The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

Nigerian elections: what lessons?

The Nigerian elections have come and gone. The country has elected a President, members of the National Assembly, governors and state house of assembly members (there are few reruns for some polling units to be fixed by INEC and two yet to be declared governorship results). A lot of developments have trailed the elections across the country. It does seem that the same old stories played out during the campaigns and during the election days across the country.

Religious and ethnic sentiments were again issues in the just concluded elections. However, the two major religions, Christianity and Islam were not just the focus this time. In some states, even different Christian denominations have been issues. In a state like Enugu, Catholicism and Anglican denomination at some point became an issues during the campaigns as some party members accused each other of exploiting their membership of either denomination for political interests. Some party members peddled false information against opponents through church members.

The idea of zoning of Presidential party tickets by the major political parties, the All Progressive Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were issues during the party primaries. However, while the APC were able to arrive at a consensus by picking a Southern candidate now President-elect, Bola Tinubu, the PDP in a way suffered the collateral damage of deviating from their previous zoning of offices to the different regions.

The emergence of Atiku Abubakar as the party presidential ticket in a way divided the party as some governors headed by the governor of Rivers state, Nyesom Wike led four the governors of Enugu, Benue, Oyo and Abia state to form the G-5 (integrity group) that decided not to support the presidential candidate of the PDP. Ultimately, only governors Wike of Rivers state, Makinde of Oyo state and Ugwuanyi of Enugu were able to work and win their states for the governorships and some legislative seats.

In some states, certain clans and ethnic sentiments were whipped up. In a place like Rivers, Lagos, Kaduna and Abia among others, intra-ethnic differences were played up by politicians and their supporters that often led to very tense verbal and physical attacks before, during and after the elections. In a country with no clear and implementable electoral offences laws, most of the perpetrators of the recorded electoral offences may never face justice. But the victims are across the nation.

However, while elections have been won and lost, Nigeria must decide the route to follow for development. No election in Nigeria’s history must again remind or take the people back to the 1983 or 2011 post-election violence that claimed lives. Post-election violence does not happen out of the blues. They are normally products of pre-election rhetoric that fan the embers of division. Nigeria cannot develop when there is no unity, justice and peace.

The essence of democracy is for the people to choose among themselves those that should lead them. The needs of any group of people are the same and divisions and conflicts come when the proponents want to have undue advantages. But we must understand that elections are not supposed to divide in a democracy, they are supposed to unite the people even if they don’t vote for same candidates.

The Roundtable Conversation believes that conversations are valuable tools for unity and understanding so we must have serious conversations as a people. Nigeria is not where it ought to be politically and economically. The country is too blessed to have 133 million people living in multi-dimensional poverty. Poverty and illiteracy cannot power development. We must question our inability to harvest the potentials of our people both in Nigeria and the diaspora.

Nigerians are some of the best educated and most talented in the world. The country has become a brain bank literarily for global economies that target our people for their own growth. Nigerians excel in all human fields across the globe and most of our citizens are elected in other countries where they have all the rights of citizenship. Nigerians are always quick to congratulate Nigerians in diaspora when they win elections, achieve professional excellence or get appointed to multi-national organizations.

In essence, Nigeria has not got its democracy right. If we have chosen that system of government then we must be prepared to dig fully into its core essence. If it is about the people, then we must be a people first in the real sense of the world. Development must be seen as holistic. Development is not about one individual group, region, state or nation. It is about a people coming together to define the vision they have. The 2023 elections speak to the very divisions that have made it impossible for Nigeria to achieve its full potentials.

The just concluded elections must tell the country that it is still a long road to development as the political parties seem to be a mere gathering of people with no defined ideological leanings even if they claim otherwise on paper. There must be some real constitutional reviews to make the country’s political party structure more functional than being a mere vehicle that ferries candidates into political offices. Political parties like in other democracies must be ideologically identifiable and must be visionary enough to have clear roadmaps to the development of the country with a good and deep appreciation of the socio-religious nuances that define us.

The political parties must redefine their roles in nation-building. The running of political parties must be transparent and leadership more altruistic and varied. The male monopoly of political leadership in Nigeria is an albatross. There is no reason why women should have a Women’s Wing while top executive positions in parties are the exclusive of men. More often than not, women leadership in political parties starts and ends with ‘Women leader’ or ‘Welfare Officers’. Party leadership must be open and more competitive than what exists at the moment.

Women’s voices are muted and so is their participation. The legislative arm of government and the executive are male dominated. Nigeria has one of the lowest ratios of women in parliament and it is even worse now after the elections. The declared election results show that elected males make up more than 95% as against women with a paltry 3.5%. For a nation of 200m people with almost half made up of women, this is recipe for disaster. The world is leaving us behind. Nigerian women are some of the world’s most educated and capable.

The Nigerian political space is very discriminatory on a lot of grounds mainly because most often capacity is not the only criteria for political parties to nominate candidates. The five gender equity bills that were thrown out by the 9th National Assembly happened because more than 90% of the legislators were men and they interpreted democratic tenets on the basis of mundane issues like religion and culture which by the way are male creations for political expediencies.

Kenya just elected its seventh governor. This happened because there was a constitutional amendment in 2010 that made it unlawful for any gender to occupy more than two third of elective positions. That has given women more chances at the political table. That is however not equity but it is better than where Nigeria is at the moment. Women are under-represented and it is due to the structure of the political parties where women are seemingly absent at the party decision making table.

Nigeria cannot develop if Nigerians continue to play the same type of divisive politics that ignores equity and justice. It might appear as a jaded cliché but things are not changing. It might be politically expedient for the men in politics to resort to cheap blackmail that women do not support women because they always vote for men. That too is very laughable because the socio-religious institutions always nurture women to believe that leadership is a male prerogative even when women in Africa had always provided leadership in pre-colonial times.

The outcome of the elections must also teach politicians that it may not be business as usual. The emergence of Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigeria peoples Party (NNPP) has changed the power dynamics. PDP and APC lost a few of their former strongholds while LP and NNPP made inroads into a few areas. Veteran politicians lost to new entrants and those that might never have won elections in the past.

Countries are built by citizens and Nigerians must make conscious efforts to build the nation and benefit from the human and material resources that the country has and continues to nurture. The political structure must be functional enough to push development. The poverty in the country must be unacceptable to political players. Political elite must rise above self to be more patriotic. It is only citizens that can develop nations and that may never happen if certain constitutional amendments don’t happen.

While some politicians revel in the euphoria of victory and others mourn their defeat, there must be introspection across the land. What is the future we want to see? What future can bring the prosperity we seek? Who would chaos and division profit? How can we have a more functional political structure that can be as inclusive as it is functional? Would we benefit from division or unity? Can inclusivity hurt our nation or can it prosper us? These are the conversations we must have as a nation desirous of development. We must have a functional constitution made by the people.

The dialogue continues…

March 25, 2023
Senator’s leadership bid faces fresh hurdle

WITH the general elections concluded and the All Progressives Congress (APC) winning the presidential election, the battle for political offices other than the president and the vice president has begun in the ruling party.

Of particular interest to top ranking party members is the number three position, namely the Senate President, which a popular politician from the Southeast is said to be desperate about.

The politician in question is said to be going round the country to seek support from anyone he believes could help him to realise his bid for the exalted office.

There is, however, a twist that could see the ambition of the senator crumble like a pack of cards following underground campaigns by some members of the upper legislative chamber that the rules be changed to make it possible for non-ranking senators to contest the coveted seat.

The implication of this is that the door may now be open to some newly elected senators from the Southeast and the South-South regions of the country considered by many as better materials for the seat to throw their hats in the ring.

The new development is bound to compound the plight of the Southeast senator whose image many of his kinsmen have already opposed because they fear that his character is not something the people of his region would be proud of to have him as their highest representative in government.

Candidate rains curses as governorship ambition crumbles

THE governorship and House of Assembly elections have come and gone, leaving winners to savour the joy of victory and losers to lick the wounds of defeat.

But an aspirant whose wounds would take a long time to heal is one who was said to have spent billions of naira in pursuit of his governorship ambition only to fall short of victory.

Frustrated not just by the loss of the election but by the gaping hole his ambition left in his pocket at the end of the race, the wealthy politician was said to have rained curses on his rival who emerged victorious in the election as well as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

His frustration was said to have been compounded by saucy voters, some of whom were beneficiaries of the N10,000 he allegedly paid per vote, as they launched into a song in mockery of the politician, saying: Owo wogbo-o, owo wogbo, ten, ten thousand, owo wogbo, meaning in Yoruba language that the N10,000 the politician paid per vote had gone down the drain.

March 25, 2023
Southwest: Significance of 1951 and 2023

GOVERNOR Babajide Sanwo-Olu has achieved for Lagos State what the late Premier of defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, achieved for the Yoruba 72 years ago.

Politically speaking, the governor has protected the interest of Lagos the same way Awo protected the interest of the entire Southwest in the last years of colonialism.

In 1951, Nigeria was gazing at independence. Under the Macpherson Constitution, a pseudo-autonomy was granted to the three regions to elect representatives at the Houses of Assembly under the Westminster model.

The late Dr. Nnamidi Azikiwe, a vocal journalist, nationalist and politician, was elected by Lagosians to represent Surulere/Mainland Constituency in the Western Regional House of Assembly. The Yoruba of Lagos bestowed the honour on him as a lieutenant of the departed father of nationalism and Lagos political icon, Herbert Macauley, though Zik was an Ibo.

Zik had many admirers and supporters in Yoruba land. Prominent among them were Chief Theophilus Benson, Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya, Chief Odeleye Fadahunsi, Chief Babatunde Olowofoyeku, Chief Olu Akinfosile, Alhaji Ishawu Adio Sanni (I.A.S) Adewale (The Boy Is Good), Ibiyinka Olorunnimbe, Adeleke Adedoyin, H.P. Adebola and the strongman of Ibadan politics, Adegoke Adelabu.

Many Yoruba youths adored Zik. They flooded the Zikist Movement, eager to drink from his fountain of knowledge.

So hugely popular was Zik that he aspired to become the Leader of Government Business/ Premier at Ibadan. But there was a big challenge.

In the North, Sir Ahmadu Bello (Sardauna of Sokoto) and leader of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) was set to become the Leader of Government Business.

Also, Eyo Ita Eyo from the Eastern Region had become the Leader of Government Business in the Eastern Region.

The Yoruba in NCNC and Action Group (AG) were agitated in those days of primordial sentiments. Their belief was that since the Northern Region had produced a Hausa/Fulani Premier for the region and someone from a Southeastern ethnic group had assumed the reins in the Eastern Region, the Western Region should produce a Yoruba as Premier.

Despite the admiration for Zik, his followers, especially in Yoruba land, were realistic. They, therefore, pleaded with him to nominate a Yoruba lawmaker as Leader of Government Business, in the interest of national ethnic balancing. Adelabu and Adisa Akinloye were suggested since their party or association, Ibadan Mabolaje, tended to have sympathy for the NCNC.

But Zik, the NCNC leader and Western Regional parliamentarian, refused, in utter insensitivity to the strong ethnic factor.

His rigidity provided an opportunity for the AG leader, Awo, who was also an elected member from Remo, to woo the undecided legislators to team up with his party to secure a majority in the House.

Back then, majority of parliamentarians were elected into the House on the platforms of township associations. For example, Oduola Osuntokun, vice principal of Christian School, Ado-Ekiti and a fan of Zik, was sponsored by Ekiti Descendants Association, led by High Chief Johnson Anisulowo. Also, the member from Ondo, F. O. Awosika, ran on the platform of Ondo Improvement Union.

The AG reached out to all of them. Five of the Ibadan Peoples Party legislators – Akinloye, Daniel Akinbiyi (later Olubadan of Ibadan), Moyosore Aboderin, Akinyemi and S. O. Lanlehin – queued behind Awo in the Parliament; only Adelabu refused to team up with the AG leader.

When the British Speaker of the Western Regional House asked the two parties to exhibit their numerical strength on the floor, AG carried the day and Awo became the Leader of Government Business and, later, the Premier.

A section of non-Yoruba Southern elements bragged that the Western Region was for all, irrespective of ethnic backgrounds of the residents. The indomitable Awo disagreed. He was labelled a tribal bigot. But he secured for his ethnic group a place under the sun, erecting the foundation of the Western Region on a strong pillar through his path-finding, developmental policies and programmes, which made the region a model in Africa.

The fact of authentic history, which Awo left as an instruction, guidance and legacy, was borne out of two experiences.

The first was the collective Yoruba reaction to the boasting that the god of the Igbo had predestined the children of the Southeasterners to dominate the people of Africa.

The 1951 battle for supremacy inside the hallowed chambers at Ibadan reflected the push for the realisation of Zik’s dream for domination of political power and the ultimate resistance to subjugation by the natives.

Yet, earlier, Awo, who had opted for federalism as far back as 1947, as documented in his book, titled: Path to Nigeria’s Freedom, as against Zik’s inexplicable disposition towards unitarianism before he later reluctantly changed his mind, had offered a veritable enlightenment on the sheer value of cultural nationalism, identity protection and unity in diversity.

With a benefit of hindsight, he emphasised the utility, unity and oneness of a nation as a component unit in a federation of nation-state, with his acclaimed heroic and patriotic statement that in a diverse country like Nigeria, whoever aspired to be a good citizen of Nigeria must, and using himself as an example, first of all, be a good indigene of Ikenne, then Remo, Yoruba/Western Region, and finally, Nigeria.

The step Awo took in 1951 paid off. If he had not assumed the reins as Premier, how would an Igbo-born Premier at Ibadan understand the challenges, needs, yearnings and of the people of Awori, Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Remo, Ekiti, Akoko, Ilaje, Ijesa, Agbadarigi, Itsekiri, among others, for development?

It, therefore, meant that Liberty Stadium, Ikeja industrial estate, farm settlements, schools, Cocoa House, free education programme and first television in Africa would not have happened.

Instructively, after Zik relocated to the Eastern Region where he displaced Eyo Ita as Leader of Government Business, he could not sustain free education in the region beyond two years.

The 2023 governorship battle in Lagos State partly mirrored the 1951 struggle. The same mistake was averted. Even, in the distant pre-colonial days, Orowusi (Baale of Ibadan), whom Rev. Samuel Johnson described as a “far-seeing man” and a leader with sound judgment, had implored the natives to rely more on the children of the soil for governance than strangers. He must have come to the reality that strangers may not have any emotional attachment to the land beyond the economic benefits they were targeting. The Yoruba capture the situation in two popular proverbs: “Igi da, eye fo” (The perching bird vamooses when the tree snaps) and “Ti idi ba baje, t’onidi lo nda.” (When the genitalia is diseased, the person concerned bears the brunt alone).

Reminiscent of the pre-First Republic era, few men of irritable political temper recently conspired, for selfish reasons, to sell Lagos, unarguably Southwest’s fortress, to strangers, out of bile, ego and disdain for a colossus they cannot match, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

They built castles in the air, projecting an upstart from the blue, concocting falsehoods and sharpening an ethnic arrow, in preparation for an electoral war against indigenes on their God-given land.

They came up, once again, with the vexatious slogan: ‘Lagos is no man’s land.’ In fact, they invented a more corrosive anthem, which they chorused: ‘We own Lagos.’ Like Awo of 1951, Sanwo-Olu disagreed. Again, truth prevailed and the desperados have been gaping in the dark with their tails dangling between their shapeless legs.

But the lessons of this season’s political braggadocio should remain instructive. If the owners of the house sleep on guard, if the inheritors of invaluable assets fail to protect them, strangers will stage an invasion and freeborn would be subjected to the status of slaves on their soil.

The attempts to snatch the Centre of Excellence by envious, covetous settlers are more likely to continue through various designs, as the years past have shown. It is up to the land owners to stave off the political invaders to save the land from further incursions.

March 25, 2023
X-raying 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections (2)

My experience with elections in Nigeria in relation to the concept of rigging, particularly that of 2003 and that of 2007 will largely trigger the question “What manner of rigging will make the ruling party lose its strongholds and will see sitting governors under its platform lose their bids to retire to the Senate in 2023?

True, the elections had its shades of ugly occurrences but are these enough to nullify the process in a country where we were prime witnesses to the eras of moon slides, and electoral heists that shocked millions of Nigerians to their marrow. Again, it is important to note that the incidences of such ugly occurrences were spread all over the Federation and whatever underhanded practices that occurred were perpetuated by the four major political parties who like the game of musical chairs played either victim or perpetrators and so the “Anwuolam” (I am dead in Igbo language) shrieks by certain candidates cannot hold any water.

For example, one must condemn the violence against Igbos in isolated areas of Lagos , i am one of those persons who believe that there was really no need for such in the course of both elections, but these same Labour Party sympathizers will pretend that such did not occur in the SouthEast Region where thugs blatantly announced that those not intending to vote the Labour Candidate to leave the voting premises. So while we must condemn the ethnic profiling and harassment of persons living in a particular area because it is believed that they would vote in a particular direction, the condemners have refused to condemn too the profiling and harassment of one’s own kinsman or woman because he or she too intends to vote otherwise, after all what is good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Again, to the allegations of rigging, let us ask what were the pathways of an Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his theatrical counterpart in Mr. Peter Obi to victory in that election? Obi’s emergence produced a seismic shift within the Southeast, SouthSouth and swathes of the North Central advertently denying Atiku Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party any inroads into these regions, which used to be the traditional strongholds of the PDP. Kwakwanso, who ran as the fourth force denied both Atiku and the APC Kano State and splintered whatever bloc of votes that should have gone Atiku Abubakar’s way in the core North.

Obi who had campaigned on the lines of ethnicity and religion, visiting church after church and attending every revival programme that was sure to draw in crowds of Christians should never have expected to get the support of the vastly populated Muslim North, not with his infamous “ Church take back your country declaration”, possibly his own harmatia and very similar to the naivety exhibited by the April 1990 coupists who attempted to excise the five core northern states from the Nigerian nation at the start of the coup.

Thus it is indeed shameful or mischievous for certain persons to argue that the 2023 elections were rigged in favour of Tinubu— as outlandish as such claims appear to be it is even funnier when it comes from the stables of Chief election riggers like former President Olusegun Obasanjo who master minded the rigging of the 2003 and 2007 elections , far cries from whatever irregularities we witnessed in 2023. It is on record that the rigging exercises of 2003 and 2007 were the most brazen attempts at rigging in the nation’s history, second only to the rigging witnessed in the 1965 Western Region elections , an era dubbed as riggings “finest hour”. In 2003, Obasanjo’s PDP shamefully stole votes from the other parties and where it couldn’t steal simply cooked its own votes, the rigging pattern witnessed then was so horrifying that former President Jimmy Carter , Obasanjo’s Man Friday and fellow Baptist who was in Nigeria to observe the elections declined to congratulate Obj for securing a stolen second term in office. Now, have you ever wondered why the 2007 Presidential elections do not have a concise result? In which we cannot pinpoint which state gave which figures but yet it ended up producing a President who admitted that the process that brought him to power was flawed? Who was the sitting president then?

Even Obi’s recent posturing as a moralist of sorts does not move me one bit, he should rather tell us how he won his reelection bid to govern Anambra in 2010 and his roles in the 2011 National Assembly Elections featuring Senator Chris Ngige and Professor Dora Akunyili as well as the 2013 guber elections which saw numerous irregularities play out in the victory of Governor Willie Obiano. In the 2013 scenario , materials meant for Idemili North were switched to Idemili South to undermine Ngige in those areas which were largely viewed as his strongholds. The question now is this , at such points were such processes excellent? Your guess is as good as mine.

The 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections have surely come and gone but the lessons learnt from such a process will help guide this our fledgling democracy by conducting better elections. Yes things could have been done better, but from this standpoint, the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections were as free and as fair as it could be.

March 25, 2023
Logic of the February 25 polls

Having spent the best part of the last two to three years attacking, traducing, insulting, denigrating and hurling all kinds of weapons to demonize Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and derail his unhidden presidential aspiration, it is understandable that a not insignificant number of newspaper columnists, public analysts, social media influencers and electronic medium talk show anchors are investing considerable time and energy in trying to discredit the February 25 elections in which the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate has emerged as President-elect. To his bitter and apparently inconsolable adversaries, any of the other major contestants for the apex office emerging triumphant would have been preferable to Tinubu’s victory. It is not impossible that the often inexplicably fierce antagonism to his person and politics may have impelled divine forces to aid the realization of Asiwaju’s ambition even in the face of almost superhuman odds. Of course, those who oppose Tinubu for whatever reasons have as much right to their political choice and stance as those like this writer who have not disguised their support for and inclination towards the President-elect. Whatever line one takes, however, it is intellectually dishonest to seek to de-market an election and call vociferously for its arbitrary cancellation simply because a candidate of one’s choice did not emerge victorious.

Let me quickly say that I have been in the place of those who feel bitter, disappointed and despondent that this election did not go the way of their favoured candidates. As a teenager in the final year of secondary school, I was a polling agent of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the 1979 presidential elections in Kwara State. My support for the party’s presidential candidate was predicated on what I saw as his superior programmatic agenda over his co-contestants as well as his glorious and incomparable track record of performance as Premier of the Western Region in the First Republic, which I had copiously read about. There are a number of interesting parallels between the 1979 elections and those of last February 25. The dominant ethnic groups – the Hausa/Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba had key contestants in the race. Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) from Sokoto State, Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP) from Borno State, and Mallam Aminu Kano of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) from Kano State were the northern candidates eyeing the presidential office. Dr. Nnmadi Azikwe of the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) from Anambra in the South East and Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) from Ogun State in the South-West were the contenders from the South.

As was widely projected before the election, the candidates performed well in their various ethno-regional bases. For instance, Azikwe scored 82.88% of the votes in Anambra State, 84.69% in Imo and 49.70% in Plateau, the three states won by the NPP out of the then existing 19 states. He recorded a total of 2,822,523 of votes cast in the election. The Christian factor contributed to his victory in Plateau. Chief Obafemi Awolowo made a clean sweep of the South-West recording 85.78% of the votes in Oyo, 94.50% in Ondo, 92.1% in Ogun, 82.30% in Lagos and 53.20% in Bendel which used to be part of the old Western Region to win those five states. His party also performed relatively well in Gongola where it recorded 21.67% of the votes. While Aminu Kano won 76.41% of the votes in his native Kano State, his party won 31% of the votes in Kaduna although the PRP narrowly clinched the state in the governorship election but with the NPN, however, winning a majority of seats in the House of Assembly. The winner of the election, President Shehu Shagari, secured vic tory in nine states winning 62.48% of the votes cast in Bauchi, 66.58% in Sokoto, and 35.2% in Gongola in the core North.

What secured overall victory for Shagari, however, was his victory in the ethnic minority states where he scored 76.38% in Benue, 64.40% in Cross River, 53.62% in Kwara, 74.88% in Niger and 72.65% in Rivers. Where Shagari did not come first nationwide, his party mostly came second thus having not just the highest number of total votes cast but also the widest spread of support across the country as required by the constitution to be declared victorious in a presidential election in Nigeria. It is interesting that while Shagari scored a total of 5,688,857 to win the election, Awolowo had 4,916,551 votes, Azikwe scored 2,822, 523, Aminu Kano, 1,732,113 votes and Waziri Ibrahim 1, 686, 489. But the NPN was the only party to meet the constitutional spread demand with 25% of the votes cast in 12 states and a substantial number of the votes cast in a 13th state, namely Kano. Despite the undisputed bias of the military superintendents of the transition, the General Olusegun Obasanjo regime, there is no way they could have handed over to any of the others and not instigated widespread instability and political insecurity. Yet, the opposition was vociferous in claiming that the election was rigged in favour of the NPN and the loudest in this regard was naturally the UPN whose candidate came a close second in overall numbers even while winning only in the five states of his home region.

Incidentally, that was also my view for many years until much later with greater emotional detachment and dispassionate analysis it became clear to me that Awolowo’s UPN simply did not have the spread of support to have won the 1979 election. To make the UPN’s case worse, Awolowo picked his running mate, Chief Phillip Umeadi, from the South-East thereby ignoring the whole North yet his party performed abysmally in the South- East. Interestingly, in the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, both Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) are vehemently claiming to have won the presidential election and to have been rigged out by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which allegedly manipulated the polls in favour of the ruling APC. A battery of public intellectuals including columnists and radio as well as television anchors and pundits have taken up the ‘rigged election’ battle cry with hardly any credi ble evidence or convincing logic to support this perspective.

The Chief Ayo Adebanjo-led Afenifere socio-cultural group has arbitrarily and magisterially declared that its preferred candidate, Peter Obi, won the election. No figures. No facts. No logic. Just like that! The ordinarily cerebral political scientist, Mr. Akin Osuntokun, DG of the LP campaign, claimed on national television that his candidate, Obi, won over one million votes in Lagos. These surely are claims which have to be proven in court but the opposition parties obviously do not want to go that route. They prefer an outright and legally baseless cancellation of the results and a recommencement of the process de novo. But the pertinent question is whether or not there is a clearly discernible logic to the outcome of the election. I believe there is just as in 1979. For instance, in his South-East Igbo redoubt, Peter Obi’s LP scored 1,960,589 votes to the miserly scores of 127, 605 and 91,195 recorded by the PDP and APC. He recorded nearly 95% support in the region. Was that also a function of rigging or did the election manipulation take place only outside the South-East?

Outside the South-East, is there not a logic to Obi’s victory in Lagos, Delta, Edo, and even Nasarawa and Plateau States in the North? Here, both the ethnic Igbo factor and the evangelical Christian vote, which he deliberately and consciously courted, worked in his favour. But then, there was a downside to this as the politicization of Christianity boomeranged against him in the vast North-East and North-West where Obi did not record up to 25% of the votes in any state. In the same vein, Atiku won key northern states in his base such as Adamawa, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna and Taraba as largely projected before the elections although Tinubu came a close second in these states thanks to the strong support he enjoyed from sitting APC governors in those states. As I stated last week, “The APC had a total of 1.7 million votes to PDP’s 1.4 million votes in the North Central. In the North-East, the APC scored a total of 1, 185, 458 votes to the PDP’s 1,741,845 votes thus coming second in the region. And in the North-West, APC scored 2,652, 253 votes to the PDP’s 2,329,540”. Thus, Tinubu came first in two of the zones in the North with Atiku triumphing only in his North-East region.

Again, was this unexpected? The answer is most certainly no. As I put it last week, “Again, the PDP inexplicably went into the election as a divided house, especially with the grievances of the G5 governors – Rivers, Benue, Abia, Enugu and Oyo – not addressed by the party and its presidential candidate. The indifference of the governors to the Atiku campaign no doubt partly contributed to the loss of the party in all the South-East states as well as in Rivers, Benue and Oyo states”. In Kano, Rabiu Kwankwanso of the NNPP eviscerated Atiku’s hitherto strong electoral base winning the state with 997,279 votes to Atiku’s 131,716 votes. Meanwhile, Tinubu scored 517,341 votes in the state. Tinubu predictably had a strong showing in his South-West where he won Oyo, Ondo, Ogun and Ekiti but narrowly lost Osun and Lagos states to Atiku and Obi respectively. Just like the Shagari victory in 1979, where Tinubu did not come first in many states, he posted a close second thus winning the widest pan-Nigeria support base of all the aspirants. Outside his own zone, Tinubu won in Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Jigawa, Benue, Zamfara, Borno and Rivers. Another key factor in understanding the logic of the outcome of this election was the factor of young first-time voters to whom Obi no doubt had considerable appeal and boosted the performance of the LP.

It is unfortunate that even seasoned columnists who are also respected academics would readily quote foreign newspapers and agencies in trying to discredit the election when an informed and unbiased local media ought to provide the most reliable and authoritative source of news on the polls for their foreign counterparts. Were the elections perfect and faultless? The answer is no. But there are no perfect elections anywhere in the world. The last American presidential election in the US, a country that has been practicing democracy for over two and a half centuries, is a case in point. That country is still trying to recover fully from the fallouts of that exercise. Millions of Republicans still cannot be convinced that the election was not “stolen” from Trump. The era of some countries giving others lessons in democratic practice should be over and should no longer be indulged.

Some other analysts fault the election on the basis of the perceived low turnout of voters. They claim that the opposition party candidates combined had more overall votes than the President-elect. This is nonsensical. Did the constitution stipulate a given percentage of voter turnouts for the election to be valid? No. Were the votes cast for the opposition candidates jointly or for each party candidate separately? Did either of Atiku or Obi singly score higher votes than the proclaimed winner of the election? Again, no. True, Tinubu had 8,794, 726 votes but all 24,965,218 total votes cast affirmed their faith in the process and invested it with legitimacy in whichever party or candidates they voted for.

In conclusion, let me quote a piece sent to me online during the week on the cavalier claims that the elections were rigged. It read: “All PDP and Labour Party senators-elect and House of Representatives members-elect went and collected their Certificates of Return from INEC without complaints. This is the same election, same day, and same polling units, by the same INEC, same processes, and same BVAS. And this was the same election that was rigged? They should have rejected their certificates in protest. Now PDP and LP have validated the election. You can’t eat your cake and have it”. End of discussion.

March 25, 2023
NFF: the colony of jesters

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is gradually becoming a colony of jesters with their decisions and utterances on critical national issues. Otherwise, how do they want the world to perceive them with their pronouncement through a press release that the Nigerians attached to the Super Eagles would take their turns whenever the team has any kind of game? Where in this universe do you rotate coaches for national team jobs? Shouldn’t the Super Eagles have Nigerian assistants who should be understudying that Portuguese? Who does that under the guise that the federation is cash-strapped?

Are these two coaches not their employees bound by a contract with expiry dates and duties assigned to them? Where in their contract is it stated that they would function in the team’s technical matters on a rotational basis? Isn’t it a breach of the terms of the contract? Or is the NFF hiding the fact that the contractual agreements haven’t been fully sealed? Are they not aware that these coaches have their deals with them, a copy or copies that NFF also have? Why is it that it took the NFF the blink of an eye to issue messages to the Nigerians while casting an indulgent eye on the Portuguese assistants working with Jose Peseiro in the team? In the message, the federation forgot to tell the coaches if their letters of appointment were ready. Of course, it doesn’t matter if the federation owes the coaches their wages for nine months. After all, as the players, these coaches have in the past been Nigeria’s sports ambassadors – or should I say, patriots.

NFF men shouldn’t browbeat Nigerians with the illusory arrangement where Peseeiro is paying the wages of his assistants. Isn’t it very outrageous for the NFF to pay the Portuguese $70,000 monthly, yet when the board decided to cut costs, it is the wages of the Nigerians which is paltry that should be cut? Isn’t it incredulous that Peseiro has his son as one of his assistants and it suits the federation not to raise issues about it? Who cursed Nigeria like this? Are these Portuguese fluent in the English language? Why would the NFF allow Peseiro to have three assistants while Nigerians are made onlookers?

The question next would be who these Nigerians are. George Finidi and Ike Shorunmu were told via WhatsApp messages to alternate their jobs with those who weren’t pronounced for the positions when it was first announced last year by the Amaju Pinnick-led board? The simple deduction from this terrible decision is that the NFF has no succession plan for the Super Eagles in which Nigerians would be at the helm of the team’s technical crew. Pity.

Finidi and Shorunmu are some of our best exports to Europe aside from the fact that they are World Cup stars with Finidi scoring crucial World Cup goals for Nigeria. This is why the world soccer nations laugh at us when such laughable decisions are taken. This is how we always belittle our heroes before Lilliputian coaches from Europe.

Can you imagine the NFF justifying the replacement of Shorunmu with a coach in the U-20 side? Even if the federation wants to drop Shorunmu, is it when Nigeria has a game within such a week? Or is it because the opposition is Guinea-Bissau? If Finidi and Shorunmu had been given their letters of appointment, would they have done that? After all, the new board persuaded them to tarry a while to allow them to find their feet in the governance of the federation. Is this the reward for their understanding, dear NFF board members?

What this bestial act has shown is that Nigeria’s most prestigious team, the Super Eagles has no domestic coach worthy of any position. Does it also mean that foreigners are running our most extensive team? What happens when Peseiro’s contract expires in the next two months? Is it then NFF would be talking afresh for coaches to handle the team? How do the NFF men expect the players to respect these coaches, having seen how they were treated like orphans?

NFF should wake up to the reality that no country’s football development is measured by the number of foreign-based players in such a country’s senior soccer team. Rather, the measurement is done by the number of new talents produced from the grassroots of such countries. No country’s soccer grows when she shops for younger and already exposed players who lived all their lives in Europe and The Diaspora.

Any country without thriving nurseries and academies to discover, nurture, and expose the talents across the grassroots areas, in Nigeria’s case 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) shouldn’t expect growth in the country. It explains the penchant for parading over-age players in age-grade competitions. Academies cannot thrive when there aren’t school sports tournaments with the different State governments establishing a synergy between their individual sports councils and the state’s ministry of education. Schools are the key to ensuring that the growth recorded is enduring and productive.

Already, Nigeria’s U-20 side though slated to play at the World Cup in Indonesia later in the year, is a sham with the coaches unable to identify young boys of true school age to give the country quality representation in Indonesia. As for the U-23 side, they would be taught lessons on how to play youth football next week Tuesday in Conakry. The implication is that Nigeria’s stable for youth footballers has been shattered by visionless coaches who NFF men expect should give out what they don’t have during training with our players.

The first advantage of having nurseries or academies is that such schools must have teachers either Physical and Health experts trained in top-rated schools and regular coaches whose speciality would essentially be youth development. Without properly trained experts, the nurseries would just be a training ground for anybody to recreate than for the kids in the LGAs to ventilate their energy towards sporting activities and shirk the societal vices – crime, drugs, banditry etc.

The irritating aspect of the flaws inherent with the NFF is that the board members thrive in celebrating pyrrhic victories such as those against Guinea Bissau, with due respect. In Nigeria’s heyday, a second-string Super Eagles would have battered the Wild Dogs of Guinea Bissau with goals because the players would be motivated by the huge dollars the big boys earn while playing. Gone are those. Such weary matches are being played by our armada of stars in Europe. Who cares if Nigeria beats Guinea-Bissau? If we don’t beat the Wild Dogs silly with goals aplenty, we have no business calling Nigeria a world power in football.

If we have learned our lessons from the past events, then Peseiro should be seen around league venues monitoring matches to pick future Super Eagles from the home-grown players. Any coach who needs to be prompted to stay in Nigeria to train our boys should be shown the exit door.

We have the best opportunity to change how we do things, having not qualified for the Qatar 2022 World Cup and these changes should include how to generate cash to prosecute the campaigns without relying wholly on the government. Corporate sponsorship of our football would come when our organisations learn how to account properly for what they received. Corporate cash isn’t freebies. Rather it’s the cash of shareholders who need to know what their money was used for. Absolutely.

March 25, 2023
Lagos’ Labour Party and its vengeful ‘ghost’

IN mythology and folklore, a vengeful ghost is said to be the spirit of a dead person who returns to seek revenge for injustice it suffered. Usually, the dead is long buried and sometimes forgotten. Such ghosts have the habit of choosing crucial moments in the lives of their traducers to return with the cry for justice. Usually, too, their activities do a lot of damage to the interests of their victims.

Ahead of today’s gubernatorial election in Lagos State, Professor Ifagbemi Awamaridi, a former state chairman of the Labour Party (LP) has proven to be the equivalent of a vengeful ghost seeking to punish the party for the wrongs allegedly meted to him during the LP governorship primary election last year. Only that Awamaridi, who describes himself as the authentic governorship candidate is not dead. He is very much alive and kicking hard at the jugular of his party.

Awamaridi has refused to bow to the party’s decision to put forward Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour as its flagbearer. He instituted several cases in court over the exclusion of his name from the list of those contesting the governorship election today. And like the mythical vengeful ghost, he appeared to have chosen the last couple of weeks before the Election Day to shout the most over “the tricky manner the LP ticket was taken from me and handed over to a ‘stranger’ who was never a member of the party.”

As late as last Thursday, at a news briefing to round off his electioneering campaign, Awamaridi accused some party leaders of selling the soul of the party to ‘foreigners’ and godfathers, adding that he never withdrew from the race as claimed by some national leaders of the party. He said that he was the bonafide flagbearer, having emerged winner in the July 2022 primary. He said that his name was forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the party’s leadership.

Awamaridi said he had written INEC that he had not withdrawn from the race, adding that a candidate could only drop out on a signed Letter of Oath or Form 11B of INEC. He said that the party was trying to change a lot of things in the country and INEC irregularities would not be excluded. He alleged that LP had issues of forged documents in 22 states, including Edo and Ebonyi , in connivance with some INEC officials. He, therefore, urged the Nigeria Police to look into the issue of forged documents by some national officers and charge them to court. According to the professor, the matter of his candidacy is before the Supreme Court.

Sentry gathered that several efforts have been made to pacify the former party boss who is also the National Coordinator, Labour Party Concerned Stakeholders, to no avail. He is said to have vowed not to be placated until Rhodes-Vivour’s name is removed from the list of governorship candidates. Even after today’s election, he has promised to continue his objections and litigations against the candidate.

March 18, 2023
Battle for Lagos (2)

TODAY is another Election Day in 28 states across Nigeria. Of the 36 states of the federation, the following states will not go to the poll to elect new governors. They are: Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Osun and Ondo.

They have become states with off-season elections. The development arose from protracted disputes over the winners of governorship elections in past polls.

After weeks of rigorous electioneering, campaigns have ended. Governorship and Houses of Assembly candidates are now on popularity scale. There are the contenders, and there are the pretenders. This has thrown up so much anxiety and suspense among the candidates and their supporters. Not many of the first-term governors can conveniently go to sleep with assured victory today.

The situation is even dicier for freshers. It is only in states where a political party is very popular that its candidate can exude the confidence of victory.

In few hours, the contest will be over. The judgment of the people will manifest in the results of the polls. The verdict will demarcate the political class into winners and losers. But this is the beauty of democracy.

In Lagos State, the outcome of today’s governorship election will determine the direction the electorate has chosen for the state: progress or regress. If they vote wisely, the future of the state will be secured. But if they vote otherwise, the multiplier effects will negatively affect the other five Southwest states and beyond. The impact of wrong choice will even be felt in the Yoruba-speaking states of Kwara and Kogi.

Lagos, a Yoruba state, is the Southwest’s fortress and jewel. This is why the regional attention is on the Centre of Excellence.

How was the battle fought, won, and lost in the Lagos of old?

Politics, back then, was not an occupation. It was a vocation. The actors had a sense of community. They resided with the masses. Wealth and material possessions were not strong factors.

Ideology was in vogue. Only men of honour and integrity were given their parties’ tickets. The conditions for eligibility included community participation, service to the party, hierarchy and loyalty to the platform.

Primaries were not among the basic issues with the parties of yesteryears. The platforms were guarded jealously by their leaderships. Party leaders were disposed to selection by consensus. The fear of hijack by moneybags was prevalent. There were party supremacy and discipline. It was an era characterised by the predominance of the party caucus.

Also, performance was key. Campaign promises were made to be fulfilled. Parties were sustained by dues paid by members and supporters.

Rigging was a core issue in manual voting and collation of results, back in the day. It often led to large-scale violence, killings and destruction of properties.

In the pre-independence era and during the First Republic, the dominant political parties lacked national outlook. Voting was influenced by ethnicity, religion and primordial sentiments in varying degrees.

The main element of regional politics was the election into the Western Regional House of Assembly under the Westminster model. From there, the Leader of Government Business, and later, the Premier, was chosen from the party that won the majority seats in the Parliament. The inaugural partisan battle was between Action Group (AG), led by the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.

Both were elected into the regional assembly at Ibadan. Since AG commanded the majority, Awo became Premier. Naturally, Zik became the Leader of Opposition. Irked by the outcome, he declined to play the role and hurriedly left for the Eastern Region to displace Prof. Eyo Ita Eyo as Leader of Government Business, yielding his position at Ibadan to Chief Adegoke Adelabu, fondly called Penkelemeesi (the city’s dialectical pronunciation of “Peculiar Mess”).

Another contest that shook Western Region was the one between Chief Samuel Akintola, the rejected Premier, and Chief Dauda Adegbenro, who was Premier for just one day. Leaning on federal might, Akintola was restored as Premier after the six-month emergency period.

The Parliamentary system being practiced then ran into turbulence. The chaotic regional election in the “Wild Wild West” made the military, which also coveted power, to sack civilian authorities. The region thus went up in flames. The volatile politics of the Western Region took its toll on every other thing in the region and far beyond.

For another 13 years, the military held sway. When democracy was restored in 1979 under the presidential system, Lagos elected a new government. The battle was not tough. Alhaji Lateef Jakande of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) defeated Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and Prince Sultan Ladega Adeniji-Adele of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

In 1983, Jakande was re-elected, defeating Alhaji Abdulakeem Abdulraheem of the NPN. Three months into the second term, soldiers came back and displaced legitimate democratic authorities.

In the Third Republic, Nigeria experimented with a two-party system during the transition programme midwifed by the military regime. Chief Yomi Edu, who ran on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), was defeated by the less politically popular Chief Michael Otedola of the National Republican Convention (NRC). The SDP went to the poll as a divided platform. The Jakande group (Ase) was at loggerheads with Primrose, led Chief Dapo Sarumi. The party won majority seats in the House of Assembly. But it crashed during the governorship poll.

Reminiscent of 1966 and 1983, the military later sacked the governors during the interim contraption headed by the late Chief Ernest Shonekan.

From 1999 to date, Nigeria has enjoyed political stability. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of Action for Democracy (AD) defeated Sarumi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In 2003, he defeated the late Funso Williams, also of the PDP.

In 2007, Tinubu handed over to Babatunde Fashola (SAN) of the Action Congress (AC), who defeated Senator MusiliuObanikoro of PDP, Jimi Agbaje of the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA), and Olufemi Pedro of the Labour Party. On poll day, the candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), resurfaced as the AC agent at the INEC office.

In 2011, Fashola retained power on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). His rivals were Dr. Ade Dosunmu of PDP and Chief J. K. Randle of the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP).

Fashola handed over power in 2015 to Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressives Congress (APC). He defeated Agbaje. Four years later, Babajide Sanwo-Olu of APC, who succeeded Ambode, also defeated the eminent pharmacist on the platform of the PDP.

In today’s poll, three candidates – Sanwo-Olu of the ruling APC; Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party (LP); and Jide Adediran (Jandor) of the PDP – are locking horns. The exercise has generated much interest. Religion, as a factor, is a leveller. But there is a resurgence of ethnic nationalism.

Previous elections in Lagos were won by progressive parties. Poll outcomes, unlike now, could be easily predicted. It is lamentable these days that governors who have performed excellently are not insulated from threats of displacement. It is dangerous to sleep on guard.

In whatever circumstance, it has always been painful to lose an election in Nigeria. Losers suddenly become liabilities, if not lepers. The agony of defeat exacerbates dejection and the resort to litigation. A bad blood is generated. The pain lingers. This is why the battle often shifts from the ballot box to the court.

The investment is enormous. The presidential system, unlike the parliamentary model, is very expensive.

How can the antics of bad losers, or their post-election venom be curtailed?

There are two solutions: politics should not be monetised, and political actors, particularly candidates, should demonstrate maturity.

For Lagos, today’s poll will be highly interesting, given the factors that new entrants, especially, have introduced into the politics of the state. The intrigues that certain interests brought into this year’s electioneering will remain indelible in the anal of the state’s political history. For a very long time, indigenes of this State of Aquatic Splendour will remain vigilant to the antics of some political jobbers and their crowd of opportunists who have been scheming to pocket the resources of the state for personal gains rather than for the collective progress that has made the state the envy of all and one of the strongest economies in Africa.

As goes the saying, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. This should be the motto of the progressives as Lagosians go to the poll today.

March 18, 2023
All eyes on Lagos

One myth spun about the politics of Lagos State in this dispensation, a fallacy reinforced by many analyses of the Saturday, February 25, presidential election in which Mr Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) defeated the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress ( APC) by a little less than 10000 votes in the state, is that the country’s commercial nerve-Centre and economic powerhouse has been under the dictatorial grip of one man since 1999. It is as if elections never held in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 as constitutionally required and that successive governors of the state have simply been picked and foisted on the state without the participation of the people in general elections.

True, one party in its various mutations from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to Action Congress (AC) to Action Congress of Nigeria ( ACN) and now the All Progressives Congress (APC) has enjoyed political dominance in Lagos over the last two and a half decades. However, this does not mean that elections in the state during this period have been a stroll in the park for Tinubu’s dominant progressive tendency. For the most part, elections have been highly competitive in Lagos State indicating that a vibrant democratic culture exists in the state while it is also noteworthy that the state had remained in opposition until 2015 and all elections between 2003 and 2015 were conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under the control of the PDP-controlled federal government in that period.

INEC under the imperious President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration did not enjoy the kind of institutional autonomy it does today and PDP chieftains, notably Chief Olabode George, routinely boasted of the ease with which they would ‘capture’ Lagos. Yet, despite Obasanjo deploying troops to Lagos for that purpose, Lagos was the only state that refused to capitulate to the PDP Tsunami that swept the AD out of power in Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Oyo states in 2003. Tinubu remained the ‘last man standing’ winning a hotly contested election in which the PDP had the late Engineer Funsho Williams, a technocrat who had risen to the peak of his career as a Permanent Secretary in the Lagos State civil service and served as Commissioner for Works during the tenure of Olagunsoye Oyinlola as military administrator of the state, as its governorship candidate.

In the 2007 governorship election in Lagos State, Obasanjo vowed to ‘capture’ the prized state for the PDP deploying troops once again for that purpose and personally coming to campaign in the three Senatorial Districts of the state for the PDP governorship candidate, Senator Musliu Obanikoro, despite which the AC triumphed. The AC candidate, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) polled 599, 300 votes (51.48%) to beat PDP’s Obanikoro who scored 383,956 votes (32.98%) while Mr. Jimi Agbaje of the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA) scored 114, 557 votes (9.84%). Combined, the opposition had a healthy 42.64% of the vote.

Fashola’s 1,509,113 votes in 2011 (81.03%) has been the highest so far by any winning candidate in a governorship election in the state in this dispensation. His main opponent, Dr Shamsudeen Dosumu, of the PDP recorded 300,450 votes (16.13%). In 2015, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode of the APC scored 811,994 votes (54.94%) while Mr. Jimi Agbaje of the PDP got 659, 788 votes (44.64%). And in 2019, the incumbent governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, scored 739,445 votes (75.65%) while Mr. Jimmy Agbaje of the PDP recorded 206,141 votes (21.09%). The sharp decline in the PDP’s share of the votes in 2019 has been attributed to protracted factional infighting within the party and Chief Olabode George’s alleged high handed leadership that has resulted in the incessant depletion of quality party membership over the years.

Over all, however, the opposition has always been active and posted impressive results in virtually all governorship elections in Lagos State.

However, the APC has no excuse for not taking due notice of the decline in voter participation in elections from 2011 to 2019 and taking proactive steps to halt a trend in which its share of the votes steadily dropped from Fashola’s 1,509,800 votes in 2011 to Sanwo-Olu’s 739,445 votes in 2019. According to a research report, Lagos State led the states with the lowest voters turnout in 2019 with 1,089,567 voters (17.25%) even though out of the 6,570,291 registered voters, 5,531,389 had collected their PVCs. The APC machinery did nothing to interrogate and take measures to counteract this trend.

Ethnicity was clearly a key determining variable of voter behavior in the February 25 elections and not just in Lagos. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP won most of the key states in the Northwest and Northeast such as Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Bauchi, Yobe, Zamfara, Kebbi and Taraba although Tinubu from the Southwest won in Jigawa, Kogi, Niger, Kwara, Benue and Borno states while Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) won in Plateau and Nassarawa states in the North-Central. In a similar vein, Tinubu won in Oyo, Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti states but lost Osun to Atiku and Lagos to Obi in his Southwest region.

The most ethnically monolithic voting behavior, however , occurred in the Southeast where Obi won over 95% of the votes of his Igbo kinsmen in the five states of the region. In Lagos, the Igbo bloc voting in areas where they have large populations propelled a hitherto marginal LP to a narrow victory in the presidential election although the APC won all three Senatorial seats and 20 of the 24 House of Representatives seats in the state.

The fact that the LP in Lagos, which has utilized the ethnic factor to become the major opposition party in the state, is fielding a Gbadebo Chinedu Rhodes Vivour as its governorship candidate in today’s election has strengthened the belief in many quarters that the Igbo have an expansionist agenda in Lagos and have ambitions to take over political control of the country’s most economically viable state. That the LP candidate’s mother as well as his wife are Igbo and that he speaks only a smattering of Yoruba have become key issues in today’s election largely because of the Igbo bloc voting in the February 25 election as well as the insensitive claim by many Igbo residents of the state over the years that Lagos is a ‘no man’s land’, a claim that riles most Yorubas.

Furthermore, Gbadebo Chinedu Rhodes Vivour admitted on live television that he does ‘not think in Yoruba’, a fact that demonstrates his cultural distance and alienation from the majority of the people in this core Yoruba state of the Southwest that he seeks to govern. Furthermore, several of his tweets in the past, many of which have been reportedly pulled down following his emergence as governorship candidate of the LP, indicate that he is a strong supporter of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its separatist aspirations. He has admitted being an active organizer and participant in the 2020 #EndSars protests that turned into an orgy of violence in which public and private property estimated at over N2 trillion were destroyed in Lagos. Videos that have already gone viral showing the now incarcerated leader of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, ordering that select properties of targeted individuals, all Yoruba, be attacked and destroyed by the #EndSars protesters suggest that what started as a noble nationwide action against police brutality nationwide was hijacked and used to pursue an ethnic agenda in Lagos.

Another video that has gone viral is that of a LP meeting in a community in Abia State where it was repeatedly stated that the party’s target was not just to win in Abia but even more importantly to take over Lagos “at all cost”. All of these suggest that today’s election will be underlined by serious ethnic undertones as the Yorubas are likely going to mobilize to participate actively in the exercise unlike the apathy they demonstrated in the previous election. And the antipathy to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket among Pentecostal Christians in particular which played a key factor in the outcome of the presidential election in Lagos will certainly not be a determining variable in today’s elections in the state.

But regular online public affairs analyst, Michael Ogueke, believes that the anti-Igbo narrative is only an excuse by a lazy and complacent APC machinery to rationalize its loss in Lagos. According to him, “Yorubas in Lagos that make up 70% of the registered voters refused to come out to vote. About half of those who came out to vote voted Labour. And party officials were busy pocketing mobilization funds without adequately taking care of their field officers and polling agents and as a result many could not be at their polling unit duty posts thus allowing the LP’s field agents to rig everything in favour of Labour in their backyard”.

In the midst of all this, Sanwo-Olu has adopted a characteristically statesmanlike posture and risen above the fray. In a broadcast to the state ahead of today’s elections, the governor said “Dear Lagosians, as we go out to vote on Saturday, let me make this very clear: No electoral victory is worth the blood of any Lagosian, regardless of faith, ethnic origins or political affiliation. My desire is not just to win this election; my desire is as well to win Peace and Unity for our dear state”. Continuing he said, “To those who have been hurt by ethnic profiling by fellow citizens in the course of this campaign, I plead that you forgive…This is perhaps the greatest take away from this whole election- our need to heal and move past the divisive rhetoric that has shaped the course of this election cycle. What unites us as Lagosians is far more important and substantial than whatever differences exist among us”.

Some have framed this election as a referendum on the last 24 years of the political hegemony of the Tinubu progressive tendency in Lagos State. If so, the state has made definite, identifiable and undeniable developmental strides across diverse sectors. From a largely financially insolvent state that generated an internal revenue of a miserly N600 million per month in 1999, Lagos today has an IGR that has crossed the N40 billion mark monthly and has been nurtured to become Africa’s fifth largest economy. The Lekki Deep Sea Port, the Blue Line Light Rail mass transit project and its ongoing Red Line complement, the phenomenal Eko Atlantic City project that has emerged from the belly of the sea on which is being built the United State’s largest embassy in the world; the Lekki Free Trade Zone where the Dangote oil refinery, one of the largest in the world is located; the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) mass transportation initiative that has delivered Lagos from the ancient Molue buses that once dominated road transport in the state are just a few indicators of the largeness of vision and lofty ambition that has defined governance in the state in the last two and a half decades.

There is a reasonable consensus that Sanwo-Olu has impressively carried on from where his predecessors stopped and even improved on their performance despite having to respond to such unanticipated emergencies as the Coronavirus pandemic as well as the disruptive and destructive #EndSars violence in the state. True, after prolonged periods of rule by one party or tendency, it is only natural for human beings to desire change even for the sake of change. But then, even in the quest for change, does it make sense to trust the management of Nigeria’s most strategic and complex state which is also Africa’s largest economy to candidates with zero managerial experience in either the private or public sectors? Most rational voters will most likely answer the question in the negative.

But the APC must also realize that the longer it stays in power in Lagos, the greater the imperative for it to continually renew and reinvent itself as a party, maintain its organizational dynamism and vibrancy and, most importantly, remain in close organic linkage with its grassroots support base which must never be given the impression that they are being taken for granted.

March 18, 2023
Dream Flying Eagles for Nigeria

ANYONE who is said to be U-20 should be 19 years 11 months or below at the time of reckoning. This presupposes that such a child must either be in secondary school or is a Jambite in any of the tertiary institutions albeit the university. For those who cannot pursue their education at the university, the polytechnics and other Colleges of Education serve as remedial platforms, especially for the brilliant ones eager to be called graduates in the future.

There may be others who couldn’t make the required grades to qualify to attend higher institutions. They may opt for other things in life or choose to do some jobs to eke a living and invariably repeat their classes. What all these scenarios tell us is that it is easy to identify any U-20 using these criteria as mentioned earlier.

The telltales by some of the participating teams at the concluded U-20 World Cup qualifiers for Africa’s representative for the event in Indonesia over discrepancies were shameful. They forgot that the world is a global village with age complainant countries who will be in Indonesia ready to pounce on these cheats.

Would it matter if one Nigerian player is caught in Indonesia as an age cheat? Of course, the shame would be on us for a long time. But do we care? No. Those caught in those days of being born in hospitals in Local Government Areas (LGAs) that weren’t created at the time when their documents stated became stars and coaches for the country at major football competitions.

Should this age scam continue when we know where to find U-20 players in Nigeria where we have 774 Local Government Areas LGAs? No. Those who were in Cairo should be made to show their educational records no matter how remote the areas where they were issued were. A country with a population of over 200 million people shouldn’t find it difficult to identify, train and expose 30 truly young boys to represent us in Indonesia.

Would it not be a shame if all members of the Flying Eagles could not show us verifiable educational records? Where were their schoolmates when they returned to the country? How about their principals? Wouldn’t it have been a delightful sight to behold if their classmates stormed the airport to celebrate with them? Or are we saying these boys aren’t of school age? Is it the best way to seek funding from the corporate world if we showcase these boys with their schoolmates? How do we hope to revive defunct inter-school soccer competitions across the country when the products wouldn’t be allowed to use the platform to change the narratives of their different families the way Napoli FC of Italy’s Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen has done with his? Pity!

One feels ashamed reading stories about non-payment of allowances and winning bonuses to age-grade players in Nigeria instead of encouraging those who are ready to improve their educational qualifications by going to school. It is not too late to start this age-grade renaissance with the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Indonesia later in the year.

This desperation to win every competition Nigeria registers for is the death knell of the game. Indeed any age cheat who is registered in place of the real U-20 player has thrown such boys into the crime market. Countries that have perfected these age-grade cadres did so with a prize when they started. Such successful nations deemphasised winning the cups. They chose to build structures which would institutionalise the need to have feeder teams in all their soccer teams as one of the criteria for registration every season.

At the 2018 World Cup, 19 years old Mbappe played for France winning the diadem and playing up to the finals years later at the 2022 Qatar World Cup at 23. Mbappe has no history of playing for France’s age-grade teams since such exceptional players are immediately elevated into the senior side. Any person thinking that these Flying Eagles would play more than the mandatory three games of the group stage would be in for a shocker because this team would be beaten groggy with goals.

Sports minister Sunday Dare Tuesday at a reception to welcome the bronze medal-winning Flying Eagles in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was called out for mentioning the only student who dazzled in one of the editions of the Principal Cup competition played in Abuja. The minister tacitly elucidated the essence of the U-20 World Cup as one meant for students although he only mentioned wasn’t in school again, having been discovered in 2021. The question could then be asked how old he was when he played for the winning team in the finals in 2021. This writer won’t stretch this argument too far because the owner of the school where this boy was discovered, nurtured and exposed to bigger competition is a stickler for excellence and won’t be part of any age-cheating expedition that would pour odium on his reputation.

Sunday Dare recalled the Fosla Academy Karshi, Abuja player was among the Flying Eagles and called him out.

“There is a Secondary school student among you, Dare said pointing to the Flying Eagles.

“Yes, he is Onuche Ogbelu, some of his teammates responded with a rousing chorus.

Ogbelu stood up and after introducing himself, the Minister asked everyone to clap for him for breaking into the national team stressing that Ogbelu made him proud two years after the maiden Principals Cup was held. He however said, “this is one of the gains of the maiden Principals Cup.”

Fosla Academy Karshi, Abuja on March 30, 2021, emerged champions of the maiden National Principals’ Cup finals held at the Moshood Abiola Stadium, Abuja. The Sani Lulu boys defeated Christ Comprehensive College, Kaduna 2-0 in an entertaining final dominated by the FCT boys.

One only hopes that the NFF chieftains took notice of this singular attention given to Ogbelu by the minister. They should take a cue from the Ogbelu example to populate the Flying Eagles with good players of school age not what we have in the present team.

The other thing which should worry the NFF chiefs was the fact that none of Ogbelu’s teammates could also tell the minister that they were students too like Ogbelu by mentioning their schools, especially after Ogbelu had left school. Ogbelu left school this year at SSS 3 at 19. Meaning that he is ready for university. One of my friends laughed his heart out and told me that the other players forgot the names of their schools. Really?

No prize for guessing right that Ogbelu is the youngest in the squad in the true sense of the claim. Others, I dare say would have been allocated ages which aren’t theirs. Otherwise, they would have told the minister about their former schools or the present ones. I also wonder how the coaches felt about the preferences given to Ogbelu.

Today, the Senegalese are the winners of the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations. They are also the winners of the Africa Beach Soccer championship, winners of the home-based Africa Nations Championship (CHAN) 2023 and only recently in Egypt, Senegal added the U-20 AFCON tile to their long lists of achievements anchored on proper planning with the grassroots central to their soccer developmental programmes.

Any Nigeria team to major competitions meant for age grade players without school boys or girls is a scam. It isn’t what will develop the game here. If we don’t expose players to competitions how will they improve? You tell me.

March 18, 2023