The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

  • Elitism, power and cowardice

    A book  launch  by  the    ruling  elites or  oligarchy  in Nigeria, a reluctance  to accept  defeat in the November 6 Mid Term primaries in  the  US,    a  statement  by the Governor  of Ekiti State  that  President  Muhammadu  Buhari  saved  the Yorubas from  political  oblivion  through  juicy  ministerial  appointments form  the kernel  of our discussion today. I  intend to show that these  events highlight in each unique  way  the manner  that the ruling class  in modern  societies cling to power  tenaciously and desperately in a way  and manner  that  beggars  description. Preservation  and survival are  the working slogans of global oligarchies  and we shall  show how  and why  in the last  week these  elites  overlook  any grievance, insults and misdemeanor as long as it does not threaten or  seek  to  withdraw  or dismantle their hold on power or  the status quo.

    We  start  with the book  launch  of Nigeria’s last  President, Goodluck  Jonathan  aptly  titled  -My  Transition  Hours ‘  attended by the ruling class in Nigeria and at which the Chairmen  of the two major  parties took  pictures  together  and  the Chairman of the occasion,  former  President  Olusegun  Obasanjo  asked Nigerians not to hand power over to thugs and hooligans. The  book itself  which  I have not read but have read about, was  really  about  how Jonathan took  the decision  to concede  defeat in  2015  after  the results showed  he  had  lost. And that  in the views of the Nigerian  ruling class    literally made him a prime candidate for the Nobel  Prize for  Peace in Nigeria. It  is a view point  that  I wish  to disagree with  and  go  on to call an act  of cowardice  that  lacks genuine leadership  credentials  of principle  and  responsibility. Indeed it is an abdication of power based on faulty intelligence which has been  used as a future  bargaining  chip  and I will  illustrate  with some portions of the book in the news media.

    According to the book the former Head of State  had gotten intelligence report that  hinted  that Nigeria would  have collapsed if he didn’t concede defeat. He  mentioned the riots that followed the results of the 2011  election that he won  and during which his opponent, now the incumbent president  had  said in 2013 that  the dogs  and the baboons  would  be soaked in blood if the outcome of the 2015  election was the same as 2011. Yet  the incumbent President was represented at the occasion by the Secretary  to the Government and  commended the author  of the book  the former President.  Again this is an author who  while in office diverted  arms  funds meant to fight Boko  Haram to  campaign purposes and whose  aides  and accomplices  are facing  various court  cases to explain their source of funds. Also  according to  Kashim  Shettima, the Governor  of Borno State  who called the book ‘an elementary  book of fiction’ Jonathan  did  not act on a report of  an inquiry set up by himself on the abducted Chibok girls which  indicted him and his advisers and aides of negligence  and inaction on initial intelligence  warnings on the Chibok  girls abduction.

    So  how  can a leader whose administration used security  funds  for campaign, and mishandled the Chibok  abduction  suddenly  become  a hero  because he  conceded defeat in an  election in which he said in the same book  that  there were justifiable  grounds  for him to  reject  the  results  but he was determined  that Nigeria  would not  disintegrate  under  his watch. Which  simply says  that he  had put  personal  achievement over what  is right  and just,  to preserve  the status  quo , which

    is the objective  of all oligarchs  and elites globally.

    In  the US Mid  Term elections history  would  have been  made if Stacy  Abrams, the Democratic Party  candidate,  a woman  had won the Governorship elections but  that was not  to  be . Of  relevance to our discussion here is that even  after a recount the  loser refused  to concede  defeat and congratulate the so  called  winner and  insisted  that  there  was no  legitimacy  in the  victory. She has been deemed as not politically  correct in her position but  I see her view  point. The  flaw  in the  electoral  arrangement favored her opponent  Brian  Kemp  a Republican who  was Secretary of State for Georgia and whose office was in charge of elections but  who  did not resign that office  while contesting for the office of governor with her. That  too  was like was being a judge in one’s case and is a clear  case of conflict  of interest  and her decision not to concede,  but  to  hurl  the charge of illegitimacy  instead  at the result,  is not only  justifiable but  bold and in the public interest.

    We  now  look at  the statement credited to the Ekiti  State Governor Kayode  Fayemi  that but for the President in Aso  Villa Muhammadu Buhari, the Yorubas of the Southwest  would have gone into political oblivion.  According to him Buhari gave Yorubas people the key Minsteries of Power, Housing and Works, and Health to Yorubas. and the Yorubas of the Southwest should reward him with  reelection. Which  to  me is quite logical  and acceptable  and  which  showed like I said last week  that  tribalism  would play a huge part in this 2019  elections.  Actually  Governor Fayemi is  a blessed oligarch of the APC mould who  has known the dark  and sweet uses of  Federal  might in the way he lost  and regained power in the State House  at  Ado  Ekiti.  Of course  his opponent and sparing partner  in their two Rumble  in the Jungle,  Ayo  Fayose now knows all that glitters is not gold  and that No  Condition is Permanent. Once again, long live the Federal Republic  of Nigeria.

  • Eyes on football, not religion

    Ahmed Musa has shown the kind of leader he is. He leads by example on the field of play by scoring goals. Ignore the fact that Bakary Gassama, the centre referee in Saturday’s game at the FNB Stadium, Johannesburg allowed one of the assistant referees to mislead him into disallowing a goal scored by Musa. Off the pitch, Musa joins his mates in celebrating after victories and reminiscing on unfavourable results. Fans should not mix sports with religion.

    When players celebrate, the motive of their victory songs is to rejoice and thank God (for the Christians) and Allah (for the Moslems). For Musa, the songs are celebratory, so he dances with his mates. He mimes the words as others sing along, that is if he doesn’t know the songs. Back home, Nigerians continue the celebration into the night, especially if the teams defeated are the Black Stars of Ghana, Indomitable Lions of Cameroon or Cote d’ Ivoire – these are our rivals in the continent.

    The Eagles stand-in captain shared a video of himself and other stars rejoicing after they were held to a 1-1 draw in the match played on Saturday. But a fan of the Al Nassr of Saudi Arabia’s striker, musaumarsaid1348 posted a message reminding Musa about his faith.

    “Don’t forget you are a Muslim,” the Instagram user said.

    But the ex-Leicester City star, who was visibly upset, wasn’t having it. Musa set the record straight by telling the fan not to bring any form of religion on his page.

    “Don’t come to my page and talk about religion. Take it out of my page please. I do what I like, not you telling me what to okay. Keep it to yourself if you are not okay with what I’m doing,” he added.

    Will anyone blame Musa for dancing to Christian songs when two-thirds of his team mates are Christians? The Christian worship songs were sung in our major languages. It was a spectacle to hold on television. I was bowled over watching Gernot Rohr’s assistants, the Germans, clapping, singing and dancing along.  So, what was wrong with Musa’s participation if foreigners enjoyed what they were witnessing? The beauty of dancing sessions in sports is that all faith have their songs. And it is always nice dancing to them if each faith is represented in the team.

    Musa, who is from Edo State, has a Moslem upbringing. He doesn’t hide the fact that he isn’t Hausa, even though he speaks the language as fluently as the native speaker. Besides, Nigeria is a secular nation. In fact, in sports, it doesn’t matter where you come from, your creed or beliefs; what matters is your talent. It is only during sporting activities that Nigerians forget creed or religion. We embrace ourselves when our teams and athletes win laurels just as we stand up to recite our national anthem before major events.

    Interestingly, the Bafana Bafana game had many twists and turns, one of which was the little South African boy, who wasn’t interested in Saturday’s game. He wanted to see, touch and talk with an Arsenal FC of London player, Nigeria’s Alex Iwobi. No prize for guessing that this kid supported Super Eagles against Bafana Bafana. What won’t fans do for their clubs and players? Age isn’t any restriction. It was moving watching the boy shed tears of joy of meeting Iwobi. He was fulfilled that Iwobi autographed his jersey – a lifetime experience. That he came with his mother shows how passionately the game is being followed globally.

    This writer isn’t quick to complain about refereeing of matches. What we see on television at home are all the angles from slow motion replays, which the referees don’t have. Referees’ decisions are taken on the spur of the moment, even as this shouldn’t be why they can’t make the right decisions. What is intriguing is if the referee could have apologised to Musa. No referee apologises to any player after a game. An admittance of error to a player won’t be taken lightly by the continental soccer body.

    I’ve read Musa’s response to the so-called apology and nowhere did he refer to where they met before the apology was made. Nor did he tell us what the referee wrote or said that precipitated his response.

    “I will say that it was good that he realised his mistakes and apologised for his action and it is past tense for me,’’ Musa was quoted as saying.

    “The major thing is that we have qualified for AFCON for the first time since 2013 and we are delighted about that. I don’t see any big deal about that because our emphasis was on playing at the Africa Cup of Nations and now that we have qualified, we are relieved.

    “I am not worried that I was not able to score because we didn’t lose and we have got our hearts’ desires with the ticket to Cameroon. We know that it is time now for serious preparations and that is what we are after now.”

    Clearly, Musa was responding to what he read. I digress.

    No surprises that Eagles’ admirers always want the team to win matches, hence the barren draw result against the Cranes of Uganda elicited some harsh comments from them. Many felt that the players didn’t show enough enthusiasm to win the game. A few ex-internationals such as Victor Nosakhare Ikpeba, a former Africa Footballer of the Year, felt Gernot Rohr should scout for good midfielders – that section was weak due to Wilfred Ndidi’s absence.

    Ikpeba posited: “The transition of this team from the midfield to the attack remains the weakest link. We are not quick enough. If we get our transition right, we will be unbeatable in Cameroon.

    “We will be a threat in Cameroon with the qualities we have, but we must be ready. Egypt, Mali, Senegal, Tunisia are there; they will be there to compete. We have to do well in Cameroon after missing out on two editions. (But) winning the AFCON will be difficult and I think the last four will be a good outing for the Super Eagles.”

    Indeed, one of the assistant coaches, goalkeeper trainer Alloy Agu revealed: “We’ve set a precedence in the Super Eagles such that any of the goalkeepers can come in and do well for Nigeria.”

    “That was what Ikechukwu Ezenwa did for Nigeria in South Africa. You saw Daniel Akpeyi do it also against the Cranes of Uganda. So, it is not something that we should begin to say Super Eagles felt the absence of Francis (Uzoho) in South Africa.

    “No, his absence did not affect the team. But truth is that he is a good goalkeeper, a fantastic one for that matter. He is still part of the team. He has done very well for the team and we are praying for him to recover and come back. But if there is any player the team felt his absence in the match (vs South Africa), it is (Wilfred) Ndidi, Agu.”

    Will Rohr tell Nigerians next year that the Eagles are a work-in-progress, considering the time he has spent with them? We need to see Eagles play with plenty of understanding. We should sit anywhere in the world and watch the team devour countries not in our class. Fans are not asking for too much, if they felt the Eagles should beat the Cranes of Uganda – even as we have not beaten the Ugandans in recent times.

    No Eagles team has enjoyed the kind of exposure to bigger friendly matches which Rohr’s has. In the past, friendly games were mostly played in the media.

    Gallant Super Falcons

    Super Falcons and other female Nigerian sides are magicians. Every time they attend competitions, I root for them, knowing what failure means to them. Our girls are on their own when there are no international competitions. We only remember them when an event beckons.

    Falcons, for instance, have been inactive since they clinched the trophy two years ago. In the lull period of close to two years, other countries exposed their girls to rigourous training, including playing quality matches, a case in point being Bayana Bayana of South Africa.

    It, therefore, hasn’t come as a surprise to pundits that Bayana Bayana beat the Falcons in the opening game. Rather, this writer is excited that the South Africans are changing the narrative in women football in Africa, with the way they trounced Equatorial Guinea 7-1 to show that their victory over Nigeria wasn’t a fluke. I won’t be surprised if the South Africans start the first professional female soccer competition in the continent.

    We need  a new approach to female football in Africa, which the emergence of South Africa could bring to the game. Nigeria’s dominance has translated to nothing, largely because we have a system where the sports minister thinks developing the industry through the involvement of the corporate world is a mirage.

    A situation where the minister doesn’t watch matches involving our national teams explains why these teams are cash-strapped. It is important to inform the minister that these teams hoist our green-white-green flag during competitions. When they win, they make Nigerians happy. The teams are not for NFF but Nigeria. It is shameful when the international media is awash with stories of Nigerian players being owed huge sums of money.

  • Buhari’s next level through Fashola’s prism

    Works and Housing minister, Babatunde Fashola, and Transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi, are among the most ingenious of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministers in selling his re-election ambition. This of course is not to discount the combative, wholehearted and aggressive marketing embarked upon by the national chairman of the ruling party, Adams Oshiomhole. But in sheer ingenuity, few ministers can hold the candle to Messrs Fashola and Amaechi. Whereas some ministers and supporters constrain their enthusiasm in a manner that indicates their inner doubts and perhaps too the pawky caution intellectuals are accustomed to, the two ministers let go with a fervency that is at once troubling and infectious.

    Mr Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers State, is used to the animated display of enthusiasm, an attribute that helped him, in his second term especially, battle his political opponents in the years of rebellion against the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. It is not surprising that he is bringing those attributes in the service of the Buhari presidency, particularly the president’s re-election ambition. Mr Fashola’s charismatic style is harder to explain. But notwithstanding his aloofness, the Works minister’s rhetorical flourish and preachy and didactic manners are as beguiling as Mr Amaechi’s earthy humour and accessible style.

    On Tuesday, however, Mr Fashola took the liberty of unfurling, with panache and logic, a verbal treatise on President Buhari’s second term ambition which his watchers found truly confounding. He used to act as a technocrat, and administer as a disinterested ruler. Now, finding himself having to prove his political skills, he has begun to act thoroughly involved, eager and even remorseless.  His new form came to the fore early in the week when he inaugurated some 5,000 foot soldiers for the Buhari/Osinbajo campaign in Lagos. During the ceremony, he needed to tackle a few knotty political questions. Hard-pressed to explain why there seemed to be a dissonance between the APC’s promise of change in 2015 and the seeming lack of change today, the minister averred that although the APC promised change in 2014, the party did not promise to do it in four years. Brilliant sophistry. And recognising that the Southwest could once again determine the outcome of the presidential election, he threw a bait to the Yoruba, suggesting that the re-election of Buhari would guarantee that power would come to the Southwest in 2023.

    Mr Fashola said much more. Hear him: “As a Southwest indigene, I will vote for the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket because my people stand to gain more from it. The Southwest is currently occupying the position of the vice president. We have three sitting ministers and many different federal appointments from the present administration which we cannot afford to lose…The APC has done more in three years than 16 years of PDP administration, yet they say president Buhari is too slow. President Buhari is taking Nigeria to the next level. We are going to the next level. The 2019 presidential election is a choice between going back and moving forward to the next level and also a choice of whom Nigerians can trust with their money. Buhari has inaugurated a structural infrastructure fund for road construction. N15 billion has been released for the continued construction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway.”

    Mr Fashola’s logic is both faultless and irresistible. The PDP is still in a quandary just how much concession to make to the Southwest. They have talked of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), but little else thought to be of any serious significance. The presidential and vice presidential positions, should the PDP win, will go to the Northeast and Southeast. So, Mr Fashola’s reminder may help jog the memory of his fellow south-westerners to remember what they would lose should they take their 2019 balloting decision with levity. Undoubtedly, the Southwest will do a cost-benefit analysis in order to determine how they would vote, whether to stick to their current gains or hanker after the birds in the bush.

    It is, however, unlikely that the Works minister does not recognise the implication of reducing both the presidency and the decision about whom to vote for to the crass politics of distributing political pork. It is untrue that the APC has done in three years more than the PDP in 16 years, as Mr Fashola asserted. But, really, how can anyone challenge the incontrovertible fact that the Southwest has gained much more under this administration than it gained under the three PDP administrations of the past 16 years? If regional gains are all politics is about, then the Southwest will find little difficulty in voting for President Buhari next year. But if far more noble and lasting benefits are considered — and the Southwest has the depth to expertly make the right assessments — they are unlikely to find it easy to do what both Mr Fashola and Mr Amaechi expect of the electorate, particularly the Southwest voters.

    But the Works minister can take consolation in the fact that no matter how cracked his prism is, the Southwest is not the only region trapped in the sectional mindset. Both the North and the Southeast have also immersed themselves in sectional calculations, computing just what they stand to gain as the gravy train rumbles on over Nigeria’s rough and treacherous political and economic terrains. They recognise the more ennobling virtue of seeking and fighting for the national interest, but they lack the foresight and discipline to include that interest in their politicking. There is indeed little anyone can do, as far as the 2019 elections are concerned, to rouse Nigerians to higher ideals. If, as the APC and PDP leaders have shown, their leaders are shamelessly not encumbered by issues of national interests, and if in their short-sightedness these leaders cannot envision how that noble interest can deliver high positions and immediate pecuniary benefits to them, it is pointless preaching to the already damned ordinary voter to beware of their own private and ignoble interests.

    It is not clear who Mr Fashola was addressing when he spoke that Tuesday about voting President Buhari so that the Southwest could retake the presidency in 2023. The Southeast is desperate for the prize; a few ambitious politicians in some zones in the North hanker after it; and the so-called minorities also pant for it, believing that they are best placed to look selflessly after the national interest in the most patriotic and unaffected way. The pro-Buhari/Osinbajo campaigners whom Mr Fashola addressed can hardly be bothered about his 2023 calculations. On the contrary, it is a calculation Mr Fashola probably designed for politicians like himself. His principal, whom he is campaigning for, never respected zoning in all his attempts at the presidency. So, come 2023, the elections are likely to become an all-comers’ affair. They will not be circumscribed by the politics of Elections 2019.

    What is most probably true is that for politicians like Messrs Fashola, Amaechi, Oshiomhole, and other top APC leaders eager to get President Buhari re-elected, their own interests are more at stake than any other thing, not whether the APC government returns to office in 2019 to complete projects. Indeed, for most of them the prospect of leaving office and sinking into the gruelling nothingness some of their colleagues have found themselves is too depressing and damning to contemplate. They will, therefore, go at this presidential election hammer and tongs. They will not contemplate any other outcome but victory, and no other fate but one that does not injure their person and future. Yes, Mr Fashola’s prism may be cracked, but as far as he knows, no cracks are visible, and his vision and perspective cannot be more peerless and immaculate than any he has ever taken advantage of.

  • Unequal partnership

    Can there be any meaningful logical or empirical basis for a comparative analysis of the relative endowments of the United States of America (USA) and Nigeria with a view to assessing the political, social, economic, cultural, military and strategic relationship between both countries and the implications for the international geo-political system of which they are a part? Viewed from the prism of the contemporary situation of the two polities, most Nigerians would readily disavow the usefulness or validity of any such comparative exercise believing that their country is too far below the rungs of the ladder on which nation states are ranked relative to the United States.

    Considering the unequalled global military might of the USA, her enormous resource endowment and phenomenal economic capacity, prodigious industrial and agricultural productivity, her technological prowess and innovative dexterity as well as her unrivalled geo-strategic reach, it is not surprising that most Nigerians would tend to relate to the global superpower with a feeling of deep seated inferiority. To compound matters, the resilience of America’s democracy and the solidity of her political institutions have been vividly demonstrated in recent times by the capability of that polity to withstand and resist the relentless effort of President Donald Trump, by the sheer unorthodoxy of his style, to circumvent time tested values, structures, processes and norms that have served America well for over two centuries.

    This is in sharp contrast to Nigeria’s largely dysfunctional and often unstable polity, fragile democratic culture, debilitating economic dependency, inchoate nationhood and security vulnerability among other debilities. From this perspective, it is all too easy to presume that there is really nothing to be gained by a comparative analysis of the relationship between the two countries. After all, America is today a virtually stand-alone global economic, military and political behemoth; Nigeria a once upon a time self-advertised giant of Africa alas with feet of clay!

    Yet, in his newly published book, ‘The Political Economy of Nigeria-United States Relations’, Dr. Dapo Thomas, a senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Relations of the Lagos State University, (LASU), meticulously examines the multi-dimensional relationship between the two countries right from the pre-colonial through the colonial and post-independence periods providing useful insights and pointing out pertinent lessons that can guide the future theory and practice of Nigerian foreign policy.

    In six chapters and six appendices covering 258 pages, Dr. Thomas delves into an insightful theoretical discussion and theoretical analysis of the asymmetrical relations between Nigeria and the United States, historical and conceptual reflections on Nigeria-US relations as well as offering a reflective mirror into the evolution of the unequal relationship between the two countries. The book is further enriched by discussions on the strategic configurations of unequal partnership between the two countries particularly in the political and military spheres in addition to a close examination of the economic relations between both polities.

    One critical point that is poignantly made in this important book is that if Nigeria is today at a grossly disadvantaged, unequal, subservient and helplessly dependent position in its relationship to the US, it is not because it has been so divinely ordained by the gods. Rather, Nigeria’s inexcusably weak position in the international political economy relative to the US and other major world powers is largely a function of her reckless squandering of past opportunities and resources to strengthen and consolidate her once respected position in the world community as a notable African regional super power.

    In his words, “I tried to explain how Nigeria’s lack of seriousness and policy discipline caused it a prime position in the comity of nations. Interestingly, corruption was seen as an issue that made the difference between the two countries. If, as at today, Nigeria cannot call US bluff in some of the issues where there are fundamental disagreements, it is because it had failed to exploit some obvious advantages in the relations. In spite of Nigeria’s substantial export of petroleum products to the United States of America, it did not transform its relations of dependency to interdependency”.

    The author points out that in the immediate post-independence period, Nigeria and the US maintained cordial relations characterized by mutual respect. For instance, when Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, visited the US between July 24 and August 1, 1961, he was accorded the honour of addressing a joint session of the United States Congress on July 26. The harmonious relationship between the two countries was partly due to the fact that the Balewa administration’s conservative ideological posture tallied with the US’s policy of containing and preventing the spread of the Soviet Union’s ‘communist influence’ across the world.

    This was despite the fact that key influence groups in Nigeria including students and radical youth movements, trade union organizations and even the main opposition political party, the Action Group (AG), exhibited a soft spot for the Eastern ideological bloc partly because of the radical anti-colonial posture of the latter.

    The discovery of oil in Nigeria and the subsequent phenomenal oil wealth, the popular ‘oil boom’ that this brought Nigeria, had significant implications for Nigeria – US relations. Perhaps the most significant development in this regard was the key role that the new wealth enabled Nigeria to play in the struggle for the independence of Southern African countries like Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique from the clutches of colonialism as well as the eventual collapse of apartheid rule in South Africa.

    It was at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Addis Ababa, on January 11, 1976, that the Nigerian military Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, delivered his great speech titled ‘Africa Has Come of Age’ that mobilized African countries decisively to rise against the US’s pernicious pro-Portuguese position in Angola, Mozambique and the rest of Southern Africa. In the run up to the Summit, the US had intensely lobbied African countries to support the pro-imperialist UNITA and FNLA as against the popular and revolutionary MPLA to form the immediate post-independence government in Angola. Nigeria was unflagging in giving staunch support to the MPLA. Before the summit, most African countries were geared towards towing the line preferred by the US as was always the case in the past.

    Murtala Mohammed’s fiery speech in Addis Ababa changed the scenario dramatically. Laying down his military cap, his eyes flaming red, the Nigerian Head of State rose to declare famously, “Africa has come of age. It is no longer under the orbit of any extra continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country no matter how powerful. The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or to mar. For too long have we been kicked around: for too long have we been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly. For too long has it been presumed that the African needs outside ‘experts’ to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies. The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves; that we know our interests and how to protect those interests; that we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers which, more often than not, have no relevance for us, nor for the problem at hand”.

    It was a golden moment for Nigeria’s Afro-centric foreign policy. Needless to say, the MPLA formed the new postliberation government in Angola. Decisive economic action by the Obasanjo administration in 1978 against British oil and banking interests in Nigeria also compelled the British authorities to agree to conditions that ultimately led to the independence of Zimbabwe. Is the contemporary supine and servile foreign policy of Nigeria as regards the US and major world powers solely a function of the economic crisis attendant on the decline of oil revenues as a mainstay in global diplomacy? Not entirely. It is also a function of the dearth of bold, visionary and patriotic leadership.

    In this tour de force in comparative international relations analysis, Dr. Thomas casts informative light on diverse factors relevant to Nigeria – US relations including the Nigerian civil war, the phenomenon of corruption as per the Halliburton scandal etc, the rise of post-apartheid South Africa, the crisis attendant on the annulment of the June 12 election and the issue of asylum for former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor among several others.

    He notes pertinently that “…the Nigerian state is endowed with immense natural and human resources capable of reducing the level of disparity between it and the United States and also make it a dominant power in the world. Even if it seems an unattainable feat to match the US strength for strength or wits for wits, the possibility of transforming to a nation to reckon with or a nation to fear should not be discountenanced…The Iranian government has demonstrated one thing with its current face-off with the US and other powers. And that is asymmetrical relationship should not be an excuse for weak nations to submit themselves to the eternal manipulation and domination of strong nations”.

  • Southeast’s problematic approach to 2019

    Despite Governor Rochas Okorocha’s warnings and fears, the Igbo leaders from the five Southeast states who met in Enugu on Wednesday had the right and justification to endorse the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket of Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, and Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor. What is controversial, however, is whether that right and that justification amounted, in combination, to wisdom. Almost immediately, Mr Okorocha, the Imo State governor and founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), responded to the Southeast leaders’ endorsements by suggesting to them that they were both incautious and indiscriminate in their endorsements. He argued further that the leaders appeared to be putting all their eggs in one basket as they did in 2015. But had they endorsed the APC presidential ticket of Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo, nothing suggests that the Imo governor would have chafed at the move.

    The Southeast leaders who met in Enugu to discuss the place and future of the Igbo in Nigeria constituted a broad spectrum of Igbo elders and statesmen, of course minus their wary and often fearfully cautious governors. Egged on by the impassioned plea of elder statesman and eminent law professor, Ben Nwabueze, 86, who asked the elders to honour his age by working for the success of the Atiku-Obi ticket, the gathering seemed to believe that this time, unlike 2015, they could pull off the impossible. Speaker after speaker whooped enthusiastically for the ticket, suggesting that its success might bring the alienation of the Igbo to an end. In general terms, they expect without saying so that the Igbo should take advice from the resolutions of what they described as their non-partisan meeting in Enugu. Even Mr Okorocha knows that the meeting was probably more representative of the Igbo than his own camp of tentative ideologues.

    However, the Enugu resolution is more revelatory of the problem with the Igbo political logic than indicative of either their common purpose or their overall objective. Consider the following excerpt from the communiqué: “…The summit deliberated on the state of Ndigbo in Nigeria today, especially after years of exclusion from the centre.  This country has never been so divided as it is today. We Igbos have always yearned for a level playing field with justice, equity and fairness. The summit recognised the nomination of His Excellency Mr. Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State, as the vice presidential candidate of the PDP and fully endorses this nomination. It was acknowledged that this nomination puts Ndigbo back in the centre of governance.  It is, therefore, important that Ndigbo should rally behind the Atiku/Obi ticket. We identify with the Atiku/Peter Obi ticket on the restructuring agenda as has been reiterated by four zones of the country, namely: South-South, Southwest, North Central and Southeast. We believe that as long as the federating units remain weak the centre will continue to be weak. We equally move to appreciate the position of the Atiku/Obi ticket in promoting national unity. In conclusion, the summit reiterated that the time is now for Ndigbo to mobilise and organise effectively to realise the Atiku/Obi ticket. We are not campaigning against anybody, we are simply campaigning for our very survival. Igbo votes must count wherever Ndigbo live in Nigeria.”

    On the surface, the main trigger for the Igbo disaffection is their alienation. That alienation is real and cannot be disputed. Even Mr Okorocha knows this as well. It is indeed doubtful whether any Nigerian but the most rabidly sectionalist will dispute that under the Buhari presidency in particular, the Igbo have been marginalised and alienated. So, no concrete steps have been taken to lessen the alienation, nor to heal the deep wounds of the 1967-1970 civil war, not to talk of finding ways and formulae to integrate the Southeast seamlessly, continuously and permanently into the system. The divisions have been accentuated, have become more noticeable in the past three years, and there does not seem to be any hope that soon the fractiousness and chaotic approach to socio-economic and political integration would be straightened out.

    Furthermore, the Enugu meeting also correctly identified the urgent need for restructuring, given the political imbalance and disarticulation an untenable structure has horribly engendered. That the Atiku-Obi ticket promised to address the restructuring agitation undoubtedly and unavoidably holds some appeal to the Southeast. In the face of APC dithering over the question of restructuring, not to talk of the implacable opposition of the president to anything that would as much as give a hint of even tinkering with the country’s wobbly structure, it is only natural that the Southeast would gravitate towards the Atiku-Obi ticket, regardless of Mr Okorocha’s hysterical denunciations. In addition, whether the APC likes it or not, or whether the PDP is able to grab the chance to do something about the controversy or not, the restructuring controversy will only die when something concrete has been done to exorcise the ghost of imbalance from the body politic. The Enugu meeting was, therefore, not opportunistic, self-serving or irrational in putting the interests of the Igbo or their region ahead of any other consideration.

    But the Enugu resolutions were also revelatory in a disturbing and unflattering way. In their communiqué, the Southeast leaders painted a picture of an alienated region that must single-mindedly look out for number one. They hoped to advance that interest by promoting the candidature of Mr Obi, over which they exulted. Why they equate the promotion of their regional interests with the promotion of the political career of a politician from the region is hard to say or defend. It is uncertain that such equalisation or conflation even makes sense. The effort falls dismally into the same trap that has held Nigeria captive for the past five decades or more, wherein regardless of the incompetence of the president, his failings are excused by his tribesmen. Could the Southeast, which has produced some of Nigeria’s notable statesmen and intellectuals not find — and verbally promote — refuge in a ticket that appears competent, ideological, and patriotic, whether Igbo or not?

    There is of course nothing to indicate that the Buhari-Osinbajo is more competent or ideological than the Atiku-Obi ticket. What is dangerously amiss is the grounds upon which the Southeast leaders base their infatuations. Whether it is obvious to them or not, they seem to be promoting the same insularity and clannishness the Buhari presidency has found so natural and comfortable to exhibit and adulate. If the Southeast wishes to replace the ruling party because of the latter’s dangerous failings, it must take care to promote that noble objective in ways that elevate their region and the nation as a whole. The Buhari-Osinbajo ticket is not even a tad ideological, and does not possess the nobility of purpose a driven nation must promote as its lodestar, but neither the Southeast nor the Atiku-Obi ticket has proven that it is inspired by a greater sense of nobility and purpose than those of the party they seek to replace.

    It is perhaps too late to persuade the Southeast to vote APC in the next presidential election. Nothing Mr Okorocha does or says will deliver the Igbo votes to the ruling party. As a matter of fact, almost from the beginning, the Buhari presidency had seemed to write off the Southeast as a factor in their quest for a second term. Having been consigned willy-nilly to the opposition, the Southeast has taken the natural and most plausible course of embracing the Atiku-Obi ticket to actualise its ambitions and yearnings. Nigerians had hoped that those ambitions and yearnings would be undergirded by principles and values that are hard to impeach, let alone gainsay: values that bring out the best in the Igbo, principles that do justice to their huge contributions to the nation and the continent, and logic that do not give dark hints to other nationalities that the Igbo votes outside the Southeast  could be used conspiratorially and disingenuously to affect outcomes in ways that irritate and provoke host communities. The Southeast is far better and more endowed than the politics it is playing.

  • Campaigns, issues and leadership

    Elections are  the engine room and raw meat of  democracy  and the quest  or competition for  power. Those seeking political  offices are  invariably    so desperate for power  that they can be compared to the brood of chicken following the little boy dishing out grains for the birds at dawn at farms all  over the world. Imagine the way the chicks rush  in the direction of the feeder’s   throws  of corn  and you will  understand the frenzy of politicians in searching frantically for where the corn or grain will land so that they can swallow before others and go on  looking for more grains  to fortify themselves  for the day  and the future contest   for  power. Such  is the competition for  power in all  political  systems   and today  we shall  look  at  the signals, and    the  issues that  political  leaders face in their quest  to fortify each  other so that that they can outpace and   outrun other  contestants  and  snatch  the grain of power  during campaigns and elections.

    Today  however  we do this  by looking at  some personalities in the war front of leadership of political  parties seeking  power  first in Nigeria and all  over the world.  In  Nigeria we  look at the two presidential  candidates that have emerged from the two  political parties  and their prospects in the 2019  presidential elections. We  examine  the spat  between the Senate President and the Chairman of the ruling APC  and wonder at their mutual animosity   and   conclusion that  the other is not fit to hold his position on moral  grounds. We venture  overseas  and look at how  the French President talked  down  at his American counterpart  at an event  in France  to  mark 100  years  since the end of the First  World War  in which  they both  fought  together  on the same side.

    First  let  us look at  the chances  and the credentials of the two  aspirants that emerged  from the presidential  primaries  of the  two  major  parties  namely President  Muhammadu  Buhari  of the ruling APC and  Alhaji  Abubakar  Atiku  of the  PDP  which  lost the 2015 presidential  election to the PDP. The  incumbent  president’s  main  electoral  asset  has been his reputation for discipline, asceticism, and integrity. He  has  been on the seat for three years  and is confident he  has done enough to be re  elected.

    His  opponent Alhaji  Atiku  is not a stranger  to power  having been Vice  President to President Olusegun Obasanjo  for  eight  years. Obasanjo  called him names before but  has now  endorsed him  just as he endorsed  Buhari  before  and has now  forsaken  him for   the  2019 election.  The  two running mates for the presidential  candidates  are Christians namely Prof  Yemi  Osinbajo  for the APC  and Peter  Obi  for the PDP. Osinbajo  is from  the Southwest, Ogun  state  to be specific  and was a long serving Attorney General  for Nigeria’s  foremost and  viable state,  Lagos  state,  which  is also the only state that experts say can  afford the 30000 naira  minimum wage if it is approved.  Peter  Obi  too was a successful governor  of Anambra  state  with  a reputation for prudence and integrity. What  is interesting is that the Igbos  at a meeting    said to be none partisan  have now endorsed  the Atiku  candidacy  for president on account  of his choice of an Igbo  man  to be his running mate in 2019. Which  is quite  significant  given the fact  that the Igbos, like  their rivals for power,  the Yorubas,  have never put their eggs in one basket  in their quest  for federal  power  which is the most  attractive  of the power structures in Nigeria’s  volatile democracy.

    The  Igbo endorsement  must bother  the APC or  they  will  be   like  the proverbial ostrich  with its head buried in the sand. This is because the Igbos  are   homogenous in terms of two  cultural  factors namely religion and language and in addition are well  travelled and dispersed all  over  Nigeria    and  have  large  presence globally  in diaspora. They  will  be a formidable electoral  asset  to Atiku  and  potent threat   to the APC  and the incumbent president in  2019. That  is one scenario  the APC electoral  eggheads must strategise   to  overcome. Whether  that will  raise  the specter of  tribalism in the competition for  power in 2019  is    a question begging for an answer. For  the Igbos  however  the die is cast  and Atiku  is their  champion  and good luck to them.

    Let  us now look at the verbal  gymnastics between the Senate  President Dr  Bukola  Saraki  and the APC  Chairman,  Adams  Oshiomole. The  APC  Chairman  even before  the brouhaha  that dogged  his handling of the  APC primaries  nationwide had  always  promised  that since the Senate President defected to the PDP  he  has no moral right to remain in office. Now  after the primaries  the  Senate  President now Director General  for the Atiku Campaign has  countered   that  the given  the allegations of corruption and irregularities leveled  against the APC  Chairman, he has no moral  grounds to remain  in office    as  well. But really  what are the facts on this cross  accusations on moral  grounds?. Let  us look  at  the case of the senate president as well  as his credentials before  defection.

    Undoubtedly  the Senate  President pulled  the rugs from under the feet of the APC  government  right  from day one in government. He  became President of the Senate   by default  and with  the collusion  of the PDP  and  with the benefit of hindsight,  his defection was a logical  progression. The  moral  lesson there is political  treachery  although   the punishment  ordained by  the APC  Chairman has  become an  illusion and the APC has  become like a  dog barking at the moon  in getting the  defected APC President of the Senate  removed. That  is the reality of the situation the APC Chairman  must learn  to fight or be forced  to live with.

    In  the case  of the APC  Chairman, he must  by now  know that those  who  live in glass  houses do not throw  stones.  He  should know  this  as a seasoned  and experienced trade unionist  and former  governor  of a politically  volatile  and combustible state. He  has  now seen that Lagos, Ogun  and  Imo  states  are  more  charged and  more  connected  than  the state  he left  as a powerful  godfather and kingmaker. Indeed  the comparison of what happened in Lagos and Ogun states will  be an  albatross  on the neck of the APC Chairman    in  terms  of  consistency  and integrity  in the conduct  of primaries in the APC  for  a long time. We  are watching to see  how the Eagle  will  land in this ding dong battle between  the APC  Chairman  and the elusive and mercurial  Senate  President.

    Finally  we  look  at  the event in Paris where former  enemies  and allies convened to mark the 100 year anniversary of the  end of the First  World  War from 1914 – 1918. At  the event in which many world leaders were  present,  the French President Emmanuel  Macron  denounced Nationalism  as an insult  to Patriotism and there  was no denying  that he was talking down  at the American President  Donald  Trump who  was present at  the occasion  and  who  recently admitted  he is a Nationalist. Trust the US president however  to live  to his billing in response. Donald  Trump tweeted that  but   for the intervention of the US the French  had been  subdued  and were learning German, the language of their oppressors   before  the US  joined the war  and changed  French  fortunes. Which  really is tit for tat   in  terms  of the abusive  diplomacy  that both presidents  were peddling  in quite an undiplomatic manner.  But  then   I call  for restraint on both sides  on account of historical  lessons.

    What caused  the first  World War  was an assassination of a visiting Grand Duke to Bosnia Hercegovina  and the assassin  was  a Serb. The  violence by Serbs against Bosnian  Muslims in the break up of  Yugoslavia years  later still  had echoes of the violent death of Archduke  Ferdinand in Saravejo  in  1914. It  is  not far  from the murder   this year  and quite  recently   of the Saudi journalist Kasshogi  in the Saudi  Arabia  embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, 100 years after the end of a brutal  war  that started with an  assassination.  World leaders   surely   need  to learn  from history  and watch  their language  so  that they  do  not lead  to  wars, assassinations  or the murder of journalists in foreign embassies. Once  again, long  live the Federal Republic  of Nigeria.

  • Cultivating the nurseries

    Each time we prosecute our football matches in the last two decades with mostly the ‘’foreign legion’’, I wonder if our soccer administrators appreciate the damage they do to the ‘’beautiful’’ game. Our administrators see soccer development from the prism of participating in competitions outside the country. No programmes to catch the talents young, train and retrain the coaches for a workable template. For them, success is wining trophies, even if the players come from the moon. No surprise the dearth of competitions here.

    We have relied so much on the ‘’foreign legion’’ that is doesn’t matter if kids from Europe populate our age grade teams. We must not win age grade competitions. We should de-emphasise winning, even though it is the ultimate. We should insist on getting kids who can return to the grassroots to serve as icons for others to emulate. Otherwise, we may get the ‘’foreign legion’’ as administrators of our sports to drive home the point.

    There is the need to ask these administrators where those countries get the talents we scramble for to change their nationality. We are experts in spotting Nigeria-born kids, forgetting that they evolved from a planned system, which isn’t alien to us. In those countries, there are established academies at the grassroots where these young boys and girls are introduced to the game usually under neighbourhood schemes. Hence, when such talents blossom, the neighbourhood is proud of them as they return to be celebrated.

    Nigeria has perhaps one of the best records at the U-17 cadre, yet only the exceptional ones actualise their dreams of playing professional soccer in Europe. These players’ movements are frequent among those who headed straight to the European market after the World Cup feats. The unlucky bunch return to our domestic leagues to rot out of existence.

    We have lost budding talents to mismanagement, even after the Federal Government had directed that their future be nurtured by past soccer federations. Our administrators bask in the euphoria of being recognised in the world, leaving the game’s development on the lurch for shylock European scouts to exploit to the disadvantage of our young ones.

    Civilised countries develop their sports through the neighbourhood system where facilities are built to engage the youth and push them away from social vices. Nurseries serve as the bases for storing the data of those discovered. Such information help to nurture and monitor the good ones to stardom. Besides, nurseries lay the foundation where the athletes are taught the rudiments of the game. It’s at such factories that playing styles and patterns unique to such countries are evolved.

    The refreshing difference in this new NFF is the focus on  youth programmes, with Barrister Seyi Akinwunmi showing clearly that the results count for nothing if the products cannot solve the problems for which they were inaugurated. Akinwunmi’s is emphasis on quality talents – not quantity – and the insistence of going for kids in schools are some of the tools to reshape our football to conform with the Millennium era. The only snag in this initiative is that it appears to be  restricted to Abuja and Lagos, which do not represent all of Nigeria, even if the players come from the 36 states and Abuja.

    We can’t be talking about growing talents at the nurseries without standardising the academies that abound in the country. The fraud committed by some disgruntled folks in the name of soccer academies can only be curtailed if the NFF through its state affiliates compel all such bodies to register with it. That way, the authorities can identify who the fraudster is if such allegations arise. This collegiate arrangement will eliminate age cheats because a kid discovered in Edo State, for instance as Ikponwonsa Ikponwonsa in 1988 as a 12-year old, cannot be Etim Etim in 2008 claiming to be 16. The details of his data from his first registration in Edo State will give him out even as Etim Etim.

    Pilot schemes of this initiative should be spread across the country, especially when a sponsor as big as Zenith Bank Plc is involved. Sports friendly governors should be cultivated to embrace the project. These governors will key into it since it encourages the synergy between the Sports Ministry and the 36 states and Abuja’s Ministry of Education, where the bulk of the grassroots talents reside.

    Our soccer chiefs should reinvent those secondary schools’ competitions, such as Principal Cup, Governor’s Cup, Grier Cup, Hussey Shield, Lady Manuwa Cup for athletics, Morocco Clarke Cup for cricket etc. Such remodelled initiatives will boost the return of the biannual National Sports Festival, which must be hosted by the Sports Ministry not made a political tool by self-seeking state governors.

    The governors will be encouraged to speak with their friends and government contractors to contribute towards the project’s sustenance by sponsoring competitions, not just soccer, in their Local Government Areas (LGAs). Secondary schools’ inter-house sports were always a spectacle, especially the last races – the 4×100 metres invitational relay races for schoolboys and girls. The dearth of competitions crippled sports, not forgetting the conversion of playgrounds into make-shift schools under the guise of offering free education to everyone.

    Free education killed boarding houses, the nurseries for sports talents among schoolboys and girls. Inter house competitions were like carnivals in Government College Ughelli, no matter the sport.

    Governors’ could impress it on proprietors of schools to construct playing grounds for kids to unwind and compete with others in sports. The idea of schools hiring playgrounds or stadia for their inter-house sports doesn’t encourage participation in sports. Growing up in Government College Ughelli from 1972 to 1977, students knew what category of sports wears they took to school. There was a calendar for sports, which is missing today. Only few sports, such as table tennis, badminton and the elite sports, such as golf and polo have discerning calendars of yearly activities, which they follow religiously.

    Sports cannot thrive in Nigeria without the government’s intervention. It is the government’s responsibility to provide facilities and create the enabling environment for the industry to function with support from the corporate world. Blue chip companies will be willing to support sports if they know government’s level of commitment towards the industry. The government should offer incentives to sports friendly firms.

    Once the government can persuade the corporate world to key into sports programmes, the federation  should ensure that their foreign coaches are part of the development, such that they are forced to look towards the products of such efforts to  replace our ageing stars instead of combing Europe to beg kids who have never been to this country to play for us.

    Peter Rufai, George Finidi, Stephen Keshi, Rashidi Yekini, Samson Siasia, Mikel Obi, Nwankwo Kanu, Segun Odegbami, Henry Nwosu, Tarila Okoronwanta, Edema Fuludu, Emmanuel Okala, Christian Chukwu, Adokie Amiesiamaka et al were not discovered in Europe. They are products of previous systems in place to scout for talents.

    Even foreign coach partook in the scouting system, such that Clemens Westerhof and Johannes Bonfrere were adjudged to have excelled because of their feats in fishing out young players in the domestic league to displace established stars in our national teams. Daniel Amokachi, Friday Elaho, Uche Okechukwu, Benedict Iroha et al were some of the domestic league players Westerhof discovered and exposed to clubs in Europe.

    The domestic league is ugly to watch because our national team’s stars don’t play there. It was box office fixture anytime IICC Shooting Stars met Enugu Rangers anywhere in the country because both teams paraded our best players in the Green Eagles. Football fans in the neighbouring states and those who could afford to travelled long distances to watch the game. The pulling force was the boys in the Eagles playing for both teams.

    The corporate world supported clubs because they could connect their products and services to fans of IICC and Rangers who pulled the crowd everywhere they played. IICC had the late Best Ogedegbe in goal. Rangers had towering Okala. IICC had Odegbami, the late Mudashiru Babatunde Lawal, Sam Ojebode and the late Kunle Awesu. Rangers had Chukwu, Aloysius Atuegbu, the late Christian Madu, the late Ogidi Ibeabuchi (we became friends at the University of Benin, Benin City) and master dribbler, Amiesiamaka, for instance. Need I list others?

    Of course, the spiral effect of these stars’ exploits was best captured in 1978 when Coach Alabi Assien brought Bendel Insurance FC of Benin City to Lagos to discipline IICC 2-0 in the semi-final and Rangers 3-0 in the finals of the Challenge Cup with new kids, such as Agwo Nnaji, David Adiele, Kadiri Ikhana, the late Felix Agbonifo, Lotis Boateng, Francis Monidafe, Christopher Ogu, George Omokaro, Peter Egharebva, Henry Ogboe and Ebenezer Badger.

    Pundits and gurus, such as the late radio commentator Ernest Okonkwo looked forward to an IICC Shooting Stars vs Rangers’ Challenge Cup final in 1978 inside the main-bowl of the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos. It never came to pass- no  thanks to Coach Aissien who invaded Lagos with grassroots boys to change the narrative of the domestic league with the Bendel boys. It didn’t come as a surprise when Bendel boys, such as Ikhana, Adiele, Ogu, Boateng and Monidafe played for Nigeria subsequently.

    The Zenith Bank cum NFF initiative is the right way to go but effort should be made to ensure that those discovered are nurtured and exposed to the big game through the federation’s transfer systems, not through shylock agents who transfer them to slavish deas in all manner of leagues.

  • Issues in party primaries

    Given the vehement outcries in several quarters as regards the outcome of the just concluded primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was the party right to have gone ahead with the contentious intra-party polls rather than allow the continuation of the erstwhile Chief Odigie Oyegun-led somnolent status quo as desired by some stakeholders? Viewed superficially, the boisterousness and seeming descent into disorder in some states following the APC primaries is far less preferable than the peace of the graveyard that hitherto prevailed before comrade Adams Oshiomhole’s emergence as national chairman of the ruling party.

    Yet, the truth is that it would have been infinitely more dangerous for the APC to have gone into next year’s elections in the complacent and utterly delusionary belief that all was well in the party when deep seated grievances and frustrations were simmering ominously beneath the deceptively placid surface. Though often rancorous, chaotic and sometimes even temporarily destabilizing, inter and intra- party contests allow contending ideas and interests to compete openly thereby bringing disagreements, disaffections and misgivings into the public space and allowing a significant degree of healing to take place within parties or in the polity as a whole.

    Open and free intra-party contestations also enable the identification of individuals and tendencies that cannot reconcile their particular aspirations with the group interest of their political parties thus making it easier for such disaffected persons or groups to seek accommodation elsewhere. In apparent affirmation of the fact that most politics is ultimately local, the post primaries crises that have engulfed the APC in a number of states do not appear to have had any significant negative effect on President Muhammadu Buhari’s support base within the party.

    It is instructive that no aspirant was confident enough to challenge Buhari for the APC’s presidential ticket thus his overwhelming victory at the September 25th  direct presidential primaries, an exercise in which he garnered 14, 842, 072 votes nationwide. No less significant is the fact that those who left the APC to contest for the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – Senator Bukola Saraki, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso and Governor Aminu Tambuwal – were unable to clinch the opposition party’s ticket, which was emphatically won by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

    Quite apart from the alleged role of money in the outcome of the PDP presidential primaries, there is no doubt that the party’s key stakeholders were convinced that only Atiku had the requisite stature to offer a formidable challenge to Buhari and the APC at next year’s polls.

    At the very onset of his presidency, Buhari had given an indication that the kind of debilitating dwarfing and marginalization of the ruling party by the presidency witnessed under the PDP would no longer be the case during his tenure. He thus commendably kept the presidency at a respectable arms length from the internal affairs of the APC to the extent of not interfering with the process of electing the party’s inaugural leadership at the National Assembly. True, the efficacy of the PMB administration has been considerably hobbled by the emergence of a National Assembly leadership that not only was at variance with the party’s preference but actively nurtured the legislature into an effective opposition to the executive.

    But it is not PMB’s perceived antipathy to politics that is to blame for the dysfunctional relationship between the legislature and the executive under the current leadership of the National Assembly. Rather, the fault lies squarely with the complacent, indolent and lethargic Chief John Odigie- Oyegun led National Working Committee (NWC) that was pathetically unable to enforce discipline among the party’s ranks in the legislature as well as foster harmonious legislative-executive relations predicated on a common party platform.

    Since nature abhors a vacuum, the APC governors naturally moved in to seize the sovereignty within the party especially given PMB’s unwillingness to act the part of authoritarian imperial president as was the case with President Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan under the PDP. As major financiers of the party within the context of the widespread poverty that incapacitates millions of party members from being effective financial members, the governors were well placed to assert authority over the party within their states and by combination to steer the party nationally in the direction of their choice. All they had to do was to ensure that their interests did not collide with that of an essentially apolitical but still very powerful and influential presidential incumbent.

    Against this background, it is misleading to label only one or two governors fiercely contesting the outcome of the primaries in their states, which they find disagreeable, as emperors. The truth of the matter is that by virtue of the positions they occupy and the ingrained political culture that had subsisted until now, all governors irrespective of their party platforms are veritable emperors in their states to varying degrees. If governors had largely imposed their candidates for various offices on their parties in the past, it is certainly not illegitimate for current occupants of the office to wonder why things should change in their own time.

    Yes, Oshiomhole deserves commendation for his courageous attempt to change the extant system favourable to governors, which he also benefitted from in the past as a former state chief executive. A far easier and possibly more beneficial path in pecuniary terms would have been for the national chairman to dance to the tune of the governors who are after all his erstwhile colleagues. The dominance of the club of governors in the APC would thus have been consolidated under Oshiomhole watch. The diminutive ex trade unionist leader’s preferred option of direct primaries is a revolutionary initiative to foster greater popular control of the parties by rank and file party members. It may indeed be one of the most epochal developments of this political dispensation if Oshiomhole summons the courage to remain steadfast.

    To paraphrase the late Professor Harold Laski, an increasingly obsolete and dysfunctional era in the management of the affairs of political parties in Nigeria, specifically the APC in this case, is dying. A new, more inclusive, transparent and democratic intra-party dispensation is struggling to be born. It is the Oshiomhole-led APC NWC’s historic role to be the midwife of the emergent, more just, equitable era, which will be hopefully less prone to financial manipulation. There can certainly be no new birth without the kind of labour pangs currently being witnessed by the APC.

    But as national chairman, Oshiomhole should be the chief unifier of the party. He should be able to stand firmly by the principles of transparent and credible intra-party electoral processes within the APC without engaging in avoidable public insults and brickbats with aggrieved members of the party understandably opposed to the change he champions.

    In my view, PMB emerges as the undisputed hero of the APC’s inevitably fractious primaries. Being the ruling party, the fierce scramble for the APC’s tickets at various levels is understandable. Whatever may be the fault of the party and its administration over the last three and a half years, it still offers the best prospects for aspirants to public office in next year’s elections in large swathes of the country. In this context, it is to his credit that PMB has not thrown his weight around unduly or utilized the immense powers of the presidency to circumvent or short circuit due process during the APC primaries.

    Some of those most aggrieved at the outcome of the primaries are known to be very close personal allies of Buhari. Yet, he has not constituted himself into a superior adjudicating authority to decide on the merit or otherwise of their complaints. Buhari has insisted rather that stipulated procedures be strictly adhered to. This in my view places him on an elevated moral pedestal that will be difficult to equal in this political dispensation.

    What has become obvious from the various intra-party electoral contests, particularly those of the ruling APC, is that party primaries are too important and critical to the smooth functioning of the political system to be left to the internal arbitrary devices of political parties. Going forward, this column advocates the establishment of a National Political Parties Regulatory Commission (NPPRC) to oversee the registration and deregistration of political parties as well as conduct intra-party elections both for party and elective offices at all levels. That way, party members will not be at the mercy either of domineering governors or all powerful national executives.

     

     

     

  • Before the Bafana dance

    I can visualise the dance steps and whining among the players and other passengers kissing their bottles of wine, beer, minerals and the clapping from those seated, but who don’t know how dance Shaku Shaku inside the chartered aircraft in the wee hours of November 18, after beating Bafana Bafana inside the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on November 17. I can virtually hear the pilot’s messages for calm, although he too likes what is happening, but he must do his precautionary job.

    I can see the celebrants holding tight to anything in sight when turbulence starts with the aircraft’s jerky movements due to the cloudy skies. This weather condition will force the pilot to warn passengers to sit down and fasten their seat belts in line with aviation rules.

    Did I hear you say I’m beating the gun? For a game between Nigeria and South Africa, with due respect, pundits will give it to us with goals aplenty, given the quality of players on both sides. We have close to 23 foreign-based players in this squad. We will need to surf the internet to search for the clubs where most of the South Africans picked for this game ply their trade. Bafana Bafana’s strength epitomises what the leagues represent unlike ours where our administrators are not bothered if all the invited players come from the moon – if possible.

    However, the South Africans burnt their candles on both ends by securing  a barren draw against Libya at home and Seychelles in Victoria. If they had won these two games, they wouldn’t be pressing the panic button for the Super Eagles clash on November 17, having humbled the Nigerians 2-0 inside the Nest of Champions in Uyo last year. No one should blame Bafana Bafana for the drawn game because those are the hallmarks of soccer – unpredictable.

    Interestingly, injuries have crippled both teams, leaving the managers with the option of parading their second best in key positions. Bafana Bafana’s manager Stuart Baxter has re-arranged his squad due to injuries to several of his key players – the latest being England-based Kamohelo Mokotjo. Other key players set to miss this fixture are Dean Furman, Bongani Zungu, Keagan Dolly, Sibusiso Vilakazi and Bradley Grobler. The new entrants, however, could decide the course of the game, knowing that it is their best chance to prove their mettle.

    Nigeria lead Group E with nine points, just one ahead of South Africa – who are yet to concede or lose a match in the qualifiers, making the November 17 game, a tricky test for the Nigerians, who must leave the FNB Stadium unscathed, if they hope to top Group E. The South Africans are ready to scuttle the Eagles’ revenge mission. They talk about it. They are ready for what the Nigerians will throw at them to avenge the 2-0 loss in Uyo last year.

    “It has really been a tough task to select the team to face Nigeria without some of our regular players, but we have to soldier on. These injuries could not have come at the worst of times when we really need to collect all three points because we are well aware of the importance of doing this.

    “The positive side, however, is that this gives us a chance to introduce other players into the squad, and these are players we have been monitoring, so it not like a knee-jerk reaction. This helps us to ensure that when we qualify for the tournament, we’ve an even bigger pool of players to choose from. I am also confident that the players brought in will do a good job,” Baxter concluded.

    Baxter is holding on to a straw with this game. He knows that he will be sacked at the end of this campaign. But victory over Nigeria will attract the fans’ sympathy and put pressure of the South Africa Football Association (SAFA) to rescind its plan to sack Baxter. Baxter and SAFA chiefs are strange bed fellows, united only by the task of getting Bafana Bafana to qualify for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations slated for Cameroon in June.

    What Baxter lacks in support from his employers, Gernot Rohr has aplenty, such that his professional opinions are considered while his salaries have been paid – a departure from the past. However, Rohr’s best chance to show that he hasn’t been wasting his time here rests with how well his substitutes for injured players perform in Johannesburg on November 17.

    Goalkeeper Francis Uzoho is out. His replacement is Theophilus Afelokhai, a home-based player, who will be sitting down on the bench when his team mate Ikechukwu Ezenwa at Enyimba FC of Aba, who he benches, mans the goalpost. It happens only in Nigeria. No criteria for picking players. Otherwise, where did Rohr see Ezenwa keep to necessitate his invitation to camp ahead of Afelokhai? Well, this is Ezenwa’s chance to show that he is the best goalkeeper. South Africa-based goalkeeper Daniel Akpeyi, ordinarily, should be in goal on November 17, since he knows the FNB Stadium very well. Will Rohr gamble on Akpeyi against Bafana Bafana? Not likely. Akpeyi has problems with aerial balls just as his flaws are known to the South Africans since he is based there.

    I pity Rohr. The news Thursday that Odion Ighalo, the team’s highest goal scorer in this qualifiers, is injured and was stretchered out of the field in a game in China will set him thinking – why now? Ighalo understands how to play with Ahmed Musa and their combination raised hopes of a new dawn for the Eagles during the two games against Libya in Uyo and Tunisia.

    Will the Eagles trouble the South Africans without Ighalo? Yes, since they will be disappointed with his absence, having factored his strong points into their preparations. Samuel Kalu and Simon Moses can rattle the South Africans, if the passes get to them upfront. They may be smallish in stature but their pace will unsettle the hosts, which is what they cannot manage, especially with a faster Ahmed Musa, captain for the side and another goal scorer upfront.

    How on earth will any coach place Henry Onyekuru on standby when his absence was due to injuries. He has since been training with Galatasaray FC in Turkey. It raises the poser of how effective Rohr’s monitoring of our players is? Rohr should seek answers from his scouts. Our best players should be on parade- no matter what. It is a shame that Onyekuru will be playing due to Ighalo’s injury, not on merit.

    The biggest tool in any warfare is the surprise element. Injuries to our key players in the defence, midfield and attack have offered Rohr a chance to try out new boys. Bafana Bafana will be worried about the composition of our midfield, now that we won’t have Mikel, Ogenyi Onazi and Wilfred Ndidi. Alex Iwobi’s weekly mercurial displays for Arsenal in the Barclays English Premier League and Europa Cup matches should be the match stick that Eagles need to burn out the hosts.

    Iwobi has shown that he can play effectively in the midfield. John Ogu, Oghenekaro Etebo and Iwobi are the holding midfielders capable of making the absence of Mikel, Onazi and Ndidi a necessity for change. We tottered a bit in the first of both games against Libya in Uyo and Sfax in Tunisia. The coach didn’t offer solutions to the problems noticed in the first leg so much so we lost a two-goal lead in Sfax due to lack of concentration, which most time results from players’ tiredness.

    Besides, it takes forever for Rohr to make tactical changes during matches, which explains why we haven’t been able to defend our leads. Rohr’s excuse, for instance, that he replaced Kelechi Iheanacho at half time against Argentina at the Russia 2018 World Cup didn’t capture the essence of making changes because his replacement wasn’t any better. Whereas, Rohr didn’t give Iwobi a second chance to correct his mistakes as a debutant at the Mundial in Russia, he allowed several others with better exposure than Iwobi to ”wobble and fumble”, apologies to Coach Fanny Amun, until we crashed out.

    NFF chiefs need to remind Rohr make his changes when the team seems to be losing steam. The elderly ones could be spared the trauma of playing 90 minutes; after all only 14 of the 18 players on the bench can play. For instance, Mikel is out for the season. His spate of injuries is a subtle indicator that he should quit the game. Nigeria will be doing Mikel some good by excluding him from our matches.

    It won’t be out of place if NFF chiefs find a role for Mikel in FIFA or CAF where he can function as an indicator for him to quit the game. He may be reluctant now because he cannot fathom what to do in retirement. If NFF chiefs make him useful like other federations have done with Didier Drogba et al, he will quit and pursue administrative or coaching businesses.

    Beating  Bafana Bafana inside the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, is a task that must be done. We cannot afford to miss a third consecutive appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations. Up Super Eagles; up Nigeria!

     

  • Communication, culture  and diplomacy

    Let  me confess to  a feeling of                 excitement on the issues  I  want to   write  about  today. Probably because they  already give me  as I  start,  some nostalgia about past events or because they  are quite emotional in nature and I am already  feeling passionate  about them. Please join me as I    recall  the events and  proceed to analyse  them  as usual.

    The  first  was the crowded  and racy press conference the US President Donald  Trump  gave and at  which  a CNN reporter clashed verbally with  him such  that  he wanted to leave the rostrum; and that  upset  me gravely as  a former working  journalist  who  had covered such press  conferences before. The  second was the visit of the Prince of Wales to Nigeria  and the report on a documentary  by the BBC which noted  that the aged Prince at  70  said  he would  be different  as King from his role now. Just  like  Henry  the fifth  in Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which  incidentally was the play  I studied  for my  WASC in  1968 and  I had A1 in  English  Literature.

    The  third  was the news that the EU had  recalled its Ambassador to Tanzania and was considering stopping a well  funded EU  Development Programme  because of  that  African nations laws on homosexuality. And  that  is an  issue that I feel  sooner  than later will divide Africans  and  western  nations  because  it  is  an  issue  that borders on a clash  of civilization  and culture as well as a new definition of sex and  marriage  from the  West  that is irreconcilable  to both  cultures and peoples.  Let    me now  see through  my passion on these  issues   to  arrive  at  my conclusions,    which  I  hope  should  be objective !.

    First is the verbal  gymnastics between CNN’s  Jim  Acosta  at  the press interview  given at the  White  House  by the American President after  the Nov  6  Mid  term  elections in the us. Undoubtedly  the two personalities  had  a history  of hostility and  mutual  hatred and disdain. CNN  had  unabashedly labeled the US president a compulsive liar  and he too had  called CNN  fake  news repeatedly.

    But  on this occasion it  was the mood  of CNN  and the US president after  the results of the November 6 Mid  Term elections that led to the  verbal  exchange  which  later  led to the CNN reporter  being denied access  to do his job at the White  House. The  heated exchange  to  me  was  a product  contrasting  mood of elation  on the election results  by both Donald  Trump  and the CNN. Donald Trump  was in a celebration mood because he felt victorious in the GOP improving its majority in the Senate and winning some  governorship elections  in some states in which he personally  campaigned furiously  for  Republican candidates. The CNN on  the other hand felt and showed that the President  had lost  because the Democrats had the new majority  to  control the House of  Representatives.

    In questioning Trump, Jim Dacosta  went on and on in talking about immigrants and insisting that  the US president  should  admit  what he saw as his fault in calling those in the caravan invaders. The CNN reporter was rude and the US president told him  that  much. Even though press  conference  was rowdy Trump  took on so many questions that I  gave him kudos for his self  given  assignment  during which he once asked if he had not outstayed  his welcome and the press asked him  to go on.

    To  appreciate  the element of bias against  Trump  you only need to recall  a similar post Mid term election given by Nancy Pelosi  who is expected to be Speaker in the next  Congress. It  was a very orderly affair and the press asked questions seated. Whereas  at  the White  House correspondents sprang  and  yelled questions  and in Da Costa’s case, he refused to hand over the mike even after the US President in anger,  did  as if he would leave the venue. Indeed the CNN ‘s Dacosta’s  action  was aggressive  and symbolized in physical form  the digital and communication enmity  between the CNN and  the American  president. It  was a show of  disrespect  for  the US president  and quite  shocking  and revulsive  for  me as a writer and communications professional  to behold  or  comprehend.

    The  second issue  was the statement credited to the Prince of Wales to the effect that he won’t speak on issues when  he becomes  king because  he is not stupid. He  then  referred to  some parts  of Shakespeares plays Henry 1V and  Henry  the  fifth  my favorite play. Henry V  is the story  about the Battle  of Agincourt  in which  the young Henry  who  led a dissolute  life of a youth  became  a brilliant    English leader and warrior  who  defeated  a much larger French army at the famous Battle of  Agincourt.

    Of  course I want to link this with the visit  this week  of Prince Charles to  Nigeria and the beautiful  regal  pictures he took  with the royal  fathers in  Nigeria. I  felt  happy  seeing  those pictures  and  confess  to some  element  of  colonial  mentality which Nigerians born after Independence  in 1960  may  not understand.  This is because in  spite of hostile  Nigerian  observations and writings  against Colonial  powers especially  Britain,  most former  Commonwealth subjects like me still feel  some love and affinity  for the British  royal  family. So  one can understand the Oba Of Benin  diplomatically asking future  King Charles  to arrange to return ancient war, art works    antiquities  looted from Benin, during the colonial  era,  now adorning  the  well  visited  London Museum. But  yes  in spite of that, we still  have fond memories of the Queen, her  family  and especially  of Diana, her  sons and now  the old, future King  Charles. Let  me end this bit  with an apt    quote  from  Henry V  to show that Charles  will  not say anything stupid when  he becomes king – ‘ In  peace there is nothing so  befits a  man  as modest stillness and humility;  but when  the blast  of war blows in our ears,  then imitate the action of the tiger…. ‘

    The  last  issue is the  recall  of its Ambassador  to  Tanzania  by the European  Union and  a threat to review its $700m  aid  programme spread over  2014 – 2020  to  that African  nation. The threat  is based on what  the EU  had  labeled ‘a deterioration of the human rights  and rule of law  in Tanzania because it is implementing Tanzanian laws that  forbid Tanzanians to be gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.  On  the  surface,  to  the  EU,  this is like – who pays the piper  dictates  the tune. But  for African  nations like  Tanzania  it is  a clear  case of buyer, beware. The  EU must  learn  how  to differentiate  between laws  and values  of  non EU  nations  especially  African  nations, based on the traditions and customs of such  nations. Indeed it needs to do that before giving aid  and do due cultural  diligence  or face its own  caveat emptor in default  of such error. In  EU terms African  nations are homophobic  and anti  gay. That  does    not  however make them opponents of human  rights or traducers of the rule of  law. It  is just  their culture and that deserves respect, aid or  no  aid. Once again long live the Federal  Republic  of  Nigeria.