The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

Renewed Hope Agenda and anti-corruption war

When he appeared before the Senate for screening and approval of the upper chamber of the National Assembly before his confirmation as the new Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) last October, Mr Ola Olukoyede. appeared sure-footed and sounded self-assured. In his responses to questions from the law makers, the new anti-corruption Czar demonstrated that he is a thorough professional well acquainted with the terrain of fighting financial crime, unveiling fraud and bursting corrupt cartels.

Critics of his appointment had contended that Olukoyede was not qualified for the job in the light of Section 2 (3) of the EFCC Act which states that the Chairman of the EFCC “must be a serving or retired member of any government security or law enforcement agency not below the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police or equivalent and possesses not less than 15 years experience”. But those who supported his nomination for the job pointed out that Olukoyede is a lawyer with over 22 years experience as a regulatory compliance consultant as well as a specialist in fraud management and corporate intelligence.

Furthermore, the new EFCC boss served as Chief of Staff to a former Chairman of the outfit from 2016 to 2018 as well as Secretary to the Commission from 2018 till 2023. His performance on the floor of the Senate demonstrated his thorough knowledge of the psychology of corruption and he came across as someone who had thought deeply about the subject and thus had pragmatic and concrete policy suggestions on how best to tackle the menace from the roots without recourse to cheap sensationalism.

For instance, as he told the Senators, “I did a survey between 2018 and 2020 on 50 entities in Nigeria, both human and corporate entities. I picked just one scheme, one specie of fraud, which is called contract and procurement fraud. I discovered that within the three years, Nigeria lost N2.9 trillion”.

Demonstrating to the legislators the colossal opportunity cost of such massive looting of public resources, Olukoyede said “When I put my figures together, I discovered that if the country had prevented the money from being stolen, it would have given us 1000 kilometers of roads and it would have built 200 standard tertiary institutions. It would also have educated about 6000 children from primary to tertiary level at N16 million per child; it would also have delivered more than 20000 units of three bedroom houses across the country; it would have given us a world class teaching hospital in each of the 36 states of the country”.

It was thus against this background that Olukoyede said that the EFCC under his leadership would spend more money on preventing corruption by identifying and blocking leakages rather than spending humongous amounts on trying to retrieve lost money after such money has been stolen and most likely expended. While saying that enforcement is a very strong tool in the hands of anti-corruption agencies which the EFCC would not ignore, he advocated for what he called a transactional credit system in Nigeria because in his words. “If we continue to allow Nigerians buy houses, cars and other essential properties by cash because we don’t have an effective credit system one thousand security agencies will not do us any good and that is the reality”.

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Continuing, Olukoyede told the Senators that “The savings of an average Nigerian all through his service years cannot build the type of houses they are building and the cars they are riding. The problem we have is just like the proverbial monkey that was locked in a cage with a bunch of Bananas. The owner stood outside with a cane. The monkey would either eat the bananas, get beaten and be alive or allow the bananas to get rotten and die of hunger”. It is obvious that Mr Olukoyede is not excusing corruption but advocating that even as we deal decisively with corrupt elements among us, we must also reflect on the deeper and more fundamental roots of the problem so that we do not continue to address just the symptoms.

That he takes enforcement as important as the preventive measures he articulates is evident from his submission that “To encourage our criminal Justice system to work, the substance should be taken above technicalities. We must encourage our criminal Justice system to adjudicate in such a way that it will not drag for a very long time. Prosecution should not be allowed to take more than a maximum of five years from the court of first instance to the Supreme Court. The Senate can work on that very seriously. If we make the administration of the criminal Justice system to work, you will see the great work the anti- corruption agencies are doing”.

Mr Olukoyede has already begun to walk his talk as his agency has asked the immediate past Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadia Umar-Farouk to appear before its team of investigators currently probing the alleged laundering of amounts to the sum of over N37.2 billion under her watch as Minister. In a similar vein, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), Halima Shehu, who has been placed on suspension, has also been interrogated by the EFCC to shed light on the alleged movement of N17 billion from the account of the NSIPA to some suspicious accounts within one week.

Of course, the EFCC has also taken over the case file of the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele, for prosecution over stupendous corruption investigations into his management both by the Department of State Services (DSS) as well as the Special Investigator into the finances of the apex bank, Mr Jim Obazee, former Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria and highly respected financial analyst and investigator. It could be argued with some justification that not much use can come of expending valuable time in seeking to probe the activities of previous administrations when such time can be utilized in the pursuit of a new administration’s agenda.

However, if the alleged diversion of public funds is of such a gargantuan scale, there certainly can be no harm in seeking to retrieve such funds as unobtrusively as possible especially if the culprits are cooperative enough to want to return looted wealth quietly. The new EFCC Chairman must, however, guard against sensational trial by media of allegedly corrupt persons which past Chairmen of the agency indulged in even when there was scant evidence to meaningfully pursue such cases to a logical conclusion in the courts.

The NFIU also has a critical to play in effectively actualizing the anti-corruption objectives of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda. A major step that the NFIU has taken in this regard is that of ensuring that security votes of state governors are paid into dedicated accounts at the CBN to facilitate better monitoring of disbursements from the accounts. Prior to the decision of the NFIU in January that cash withdrawals can no longer be made from public accounts, governors were collecting their security votes directly from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee.

Between 2015 and January this year, governors reportedly withdrew over N701 billion from their respective accounts

and it is hoped the new requirement on withdrawals will help facilitate greater transparency, integrity and accountability in the use of the security votes. The secrecy that shrouds the magnitude and pattern of disbursement of security votes has been identified as a major source of corrupt enrichment at the state level and it is surprising that the funds should now be domiciled and accessed from dedicated accounts at the CBN has attracted hardly a mention in the media.

Another major step taken towards concretizing the goals of public accountability in the utilization of collective resources by public officers is the decision of the federal government to publish for the first time ever the 2024 budgets of its 63 Government Owned Enterprises (GOE) in accordance with the Renewed Hope Agenda. Many Civil Society Groups, activists and Non Governmental Organizations have commended this move which they say will open up the activities of such agencies for public scrutiny thus helping to ensure a greater sense of responsibility by public office holders in affected GOEs in the expenditure of government funds.

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Abubakar Bagudu, has been enjoined by Nancy Odimegwu , spokesperson of BudgIT “to make public comprehensive details of the 2024 Approved Budget to keep citizens informed and empowered to engage with the government across all levels”. According to a news report in this newspaper on the development, “Nancy Odimegwu commended the government for the unprecedented step towards transparency as this was the first time the government would be acceding to public clamour for insights into the budgets of the major agencies and enterprises”.

January 6, 2024
The APC gadfly

Why has the All Progressives Congress (APC) since its formation been unable to constitute its Board of Trustees (BOT) as provided for in the party’s constitution? I have always found this curious and inexplicable. Indeed, so uncomfortable some key members of the party appear to be with the word or concept of the BOT that they have rechristened it as the National Advisory Council. Yet, despite this change of nomenclature, I am unaware that this critical organ which is indispensable for maintaining high ethical standards within the party and serving principally as its moral compass has been inaugurated.

The APC constitution provides that the BOT shall “Be the embodiment of the conscience, the soul and the sanctity of the Party and shall intervene in all disputes and crisis in the Party to ensure its stability at all times”. Given the criteria stated for its membership and the vast experience of those qualified to belong to it, the BOT should be at the vanguard of propagating and upholding the values of the party. Its influence stems from the assumed integrity of its members as well as their rich experiences in public life and the wisdom this confers.

It is perhaps in the absence of either a BOT or a National Advisory Council that the former Director General of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) as well as National Vice Chairman of the ALC, Mallam Salihu Lukman, has often chosen to speak as the conscience of the party and to hold successive leaderships of the APC to account particularly with regard to fidelity to the party constitution, organizational efficiency and adherence to the principles of good corporate governance.

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During the week, Lukman, a development economist, former students union leader, pro-democracy activist who is also described as a political organizer, launched his new book ‘APC and Transition Politics’. The author said the book was written to document his experiences in the struggle that brought President Bola Tinubu to power. This book will certainly make interesting, informative and provocative reading as Lukman can be as controversial as they come and he never refrains from speaking out courageously and boldly as well as taking a stand in accordance with his principles.

To those who have been at the receiving of his often acerbic, trenchant and unsparing criticism, Mallam Lukman cannot be their idea of a good and loyal party man. If he truly had the best interest of the party at heart, they would reason, why does he often resort to public criticism of its leaders which is tantamount to washing the party’s dirty linen in the open? While he may exaggerate in some of his positions, indifference to or silence on many of the issues he raises can certainly not be described as a demonstration of love for the party or the administration of President Tinubu.

A veritable gadfly, he has been a constant and unrelenting thorn in the flesh of successive leaders of the party from Comrade Adams Oshiomhole during his tenure as National Chairman to governor Mai Mala Bunu when he served as Chairman of the Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Comnittee (CECPC) to Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu as National Chairman as well as the National Secretary at the time, Senator Iyiola Omisore, and now Dr Abdullahi Ganduje.

His views may at times come across as exaggerated, extremist or unpalatable but they still serve a useful purpose. For instance, a few days before he launched his book, Mallam Lukman addressed a press conference in which he warned the APC of the possibility of its being swept out of power at the centre in 2027. Referring to current severe economic hardships, he said “Life is becoming more difficult. We must appeal to our leaders that things are getting out of hand at the rate at which we are going under a Party that is envisioned to be progressive. We are likely going to start witnessing rebellion if care is not taken by 2027”. Luckily, the Tinubu administration itself is very much aware of the current inclement economic climate and the consequent harsh existential conditions.

Speaking recently at the graduation ceremony of the Executive Intelligence Management Course 16 participants, Vice President Kashim Shettima acknowledged that “All of us here belong to a tiny segment of the Nigerian population. And you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you that the poor are angry with us. Go to the slums and mingle with the poor. I am a native of Maiduguri (Borno State Capital). Anytime a rich man brought a new car to his house, it used to be a place of pilgrimage. People used to go and see not out of anger, but of admiration. But now, as we cruise around in our bulletproof cars, one will see contempt in the eyes of the poor. We have to improve the quality of governance”. Beyond this, there is a palpable sense that majority of Nigerians are willing to give the Tinubu administration time to settle down and for its bold policy initiatives to begin to yield the desired results.

It is certainly significant that the administration’s wholesale removal of the fuel subsidy and the attendant sharp inflationary spirals has not elicited the kind of outrage and mass demonstrations that erupted when previous administrations tried to toe the same policy path. This is reflective of a willingness to give the administration the benefit of the doubt but this supportive stance of the public does not obviate the fact that the peoples trust must not be taken for granted and that the administration must be sensitive to the imperative for the requisite sense of urgency in delivering concretely on its Renewed Hope Agenda.

Mallam Lukman is a passionate and vehement advocate of fundamental reforms of the APC to enable it become a viable, vibrant and dynamic organization. In a recent open letter to leaders of the party, he noted that the current ruling party is becoming a replica of the PDP “with all the negative attributes “. According to him, “We spent eight years under former President Buhari motionless in terms of developing the needed initiatives for party building. Are we also going to experience another era of zero initiative for party building under the leadership of President Asiwaju Tinubu? Where is the claim of being progressive? Where then is the justification of any link to being an Awoist?”.

But then, it is heartwarming that the current leadership of the party has revealed plans to improve its organizational efficiency and strengthen its ideological orientation. When he led members of the National Working of the APC on a visit to President Tinubu this week, the National Chairman, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, unfolded plans to establish a National Institute for Progressive Studies, launch an electronic registration portal and develop a reliable database. This most certainly is the way to go.

It is interesting that even before Mallam Lukman’s new book hit the bookstands, remarks made by a former National Chairman of the APC, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, at the book launch had generated considerable controversy. Oshiomhole had recalled how the author of the book as well as former governors Ibikunle Amosun and Kayode Fayemi of Ogun and Ekiti states, respectively, had conspired to engineer his removal from office as party Chairman. Oshiomhole had strenuously resisted attempts by some governors to foist their governorship and other candidates on the party insisting that only those who emerged through credible primaries would be accepted by the party.

In a swift response, Senator Amosun accused Oshiomhole of peddling falsehood arguing that the erstwhile National Chairman of the party deserved to be removed from office because he conducted what he described as the worst primaries ever in the history of the party.

It will be recalled that on November 20, 2018, Oshiomhole had addressed a press conference in which he stated reasons why the purported primaries conducted by the Amosun group in the Ogun APC lacked credibility and could not stand. In conclusion, I will quote him at length to show the albatross that governors had become in the party at that time.

According to Oshiomhole, “At a stakeholders’ meeting, governor Amosun decided to introduce the third element which didn’t feature in the resolution of the National Executive Council and announced that Ogun State was going to adopt consensus and he proceeded to define what in his view constitutes consensus. He announced somebody as the consensus governor, he proceeded to announce another man as deputy governor; he went on to announce himself as the next Senator and he said the current serving Senator, Tejuoso, should step aside. He also went on to announce that the second Senator also from Ogun State would step aside while another will come in”.

He continued, “Governor Amosun went on to announce another man who will be the next Speaker and another one as the next Deputy Speaker. He also single-handedly pronounced that of the eight House of Representatives members, seven will not return. According to him, only one will return. All these he claimed is a consensus”. Luckily for the APC, the first National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, set a very high standard in terms of comportment, maturity, ethics and efficient administration of a political party. He showed the light for present and future generations of the party’s leadership to find the way towards the strengthening of the APC as a cohesive, stable, efficient and result-oriented political party.

December 30, 2023
Political parties, governance and leadership succession

The view in some quarters is that the ongoing disturbingly incendiary, even if low intensity warfare, between former two-term governor of Rivers State and now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mr Nyesom Wike, and his personally and passionately anointed successor, Mr Siminalayi Fubara, is a function of perceived weaknesses and/or excesses of both men. While some have accused Wike of high-handedness, an overbearing disposition and intolerance in his relationship with his successor, others contend that Fubara has exhibited the highest degree of ingratitude and tactlessnesses towards his predecessor given the unprecedented exertions of the latter to ensure his emergence as governor.

Both men evidently have their faults and failings. But this kind of personalized reading of the often strained relationships between governors and their successors, which has been quite common in this dispensation as exemplified by the combustible crisis between two-term governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and his equally anointed successor and incumbent governor of the state, Mr Godwin Obaseki, may not be helpful in locating the institutional roots of the problem and preferring enduring solutions.

Just as was the case in Edo, the dimension of the problem in Rivers was assuming alarming proportions before the intervention of President Bola Tinubu with the anarchic incapacitation of the state legislature with dangerous implications for democratic practice in the state. It is the view of this column that the source of this recurrent problem in several states lies in the underdevelopment of the political party system in the country and the consequent emergence of many incumbent state governors as virtual sole administrators and veritable dictators in their states.

Despite the central role that the extant 1999 constitution accords political parties as the platforms for the emergence of occupants of both legislative and executive leadership at all levels, the parties have since 1999 not evolved the requisite quality of organizational structures, ideological clarity and philosophical disposition to effectively perform their constitutional functions in this regard.

Consequently, at the state level in particular, governors have emerged as strong men who have practically captured and immobilized the enfeebled party structures through which they ascended to power in their states. This has contributed to the debilitating leadership succession problems in many states with governors imposing their choices mostly through strong arm tactics only with the latter once in power seeking to become all powerful strong men in their own right.

It is not surprising that one of the most effective, impactful and result-oriented political leaders this country has ever produced, whose leadership as the first Premier of the Western Region in the First Republic has remained a landmark, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, had no illusions about the prime role of political parties in ensuring effective, accountable and focused governance. In a speech to the Oyo State Conference of the Unity Party of Nigeria in November, 1980, Awolowo was unequivocal in his articulation of the supremacy of the party over its members in both the executive and the legislature.

In his words, “The important point to stress here is that our Constitution clearly makes a Registered Political Party the cornerstone of the activities of all the members of that Party, including those of them in the Legislature and Executive, as well as those of them operating outside these two organs of government. Indeed, the Registered Political Party is the sole source from which candidates for election, and elected members of the Legislature and the Executive, derive life blood for acceptability, public status and legitimacy”.

The truth of the matter is that elected officers either in the legislature or executive are not expected to function independent of the political parties on the platform of which they were elected. And this does not exclude governors. In justifying and rationalizing Fubara’s rebellion and repudiation of Wike’s leadership and mentorship, some have made the untenable argument that once elected a governor should be allowed to be his own man, to independently choose his commissioners and other aides as well as chart his autonomous cause. But then, a governor was elected on the platform of a party. No governor wins election alone.

The party must thus necessarily have a say in the choice of appointment of officers by a governor and government elected on its platform. Indeed, in the Second Republic, key officers both of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the President Shehu Shagari administration including the National Chairman of the party, the President, the Senate President, Senate Leader and Speaker of the House of Representatives met regularly to take joint decisions on appointments, major contract awards and other issues. Indeed, elected officials are expected to implement the policy planks of their parties.

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In my view neither the parliamentary nor the presidential systems of government envisages that the head of the executive arm of government will govern alone. True, under the parliamentary system, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are more dependent on the legislature but even Nigeria’s presidential constitution mandates the Chief Executive to appoint a Council of Ministers which he must consult regularly in running the affairs of state. Unfortunately, in many states, the governors run their administrations like emperors with the State Executive Council no more than rubber stamps and robotic sounding boards for the governor’s often ill conceived and defective ideas.

To make matters worse, the state legislatures are also at the beck and call of state governors while the local government councils are denied any meaningful financial or other forms of autonomy. And the civil servants too are too cowed to give honest and objective professional counsel. In many cases even the judiciary is largely emasculated by the governors’ suffocating monopoly of power. In such a situation, the governor is most likely to be dangerously divorced from reality and prone to make avoidable and costly policy errors.

Ironically, in derisively referring to President Bola Tinubu as ‘The Godfather’ of Lagos during and after his tenure as governor of the country’s commercial nerve center, many of such critics are blissfully ignorant of his modus operandi in governing the state that was largely responsible for his widely acclaimed success in laying the foundation for today’s viable and rapidly growing mega city. For instance, the State Executive Council under his leadership was a rigorous and vibrant debating forum where proposed policies were exhaustively considered before being adopted, rejected or modified on merit. Just like governor Babatunde Raji Fashola immediately after him and governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu today, Tinubu enjoyed being debated and challenged on the basis and soundness of his ideas and did not despise losing arguments to better alternatives. Lagos has been the better for this liberal disposition of her successive governors over the last two and half decades.

Apart from carrying party leaders along in the governance process, Tinubu instituted the novelty of a Governors Advisory Council (GAC) comprising seasoned administrators, politicians and statesmen to contribute to deepening the quality of governance. Furthermore, he deployed greater tact and wisdom in his relationship with his successors such that even when there was crisis, it never snowballed into the uncontrollable scenario witnessed in many states. He was able to exercise considerable influence in the choices of those who emerged as governor after him not through strong arm tactics but through extensive informal consultations with party and other stakeholders as well as the soundness and competence of his choices.

The only way to effectively address and curtail the frequent distracting and destructive conflicts and tensions between governors and their successors is to replace the current tradition of the supremacy of the governor with the healthier and less dysfunctional supremacy of the party. When Chief Awolowo was leaving the Western Region as Premier to contest for election at the centre, he involved party leaders at various levels in the process that led to the emergence of Chief Ladoke Akintola as his successor in the West even though he had other preferred candidates for the job such as Chief Rotimi Williams or Chief Anthony Enahoro.

That was why when he faced rebellion from Akintola against his leadership of the Action Group (AG), critical stakeholders in the West and the rank and file of the party stood by Awo despite the immense powers and resources of the Premier. That is a lesson to governors to encourage the functioning of viable party structures and involve the latter fully in the determination of their successors so that they can have solid support bases when the new emperors they single-handedly imposed bare their fangs.

All too often, governors want to be lone super stars and to claim all the glory and accolades for the perceived successes of their administrations. That is most unwise. No leader in reality succeeds alone. Here again, appropriate lessons can be learnt from the inimitable Awolowo. In his valedictory speech to the Western Region House of Assembly after his superlative performance as Premier of the region, he declared “The undoubted, outstanding and epoch-making successes which have characterized my regime have not been achieved single-handed. I have owed these successes to God’s abiding grace and mercy, and to the cooperation of all my colleagues without exception. I take this opportunity to pay public tribute to my cabinet and Parliamentary colleagues for their patriotism, public-spiritedness and devotion to duty; and for their unwavering loyalty to the noble cause of our great party and to my leadership”.

Awo even had a word of appreciation to the opposition in the Region: “However much one may dislike the methods of some individual opposition members, the fact remains, and I hereby publicly and gratefully acknowledge it, that under the leadership of the Honorable Dennis Osadebey, the opposition has made worthy contributions to the healthy growth of parliamentary democracy in this Region”. Today, in how many states of the country do we have thriving and vibrant oppositions which are indispensable to good governance? It is this anomaly of state governors as tyrants that must be addressed to prevent or at least drastically minimize the ongoing debilitating crisis in Rivers State.

December 23, 2023
Deepening good governance in Lagos

In recent days there have been vehement denunciations and criticisms by members of the public particularly on the social media of what had been described as frivolous and wasteful spending by state governments. The mood of the country is understandably tense, febrile and easily combustible. Ever since the announcement of the removal of the fuel subsidy regime by President Bola Tinubu during his inauguration on May 29, the implications for the economy and an already overburdened citizenry have been punishing and excruciating. Inflation has spiraled considerably as prices of essential commodities such as food, basic drugs, housing and transportation costs among others have more than quadrupled.

Unfortunately, although a few state governments are effectively and efficiently managing the distribution of palliatives to cushion the hardships of their people, these are a stark minority. At times of acute economic crisis such as we are in today, it is only natural that perceived acts of frivolity and waste in the expenditure of public resources will meet with intense censure and public disapproval. The inequitable material conditions between the haves, including those lucky to hold public office and the have nots, will be a source of disenchantment and class-induced tensions.

It is thus understandable that there has in recent weeks been critical focus on the expenditure of state level governments with their budgetary provisions under line-by-line scrutiny by both individuals and civil society groups. Among the various data sources available online is, for example, the website of the Open Budget System (OBS), a budget foundation initiative dedicated to promoting openness and transparency in budgeting and spending by governments at all levels. According to information on its website, the OBS found that all the 36 state governments of the federation spent, cumulatively, N4.59 trillion comprising debt payments as well as capital and recurrent expenditures from January to September 2023. Out of the N4.59 trillion combined budget, the 36 states spent N2.52 trillion on recurrent expenditure with civil servants and political office holders’ salaries and allowances amounting to N892.43 billion, which is approximately one-third of the total recurrent expenditure.

The OBS website indicates that spending on other items by the state governments including those on entertainment, food and honorariums, domestic and foreign trips by government officials, internet access fees, operational and luxury vehicles, sitting allowances, electricity and telephone bills, aircraft maintenance, toiletries and stationeries among others cost N1.71 trillion. 30 out of the 36 states reportedly disbursed N87.45 billion as security votes in the period under review while the state governments increased their borrowing to N988.48 billion with 29 of the 36 states presently owing financial institutions and other government enterprises about N536.01 billion.

Perhaps because she is the country’s frontline state, the country’s centre of commerce, business and industry, a cultural melting pot where residents drawn from all over the country make a living as well as the seat of the media, traditional and social, Lagos has understandably been under intense focus as regards the expenditure of public resources by the governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration in the state. Following an open letter to governor Sanwo-Olu by the governorship candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the last governorship election, Mr Funsho Doherty, on the administration’s budgetary provisions, there was not inconsiderable debate on social media, many motivated by partisan considerations, on the administration’s expenditure patterns.

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It was reported , for instance, that over N400 million was allocated for the procurement of a luxury vehicle for use in the vehicle pool of the Chief of Staff (COS); that items such as rechargeable lights, fans and fridges were supplied to the Office of the Deputy Governor, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, for the sum of over N2 billion; that the Office of the Deputy Governor was allocated N30 million monthly for outreach to indigent citizens by his wife; that provision was made for sundry consultancy services ranging from between N2 billion and N7 billion; that N7.45 million was reportedly allocated for the replacement of the liquid fragrance in the governor’s office while provision of about N400 million was made for flying hours expenses charged by charter planes. It was also reported that the state government paid from the public purse for the service of lawyers who defended the governor’s victory in the post-election litigations after the March 18 governorship election.

In a swift reaction, the Deputy Governor corrected the error in the figures being bandied about pointing out that the supply items to his office cost over two million Naira and not two billion. He also noted that the amount voted to his office for outreach to indigent citizens was N30 million annually amounting to about N2.5 million per month and not N30 million monthly. There is certainly no way this expenditure can be considered frivolous or exorbitant. It would appear that this error emanated from the Lagos State Office of Public Procurement (OPP) which readily admitted its mistake and effected necessary corrections.

According to the Director General (DG) of the Office, Mr Fatai Idowu Onofowote, in a statement, “We regret that specific details, particularly concerning the descriptions of government dealings, may have inadvertently led to confusion impacting both government entities and corporate partners providing services to the state. This arose largely from the lack of detailed descriptions in the project information which has inadvertently led to confusion in the public space”.

To remedy the situation, the DG of the Lagos State Office of Public Procurement noted that “To address these concerns thoroughly, the agency has taken immediate steps. Line-by-Line explanations of the contracts in question are attached herewith, aiming to provide absolute clarity and dispel any lingering misconceptions. The agency continues to improve its internal processes and communication methods as our commitment as a government is to offer clearer and more accessible information to the public”.

The point is that if the Lagos State government had wanted to run an opaque and inaccessible budgetary and financial management system, it would not have bothered to establish a Public Procurement Agency with an obligation to publish on its website details of government financial transactions for easy tracking by the public. Despite the hard times, the business of government must continue apace and there is no way that certain inevitable costs including those for domestic and foreign travels, air charter flights, stationeries and toiletries, training, entertainment and feeding costs during government functions, accommodation for visiting dignitaries and sundry allowances for public officials will not be incurred.

The cost of over seven million Naira to replace the liquid fragrance that serves the sprawling edifice that is the governor’s office is certainly not out of place if we do not want to play politics and be deliberately mischievous. In the same vein, the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr Gbenga Omotosho has strongly debunked the allegation that state funds were utilized to pay lawyers who defended the governor in the aftermath of the last governorship election pointing out that the sheet of paper purportedly indicating such payment had no state government emblem on it nor was it signed by any authorized person.

The commitment of the Sanwo-Olu administration to maintaining the highest standards of accountability and transparency in the handling of public finances was indicated early in its tenure when it scrupulously accounted for every donation in cash and kind made to the state during the unfortunate #EndSars protests of 2020 when public and private property estimated at over two trillion Naira were destroyed in the state. Even though there have been allegations of frivolous and wasteful spending against many other state governments in the country, Sanwo-Olu is the only governor as far as I know who has come out frontally and personally to address the issue not relying only on statements by his aides.

Speaking at the commissioning of the newly built Headquarters of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), the governor admitted that the state government may have made mistakes on some of the line items in the records released by the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency. He welcomed the open letter by the ADC governorship candidate stressing that his administration remains firmly committed to ensuring utmost transparency in its financial transactions. It is also instructive that despite the clarifications made by the executive arm of the Lagos State government on the issues, the Lagos State House of Assembly has summoned officials of the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency over the alleged frivolous spendings.

According to the Speaker, Honourable Mudashiru Obasa, “We call on the committee in charge of procurement to invite the agency and others mentioned and do a thorough job on this in order to establish facts concerning the publications”. This is certainly a model of governmental checks and balances as well as accountability at work in the Centre of Excellence.

What is good about the Lagos State government making its budgetary line items available online for public scrutiny is that most of the items are provisional and necessary expenditures have not yet been incurred on them. This makes it possible for the government to go back to the drawing board to reorder its priorities and modify some of its budgetary projections where necessary in the light of prevalent public mood and perceptions.

December 9, 2023
Are judges to blame?

There are at least two developments in recent times that have tended to lend some degree of support, even of an essentially superficial nature, to the claim in some quarters particularly on the part of those who lost out in election petition cases arising from the various 2023 elections that the judiciary in the country is corrupt and lacks integrity and credibility. It must be stated that never in the history of electoral jurisprudence in this country has judicial decisions aroused such enthusiastic interest, tension, and heightened public expectation as in the aftermath of the February 25 presidential elections. This was due to the decision of candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi, respectively, to challenge the electoral outcome in court each claiming that he won the election.

In the run-up to the verdicts of both the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PETP) and the Supreme Court (SC) respectively, the various judges on both panels were subjected to unprecedented levels of psychological intimidation, bullying by unrestrained blatantly political pastors and social media blackmail and harassment. Refusing to be cowed, the judges on both panels, delivered judgements unanimously upholding the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Attacks on the judges particularly on social media, which had hitherto reached a crescendo, were ebbing after the SC judgement on the presidential election appeals, when retiring Justice Musa Datijo, in delivering his valedictory speech on the occasion of his retirement from the SC, launched a withering onslaught on the integrity of his colleagues and the credibility of the judiciary as an institution.

Among others, the retiring jurist attacked what he described as rampant corruption including nepotism in the judiciary; the non-representation of two zones in the country, the North-East and South-West, at the apex court; alleged non-transparent management of budgetary allocations to the apex court and what he described as the excessive powers of the Office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) underscored by the latter’s being the Chairman of all critical agencies under the judiciary including the National Judicial Council (NJC), Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC), National Judicial Institute (NJI) and the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC).

As Chairman of these bodies, Justice Datijo lamented, that the CJN “neither confers with fellow justices nor seeks their counsel or input on any matter related to these bodies” including appointments of Chairmen, Board, and Committee members. The learned jurist’s fiery denunciation of the judiciary provided fuel for those who had desired all along to incinerate that institution for the simple reason that decisions on electoral petitions did not go their way. Datijo decried his marginalization in the running of the judiciary even as Deputy Chairman of the NJC by virtue of his seniority on the bench.

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Justice Datijo came across as a no-nonsense anti-corruption crusader with a commitment to high levels of integrity. How come then did he rise to the apex of the Judiciary if the institution is as corrupt and flawed as he painted it? Again, despite the excessive powers that he claims the occupant of the Office of the CJN wields, is it not true that it was the virtual revolt of other SC judges that forced the retirement of Justice Mahmoud Mohammed as CJN in 2016? And if the CJN shares control over the various institutions in the judiciary with a Deputy CJN or other judges, will there not be the possibility of a leadership crisis to the detriment of the judiciary if differences of opinion occur among them? But this does not mean that the CJN should not carry his brother judges along in presiding over the judiciary.

The second development that has considerably raised the cacophonous decibel of a mob lynch against judges was the controversy attendant on the release of the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the Court of Appeal Tribunal sitting on the election petition case as regards the Kano State governorship election in which the candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Alhaji Abba Kabir-Yusuf, was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the end of the March 18, 2023, election. However, the Kano State Election Petition Tribunal annulled Yusuf’s election declaring the APC’s Alhaji Basiru Gawuna as the rightful winner of the election, a decision which the Court of Appeal upheld in its judgement of Friday, November 17.

But the bone of contention has been that the CTC of the judgement released to legal counsel to parties in the case ruled in favour of the ANPP in Kano. The Court of Appeal has since clarified that the mix-up in the CTC issued to the public was a result of a clerical mix up and it stands by its judgement. Of course, the Court of Appeal must be given the benefit of the doubt in the absence of any compelling evidence of underhand dealings in its judgement but this kind of careless scenario is exceedingly unhelpful to the image of a judicial institution consistently under fire by political partisans mostly piqued not necessarily by lack of integrity on the part of the judiciary but rather because the side they supported lost out in the courts.

Many of those who have been vehemently critical of the courts in election petitions have referred to decisions of the Court of Appeal to void the election of the PDP governors in Plateau, Kano, and Zamfara states and award victory to the ruling APC governors in those states. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo with characteristic trenchancy wondered why a few judges must now decide who won elections in which large numbers of people had already voted and made their choices. Incidentally, the Ota farmer spoke during a forum at his presidential library in Ota where he lamented what he perceived as the failure of liberal democracy in Africa and championed what was so obviously an ill-conceived and poorly thought through ‘Afro democracy’ for Africa.

Nobody who truly values democracy would question the role of the judiciary in adjudicating electoral disputes as prescribed by the constitution. In any case, judges do not willfully impose themselves as meddlesome interlopers to adjudicate in electoral disputes. If contestants in elections do not disagree with the outcomes and approach the courts for mediation, judges would have no role to play in the process. And if we happen to be an excessively litigious society in which invariably all elections are contested right up to the apex court in the country, how are judges to blame for that?

Some analysts have pointed out, rightly in my view, that those who excoriate the judiciary when they lose election petitions tend to express satisfaction with judges when cases are decided in their favour. Furthermore, it has been argued that in 2015 and 2019, courts have been known to ban all APC candidates from participating in elections in Rivers and Zamfara states either for intra-party disputes or outright violation of court orders. I am unaware that anyone complained at the time that the courts were working against the APC in favour of the PDP. Even then, judges must be aware of the sensitivity of their role as electoral arbiters and must be seen as much as possible to dispense with technicalities and predicate their rulings on substantial justice.

For instance, it is untidy for judges to dismiss an election petition on the basis that the ground of appeal by petitioners dealt with pre-election issues over which they had no jurisdiction only to resolve similar cases in favour of the petitioners by assuming jurisdiction in pre-election matters. Again, if courts decide to cancel a substantial number of votes of the winner of an election to award victory to the loser, the judges ought to seek to ascertain beyond reasonable doubt that such canceled votes were indeed fraudulently obtained and innocent voters were not being disenfranchised. The Supreme Court has a duty and responsibility to decide the election cases that come before it from the Court of Appeal strictly on merit in accordance with the tenets of justice in the interest of the judiciary and the polity as a whole.

In his classic on prebendal politics and democracy in Nigeria’s Second Republic, the eminent political scientist, Professor Richard Joseph, had offered useful insights into why it is dysfunctional for systemic stability if the judiciary becomes the last and inevitable electoral umpire. In his words. “Yet, if the Federal Electoral Commission could not be the Leviathan needed to supervise the 1983 elections, the Nigerian Judiciary was even less able to fill this role” and that “By assigning the adjudicating of electoral disputes wholly to the Nigerian judiciary, the drafters of these provisions (of the 1979 Constitution), assumed such an arrangement would contribute to political stability in Nigeria and provide a way for expeditious and impartial settlement of conflicting claims. As it turned out, many of the elections were so controversial, and the range of evidence opposing sides brought before the court was so different and of such questionable reliability, that the judiciary found its integrity placed at risk by its mere involvement in the process”.

Thus, the problem we face in 2023 concerning the judiciary and resolving election disputes is not new. It has been with us as far back as the Second Republic between 1979 and 1983. Neither the INEC nor the judges are to blame. Rather, the problem is with a political class that wants to win elections at all costs and by all means in the desperate quest for state power as a means of primitive accumulation of wealth. In the process, they do all in their power to corrupt and compromise electoral officials, security agencies, and finally the judiciary itself which has become the final decider of electoral victors due to a perverse, corrupt, and cynical political culture.

December 2, 2023
Issues in the BIK polls

Just as was the case with the 25th February presidential election and the March 18th governorship elections, losers in the off-cycle elections in Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi states, which held last Saturday, November 11, across party lines have roundly rejected the outcome of the polls accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of brazenly rigging the exercise in collusion with those who emerged winners. It is significant that the parties in control of the governments in the three states emerged victorious in their respective spheres of control indicating that the power of incumbency, though no longer an overwhelming factor in determining electoral loss or victory, remains a critical variable with enormous influence on the outcome of elections.

Equally noteworthy is the fact that just as it was with the general elections held earlier in the year, parties and candidates applauded the INEC and the security agencies where they won while condemning these entities as biased and compromised where they lost. It is thus obvious that the only condition for parties and their candidates to accept and affirm the integrity and credibility of INEC and other stakeholders in the election management process is if they are triumphant.

In congratulating the Bayelsa State governor, Mr Duoye Diri, on his re-election for a second term, a victory which he said was “against all odds” despite the governor’s emphatic win, the PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 polls, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was indirectly admitting that the electoral umpire conducted an exercise which reflected the will of the electorate in the state. Yet, the Waziri Adamawa was vehemently critical of the conduct of the elections in Imo and Kogi states where the APC candidates won and his party lost and, once again, chided INEC for allegedly conducting “the worst-ever general election in the country” on February 25. The APC candidate in Bayelsa, Mr Timipre Silva, a former governor of the state, who scored 110,000 votes to Governor Diri’s winning 175,000 votes has rejected the results alleging that the electoral and security agencies manipulated the exercise in favour of the governor.

Even though Atiku continues to blame election rigging and the complicity of an allegedly compromised INEC for his dismal performance in the last presidential election as well as the PDP’s desultory electoral outings post-2015, the veteran presidential contender appears to have put his hands on the most critical reason for the APC’s triumph over the opposition in recent elections despite the ruling party’s less than stellar record of developmental performance in the last eight years. Receiving the executive committee of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee Nigeria, which paid him a courtesy call, he advocated the merger of opposition political parties to present a formidable front against the ruling party in future elections.

Accusing the APC of deliberately trying to foist a one-party dictatorship on the country, he said, “If we don’t come together to challenge what the ruling party is trying to create, our democracy will suffer for it, and the consequences of it will affect generations yet unborn.” Atiku is probably gradually realizing that the PDP and not INEC gifted the APC victory in the February 25 presidential election by fragmenting into PDP, LP, and NNPP while also having the Nyesom Wike-led G5 governors as an opposition within the party going into the election.

The constellation of forces that have unceasingly sought to delegitimize the February 25 presidential election as well as destroy the institutional integrity of INEC as well as the personal credibility of its Chairman, Professor Yakub Mahmoud, have intensified their efforts after last Saturday’s off-cycle polls. A number of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) addressed news conferences vehemently denouncing the conduct and outcome of the polls, particularly in Imo and Kogi. While they alleged massive rigging of the elections in the two states, these groups did not suggest who they thought were the genuine winners of the elections there.

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What is becoming more and more apparent is that many CSOs including election observer groups have become aligned with political parties and pursue partisan agendas in the guise of patriotic altruism. Rufai Oseni, the incurably cynical Arise TV program anchor, this week joined in the generalized condemnation of the polls, excoriating the INEC and asserting with characteristic magisterial ignorance that, after 2015, the conduct of elections in the country has regressed to the utterly despicable elections of the early 2000s. Nothing could be more untrue.

Let’s take the Kogi governorship poll for instance. The major candidates, Ahmed Usman-Ododo of the APC, Murtala Ajaka of the SDP and Dino Melaye of the PDP scored 446,237; 259,052, and 46,362 votes respectively. Could Ododo’s victory be attributed to a massive rigging of the election as alleged by the opposition or are there other factors that can credibly explain the pattern of the voting in the election? In the first place, did APC deserve victory in the poll on the basis of the performance of the outgoing Yahaya Bello administration? I don’t think so.

Bello’s propaganda far outweighed the actual record of achievement of his administration. Against the background of the abundant natural resources of the state, her strategic geographical location, and the immense potential of its population, the Yahaya Bello administration was as lacking in vision and competence as its predecessors. But the election was not necessarily about governmental performance or development as about the political dynamics of its ethnic component parts.

Both Ododo and Ajaka won emphatic victories in their respective ethnic redoubts, the Igbira and Igala in Kogi Central and Kogi East Senatorial districts respectively but Melaye performed desultorily in his native Okun land in Kogi West Senatorial district. Apart from winning massively in Kogi Central Senatorial district, Ododo’s victory was substantial because of his no less impressive performance in Kogi West where he won in Mopa, Ijumu, Kabba-Bunu and Yagba-West Local Government Areas while coming a close second to the ADC candidate, Leke Abejide, in Yagba LGA. The voting pattern in the election can be understood against the historical fact that, relying on its dominant ethnic demography, the Igala ethnic group had maintained monopolistic control of the governorship of Kogi from the creation of the state in 1991 till the emergence of Bello as governor in 2015.

It was the unfortunate death of the late Abubakar Audu, candidate of the APC, shortly before the announcement by the INEC of his victory in the 2015 governorship election that enabled surreptitious elements in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to mysteriously and controversially manipulate the emergence of Yahaya Bello to inherit Audu’s votes and become the first non-Igala governor of the state in this dispensation. But for these fortuitous circumstances, the Igala would have maintained their unbroken stranglehold on the tenancy of Lugard House.

To win re-election for his second term, Yahaya Bello had to resort to his ruthless ‘ra-ta-ta-ta’ scorched earth electoral tactics to overcome the overwhelming and otherwise insurmountable Igala numerical superiority. Going into the 2023 election, therefore, the fear of Igala ethnic hegemony would appear to be the beginning of wisdom particularly for the Okun people who have not been opportune to produce a governor since the creation of the state.

Substantial numbers of voters in Kogi West in last Saturday’s election were apparently persuaded that it would be much easier for power to pass over from an Igbira to Okun land after Ododo’s tenure than from an Igala man to the zone if Ajaka won. This largely explains the dynamics of the Kogi election even if the figures recorded by the APC in Kogi Central appear extraordinary and may yet spur the opposition to seek their judicial interrogation.

The election in Imo State was held under the shadow of the crisis between the Imo State government and the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Joe Ajaero, a few days to the polls. Comrade Joe Ajaero, was in the state to lead workers in a protest against alleged unpaid salary arrears of over 20 months by the Senator Hope Uzodinma administration when he was rough handled and beaten up by those he claimed were thugs sponsored by the Imo State government. The state governor denied vehemently that any salary arrears were being owed pointing out that his administration was even paying a 13th month salary as incentive to workers.

Curiously, the Imo State Chapter of the NLC has till date not controverted Uzodinma thereby lending a degree of credence to suggestions that Ajaero’s actions were actuated by partisan considerations both as an indigene of the state and a fervent supporter of the Labour Party at national and state levels.

If indeed Uzodinma was owing 20 months’ salaries, the election offered the not inconsiderable number of workers in the essentially civil service state an opportunity to vote overwhelmingly against the APC in the state. To the contrary, Uzodinma scored a landslide of over 540,000 votes to Sam Anyanwu of the PDP’s 71,500 votes and Nneji Achonu of the LP’s 64,000 votes. Large numbers of Imo State workers trooped to government house, Owerri, to celebrate Uzodinma’s victory even as they refrained from participating in a nationwide strike called by the NLC to protest the brutalization of Ajaero in the state. However, the PDP and LP candidates have given INEC a 7-day ultimatum to cancel the election alleging that it was characterized by over voting, hijacking of electoral materials to private homes and other irregularities.

But are the performances of the PDP and LP in the Imo election any surprise? The answer is most certainly no. After Peter Obi’s impressive run in the February 25 presidential election, a performance fueled largely by his personal appeal to his admirers, the LP had fizzled out by the March 18 governorship elections in which it won only one state, Abia, and the trend has only continued in last Saturday’s off-cycle elections in which it did not win any of the three states in contention.

It is unlikely that Sam Anyanwu, candidate of the PDP in Imo, enjoyed the support of Honourable Emeka Ihedioha, the immediate past governor of the state whose election in 2019 was truncated by the Supreme Court which declared Uzodinma as the true winner of the election. Had Ihedioha been fielded as the candidate or carried along to enthusiastically support Anyanwu, the PDP would most certainly have offered the APC a far stiffer contest in Imo.

In contrast, Uzodinma enjoyed the endorsement of a former governor of the state, Senator Rochas Okorocha, while his pledge to ensure a rotation of power to Owerri Zone after his tenure must have been an attractive deal to a not insubstantial number of voters from that zone. It is instructive that Uzodinma won in all 27 LGAs of the state and the Imo State Council of Elders has since visited and congratulated him on his victory. While the LP and PDP candidates are calling for a cancellation of the election in the state, neither has claimed that he was triumphant in the exercise.

A common feature of the elections in the three states was the voter apathy that has been characteristic of our elections in recent times. One factor responsible for this is the increased use of technology that has helped to clean up the voters register and virtually eliminated the incidence of multiple voting that was witnessed in most elections before 2015. Again, the persistent and deliberate attempts to destroy the credibility of the INEC and the electoral process by desperate election losers have eroded the trust of large numbers of people in the system and they thus do not bother to vote.

The dominance of this negative and cynical narrative by such dishonest and anarchic voices must begin to be effectively countered while the National Assembly must continue to introduce new innovations into the Electoral Act to enhance further transparency and credibility in the conduct of elections and rebuild public trust in electoral institutions and processes. Furthermore, political parties, pressure groups and patriotic CSOs must intensify their efforts to educate, enlighten, and mobilize the citizenry to participate actively in the choice of those who govern them at all levels.

November 18, 2023
Between 1979 and 2023 polls

Nearly four and a half decades between Nigeria’s critical presidential election of 1979 and the no less momentous presidential polls of this year, many analysts have rightly noted the striking similarities between both exercises. The 1979 presidential election was contested by five political parties namely the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP), Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP) and the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). The presidential candidates of these parties were Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the NPN, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the UPN, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NPP, Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of the GNPP and Mallam Aminu Kano of the PRP although the election was widely perceived at the time and turned out to be a closely fought three-cornered contest among Shagari, Awolowo and Azikiwe as Aminu Kano and Waziri Ibrahim were essentially fringe players with their support bases in Kano and Kaduna as well as Borno and Gongola respectively.

Interestingly, the three main contenders also represented the tripod of the three major ethnic groups namely the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. All presidential elections between 1979 and that of this year had essentially been two-party contests even when there were more than two candidates on the ballot making the share of votes scored by candidates far higher than that possible in a three-horse race. Thus, in the 1983 presidential election, which was really a showdown between Shagari and Awolowo even though Azikiwe was on the ballot, Shagari scored 12,081,471 (47.57%) of votes to Awolowo’s 7, 907, 209 (31.09%) of the votes. The June 12, 1993, presidential election was a two-cornered affair between Chief MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) from the South who polled 58.36% of the vote to win the election and Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) from the North who recorded 41.64% of the vote.

In the same vein, the 1999 presidential election was a showdown between General Olusegun Obasanjo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who won 62.78% of the vote and Chief Olu Falae of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) who scored 37.22%. In 2003, another essentially two-cornered affair between Obasanjo and General Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP, the former polled 61.94% of the votes to Buhari’s 32.19%. This was also the pattern in the 2007, 2011 and 2015 presidential elections which were basically contests among two major candidates respectively even when there were other fringe candidates in the race.

In essentially two-party contests, candidates have the chance of scoring a higher number of votes than in contests with three or more major candidates who split the total number of votes cast into more fractions. Thus, in 2015, Buhari’s margin of victory over Jonathan was 2,591,759 votes as he scored 53.96% of the total votes while in 2019, the Daura General’s margin of victory over Atiku Abubakar was 3,928,869 as he polled 55.60% of the votes. A number of analysts have sought to despise, discredit and delegitimize the 2023 presidential poll outcome partly because the winner, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, scored what they consider a paltry 8,794,726 representing 36.1% of the votes while his two main contenders, Atiku of the PDP and Peter Obi of the LP, jointly scored approximately 13 million votes.

But it is the single candidate with the highest number of votes and the requisite constitutionally required spread that can emerge winner. The constitution makes no room for a tag-team in presidential elections. In any case, as I had earlier stated, each candidate will necessarily score a lesser number of votes in a three or more- cornered contest in which the key contenders are from the major ethnic groups from which they enjoy considerable support as was the case in the 2023 presidential election.

Let’s return to the 1979 presidential poll to illustrate this point. In that election, President Shehu Shagari scored 5,688,857 (33.77%) of the vote, Awolowo recorded 4,916,531 (29.6%) of the vote and Azikiwe had 1,732,113 (16.75%) of the vote. Shagari’s 33.77% of the vote in no way detracted from the legitimacy of his victory in 1979 just as Tinubu’s 36.62% of the vote in this year’s election rests on solid ground and does not erode from either the legality or legitimacy of his triumph. Another point of similarity between the 1979 election and that of this year is that the Yoruba of the South-West voted as massively and one-sidedly for Awolowo’s UPN back then as the Igbo of the South-East did for their son, Peter Obi, in this year’s election.

Indeed, it is remarkable that with victories in only five states, Lagos (82.30%), Ogun (92.61%), Ondo (94.50%), Oyo (85.78%) and Bendel (53.20%), Awolowo recorded 4.916 million votes coming a close second to Shagari who only won by a margin of 772,306 votes even though his party, the NPN, won 12 states and performed impressively in a 13th, Kano State. Perhaps a major difference, however, is that the Yoruba near-unanimous vote for Awolowo was predicated largely on his superlative, unsurpassed, performance as Premier of the Western Region in the First Republic.

Prior to his emergence as Premier and Leader of Government Business in the West, which enabled Awolowo to showcase his administrative acumen as well as developmental passion and genius that endeared him to the masses of the region, Zik’s NCNC had been the darling of the West with the party winning elections in key urban Centres of the region including Lagos, Oyo, Ibadan, Ife, Ilesha among others. But beyond sheer primordial tribal identification, it is difficult to decipher the basis of Peter Obi’s new cult following in the Igbo land. His performance during his 8-year tenure as governor of Anambra State was anything but stellar. Obi is distinguished neither by a commitment to principled politics nor by a capacity for rigorous and profound thought.

But this is not new. In 1979, Dr. Azikiwe scored 82.88% of the vote in Anambra and 84.69% in Imo, possibly because of his status and role as perhaps the greatest Igbo man of the 20th century and his contribution simultaneously and rather paradoxically both to Nigeria’s nationalist struggle for independence and the evolution of Igbo collective consciousness and ethnic self-esteem. On the developmental front, however, the great Zik was not a spectacular success as Premier of the Eastern Region at least not in the mold of the mercurial and intrepid Dr Michael Okpara, who remains, perhaps, the South-East’s most impactful transformational leader till date.

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Just like most Igbo today, particularly members of the intelligentsia, believe fervently that Obi won the February 25 presidential election, a substantial percentage of the Yoruba were convinced that Awolowo won the 1979 presidential election. Their conviction unfortunately rests on shaky ground even though I was also of the same view at the time. The great educationist, social critic and newspaper columnist, Dr Tai Solarin, wrote a long-running series of articles on the 1979 election titled ‘The Stolen Presidency’ in the Nigerian Tribune. Indeed, no presidency was stolen in 1979 just as in 2023.

But many of the intellectuals in the West were more circumspect and realistic as regards the dynamics of Nigerian politics at the time. As an ardent Awo supporter, I watched aghast and dismayed as a group of five Yoruba academics from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, who participated on an NTA Ibadan discussion programme shortly before the 1979 presidential election all predicted victory for Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the NPN.

Of course, their reasons were obvious. With Azikiwe’s presence in the race, it was unlikely that Awolowo would do well in the South-East even though his running mate, Phillip Umeadi, was from the region and his low rating in the East was compounded by Awo’s role in contributing to the victory of the federal side in the civil war. Furthermore, with the loss of some of his staunch stalwarts in the Middle Belt such as Joseph Tarka, Awolowo’s influence in the region was diminished and he had dim prospects of doing well in the far northern states. There was simply no pathway to victory for him just as any thought or talk of a Peter Obi victory in the 2023 presidential election is utterly self-deluding.

An emphatic victory in his Igbo South-East, a slim victory in Lagos in the South-West, Victories in Edo, Delta and Cross River in the South-South as well as victories in Christian dominated Plateau and Nasarawa in the North-Central as well as the FCT, Abuja, was an impressive performance by Peter Obi but grossly insufficient to achieve victory for him in a presidential election in a vast, complex polity like Nigeria comprising 36 states.

Yet, Obi continues to proclaim from the rooftops that he won the election although his lawyers could not present credible evidentiary proof of this before the courts. Even if the courts were to annul President Tinubu’s election as prayed by Atiku and Obi, could they have overlooked the Waziri Adamawa who came second in the polls to declare Obi winner even when the LP candidate did not raise any legal objections to the votes recorded by Atiku? It is brazen illogic.

When Awolowo challenged Shagari’s victory right up to the Supreme Court in 1979, the UPN presidential candidate did not claim to have won or sought to be declared winner. Rather, his contention was that Shagari did not meet the constitutional requirement to be declared winner in the election. Awolowo argued that although Shagari scored the highest number of votes, he did not meet the requirement of scoring 25% of the votes in at least two-thirds of the 19 states which he claimed was 13 since it was impossible to fractionalize a state as demanded by Shagari’s counsel, Chief Richard Akinjide.

The wily SAN had contended that Shagari won 25% of the votes in 12 states and also 25% in two-thirds of a 13th state, Kano even though he did not secure 25% overall in the state. Unsurprisingly, both the appeal tribunal and the Supreme Court upheld the respondent’s submission that Shagari was duly elected having won not just the highest number of votes but also scored 25% in 12 two-thirds of 19 states.

Most of Awolowo’s supporters were livid and contemptuous of the judgement but the great sage himself, unlike Peter Obi, was restrained and refrained from commenting on the judicial verdict till nearly a year later when he addressed the National Conference of his party. There he mainly questioned the suspicious mode of appointment of the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Atanda Fatai Williams, by the Obasanjo regime allegedly in consultation with Shagari even when it was obvious that the legal challenge against the latter’s election would most likely get to the apex court.

But could the judiciary have realistically reached a different conclusion as regards the 1979 election petition? It is unlikely. They could not have annulled the election of a candidate that clearly won in 12 states and performed strongly in a 13th and ordered a run-off between Awolowo and Shagari that could at least theoretically have resulted in victory for the former who won only five states and secured a little over 21% in Gongola State. Such a judgement could have consumed the country. Neither Atiku nor Obi met the constitutional requirement of support spread and did not score the highest number of votes in the election and yet they each sought to be declared the victors.

Peter Obi in particular laments that the Supreme Court judgement did not reflect public opinion. This is naive, betrays ignorance and is intellectually lazy. Such a position assumes that public opinion is a monolithic, uniform and unitary phenomenon. Unfortunately, in liberal democratic politics, public opinion is always complex, complicated, plural and not easily measurable. To which voice of public opinion, for instance, should the jurists have listened to and abided? That of the Obidients, Articulated, Batified or those who belonged to none of these partisan groups? It is a nonsensical proposition. The judges at both levels of adjudication decided to stand by the law and the facts. That was the right and reasonable thing to do.

November 11, 2023
Chimamanda, Ezekwesili and the ‘Ogboju’ syndrome

Ever since the conduct and announcement of the outcome of the 25th February 2023, presidential election, there has been a sustained, persistent and concerted attempt, particularly and overwhelmingly by intellectuals from a part of the country, to impugn the credibility of the elections as well as denigrate the integrity not just of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) but also the judiciary once it was obvious that institution would be the final determinant of the winner of the intensely contested election.

Apparently following in the footsteps of former President Donald Trump and his fanatical supporters who persistently and insistently asserted that the 2020 presidential elections in the United States were ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen’ without a scintilla of credible evidence, the ‘Obidient’ movement in particular repeatedly echo their idol, Peter Obi’s claim without credible empirical demonstration that he won the election on the platform of his Labour Party (LP).

Trump and his supporters had continued to claim that the election was stolen even after no less than 50 legal challenges they had mounted against the results in several states were thrown out by US courts. They provide a role model for the ‘Obidients’ and their candidate despite the fact that Peter Obi indisputably came third in the February 25 polls.

If members of the ‘Obidient’ mob on social media, actuated by ethnic sentiments and emotive irrationalities, take anarchic and patently unreasonable positions on the elections making wild and unproven claims, what do we make of the no less erratic and aberrant behavior of some otherwise accomplished intellectuals in their response both to the results of the elections and the verdicts of the appellate courts on petitions by Peter Obi and the PDP presidential candidate, Waziri Atiku Abubakar, seeking the nullification of the exercise?

When President Bola Tinubu of the APC was announced the winner of the February 25 presidential election with Atiku and Obi coming second and third respectively, respected novelist and global intellectual, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, had written an open, widely disseminated letter to President Joe Biden subtly urging the US to withhold recognition for the newly elected Nigerian President which she claimed was not marred by technical faults but was deliberately manipulated to achieve victory for Tinubu. She offered no proof for her authoritative assertions beyond citing instances of certain ‘cousins’, friends and other relatives who narrated to her stories of malpractices they claimed to have witnessed in polling units where they voted.

One would have thought that someone like Chimamanda who was not even in Nigeria when the elections were held, and who is a respected writer and thinker should have been more restrained and circumspect in jumping to authoritative conclusions based on what she was told by less than a score of acquaintances who were not present at the vast majority of the over 176,696 polling units across the country where voting took place.

Chimamanda was again on global television, the CNN after the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) gave its judgement dismissing the petitions of Atiku, Obi and their parties against the outcome of the election. Obviously trying to leverage her international clout to rubbish the decision of the PEPC rather than deploy empirical facts and impeccable logic as one would expect from one of the world’s contemporary leading minds, Chimamanda told her interviewer, Christiane Amanpour, who inexplicably refrained from asking her guest probing follow-up questions, that the judgement was “shoddy and shabby” even though she had admitted she had not finished reading it!

In her words, “I am in the middle of reading the judgement and it’s stunning how shoddy it is. The elections were manipulated in a way that is very shabby and shoddy and the judgement is shabby and shoddy. I didn’t expect it to be very thoughtful but I am shocked at how very lacking in thought it is”.

But it is not enough for Chimamanda to assert ex-cathedra that the PEPC judgement was ‘thoughtless’ or ‘shabby’. She has to demonstrate for us through rigorous logical, textual analysis of the judgement and empirical facts that the judgement was shoddy or incompetent. This was a judgement that was televised globally as it was delivered and has been commended by some of the country’s best and brightest legal minds. Surely, Chimamanda’s fame as a fiction writer cannot be ‘a magna carta for mandibular waka about’ (apologies to the late Gbolabo Ogunsanwo). Her unwarranted arrogance and insulting condescension towards the Nigerian judiciary without cause shows a woman who lacks grace and class despite her scholastic attainment.

Featuring on a television programme not too long ago, the renowned human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), stressed that rather than cast aspersion on the character and integrity of judges because of their judicial decisions, Nigerians should advocate and clamour for fundamental changes in the extant electoral laws that judges have no choice but to interpret and apply. Incidentally, Falana is a severe critic of lapses that occurred in the conduct of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections. Even then, the point cannot be disputed that there can hardly be perfect elections anywhere in a community of fallible mortals.

But then, Chimamanda was not done. A few days before the Supreme Court delivered its October 25 judgement on the election petitions of Atiku and Obi against Tinubu’s election, she was the inaugural lecturer of the Africa World Lecture series of Princeton University in the US and Peter Obi was present at the event. Turning herself into a one-man electoral commission, Chimamanda told her audience: “I want to recognize the presence of a man I deeply respect and a man who I think is a beacon of hope not just for Nigeria but for Africa. And he’s the man who many of us know won the election in Nigeria”. She also averred “We had an election in February that was deeply flawed and we have a person who we’ve been told is a winner who did not win the election and this has been shown over and over, there’s evidence for this”.

This is the height of intellectual fraudulence and dishonesty. Chimamanda was deliberately lying to her audience, the majority of whom may be unfamiliar with the political realities of Nigeria. A central thrust of both the PEPC and the Supreme Court judgements was that the petitioners’ counsels were tardy and lazy in bringing before the courts credible evidence to demonstrate their allegations that the elections were rigged. The courts noted that neither Obi nor Atiku, for instance, called even one of their polling agents who were on ground in various polling units across the country and must have witnessed the alleged electoral refractions to give first-hand testimony in court. They rather relied on witnesses who gave what was no better than hearsay evidence before the courts. It is instructive that the apex court spent less than 10 minutes in dismissing Obi’s petition indicating its utter lack of merit.

No less acerbic, scurrilous and lacking in substance was a former Minister of Education in Nigeria and noted international bureaucrat, Mrs Oby Ezekwelisi’s response to the apex court’s decision on the election petitions. Reacting in a post on her official X handle to the Supreme Court judgement, she wrote, “Now we all know the true definition of a Criminal Enterprise Gang. Some would ask, “Where’s now the hope?” because what else can citizens who seek a Good Society now do in the light of judicial enthronement of criminality as an official norm? Well, take heart in this fact. History shows that every Criminal Enterprise carrie’s the seed of its eventual destruction”.

Beyond hurling insults and making baseless insinuations and innuendos, Oby Ezekwesili does not take on the Supreme Court judgement on facts or logic. The apex court gave reasons for its ruling against the petitioners in the seven issues formulated for them to adjudicate on. They gave reasons for their position on each of these issues and it is up to those who oppose them to provide superior arguments in the public domain rather than resort to cheap abuse and insults.

Read Also: Mutiu Are hails Tinubu’s Supreme Court victory

The apex court refused to admit the purported fresh evidence that Atiku sought to tender as regards Tinubu’s Chicago State University diploma citing both statutory time limitations as well as the fact that there was no reason for the petitioner not bringing such evidence up at the level of the PEPC as required by law. The Supreme Court is a policy Court and not a court of evidence as lawyers tell us. There was sufficient time to have done so right from when candidates submitted their personal details to INEC which published them for public scrutiny before the respective party primaries in accordance with the law.

In any case, even if the fresh evidence had been tendered at the PEPC and been part of the hearing, of what probative or utilitarian value would it have been as Dr Reuben Abati, himself a lawyer, recently asked on Arise TV ‘The Morning Show’ programme on which he is one of the anchors? Atiku and his team had chosen to make a mountain out of Tinubu’s CSU diploma molehill even after the school’s register had stated clearly in his deposition under oath that Tinubu was admitted into the institution as a male student in 1977 and graduated in 1979 with flying colors while also making public his transcripts.

Mischievous and ethnically motivated intellectuals like Chimamanda and Ezekwesili refuse to furnish the public with a persuasive, fact-based analysis on what pathway Obi, whose campaign was targeted at his Igbo kinsfolk like these two women as well as Christians opposed to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket, could have won a national election in a complex, plural, multi-religious polity like Nigeria. Yes, he scored over 95% of the votes in his native South-East, won in the largely Christian states of Edo, Delta and Cross River in the South-South, won in cosmopolitan Lagos and Abuja with large clusters of Igbo and Christian votes while also winning in Christian dominated Nasarawa and Plateau states in the North-Central.

He equally performed impressively in Southern Kaduna although Atiku won that state in the presidential election with Tinubu coming a close second. But Obi’s votes in the electorally fertile North-East and North-West was negligible and with Tinubu’s victories in Benue, Kogi, Niger, Kwara in the North-Central, Obi lost to the President in the overall vote count in the zone. Just as Atiku won only two states in the South, Osun and Akwa-Ibom, Obi did not score up to 25% of the votes in any of the 19 states in the far North.

Neither Obi nor Atiku could realistically have won a nationwide presidential election with their parochially skewed electoral support base.

The performance of Obi and Atiku was unlike that of President Tinubu who won the highest number of votes in his native South-West, the North-Central and the North-West while coming a close second in the North-East which Atiku won and the South-South. It was only in the South-East that Tinubu performed abysmally, winning less than five per cent of the votes. Nobody can emerge winner in a presidential election in Nigeria without achieving an outright victory in at least three of the country’s six zones and scoring 25% of the votes in no less than two-thirds of the 36 states and the FCT.

In his comments on the presidential election in an interview in South Africa, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, stated emphatically that Peter Obi did not win the polls but came third and that the leaders of the LP were very much aware of this truth. What they were engaged in by loudly and ceaselessly proclaiming victory in an election they so obviously lost despite an unexpectedly impressive performance was what Soyinka called ‘Gbajue’ a Yoruba term for what he could rely on ‘the force of lies’.

It would appear to me that in their unreasonable, irrational and anti-intellectual outbursts, the likes of Ezekwesili and Chimamanda are deploying what the Yoruba call ‘Ogboju’; an attempt to force a syrup of falsehood down the throats of a vast majority of Nigerians through sheer intimidation, harassment, threats, insults and absurd illogic. Their ethnically inspired diatribes detract from the stature of these women as enlightened, cosmopolitan and intellectually honest members of the professional elite. This attitude and disposition diminishes their Igbo ethnic group and makes the path to their much desired Igbo presidency in the near future a Herculean task.

October 28, 2023
Saint Atiku asmoral exemplar? (2)

In the run-up to the February 25, 2023, presidential election, specifically on Sunday, January 8, a former media aide to the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, imploded a veritable bomb beneath his erstwhile principal’s long-running ambition capable of blowing the Waziri Adamawa’s burning aspiration to smithereens. Michael Achimugu, who had been appointed media director for the Atiku Support Organization on September 5, 2021, and later a member of its presidential election technical committee aired a video tape on his YouTube channel which featured a telephone conversation he claimed to have had with the former Vice President. The clearly inimitable voice of Atiku was heard in the video of the PDP candidate narrating to Achimugu how, as Vice President, he had supervened the formation of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) through his cronies for the award of contracts. It was obvious this implied the diversion of public funds through contracts that could not be traced to him.

In the course of the conversation, for instance, it was revealed that the former governor of Plateau State, Mr. Joshua Dariye, had paid the sum of N100 million of his state’s funds into one of these shell companies, Marine Float. Achimogu demonstrated in the video his close relationship with Atiku and even with the latter’s children as he also aired his telephone conversations with some of them. What may be perceived as his betrayal of his boss was immoral and indefensible no matter what the reason may have been but Achimogu’s action was just as unethical as the sordid revelations about Atiku’s alleged surreptitious financial dealings as revealed by the leaked audio conversations.

What was more scandalous than the contents of Achimogu’s leaked audio tapes was the thunderous silence of dominant sections of the media on the matter. Scurrilous newspaper columnists and hypocritically morally sanctimonious television and radio talk show anchors, who pretended to be outraged by President Bola Tinubu’s alleged but unproven moral lapses, suddenly went deaf, dumb and mute as regards the smoldering ‘Atiku-gate’ unleashed by Achimogu. Even if he was playing to the gallery, an exasperated Festus Keyamo (SAN), who was one of the spokesmen of the Tinubu campaign at that time, took Atiku and the PDP to court over the matter possibly as a strategy of drawing an inexplicably complacent and indifferent media to at least investigate Achimogu’s allegations to ascertain their veracity or otherwise.

But it was obvious from the media treatment of this scandal that most of the dramatic posturing in the media and in some other partisan and religious quarters on allegations against Tinubu were actuated by partisanship, self-serving interests and even malice than any principled commitment to the public good. For, if that were not the case, patriotic analysts and public intellectuals would not be selective in their choice of allegations against actors in the public arena to focus on.

Although Atiku’s undoubtedly dynamic team of media handlers and political strategists tried strenuously to discredit Achimogu and distance him from their principal, their efforts were insufficient to effectively dispel the widespread notion that there was likely a substantial element of verity to his allegations. For, his revelations with regard to the issue of SPVs as creative public fund-siphoning vessels into private pockets, for instance, appeared to shed some useful light on earlier grave allegations against Atiku on his role as Vice President in the pervasive corruption that characterized the privatization of scores of public enterprises under the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

During the first term of his administration between 1999 and 2003, Obasanjo largely left the running of the economy to his Deputy while he concentrated on salvaging the international image of Nigeria, re-positioning the country to regain its influence in global affairs and thereby making her more attractive for foreign investment. As Vice President, Atiku was statutorily the Chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP).

As one report put it, “Needless to say that laudable as the objectives of privatization may have been, the exercise in Nigeria has been characterized by corruption in high places…The public were fully informed of the corruption that attended the sale of Daily Times of Nigeria, the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, the failed Pentascope purchase of NITEL, the controversial sale of Asaba Textile Mill, Asaba, and many more. Nigerians have been stripped of their national assets by unpatriotic political leaders and corrupt bureaucrats”.

The report continued, “Besides, there was the accusation of fraud and rip off of Nigeria’s commonwealth in tonnes of billions of Naira in the sale of the Aluminum Smelting Company of Nigeria, (ALSCON), Ikot Abasi, Delta Steel Complex, Alaja and the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, Itakpe. The Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Ms Onagoruwa, confirmed to the Senate Committee that ALSCON was sold to RUSAL Nigeria Limited for N39 billion even though the initial value was N480 billion while the Delta Steel Complex, Aladja, was sold to Global Infrastructure Nigeria Ltd, (GINL), at the sum of N4.5 billion as against the initial value of N225 billion”.

Even though in his devastating criticism of his former Deputy in his autobiographical trilogy, ‘My Watch’, former President Olusegun Obasanjo painted a picture of Atiku as incorrigibly corrupt, a former Chairman of the BPE during his tenure, Mallam Nasir’el Rufai, testified before a Senate investigative committee in 2011 that both Obasanjo and Atiku put pressure on him to breach the rules and perpetrate unethical practices in the implementation of the privatization exercise; pressures which he claimed to have resisted when he occupied the office.

It was quite amusing watching Atiku affecting to be a ‘born again’ moralizing Saint during his recent self-styled world press conference where he continued to raise questions about the authenticity of President Tinubu’s certificate from the Chicago State University (CSU). This was despite the clear deposition of the CSU authorities that the President graduated from their institution with honours in 1979 and was a male student who even contested to be President of the students’ Accounting Society. For, Atiku had hitherto not hidden the fact that ethical principles play a negligible role in his decisions and actions. When asked by an interviewer in 2019 to respond to allegations that he influenced the sale of public assets to his friends and cronies in the privatization exercise, Atiku turned a veritable national tragedy into a comic affair when he responded by wondering if he should have influenced the sale of those assets to his enemies!

Read Also: PDP, aides mum over Atiku’s affidavit

In another unabashed exhibition of his unrepentant indifference to ethics in his politics, Atiku has on a number of occasions publicly claimed the credit as being the mastermind behind the massively rigged elections that propelled the PDP to victory in the South-West states of Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti and Osun in 2003 with Lagos as the only state remaining in the control of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD). Indeed, Atiku has suggested that Tinubu owes his retention of his office in his second term to his benevolence irrespective of the fact that the former Lagos State governor won re-election after putting up stiff opposition to an Obasanjo presidency that deployed troops to Lagos in a desperate bid to ‘capture’ the country’s commercial nerve centre as repeatedly boasted by PDP chieftains.

In his bid to damage President Tinubu’s character and denigrate his public image, Atiku embarked on his recent barren voyage to the United States in quest of an allegedly forged CSU certificate. Although he returned empty-handed, it is well within Atiku’s rights to do all he can to prove that the President was ineligible to contest the election if indeed he forged any certificate as alleged. However, it is ironical that even in the US, Atiku does not have a reputation that smells of roses. His name had been mentioned in a bribery case involving then US Congressman, William J. Jefferson, even though there apparently was no full-proof evidence of his culpability. Even then the Congressman, who was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on November 13, 2009, and released on October 5, 2017, had, according to Wikipedia, “told an investor, Lori Mody, who was wearing a wire, that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, $500,000 “as a motivating factor “ to make sure they obtain contracts for iGate and Mody’s company in Nigeria”.

Atiku’s image in the US could certainly not have been helped by the published outcome of an investigation by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs titled “Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States: Four Case Histories”. The report, released in conjunction with the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on February 4, 2010, focused on the financial transactions of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, between 2004 and 2008; deposed President Omar Bongo of Gabon between 2003 and 2007; three Angolan Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) accounts and then Vice President Atiku Abubakar between 1999 and 2007.

According to the Executive Summary of the Report, “From 2000 to 2008, Jennifer Douglas, a U.S citizen and the fourth wife of Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and former candidate for President of Nigeria, helped her husband bring over $40 million in suspect funds into the US through wire transfers and by offshore corporations to U.S bank accounts. In a 2008 civil complaint, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Ms Douglas received over $2 million in bribe payments in 2001 and 2002 from Siemens AG, a major German Corporation. While Ms Douglas denies wrongdoing, Siemens has already pled guilty to U.S criminal charges and settled civil charges related to bribery and told the Subcommittee that it sent the payments to one of her U.S accounts. In 2007, Mr Abubakar was the subject of corruption allegations in Nigeria related to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF)”.

Continuing, the report stated that “Of the $40 million in suspect funds, $25 million was wire transferred into more than 30 U.S bank accounts opened by Ms Douglas, primarily by Guernsey Trust Company Nigeria Ltd, LetsGo Ltd Inc and Sima Holdings Ltd. The U.S banks maintaining these accounts were, at times, unaware of her PEP status and they allowed multiple, large offshore wire transfers into her accounts. As each bank began to question the offshore wire transfers, Ms Douglas indicated that all of the funds came from her husband and professed little familiarity with the offshore corporations actually sending her money”.

The Report revealed that two of the offshore corporations wire transferred about $14 million to American University in Washington D.C over five years to pay for consulting services related to the development of a Nigerian university founded by Atiku. It noted that American University accepted the wire transfers without asking about the identity of the offshore corporations or the source of their funds because the university had no obligation to do so under the current law at the time. Does ‘born again’ Saint Atiku possess the ethical credibility and integrity to pose as a moral exemplar? The answer is blowing in the wind.

October 21, 2023
Saint Atiku as moral exemplar? (1)

It is quite absurd and a grand irony. Having lost his fragile petition against the outcome of the February 25, 2023, presidential election, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, proceeded on a voyage in futility to the United States of America in quest of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s academic records at the Chicago State University (USA). Acting in consonance with an order of a US court, the CSU released Tinubu’s transcripts and other documents to Atiku.

Alas, there was no smoking gun for Atiku and his legal team to feast on. The CSU registrar, Carl Wesberg, even deposed on oath that Tinubu attended and graduated from the university with honors and that it is the same male student at the time between 1977 and 1999 who is President of Nigeria today.

Despite these glaring and indisputable facts, the Atiku team continue in their bid to nullify an already declared election result in which a clear winner has emerged by questioning the winner’s qualification to run rather than demonstrate concretely in court through incontrovertible evidence that he won the polls. What is ironical is that in the wake of the former Vice President’s barren mission to the US, a great deal of searchlight has been beamed on Atiku’s own educational credentials and identity.

Intense questions have been asked on social media as to why some of his certificates bear the name, Sadique or Sidique Abubakar and others Atiku Abubakar or Atiku Jokoli. The PDP presidential candidate has tendered the affidavit he swore to effect the change of name but has given no concrete reason why he did so. Thus, legitimate questions have been raised in several quarters on whether we are confronted here with a question of multiple identities for various purposes on the part of the PDP presidential candidate.

Given the tenacity and vehemence with which Atiku has pursued the issue of President Tinubu’s certificate from the CSU, one would think that he has a stellar academic record to flaunt. No, his educational trajectory is quite modest and largely undistinguished. This is unlike Tinubu who graduated on the honors roll with distinction as stated on oath by the CSU. Atiku holds a diploma from the School of Hygiene, Kano and later graduated with a Diploma in Law from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Institute of Administration. And in 2021, Atiku purportedly completed and bagged a Master’s degree in International Relations at Anglia Ruskin University. But how could he have registered for and acquired a Master’s degree without the prerequisite of a first degree?

Mr Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last election, has characteristically jumped unto the Atiku bandwagon. In his own press conference on Wednesday, October 11, 2023, he asked that President Tinubu re-introduce himself to Nigerians. This is of course quite farcical. Tinubu has been active in the public sphere playing diverse roles hugely contributory to the country’s socio-economic and political development over the last three and a half decades. He is certainly far better known than Obi across vast swathes of the country; a fact that was obvious from the spread of his electoral support across the country in the last presidential election.

But just like Atiku, questions have been raised as regards some of Obi’s academic records in the public domain. For instance, some have wondered how he got admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsuka (UNN) without the requisite O level credits in English and Mathematics. Again, it has been alleged that while he graduated from the UNN in 1984, he obtained his General Certificate of Education (GCE) certificate in 1986! There is certainly something fishy here. Again, an executive member of a faction of the LP who claims to have been a member of the panel that screened the then presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential poll, has claimed that the documents submitted to INEC by Obi namely the secondary school certificate, NYSC certificate and the UNN certificate bear different names.

Read Also: The trial of Bola Tinubu

Ordinarily, all these should be of no moment once elections have been held and the people have expressed their preferences at the ballot box. All these issues just like those raised against President Tinubu are pre-election matters and the Constitution as well as the Electoral Act have given ample opportunities for aggrieved persons and parties to raise objections to credentials submitted to INEC by contestants at the intra-party primary contests. This is particularly so since these documents are displayed by the commission for public scrutiny and possible legal action to address identified discrepancies before party primaries.

It is interesting that at his ‘World Press Conference’ at which he dilated on his purported discovery on his certificate fishing expedition to the US, Atiku posed as a moral crusader whose actions particularly in search of President Tinubu’s certificate were motivated by considerations of promoting ethical standards in public life as well as transparency and accountability on the part of public office holders. This is obviously a most intriguing transmogrification of the Atiku we all know too well into Sainthood. But does Atiku’s trajectory in public life offer a picture of adherence to or respect for the highest ethical standards? Do we now have on our hands a ‘born-again’ Saint Atiku? This self-portrait by Atiku and his handlers is entirely fictive, deceptive and self-serving.

In terms of character and moral integrity, Tinubu stands shoulder high above Atiku. A person’s character is best portrayed at times of crisis such as Nigeria was plunged into after the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election and the consequent emergence of the ruthless late General Sani Abacha to consolidate the stranglehold of military dictatorship in Nigeria. These were times when many men and women of supposed integrity sold their conscience to the military dictatorship for a mess of pottage. As Martin Luther (Jnr) immortally noted, it is impossible for a man of integrity to sit on the fence at periods of great moral crises.

What were the responses of Tinubu and Atiku to the crisis? Tinubu threw himself fervently into the pro-June 12 and pro-democracy struggle, committing all of his energy, time and resources to the struggle to force the exit of the military from the political space and bring about restoration of democratic governance. In taking this option, Tinubu put his very life on the line, his residence on Victoria Island was fire bombed and he ultimately had to flee the country on exile joining other Nigerians abroad to intensify the campaign against the perpetuation in power of the Abacha regime. That is character. That is integrity.

But what about Saint Atiku? How did he react at a time of severe political and moral crises for his country when so many patriotic Nigerians were laying down life, limb and livelihood to free their country from the humiliating jackboots of military misrule? The Waziri Adamawa opted to join the defunct United National Congress Party (UNCP), one of the five parties famously described by the inimitable late Chief Bola Ige as the five fingers of the leprous hand of the Abacha administration. He participated actively in the Abacha junta’s political transition programme probably oblivious of the credibility crisis created for the process by Abacha’s scarcely designed self-perpetuation agenda.

On the platform of the UNCP, Atiku sought to contest for governorship of Adamawa State. To make matters worse, he reportedly kept a distance from his mentor and benefactor, the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who had been incarcerated at Abakaliki prison for trumped up coup charges so as not to be in the bad books of the Abacha regime and jeopardize his governorship ambition. There can be no better example of a lack of fidelity to leadership, crass and unfeeling opportunism and deficiency in ethical integrity.

Ironically, seeking to play on sentiments, Atiku at his world press conference, invoked the name of the late great human rights lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, (SAN) describing him as the motivating spirit behind his efforts to unravel the truth as regards President Tinubu’s certificate from the CSU. Yes, Gani Fawehinmi put up a strenuous fight to get Tinubu impeached as governor of Lagos State on the unproven allegation of certificate forgery but failed. The truth of the matter is that no one, not even the highly respected Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM), Chief Fawehinmi, could produce any documents purportedly forged by Tinubu.

Interestingly, however, as the late legal luminary battled the cancer that had attacked his body, Tinubu paid him a visit at his Anthony Village home in Lagos. A surprised Fawehinmi was appreciative of Tinubu’s gesture despite the previously strained relationship between them and he was full of approbation for the latter. Did Atiku even send a token message of sympathy to a man whose name he now exploits for political reasons at the time of his health travails? It is unlikely.

In any case, what was Fawehinmi’s perception of Atiku and the PDP administration under which he served as Vice President? In an interview in 2007, Fawehinmi was scathing in his critique of both. In his words, “I am appalled because if not for the feud between him (Obasanjo) and Atiku, we may never have known that Atiku was messing up with the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF). Obasanjo cannot say that he did not know that Atiku was stealing money from the PTDF, established in 1973, meant for the welfare of our country by training our brilliant students in the universities with the fund”.

Continuing, Fawehinmi lamented that “A fund meant for the improvement of our petroleum technology, a fund meant to ensure that the sons and daughters of poor parents who have the intellect can engage in research work. But alas, this fund was used, not only to pay lawyers but to establish just one company alone. Now, Atiku dipped his hand into it, (businessman Oyewole) Fasawe dipped his hand into it and Mr President dipped his hand into it for personal reasons. We want to have the full story of PTDF and other agencies of government”.

October 14, 2023