The Nation Newspaper

Category: Saturday

Before the fans maim referees

Crazy and divisive comments by fifth columnists, haters of the new body running the league (IMC) sadly so, some pen pushers (I have deliberately not tagged this group as journalists) in various media are steadily building the structures for urchins to ‘kill’ one match referee for failing to handle games involving their favourite team at home with cheap penalties. It is important for the IMC to raise the alarm before the relevant security apparatuses to avoid the chilling shedding of fans’ blood being spilt at match venues on the altar of winning domestic league games at all costs.

These merchants of death who have as their mantra do-or-die are growing in their numbers and need to be checked before they wreak havoc at match venues by inciting innocent fans to share in their perilous comments. They have in the last three fixtures brought to the fore some referees’ flaws to provoke the supporters of teams that were hurt by their perceived injustice. Rather than allow the disciplinary committee to adjudicate on the matter, they want to force their views on the committee without hearing the referees’ responses.

We have seen referees handle games brilliantly in the first half only to return for the second half to misbehave, especially in the second round where every game points to either a good or bad future in the competition for teams. Investigations have shown that such diligent referees are given the beating of their lives by irate fans of the home team desperate to have the three points at stake for the game. Courageous referees have remained inside such dressing rooms where fans have invaded at half-time to bring their horrible experiences to the fore.

These killjoys’ mode of operations is targeted at the match referees, especially when their clubs and fans fail to coax the match arbiters to award frivolous penalty kicks against the opponents. Over 30,000 spectators can’t watch a game only for an insignificant six people to run the rule on the referees’ performances. Indeed, I have looked out for the reports in the newspapers since week seven’s games were played and they haven’t hinged their reports on the referees’ poor outing but on the missed goal-scoring chances by the two teams.

The referee is the sole judge of time and other things concerning the game. If in the opinion of the referee, a purported call for penalty isn’t worth his time and he decides to cast an indulgent eye on such incidents, so be it. Unfortunately, all our match venues don’t have CCTV devices built into the premises at strategic points to help fish out these people who love to smell blood at venues. I’ve seen a few games on camera and I’ve not been impressed by the security architecture of the venues. I only hope that the IMC isn’t waiting for the worst things to happen before allowing irritants to know what lies ahead of them in the event of crisis before, during and after games.

The Police are our friend, we have been told. Therefore, the IMC ought to hold critical meetings with the Inspector General of Police (IGP), State Police Commissioners and other security agencies to secure the stadia before, during and after matches. After all, the primary job of security operatives is to secure the lives and properties of the citizenry. Plainclothes operatives need to sit among the fans so that it would be easier to spot those with unsportsmanlike conduct to face the full wrath of the law. It is done in civilised politics. We have seen instances where roughnecks are bundled out of the stadium with every uncouth act inimical to the people around such a repulsive yoyo.

It is the only way to avert violence since the unwanted weapons come from the spectators. If the first person who throws his or her empty bottle onto the pitch is caught red-handed and taken away to the parked Black Maria vans, other urchins would be advised to be of good conduct. The language which criminals understand is force. Indeed, acts of violence start from the fans at the stand who have objects such as umbrellas, sachets and/or bottles of water, food packs etc which come in handy as weapons of mass destruction during mayhems.

The Executive Director, Fund management of the GTI Asset Management and Trust Limited, Nelson Ine, has said the body’s and the Nigeria Premier League’s objectives are geared towards building a football economy for Nigeria.

Ine on Wednesday in Lagos revealed that the partnership is being driven with The Nigeria Football Fund to boost the Nigeria Professional Football League to help change the face of the round leather game in the country.

Ine said: “We expect that soon enough government clubs won’t be able to cope in the league. They will leave because we expect corporate organisations to come in now that we are building trust in the operations of the NPFL.

“TNFF has transparency and accountability and we expect to publish all the finances at the end of every year. So far, we are not paying match officials through anybody but direct. They collect their indemnities before every match.”

Sport isn’t leisure anymore. It is a serious business used by countries which appreciate its power to pull the youth away from social vices, to change people’s perception of their countries, as a recreation platform for its citizens and as a veritable means for its populace to improve their health.

Most Sport originates from the people through the communities with the products of such an enterprise emerging as ambassadors for the country in international competitions. All that the government does is provide the enabling environment for the industry to thrive. Since the ultimate target of the corporate world is the citizen, it follows therefore that sport gets the needed fillip for growth when the athletes become big stars in the world.

This seamless setting also ensures that only technocrats are recruited to drive the process, such that it is free of scams and controversies that would chase away the blue-chip industries which are ready to provide the financial support for growth.

But in Nigeria, we only start to take the sport seriously when it appears that we will miss out on big competitions. Unfortunately, soccer, which is our poster sport, is under the stranglehold of government personnel, who have refused to free the sport to achieve its full potential.

A domestic league without a regimented calendar can’t produce new stars, since they only know when the season begins without knowing when it would end. We have had in the past in Nigeria, a league season without end, hence such contraptions as abridged leagues or regional league competition, become the only way out of a self-inflicted quagmire. How does anyone expect the league to produce new talents for the Super Eagles when the competition only starts when the organisers are pressurised to do so?

Our league organisers should use this period to get all the clubs to clear their debts, with a firm warning not to register any team with outstanding for the new season. It doesn’t matter if only six teams comply with the directive. It leaves room for the eligible ones in the lower cadre to get promoted. This idea of glossing over the rules enshrined in the league’s constitution won’t make the game run here as a business, even though state governors use their teams to settle their lackeys.

A league without an official television rights holder is a circus, which should not be taken seriously. Such leagues obviously cannot produce national team players since they wouldn’t want their careers truncated through the organisers’ ineptitude. Any league without title sponsors has no business with the corporate world – it has unwittingly become a commercial failure. Any league without an official insurance company for the clubs, coaches, and players can best be likened to celebrating mediocrity.

February 18, 2023
A creeping coup?

It is amazing that with the next general elections barely a week away, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has not demonstrated the requisite will to decisively confront the fuel shortages and the current acute cash scarcity crises, which are clearly not designed to endear the party to the electorate in the elections. Even as the protracted fuel scarcity continued to bite harder, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, came out of the blues to spring the surprise of the Naira redesign initiative on Nigerians with an impossible time frame for Nigerians in possession of the old notes to swap them for the new N200, N500, and N1000 notes.

To the consternation of millions of Nigerians, most of them who run small-scale businesses in the informal sectors of the economy, the past few weeks have been ones of excruciating hell on earth. Most of the poor and vulnerable sections of the populace who thronged ATM points and banking halls to replace their old notes and collect the new ones discovered that there was insufficient number of the new notes to meet the upsurge in demand for the new currency.

It is clear that the amount of new notes printed and pumped into circulation is grossly inadequate to effectively fund trade and other financial transactions in the economy. Yet, in spite of the glaring deficiencies in the implementation, Mr. Emefiele continues to double down on his entrenched and inflexible position that there would be no going back on the February 10 deadline after which the old notes will no longer be accepted as legal tender. The CBN governor has assumed the toga of ‘His Worshipful Majesty’ or ‘He who must be Obeyed’ no matter how flawed his policy judgments or his administrative acumen as governor of the country’s apex bank.

For instance, commenting on the queues of embattled and mostly angry Nigerians at ATM points and banking halls across the country, Emefiele submitted astonishingly that “On long queues at some bank ATMs and banking halls,, while some of these withdrawal requests are genuine, some are simply reprehensible activities of the miscreants who do not have intentions of making a withdrawal but seek quick earnings just to queue up and sell their space for money”. It is unfortunate that Emefiele would refer to the anguished victims of his rash and ill-conceived policies as miscreants virtually insinuating that they are frauds. Emefiele does not furnish us with any logical or empirical justification for reaching this bizarre conclusion. All that one can surmise is that the CBN governor is severely and dangerously out of touch with reality. Mr. Governor Sir, please get out of your cloistered accommodations and begin to live!

Even worse, his insistence on the February 10 deadline for the old notes to remain legal tender was utterly contemptuous of the Supreme Court which, on February 8, gave a subsisting order that the old notes remain legal tender until the determination of the substantive suit before it filed by the governments of Kaduna, Zamfara, and Kogi states on the Naira scarcity crisis. In the same vein, Emefiele seems totally oblivious of the unanimous resolution and recommendation of the National Council of State (NCS) which in its collective wisdom urged the CBN to allow both the new and old currencies to circulate concurrently until the latter can be systematically phased out without the severe hardship being suffered by millions of Nigerians.

Even the World Bank has waded in and called on the apex bank to extend the deadline for the complete replacement of the old notes pointing out that other countries that successfully carried out the demonetization and currency swap being implemented by the CBN carried out the exercise over a 12-month period. President Muhammadu Buhari in his address to the nation on Thursday also seems to have overruled the Supreme Court when he insisted that only the old N200 remains legal tender while the old N500 and N1000 notes have been phased out. It is unfortunate that any claims that Buhari may have about abiding by the rule of law, especially with regard to election outcomes, one of his strong legacies, will be badly dented and eroded in his last months in office by this decision. A great pity that is.

Not even when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mohammed led his management team to remonstrate with Emefiele on the Naira redesign policy and the short time span for removing the old notes from circulation, given the implications of such a policy for the successful conduct of the elections, could Emefiele be persuaded to budge? Emefiele replied rather defiantly and arrogantly that the CBN would provide the electoral umpire with all the resources it needs for a free and fair election.

There have even been reports that many of the troops on the frontline in the battle against terrorism are psychologically distraught and de-motivated by reports from home that their embattled loved ones are suffering acutely due to their inability to access their own money in bank vaults across the country. None of these move Emiefele. It would appear that in his books man is made for the Naira re-design policy and not the policy made for man.

As I noted last week, Emefiele’s sacrilegious politicization of the very sensitive office of CBN governor reached its height when he paid N100 million through proxies to collect the ruling APC’s presidential nomination form and participate in the primaries without first of all resigning his position. Fortunately, the presidency put paid to his ambitions in that regard. Before then, scores of branded vehicles with Emefiele’s logos for his aborted presidential campaign were featured prominently on national television. Against this background, any policy introduced by the CBN for as long as Emefiele remains in office for the remainder of his tenure will be tainted with partisan bias no matter how sound and sensible it may appear at face value. Emefiele is facing a crisis of credibility and integrity that will surely linger for his remaining years in office as CBN governor.

Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and some other leading political actors have stressed that the fuel queues and Naira shortages have been timed so close to the elections to de-market the APC and hurt the chances of its presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the polls. Tinubu himself has said that shadowy, sinister forces close to the corridors of power have contrived both the fuel and Naira scarcity to possibly create widespread violence and large-scale havoc in the country capable of destabilizing the polity and aborting the elections to facilitate the setting up of an interim government. It is difficult to dismiss these fears and apprehensions. But it would be unfair to question Buhari’s commitment to Tinubu’s ambition and his party’s electoral victory. This is demonstrated by his unqualified endorsement of Tinubu at those presidential rallies he has attended particularly in key northern states even though a school of thought believes he could have been more actively involved in the campaigns if he chose to.

However, it is also not easy to dismiss with a wave of the hand the fact that there is seemingly an ongoing creeping coup against democracy and democratic practice in Nigeria by clandestine cabals not necessarily working with the consent of the President. The aim of the creeping coup is either to replace the current democracy we practice with an interim government or in a worst-case scenario prevent the victory of the APC in the election. Already, pockets of violence are being experienced in a number of states with the vandalization of ATM machines and the destruction of banking halls. Those architects of the Naira redesign policy as well as the brains behind the fuel queues must be inwardly overjoyed with these protests. More widespread protests, violence, and bloodshed will play into the hands of these fifth columnists and have serious consequences for our democratic evolution. This is why the electorate must heed the admonition of Tinubu to remain calm, refrain from violence and stay focused on the task of voting in a government which will proactively confront and redress these challenges.

In the aftermath of the 1979 elections that ushered in the Second Republic, the leader of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on 22nd January, 1980, articulated what he described as a ‘Judelex coup’ largely responsible for the defeat of his party at the polls at a public lecture. In his words, “It was a Judelex coup de grace or, for short, a judelex coup. Judelex is a shortened form of judicial/electoral/executive”. Awolowo detailed the complex web of perceived conspiracies that involved the judiciary, the executive, and the electoral commission that badly tainted the transition to the second republic and weakened its legitimacy from inception.

With the fuel crisis slowly abating but the Naira crisis getting more acute and intense by the day, what we have on our hands is not a Judelex coup as articulated by Awolowo but it is a coup nonetheless – even if a creeping one, unfolding in carefully choreographed stages. The purpose of the coup is either to derail the democratic process paving the way for an illegal interim government or to employ underhand methods to facilitate the victory of a predetermined candidate. Whether the ongoing subterranean attempts to frustrate the elections make an interim government inevitable or it surreptitiously utilizes state power to facilitate the victory of one party against the will of the people through the manipulation of the electoral process, a coup is a coup and the consequence in the face of the law is treason.

A coup, direct or otherwise, is a change in the power configuration of the state which does not flow either from the constitutive and regulative rules of the game as well as from the freely and fairly expressed will of the electorate at credible polls. Rather, power changes occur either through the barrel of the gun or the structural manipulation of polls to favour a political party irrespective of the will of the people. It is ironic that the greatest threat to APC’s otherwise assured victory in the February 25 election is not a crisis-ridden PDP whose campaign is yet to acquire the momentum it badly needs or a Labour Party that is so obviously losing steam after approaching a marathon as if it was a 100-metre dash.

Rather, the elements involved in the creeping coup are fifth columnists within the inner recesses of power at the APC-occupied presidential Villa who are taking advantage of Buhari’s famed aloofness, a highly political and partisan CBN governor, the Attorney General of the Federation, Mr Abubakar Malami and a Section of the media that all too often sees nothing, hears nothing and thus says nothing. But there is no doubt that democracy will once again ultimately triumph emphatically over the forces of reaction and retrogression as has most often been the case in our history.

February 18, 2023
Emefiele as the Nigerian Houdini (2)

Under Emefiele, the CBN has meandered—slinking from the ridiculous unto the absurd.

The office of Governor of the apex bank came under repeated scrutiny for a number of corruption allegations.

For the first time in the annals of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the apex bank in clear contradiction of its own rules went on an overfunding drive by overlending beyond its own set limits as prescribed in the Act from which the bank derives its powers from.

The lending which began in 2016 saw the CBN overreaching itself while it made funds available for federal government’s spending , monies which did run into trillions.

Such funding was in direct contravention of the CBN Act 2007. A cursory look at

Section 38 (1) of the Act gives powers to the bank to grant “temporary advances to the Federal Government in respect of temporary deficiency of budget revenue” however, its subsection 2 of that same section states in clear terms that “the amount of such advances outstanding shall not at any time exceed five per cent of the previous year’s actual revenue of the Federal Government”. While subsection three of the section provides that such advances should be paid “as soon as possible and shall in any event be repayable by the end of the Federal Government financial year in which they are granted and if such advances remain unpaid at the end of the year, the power of the Bank to grant such further advances in any subsequent years shall not be exercisable, unless the outstanding advances have been repaid”.

Emefiele, had however in clear damnation of the directives of the act turned itself into the FG’s piggy bank.

As we speak, the sum total of the Ways and Means advances made to the Federal Government stands at N22.7 trillion an amount the Buhari administration had sought to restructure via its securitization along the following terms: Amount; N23.7 trillion; Tenure 40 years; Moratorium on principal repayment; three years; Pricing interest rate 9%.

As the escapist banker, Emefiele simply waved aside the rules ensuring that this generation of present day Nigerians and generations unborn would bear such burdens.

It did not matter if such actions were reckless and illegal and is one of the reasons why despite the many firsts of this administration in terms of infrastructural development and in agriculture, such a Houdini form of monetary policy could cripple the Nigerian economy.

Not done with monetary voodooism, Emefiele dabbled into the murky waters of politics when he made an unprecedented attempt to shoot himself from the CBN into Aso Rock. In what looked like a harmless joke, Nigerians started seeing posters donned with the dour looking Emefiele announcing his intention to vie for the plum job of president. It however stopped looking like a joke when support groups began springing all over the federation and began their earnest asking for Emefiele.

It did not matter if the Public Service Rules, CBN Act and the 1999 Constitution, drowned out the silly argument that Emefiele as a Nigerian had a presumed right to associate with a political party, as a Nigerian, yes but as a sitting Governor of Nigeria’s apex bank the answer is a resounding no.

To cap it all, Emefiele saved the best of his magic tricks for last and decided to engage in a currency redesign/swap policy with the intention to phase out the old 1000, 500 and 200 notes from public replacing them with newly redesigned notes. No doubt, the policy in all ramifications is indeed good for the country, the devil however is in its implementation as well as the time allotted to get it all done.

The babalawo in Emefiele with all his training for 36 years as a banker believes that it is easy to mop up N 3.2 trillion in a space of six weeks while it has through its printing counterpart in the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Corporation printed just N400 billion! Now, in a country of over 200 million people, where more than 40 percent lack access to banking or some form of banking services, is it not madness to think that such can be achieved within less than a year? Emefiele as a Houdini does not think so and thus we now see Nigerians struggling all over to get cash! Matter of fact, Nigerians are now buying Naira with Naira all thanks to the Houdini from Agbor in Delta State.

Even as there is a consensus amongst notable economists that the nation needs to have about N2 Trillion in circulation to sustain the pulse of economic activities within and close to its borders, how Emefiele much believes that N400 Billion or N700 Billion , (the latter being the figure projected by the CBN as the figure needed to kickstart the nation’s leap into the cashless economy phase ) which leaves us with a shortfall of over 1 Trillion can be deployed to meet the yearning cash needs of Nigerians, amidst our weak banking system, poor state of technology and massive illiteracy is indeed a cause for concern.

Picture this, the United Kingdom following the demise of Queen Elizabeth has begun a phasing out of all notes bearing her image, but this even with Britain’s financial advancements and sound banking system has a timeline of three years, compare with Emefiele’s Nigeria and you will wonder if sometimes we do not have mad men serving in a number of our institutions.

Even with Emefiele seeking to blame banks and ATM machines for the chaos we are presently witnessing, is it not magic or bordering on near insanity for one to think that N400 Billion will fill the void, when it has allegedly mopped up N2.1 Trillion?

History will definitely remember Emefiele, it’s verdict will definitely see him as an opportunist, escapist and simpleton who the country had the misfortune of having him as a two time governor of its apex bank.

February 18, 2023
Power, Elections and Security

Nigerians are in the throes of pain, anguish , and serious suffering   over a lack of money and fuel to move their vehicles and run their businesses on the eve of an election . Similarly   in   the   US, Americans   suffered the humiliation of watching a strange balloon hovering over their continent from the skies later identified as Chinese , before a frightened and dithering government summoned the nerve to have it shot down . Yet in a scheduled state of the    union address expected to be      the annual rendering of government accountability on performance and mandate , the US president gleefully asserted this week    that   America has never had it so good . That   drew   the ire of   a furious   Republican    opposition legislator   who shouted ‘ liar’ to his face and in his presence in the Capitol ,America’s seat of power in Washington DC .

Today   I draw a fascinating comparison between the political culture , government and security of my nation Nigeria , the   largest black nation in the world , the USA the   largest democracy and presidential system in the world , and   little Israel , the most cantankerous   but   very   security conscious nation in the Middle East and scourge of the Arab world as well as   the Islamic state of Iran . The   lines of comparison are thick and obvious between Nigeria and the US . This is because Nigeria evolved from colonialism   as a parliamentary democracy at independence in 1960 before the military coups of 1966    and   subsequent   ones later , diverted our political course and destiny towards , at first ,   a unitary command system   and   structure of government and later the American style of presidential system of government and separation of powers . It is the use and separation of powers in these three nations that arrest our attention today in terms of time and space and the scope of power transition. Especially at times of elections and refreshment of power , which are expected to be conducted in a safe and secure environment in any democracy .

Let me start with initial observations on the political situations in these nations as of today before darting into   historical comparisons   and analysis . Israel ,   in the face of rocket war with Hizbollah and Gaza is rocking from huge democratic protests against   planned   judicial   reforms of   the newly elected government of Benjamin Netanyahu who has just claimed the democratic mantle to govern for the sixth time, in a vastly unstable system of government which must be second only to that of Italy in terms of frequency   of change of government at numerous and various occasions and based on many issues and contentions . Nigeria on the other hand faces a presidential election on February 25 but the electorate is not focused on the election but on how to survive as human beings looking for   food , fuel and money which   have    become rare   commodities   in these hard days and times. These   translate into how to have money to eat and pay for transport at affordable prices which is hard and   impossible because the banks have literally seized customers deposits and money because of the unavailability of money from the Central Bank .     This    arose   from   a policy     of a new currency design and confiscation of old notes , all on the eve of a   long planned    presidential election slated for this month on February 25 2023 . In the US a   balloon floated over sites   and    cities harboring nuclear weapons and military arsenal and the Chinese owned up it was theirs . But a sitting US government accepted their excuse that it was for meteorological research before shooting it down days later in the shoddiest manifestation of deterrence by a world power . This   is   because   the US ,   diplomatically and militarily , accepts that China is a potent enemy and adversary of the US globally and second only to Russia in that regard .

Obviously all three nations face different types of security   problems but the US just had   its mid term elections last year and will not have a presidential election till 2024. Whilst Israel just had Netanyahu elected as PM of what is said to be the most radical far right coalition in the Jewish state recent history . Nigeria on the other hand is having its presidential election this month and Nigerians are beset with problems of hunger and mobility such that it is apparent that voter apathy will be a major determinant of the   result of the presidential election if it takes place as scheduled . I pray    it is not postponed because of the high fuel cost and crippling non availability of money and funds for Nigerians to go about of their daily duties and eke out a living most especially at an election time such as we are in .

Some observers have said that Nigeria’s unexpected pre election hiatus on fuel and naira shortage are self inflicted and   could have been a retaliatory policy of an aggrieved CBN governor who also wanted to be president but was not given the green light to contest by his boss who happens to be the incumbent president . My take on that is that the CBN boss is more of the boss than his legitimate boss who   happens to be the president . Or else how can a CBN governor want to be president before resigning first as required before contesting ?. It is a clear case of the tail wagging the dog that the CBN governor is back on his seat and driving the currency redesign process after having declared openly that he wanted to be president and was not allowed . Yet   he is   still    driving the currency change   on the eve of an election that he was not allowed to contest in . It again shows the strength of the executive in   Nigeria’s presidential system in which the APC is controlling both the legislature and the executive . Surprisingly      though   , it    cannot provide an enabling and comfortable environment for its own candidate ,the   Jagaban , who is the forerunner in this election to   literally coast to victory as any government in power is expected to do   legitimately    for its own candidate in any democracy . As Shakespeare once noted in the   tragedy Hamlet ‘ something is rotten in the state of Denmark ‘ and surely something is fishy in the way the APC is not using its executive power to further it retention of power in this month’s election . It is in bad taste for a party in power to treat its candidate like an orphan and create avoidable crisis on the eve of an election it has pledged support its    candidate openly and is campaigning all over the nation to see this through . The consequences   can be suicidal if not destabilizing both for nation and party . Again a word is enough for the wise .

Aside from the floating Chinese   balloon issue in the US , the current US president is behaving like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand . The Biden government is in for a hard time with the Republican majority in the Lower House of its legislature . I recall a state of the Union address when Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore the president’s speech being delivered by Donald Trump . Pelosi was seated behind the president then with his VP Mike   Pence . When   Biden delivered   his state of the union address this week the VP Kamala Harris was seated behind the president with Kevin Macarthy , the new Speaker of the House . This is where the fire works begin for Biden on his mishandling of the US inflation which is said to be the highest in 40 years , a porous border where drugs said to be enough to kill every man woman and child in America   are smuggled in with impunity , and   an economy    in which fuel prices are   rising like in Nigeria because of Biden’s policy to close down the oil companies literally because of his priority and pursuit of clean energy and consummation of climate change policy . The die is cast for the Biden government and family given the majority reality   of the Republicans in the House of Representatives . This   , together   with his son Hunter’s lost lap top and dealings with China   means the American president us about to learn a hard   lesson that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones .

February 18, 2023
When women teach men how to serve

Nigerians will go to the polls in one week from today to elect the next president and members of the National Assembly. On the 11th of March, they will elect the governors and the state houses of assembly members. The run-up to the elections has been very tense with many acts of violence being experienced by some party members across the country. Sadly, what this means is that even though the political parties signed a peace accord before the commencement of the campaigns, it does show that there have been no strict adherence to that.

Nigerian elections have always been of concern to Africa and the international community due the strategic position of the country in the continent. With a population of over two hundred million people, the place of Nigeria in the continent is very key. The elections therefore mean a lot and most times there are visible and focused attention and concern about Nigerian elections. Democracy in the Nigerian political space is vital to the stability of the continent.

Sadly though, Nigerian political history has been a very intriguing one. Since independence in 1960, the military incursions into the political space has lasted for decades and as such there has been somewhat of a corruption of the political process and in some ways, the military idea of leadership seems to have been imbibed by the civilian politicians. The Nigerian democratic practice seems not to have been totally weaned from certain military characteristics. There is still some confusion with the political class about the best tenets of democracy. The three arms of government, the executive, legislature and judiciary in some ways seem not to operate totally along the lines of clear routes of checks and balances.

In theory and practice, there seems to be some blurred lines in terms of the functions of each arm of government. While most people agree that there is still time for the democracy to develop fully and functionally serve the people, some political watchers believe that the political elite in Nigeria has the capacity to re-organize the process to be progressively better.

However, the Roundtable Conversation believes that 62 years in the life of any nation is a long time to have moved up the progress ladder. However, there are too many roadblocks to the advancement of democratic practices in Nigeria. The political class have carried on as emperors rather than democratically elected individuals who are to serve the people. There is a certain false sense of ownership and entitlement that pervades the entire political landscape.

The elected public officers often do not totally understand their position in the lives of the people. Leadership is about service and that comes with a lot of introspection and commitment. The respect for the office one occupies either at the executive, legislative or judiciary is a sine qua non to good service. The respect for the constitution and the rule of law makes it mandatory for public office holders to look unto the people as their bosses and realize that if one is no longer in a position to render service to the people, the honourable line to tow is to step down.

However, in Nigeria, the political space is almost totally monopolized by men. The ratio for instance of candidates for this year’s election is about 89% to 11% in favour of men. All the three major political parties, the All Progressive Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) all have male presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates, only the APC is the major one that has a female gubernatorial Candidate in Adamawa state. For legislative elections, the ratio of men to women is equally abysmal across the states.

For a very long time, the domination of the political space by men has been very injurious to the people and economy. There are religious and cultural spins to the situation. There is a fundamental socio-religious impression that leadership if for men and leadership has a somewhat divine slant that makes any elected person anointed of God. This idea is often exploited by the political class to perpetuate themselves in power even when they have lost the steam to provide leadership. The sense of ‘ownership’ of political positions is again fueled by the unfettered powers of the elected and the attendant privileges which in some ways are not accessed by those outside the political class. The lack of the total adoption of core democratic tenets where non-performance and the breach of the constitution and be punished legally and constitutionally makes it possible for elected persons to continue in office without consequences even when they err.

However, as we go into this year’s elections, it is apposite to get around other democracies and show the patriarchal Nigerian political class recent examples of female leaders across the world who have in the last few months resigned their leadership positions for one reason or the other but ultimately in patriotic spirits to give way for other leaders to emerge.

After the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Britain, the Conservative party elected Lizz Truss as the third female Prime Minister amidst the economic quagmire following the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit consequences and other socio-political problems affecting citizens of the United Kingdom. Seven weeks into her term, she resigned when in her words, “I recognize, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver on the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party”. The party elected Rishi Sunak in her stead in October of 2022.

In late January, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Arden, the young leaders famous for her empathy and handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and swift action after the terror attacks that claimed more than fifty lives in her country resigned even before her tenure expired. In her words, “…I no longer have enough in the tank to do the job”. “It’s time”, she concluded. To her, “I’m leaving because such a privileged role comes with responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not”. She set a February 7th date. Chris Hipkins has since resumed duties in her stead.

A few days ago, Nicola Sturgeon, the first Prime minister of Scotland and Leaders of the Scottish National Party (SNP) announced that she would resign as PM and as SNP leader once a new leader is elected. In her words, “…part of serving in politics is knowing when it is time to make way for someone else”. Sturgeon has led Scotland for the last eight years. She is best known for her push for Scottish independence, a move that has been stalled by political mines, literarily. Before becoming Prime Minister, she had held other positions in the country and made significant reforms in the health and education sectors. She is a vocal gender advocate.

Her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and her strong push for Scottish independence stands how out amongst global leaders of impact. However, despite her fame and ambition to achieve some political milestones for her country, she took the decision to step aside and let other leaders emerge and take the baton of leadership. That is the essence of leadership, knowing when to let others take the seat knowing that leadership is not a monarchical institution. Even in monarchies, some heirs and heiresses to the throne often abdicate or step down for reasons that the throne is more important that personal ambitions or needs.

The Roundtable Conversation wishes that the predominantly male politicians in the country can begin to think more of improving the democratic structures in ways that can be more inclusive. It is interesting to note that some of these women were the leaders of their political parties. In Nigeria, the patriarchal situation often excludes women from the top leadership of the political parties and that often accounts for the chaotic administration of the political parties. The idea of structurally restricting women to the leadership of ‘Women Wings’ of the various political parties is not only laughable but has made party administration in Nigeria very unstable and less productive.

Governance at all tiers of government, local , states and the federal levels are seen in Nigeria as permanent jobs that the occupiers never have to leave till their tenures expire or they die in office. Even when there are cases of poor performances and clear cases of incompetence, the people rarely see Nigerian leaders resign from office. This is part of the reasons development is slow and as many as 133million Nigerians are living in multi-dimensional poverty.

The coming elections must usher in candidates that understand that they have no monopoly of leadership and resigning when your capacity to deliver is in doubt is actually a patriotic action. Resigning from a post you have lost the zeal or steam to deliver on is actually a noble action to take and an admirable sacrifice to make for a nation, state or local government. Sitting tight in political offices or jumping from one arm of government to the other like failed governors using state funds to contest for Senate seats just to continue in a political space is an unpatriotic action that cannot grow the economy.

The dialogue continues…

February 18, 2023
Doctoral feather to Dele Alake’s cap

It was dusk in Lagos on one of those tense and tortuous days after the annulment of June 12, 1993, the presidential election decisively won by Chief M.K.O Abiola on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was one of those persons from diverse fields of life under watch by the ubiquitous security agencies because of their perceived active roles in opposing the annulment and working hard underground to ensure the de-annulment of the polls result and the recognition of M.K.O’s emphatic victory and his inauguration as President of Nigeria in accord with his electoral mandate. As he drove out of the expansive premises of the Concord Group of Newspapers located at Concord Way, off Murtala Mohammed Airport, that late evening the then Editor of the Sunday Concord, Mr. Henry Dele Alake, had no inkling danger could be lurking even though he knew he was under surveillance and had only paid a furtive visit to his office.

Turning right, he headed towards the domestic wing of the airport where at the junction he would make another right turn to proceed to his location in Ikeja. He was not paying much attention to a station wagon vehicle that had started following him once he drove out of the newspaper’s premises. However, he soon had a sense of intuitive foreboding when he looked into his rearview mirror a number of times and discovered that the same vehicle with a number of men in it appeared to be trailing him. After he had meandered dangerously through the Lagos heavy traffic with the vehicle still obviously in pursuit, he was finally able to shake them off at the Allen Junction roundabout and made his way to safety.

That was only one of the occasions Dele Alake narrowly escaped falling into the iron claws of the military goons in that grim period of Nigeria’s history. His memoirs will surely contain even more gripping tales of his close shaves with the security agents of the military.

On another occasion, he was in custody of a speech prepared for Abiola by a renowned academic and iconic columnist, and the document, which the dictatorship in power would certainly have considered subversive, was hidden under the foot mat beneath his seat. On Opebi Road, he ran into a military stop and search checkpoint and had to stop.

One of the officers asked him to pull to the side and proceeded to search his car booth without finding anything incriminating. However, as Alake sighed in relief and was about entering his car, the soldier said he wanted to have a look at what was inside the vehicle. In the process, he lifted the foot mat, and lo and behold, there was the draft speech before his very eyes. Mr. Alake missed a heartbeat and he waited with bated breath not knowing what the officer’s reaction would be. To his amazement, the man dropped the speech back under the foot mat and told him quietly that “You guys should be careful o,” and waved him on telling his colleagues the car was clean.

On Saturday, January 21, this year all roads led to the Caleb University at Imota on the Ikorodu, Ibadan-Ijebu Ode Road, Imota where, at its 12th Convocation/Founders Day Ceremonies, the institution conferred a honorary Doctoral degree in Mass Communication on Mr. Alake while another outstanding media practitioner, Mr. John Momoh, Chairman of the Channels Media Group bagged a honorary Doctoral degree in Business and Entrepreneurship. These awards were obviously most deserving and were not dispensed lightly or frivolously. Caleb University, which has consistently ranked among the ten top private universities in Nigeria in just a little over a decade of its existence, obviously takes itself and its values very seriously. It gave careful thought to who deserved its awards and the two choices for this year undoubtedly enhance the credibility of the university.

It was surprising that in his citation on Alake, the university orator was completely silent on his active participation in the protracted struggle against the military dictatorship that birthed the current democracy that has been sustained for over two decades now. That was an almost unpardonable lapse. He probably thought that risking one’s life in the trenches for democracy and being forced to go into exile in the process was extraneous to journalism or the mass communication profession. But the truth is that Alake’s pro-democracy activism cannot be credibly dissociated from his journalism. This is particularly so when we consider that many other practitioners in the profession actively colluded with the military in a bid to sustain the unjust annulment of Abiola’s election victory and keep the country under military thralldom, an enterprise from which they reaped bounteous financial gain to set up thriving media groups.

It must be remembered that journalists like Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Earnest Ikoli, SLA Akintola, Anthony Enahoro, Herbert Macaulay, Lateef Jakande and Mokwogwu Okoye among others fought the evil of British colonial imperialism with their fearless pens. Many of these patriots who moved on to other pursuits later in life started out as journalists who were active in the trenches in the battle against colonial rule.

Mr. Alake belongs to that species of journalists who refused to sit on the fence in the face of oppression but exemplified Dr. Martin Luther King’s admonition that it is evil to adopt a posture of neutrality in a time of grave moral crisis. Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, also declared with a thunderous pungency that “Justice is the first condition of humanity” and that “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” As the online resource, Wikipedia, put it, “Alake was terrorized and tormented by the oppressive junta of late General Sani Abacha for his candour and daring in pressing for dis annulment of the 12 June election. Alake subsequently went into exile where he identified and joined forces with other patriotic elements like Senator Bola Tinubu, Lt. General Alani Akinrinade, Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, Chief John Oyegun and other chieftains of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). From there, Alake kept up the grim battle for the restoration of democracy. He made a return to Nigeria in 1995 when the Concord was reopened”.

Of course, over the last four decades, Alake has traversed with excellence all spheres of the mass communication profession spanning the private and public sectors. Born on 6th October, 1956, he had his primary school education at Surulere Baptist Primary School, Surulere, Lagos, and obtained his West African School Leaving Certificate and Higher School Certificate at Christ School Ado- Ekiti, Ekiti State and Igbobi College, Yaba, Lagos, respectively. He obtained a BSc degree in Political Science from the University of Lagos in 1978 and his MSc degree in Mass Communication from the same institution in 1981. After his compulsory one year NYSC service which was at the Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGSBC), he was employed by the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation (LSBC) as Senior Sub-Editor and had risen to become a Senior Current Affairs Editor at the radio station by 1983.

He was part of the team that set up the Lagos Television (LTV) Channel 8 under the dynamic leadership of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, then Lagos State governor. Late in 1985, he was headhunted to become part of the team recruited to fortify the “intellectual unit” of the Concord Group, marking his transition from the broadcast to the print media. He served as a columnist and member of the newspaper’s Editorial Board from 1985 till 1989. He became Editor of the Sunday Concord in 1989, while he was the Editor of National Concord between 1995 and 1999. The newspapers in the Concord stable rose to become the highest circulating in the country within a short span.

It is also noteworthy that he was an Adviser on Information to Chef MKO Abiola even as Editor of the Concord titles. In 1999, he was appointed first as Special Adviser on Information and Head of the Information Bureau in Lagos State and later became Commissioner for Information and Strategy when the Bureau was elevated to Ministerial status. When he assumed office, the Ministry was designated the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports. Alake, however, sought the approval of the governor for the Sports and Culture component of the Ministry’s responsibilities to be transferred to other agencies and the re-designation of the Ministry as the Ministry of Information and Strategy. This was in his words “to make the Ministry more relevant and dynamic to confront the challenges of modern information management in an emergent democracy.”

It was the first Ministry of Information and Strategy in Nigeria. Just like he was with MKO, Alake soon became one of the closest aides and associates of Tinubu which says something about his character, integrity, and steadfastness. As Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos State for eight years, he distinguished himself in terms of performance far above any occupant of that office in the country at state or federal levels. Indeed, his astuteness was a key factor in helping the Tinubu administration to survive many of the crises it went through, most of them contrived by its adversaries to destabilize and derail the government.

Ever since he left office, Alake has run a successful private communication and strategy consultancy business with several clients in the private and public sectors. He has been responsible for laying a solid professional grounding for the take-off and sustained success of several media organizations such as Adaba FM, Akure; Television Continental, Lagos; Max FM, Abuja; and Lagos, The Nation Newspapers; and Unique FM, Ilesha, Osun State. This is a man who has straddled all spheres of Mass Communication practice making him eminently worthy of the award and as the Vice Chancellor of Caleb University, Professor Nosa Owens-Ibie, stressed at the conferment, the awardees are entitled to all the privileges attendant on the honor.

It was not surprising that in addressing the students after the conferment, Alake dwelt on the need for a high degree of character, integrity, and scrupulous adherence to the canons of professionalism in all their undertakings.

As Editor of Sunday Concord, Alake’s newspaper had one of the most vibrant Business Desks in the country and enjoyed the confidence and patronage of actors in diverse sectors of the economy. One of his star reporters who routinely turned in exclusive stories and incisive interviews apparently got information about a company which the latter did not want published.

He was however insistent that he could not drop the story unless they paid a substantial sum of money which his Editor had demanded. Unknown to him, the firm who had the reporter on tape, reached out discreetly to Alake and asked how much he required to drop the story. A livid Alake who was unaware of the whole issue retorted that he never engaged in blackmail and the practice was alien to the organizational culture of the newspaper. The reporter lost his job. Scrupulous adherence to the highest ethical standards has been Alake’s consistent refrain over the years in his ongoing epochal journalistic Odyssey.

February 11, 2023
Wanted: VAR machine for NPFL

The Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) enters its seventh week this weekend with the tables in Groups A and B showing how well or how poorly some of the teams have fared in the abridged league system used for the domestic games this year. Indeed, the first round of the league competition ends on February 19, and it would be time for stock-taking with fans giving damning conclusions about the poorly placed teams. It won’t come as a surprise that referees are being blamed by losing teams.

For the fans who throng the venues, they have been satisfied with the conduct of those charged to play sensitive roles in the league’s administration, especially with the seemingly improved performance by the match referees. This writer feels strongly that the best security at any match venue can be guaranteed if the referees come with their Grade A performances during games. Football fans are very discerning to know when they have watched a properly officiated match. It would be very difficult for bad-playing sides to cajole the fans to cause mayhem based on the match referees’ actions if such an arbiter interpreted the rules of the game impeccably.

The biggest complaints have come in Week six from visiting clubs, no surprise now the league table is giving warning signals to teams in the murky relegation waters in the two groups. The complaining teams should be reminded that the referee is the sole custodian of time during matches and his decisions as final. A few times, the centre referee when in doubt asks for better advice from any of his two assistants closer to the scene of the offence for his or her opinion before making his final decision.

Indeed, not all decisions can be captured by the human eyes which explain the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) machine which captures actions including offences committed by players, coaches, and officials within the perimeter areas of the pitches. Interestingly, some of the offences or decisions which escape the referee’s eyes are human errors discovered on the retrospection by spectators after watching video replays of such scenes in the stadium’s in-built television sets. Other times mistakes committed by some referees could come from sheer incompetence such as the misapplication of the rules of the game.

Indeed, it took VAR’s intervention for the referees, and his assistants to rule on Manchester United’s midfielder Casemiro’s red card for almost strangling Crystal Palace’s player in a sideline melee. Again, only VAR could have spotted the ball which had crossed the line before the Newcastle right winger pulled it for what could have been the first goal. Rightly so, the goal was ruled out in West Ham’s favour. VAR’s playback mechanism has solved a lot of knotty issues associated with the game, although there have been a few cases of disagreement with the machine’s decisions.

The cry from the league venues last weekend was hinged on penalty decisions which weren’t granted most times by the losing side simply because their players were fouled inside the 18-metre area. It is not enough for a player to fall easily inside the penalty area especially if his side is losing that game. Such drama from inscrutable players shouldn’t be tolerated based on the pigeonhole camera shots which are not clear or doctored to show only where the offence was committed. The truth is that Nigerian teams are too defensive leaving their defences crowded from where offences are committed easily. It is also quite commendable that the NFF President Ibrahim Gusau directed the federation’s General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi, according to the communiqué released on Wednesday to ensure that: ”As a further step, Alhaji Gusau had handed the General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi the task of always putting a call through to all referees on arrival at their assignment venues, to remind them to discharge their duties efficiently and about the sanctity of fidelity to the laws of the game.”

It is also laughable when attempts were made to produce slow movement using one of the phone’s devices. These unorthodox methods shouldn’t be used to take decisions which could turn out to be inimical to the game’s growth here in Nigeria. Those referees punished for poor officiating involving particular clubs should be interrogated while games involving such clubs should be adequately monitored by the IMC. Of course, such clubs’ matches should have top-rated match officials with the hierarchy of the IMC physically present at such matches venues either at home or away. If the domestic game must grow, such suspected foul plays should be checked before it becomes a reason for vendetta in the return legs by the losing teams. Restricting the punishments to just the matches referees is a recipe for disaster arising from crowd violence at match venues.

This writer challenged a member of the IMC over the possibility of having VAR machines at league venues across the country bankrolled by the committee. The IMC member welcomed the suggestion but disclosed that it costs about $377 million to buy the VAR machine not forgetting the cost of installation and training of the experts to operate the machine. Quickly, we both brought out our phones to convert $377 million to naira and the expression on our faces told the story about the slippery pole task if it was to be purchased and installed for use during matches by either the IMC or the participating teams.

Should we throw our arm up over the purchase and usage of the VAR machines during domestic league matches? No, except we are saying that there are unresolved issues surrounding the live transmission of games in the courts or are out of it by way of existing Supreme Court judgments which must be respected and obeyed. The IMC may need to sit with those in whose hands lie the right ownership of the domestic league’s television rights for proper schooling for the good of the game. Government bodies should learn how to respect such issues since the owners of such rights did so with large sums of money, most times secured from commercial banks with very vulgar interest rates. Besides, these rights owners are businessmen and women whose intellectual property shouldn’t be wished away on the altar of a few people’s penchants of always thinking that there are Nigerian ways of doing things. No way. That is why we have the courts to help adjudicate on such matters.

League matches can’t be played to attract sponsorship from the blue chip companies without television coverage. The IMC should, therefore, sit with the true rights owners and talk things over. These rights owners love the game and have chosen to do the business of television coverage based on the tenets of their contract. Breaches to contracts should be frowned upon. This perhaps may have prompted the decision to head to the courts for judgments which must be respected. Any league competition not captured by television is dead. It translates to winking in the dark. Who does that?

The call to have a live telecast of the domestic leagues is on the NFF in conjunction with the bodies law section to look at the defunct league board’s document to see how best the problem can the resolved amicably for the good of the game. Indeed, there is truly a new dawn in the domestic game with the NFF Referees Committee holding a meeting to review the case of match officials whose handling of designated games appears to have poured odium on the league. Decisions taken were applauded by most stakeholders. The way forward.

February 11, 2023
Emefiele and Buhari’s legacy

Had an aspirant like the All Progressives Party (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, not emerged as the party’s presidential flag bearer in the critical elections slated for February 25, in a landslide victory at the party primaries held in June last year in Abuja, the party would most probably have kissed triumph at the polls goodbye by now. So far, however, the strenuous efforts of the major political parties to pin the perceived flaws of the President Muhammadu Buhari APC administration on Tinubu and thereby fatally decapitate his campaign have abysmally failed to gain meaningful traction.

The APC candidate thus remains the clear front runner in the race hence the desperate but still futile attempts by the opposition, principally the Abubakar Atiku presidential campaign, to throw vicious dirt at him through recycled false allegations, mudslinging and character assassination.

For the candidate of a party which, despite the indisputable achievements of its government in the last eight years, has failed to match the great public expectations of fundamental change that greeted its assumption of office in 2015, what is responsible for the continued upsurge of the Tinubu campaign on the platform of a party that ought really to have its back on the ropes and literarily fighting for its political life?

There are at least three possible reasons for this scenario and the continuously upbeat tempo of the bulk of the APC leadership and rank and file membership in my view. First, President Buhari although traditionally regarded as the leader of the party, put a wide berth between his administration and the APC on which platform it came to power. The party had a negligible influence on or input into the government’s policies. The administration was at best perfunctory in its implementation of the party’s manifesto, a document which ought to have been its guiding light and veritable Bible.

On the critical restructuring component of the party platform, for example, the administration adopted a stance of complete indifference and nonchalance even as party leaders agonized in discomfited silence. When the administration over two years into its first term deigned to set up a committee headed by Kaduna State governor, Mr. Nasir el’Rufai, to advise on the party’s policy position on restructuring, for instance, the committee’s far-reaching recommendations such as the urgent need to radically decentralize the country’s security architecture was completely ignored after it was submitted to the President even though, in his characteristically thorough manner, el’Rufai had accompanied the proposals with draft bills on the various issues to be forwarded to the National Assembly for legislative follow up action.

It was obvious that the infamous alleged cabal in the inner precincts of the Aso Rock power house had edged out the party hierarchs from exerting any meaningful influence on government direction and policy with the result that many discerning members of the public lay the blames for the administration’s perceived failures on a few members of the President’s inner circle who abused his confidence and trust rather than on the party.

The second reason for the relative feebleness and bluntness of the PDP’s salvos against the APC in this campaign is that, even if the ruling party’s alleged failings are partly true, the PDP has not sufficiently demonstrated that it has fundamentally reformed itself and would do better if returned to power in 2023 than it did in its earlier largely squandered 16 years in office at the centre. Most of the seeds of the problems that bloomed and festered under the APC in the last eight years were laid during the preceding PDP years in control of Aso Rock.

A good example of the PDP’s all too obvious imperviousness to change was the crassness and brazenness with which it abandoned its own constitutional provision for rotation of power between the North and the South and the sleight of hand through which Alhaji Atiku Abubakar grabbed the party’s presidential ticket. The party continues to reel from the intra-organizational crisis arising from this development as illustrated by the rebellion of the governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State-led G5 governor’s and its crippling effect on the Atiku campaign.

To worsen matters, Atiku’s cynical, divisive attempt to pitch the North against the South by projecting himself with open and brazen contempt as the candidate of the North is not flying among key enlightened stakeholders of the latter region with considerable electoral clout such as the Northern APC governors who are obviously mindful of the critical importance of power rotation between the North and South for national unity, peace and stability and have been campaigning ardently for Tinubu.

Thirdly and perhaps most important is the factor of Tinubu himself. True, he is credited with having played a pivotal role in enabling Buhari to win the 2015 presidential election after three failed earlier attempts on the latter’s part. But many of those who want the electorate to blame Tinubu for the emergence of Buhari and the alleged failures of his administration were the very ones who cynically mocked the APC candidate shortly after the assumption of office of the President Buhari in 2015 because the latter’s government had so obviously sidelined a man who held the honorific title of National Leader of the APC.

Of course, many Nigerians who know him well swear that Buhari had nothing personal against Tinubu and would do nothing to impede his ambition even though as a stickler for rules and due process he would also not lift a finger to help him unduly, which is fair enough. But the unhidden fact is that the hawks around the President influenced him to distance the former Lagos State governor from his administration for the better part of his tenure but for the brief interlude when he got Tinubu to lead his re-election campaign for the 2019 election. If any of the other leading aspirants who had been key functionaries of the administration had emerged as candidate, they would face critical credible questions on what they did to enhance the quality of governance as members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the highest decision- making body of the executive arm.

It is a testimony to Tinubu’s astuteness, steadfastness, good faith and fidelity to party loyalty that he had never at any time disparaged the Buhari administration despite pressures in a number of quarters that he did so especially when he was widely perceived as deliberately marginalized from the government. Rather, he has consistently applauded the administration’s accomplishments and strengths especially in infrastructure provision across the country, its massive social intervention programmes to alleviate poverty and its monumental investment in agriculture to diversify the economy among others. While promising to improve on the administration’s creditable records in these areas, he has also pledged to seek more effective solutions in tackling the security situation, managing the debt burden, boosting power supply, dealing with the fuel subsidy conundrum and enhancing national unity through more inclusive governance among others.

This is at least far more intellectually honest than the candidates who claim they want to recover Nigeria without admitting the Buhari administration’s areas of success and that it initiated and completed scores of infrastructure projects nationwide to which most of the debts acquired are tied while investing heavily in social safety nets for the poor and vulnerable thus accomplishing much more in seven and a half years than the PDP did in 16 years even while earning far less revenue than the latter did as a result of sharp decline in oil revenues as from the end of 2014 shortly before assuming office. No matter what may be the perception about his failings and lapses, it is difficult to deny that Buhari is an essentially decent man with a good heart. That he does not own an oil bloc or scores of choice properties within and outside the country despite the critical and ‘lucrative’ positions he has held over the years is a mark of asceticism and frugality for which he is still regarded by the teeming masses of the North. It is remarkable that he is held in much higher esteem by this electorally critical constituency than most former retired military officers from the North that are far away wealthier than him.

His democratic credentials remain indelible as he has allowed free and fair elections in which even his party has lost elections in a number of states. Some of his military predecessors as President who proclaim their Messianic morality from the rooftops in obscenely nauseating self-adulatory public epistles have an odious legacy of reckless election rigging and compulsive material acquisition.

If he has a weakness, it is that Buhari trusts those he has appointed into public office, many times on the recommendation of those who were with him in his many years in the political wilderness after his overthrow in a palace coup in 1986, virtually absolutely. His style is to give them a free hand to carry out their duties without interference. Unfortunately, many of these do not hesitate to hide behind the toga of his perceived integrity to pursue policies that feather their personal, selfish and allegedly pecuniary ends.

One of such self-serving appointees is Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele. It is inexplicable, even unthinkable, that such a key player in regulating the country’s financial sector, a job that requires the highest degree of restraint, sobriety and integrity, would actually collect the APC presidential nomination form for N100 million and even attempt to contest the party’s primaries without vacating his office; that hundreds of personally branded vehicles estimated at billions of Naira would be bought for his campaign and paraded on national television.

It is this unprecedented, unwarranted, reckless and possibly criminal politicization of the sensitive office of CBN governor that has prompted widespread suspicion and outcry about Emefiele’s Naira redesign policy which, with an impossibly short deadline to dispose of old Naira notes and exchange them for acutely scarce new notes, a few weeks to a general election, has caused a severe Naira scarcity and foisted avoidable hardship on poor Nigerians throughout the country. This policy is unimpeachable buts its implementation horrendous and catastrophic. Yet, Emefiele is adamant. Is this Emefiele’s ultimate revenge against those who clinched the presidential ticket of a party whose presidential candidate he sought in futility to be?

If so, his present venture will surely end up the way his presidential did – a colossal failure. But does Emefiele have a heart for the groaning of millions of Nigerians in Banking halls and ATM queues across the country? Does he have the humaneness to realize that this misbegotten policy would compound the severe hardships already being experienced due to the protracted acute fuel scarcity? Does he care a hoot about the historical legacy of his boss and benefactor, President Buhari? These are sad but pertinent questions to ask. Emefiele typically exemplifies the ironies of PMB’s paradoxical legacy.

February 11, 2023
How the Attorney-General made a u-turn

First, he sounded very tough. The government, those close to him told the media, would not obey the Supreme Court ruling that the deadline for the currency swap be extended beyond February 10, following a plea by Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara state governments that the naira swap policy was causing hardship on Nigerians, especially those in the rural areas.

Soon after the ruling, Emefiele and the Attorney-General (AG) met with the President. No statement was issued but word soon got out through anonymous sources that the government was seething with rage and would not obey the order. Some senior lawyers went to town with why the order should not be complied with. Some even urged President Muhammadu Buhari to overrule the ruling with an executive order. It was as if the government was set for a showdown with the Supreme Court.

Worried by the development some retired judges and renowned lawyers warned the AG on the consequences of his action. They told him frankly that he was on a suicide mission and advised him to quickly retrace his steps. Buhari, they told him, is not a lawyer and has only three months to the end of his tenure.

Emefiele, they further told him, has already ruined his career and would not be spared by the law. He was told to avoid being charged with contempt and punished accordingly. He got the message, and the result was the statement he issued on Thursday night that the government would comply with the injunction.

February 11, 2023
Atiku, PDP regret position on Naira policy

Were Ayodele Awojobi, the late professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) alive, he would probably be deploying against the presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a popular phrase he used to describe Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s contradictory positions on issues in the 1978/79 electioneering: “consistently inconsistent”.

If anyone is wondering why the main opposition party and its candidate are no longer upbeat in the run-up to the presidential election, the answer is simple: they have shot themselves in the foot with their comments and positions on critical issues on naira swap and fuel scarcity.

It will be recalled that Atiku and the PDP were the first to attack Tinubu when the APC presidential candidate spoke against the twin issues that subjected ordinary Nigerians to untold suffering. Contrary to popular opinion, they told the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to forge ahead with the policy. Tinubu, however, ignored Atiku and the PDP and appealed to the government to consider the poor who would suffer the most.

Somehow, Atiku and his party were blind to the hardship that ravaged the land and even dismissed the APC governors who supported Tinubu’s position. Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari was under pressure from traditional rulers and other non-political actors to extend the January 31 initial deadline set for the old naira notes. The President agreed and directed Emefiele to consider an extension.

Word got to Atiku through no other person than Emefiele that an extension had been approved. Pronto, he released a video on Saturday, January 28 asking the government and CBN to extend the deadline in the interest of the poor. On Sunday, two days to January 31, the CBN announced a new deadline of yesterday (February 10). Still convinced that the extension was no solution to the hardship, Tinubu and APC recommended a minimum of six months for both old and new currencies to co-exist. This, they said would cause the hardship caused by the scarcity of the new notes to cease . Atiku and the PDP countered Tinubu and the APC, saying that the deadline should not be extended. They now became the defender of the CBN. The motive was clear: to cast the Buhari government and APC in bad light ahead of the elections and reap electoral benefits from the hardship in the land.

But Nigerians were not deceived. They saw through the politics of Atiku and the PDP. Now, the position has backfired. To many, Atiku is truly anti-people. In public places, he is regarded as selfish, unprincipled and manipulative. He wants power desperately and does not care if the people die from bad and obnoxious policies provided his interest is not injured. He has never fought for the people.

Atiku had previously exhibited his desperation and selfish instincts in the case of Deborah Samuel, a Christian student gruesomely murdered in Sokoto by some Muslim extremists who accused her of blasphemy. Atiku had issued a statement on his Twitter account condemning Deborah’s killing only to take off the statement moments later because some young Muslims threatened to withdraw their support for his presidential ambition.

During the Abacha years when Tinubu and others were in the trenches fighting for democracy, Atiku was busy campaigning to become the governor of Adamawa State on the platform of one of the parties described by the late Bola Ige as “the five fingers of a leprous hand”. He spoke no word against the Abacha junta. Now, with Nigerians going through serious hardship as a result of an ill timed and badly executed policy, he is cool with those behind it, leaving his handlers worried that their stance on the naira crisis has backfired.

Everywhere, from the North to the South, reports reaching them say that voters are disappointed in Atiku, especially.

February 11, 2023