The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

If not Jonathan, then who?

Some have labelled him a bread-and-butter rebel with a cause. Some say he is just a smart man who knows how best to feather his nest. Others call him an ethnic irredentist who has perfected the art of empty blabbering. But I believe Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo is too big to be crated into someone’s warped descriptive nuances. In our quick rush to hang him in the sun to dry for daring to insist that President Goodluck Jonathan must remain Nigeria’s leader post 2015, we tend to forget that this true son of Niger Delta was speaking under the influence of a spirited dose of presidential amnesty. And instead of showing him some respect for accepting the Federal Government’s plea to distance his crew from violence and oil bunkering by voluntarily abdicating his kingdom in the creeks, we are busy nudging the police to arrest him for threatening a spiral of violence should Jonathan be eased off a seat which should be his for eight years! Why should we?

And, in its usual atavistic way of looking at issues of national importance, the House of Representatives has compounded the problem by erroneously concluding that Asari-Dokubo’s patriotic rant of ‘it’s either Jonathan or no one else’ is “capable of creating disunity and disaffection among the good people of Nigeria.” As for the lawmaker who raised the issue on the floor of the House as a matter of urgent national discourse, Ali Sani Madaki (Kano), I doubt if he read through the reasons adduced for a continuation of the Jonathan presidency before crying blue murder. If he had taken out time to dissect Asari-Dokubo’s unimpeachable logic, he would by now be pushing for the conferment of the highest honours in the land not only on the former ex-militant but also on other well-meaning Nigerians who daily canvas for the extension of the fresh breath of air we currently enjoy.

Like they say in my profession, facts are sacred and comments are free. Luckily for us, neither Asari-Dokubo nor the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Committee, Hon. Kingsley Kuku, can be accused of not dwelling on the facts on the table before declaring a no vacancy in Aso Rock until 2019. So, what are these facts? I’ll simplify them. First, that Jonathan is constitutionally guaranteed two terms of four-year tenure. Second, that he is from the Niger Delta, which produces Nigeria’s main revenue—oil. Third, that, with amnesty, the restiveness in the Niger Delta has abated with huge impact on crude exploration. And, most importantly, there is a sense in the insistence by the ex-warlord that “monkey no fine, but him mama like am”. Call it an apt description of the basest form of political skulduggery, it really doesn’t matter for as long this kinsman to many ‘generals’ is on the throne. He is simply the best!

Besides, these guys are not asking for too much. They are, in my humble opinion, appealing to our sense of equity, justice and fairness. They say since we have voted massively for Jonathan to be in government, we should have the presence of mind to allow him to be in power for just another four years. After all , didn’t we allow Obasanjo his eight years of deferred dreams? Would we not have tolerated an Umaru Musa Yar’Adua for eight years if he had not died in office? Would it have mattered if the country had been divided down the middle? So, why should anyone deny Jonathan the right to live in Aso Rock just because some debased minds are killing and maiming

in some parts of the country? Would it not be better to live with the activities of these insurgents than allow the kind of ‘war’ being threatened by Asari-Dokubo and the likes?

In any case, it is not as if those cavorting for a Jonathan presidency beyond 2015 are solely doing so on the basis of where he comes from. No. They are equally posturing with his unprecedented achievements in the last two years. They said he has been working silently to transform all sectors of the economy even if majority of us have opted to close our eyes to those things. Well, as they say, that one ‘na your toro!’ As far as Asari-Dokubo is concerned, that can only be the jabbering of “greedy politicians.” The common Nigerian from Otuoke in Bayelsa to Baga in Borno knows that a working machine has taken over Aso Rock and he is breaking new horizons in classical over-achievement.

Listen to Asari-Dokubo: “The (Nigerian) story has changed. I made five hours from Benin to Lagos by road (by the way, it used to be three hours when I did my youth service corps in that ancient town in 1990). Electricity supply is relatively constant now than what it was before Jonathan came in as President. The Abuja-Lokoja Road that was neglected is almost completed and several other roads across the country. People have started using the rail system again. This shows that Jonathan is silently moving the country at the direction to satisfy these people, while we from the Niger Delta are not being satisfied. Before now, we have had university lecturers going on strike for over six months, people go to universities to study courses of four or five years, but end up staying five and six years because the lecturers were always going on strike, but that is not the case as at today because the government is handling the issue. Even at that, this is the most maligned government because some people think, and they have been made to believe that they are born to rule, and so many people who are very timid to challenge them have accepted it.”

And did he have to say about the call for his arrest? He fired: “I am saying it bold and clear without mincing words, that the consequences of my arrest, Nigeria will be history.

The last time Obasanjo arrested me, my arrest reduced Nigeria oil production to 700,000 barrels per day. This time, it will reduce it to zero barrel and we will match violence by violence, intrigues by intrigues. We are ready for them.

Goodluck Jonathan will complete his tenure of two terms whether they like it or not; for us, they don’t even exist because we pay them; he who pays the piper decides the tune.

And then…Kingsley Kuku: “People have created negative tendencies just to create the belief that President Jonathan cannot govern Nigeria. I did not say that Jonathan should be elected, by hook or crook, as President in 2015 otherwise there will be violence in the Niger Delta. I said for the peace process not to degenerate and collapse, President Jonathan should be allowed to implement the amnesty package. Nigeria will never be ungovernable. Nigeria will be governable under President Jonathan and he is already stemming the tide of restiveness.” Awww!

How more logical can anyone be on this matter? Those who say the Jonathan train should be stopped because Nigeria is tottering on the brink of anarchy miss the point. It is not really important whether he has the capacity to rein in the terror that has assailed the nation. It matters not whether he is slow and sadly effete at tackling the ills that continue to plague the society. This debate is not about how guns echo sorrowful lullabies and ignite teardrops in our homes. It is about the politics of leadership in a nation that is forever perched on a plateau of non-populist leaders’ delusion of grandeur. It is not even about war and peace. Instead, it is about something more pedestrian than the lure of the stomach which has propelled many to think through their buttocks—what the National Auditor of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Adewole Adeyanju, tagged “turn by turn Nigeria Limited.”

Being a man of figures, Adeyanju simplified all the fiery ranting of Asari-Dokubo thus: “PDP has leaders and we know them. Today, our leader is the President and Commander of the Armed Forces, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonatha n. This man is from the South-South. The best thing to do for Nigeria to sustain peace is to make Nigeria turn by turn Nigeria Limited. That’s why we can talk two terms. South-South is there now and we should just allow them to do two terms and that is how Nigeria can survive.”

And so, neither cluelessness nor outright incompetence can stop the moving train in this asphyxiating environment of government by the whim! If not Jonathan, who else can help sustain this uncommon transformation – the motions without movement in our land and the unequalled peace of the graveyard that now pervade the land? Who else but Jonathan?

May 18, 2013
State of emergency to slate the insurgency

So after much deliberation and rigmarole, after much dissent by leading sec tors of Nigerians, after the massacres and nauseating murders of men, women and children, the government has finally declared a state of emergency in three states. The unexpected declaration of the state of emergency to deal with the high rate of violence and spate of deadly attacks by militant groups has taken many by surprise. Yesterday evening, 14th May 2013, President Jonathan delivered an address in which he gave the military powers to take over security in the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. This step, which affects a broad range of civil rights, has already triggered widespread debate about the implications of the government’s latest strategy, from the opposition, to religious groups, civil society and even the governor’s forum.

The state of emergency requires a presidential proclamation under conditions specified in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended under the provisions of Section 305 (1). It gives the authorities special temporary legal powers to arrest and search citizens without a warrant. It also imposes a curfew on the specified states, restricting residents to their homes between the times of a curfew. Other emergency powers regulations affect ‘habeas corpus’ and citizens’ rights to freedom of movement, assembly, association, speech, and privacy.

Over the past two years, the rate of violence in several states has increased dramatically, fueled by the rise of militancy, extremism and the widespread availability of illegal weapons. Successive clamp down by authorities, an apparent trigger-happy task force, mismanaged deliverance of information on behalf of the government and a leadership that seems totally confused and not in control have had the utmost regressive effect, almost to the point of providing sympathy and understanding for the plight of the insurgents. In recent weeks, the country has been horrified by the series of violent murders. The situation became a lot worse, with the massacres in Baga and Bama town. Announcing the state of emergency, President Jonathan said, “The country is facing, not just militancy or criminality, but a rebellion and insurgency by terrorist groups which pose a very serious threat to national unity and territorial integrity”.

While I am often at variance with the utterances and policies of President Jonathan, it is not so difficult for me to understand why the president felt the need to take such an aggressive reaction, especially along his reasoning that no terrorist group, religious or tribal has a right to pose a threat to national unity and territorial integrity. Not Boko Haram or tramps and vagrants like Asari Dokubo or any other ignorant yobs who fancies themselves as the new Scarface and who happen to all be the same kind of bigoted criminals disguised in different garbs. The country cannot go to war because of some criminal elements have been threatening to overrun the Nigerian state under the guise of religious extremism, resource control, militancy or insurgency.

If reports that over a dozen local government areas in Borno State have been taken over by insurgents are true, if reports that in those local governments there is no semblance of authority are factual, then a state of emergency in those hotspots was absolutely and unquestionably necessary. Why should a whole nation be held to ransom by plundering and rancorous groups of brutes bent on creating havoc on a society, no matter how candid their grievance or cause? Why should a group of people organize themselves in guerrilla warfare and carry out the kind of offensive that is claiming the lives of innocent men, women and children? For goodness sake, when did our society sink to the depths of darkness we are in now; where we are forced to discuss the destruction of people’s lives and death of fellow human beings in such a blasé manner? That is what we have been reduced to. Every single morning, the minute one listens to the news or reads a paper, the first thing one is confronted with is stories of death, destruction and murder. I mean it is just so absolutely unbelievable for us to wake up every morning with news of the kind of senseless violence we have been witnessing. It is simply unacceptable. As a civilized society which has evolved from the dark ages, our current situation has got to be intolerable by every standard, even for those criminal Nigerians who are hell-bent on declaring a ridiculously, unnecessary and unfair war against innocent Nigerians.

It may be easy enough for those of us who are not directly affected by the violence to sit and judge this draconian declaration by the government, but even those of us that have not been directly affected by the violence and unwarranted massacres in the affected states have been shaken to the core by it and shudder at its domino effect. The situation of the murders and total disregard for human life has reached epic proportions; proportions which call for the authorities to respond in the most decisive manner possible.

There is no doubt that this measure which the government has taken will have an impact on the daily lives of innocent, law-abiding citizens in these areas and provide inconveniences for them. It will limit people’s movements and give the regiment powers to arrest; it will even infringe on the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens, but, unless someone in authority takes the bull by the horn and affects this kind of stringent system, the situation in those areas will not be brought under control and it will come to a point when the violence cannot be contained. Those affected by the state of emergency should look at the bigger picture and recognize the need to protect them and bring the current violence surge affecting them under control. Many people have lost their loved ones to unnecessary violence in the past three years and unless something is done to restore normalcy in those areas, it will likely get worse.

Of course, there are other manners of dialogue and solutions that need to be adopted in order to bring this impasse totally under control; solutions that focus on long-term results to the problem and the fundamental issues that gave birth to the crisis itself has to be tackled. A state of emergency has a time-limit and therefore has a short-term effect and short term gain.

Therefore, in addition to placing the state of emergency, the government must immediately sit down and identify what is driving this upsurge of violence in these respective areas and address the best way to bring an end to it, otherwise when the emergency is eventually lifted, it will be ‘violence’ business as usual.

To show sincerity in its wish to end the violence, the government should immediately make an undertaking to release the innocent women and children that have been detained without cause in the quest to clampdown on the guerrillas. Government should further undertake to rebuild and relinquish the Mosques and properties that belonged to the Jam’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihd movement before the Borno state government under the leadership of Ali Modu Sheriff launched its offensive against them, before the murder of their leader Imam Mohammed Yusuf. And most importantly, the on-going trial of the security operatives who murdered Imam Mohammed Yusuf and Alhaji Buji Foi should be intensified, together with the arrest and prosecution of the government officials who allegedly ordered their execution. Those actions would show the sincerity and commitment of government to tackle the root of this problem and bring it to an end.

Now that the presidency has expressed determination to root out the insurgents in the affected areas, the good people of those states should endeavor to cooperate with the authorities in order to bring an end to the horror that surrounds them every day. To restore law and order to the states, people should be able to give accurate and dependable information as well as advice to all seekers of peace. It is expected that if the society as a whole resolves to end the crisis today, there will be no more killing or kidnapping of our people tomorrow. If the communities do not provide a safe haven for those who are out to disrupt peace, there will be no place for any criminals to hide. Our brothers that have turned renegades should also be persuaded to embrace peace and end the killings of innocent people.

The security officials deployed in the three states ought to understand that democracy is still in place in Nigeria as a whole and even though a state of emergency has been declared in those states, we are still a democracy and overzealousness of any kind should by no means be exercised or tolerated. The authorities themselves cannot use lawlessness to fight lawlessness because violence begets and encourages more violence.

One prays that we will soon see an end to the violence and hopes that the government, in enacting this state of emergency can tackle the mayhem in the troubled areas in the most responsible manner and be committed to placing every resource at their disposal towards winning this war in a way that is in the best interest of the collective.

The current rate of violence dictated for more to be done and stronger action to be employed. The situation, especially in Borno State, could not have been expected to continue the way it was going without a response commensurate with the wanton acts of violence and lawlessness; it is a response that is necessary to halt the current spike in the hostile activity of insurgents in the shortest possible time. Desperate acts require desperate measures.

So, even though the method is not ideal under our democracy, I can appreciate the current declaration of government to be more than a panic response. I do not see it through the lens of opposition, creed or tribe; I see it simply as a “state of emergency to slate the insurgency.”

May 18, 2013
Needless debate on President’s tenure

Since the news filtered out a few days ago that the Senate is angling for a six-year single term tenure for the nation’s President in the new constitution expected to emerge later in the year, the nation has been polarised into two camps of those who cherish the idea and those who oppose it. Actually, the idea is not one for which the upper legislative chamber deserves credit. It is a mere modification of the seven-year single term tenure President Goodluck Jonathan proposed to the National Assembly a few months after he assumed office in 2011.

In justifying the proposal, the President had argued that it was impelled by the need for an incumbent President to focus maximum attention on the execution of his developmental programmes rather than exert vital energy on re-election issues. “President Jonathan is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates both at the federal and state levels,” presidential spokesman, Dr, Reuben Abayi, said in a statement. “The nation is still smarting from the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election. The fallout of all this is the unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations. In addition, the costs of conducting party primaries and the general elections have become too high for the economy to accommodate every four years. The proposed amendment Bill is necessary to consolidate our democracy and allow elected executives to concentrate on governance and service delivery for their full term, instead of running governments with re-election as their primary focus.”

Other proponents of the idea believe that it will reduce acrimony in politics and create a level play field for all candidates during elections. But as would be expected in a country where the people are perpetually at war with their leaders’ desperation to cling to power, the President’s proposal was discounted as a subtle move to perpetuate himself in office. The opposition parties, the Transition Monitoring Group, civil society groups, socio-political organisations like the Afenifere and Arewa Consultative Forum, and even the House of Representatives all believe that the proposal is nothing but a ploy by the President and sitting governors to add more years to their tenures through a back-door arrangement.

The idea of breaking the President’s tenure into two terms of four years each emanated from the need to give the electorate an opportunity to assess the President’s performance in the first four years and use that as a yardstick to determine his continued suitability or otherwise. He would be voted out, if he is deemed not to have lived up to expectation or voted in to continue his good works, if he is deemed fit and able. The arrangement imposes on an elected President the responsibility to hit the ground running in order to merit a second term. On the other hand, the President elected for a single term of six years is a fait accompli. The people have no choice, but to endure him for the period, no matter how patently incapable.

However, both arrangements are premised on the presumption that the votes count and the power to elect resides with the people. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case with us. Hence I have a feeling that the debate on the President’s tenure amounts to putting the cart before the horse. Our most pressing political need at the moment is not how long the president stays in office, but the ability of the people to get the kind of leaders they desire. Of course, it is obvious that the nation has not profited from the present arrangement. But there is also no guarantee that shortening the maximum tenure of the President from two four-year terms to a single term of six years would guarantee the dividends of democracy the people have so wistfully longed for. The constitutional innovation that would help the nation at the moment is one that guarantees that every vote counts so that the electorate can choose trusted individuals to lead them.

This is important because the success of any administration is a function of how much trust the people repose in it. Once the people believe that they are being led by individuals in whom they repose a lot of confidence, their trust in the administration is boosted and this results in maximum cooperation between the leader and the led. In June 1993, for instance, prices of food items in Lagos markets and elsewhere began to crumble as soon as the news filtered out that the late Bashorun MKO Abiola had won the presidential election. This was without any prompting from any official quarters. It was believed that many traders started bringing out the food items they had hoarded because they believed that an Abiola presidency would flood the economy with them.

Two years ago, traders in Sango-Ota who had narrowed the streets and obstructed traffic with their makeshift shops began to demolish them on their own as soon as they learnt that Ibikunle Amosun of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had won the governorship of Ogun State. Conversely, not a few people believe that the Boko Haram and other forms of crises the Jonathan administration is witnessing are direct consequences of diminishing trust in the government.

There is no doubt that what is uppermost in the mind of the average Nigerian now is the chance to elect a President that would run a responsible and responsive government. Given the disappointments they have suffered from successive governments since the nation returned to democracy in 1999, Nigerians would tolerate a President that guarantees adequate security, good roads, regular electricity and potable water longer than Libyans tolerated Ghadaffi.

Rather than waste time and energy persuading Nigerians to accept a single six or seven-year tenure, President Jonathan should revisit the recommendations of Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on Electoral Reforms and adopt them without any exception. That, to me, is the most auspicious way to begin our search for a fruitful democratic system.

May 18, 2013
A distracted Presidency

There is nothing but ‘darkness visible’ on the Nigerian horizon. The portents are ominous. The country descends deeper into anarchy daily under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch. Like the ‘Titanic’, the fabled giant of Africa is moving swiftly towards a giant iceberg but the Chief Helmsman obviously has other things on his mind than offering effective leadership, averting imminent danger and steering the ship of state to safety. Commenting on the state of the nation, an exasperated Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, recently told Al Jazeera that “Nigeria is in a war situation and the entire population must consider itself as being in a war situation and that means the Boko Haram phenomenon should not be regarded as being limited to the Northern region alone or Borno and Yobe States”.

This is certainly no exaggeration. The stories get scarier by the day. No wonder, Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Azubuike Ihejerika last week complained at an army seminar that the increasing wave of ethno-religious violence in the country had severely strained the military’s resources. This is not surprising. The military are now performing police functions in virtually all states of the country. Joint Task Forces comprising the army, navy and air force operate in most states indicating the utter helplessness of the Nigeria Police Force to contain the situation. Surely, this is a situation of war. We are yet to get over the tragedy in Baga, the border town between Nigeria and Niger in Borno State where 185 people, mostly civilians, died in a reported battle between soldiers and Boko Haram insurgents.

On Tuesday, members of the Boko Haram sect attacked Bama in Borno State leaving 55 people dead – 22 police officers, 14 prison officials, two soldiers, four civilians and 13 Boko Haram members. About 300 heavily armed Boko Haram members attacked the town razing the Bama Police Station, the prison and the military barracks in the town. The following day it was the turn of Alakyo, a town 10 kilometres from Lafia in Nassarawa State. A hitherto little known cult, the Ombase militants, opened fire on security agents deployed to arrest their leader killing at least 30 policemen. On the same day, Fulani herdsmen in Benue State attacked Agatu Local Government Area of the state leaving “high casualties including women and children” according to Governor Gabriel Suswan. “There are a lot of killings, a lot of property destroyed and I felt that I should come to brief the Vice President who is holding forth for the President” the Governor said.

It is itself illustrative of the seriousness of the security breaches in their states that Governors Tanko al-Makura and Gabriel Suswan of Nassarawa and Benue states, respectively, rushed to Abuja to seek help. This again is an indictment of our dysfunctional, over-centralized security system that Governors who are supposedly Chief Security Officers of their states, could be so helpless to protect the lives and property of their residents without having to rush to Abuja.

In the South East, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has declared that the 8th of June will be sit-at-home day in the entire region. This the organization announced is to protest “the killings of Ndigbo in Nigeria, mostly in the Northern region, extra-judicial killing of our people in Biafra land, the wanton destruction of our people’s properties and the insensitive murder of six Igbo traders on June 8, 2004, at Apo Village, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja”. The group contended that only the ultimate actualization of Biafra could properly avenge these deaths. One can continue to itemise all kinds of security challenges across the country including the Niger Delta where President Jonathan comes from.

Of course, the President deserves full marks for cutting short his trip to South Africa where he was attending the World Economic Forum on Africa as well as cancelling his state visit to Namibia to rush home in response to what his spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, described as “fresh challenges to national security which has emerged this week in Borno, Plateau and Nassarawa states”. But there is certainly nothing fresh or recent about these security challenges. They have been a recurrent decimal in diverse parts of the country for the last two years. This is easily the most precarious period in the existence of Nigeria since the civil war.

Indeed, the current conflicts and insurgencies are potentially more dangerous than the civil war precisely because the world has become a very changed place. Weapons of violence have become more numerous, sophisticated, mobile and available to rogue groups who challenge the monopoly of these instruments by organized states. It is much easier now for fragile federations like Nigeria to disintegrate under the weight of centrifugal conflicts fuelled by external influences. At times like this only the most critical and unavoidable foreign trips should be undertaken by the President. Surely, the country would have lost nothing if he had been represented in South Africa by the appropriate Ministers. But then, that is not even the crucial issue.

Nigeria today can only be saved by the most focussed, determined, creative, imaginative, selfless, industrious and patriotic leadership at the highest levels. It is thus astonishing that while the country increasingly becomes a veritable wasteland of sorrow, blood and tears all around him; a time when the people that have entrusted him with their sacred mandate deserve that he serves with all his physical, mental, psychological and mental energies, the Jonathan presidency can afford to dissipate time, energy and concentration on petty squabbles and avoidable power shows. A good example is the show of shame currently going on in Rivers state. Following speculations that Governor RotimiAmaechi has presidential ambitions, the full weight of higher state powers has been unleashed to castrate and demolish him politically.

All of a sudden, desperate attempts are being made to prevent his re-election as Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) despite the will of majority of his colleagues. A PDP Governors Forum has been formed to destabilize the apparently recalcitrant NGF. The Aviation authorities are suddenly fishing for all kinds of reasons to justify the grounding of the state’s aircraft. A curious Abuja court judgement has dislodged the duly elected Rivers State PDP executive loyal to Amaechi and installed one favourably disposed to the anti-Amaechi forces in Abuja. The stage is currently being set in Rivers for recourse to the kind of shameful impunity that saw state governors illegally impeached by a minority of legislators in the past. Shouldn’t all these energies be channelled to confront the serious tribulations that threaten the existence of Nigeria? Is Rotimi Amaechi a security threat to Nigeria? Do the powers that be at the centre want to add a crisis in Rivers State to the multifarious crises they have been incompetent to effectively tackle across Nigeria?

Even though President Jonathan has claimed that he has not made up his mind on 2015, it is obvious that his presidency has become terribly distracted by an obsession to secure a second term at all costs. Amaechi’s only crime is that he is rumoured to have ambition for a higher office; an aspiration that may jeopardise Jonathan’s chances. But does the governor not have the same constitutional rights as Jonathan? Now, the worst forms of impunity are being perpetrated to cut Amaechi to size. State institutions are being undermined to subvert the legitimately elected government of Rivers State. Let the men of today in Abuja know that the kind of impunity being brazenly perpetrated today in Rivers State is as immoral and unacceptable as that exhibited by Boko Haram in killing innocent citizens. Those who perpetrate a form of impunity that violates due process and the rule of law in the selfish pursuit of power are as guilty of crimes against the polity as those who perpetrate violence against innocent citizens with impunity. They both belong to the same degenerate moral category.

May 11, 2013
Oshiomhole ‘conquers’ Okpekpe

How else can anyone measure development than with this description of a hitherto decrepit, dingy and hilly bush path or should I say village called Okpekpe in 2007 and today?

Okpekpe was a forgotten hamlet – permit me to use the word- whose occupants stared as visitors meandered their way through the tough hilly terrain to attend the funeral of Lagos businessman the late Beatrice Itemuagbor, mother of Michael Eshilama Itemuagbor.

First timers closed their eyes. Many cars stopped half way up. Other slid and got stuck. No hyperboles about what happened in 2007. For those cars with smoky exhausts, it was mission impossible.

Itemuagbor promised to bring people back to Okpepke through good roads. How he would achieve this was difficult to see. Most of his friends, in fact, dismissed his promise as a mere dream.

Itemuagbor, a trail-blazer, had other ideas. He waited patiently for the window of development, this time coming from a God-fearing governor, who is anxious to reinvent the wheel of a state that had been looted blind by the very administrators who swore to protect it.

This writer couldn’t fathom how apolitical Itemuagbor wanted to modernise Okpepke. I also didn’t reckon with the fact that manna would fall in Edo State in the form of a reformer governor- Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomhole, after the locust years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). At least, not in 2007, when the Comrade Governor was active in labour matters as the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

Going to Okpekpe, for me, was like another expedition, irrespective of all that one had read about its new form in the media. Curiously, I insisted on doing a recce of the marathon race tracks. Behold, well tarred road. The scary hill had being dissected into a beautiful windy path, the envy of motor racing faithful.

Driving through what was a tough terrain on good speed showed how well Oshiomhole had made his mark in the “Heartbeat of the Nation.” I was proud to be an Edo man. I was marvelled at the way the organisers utiliszed the surrounding hills to celebrate their sponsors and longed for the aerial photography of what I saw, for our dear readers to appreciate.

As the car that I rode in snaked its way through the windy path, we noticed a galaxy of cars. We asked ourselves- could that be the Comrade Governor on inspection? We were right. Oshiomhole didn’t leave anything to chance. He was at the intersection of the marathon race path where an impending bridge was being built. Road construction had stopped there. It was clear that the governor wanted to know why the contractor was stalling.

This writer joined in the inspection. Close to the Comrade Governor, I asked- Comrade Governor Sir, would you be participating in the marathon race tomorrow?

Dead silence. I thought the governor didn’t hear my question. He took about 15 steps and said: “yes, I will. That is why I’m here to ensure that things are ready.” The governor continued the inspection with his aides running to macth his fast strides. All was set for the maiden edition of the Okpekpe Race last Saturday.

D-day came with plenty of expectations. Would Oshiomhole really partake in the race? Or was his promise to run another Public Relations (PR) stunt to attract people to see how Edo is working? Would Oshiomhole keep us waiting like some of his colleagues do?

Take a bow Adams Oshiomhole. We are proud of you. Oshiomhole arrived at the appointed time. He waited like others. He answered questions from reporters. Watching him, only the lily-livered would ask if he would run.

The starting point broke into a roar when Oshiomhole exposed his green singlet, registered and set for the Very Important Personalities (VIP) race. Where I was, I could see the visitors from East Africa touch themselves, apparently asking if such a high placed dignitary would run in any marathon race where they come from?

With the blast of the starter’s gun, Oshiomhole burst out of the pack and ran his race. He tried. He didn’t gnash his teeth like many had expected. He showed that he trained for the race. As he strode through the track, many were waiting for him to stop. That certainly would be the high point of the maiden edition of the Okpekpe race, since pundits had tipped the elite event to be a struggle between the Kenyans and the Ethiopians.

Three kilometers into the race, one could see that the governor was running with plenty of effort. Of course, he broke into a stroll, which is permissible in the VIP race. Don’t ask me if the Comrade Governor stopped running. I noticed he entered his car only to emerge some metres to the finishing line. Yes, I saw the Comrade Governor cross the finish point, several minutes after the Kenyan had clinched the coveted prize.

Not one to shy away from confounding his critics, Oshiomhole alleged though jokingly, that he wasn’t listed among those athletes who finished the race. He went further to say that he would sue the organisers to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS). Oshiomhole surely knows how to hold his audience spellbound.

Hear him: “I’m surprised that my name is not among the winners or losers yet I took part in the race. I completed the race; didn’t I? Anyway, I will ask my Attorney General to file a suit at CAS prono bono, a legal term for free-of-charge. Anyway, I tried abi? At a point when I was running, I kept telling myself that I needed to be alive to collect the prize or to really give my people good governance by delivering on my electoral promises. So, I stopped when I realised that I couldn’t stress myself any further.” I have answered the question, if the governor finished the race. Oshiomhole surely deserves applause.

The villagers cheered the runners. But it was at the finish line that most of them raised a poser, which sent the Athletic Federation of Nigeria’s (AFN’s) President Solomon Ogba reeling on the floor.

Okpekpe people had seen the East Africans (men and women) finish the race strong and energetic. They stood on their feet. Most of them exchanged pleasantries with the people in the demarcated areas.

But when Nigerians started crossing the finish line, they collapsed into human heaps. Several bottles of water were given to them to pour on their bodies. Many couldn’t stand on their feet. The medical men and women had their busiest time attending to them.

It was when the ambulances were driving a few of them away that Okpekpe people asked this question. Ogba had no answer. He certainly didn’t know how to communicate his message to them in their dialect for them to fully grasp why Nigerians crumbled and others stood firm.

However, the lessons from the Okpekpe race are many. Thank goodness Sports Minister Bolaji Abdullahi witnessed it all. Ogba’s presence too should embolden him to utilise the place to nurture future marathoners for the country. The East Africans marvelled at the terrain. Many of them were wondering why we opted for the 10km race instead of the 12.5km stuff. It won’t be out of place if AFN enters into an arrangement with the Edo government to make Okpekpe the breeding ground for marathoners now that some parts of the North have become theatres of violence.

Okpekpe race organisers showed Ogba and, indeed, AFN members that if you package a product, sponsors will key into the project, no matter the sport or the location. Sports federations must shop for credible marketers to sell their sport, not board members masquerading as marketers with one objective- to get commission that is almost equal to the cash that they have generated.

AFN members must roll up their sleeves and cultivate the habit of organising competitions with prize money for athletes. This idea of members drawing allowances only to allow the athletes burn their energy for nothing should stop.

The event compelled the organisers to rehabilitate the buildings leading to the finishing point of the race for look and feel. The residents made brisk business; they are looking forward to the event yearly.

Okpepke’s hilly setting will remain etched in the minds of the athletes, officials and other visitors. They took back pictures of the breath-taking scenes, the majesty of nature, back home and long to return.

The Olympic Games’ unique selling point rests with the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is always tied to a particular city, which never remains the same after the Games.

The Okpepke 10km Marathon will signpost development in this rustic community.

May 11, 2013
If not Jonathan, then who?

Some have labelled him a bread-and-butter rebel with a cause. Some say he is just a smart man who knows how best to feather his nest. Others call him an ethnic irredentist who has perfected the art of empty blabbering. But I believe Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo is too big to be crated into someone’s warped descriptive nuances. In our quick rush to hang him in the sun to dry for daring to insist that President Goodluck Jonathan must remain Nigeria’s leader post 2015, we tend to forget that this true son of Niger Delta was speaking under the influence of a spirited dose of presidential amnesty. And instead of showing him some respect for accepting the Federal Government’s plea to distance his crew from violence and oil bunkering by voluntarily abdicating his kingdom in the creeks, we are busy nudging the police to arrest him for threatening a spiral of violence should Jonathan be eased off a seat which should be his for eight years! Why should we?

And, in its usual atavistic way of looking at issues of national importance, the House of Representatives has compounded the problem by erroneously concluding that Asari-Dokubo’s patriotic rant of ‘it’s either Jonathan or no one else’ is “capable of creating disunity and disaffection among the good people of Nigeria.” As for the lawmaker who raised the issue on the floor of the House as a matter of urgent national discourse, Ali Sani Madaki (Kano), I doubt if he read through the reasons adduced for a continuation of the Jonathan presidency before crying blue murder. If he had taken out time to dissect Asari-Dokubo’s unimpeachable logic, he would by now be pushing for the conferment of the highest honours in the land not only on the former ex-militant but also on other well-meaning Nigerians who daily canvas for the extension of the fresh breath of air we currently enjoy.

Like they say in my profession, facts are sacred and comments are free. Luckily for us, neither Asari-Dokubo nor the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Committee, Hon. Kingsley Kuku, can be accused of not dwelling on the facts on the table before declaring a no vacancy in Aso Rock until 2019. So, what are these facts? I’ll simplify them. First, that Jonathan is constitutionally guaranteed two terms of four-year tenure. Second, that he is from the Niger Delta, which produces Nigeria’s main revenue—oil. Third, that, with amnesty, the restiveness in the Niger Delta has abated with huge impact on crude exploration. And, most importantly, there is a sense in the insistence by the ex-warlord that “monkey no fine, but him mama like am”. Call it an apt description of the basest form of political skulduggery, it really doesn’t matter for as long this kinsman to many ‘generals’ is on the throne. He is simply the best!

Besides, these guys are not asking for too much. They are, in my humble opinion, appealing to our sense of equity, justice and fairness. They say since we have voted massively for Jonathan to be in government, we should have the presence of mind to allow him to be in power for just another four years. After all , didn’t we allow Obasanjo his eight years of deferred dreams? Would we not have tolerated an Umaru Musa Yar’Adua for eight years if he had not died in office? Would it have mattered if the country had been divided down the middle? So, why should anyone deny Jonathan the right to live in Aso Rock just because some debased minds are killing and maiming

in some parts of the country? Would it not be better to live with the activities of these insurgents than allow the kind of ‘war’ being threatened by Asari-Dokubo and the likes?

In any case, it is not as if those cavorting for a Jonathan presidency beyond 2015 are solely doing so on the basis of where he comes from. No. They are equally posturing with his unprecedented achievements in the last two years. They said he has been working silently to transform all sectors of the economy even if majority of us have opted to close our eyes to those things. Well, as they say, that one ‘na your toro!’ As far as Asari-Dokubo is concerned, that can only be the jabbering of “greedy politicians.” The common Nigerian from Otuoke in Bayelsa to Baga in Borno knows that a working machine has taken over Aso Rock and he is breaking new horizons in classical over-achievement.

Listen to Asari-Dokubo: “The (Nigerian) story has changed. I made five hours from Benin to Lagos by road (by the way, it used to be three hours when I did my youth service corps in that ancient town in 1990). Electricity supply is relatively constant now than what it was before Jonathan came in as President. The Abuja-Lokoja Road that was neglected is almost completed and several other roads across the country. People have started using the rail system again. This shows that Jonathan is silently moving the country at the direction to satisfy these people, while we from the Niger Delta are not being satisfied. Before now, we have had university lecturers going on strike for over six months, people go to universities to study courses of four or five years, but end up staying five and six years because the lecturers were always going on strike, but that is not the case as at today because the government is handling the issue. Even at that, this is the most maligned government because some people think, and they have been made to believe that they are born to rule, and so many people who are very timid to challenge them have accepted it.”

And did he have to say about the call for his arrest? He fired: “I am saying it bold and clear without mincing words, that the consequences of my arrest, Nigeria will be history.

The last time Obasanjo arrested me, my arrest reduced Nigeria oil production to 700,000 barrels per day. This time, it will reduce it to zero barrel and we will match violence by violence, intrigues by intrigues. We are ready for them.

Goodluck Jonathan will complete his tenure of two terms whether they like it or not; for us, they don’t even exist because we pay them; he who pays the piper decides the tune.

And then…Kingsley Kuku: “People have created negative tendencies just to create the belief that President Jonathan cannot govern Nigeria. I did not say that Jonathan should be elected, by hook or crook, as President in 2015 otherwise there will be violence in the Niger Delta. I said for the peace process not to degenerate and collapse, President Jonathan should be allowed to implement the amnesty package. Nigeria will never be ungovernable. Nigeria will be governable under President Jonathan and he is already stemming the tide of restiveness.” Awww!

How more logical can anyone be on this matter? Those who say the Jonathan train should be stopped because Nigeria is tottering on the brink of anarchy miss the point. It is not really important whether he has the capacity to rein in the terror that has assailed the nation. It matters not whether he is slow and sadly effete at tackling the ills that continue to plague the society. This debate is not about how guns echo sorrowful lullabies and ignite teardrops in our homes. It is about the politics of leadership in a nation that is forever perched on a plateau of non-populist leaders’ delusion of grandeur. It is not even about war and peace. Instead, it is about something more pedestrian than the lure of the stomach which has propelled many to think through their buttocks—what the National Auditor of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Adewole Adeyanju, tagged “turn by turn Nigeria Limited.”

Being a man of figures, Adeyanju simplified all the fiery ranting of Asari-Dokubo thus: “PDP has leaders and we know them. Today, our leader is the President and Commander of the Armed Forces, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonatha n. This man is from the South-South. The best thing to do for Nigeria to sustain peace is to make Nigeria turn by turn Nigeria Limited. That’s why we can talk two terms. South-South is there now and we should just allow them to do two terms and that is how Nigeria can survive.”

And so, neither cluelessness nor outright incompetence can stop the moving train in this asphyxiating environment of government by the whim! If not Jonathan, who else can help sustain this uncommon transformation – the motions without movement in our land and the unequalled peace of the graveyard that now pervade the land? Who else but Jonathan?

May 11, 2013
Wild, wild country, still

What happens when killers and other violent criminals strike in Nigeria?

Simple: Nigerians talk about it for a few minutes. Relatives grieve. The authorities mouth some ineffectual words. The security family promises the world. Then, everything goes quiet. We move on.

In January, to recall a few recent incidents, Anambra people saw corpses floating on their river. In March, a police commissioner, Chinwike Asadu, was killed outside his home in Enugu. Last month, Baga popped up with a massacre of nearly 200 of its residents while their houses were burnt. Last Friday, a 92-year-old ex-minister in the Gowon era was kidnapped. This week, scores of policemen were cut down in Nasarawa.

I reproduce a piece I wrote entitled “Wild, wild country”. It is still a wild, wild country.

The piece: The two killing incidents, set apart by just four days, were as horrifying as the word can be. The one took place in the night when the day’s work was done and many had retired to bed; the other happened in broad daylight. On Independence Day, in Mubi, the second biggest town in Adamawa State, and its commercial nerve, students of the Federal Polytechnic sited there were in their hostel when guns began to boom. They sounded near at first, said one student; soon the gunmen drew nearer, still shooting. Panic gripped the hostel community. Everyone hurried into their rooms and locked their doors. But the visitors were on a mission they must accomplish. They kicked the doors open, shot and killed one student after another. At the end of the operation, over 40 students, according to some accounts, lay dead. The incident threw the polytechnic community into imaginable trauma. Friends and families of the dead were left in the deepest grief. The nation was in a daze, while the entire world stood stupefied.

That was one wild night in the Northeast of the country.

Four days later, and down south in Aluu, where the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, is located, four students of the institution faced the grimmest ordeal of their lives, none of them surviving to relive it. They were stripped naked and beaten until there was no life left in them. Finally, their bodies were burnt.

That was another wild outing.

Some reports blamed the Mubi attack on fundamentalists, while in Aluu, residents were said to have done the job.

Both incidents, not forgetting the killings in a Kano school within the same period, have sharpened up a whole new, horrifying angle in the country’s insecurity challenges. Schools have been attacked before, only now, there seems to be more boldness in taking on larger numbers of Nigeria’s young people secluded for the purpose of study. We must worry about the ease with which assailants invade our schools and kill young people being groomed for leadership. Our educational profile may not lift our spirits but we must worry when students are wasted. More fundamentally, we must worry when lives are wasted by people who neither have the sanction of the creator to do so nor the authority of the law of man. We must worry when mobs become accusers, prosecutors, judges and executioners in one fell swoop, as in the case of the Uniport Four, who were reportedly accused of stealing laptop computers and mobile phones.

Reports said a crowd watched with interest, even applauding, as the four, all below 22, were tortured to death and their corpses set ablaze. What do you make of such a scene and such an act? Such brutalities attack every claim we make to civility, and rebrand us a wild, wild nation.

Mob action or jungle justice did not start in Aluu, to be sure. All over the country, people have faced instant death at the hands of streetwalkers and bystanders, and for even the pettiest of offences. But for me, one nasty thing about such brand of justice is that the people dispensing it may be woefully unqualified for the job. Some who clobber mob victims to death may actually be thieves themselves. We can tell from the mob which was eager to slay a certain adulteress caught in the act.

But there are weightier concerns about jungle justice. It questions the character and professionalism of the police, the outfit whose responsibility it is to sort out civil disorders. How was it that a mob tortured and killed four undergraduates, then set their corpses on fire, an operation that must have lasted hours, without the police getting any wind of it? What do you make of such police? Again, why are people better disposed to taking the law into their own hands rather than reporting their concerns to law enforcers? Why has confidence in the police waned?

It is perhaps naive to conclude that the Aluu executioners were inspired by the assailants in Mubi simply because of the short space of time between them, but it is safe to say that unlawful killings, of which Nigeria has quite a pile, if not punished, pave the way for more of such barbaric illegalities. Heaps of files of unsolved murders are still with the police, as are bunches of reports on bloody communal and sectarian crises with government. Hope may have died out on those files being reopened or the murderers being brought to justice, and it is just this sort of profile that helps to reduce the value for life in the populace. In time, people with propensity to kill, begin to do so knowing that, as in the past, there is little or no chance of ever being caught and punished. Such scenarios make life seem worthless.

Everyone has a role to make things better, but people in authority have a bigger responsibility. You can tell if life matters in a local council if the chairman defends one threatened resident with all his soul. It is easy to see if a state or federal government cares for its people if a small endangered community is given the best possible attention.

We are just one wild, wild bunch.

•First published October 14, 2012

May 11, 2013
Leaders, legitimacy and security

Leaders in all walks of life especially politics derive their authority and legitimacy from the way and manner they assumed or took office. The authority here is the legitimate power to act and execute their mandate of office, while it is assumed that security is a sine qua non for the exercise of powers inherent in their designated offices. That normal assumption of security as given and constant in the execution of the given powers of powerful and mighty office holders is our food for thought today.We shall look at this topic from one end of the spectrum of global leadership to the other – from the peaceful and blissful, to the bloody and violent; from the sublime, if you like, to the utterly ridiculous and unbelievable.

From the Middle East, that hot bed of violent politics especially the sectarian type, where US Secretary of State John Kerry just announced that there would be no role for embattled Syrian President Bashir Assad in post- war Syria, just as the US and Russia have agreed to a Syrian Conference to end the war; to the Netherlands where a much loved Queen abdicated in favor of her son to become King, the issues above are at work and at play. In Nigeria, state governors with huge security votes, lament and even cry in horror as the lexicon of terrorism expanded bloodily to include Ombatse Cult in Nasarawa state, in a security night mare that started with Boko Haram, and in recent times accommodated Baga and Bama, scenes of gory killings that included innocent women and children. In soccer, the surprise announcement of the retirement of the best Mnager in the world, Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manager of Manchester United, the biggest soccer brand that transcends continents, religion and cultures in terms of global followership was matched by the immediate announcement of his successor, David Moyes, the Manager of Everton . We end with an anecdote which is a faction, a mixture of facts and fiction, on how some leaders succeed to offices they desire, not through the normal succession procedures but through mischief, misinformation and virtual coup detats, even though they are not in the military.

Again we go back to the Middle East and look at events in Syria and Israel the agent provocateur of Islamic militancy globally, just as Iran is the biggest supporter of global terrorism. That the US and Russia have agreed to a conference is at least a face saving playoff on their inability to decide and agree on what to do to end the bloody carnage in Syria. The US wants the Syrian rebels installed in Damascus but the Russians say they support Assad at all costs and will not allow the sort of exit that the allies inflicted on Gaddafi in Libya over the no flying zone UN resolution that Russia supported then , much to its chagrin and vexation later as Gaddafi was toppled . Either way though, Assad has lost legitimacy and authority over Syria and cannot eve guarantee his own security, not to talk of the security of his nation , which is an extreme negative example of the topic of the day. Israel on the other hand is behaving illegitimately in announcing this week, the building of 300 houses on occupied territories in violation of UN resolutions not to do so. Israel is unwittingly creating insecurity and opprobrium on itself in the way and manner it is misusing authority by building on occupied territories and claiming that this will not affect future peace talks when such news violently provoke Arabs and Muslims globally on a daily basis and attract young ones to bloody jihads to redress the situation in the region.

The abdication and succession in The Netherlands provide a good example of a smooth transition of authority and legitimacy in a calm and secure environment even though role of the monarchy in The Netherlands is largely ceremonial. Just as it is in Great Britain where this type of transition is equally expected as the aged Queen Elizabeth 11 has started sharing royal duties with the fast ageing Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir apparent in the English Royal line of succession.

Similarly, the retirement and succession story on SirAlex Freguson in Old Trafford is a lesson on the smooth management of transfer of power, authority and legitimacy. The board of Man U asked for and got the recommendation of Sir Alex Ferguson and appointed that nominee as his successor and that is David Moyes. That is management of a soccer club in a secure environment. Compare that with Chelsea where the owner, Abramovich has fired six managers in a row because they lost matches he deemed as important. In fact, he picked Mourinho as Chelsea Manager by announcing that he would pick the Manager of the winning team in the Champions League Final between Monaco and Porto that year – and Mourinho was Manager of Porto which won. He fired the same Mourinho after he was unable to win the Champions League for Chelsea even though he won back to back Premier League titles for Chelsea. That to me is like Management and soccer politics in a war zone. In addition the news of Moyes announcement as Sir Alex Ferguson successor puts paid to Mourinho’s undisguised ambition to manage Man U. Obviously the Board of Man U do not want the war credentials or volatile management style of Mourinho to destabilise the orderliness and solid management success that Sir Alex has taken 26 years to build , to disappear in a jiffy. Hence the safe bet of appointing David Moyes, a son of the soil as it were, to ensure corporate and stable success at Man U.

In contrast however, killing of 22 Police officers in Nasarawa state on their way to arrest members of the Ombatse Cult said to be notorious for forcing people to take oaths of allegiance to the cult, is a pathetic and sickening one in total negative defiance of the concepts being treated today. In killing Policemen, the Ombatse Cult whose name in the language of the area – Eggon – means ‘ we have just begun‘, has created anarchy in the area. Of course where security fails, as in this case, authority and legitimacy fly out of the window. So who is in charge to bring this blood thirsty cult to book? Is it the police it is killing with impunity; or the state governor who has an undisclosed amount to spend on security but which obviously has not been judiciously spent as Ombatse Cult is on rampage killing policemen? Surely there is a mix up in the understanding and application of the concepts of security and authority in Nasarawa state and this has made the security situation in the state untenable and I pity the people of that state and hope that this dangerous affliction will not spread to other states in the vicinity.

Lastly, let me share an interesting story on succession politics, in a social institution in defiance of the spirit and order of the above concepts. It is the story of a leader who betrayed the authority that appointed him and took vengeance on another leader that asked the authority that appointed him to sack him for his disloyalty. The target of the vengeance had been leader of the vengeful leader’s team before the vengeful leader was appointed by the authority that he betrayed. The vengeful leader, in anticipation of his removal for his treachery, misinformed the leader of his team that there was a dangerous mutiny in his team and he should relinquish authority quickly and silently for his safety. The harassed and embarrassed leader in the interest of peace acquiesced and left office. Whereon the vengeful leader told members of the team that he was ready for a new office after the loss of his former office for treachery. The unsuspecting team members obliged him and gave him a new office as replacement for the leader he had misinformed to flee for his safety. This to me is a most fascinating story on the use of mendacity to gain power and calumny to sustain it. It flies in the face of integrity, loyalty and lacks any legitimacy. Which is a pity in any social institution as in this very interesting story . Please ponder awhile on the moral of this story, as I have more in the kitty.

May 11, 2013
Of Akpabio, Etok and a political faux pas

It was like drama, no, it was real drama. Overnight, Senator Aloysius Etok woke up in Abuja, decided to grant an interview but not on a national issue; he decided to speak on a senatorial contest in 2015. People who listened to the radio interview where the senator representing Akwa Ibom North-West spoke on how there was no vacancy in the Senate for ‘his seat’ in 2015, wondered why the senator chose to speak of 2015 when he has not fully delivered on the job at hand. But then, that is the way of some Nigerian politicians, they myopically think public service should be their exclusive preserve.

More than anything, speaking of the senatorial contest in Akwa Ibom North-West hurts more than a few constituents, as they would rather their senator speak on how to bring development to the region by joining hand with the governor, who is also from that region. But how can Senator Etok collaborate with the state governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio, the same way the Senate President, David Mark is collaborating with his governor, Gabriel Suswam, when he already has an axe to grind?

According to Etok, it was an anathema for Akpabio to eye ‘his chair’ in the Senate and if he did, the governor must have consulted not with the people, who are the corner stone of democracy, but with Etok because he was ‘the owner of the chair’. The big surprise of the interview was when Senator pooh-poohed the structure he rode on to get to power by bad-mouthing Akpabio, saying he did not play any role in his (Etok) becoming a senator for a second term. Though the people still remember the roles played by Akpabio, including persuading other contenders to step down for Etok and even convincing the people, who were ready to ride roughshod on Etok during the polls, Etok would have us believe that he returned to the Red Chamber by his doing and through his popularity with the people.

He even arrogantly said that the people have not told him he would not return to the Senate as if the people went to invite him to contest in the first place. He even said he would hold the chair and not let go till it is broken, pray when does the Senatorial seat of an entire constituency comprising 10 local governments become a chair for one person? Another way of the world and tragedy of Nigerian politics, staying in power for life is the be-all and end-all of their professed love for the people. Well, one need not remind Senator Etok and, in fact, other politicians who consider political positions as something they and their family alone should hold for life, that the people reserve the power to choose their leaders. More so, it is God who chooses leaders and He will do his beat in 2015 whether Governor Akpabio as well as anyone qualifies from the Senatorial District contests or not.

The greatest surprise of the whole saga, however, came when the distinguished Senator Etok threw caution to the winds by holding a press conference where he stated that Governor Akpabio was after his life. It was a classic political howler, or so most people thought. But the senator had a different opinion. He had prepared a speech in which he said: “I have on this phone some text messages which says (sic) that if I don’t retract the statement that I will contest the election in 2015, after seven days, I will see what they will do. The governor has also instructed different groups that if I don’t retract the statement within seven days, I will either be dead to stop me or alive to retract the statement. Therefore, I want you all the media to ask the governor or those he had let loose to tell the world what is the insult; that if I still remember what happened during my second term struggle when, as soon as they knew I was going to contest, my wife was kidnapped.”

Not a few people wondered how and when an issue about 2015 could suddenly degenerate into threats against the senator’s life, but many a people who know Akpabio and his politics of peace recognised that the threats could not have emanated on the governor’s instruction. Why would Akpabio or any of his supporters ask Etok to recant or face assassination when the people power belongs to them? This was an Akpabio that defeated an incumbent governor’s governorship aspirant, Bob Ekarika, in 2006 at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary; an Akpabio that won governorship election by landslide margins on two occasions.

Why would Akpabio be so afraid of Etok that he would want to hurt him when he has never taken that path before? Of course, book makers thought of Etok’s allegation as a cock and bull story woven together to appeal to sympathy. Argumentum ad misericordiam is that fallacy whereby people resort to using emotional appeal to win an argument and Etok committed that much by alleging that Akpabio was after him and that he had suffered the same fate before. So, did Akpabio kidnap his wife and mother-in-law in the past and also went ahead to support him? Does the fact that he suffered such fate make the Senate seat his exclusive preserve and is it enough reason that other people cannot aspire?

The governor’s reaction, through his Commissioner for Information, Mr Aniekan Umana, cleared the air about the allegation, as he described it as “paranoid, deceitful, baseless and mere hallucinations that serve no purpose whatsoever,” saying: “His Excellency, Governor Akpabio, is a God-fearing and peace-loving man, and has never contemplated and will never contemplate evil against anyone, let alone his brother and friend, Senator Aloysius Etok.” It actually turned out that Senator Etok’s allegation about the threat to his life was true, as evident in the arrest of one Adelola Tamunotonye Olaore, a 29-year-old graduate of Mechanical Engineering, who confessed to being behind the assassination threat against Senator Etok with a view to defrauding him. Though the State Security Service (SSS) has nipped the threat in the bud, Senator Etok had made a puerile move by ascribing the threat to the governor. It was a glaring case of trying to call a dog a bad name to hang it, it was a joke taken too far and the world is waiting for the next move that will be made by the senator.

Bob Woodward must have seen farther ahead in time to have said that “the legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get into trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.” Now that the suspect has been arrested, can the Senator prove that there is a link between the suspect, who claimed to have seen Etok’s complementary card at the office of the Niger Delta Development Commission in Port-Harcourt and Akpabio? The burden of proof lies with the Senator, who deemed it worthy to announce to the world that ‘Akpabio has let loose his resurrected assassination squad’ and has sent same after him (Etok), without proper investigation. It is incontestable that the court of public opinion will find the senator guilty of failing as a legislator and being bereft of counsel to have made such a move of naming Akpabio in an attempt to kill him.

The issue, it was further gathered, is generating ripples in the Senate and its leadership. Those who know Etok in the Senate are of the opinion that rather than concentrating his effort on how to extricate himself from the web of controversies he has found himself in the pension probe and thank the leadership for stemming the tide that was loaded against him, he is now busy soiling the name of his benefactor.

Indeed, the people of Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District in Akwa Ibom North-West are awaiting the explanation of their senator on the political faux pas, same way he is awaiting their voices to tell him they were not through him with him, when he should have seen the hand writing on the wall.

•Aina is a public affairs analyst

May 11, 2013
Needless debate on President’s tenure

Since the news filtered out a few days ago that the Senate is angling for a six-year single term tenure for the nation’s President in the new constitution expected to emerge later in the year, the nation has been polarised into two camps of those who cherish the idea and those who oppose it. Actually, the idea is not one for which the upper legislative chamber deserves credit. It is a mere modification of the seven-year single term tenure President Goodluck Jonathan proposed to the National Assembly a few months after he assumed office in 2011.

In justifying the proposal, the President had argued that it was impelled by the need for an incumbent President to focus maximum attention on the execution of his developmental programmes rather than exert vital energy on re-election issues. “President Jonathan is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates both at the federal and state levels,” presidential spokesman, Dr, Reuben Abayi, said in a statement. “The nation is still smarting from the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election. The fallout of all this is the unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations. In addition, the costs of conducting party primaries and the general elections have become too high for the economy to accommodate every four years. The proposed amendment Bill is necessary to consolidate our democracy and allow elected executives to concentrate on governance and service delivery for their full term, instead of running governments with re-election as their primary focus.”

Other proponents of the idea believe that it will reduce acrimony in politics and create a level play field for all candidates during elections. But as would be expected in a country where the people are perpetually at war with their leaders’ desperation to cling to power, the President’s proposal was discounted as a subtle move to perpetuate himself in office. The opposition parties, the Transition Monitoring Group, civil society groups, socio-political organisations like the Afenifere and Arewa Consultative Forum, and even the House of Representatives all believe that the proposal is nothing but a ploy by the President and sitting governors to add more years to their tenures through a back-door arrangement.

The idea of breaking the President’s tenure into two terms of four years each emanated from the need to give the electorate an opportunity to assess the President’s performance in the first four years and use that as a yardstick to determine his continued suitability or otherwise. He would be voted out, if he is deemed not to have lived up to expectation or voted in to continue his good works, if he is deemed fit and able. The arrangement imposes on an elected President the responsibility to hit the ground running in order to merit a second term. On the other hand, the President elected for a single term of six years is a fait accompli. The people have no choice, but to endure him for the period, no matter how patently incapable.

However, both arrangements are premised on the presumption that the votes count and the power to elect resides with the people. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case with us. Hence I have a feeling that the debate on the President’s tenure amounts to putting the cart before the horse. Our most pressing political need at the moment is not how long the president stays in office, but the ability of the people to get the kind of leaders they desire. Of course, it is obvious that the nation has not profited from the present arrangement. But there is also no guarantee that shortening the maximum tenure of the President from two four-year terms to a single term of six years would guarantee the dividends of democracy the people have so wistfully longed for. The constitutional innovation that would help the nation at the moment is one that guarantees that every vote counts so that the electorate can choose trusted individuals to lead them.

This is important because the success of any administration is a function of how much trust the people repose in it. Once the people believe that they are being led by individuals in whom they repose a lot of confidence, their trust in the administration is boosted and this results in maximum cooperation between the leader and the led. In June 1993, for instance, prices of food items in Lagos markets and elsewhere began to crumble as soon as the news filtered out that the late Bashorun MKO Abiola had won the presidential election. This was without any prompting from any official quarters. It was believed that many traders started bringing out the food items they had hoarded because they believed that an Abiola presidency would flood the economy with them.

Two years ago, traders in Sango-Ota who had narrowed the streets and obstructed traffic with their makeshift shops began to demolish them on their own as soon as they learnt that Ibikunle Amosun of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had won the governorship of Ogun State. Conversely, not a few people believe that the Boko Haram and other forms of crises the Jonathan administration is witnessing are direct consequences of diminishing trust in the government.

There is no doubt that what is uppermost in the mind of the average Nigerian now is the chance to elect a President that would run a responsible and responsive government. Given the disappointments they have suffered from successive governments since the nation returned to democracy in 1999, Nigerians would tolerate a President that guarantees adequate security, good roads, regular electricity and potable water longer than Libyans tolerated Ghadaffi.

Rather than waste time and energy persuading Nigerians to accept a single six or seven-year tenure, President Jonathan should revisit the recommendations of Justice Mohammed Uwais Committee on Electoral Reforms and adopt them without any exception. That, to me, is the most auspicious way to begin our search for a fruitful democratic system.

May 11, 2013