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Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • The naked gods (2)

    The naked gods (2)

    Unlike the Catholic Bishops who were more reticent about making predictions of electoral outcomes before the February 25 presidential election, many Pentecostal spiritual leaders rashly and brashly prophesied an outright Peter Obi victory at the polls. Many of them spoke with such boldness and seeming spiritual authority that many people would not be blamed for assuming that they were on personal speaking terms with God Almighty. I was aghast when one of the Pentecostals openly demanded that his leg be amputated if Obi did not win the election.

    Another declared that as a prophet of the most high God, it would mean there was no God in heaven if the Labour Party (LP) candidate did not triumph at the polls. Because of the brazen way they literally danced naked in the market square with their confidently asserted prophecies of the outcome of the presidential polls, it is not surprising that many of the politically partisan Pentecostal pastors have been more restrained in commenting on the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).

    Prior to the judgement by the PEPC, a Pentecostal pastor who had vehemently condemned the outcome of the election without resorting to rhyme or reason had placed large-sized pictures of the five judges on the altar of his church and prayed as well as prophesied vociferously that they would deliver Justice. He was a well- known Peter Obi supporter and in his jaundiced view only a verdict that favored Obi could be regarded as being in consonance with truth and Justice. Another fanatical and reflexively thoughtless pastor in his support for Peter Obi, Paul Enenche of the Dunamis International Ministries purported on his pulpit to avail the PEPC judges of the benefit of his jaundiced advice on how they should judge the petitions before them!

    These crassly partisan Pentecostal clerics apart from desecrating the altar of God also embarrassed, denigrated, and disgraced the name and image of the Almighty. It is not unlikely that the prophecies of these Pastors on Peter Obi’s assumed electoral victory emboldened the latter to believe that he had any chance of winning an election in which he failed to forge a possible winning coalition.

    Indeed many of these pastors reportedly got their congregations to fast and pray that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not win the election or that he would die. I watched one of these Pentecostal Bishops prophesying on national television after Tinubu had won that the then President-elect would not be sworn in. He vividly described a vision in which he claimed that he saw Tinubu being arrested by soldiers on May 29, an interim government put in place and fresh elections ordered. Or what do we make of the popular, fiery Pentecostal pastor who boldly told his congregation that God had categorically told him that he would be the country’s 16th President after ex-President Muhammadu Buhari. Did this pastor realize that the calling of a pastor is infinitely higher and more critical than that of a political office holder in God’s agenda for humanity?

    Indeed, he went on to pay the sum of N100 million to collect the presidential nomination form of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), contested the party’s presidential primaries, and scored zero votes from delegates. Is his God so profligate that He would ask him to spend such a humongous amount on procuring the nomination form and yet not guaranteeing his victory at the intra-party polls? Is it really the voice of God that these failed pastors heard or that of some sinister being bent on deceiving them and eroding the integrity and credibility of God? Is the Christian God such a capricious and inconsistent being? I don’t think so.

    Read Also: The naked gods (1)

    You must give it to leading Pentecostal pastors like Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor W. F. Kumuyi of the Deeper Life Ministries, Pastor Daniel Olukoya of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries or Pastor Sam Adeyemi of the Daystar Church who were restrained and refused to desecrate their altars for cheap and selfish partisan political goals. It is sad that most of the pastors campaigning openly for Peter Obi on their pulpits were of Igbo stock like the LP presidential candidate and it was difficult to decipher if they were actuated by genuine Christian motives or selfish ethnic considerations.

    There were of course those especially from the dominant Christian states of the Middle Belt who were irked by and were reacting to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. They assumed that the Christian God would not endorse such a same-faith ticket and presumed to speak God’s mind when they had apparently not heard from Him. As the APC repeatedly explained to these clerics to no avail, their same-faith ticket was a pragmatic and expedient strategy to achieve electoral victory given the realities of the country’s demographic composition and nothing more.

    The outcome of the presidential election justified and confirmed the projection of the APC on the electoral viability of the Muslim-Muslim ticket. In any case, the fiery rhetoric of many Christian clerics in support of Obi, the candidate’s elaborate campaigns of church tourism where he was received by enthusiastic crowds of Christians at big church events effectively de-marketed him in predominantly Muslim states in the North-East, North-West and North-Central as well as substantial Muslim populations in the South-West making it impossible for him to win the pan-Nigerian victory imperative to emerge as President.

    Beyond this, what gave the Christian clerics the impression that a Christian president or Vice-President would necessarily lead the country to the promised land of our dreams? Were Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan not self-professed Christians and did their tenures witness any effective dent on the country’s multidimensional problems of poverty, corruption, gross infrastructure deficit, mass unemployment, insufficient housing and other indices of underdevelopment?

    Again, it is sheer fallacy to presume that any religion can Islamize or Christianize the state in a democratic Nigeria as claimed by most Pentecostal clerics. The Christian clerics were deaf to explanations that President Tinubu’s wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is not only a Christian of Pentecostal persuasion but a Pastor to boot. Even the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Borno State testified that Vice President Kashim Shettima was of great assistance to the church during his tenure as governor of the state for eight years. Only recently I read a complaint by Professor Ishaq Akintola’s Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) that President Tinubu’s appointments so far are skewed in favour of Christians and calling for the appointment of more Muslims to key positions. I do not know how the Muslim Association came to this conclusion but this complaint is instructive and demonstrates the sheer mischief of those who sought to give the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket a negative and pejorative coloration.

    Although I cannot claim close familiarity with Christian theology or Biblical exegesis, it would appear that God in the Old Testament made use of non Jewish, pagan Kings like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus to pursue and fulfill his purposes in history. It is part of the sovereignty and unquestionable jurisdiction of God to choose who to utilize as instruments of his will in the history and evolution of nations. Furthermore, it is misplaced and misleading for Christians to believe that they need the backing of the state through the support of those of their faith in high political positions to advance the cause of their religion. After all, in what ways did Professor (Pastor) Yemi Osinbajo’s occupying the office of Vice-President for eight years between 2015 and 2023 necessarily have a beneficial impact on the progress of the church?

    In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus kept far away from the palaces of Kings and royalty preferring to equip his 12 disciples of humble origin to preach the good news which ultimately brought the mighty Roman Empire to its knees in supplication to the Christian faith. State patronage has all too often had a negative impact on the efficacy of the Christian church across space and time as Christ does not require the support of Caesar to propagate his good news of salvation to the world.

    The preoccupation of the Pentecostals with politics in the 2023 elections was a needless distraction and their often erratic prophesies that were wide off the mark have done incalculable damage to the credibility of the church from which it will require considerable time to recover. The most critical mission of the church in our contemporary world is not to anoint political leaders but to preach Christ’s message of salvation to a world so obviously headed for a catastrophic implosion. Much more dangerous than the economic crisis, political combustions and social dysfunctions that afflict our world are the moral turpitude and spiritual paralysis that erode positive values and demean the human worth and essence.

    Politics and political leadership will not save the world as important as these are. In the same way, neither economic prosperity nor high educational attainment will heal the malignant cancer at the heart of contemporary human society. Rather, it is my view that the solution to the current human dilemma lies in Christ and the church should urgently halt its distraction by politics and return to its primary reason for being which is to save the souls of men through the unique message of Christ.

    Just like the Pentecostals in Nigeria, the Evangelicals in America got unduly immersed in that country’s electoral processes during the 2020 presidential elections. Many leading evangelical men of God predicted publicly that Donald Trump would win the election as he was purportedly the choice of God. Yes, genuine evangelicals in America had every cause to be unhappy with the moral decline attendant on the influence of the liberals in that society through, for instance, the legalization of abortion rights, the elevation of gay rights to a cardinal principle of state policy or the elimination of prayer from public schools. But it was wrong for evangelical clerics to claim that God had told them that Trump would triumph when it became obvious with the victory of Joe Biden that they had not heard God’s voice. As the case in Nigeria, this falsehood had a corrosive effect on the integrity of the American church.

    Both in Nigeria and America, the Christian church should strive to enthrone positive and ennobling values in the larger society through the force of their moral example and the influence of their spiritual vitality and virility. Claiming to prophesy the outcome of elections when they have not heard from God and thus effectively portraying God as a liar will only make more people lose faith in the church and embrace the amoral values of a secular society gone amuck. And it becomes even worse when the church in both countries joins deliberately dishonest politicians like Trump or Peter Obi in peddling the falsehood that they won elections which they glaringly and patently lost. That would be the equivalent of stripping the church naked to the scorn and jeers of her detractors.

  • The naked gods (1)

    First published in 1971, the famous novelist, Chukwuemeka Ike’s ‘The Naked Gods’ vividly portrays the self-demystification in a fictive Shonghai University of Academics who had hitherto been apotheosized by a society which at the time placed much stock by high intellect and sound learning. But in the acrimonious and bitter struggle for the position of Vice-Chancellor of the institution in the soon-to-be independent country, otherwise highly revered scholars threw all morality and decorum to the winds and proved to be as ethically depraved and decadent as any other category of society.

    In the run-up to the last general elections and even in the aftermath of that landmark event in our political evolution, a good number of our Christian clerics of various denominations but especially the Pentecostals cast off their cloak of sacrosanct spirituality and donned the garb of partisan politicians prophesying victory in vain for candidates of their jaundiced prejudices all in the name of God. But did the Almighty not warn severally in the scriptures that his name should not be taken in vain?

    I think it was Joseph Schumpeter, the great Austrian economist, who once observed that when the average individual operates as a member of a crowd, he tends to drop to a lower level of intellectual and mental performance. Can it be denied that, in this season of unprecedented ascendancy of Information and Communication Technology and the attendant tyranny of the pervasive social media lynch mob, most of us, as individuals or groups, and no matter how brilliant, have succumbed to the lure of group think no matter how ridiculous and lacking in rigour our thought processes? The economist, John Galbraith, described it as the malaise of ‘conventional wisdom’ which may most often be quite misleading.

    It would appear that the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), an otherwise highly regarded body of clerics, who added considerable value to society through rigorous and objective social, economic and political critiques, has given in to the seductive lure of political partisanship. We recall with nostalgia the patriotic, nationalistic and courageous stance of the CBCN against military dictatorship particularly in the aftermath of the annulment of the outcome of the June 12, 1993, presidential election. In the 2023, presidential election, however, the judgement of most members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church have been tainted and swayed by the fact that a leading presidential candidate in the election, Mr. Peter Obi is reported to be a Catholic. His critics when he was governor of Anambra State alleged that he exhibited open partiality to the Catholic Church to the detriment of the other main faith, the Anglicans, resulting in tension, rivalry and hostility between the two. In recent times, such icons of the Catholic leadership hierarchy as John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja and Archbishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of the Sokoto Archdiocese of the church have, in recent times expressed brazenly partisan views devoid of the logical rigour and empirical verity they are usually known for.

    With the delivery on September 6 of the much awaited judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) in the petitions filed against President Tinubu’s victory by candidates of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Labour Party (LP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), respectively, one would have expected a sober, insightful and well-reasoned response to the judicial verdict by the CBCN. It is unfortunate that what we had at the opening ceremony of the 2023 Second Plenary Assembly of the CBCN was a regurgitation of Ill thought out generalizations continuing to seek the delegitimization of the election and the PEPT judgement, mischievous innuendoes and misleading insinuations. It is no surprise that the Archbishop of Owerri, Lucas Iwejuru Ugorji, an Igbo like Peter Obi, who is the current President of the CBCN, was the spokesman at the opening of the event. The overlap between his Igbo ethnicity and Catholic religious faith, attributes he shares with Obi, no doubt coloured the good cleric’s perception of political reality with distorting bias.

    For instance, Archbishop Ugorji was quoted to have averred gravely that “continuous disregard to the will of the people who, for once trooped out to vote their desired candidate, was a threat to the nation’s democracy which was currently in a dangerous position”. What does the cleric mean by saying people trooped out “for once” during the 2023 election to vote for their desired candidate? Did people not come out to vote for their desired presidential candidates in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 before now? Have people not voted for their desired choices in scores of other executive and legislative elections at the state level since 1999? Which ‘desired candidate’ is Archbishop Ugorji talking about? The one of his biased imaginations?

    There were three major contestants in the 2023 presidential election – Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Waziri Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP). Each of them won in at least 12 states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In such a closely fought election, how did the Archbishop come to the conclusion that someone of his choice was the desired candidate and the will of the people has been disregarded because of such a person’s non-emergency? Were the petitioners against Tinubu’s victory able to convince the PEPT that he was not the choice of the majority of voters who gave him 8,894,726 votes in the election with Atiku recording 6,984,520 votes to come second and Obi coming third with 6,101,533 votes?

    The judgement of the PEPT which lasted for over twelve hours and was televised live has been widely praised for its thoroughness, meticulousness, lucidity, logic and clarity. Ironically, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), an undisguised Obi supporter, sent a text message to an Arise News television anchor that the judges should have summarized their findings and the delivery should not have taken more than one hour. But as Mr. Dave Ajetomobi, a former Chairman of the Ikeja NBA, rightly observed, the judges “refused to summarize their findings so as to foreclose speculations by the fanatical supporters of a candidate.”

    In spite of the clearly demonstrated knowledge, experience, industry and competence of the PEPT to a global television audience, the CBCN constituted itself into an alternate court and declared that the election was “flawed by threats, intimidation, violence, the spilling of blood, poor logistics arrangement, inducement, impunity as well as the lack of transparency, manipulation of results, abuse of the power of incumbency, alleged ‘glitches’ and outright rigging”.

    It is indeed most pitiable when a supposedly revered body of clerics like the CBCN is unable to rise above the pedestrian, jejune and almost illiterate level of reasoning of the average member of the notorious ‘Obidients’ movement. For, in this election so cavalierly disparaged by the Catholic clerics, Obi and his LP won over 95% of the votes in the five South-East states in addition to winning such South-South states as Delta, Edo, Akwa-Ibom and Cross River. In the North-Central, the LP won in Nasarawa and Plateau while the party also won in Tinubu’s redoubt in Lagos as well as the FCT, Abuja. Obi directed his campaign mainly at his Igbo kinsmen as well as diverse segments of the Christian community and those were where he secured his victories. Conversely, his narrow ethnic and religious electoral appeal alienated him from predominantly Muslim states in the North-East, North-West and North-Central preventing him from securing the requisite spread of support to win a presidential election in a complex and diverse polity line Nigeria.

    Indeed, if the votes of the LP and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) were added to that of the PDP, from which Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso broke away, they had a total of 14,582,586 votes which suggests that the APC was unlikely to have won had the PDP not fragmented into the LP and NNPP. Beyond this, five governors who remained in the PDP refused to campaign for the party’s presidential candidate and the PDP failed to win in any of the states controlled by the G5. One would have expected a body of spiritual giants and intellectual titans like the CBCN to have been able to take all relevant factors into consideration to credibly analyze and arrive at informed conclusions on the elections.

    Commenting on the inability of INEC to upload the results of the presidential election on its IREV portal as it had earlier promised due to what the commission described as unanticipated glitches, the CBCN averred that this disappointed most Nigerians and that it affected the outcome of the elections. The PEPT specifically stressed that the petitioners presented no evidence before it to disprove INEC’s contention that the said glitches were unanticipated and not deliberate. According to the CBCN, “Despite the billions of Naira of tax-payers money appropriated for the provision of the BVAS technology as a game-changer in our general elections, the Judges in their ruling tried, among other things, to suggest that it was wrong to expect INEC to keep its promise or obey the electoral regulation of transmitting election results electronically in real time from the polling units”. It will be disrespectful to say that the clerics lied. But here they peddled an untruth.

    The judges were of the view that the Electoral Act gives INEC the discretion to transmit results by whatever means it finds appropriate and realistic. The CBCN should disprove the PEPT by citing specific laws compelling INEC to transmit results electronically. Nowhere, contrary to the CBCN, did the PEPT say that it was wrong to expect INEC to keep its promise. Rufai Oseni, one of the anchors of Arise television Morning Show, had wondered why INEC had apologized for its inability to upload results onto its IREV electronically in real time if it was not legally obligated to do so. No less could have been expected of the Commission. It had promised in its guidelines to upload the results on its IREV in real time but could not do so due to unexpected glitches and apologized as a decent organization should. But its guidelines are not superior to the Electoral Act which does not compel it to transmit results electronically. That is incontrovertible.

    Again, the PEPT had submitted that the petitioners did not demonstrate with evidence before the court that the results eventually transmitted to INEC’s IREV portal differed substantially from the results manually recorded on prescribed forms and signed by electoral officials, party agents and security operatives at the 176,974 polling units across the country. In any case, the court found it inexplicable that the petitioners did not present any of their polling agents across these thousands of polling units to give eyewitness accounts in court of the alleged widespread malpractices before the judges!

    It is clear that what the CBCN wanted was a victory for its desired candidate at the PEPT which such a candidate did not achieve at the polls on the field. Anything short of this, the body of partisan Catholic bishops will continue to question the integrity and credibility of the judiciary even right up to the Supreme Court. But the respected clerics should remember that three landmark judicial decisions enabled Peter Obi to emerge and serve as governor of Anambra State for eight years from March to November, 2006, February to May 2007, and June 2007 to March 2014. It is unfair and dishonest to create the impression that if judicial decisions do not go Peter Obi’s way now, then it means that the judiciary is corrupted and Nigeria’s democracy endangered. When the men in cassock allow ethnic and religious biases to becloud their reason, pervert their judgement and make them unwitting purveyors of manifest falsehood, they strip themselves naked in the marketplace.

    Contrary to the CBCN, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Dr. Joseph Nwobike, in assessing the judgement, told the Nigerian Tribune that “I must confess that the judgements delivered by the Tribunal are unassailable. The basis for the resolution of all the issues of law and facts formulated by the parties are consistent with the body of judicial precedents on all the points. The decisions are therefore correct…I will want to appreciate the learned justices for the rare industry applied in writing and delivering the judgements. The decisions will for a long time to come serve as a veritable guide for lawyers, administrators and politicians involved in electoral processes in Nigeria and perhaps beyond.”

    And the 85-year old Chief Robert Clarke (SAN) submitted that “These two judgements are the best judgements I think this country has ever had; it is a good thing that these two judgements today are being broadcast live so that you and I and those who aren’t knowledgeable in the law will understand what is at stake in the country. These two judgements have greatly enriched the jurisprudence of this country despite or in spite of what the Labour Party might say and I can tell you that I can boast of learning tonight what I normally teach my young lawyers that you can win or lose on your pleadings. The two judgements, especially Atiku’s case, show you that pleadings were the cause of the loss. In Atiku’s case, the pleadings were rough and inadequate”.

  • Limitless blackmail

    (Although this piece was first published on Saturday, August 11, 2023, before the PEPT’s judgement of September 6, its contents are still continuing to be relevant as the social media and sections of the traditional media as well as some intellectually fraudulent political actors are unrelenting in their sustained efforts to discredit the judiciary as an institution and taint the credibility of the presidential election. These ultimately futile efforts are obviously likely to continue as the Supreme Court prepares to consider appeals against the judgement of the PEPT)

    The allegations are not only scandalously outlandish and far-fetched, but they have been made by an identifiable individual, one Jackson Ude, on social media and without the slightest scintilla of evidence to back up the outrageous assaults on the reputation, integrity and character of two eminent members of the public. Ude, on his Twitter handle, had alleged, firstly, that Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), a former governor of Lagos State and immediate past Minister of Works and Housing, and some lawyers working for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), were currently drafting a judgement favourable to President Bola Tinubu to be handed over to the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) for delivery. The accuser provides no sources. He offers no details. All we have from him is a brazen allegation made with reckless impunity which he calculates gullible members of the public will swallow hook, line and sinker. And a cursory perusal of his Twitter handle indicates that a not-inconsiderable number of persons have fallen for his bait.

    Not content with his odious attempt at tainting Mr Fashola’s character, Jackson Ude posted another tweet in which he made manifestly defamatory allegations against a retired jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice (Mrs) Mary Peter-Odili, claiming that she was also involved in trying to influence the PEPT to give judgement in favour of Tinubu. He claimed that Justice Odili is “currently negotiating a pathway for Bola Tinubu” and that “she meets regularly with Appeal and Supreme courts” for that purpose. Again, all we have here is Jackson’s claim with no attempt at a logical and empirical corroboration of his story. We will recall that during the protracted election petition case between Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola over the governorship of Osun State, for instance, allegations of bias against some members of the tribunal were backed by extracts of telephone conversations which led to at least two of the judges being retired from the judiciary prematurely. In Jackson’s case, all we have are allegations with no attempt at credible corroboration.

    Of course, both Mr Fashola and Justice (Mrs) Odili have understandably not taken the allegations lightly. They have issued strongly worded rebuttals and petitioned the Nigeria Police and other security agencies to investigate the allegations with a view to ascertaining the truth. These latest wild allegations are obviously part of an elaborate and coordinated effort to intimidate, harass and blackmail the judiciary as regards the handling of the petitions of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), respectively, against President Tinubu’s election. It will be recalled that even before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) began sitting, there had been fake news on social media that the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kayode Ariwoola, had secretly met with then President-elect, Bola Tinubu, in London. It turned out to be patently and scandalously false.

    A few weeks ago, another fake news was peddled to the effect that the CJN had engaged in telephone conversations both with President Tinubu and some of the judges handling the presidential election petitions with a view to influencing the judgement. Again, the Supreme Court unequivocally denied the report and those who made the allegation were not forthcoming with validating evidence. Obviously they had none. And about two weeks ago, a member of the five-man PEPT was reported to have unprecedentedly resigned in protest against alleged attempts to influence judgement in favour of President Tinubu. This turned out to be another reckless fake news.

    The PEPT has since adjourned and reserved its judgement for a date to be duly communicated to parties in the various petitions. It is not unlikely that attempts to blackmail the judiciary and destroy the integrity of judges hearing the petitions will intensify in the days ahead, especially from petitioners who are aware they did not present a compelling, cast-iron case before the tribunal. To be fair to Alhaji Atiku and his counsel, they have presented their case before the tribunal and refrained from undue sensationalism even though the PDP came second in the election. It is rather Mr Peter Obi and his ‘Obidient’ mob who have strenuously tried to blackmail and intimidate the judiciary threatening mayhem if judgement does not go their way and this despite the LP coming a distant third in the election.

    We will recall Peter Obi’s vice-presidential candidate, Mr Yusuf Baba-Ahmed, breathing fire on national television and warning of dire consequences if judgement does not go his party’s way. In a similar vein, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress ( NLC), Mr Joe Ajaero, had warned ominously that the Congress would shame judges who did not deliver Justice in the election petitions. Apart from the NLC understandably giving institutional support to the LP, Mr Ajaero, an Igbo, on a personal level is a fanatical Peter Obi supporter largely for ethnic reasons. He seems to have retraced his steps from threatening the judges, possibly realizing that he is in no position to determine whether a given judgement is just or not.

    It is ironical that the 2023 presidential election, easily the freest, fairest and most credible since the commencement of this dispensation in 1999, has also been the object of the most intense, limitless blackmail in Nigeria’s electoral history particularly from Mr Obi and his ‘Obidient’ social media army. Attempts to manipulate public opinion as regards the elections began long before the actual polls with mostly dubious opinion polls of scant scientific validity projecting a landslide Peter Obi victory.

    When the reality of the election’s outcome did not tally with the predictions of the fictional pre-election opinion polls, Peter Obi and the ‘Obidients’ cried foul and persisted in branding the election as the worst ever in Nigeria. Atiku and the PDP have also challenged the credibility of the elections even though the logic of the outcome is so evidently clear. The PDP broke into three factions and faced the ruling and largely cohesive APC as a fragmented party even though the latter was electorally vulnerable given the policy failures and self-defeating politics of the former President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

    Peter Obi quit the PDP to join the LP and swept the votes in his ethnic Igbo land as well as substantial parts of the South-South which used to be traditional PDP strongholds. Similarly, Mr Rabiu Kwankwaso jettisoned the PDP to form the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and took away substantial votes from the PDP in Kano State. Even within the remaining rump of the PDP, five governors, the G5, did not campaign for Atiku and the latter did not win any of these states. What then could have been Atiku’s pathway to victory?

    The case of Peter Obi is not substantially different. He won massively in the five states of the Igbo South-East scoring over 95% of the votes in the region. He also won significant votes in the South-South as well as states in the North-Central like Plateau and Nasarawa with substantial Christian votes. He also won in Lagos and Abuja where you have large clusters of Igbo votes. However, Obi’s campaign which deliberately focused on Igbo and Christian votes also alienated him from large numbers of Muslim votes and he did not secure the majority of the votes in any of the Northern zones – North-West, North-East or North-Central. Obi simply had no pathway to victory. The requirements for victory in a presidential election have been so designed constitutionally that the winning candidate must secure victory in at least three of the six zones of the country. Neither Atiku nor Obi met this requirement.

    Ironically, the losing candidates accepted the validity, credibility and integrity of the elections in places where they won but queried the conduct of the exercise in areas where they lost. This was an election in which the sitting President, Buhari, lost his home state, Katsina, to Atiku who also won in other key northern states including Kaduna, Bauchi, Sokoto, Yobe, Kebbi, etc. Atiku also won Osun in the South-West. Not only did Obi win stupendously in the South-East, he also achieved victory in Tinubu’s stronghold, Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Edo, Delta, Akwa-Ibom and Cross River in the South-South as well as Plateau and Nasarawa in the North-Central. It was an election in which no less than six sitting governors lost their bid to be elected Senators. Furthermore, the presidential and National Assembly elections were held simultaneously and the APC replicated its victory in the presidential election at the legislative polls winning a majority of seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives although the opposition parties combined have a larger number of legislators in the latter – another pointer to the credibility of the election.

    The 2023 elections reflect the presidential election of 1979 in a number of ways. The NPN won in 1979 because it had the widest support base across the country just as the APC was triumphant in the February 25 presidential election because it secured the widest spread winning in the South-West, North-Central and North-West. In 1979, Chief Obafemi Awolowo swept the South-West states of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Ondo states while also winning in the then Bendel state and performing well in Kwara and Gongola states. Just as Peter Obi scored over 95% of Igbo votes this year, Awolowo secured the overwhelming majority of Yoruba votes in 1979. But just as Igbo and Christian votes were insufficient to guarantee victory for Obi this year, Yoruba votes could not propel Awolowo to the presidency in 1979.

    Interestingly, just as most Nigerians of South-East extraction believe that Peter Obi won the 2023 presidential election but was rigged out, most Yorubas in 1979 believed that the presidential election was rigged against Awolowo. But the truth of the matter is that Awolowo lost the 1979 presidential election free and square just as Obi clearly came third in this year’s election. Just like the Igbo are doing now, the Yoruba lived in denial after the 1979 elections with the late Dr Tai Solarin running a series of articles in the Nigerian Tribune at the time titled ‘The Stolen Presidency’. In reality, no presidency was stolen. Shagari won an unequivocal victory.

    I remember watching an NTA Ibadan panel discussion programme featuring five lecturers from the University of Ibadan, all Yoruba, on the eve of the 1979 presidential election. Asked to predict who they thought would win the presidential election, they all predicted an NPN victory. They were only being realistic and their predictions were validated. Awolowo inexplicably picked his running mate, Mr Philip Umeadi, a Christian from the South-East and yet expected to win a national election with substantial votes from the vast Muslim North. Peter Obi not only picked a politically inconsequential Yusuf Datti-Ahmed from the North as his running mate in this year’s election, he made church tourism the central feature of his campaign and expected to reap substantial Muslim votes even as he condoned incendiary rhetoric of many Christian clerics against Muslims in overreactions to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket.

    Just as is happening now with the petitions of Atiku and Obi soon to be adjudicated by the PEPT, the judiciary was the final arbiter in determining the final outcome of the 1979 presidential election. The court controversially gave Shagari victory on the ground that twelve two-thirds and not 13 constituted 25% of each of at least two-thirds of the then 19 states of Nigeria, which the victor was required to win to become President and the heavens did not fall. In 1979, there were no dark threats against the judiciary; no attempts to blackmail or intimidate the institution.

    At the commencement of the sitting of the PEPT, counsel to Atiku and Obi had sought the consent of the tribunal for live transmission of proceedings, a request that the panel rightly turned down. This was in itself a subtle questioning of the integrity of the judges. The insinuation was that they could not be trusted to ensure Justice unless the proceedings were in full view of the public notwithstanding that large numbers of the viewing public would most likely be unable to appreciate the technical details involved in the cases. Surely, court proceedings cannot be turned into the equivalent of premier league football matches with victory awarded to the side with the loudest cheering spectators. The ongoing limitless blackmail of the judiciary and the attempt to psychologically coerce the PEPT judges to give judgement in a predetermined direction is unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. This is why Jackson Ude’s feckless allegations must be thoroughly investigated and treated with utmost seriousness. More importantly, he should have his day in court to prove his allegations.

  • APC, ideology and poverty alleviation (2)

    APC, ideology and poverty alleviation (2)

    It is this column’s view that Chief Obafemi Awolowo‘s clearly incomparable standing as one of the most accomplished, results-oriented and productive public administrators in the annals of Nigeria, as demonstrated particularly during his tenure as Premier of Western Nigeria in the First Republic, derives essentially from the ideological clarity and philosophical vision that informed his policy choices as well as the focus as well as programmatic platform of the political parties he founded in the First and Second Republics.

    Noteworthy in this regard is the fact that Awolowo’s scathing criticism of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic was that, unlike his own party, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), “the NPN has no ideological direction, and Alhaji Shagari, for his part, and from his recent utterances, appears to have chosen to tread that accursed path which in yesteryears led to a calamitous end”.

    The starting point for Awolowo’s postulation of ‘democratic socialism’ as the ideological guiding light of the Action Group (AG) in the First Republic and later the UPN between 1979 and 1983 was his pithy and terse submission that ‘Man is the sole creative and purposive dynamic in nature: everything else by comparison is inert”. Expounding on this philosophical postulation, the great sage writes, “In all the spheres of production, distribution, exchange and consumption, man is the only active agent: all else is passive. He is the initiator and accelerator of every form of human progress: he is the generator of every initial impulse in human evolution. Any so-called plan for progress which, therefore, places man in a secondary place is basically in error, antithetical to the natural order of human endeavors, and is bound to fail, as well as be a bane rather than a blessing to the people”.

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    This then is the philosophical basis for the adoption by the AG and UPN, respectively, of free education at all levels, free medical care for all, integrated rural development and the attainment of full employment for every Nigerian as the prime purpose of any progressive government and political party. By making education as well as qualitative health care available to the vast majority of the people as well as guaranteeing them full employment and uplifting the living standards of people in the rural areas is, therefore, he argues, not doing the citizenry a favor for which they ought to be grateful.

    Rather, these are fundamental human rights to which they are entitled. Furthermore, by investing, first and foremost, in the maximum development of the human potential of every member of human society irrespective of socio-economic class, gender, creed, or ethnic origin, society is enhancing the capability of as many of its members as possible to contribute optimally to promoting the collective good of the polity.

    It would appear to me to be irrefutable that in its responses to the hardships engendered by its two key policies of fuel subsidy removal as well as exchange rate realignment, the Tinubu administration is toeing the path of progressive ideological policy orientation. The vast majority of the people are the target of its poverty alleviation interventions. Its latest initiative in this regard is the allocation of N180 billion as a combination of grants and loans to the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, to enable the sub-national units of government to relieve the hardships of their peoples through palliative interventions in cash and kind. Earlier in a national broadcast, President Tinubu had articulated specific policy initiatives designed to offer succor to the majority of Nigerians who are the most hard hit, especially by the inflationary implications of the new administration’s economic policy imperatives.

    Some of these policy outlines include the provision of Infrastructure Support Fund to states to improve rural access roads to ease evacuation of farm produce to markets; investment of N100 billion to acquire 3000 units of 20-seater Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses for distribution to states to aid more affordable transportation costs; investment of N100 billion for the cultivation of 150,000 hectares of rice and maize and 100,000 hectares of wheat and cassava, respectively; the release of 200,000 metric tonnes of grains from the strategic reserve for distribution to households across the 36 states and the FCT as well as the provision of 225,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer, seedlings and other inputs to farmers towards the realization of the government’s food security agenda.

    In the national broadcast, President Tinubu outlined other palliative measures being implemented to include empowering 75 manufacturing enterprises with N75 billion between now and March 2024 to enable each of the firms  access N1 billion credit each at 9% per annum with maximum of 60 months repayment for long term loans and 12, months for working capital; funding 100,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME’s) with N75 billion with each enterprise to get between N500,000 and N1 million at 9% interest per annum and a repayment period of 36 months; energizing MSMEs and the informal sector with N125 billion between now and March next year; offering a conditional Grant of N50 billion to one million nano businesses between now and March next year; and the provision of N50,000 each to 1,300 nano business owners in each of the 774 Local Government Areas across the country.

    A frontline Marxist activist and public intellectual, Mr. Femi Aborisade, posited in an outline post that these policies indicate a President who is more concerned about the interest of business than the welfare of the masses. This is ideologically doctrinaire. The interventions in business will stimulate the economy, provide a buffer for the enterprises against the harsh economic climate thus mitigating the need for mass layoff of workers among other benefits.

    There are others who have expressed a lack of confidence and trust in state governors through whom the federal government intends to get its palliatives across to the people at the grassroots. But the sub-national units of government are best placed to reach the people as the levels of government closest to the grassroots. The onus then lies on Civil Society groups, Non-Governmental Organizations, Community Development Associations, respected opinion, and religious leaders to be vigilant and keep pressure on the state governments to be transparent, accountable, and equitable in the distribution of the palliatives.

    Given his sterling antecedents as an economist, accomplished banker, and effective Commissioner for Finance in Lagos State for eight years, there are high hopes among stakeholders that Mr. Wale Edun, Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy will deepen and accelerate the pace of reforms with positive effects for the economy as he settles down in office.

    However, as I pointed out in the conclusion to the first part of this piece published in this newspaper last Sunday, there are, apart from the technical issues of inflation, exchange rate, interest rate, and other macro-economic management challenges, other essentially non-economic factors that are critical to the country’s quest for rapid economic recovery and sustainable development. Chief Obafemi Awolowo provided a sterling example of this in his management of the country’s finances during the civil war (1967-1970). His emphasis was on the highest level of discipline in the management of scarce financial resources within the context of pressing countervailing wants and needs.

    Incidentally, the country faces today the three-pronged challenges which confronted her during the civil war and Awolowo itemized these as “To economize our financial resources; to raise additional revenue and to save our foreign exchange reserve from being run down to a dangerous level, thereby avoiding balance of payments difficulties and preserving the strength of the Nigerian pound”.

    According to Awolowo still on his reflections as regards economic management in a period of severe crises, “In any situation similar to the one in which we found ourselves, where recurrent revenue trails behind fleet-footed expenditure, the obvious first line of attack is to economize and maximize available resources. Unless this was done, and done with Draconic firmness, it would be futile to raise additional revenue; and any claim to prudent financial management would be illusory”.

    Stressing the critical imperative of rigorous self-discipline in any bid to maximally tap the country’s developmental potentials, Awolowo, while speaking on his party’s promised four-point agenda as he campaigned for the country’s presidency in October 1978, averred that “It can be seen at once that the kind of planning I have in mind calls for extraordinary industry, and severe and strict self-discipline on the part of the planners and executants. There are far too many acts of indiscipline and self-indulgence on the part of the generality of our people in all the strata of our society. These acts of indiscipline and self-indulgence have had and continue to have, among other things, disastrous deleterious effects on our finances”.

    Continuing, Awolowo wondered, “What else on earth, for instance, could have made our public servants at the Federal level alone feel at ease with the expenditure in 1977-78 of over N97 million on Local Transport and Traveling, over N28 million on Vehicles, Maintenance and Running Costs, and over N7 million on Overseas Travel?”. The level of waste in the management of public resources has escalated astronomically in this dispensation. Cutting down drastically on this waste, recovering as much as possible the humongous amounts looted from the public treasury in this dispensation, and substantially cutting down on the costs of governance by the legislature, the executive, and the public service bureaucracy, in particular, must be as much Mr. Edun’s concern as the more technical economic management issues he has to deal with.

  • Kole Omotosho on Achebe or Soyinka (2)

    Kole Omotosho on Achebe or Soyinka (2)

    In his work, ‘Achebe or Soyinka: A Study in Contrasts’ on which I am reflecting briefly in tribute to the recent passing of the author, Professor Kole Omotosho, he indicates respective ambiguities in both Achebe and Soyinka’s personal reactions and responses to the colonial encounter by their Igbo and Yoruba ethnic communities. He argues that “While Achebe understands the need for the Igbo to compromise with a stronger power in order to survive, he is not in support of a generation of Igbo having been the instrument of that compromise”.

     According to the author, Achebe is uncomfortable with the fact that “his parents were members of that generation raised, trained and used by the white man to communicate with the Igbo people”. Consequently, he submits, rather than deal with this difficult challenge in his creative writings, Achebe prefers to write in his fiction about the period and generation before his parents, (Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God) and the generation after them (No Longer At Ease, A Man of the People). Omotosho submits that “While Achebe’s work might not be considered complete until he has dealt with the historical experience of his parents in the same way that he had to write ‘Anthills on the Savannah’, there is no doubt that he has succeeded enormously in his chosen duty of vindicating the African past through looking at the Igbo past”.

    As for Soyinka, Omotosho contends that “his own ambiguity resides…in the area of the rule of the individual and the role of the community especially at the point of creating new communities”. The author submits that against the background of the Yoruba’s acceptance of the white man as another, perhaps inevitable, episode in their history, Wole Soyinka in his works treats the colonial encounter as essentially a catalytic episode. In his words, “The catalytic effect of the colonial encounter within the Yoruba society becomes the area of his creative inquiry. This acceptance of the colonial episode as inevitable and perhaps not all evil led to Yoruba involvement in western education”.

     Still with reference to the response of the duo to the colonial encounter by their respective Igbo and Yoruba ethnic communities, Omotosho is of the view that Achebe portrays the missionaries’ advent in Igbo land with a high degree of antagonism as if they found no welcome at all among the Igbo. Achebe, he submits, appears indifferent to the fact that the emergent, new missionaries’ era was “particularly beneficial to the weakest members of the society. In fact, Achebe takes the side of the ruling elite which had done precious little to help the weak among them. He does not see the survival needs of the weak and the poor in seeking salvation in the arms of the missionaries. Achebe is only interested in defending the Igbo traditional elite in both ‘Things Fall Apart’ and ‘Arrow of God’. Whatever happened to the poor and the weak and the low caste was their problem”.

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     In the case of Soyinka, Omotosho avers that the Nobel Laureate has been kinder and more sympathetic to the poor and weak characters in his plays, novels and autobiographies. Citing such of Soyinka’s works as ‘The Strong Breed’, ‘The Bacchae of Euripides’ or ‘Isara: A Voyage Around Essay’, Omotosho submits that “Generally then, while Achebe seems to have eyes only for the traditional elite, Soyinka represents the weak and the poor while refusing to defend the point of view of the traditional elite”. In his elaborate depiction of daily life in representative multi-religious communities of Igbo and Yoruba land, Omotosho calls to mind the validity of the late Professor Ali Mazrui’s formulation of Africa’s triple spiritual heritage – Islam, Christianity, and African traditional religion.

     Professor Omotosho analyzes the works of Achebe and Soyinka within the theoretical framework of what he calls three agendas: the Pan-African agenda, the Nigerian nation-state agenda, and the ethnic communal agenda. Many critics, he avers, have taken the simplistic approach of interrogating the works of the two writers from the prism of one supposedly unanimous and undifferentiated African culture. Thus, once their works transcend the boundaries of Nigeria, they seemingly become part of a homogeneous species of excessively generalized African writers. He however argues that the criticisms of their works within and beyond Nigeria are inadequate and questionable to the extent that they ignore the substantial differences between both writers and simply lump them into the undiscriminating category of ‘African’ writers.

     Since the most important critical challenge facing Nigeria since the amalgamation of 1914 has been that of making ‘out of many peoples one people’, what political scientists depict as the challenge of ‘nation-building’, as well as the primacy of politics in their personal lives and artistic pursuits, Omotosho also extensively examines in what ways their works and persona have contributed to the emergence of a common national consciousness or otherwise.

     One of the most intriguing and fascinating chapters in the book is that titled ‘Pan-Africanism and the African Writer’. Here, beyond Soyinka and Achebe, Omotosho dissects the major works of other key African writers including Camara Laye, Sembene Ousmane, Ayi Kwei Armah, Kofi Awonoor, Mongo Beti, T chicaya I Tam si, Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Es’Kia Mphalele. After an exhaustive reflection on diverse dimensions of the colonial encounter and the anti-colonial struggle, Omotosho submits audaciously that “If the Nigerian intellectual had been bold enough to insist that the encounter between the West and Africa in Nigeria had both positive and negative possibilities, we would not be where we are today, still attempting to make sense of the nation-state and modernization. If the Nigerian intellectual had been humble enough to accept that there were many ways in which the Western life was qualitatively superior to the African way of life, the encounter with the West could have been the beginning of a renaissance in African life and in African re-development”.

    Continuing in this vein, he argues that “Africans must be mature enough now to accept that while theirs was not paradise on earth, Europe did not come to them bearing the fruits of the Garden of Eden. At the point of contact with the West, it is a fact that many African societies were near decay and stasis, whatever level of development they had achieved before this”. Nevertheless, he readily admits that “Arab and European slave trading activities in Africa worsened the conditions of Africans” and that “The pain is made even more unbearable because Africans collaborated in this grievous material and spiritual damage to Africa”.

     Omotosho admits that diverse aspects of the colonial encounter including slavery, unequal exchange, colonization, and racial disdain were painful and humiliating for the Africans. Yet, he points out, perceptively, that “there are also aspects of this encounter which Africans can indeed be proud of: the great number of battles which African armies did win against superior western arms; the great number of African ritual objects stolen by westerners and the influence which these had on western artists and the continued existence of Africans on the African continent”.

     As he rightly points out, “Africans are in fact the only natives to have survived in large enough numbers to challenge Europeans and other settlers for the ownership of their land. The North American native, the South American native, the Canadian native, the Australian native, and the New Zealand native have all been either completely displaced or else exist in ineffectual numbers compared with the European settlers in these places. Because it is the pain of African history that is more prominent, it is not surprising that the African has attempted to find compensation by valorizing everything on-European”.

     In the chapter titled ‘Achebe, Soyinka and the Gods and Goddesses of their Ancestors’, Omotosho examines the orientation and attitudes of both writers especially to Christianity and Islam with reference to traditional African religious practices. Referring to Achebe’s obvious opposition to the seeming intolerant absolutism of Christianity, he quotes the celebrated novelist thus, “Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it. Nothing is absolute. I am the truth, the way and the life would be called blasphemous or simply absurd for is it not well known that a man may worship Ogwugwu to perfection and yet be killed by Udo?”.

     As for Soyinka, Omotosho avers that “When Wole Soyinka writes or speaks, then, he does so against the background of one African religion which has had the daring to take on both Islam and Christianity. He writes from a body of knowledge which is verifiable in the Ifa corpus, a system of divination which has given rise to many publications by both Western and African anthropologists”.

  • APC, ideology and poverty alleviation (1)

    APC, ideology and poverty alleviation (1)

    In any theatre of life that he finds himself, the individual must possess an ideology that guides him on his mission through life and towards the accomplishment of purpose. This opening sentence is a paraphrase of an extract from one of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo‘s numerous speeches and newspaper interviews. Ideology refers essentially to a systematically related set of ideas encompassing a value system , political inclination and a philosophical orientation geared towards the accomplishment of stated goals. Without an ideology which impels them to move swiftly through turbulent terrains of life to fulfill their destinies as individuals many persons glide through this side of eternity with neither a sense of purpose nor direction.

    If ideology, whether it is consciously held or just an instinctual inclination, is so critical to the individual, it is even a greater necessity for a political party, which produces the government of the day with hundreds of elected officials at all levels. A country without a sense of focus, purpose and direction, which are elemental properties of an ideology, can only make niggardly progress if any. Several years back in the late 1970s, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his delivery of the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures, rigorously articulated the case for an ideological reorientation and reappraisal in Africa if the continent is to transcend its humiliating condition of debilitating underdevelopment.

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    The necessity for a developmental offensive disciplined by ideological vision and guidance is particularly imperative in Nigeria. This is because it is widely agreed that the emancipation and restoration of the dignity of Africans and the black man in general will depend substantially on what Nigeria makes of her immense and incomparable endowment of human, material and natural resources. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s developmental exertions since independence have been largely characterized by ideological deficiency and philosophical malnutrition. With the adoption of the neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the military President, General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime from the mid 1980s, the country abandoned its five-year cycle of development plans that had hitherto imposed a reasonable degree of discipline on the developmental process and abandoned the economy to the anarchy of market forces and the adventurous experiments of pragmatic neoliberal technocrats with predictable destructive outcomes.

    The steady and continued deterioration and erosion of the value of the Naira, massive de-industrialization, systematically growing unemployment, decimation of the middle class and ever worsening inequality and immiseration of the vast majority of Nigerians despite the country’s immense resource-endowment dates from this period and continues apace till date.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its 16 years in power between 1999 and 2015 understandably continued with its inherited conservative, even reactionary, economic development trajectory with an emphasis on superficial sectoral ‘reforms’ that did not tackle the root causes of Nigeria’s poverty and underdevelopment conundrum. Unfortunately, during the eight years of the President Muhammadu Buhari presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the country made pretty negligible progress in the direction of concretely breaking out of the cocoon of underdevelopment and undergoing accelerated positive transformation.

    That administration’s transfer of humongous sums of money, unprecedented in the country’s history, to the vulnerable and less privileged members of society through its expansive and extensive Social Investment Programmes, was severely undermined by continued colossal corruption that denied supposed targets of the transfers the desired benefits but also incapacitated service delivery, worsened debt peonage and immersed the country further into the cesspit of pervasive poverty.

    It is thus obvious that corruption on an industrial scale is the defining essence of neoliberal casino capitalism in an underdeveloped country like Nigeria and the seriousness and meticulousness in tackling this pandemic must be a critical differentiating factor between self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ political parties and largely conservative, ideologically rudderless ones.

    It is not for nothing that the founders of the APC utilized the word ‘Progressive’ in the nomenclature of their party. Progressiveness has been a distinct factor in the politics of Nigeria long before now. There were in this regard The Action Group (AG) in the First Republic and Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) in the same period as well as the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) in the Second Republic. There was the military-created Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the Ill-fated Third Republic which made ideological pretensions of being ‘a little to the left’. Today, the country has come full swing and a ‘progressive’ All Progressives Congress (APC) is in power at the centre. Has the party maximally utilized the opportunity given to it for the first time that a ‘progressive’ party will be in power at the centre? From the preceding analysis, it is difficult to respond to this question in the affirmative.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s role was pivotal in the creation of the APC. Although his philosophical orientation has been significantly influenced by his life experiences in America, his training as an accountant in that country and the highly individualistic capitalism of America, he is within the ideological spectrum of Nigeria, left-of-centre, and thus ‘progressive’. He traces his political ancestry to Obafemi Awolowo and the less ideologically focused MKO Abiola and his ideological inclination fits the contemporary global tendency towards a dilution of rigid ideological fixation with former communist countries like Russia and China maximizing the huge productive potentials of the capitalist system to generate massive wealth and lifting unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty. Conversely, the unanticipated coronavirus pandemic, for instance, or the ever increasingly frequent cyclical crises of capitalism has seen the most extreme neoliberal capitalist societies resorting to massive injection of state funds either to succor the most vulnerable or save the deregulated market economy from systemic collapse.

    In one of his dilations on ideology, Awolowo, utilizing the phrase ‘democratic socialism’, succinctly defined the goal of progressive ideology as including the attainment of “social Justice, equal opportunity for all, respect for human dignity, and the welfare and happiness of all, regardless of creed, parentage and station in life. In other words, under socialism, the nexus between man and man is wholly dominated by equality and fraternity and by the needs of the underprivileged”. The central motivating force of a progressive party and government would thus be to continuously and unceasingly increase the level of productivity and prosperity of society while more equitably distributing the fruits of this collective munificence with a clear and undisguised bias for the poor and underprivileged.

    Many have argued that the removal of the fuel subsidy and the attendant inflationary spirals with negative implications for the vast majority of Nigerians especially, food and transportation costs, discredits the progressivism proclaimed by both the APC and President Tinubu. The situation is in my view more complex and nuanced and, while it is easy to be wise after the fact, no one can claim perfect understanding of the unfolding dynamics of fuel subsidy removal. By announcing the fuel subsidy removal on the day of his inauguration, the President made a decisive decision to announce a policy that sought to stem the massive looting of collective resources associated with fuel subsidy a thing of the past. Indeed his major opponents in the last election, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the LP, had made the same commitment. Had he not taken that step immediately, Tinubu would have had to continue like his predecessors who kept on indefinitely postponing a decision on the matter. But is there then any contradiction between the progressive ideology of the APC and the intense suffering caused by the removal of fuel subsidy?

    Many are reflexively opposed to fuel subsidy removal on rigid ideological grounds. I must confess that my instinctual inclination is against removal of the subsidy even though I had become largely persuaded that the subsidy benefitted a corrupt and thieving fuel importation cabal rather than the vast majority of Nigerians. It was on this ground that the IMF and the World Bank had unceasingly canvassed the removal of the subsidy and have lauded the Tinubu administration for its courage to do so. However, the reality in the aftermath of the subsidy’s removal is that vast numbers of Nigerians were beneficiaries of the subsidy than had been assumed. Thus, these large numbers of impoverished Nigerians are bearing the brunt of spiraling cross-sectoral inflation while those who have benefited from subsidy-related mass corruption over the years and other elements of Nigeria’s corrupt elite feeding fat on public resources are wholly unaffected by the hardship.

    The irrepressible human rights lawyer and radical ideologue, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), had consistently argued that the corruption associated with fuel subsidy be removed while the subsidy itself be retained for the benefit of Nigerians. This is well meaning but it would appear that the corruption is intricately interwoven with the fuel importation mechanism and there could be no alternative to the removal of the subsidy. The argument is no less cogent that were local refineries working, and there is no concrete reason beyond corruption why they should not, there would be no need to export crude oil and import refined petroleum which necessitated the subsidy in the first place. But with the subsidy consuming over seven trillion Naira annually, virtually crippling productive governance and worsening debt dependency, its retention would have made it impossible to find the resources to fix local refineries or deliver other critical services to the citizenry.

    Yes, there is considerable pain in the land and President Tinubu has admitted as much, empathized with the citizenry and announced far reaching policies and short term palliatives to relieve the distress of the people in the interim. But with the removal of the subsidy, over 1 trillion Naira has poured into the Federation Account within one month and is the highest amount shared by the three levels of government since 1999. In addition to the measures announced by the President in his recent national broadcast to boost productivity, profitability and thus the job retention and generating capacities of micro, small and medium businesses, enhance agricultural productivity and alleviate the hardship of suffering millions, the administration on Thursday announced a N180 billion combination of grants and loans to the 36 state governments and the FCT to cushion the pain of subsidy removal.

    There are also the pending negotiations with the Labour unions to increase the minimum wage to reflect the rate of inflation. The personal concern of President Tinubu to lighten the plight of the people and the commitment of his administration to ease the burden of Nigerians in the short term while conceptualizing and implementing long term policies to address fundamental distortions of the economy are all too obvious. But it would appear to me that enduring solutions to the country’s economic problems lie less in technical micro and macro economic policy management, critical and important as these are, than in addressing critical non-economic sources of the multifaceted developmental crisis and the administration can learn pertinent lessons from Awolowo’s examples in this regard.

    • Ayobolu is an Editor-at- Large with The Nation
  • Kole Omotosho on Achebe or Soyinka (1)

    Kole Omotosho on Achebe or Soyinka (1)

    Following the recent demise of highly revered novelist, playwright, columnist, literary critic, media persona, teacher and public intellectual among others, Professor Kole Omotosho, aged 80, there have been cascades of encomiums and tributes to a productive and fulfilled life that added tremendous value to society in Nigeria, Africa and the human community at large. I remember that as a secondary school student in Ilorin, Kwara State, in the late 1970s, I read a number of his novels including ‘The Combat’, ‘The Edifice’ and ‘ Memories of Our Recent Boom’ at the well stocked public library then located at the Sabo Oke area of the state capital. True, I cannot recall memorable characters in those novelistic narratives of Professor Omotosho in the same way that one can easily identify with now immortal, heroic, comic or tragic figures in the works of such renowned African writers as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa Thongo or Femi Osofisan to name a few.

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    It is thus understandable that most references in the various tributes to the cerebral scholar refer to his magnum opus, ‘Just Before Dawn’, the fascinating merger of facts and imagination to render a gripping account of Nigeria’s colonial and post-colonial history up till the collapse of the Second Republic in 1983. Incidentally, at the time of Professor Omotosho’s death, I had been rereading the epic and controversial book following Professor Niyi Akinoso’s column in this newspaper in celebration of Omotosho on his 80th birthday. ‘Just Before Dawn’ is a book that is almost impossible to put down once you begin reading. It is a compulsive rendition of Nigerian history which, I agree entirely with Professor Wole Soyinka, should be read by as many young Nigerians as possible. In this tribute to the great writer, Nigerian patriot and pan-Africanist, however, I will reflect briefly on his less cited but no less intriguing work of literary criticism, ‘Achebe or Soyinka: A Study in Contrasts’.

    ‘Just Before Dawn’ is a bold and daring book that showcases the courage of its author and this comparative study of diverse aspects of the lives and works of these two great Nigerian, African and globally consequential writers is also a profile in the author’s courage. He makes a comparative dissection of the writings, philosophical outlook, cultural orientations of both writers and does not refrain from making audacious pronouncements on both that some may consider provocative when he considers it necessary. As Omotosho himself writes, “Among critics of Nigerian literature, with the possible exception of Chinweizu, few comment on both writers together, most preferring to deal with aspects of their writings separately”. Omotosho chooses to undertake this task in this book and he does this in a way that a layman like this writer who is not a literary expert finds arresting and captivating.

    First published in 1996 by Hans Zell Publishers and reissued in 2009 by BOOKCRAFT, the book runs across 224 pages and is subdivided into 12 chapters. These encompass such topics as ‘Living on the Seam of Two Worlds’, ‘The Nigerian Elite, Achebe and Soyinka and the Colonial Experience’, ‘Achebe, Soyinka and the Gods and Goddesses of their Ancestors’, ‘Achebe and Soyinka and the World Beyond Nigeria’ and ‘Achebe, Soyinka and the Languages of African Literatures’ among others. A critical factor that features prominently in Omotosho’s contrast of the two writers is their ethnic identities as he writes that “The most relevant fact in their lives is their ethnic origins: Igbo and Yoruba respectively. Moreover, consciously or unconsciously, the rivalries between the Igbo and Yoruba during the colonial period of the history of Nigeria have dogged the writings and the actions of these two writers”.

    Omotosho dilates perceptively on diverse aspects of the lives and outlooks of the two writers not neglecting facts concerning them that some may consider trite and well known. He was obviously writing also with a global readership in mind which may not be necessarily as conversant as Nigerian or African readers with the details of their lives. Thus, he notes that both Achebe and Soyinka are not just Nigerians, they attended similar secondary schools, Government College, Umuahia, for Achebe and Government College, Ibadan, for Soyinka. Both writers also attended the then University College, Ibadan, and, as Omotosho put it, “both have followed the humanist tradition of Western Europe and North America in advocating the creation in Nigeria of a civil society”.

    Furthermore, he notes that “Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi on November 26, 1930 and brought up in the parsonage of the Church Missionary Society, Wole Soyinka was born on July 13, 1934, and he grew up partly in the parsonage at Ibara in Abeokuta”. As children of the emergent educated elite of the disruptive colonial era, they enjoyed certain privileges that predisposed them to the acquisition of western education which in turn had possibly alienating psychological, emotional and intellectual consequences for them. At the risk of oversimplification of the complex issues in cross-cultural as well as generational conflict that Omotosho deals with here, we can surmise that he submits that Achebe portrays as near-treachery his father’s generation’s “opening of the door to the white man” while Soyinka in his works is more appreciative and understanding of the fact that the generation of his father strived “to achieve the modern life of the white man while attempting to hold on, perhaps even salvage something of value from their existence prior to the coming of the British”.

    Pointing out the closeness of Achebe and Soyinka to the oral traditions and cultures of the Igbo and Yoruba, respectively, he argues that they share similar attitudes both to their roles as writers and citizens of Nigeria as well as their attitudes to their ethnic nationalities. In his view, they see themselves not just as individuals within their ethnic nationalities but as speakers and griots stressing that “They often speak as if there were no alternative options and opinions within their ethnic nationalities, as if within the experiment of the Nigerian nation building their ethnic nationalities do not constitute problems for all”. I am not sure I get what Professor Omotosho means here for it would appear that at various times both Achebe and Soyinka have been critical of strands of the Igbo and Yoruba political elite respectively.

    According to him, “Achebe and Soyinka have always acted and written in terms of purging the educated elite of bad leadership behavior. Neither of them has been as critical enough of their ethnic elite as they have been of the Nigerian, and of the African elite. Without being outright ethnic chauvinists, they have refused to express the historical fact that the political and the economic rivalries of the three major ethnic nationalities of Nigeria – the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo and the Yoruba – have been the dynamo of the Nigerian political and social instability”. Yet, even in this work, he notes Achebe’s scathing criticism of the excesses of the emergent monarchical culture among the ordinarily republican Igbo in his slim volume, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’ while, beyond the written word, Soyinka is well known to have even taken up arms, literarily, against the aberrations of a reactionary faction of the Yoruba political elite in the first republic.

    Omotosho interrogates the popular and widespread notions that Achebe is simple and easy to read and comprehend while Soyinka is difficult to read, obscure and incomprehensible. He argues that Achebe’s perceived simplicity is not synonymous with a lack of profundity while the charge of obscurity against Soyinka might ultimately not stand because “What ultimately can be explained cannot be said to be obscure”. Analyzing their attitudes to politics, he notes that Achebe is considered to be conservative and Soyinka radical. In reality, however, both were members of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) in the second republic. However, when the PRP split into factions, Achebe emerged as one of the leaders of Aminu Kano’s conservative faction while Soyinka identified with the Balarabe Musa and Abubakar Rimi’s more radical faction.

    Analyzing their positions during the civil war, he notes that both were on the side of Biafra but while Achebe worked for the actualization of the breakaway Biafra Republic, Soyinka was in support of the emergence of a third force that would overthrow both the Biafran and Nigerian federal governments and replace them with a radical government for a united Nigeria. Omotosho’s comparative study of Achebe and Soyinka is inevitably also an enriching study of the political history and sociology of Nigeria as the lives of these illustrious Nigerians are intricately interwoven with the evolutionary trajectory of their country.

  • Limitless blackmail

    Limitless blackmail

    The allegations are not only scandalously outlandish and far-fetched, but they have also been made by an identifiable individual, one Jackson Ude, on social media and without the slightest scintilla of evidence to back up the outrageous assaults on the reputation, integrity and character of two eminent members of the public. Ude, on his Twitter handle, had alleged, firstly, that Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), a former governor of Lagos State and immediate past Minister of Works and Housing, and some lawyers working for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), were currently drafting a judgement favourable to President Bola Tinubu to be handed over to the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) for delivery. The accuser provides no sources. He offers no details. All we have from him is a brazen allegation made with reckless impunity which he calculates gullible members of the public will swallow hook, line and sinker. And a cursory perusal of his Twitter handle indicates that a not-inconsiderable number of persons have fallen for his bait.

    Not content with his odious attempt at tainting Mr Fashola’s character, Jackson Ude posted another tweet in which he made manifestly defamatory allegations against a retired jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice (Mrs) Mary Peter-Odili, claiming that she was also involved in trying to influence the PEPT to give judgement in favour of Tinubu. He claimed that Justice Odili is “currently negotiating a pathway for Bola Tinubu” and that “she meets regularly with Appeal and Supreme courts” for that purpose. Again, all we have here is Jackson’s claim with no attempt at a logical and empirical corroboration of his story. We will recall that during the protracted election petition case between Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola over the governorship of Osun State, for instance, allegations of bias against some members of the tribunal were backed by extracts of telephone conversations which led to at least two of the judges being retired from the judiciary prematurely. In Jackson’s case, all we have are allegations with no attempt at credible corroboration.

    Of course, both Mr Fashola and Justice (Mrs) Odili have understandably not taken the allegations lightly. They have issued strongly worded rebuttals and petitioned the Nigeria Police and other security agencies to investigate the allegations with a view to ascertaining the truth. These latest wild allegations are obviously part of an elaborate and coordinated effort to intimidate, harass and blackmail the judiciary as regards the handling of the petitions of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), respectively, against President Tinubu’s election. It will be recalled that even before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) began sitting, there had been fake news on social media that the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kayode Ariwoola, had secretly met with then President-elect, Bola Tinubu, in London. It turned out to be patently and scandalously false.

    A few weeks ago, another fake news was peddled to the effect that the CJN had engaged in telephone conversations both with President Tinubu and some of the judges handling the presidential election petitions with a view to influencing the judgement. Again, the Supreme Court unequivocally denied the report and those who made the allegation were not forthcoming with validating evidence. Obviously, they had none. And about two weeks ago, a member of the five-man PEPT was reported to have unprecedentedly resigned in protest against alleged attempts to influence judgement in favour of President Tinubu. This turned out to be another reckless fake news.

    The PEPT has since adjourned and reserved its judgement for a date to be duly communicated to parties in the various petitions. It is not unlikely that attempts to blackmail the judiciary and destroy the integrity of judges hearing the petitions will intensify in the days ahead, especially from petitioners who are aware they did not present a compelling, cast-iron case before the tribunal. To be fair to Alhaji Atiku and his counsel, they have presented their case before the tribunal and refrained from undue sensationalism even though the PDP came second in the election. It is rather Mr Peter Obi and his ‘Obidient’ mob who have strenuously tried to blackmail and intimidate the judiciary threatening mayhem if judgement does not go their way and this despite the LP coming a distant third in the election.

    We will recall Peter Obi’s vice-presidential candidate, Mr Yusuf Baba-Ahmed, breathing fire on national television and warning of dire consequences if judgement does not go his party’s way. In a similar vein, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress ( NLC), Mr Joe Ajaero, had warned ominously that the Congress would shame judges who did not deliver Justice in the election petitions. Apart from the NLC understandably giving institutional support to the LP, Mr Ajaero, an Igbo, on a personal level is a fanatical Peter Obi supporter largely for ethnic reasons. He seems to have retraced his steps from threatening the judges, possibly realizing that he is in no position to determine whether a given judgement is just or not.

    It is ironic that the 2023 presidential election, easily the freest, fairest and most credible since the commencement of this dispensation in 1999, has also been the object of the most intense, limitless blackmail in Nigeria’s electoral history particularly from Mr Obi and his ‘Obidient’ social media army. Attempts to manipulate public opinion as regards the elections began long before the actual polls with mostly dubious opinion polls of scant scientific validity projecting a landslide Peter Obi victory.

    When the reality of the election’s outcome did not tally with the predictions of the fictional pre-election opinion polls, Peter Obi and the ‘Obidients’ cried foul and persisted in branding the election as the worst ever in Nigeria. Atiku and the PDP have also challenged the credibility of the elections even though the logic of the outcome is so evidently clear. The PDP broke into three factions and faced the ruling and largely cohesive APC as a fragmented party even though the latter was electorally vulnerable given the policy failures and self-defeating politics of the former President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

    Peter Obi quit the PDP to join the LP and swept the votes in his ethnic Igbo land as well as substantial parts of the South-South which used to be traditional PDP strongholds. Similarly, Mr Rabiu Kwankwaso jettisoned the PDP to form the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and took away substantial votes from the PDP in Kano State. Even within the remaining rump of the PDP, five governors, the G5, did not campaign for Atiku and the latter did not win any of these states. What then could have been Atiku’s pathway to victory?

    The case of Peter Obi is not substantially different. He won massively in the five states of the Igbo South-East scoring over 95% of the votes in the region. He also won significant votes in the South-South as well as states in the North-Central like Plateau and Nasarawa with substantial Christian votes. He also won in Lagos and Abuja where you have large clusters of Igbo votes. However, Obi’s campaign which deliberately focused on Igbo and Christian votes also alienated him from large numbers of Muslim votes and he did not secure the majority of the votes in any of the Northern zones – North-West, North-East or North-Central. Obi simply had no pathway to victory. The requirements for victory in a presidential election have been so designed constitutionally that the winning candidate must secure victory in at least three of the six zones of the country. Neither Atiku nor Obi met this requirement.

    Ironically, the losing candidates accepted the validity, credibility and integrity of the elections in places where they won but queried the conduct of the exercise in areas where they lost. This was an election in which the sitting President, Buhari, lost his home state, Katsina, to Atiku who also won in other key northern states including Kaduna, Bauchi, Sokoto, Yobe, Kebbi, etc. Atiku also won Osun in the South-West. Not only did Obi win stupendously in the South-East, but he also achieved victory in Tinubu’s stronghold, Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Edo, Delta, Akwa-Ibom and Cross River in the South-South as well as Plateau and Nasarawa in the North-Central. It was an election in which no less than six sitting governors lost their bid to be elected Senators. Furthermore, the presidential and National Assembly elections were held simultaneously and the APC replicated its victory in the presidential election at the legislative polls winning a majority of seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives although the opposition parties combined have a larger number of legislators in the latter – another pointer to the credibility of the election.

    The 2023 elections reflect the presidential election of 1979 in a number of ways. The NPN won in 1979 because it had the widest support base across the country just as the APC was triumphant in the February 25 presidential election because it secured the widest spread winning in the South-West, North-Central and North-West. In 1979, Chief Obafemi Awolowo swept the South-West states of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Ondo states while also winning in the then Bendel state and performing well in Kwara and Gongola states. Just as Peter Obi scored over 95% of Igbo votes this year, Awolowo secured the overwhelming majority of Yoruba votes in 1979. But just as Igbo and Christian votes were insufficient to guarantee victory for Obi this year, Yoruba votes could not propel Awolowo to the presidency in 1979.

    Interestingly, just as most Nigerians of South-East extraction believe that Peter Obi won the 2023 presidential election but was rigged out, most Yorubas in 1979 believed that the presidential election was rigged against Awolowo. But the truth of the matter is that Awolowo lost the 1979 presidential election free and square just as Obi clearly came third in this year’s election. Just like the Igbo are doing now, the Yoruba lived in denial after the 1979 elections with the late Dr Tai Solarin running a series of articles in the Nigerian Tribune at the time titled ‘The Stolen Presidency’. In reality, no presidency was stolen. Shagari won an unequivocal victory.

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    I remember watching an NTA Ibadan panel discussion programme featuring five lecturers from the University of Ibadan, all Yoruba, on the eve of the 1979 presidential election. Asked to predict who they thought would win the presidential election, they all predicted an NPN victory. They were only being realistic and their predictions were validated. Awolowo inexplicably picked his running mate, Mr Philip Umeadi, a Christian from the South-East and yet expected to win a national election with substantial votes from the vast Muslim North. Peter Obi not only picked a politically inconsequential Yusuf Datti-Ahmed from the North as his running mate in this year’s election, but he also made church tourism the central feature of his campaign and expected to reap substantial Muslim votes even as he condoned incendiary rhetoric of many Christian clerics against Muslims in overreactions to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket.

    Just as is happening now with the petitions of Atiku and Obi soon to be adjudicated by the PEPT, the judiciary was the final arbiter in determining the final outcome of the 1979 presidential election. The court controversially gave Shagari victory on the ground that twelve two-thirds and not 13 constituted 25% of each of at least two-thirds of the then 19-states of Nigeria, which the victor was required to win to become President and the heavens did not fall. In 1979, there was no dark threats against the judiciary, no attempts to blackmail or intimidate the institution.

    At the commencement of the sitting of the PEPT, counsel to Atiku and Obi had sought the consent of the tribunal for live transmission of proceedings, a request that the panel rightly turned down. This was in itself a subtle questioning of the integrity of the judges. The insinuation was that they could not be trusted to ensure Justice unless proceedings were in full view of the public notwithstanding that large numbers of the viewing public most likely be unable to appreciate the technical details involved in the cases. Surely, court proceedings cannot be turned into the equivalent of premier league football matches with victory awarded to the side with the loudest cheering spectators. The ongoing limitless blackmail of the judiciary the attempt to psychologically coerce the PEPT judges to give judgement in a predetermined direction is unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. This is why Jackson Ude’s feckless allegations must be thoroughly investigated and treated with the utmost seriousness. More importantly, he should have his day in court to prove his allegations.

  • APC, ideology and poverty alleviation

    APC, ideology and poverty alleviation

    In any theatre of life that he finds himself, the individual must possess an ideology that guides him on his mission through life and towards the accomplishment of purpose. This opening sentence is a paraphrase of an extract from one of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s numerous speeches and newspaper interviews. Ideology refers essentially to a systematically related set of ideas encompassing a value system, political inclination and a philosophical orientation geared towards the accomplishment of stated goals. Without an ideology which impels them to move swiftly through turbulent terrains of life to fulfill their destinies as individuals many persons glide through this side of eternity with neither a sense of purpose nor a direction.

    If ideology, whether it is consciously held or just an instinctual inculcation, is so critical to the individual, it is even a greater necessity for a political party, which produces the government of the day with hundreds of elected officials at all levels. A country without a sense of focus, purpose and direction, which are elemental properties of an ideology, can only make niggardly progress if any. Several years back in the late 1970’s, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his delivery of the Kwame Nkrumah Annual Memorial Lectures, rigorously articulated the case for an ideological re-education in Africa if the continent is to transcend debilitating underdevelopment.

    After this general framework we can now examine more specifically the APC and its ideological orientation. It is not for nothing that the founders of the party utilized the word ‘Progressive’ in the name of their party. Progressiveness has been a distinct factor in the politics of Nigeria long before now. The AG in the First Republic and Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union in the same period; the UPN and the PRP in the Second Republic. There was the military-created Social Democratic Party (SDP) which made pretentious ideologically being ‘a little to the left’ Today, the country has come full swing and a ‘progressive’ the All Progressives Congress (APC) is in power at the centre. Has the party maximally utilized the opportunity given to it for the same time that a progressive party will be in power at the centre? Not many would respond to this question in the affirmative. Many have argued that the removal of the fuel subsidy and the attendant inflationary spirals with negative implications for the vast majority of Nigerians especially, food and transportation costs, discredits the progressivism proclaimed by both the APC and PBAT. This argument is difficult to sustain. By announcing the fuel subsidy removal on the day of his inauguration, the President made a decisive decision that made a policy that sought to stem the massive looting of collective resources a thing of the past. Had he not taken that step immediately, he would have continued like his predecessors who kept on postponing a decolonization of the matter. But is there then any contradiction between the progressive ideology of the APC and the intense suffering caused by the removal of fuel subsidy.

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    This kind of argument again is quite mistaken and misbegotten. Yes, there is considerable pain in the land. But with the removal of the subsidy over 1 trillion Naira has poured into the Federation account, the highest shared by the three levels of government since 1999. Of course, there is no less critical need for these increased revenues to be channeled to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy and be managed efficiently. And while at that, urgent steps must be taken to decisively address the current unacceptably and atrocious costs of governance.

    In this whole issue what has come across as most pertinent is the humility of PBAT and his servant-leader style of governance. Many leaders would have refused to go back, for instance, on the proposed policy of N8000 for 12 months but Tinubu did having read the body language of a majority of Nigerians and taken into consideration the strong points of opposed

    No less important is the huge impact made by the President’s broadcast to the nation on the fuel subsidy pains during the week. He demonstrated empathy for the people and identified with their pain and suffering in a touching manner. And to demonstrate his commitment to leading the country out of economic servitude and misery, he reeled out far-reaching economic policies designed to address short-term challenges and promote long-term economic sustainability.

  • Sanwo-Olu’s second term

    Sanwo-Olu’s second term

    His now widely applauded generosity of spirit, large hearted-ness; liberal disposition and non-antagonistic political and leadership style were in evidence during his immediate predecessor, Mr Akinwumi Ambode’s recent landmark 60th birthday. Despite whatever political friction had transpired between them in the less than cordial transition between the two administrations in 2019, when Ambode unexpectedly failed to secure a second term, governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu led a delegation to celebrate with the trained accountant who had risen to the apex of his public service career as a Permanent Secretary and Accountant General of Lagos State before ascending the exalted office of governor in 2015.

    The amiable incumbent was munificent in his laudation of his predecessor who responded in kind with no less charitable encomiums on his successor. The perhaps unanticipated fallout of that gesture of Sanwo-Olu, as many analysts have pointed out, was Ambode’s presence at the reception held for newly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by the Lagos State government, the first time the former would be seen publicly or privately in the company of his predecessors and successor since 2019.

    Sanwo-Olu’s exhibition of humility, charitableness, and affability that was largely responsible for this rapprochement is symptomatic of his signature political style. He does not allow the immense powers of the office he occupies to induce in him a sense of hubris. The picture of the President and his three successors relating amicably on that occasion was amply publicized in the media and Lagos is most likely the only state with this kind of governance continuity where the four governors since 1999 could still affect that degree of cordiality despite the albeit brief break in ‘political transmission’ with Ambode since 2019.

    While Sanwo-Olu has received considerable accolades for his unaffected and unobtrusive leadership style as governor during his first term, others have not failed to point out what they perceive as a weakness of this disposition to politics in a complex, cosmopolitan mega city-state like Lagos where leadership can not afford to be perceived as a popularity contest and the governor must be prepared to take some hard decisions to enforce the law and public order.

    Those who argue for a tougher governance stance on the part of the governor contend, for example, that even though Sanwo-Olu was responsible and responsive in reacting to the massive #EndSars protests that rocked Lagos along with some other urban cities across the country in 2020, exhibiting commendable emotional intelligence in handling the situation, he did not firmly communicate to the agitated youths that the state would not tolerate a descent to anarchy. After all, the nationwide protests were against the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and the police is a federal, not a Lagos State government agency.

    As events would turn out, Lagos witnessed a level of destruction not experienced in other states, a horrendous loss from which she is yet to fully recover. But then, this criticism may be unfair as, despite the goodwill extended to the protesters by the governor who bent over backwards to accommodate them and be the courier of their messages to the federal government, he was still accused of calling out soldiers to disperse the demonstrators even when it is obvious that a governor has no operational control of the military.

    But let no mistake be made about it. Sanwo-Olu has on occasion taken and abided by some tough decisions when it was absolutely necessary for him to do so. The best example is the ban on motorbikes popularly known as ‘Okada’ on major highways in a number of Local Government Areas in the metropolis. The ban has been strictly and firmly enforced with salutary effects on the level of fatal accidents, avoidable injuries, and even traffic crimes in affected parts of the state. It is expected that in due course, the administration will widen the Okada ban to encompass other parts of the state even as it continues to enhance and expand alternative and less dangerous means of transportation particularly in the hinterlands.

    The battle for the governor’s second term was hotly contested and heated. This was no function of a less-than-exemplary performance by his administration. Indeed, across sectors, the administration embarked on landmark projects with Lagos becoming a virtual construction site across Local Government Areas and Local Council Development Areas. His adroit handling of the Coronavirus pandemic early in the life of his administration was a pointer to his no mean leadership capacities. Because he kept his eyes firmly on the ball, his administration successfully midwifed the delivery of such epochal projects as the light rail schemes, the giant rice mill in Imota, and the substantial completion of the Dangote refinery some of which had been conceived by preceding administrations.

    The intensity of the electoral contests in Lagos this year was influenced largely by ethnic factors, religious propaganda, misdirected youth angst, and complacency on the part of ruling APC cadres that had become too used to seemingly effortless success in previous elections since 1999. This also resulted in the party’s alienation from many of its traditional high-vote constituencies that displayed apathy to the polls. That the governor still won a reasonably emphatic victory at the polls on March 18, was indicative of the satisfaction of large segments of the electorate with his leadership and performance despite constraining primordial tensions and sectarian pressures.

    What then do we expect of Sanwo-Olu’s performance in his second term? As all tiers of government earn significantly more revenue in Naira terms with the removal of the fuel subsidy by the Tinubu administration, there will be more focus on the performance of the sub-national units of government, and Lagos, the jewel among these entities, will be the cynosure of all eyes. The anticipation of the people is high and the governor seems to know it. If the morning of the commencement of the second term is an indication of what the day will bring, we may expect a less pacifist, more activist, and no-nonsense Sanwo-Olu this time around.

    Already, he has dispensed with the services of chief executives of some key agencies and parastatals of government indicating that he will set officials to a higher standard of performance in his second term. Some of the agencies affected include the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA), Lagos State Water Corporation (LSWC), Lagos Television (LTV) and Lagos State License Plate Authority among others.

    The governor’s body language appears clear that he will not tolerate the news of poor corporate governance, irresponsibility, and managerial incompetence emanating from some of these agencies. A good example is LASAA where, according to authoritative information, the solid foundation work done by previous Managing Directors of the Agency such as Mr. Tunji Bello, immediate past Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, as well as Mr. Mobolaji Sanusi, a lawyer, managerial psychologist and journalist who was in charge between 2015 and 2019, resulting in a considerable boost in revenue earnings, significant debt mitigation, enhanced staff welfare and elevated corporate governance, have been significantly diminished and eroded by alleged managerial ineptitude.

    With the re-engagement of Dr. Muyiwa Gbadegesin as Managing Director of LAWMA, the computer scientist has a rare second chance to correct any identified lapses during his first tour of duty. There is no doubt that the governor would do well to enhance the supervisory competence of the Parastatals Monitoring Office (PMO) to keep the agencies on their toes and ensure the sustained accountability of their executive management.

    Residents of Lagos State wait with no less interest and anticipation for Governor Sanwo-Olu’s list of commissioners for his second term as Nigerians eagerly anticipate President Tinubu’s nominees for ministerial positions. Given the experience and stature of some of the departing commissioners in a key Ministry like Environment, for instance, the public will expect highly competent and dedicated replacements to build on the achievements of the past and face emergent challenges. The administration is commendably focused on critical infrastructure projects such as big road construction works but must not lose focus of inner city roads many of which are in need of more regular routine maintenance.

    Transportation remains a key Ministry in a sprawling metropolis like Lagos and giant strides have been taken in improving public transportation and traffic management. However, one area that must attract the administration’s urgent attention is the intractable traffic gridlock in Apapa and environs which defied its best efforts in its first term. Sanwo-Olu can certainly do for Apapa what Governor Babatunde Fashola did for Oshodi during his tenure. No less critical is the efficient and proactive management of a ministry like Physical Planning and Urban Development as Lagos continues its accelerated pace towards its mega city-state aspirations.

    If Sanwo-Olu succeeds in at least ensuring the commencement of construction work on the 4th Mainland Bridge, which has been on the drawing board for long, it would be a defining element of his legacy. Expectations are high for a superlative second-term performance from Sanwo-Olu between now and 2027. He has the proven competence, managerial experience, and leadership acumen not to disappoint. Critical in this regard is a more steely disposition on his part and body language that unmistakably indicates zero tolerance for mediocre leadership on the part of critical agencies of government.

    Unending desperation on 2023 polls

    There is obviously no let up in the relentless bid in some quarters to discredit and disparage the 2023 presidential elections at all costs and by all means. After all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories, fake spiritual prophesies and other amusing antics failed woefully to prevent the swearing-in of the clear winner of the election, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the APC on May 29, enormous efforts are now being expended to intimidate as well as damage the credibility and integrity of the judiciary which is saddled with the adjudication of election petitions. This week the Supreme Court had to dismiss unfounded and unproven allegations that the Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN), Justice Kayode Ariwoola, had any telephone conversations with President Tinubu or judges handling the election petitions. Those who alleged offered no proof. Even before the Election Petitions Tribunal began sitting, there had been the fake report that the CJN had traveled to London for a surreptitious meeting with the President. This again proved to be utterly fictional. And the day before yesterday, another fake news turned up on social media that one of the judges hearing the petition, Justice Boloukuoromo Ugo, had resigned in protest against alleged attempts to compel him to pervert the course of justice. It appears that certain petitioners have no confidence in the rigor and strength of their cases before the tribunal and are resorting to media intimidation, threats and blackmail of the judiciary to have their way. These patently anti-democratic antics will fail catastrophically. Except for the irredeemably prejudiced, it is all too easy to prove, logically and empirically, that the February 25 presidential election is the best and most credible in this dispensation since 1999.