. The president-elect’s latest wife Melania, 46, was born in Slovenia and only became a U.S. citizen 10 years ago, two years before Mr Obama won the White House. The Kennedys have their ancestral roots in Catholic Ireland. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was governor of California, was Austrian. Can Mr Trump please define who an American is, and who more American than another?

  • Merchants of Niger Delta

    Couldn’t the Niger Delta elders have found a more dignified way to expose their vanity, and culpability in the region’s crisis? On Tuesday a sizeable number of them, including traditional rulers, chiefs and state governors, tabled before President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja 16 conditions for peace in the Niger Delta.

    Conditions for peace? Yes. The region has been unsettled almost as soon as the colonial government struck crude oil there in the late 50s. There were agitations but none could compare to the large-scale militancy that engulfed the area and threatened the rest of the country as was witnessed during the brief reign of former President Umaru Yar’Adua. And nothing of the sort reared its head again until President Buhari took office. Oil facilities have been blown up, reducing the country production to about a third of its capacity and further hurting the economy in the face of the global oil prices slump. For a country whose mainstay is crude oil, President Buhari has had his back against the wall. He needs peace in the Niger Delta. The region’s militants know the president’s predicament, and so do the elders who turned up at Aso Villa on November 1 with their demands.

    What are those demands? For space constraints, only a few will be mentioned here. They insist that the amnesty granted ex-militants during the Yar’Adua era be reviewed to include a “robust exit strategy”, one that will have the former fighters firmly settled into newly acquired skilled jobs before cutting off the amnesty stipends tap. They equally want the region demilitarised and the Ogoni cleanup speeded up, while other communities are also rid of pollutants.

    The Niger Delta elders also want the East-West Road completed and contracts for security surveillance and protection of oil and gas infrastructure awarded to communities rather than individuals. They equally want international oil firms’ administrative and operational headquarters back in the region. They demand power supply and oil wells as well.

    Some of the demands are in fact reasonable; no one, for instance, can quarrel with the push to suck crude toxins off the Niger Delta environment. Hundreds of millions of crude oil barrels spilled in the region have hurt its bio-diverse ecosystem, significantly affecting flora and fauna, its rich variety of crops and agricultural trees as well as its freshwater fish. The delta’s endowed mangrove swamps, its fresh waters and lowland rainforests are under incremental assault, and constantly degraded, needing urgent and comprehensive remedial action.

    Most of the elders’ demands are neither here nor there, a number of them sufficiently childish and may be nothing more than a smokescreen for their mercantilist fancies. Take the amnesty matter. Why was it not an issue during the five years of President Goodluck Jonathan who succeeded President Yar’Adua who, in fact, pardoned the fighters? What do the elders mean by “a robust exit strategy”? Have they conveniently forgotten that the Jonathan administration said the amnesty programme would be wound down before its tenure ended? Why bother President Buhari about it?

    On Ogoni mop-up, President Buhari should be praised, not bullied, and only encouraged, not cajoled, to extend the cleanup to other Niger Delta communities. The East-West Road has been toyed with for years. Why should it become one of President Buhari’s cardinal sins? The elders say they want Niger Delta communities, rather than individuals, to be awarded contracts for surveillance and protection of oil and gas infrastructure. Just how do they determine who gets how much of the contract cash? And who actually does the job? Or how far they will go in the creeks, the swamps, the high seas or the forbidden forests to secure the pipes and other facilities? Will the money not end up in the deep pockets of the so-called leaders, as it always does? It is laughable to demand the relocation of oil firms’ headquarters back to the region when everyone knows why they moved them out in the first place.

    The elders demand oil wells. Perhaps, that’s what they crave most, not the development of the region. How hard did they fight for the region’s growth when Dr Jonathan, an Ijaw, was in power? After the meeting with President Buhari, one-time federal commissioner Edwin Clark gloated       about speaking for the militants, being their fathers, as he put it, but he seemed to have glossed over the fact that he and his co-travellers could be accused of taking sides and exonerating the militants, while heaping all the blame on the Buhari administration, if not squarely on President Buhari himself. As elders and fathers, why could they not prevail on their militant sons to shelve the violence option? Don’t the elders know that sabotage accounts for 20 per cent of oil spills in the delta?

    Chief Clark said the “dialogue was key”, giving the impression that the elders had the militants under control, but a day after, an oil facility near Warri was blown up.

    One day the elders will be required to prove their leadership bona fides. Have they ever held their governors to account? Have they made the case for exploiting other equally rich endowments outside oil? Have they agitated for anything other oil money? No. Mercantilism wouldn’t let them.