By UnderTow

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is probably the most riveting, complex and controversial corruption story in Nigeria today, if not ever. It is also, bar the love scandal that gripped the North in the early 1970s (names withheld), the most romantic.

Whether the country likes it or not, it is also probably the most complete human affairs story Nigeria has seen in recent years. Corruption and mindless accumulation of wealth often for conspicuous consumption used to be the full and complete story of Nigerian public officials; now, courtesy of the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio and the former Managing Director of the NDDC Joi Nunieh, Nigerians see their hidden soft part mirrored in the flamboyant and exhilarating lives of the two quarrelsome public officials. Indeed, the NDDC is both the archetype and embodiment of everything that is uniquely and deprecatingly Nigerian.

How did the three people mentioned in the title to this piece, the law enforcement agency, the Niger Delta Affairs ministry, and the Development Commission get themselves so thoroughly entangled in a miasma of shocking financial and romantic escapades to create the lethal brew and lewd stories that have titillated Nigeria for weeks? It began inauspiciously with the National Assembly’s innocuous attempt to investigate the NDDC, which, according to allegations, and in the space of three months, ‘recklessly’ spent a whopping N40bn, or over N81bn in about a year between 2019 and 2020. Senator George Sekibo sponsored the motion.

It was not clear which three months the senate targeted for the probe. Soon, however, with allegations of financial wrongdoing flying everywhere, the former NDDC boss, Mrs Nunieh, was sucked in. So, too, the Interim Management Committee (IMC), which soon landed smack in the eye of the storm, particularly for its tragicomic spending pattern exemplified by its expenditure of N1.5bn for COVID-19 relief for commission staff. More risibly, the commission allegedly spent N23.8bn on consultancy, and N3.14bn on the nine police commands in the region and 4,000 staff, including the famous N1.5bn COVID-19 relief and N475m for police face masks.

Put in much grosser perspective, the commission received about N281bn between 2016 and 2020 for the purpose of ameliorating the desperate problems of the region. But, among other things, it managed in three months to spend some N40bn of this allocation. Indeed, in the eyes of the public, and as one sordid revelation unfurled another, the NDDC gradually became an unrecognisable cesspit.

It was impossible for the presidency to feign disinterest. President Muhammadu Buhari has, therefore, finally waded into the fray and ordered through investigations, the initial assignment given to the IMC before it got sucked into the vortex of everything peculiarly horrifying about the NDDC. So the Senate, House of Representatives, theoretically the IMC itself, and now the presidential forensic mandate are all engaged in probing the NDDC. The region is to be pitied. They have the Niger Delta Affairs ministry and the NDDC, and yet can hardly boast of anything inspiring about the region’s infrastructure. Worse, in the hands of Mr Akpabio, even the ministry is also allegedly leeching on the NDDC.

As if the financial malfeasance was not bad enough, stories of sexual harassment and all kinds of fetish practices and dalliances have surfaced. Anxious to save her neck, Mrs Nunieh, who some in the NDDC described as intemperate and high-handed, insisted the alleged financial malfeasance did not take place on her watch. She laid the blame almost solely on the present NDDC interim management.

What is more, she told the press, she was victimised by Mr Akpabio whom she described as a veritable lothario, a lothario she extravagantly claimed to have slapped for exceeding official boundaries and sexually harassing her in his guest house where he constantly scheduled official meetings. The minister debunked her story, saying he never touched her, despite a group photograph in which he wrapped his right arm around her, nor harassed her, despite the unrequited slap. Then, too, there were stories of uncompleted National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, and other cobwebs of allegations bordering on incompetence.

NDDC simply and irresistibly became the most riveting story of the day. But while matters were building to a crescendo, and Mrs Nunieh — yes, she of four husbands, according to the Niger Delta Affairs minister, waiting probably for Mr Akpabio as the fifth — was preparing to depart for Abuja to testify before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee, the police invaded her residence and were prepared to whisk her away.

Poor National Assembly, nobody fears them anymore, yes, not even the police, nor the NDDC management, which scoffed at them a few days ago by walking out of the ongoing hearing. The invasion, Mrs Nunieh claimed, occurred around 4.00am. She resisted the invasion, locked herself adamantly behind her security doors, and sent an S.O.S to Nyesom Wike the Rivers State governor, who for many distressed and sometimes proud and rebellious Riverians, has proved to be the knight in shining armour.

In the break of day, and with a posse of press hounds in tow, Mr Wike stormed the Bastille and ferried Mrs Nunieh to safety in the Government House. There she has felt free to pontificate about her traducers and intended captors. Mr Akpabio was corrupt, she alleged, and was walking free while she the blameless was besieged. She left the country to ponder the paradox. Yes, the country is bewildered that the NDDC has failed miserably to develop the region and has instead turned into a pork barrel for powerful private interests.

It has also heard and digested stories of how money was being ferried everywhere for silly and crooked projects, some duplicated as in the case of contracts for clearing seaweed, an ocean algae called water hyacinth. But much more, Nigerians, who in the past few months have been besotted to the dramatic Mr Wike, are mesmerised by tales of the governor’s derring-do. They see him as the closest reincarnation and personification of the Age of Chivalry, and Mrs Nunieh as the archetypal damsel in distress. No tale in recent years has been quite so evocative and romantic, and none fetches the heart and the public so completely.

Wrong-footed, the usually tongue-tied police have rushed out an explanation for their mysterious invasion of Mrs Nunieh’s house in the dead of the night and without a warrant of arrest. They felt obliged to respond because the governor, in ‘rescuing’ Mrs Nunieh, had impugned the integrity of the police and suggested that the invasion was carried out without the knowledge of the state police command. Said the police:  “The attention of the Rivers State Police Command has been drawn to an Online Publication, credited to Vanguardngr.com , where it was erroneously reported that ‘the MOPOL presence at the residence of Joi Nunieh was not the directive of the Command’…

1. That the Command is not oblivious of the fact that Social Media is a loose cannon, where all manner of things are thrown into…
2. That the Officers who were at the residence of the former Ag. MD Joi Nunieh were from the IGP Monitoring Team in Abuja and were here on Official assignment.
3. That before they proceeded to her residence, they observed due protocols and requisite standard operating procedures, including going through the processes of arriving themselves at the Headquarters with their Investigation Activities duly signed and approved by the Commissioner of Police, CP Joseph G Mukan psc (+)
4. That they went to her residence with Mobile Policemen, suggesting of course that they were there on official duty and not illegal duty as speculated.
5. That, the reference indicating that the Officers were there without the directive of the CP nor the IGP is preposterous and most unfortunate., hence should be discountenanced and disregarded.”

Both the police invasion and Mr Wike’s prompt response in thwarting the arrest point to the disturbing anomaly still undermining the Nigerian practice of federalism. This anomaly is compounded by the disturbing penchant of the police to lend themselves to unconstitutional abridgement, if not entirely abrogation, of the rights of citizens. It is significant that the police statement made no reference to why the invasion occurred in the dead of the night, why doors to Mrs Nunieh’s residence had to be destroyed, why they have not tendered the order to effect the arrest or a duly signed warrant, and what she was being arrested for. Surely the police cannot be a law unto themselves.

Mr Wike, the one this column once described as a lovable rascal for his abrasive manners, probably undermined good governance by obstructing justice, whether the police are right or wrong to besiege Mrs Nunieh. But how can a governor stand aside when a wrong is being committed in his state, a wrong inspired and executed by an agency that should rightly be controlled by the state but is unfortunately not? The paradox does not end there.

Given the sometimes immaturity of Mr Wike and a number of other governors, would a devolved police force not be an instrument of tyranny in the hands of autocratic governors? Indeed, given the Nigerian condition, most governors are generally regarded as dictatorial. But so too, damningly, is the federal government, thereby presenting the country a veritable Catch-22 situation. In this instance, however, it is hard to fault Mr Wike for standing up for the oppressed. Given all that is in the public domain regarding the NDDC affair and the probes still ongoing, it was unwise and pre-emptive to arbitrarily arrest Mrs Nunieh when she could have been invited to either the police command in Port Harcourt or police headquarters in Abuja. The night invasion was foolish and needless.

The NDDC affair has just started in earnest. It will not end soon. More sordid financial malfeasances will obviously still be uncovered. Perhaps a few arrests will still be made. Hopefully, however, the investigating authorities will learn to clean up their act and carry out their responsibilities, including arrests when necessary, professionally. Here, the federal government must set the tone.

It didn’t keep a clean nose when it whisked suspended EFCC acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu, before an investigative panel. It should not be surprised that other agencies copied its rule book. But the country reserves the right to be appalled by the lewd stories and corrupt cases coming out of the NDDC, and be benumbed by the unprofessional manner security agencies routinely trample the rights of citizens.

Undertow

 

In desperate manoeuvres that began last year before and after the 2019 polls, and two false starts involving improperly convened National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings, the All Progressives Congress (APC) finally got rid of their chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, on June 25.

The deposed chairman, embattled for much of his reign, has now had more than two weeks to reconcile himself to his new but somewhat humiliating status.

From calling the shots in the ruling party, a role he relished with aplomb, Mr Oshiomhole has found himself virtually idle, unlikely ever again to preside over the affairs of a party he has loved and tried his best to redefine and imbue with a new sense of mission and purpose.

Though he has publicly aligned himself with the summary decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to kick-start the reconstitution of the National Working Committee (NWC), the former chairman has said and withheld enough to let the party and the rest of the country know that he abhorred his overthrow and the manner by which it was procured.

He knew that his enemies were so powerful, and their backers in the presidency also so conniving, that it did not matter what he did or didn’t do to attract the punitive move against him.

It was enough that he had strong character and was willing to stand up to the many powerful interests in the party, especially the coterie of governors dedicated to his overthrow.

Being merely himself, when the job demanded a snivelling, ingratiating chairman, was all it took for the hunting pack to dismantle him and knock him insensate.

Of course Mr Oshiomhole was cognisant of the politics of presidential election 2023, and probably had some definite ideas of how things should progress.

He probably also knew a thing or two about how the plots against him was shaping up, and the leaders of the rebellion.

It is unlikely, however, that he guessed the relentless plot to unseat him would mature as quickly as it did, and his chairmanship unravel almost without resistance.

There were too many in the other corner, and two few in his corner, to matter what nimbleness of feet he had shown and how fanciful his punching grace and power were.

There is also no doubt that he knows all too well the first and second eleven, so to speak, of those who finally knocked the bottom off his chairmanship.

There is little he can do about them now, except perhaps rue his fall and the abominable methods by which his temporary political demise was midwifed.

Mr Oshiomhole will now have to look into the future. He is a more natural progressive, though not the archetype, than nearly all of those who conspired against him.

So he will stand pat in the party. There is no longer a need to mollify his enemies, and being a good puncher himself, he will not shirk a fight with them, nor pull his punches henceforth.

He has seen how vulnerable a party leader can be once his base at the ward level has been compromised, as his vengeful and compromised ward chairman confessed early this week; so he will return home to stitch up the loose ends.

He probably now has a better understanding of his party’s fidelity to both truth and party constitution; so he will have no illusion that both can and will constantly be denigrated, twisted and co-opted into openly selfish ends.

The former chairman’s education was completed when officials within the party who had no locus whatsoever seized upon a dishonest action by Mr Oshiomhole’s ward chairman to extract favourable judgements from the courts.

After suffering humiliation by being tied up in legal knots for weeks on end, he now understands perfectly the toxic and putrefying relationship that sometimes exists between some courts and powerful state and national interests.

For all his grandstanding and volubility, Mr Oshiomhole was in fact an innocent in the APC arena. He now knows he was and indeed cannot be as realpolitk as many powerful figures in his party, many of whom have sold their souls to the devil.

More, he now knows that the presidency midwifed by his party and installed in office since 2015 is in fact a pawn in the political and moral smorgasbord of the APC.

On June 25, the idealist in Mr Oshiomhole died with his deposition as chairman. While his reign lasted, he did a number of controversial good.

He infused a new sense of responsibility in the party, starting with the party organ itself, and did his best to curb the distinct feudalism, if not outright nihilism, of many of the party’s prominent leaders.

His predecessor paid lip service to ideology, and Mr Oshiomhole himself, starting out, was not clearly and definitively ideological.

But he nevertheless set about redefining the party in such pragmatic ways that no one should ever confuse it with the conservative and increasingly reactionary People Democratic Party (PDP).

That redefinition process has now been aborted, with the party helplessly prostrate in the temporary stranglehold of a few powerful but less moralistic and ideological party leaders, many of them governors and former governors.

If he had enough time, Mr Oshiomhole would have whittled down the number and influence of this predatory group.

Today, however, his enemies are in the majority. It will take time, if ever, to transform those who have tasted blood and loved it, into a minority, a minority devoid of influence and voice.

After June 25, Mr Oshiomhole seems to have been born into a new realism. He sensed the futility of fighting the presidency, though he knew clearly that the president erred in siding with the amoral group that raised rebellion and fused it into a judicial bugaboo to overthrow him.

He, therefore, sensibly threw in his lot with the new reality, as objectionable and repugnant as it was.

He backed his own overthrow, he croaked despondently, and would continue to be loyal to both the party and the president.

Moreover, he also groaned, he had learnt a thing or two about partisan politics. He had been damned with faint praise by many in his corner, particularly from his state, Edo, but unlike his predecessor, John Odigie-Oyegun, who refused to reconcile himself to new realities, Mr Oshiomhole seems eager to prove that he will do nothing to upset the apple cart, nor take issue with the president’s inexplicable embrace of one side in the fray, the wrong side in fact.

Whether the APC caretaker convention committee likes it or not, Mr Oshiomhole will play a significant role in the election of a new NWC.

He is so naturally irrepressible. His enemies, who have begun to foment more trouble in the party with an eye on 2023, will keep an eye out for him, determined to match him plot for plot, and swagger for swagger.

But the former chairman has many things going for him, not least among which is his pluckiness; and he will continue to wage battle in the hills as well as in the valleys, incommoded by nothing, not even the sanguinary vista of spilled blood and strewn corpses.

He is not afraid, and he is never tired. Importantly too, he has a mind of his own. Such natural warriors always go the distance, except hobbled by illness. For such a man, setbacks are nothing but stepping stones.

The immediate task before Mr Oshiomhole is winning the Edo poll for the APC. He had backed the wrong horse in 2016, Godwin Obaseki, a short-sighted politician who feigns charisma.

Now, he is placing his wager where he should have placed it a long time ago, on Osagie Ize-Iyamu, a more natural politician and former charismatic youth leader.

Mr Obaseki has antagonised virtually everyone he could not afford to make an enemy in Edo, and has caused raised eyebrows in polite circles that now see him as a dictator devoid of the inspiring instinct of an administrator.

A larger portion of the state resent his obtruding nature and high-handed politics. But the wily Mr Obaseki, never known for restraint or the ability to carefully measure a response, has adamantly framed the coming plebiscite as one of fighting godfathers and freeing the resources of the state for the people.

His narrative will resonate. He has also attacked the APC campaign coordinators and singled some of them out for excoriation in billboard campaigns.

Mr Oshiomhole and his team must resist the temptation to be incensed. They have a majority of the electorate behind them.

They must, therefore, calibrate and time their responses, while not reducing the amperage of their campaign. Mr Obaseki has said and done few things wisely.

Mr Oshiomhole and his team must expose the governor’s obtuseness and folly as carefully and forcefully as they can. Above all, they must find fitting answers to the godfather accusation levelled by the governor and his team.

There is nothing to suggest that even if Mr Oshiomhole’s party loses the poll, as some APC governors indeed want in order to prove a point, his political coffin would be nailed, but it helps considerably should he and his party win.

The former chairman must have known by now that he has enemies in both the PDP, which he and his party will be facing in a matter of months, and the APC, which has in five dizzying years spawned a nest of adders so vicious and masochistic as to desire shooting themselves in the foot.

Between himself and his enemies who bested him a few weeks ago in the party’s NEC, Mr Oshiomhole is the more likeable person and politician.

He is not a dyed-in-the-wool godfather as some allege, and he is acutely aware that Mr Ize-Iyamu, a far better politician than Mr Obaseki, will as governor be even harder to control.

Mr Oshiomhole will nevertheless survive not only in the short run, despite being out of the party’s leadership, but also in the long run.

He is said to be brusque and in possession of a sharp tongue, but he is a consummate party man, hard working, fairly ideological, unlikely ever to defect simply because of a loss, and less vindictive and vengeful.

He needs Edo governorship victory to guarantee bouncing back. But he will bounce back regardless, for he is at bottom a good-natured man, one with such joie de vivre that he knew instinctively how to balance antagonistic forces during his labour union days, and ruled Edo sensibly and productively for two terms leaving indelible marks.