Category: Segun Ayobolu

The only way for democracy to thrive, flourish and be constantly deepened in any society is for a critical mass of the population to have inculcated in them attitudes, values, beliefs and orientations that are indispensable to sustaining Abraham Lincoln’s fabled ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’. At the heart of this representative form of government is a credible, transparent and efficient electoral machinery and process, which conducts elections genuinely reflective of the will of the electorate and thus enjoys the trust and confidence of the generality of the people. Despite the grave socio-economic and security challenges confronting Nigeria today, it cannot be denied that the country has recorded considerable progress in the evolution of her political structures and processes since 1999.

One feature of positive political development in this regard is the vastly enhanced institutional autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as well as the significantly improved integrity of the conduct of elections. The last governorship elections in Edo, Ondo, Anambra and Ekiti states indicate the increasing general acceptability of electoral outcomes and INEC has promised that the governorship polls in Osun on July 16 will be a marked improvement in her performance in Ekiti last month, which has been widely lauded.

There is no doubt that the INEC of 2022 is no more the INEC of 23 years ago at the infancy of this dispensation, an electoral umpire that arbitrarily intruded and imposed itself on the electoral process and awarding fictive votes to favored candidates and parties particularly in various elections in 2003 and 2007. That INEC was no more than a parastatal under the suzerainty of the presidency. Another indication of significant strides taken forward, in the country’s political development since 1999, is the bold intervention of the judiciary in adjudicating on and remedying cases of perceived electoral injustice even though some such judgments and reversal of election results have inevitably been controversial.

Again, the continuing upgrading and improvements in the application of technology to INEC’s management of elections has helped to ensure that election results are no longer a reflection of the whims and caprices of electoral officials, biometric voter registration and fingerprint technology has rendered ballot box snatching useless while the uploading of election results online electronically from each polling unit immediately after voting has enhanced the transparency and integrity of election results.

The steadily increasing integrity and credibility of all aspects of the electoral process, combining with the growing political sophistication and consciousness of the electorate, will with time enhance the probability of competent and capable leaders emerging through the polls. If that happens, such capable leadership will help achieve greater security and enhanced economic prosperity that will reduce considerably the poverty that is at the root of the current menace of vote buying and selling that plagues our elections. But there are still disturbing attitudes, orientations and dispositions among a significant number of members of the political class that could pose a grave danger to the country’s political development and democratic sustainability. Before the presidential primaries of both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), for instance, there were tendencies in both parties that wanted either a restricted competitive race or no contest at all but rather the imposition of consensus candidates. In the PDP, the key issue was zoning. Key party leaders from the South as well as some governors wanted the field of contestation for the presidential candidacy restricted to the South in conformity with the party’s zoning policy of rotating the presidency between the North and the South.

Yes, the rotation principle is informed by the imperative of ensuring justice, fairness and equity through balance in the spread and representativeness of critical offices in a complex federation like ours. But then, can the zoning principle be elevated above the constitutionally guaranteed right of all Nigerians of the requisite age and who meet other stipulated criteria to contest elections at all level no matter where they come from? I don’t think so. Above all, we must adhere to democratic tenets at all times.

This is why the most critical thing is that the PDP threw its presidential ticket open to all zones of the country thus enabling the choice of its flag bearer through the dynamics of the intra-party democratic process. Despite Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State putting up a strong and impressive showing against the eventual presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, his bid failed, interestingly partly because a not insignificant number of southern delegates did not vote for the fiery governor even as he himself noted after the exercise. Some have pointed out that Sokoto State governor, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal’s decision to step down for Atiku played a critical role in the latter’s victory. But then, that is politics. The zoning principle succumbed to the dynamics of the democratic process within the PDP and all sides must abide by the outcome in good faith as democrats. It is another matter entirely if Atiku following his emergence as the party’s flag bearer has so far handled the process of reconciliation and healing within the party especially the choice of his running mate with the requisite wisdom and dexterity.

As for the APC, the dynamics of the democratic process within the party worked out in favour of a southern candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who emerged as its presidential flag bearer, despite a tendency within the party not disguising its preference for the emergence of a northern candidate to run on the party’s platform in next year’s presidential election. It would appear that a good number of the aspirants who paid N100 million for the party’s expression of interest and nomination forms and joined the race did so in the belief that, for one reason or the other, they would be picked as President Muhammadu Buhari’s anointed choice and imposed on the party as consensus candidate thus rendering competitive primaries unnecessary. That the President chose to allow the democratic process to play out fully is to his great credit. No less salutary was the stance of the party’s northern governors who insisted that the ticket be ceded to the south in the interest of fairness and equity and played a key role in the outcome of the primaries. Even then, it is important that the APC also did not restrict the field of contestation for its presidential ticket to the South thus enabling willing aspirants from all parts of the country to participate in the exercise with the winner emerging in a transparent and credible process. Above all, democracy must always be the watchword. Thus, while the intra-party democratic process resulted in the emergence of a northerner in the PDP, the same process led to a southern presidential candidate in the APC. In picking their candidates, the parties were understandably concerned with maximizing their electoral strengths at the polls.

Speaking within the context of democratic profession and practice, it is difficult to situate the clamorous calls in some quarters for the zoning of the presidency to the South-East because the zone has not produced a President since 1999. But a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction can only emerge through the dynamics of the democratic process. Such a candidate must join and work hard within parties to build alliances, friendships and political relationships across the country.  He or she can surely not campaign successfully solely on the basis of being Igbo. It will not fly. Rather, an Igbo candidate must campaign first and foremost on his or her merit, competence and qualification for the job while also falling back on a wide network of personal and political relationships nationwide for support.

The leading Igbo Presidential Candidate in the 2023 presidential race is Mr. Peter Obi, who defected to the Labour Party from the PDP. To his credit, Mr. Peter Obi, has been campaigning on what he considers as his capability for the job of leading Nigeria even though some of his claimed achievements in the past, especially as two-term governor of Anambra State, have been severally challenged. There is the perception that his statistics are frequently inaccurate and claims of his accomplishments exaggerated. Even then, the important thing is that he is not asking for votes necessarily because he is Igbo. Unfortunately, though, the way many of his fervent supporters are carrying on may cast Obi as a sectional rather than a national candidate and this may hurt him in a nationwide election. Does the LP have the structures to enable Obi make an effective impact in a nationwide election and with the election less than eight months away? It is doubtful. Had the attempted merger between the Labour Party and Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigeria Democratic Party (NNDP) worked out, it would have been a potentially formidable party because Kwankwaso is no pushover in Kano and some other parts of the North West.

This column foresees a vibrant and exciting campaign particularly between Atiku and Tinubu, the frontline candidates, in the months ahead. They have both been active on Nigeria’s political and economic terrain over the last three decades. It is difficult seeing litigations against the two, obviously designed to distract and thwart their ambitions, flying since these are issues already pronounced on judicially in the past.  It should be a campaign focused on issues, ideas and programmes, not abuse, personal attacks, mudslinging and insults.

Last Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State was the last off-season poll to be conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before next year’s general elections. INEC is widely perceived to have continuously improved on its technical proficiency in the conduct of elections with the successive elections in Edo, Ondo, Anambra and Ekiti states culminating in that of Osun. Not only has the commission grown increasingly more adept in the deployment of technology to aid the credibility of the process, its handling of election logistics has become more efficient even if there will always be room for improvement. The commission has come a long way from when it was no better than a parastatal under the control of the presidency with no choice but to do the bidding of the ruling party particularly during the presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo. Thus, in the five states where governorship elections have been held since 2020, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party won in Edo and Osun, The All Progresives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Anambra and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo and Ekiti.

Strengthened by the provisions of the new Electoral Act, especially the provision for online uploading of results once votes are cast and counted, has also made the process more substantially autonomous of the arbitrary whims of electoral officials and also less prone to such violent acts as snatching of ballot boxes, which is now of negligible consequence for the outcome. Overall, democratic practice can be said to be alive and well and systematically being improved upon in the country in spite of the prevalence of the menace of vote buying, which is a function of the pervasive poverty in the land and the low level of political education and sophistication of the electorate. These are ills that will gradually be overcome with the continued institutionalization of elections as sustained democratic practice is the key to overcoming observed shortcomings of this system of government. There can be no short cut to concrete democratic development and political maturation.

It is of course only natural that analysts have focused on the determining factors of the outcome of the election in which Senator Ademola Adeleke of the PDP secured victory with 50.14% (403,371) of the votes cast to incumbent governor Gboyega Oyetola’s 46.2% (375,927) which represents a 3.5% margin of loss. There are those who attribute the triumph of the PDP to the sharp division in the APC between the factions led by governor Oyetola and the Interior Minister, Ogbeni Raufu Aregbesola’s group known as The Osun Progressives (TOP), respectively. It is bad enough for a party to go into any election factionalized as the APC did in Osun but this, in my view, was not necessarily a key variable in Oyetola’s loss. Aregbesola’s supporters have naturally been celebrating the loss of their party, the APC, thus suggesting that this was a function of their leader’s electoral value and popular appeal in the state. This may not necessarily be so.

The APC’s struggle to win the 2018 Osun governorship polls, which the party won by approximately 482 votes after a tight run-off between Oyetola and Adeleke, was largely a referendum on Aregbesola’s eight years in power between 2010 and 2018. This was particularly so because many were wont to dismiss Adeleke as a political neophyte unlikely to make much electoral impact despite the popularity especially in Ede of his charismatic late elder brother, Senator Isiaka Adeleke and the prominence of the family. In any case, as my colleague, Sanya Oni, noted in his column in this newspaper on Tuesday, “In the same vein, had the party, then under the leadership of Rauf Aregesola as governor, yielded the seat to the younger Adeleke in deference to the mourning family and in recognition of the powerful interest the family represented and continues to represent in the state’s political matrix, the individual, who has now become his party’s nemesis,  would in fact have contested and most likely would have won as an APC candidate with things possibly taking a different trajectory. Unfortunately, Aregesola, the leader, would have none of it – and the rest as they say is history”.

Despite some of his bold infrastructural strides and welfarist policy initiatives, Aregbesola failed to decisively alter the relatively even balance of political forces in the state between the PDP and APC since 2003 against the background of the immense enthusiasm and momentum that accompanied the restoration of his 2007 stolen electoral mandate by the courts after a protracted legal struggle and his assumption of office. Although he obviously meant well as governor, many of his policies were populist but clearly not well thought out for example in the education sector. His administration courted avoidable controversy and caused considerable polarization among different religious faiths for instance. Oyetola was compelled by popular demand to reverse some of these policies such as merger of schools, introduction of the same school uniforms for all public schools, and re-introduction of the 6-3-3-4 system to the chagrin of the former governor who saw his successor as trying to erode his legacies in the state. This was a major cause of the deterioration in their relationship.

The mismatch between the quest for ambitious infrastructural provision during Aregbesola’s tenure and the resource base and fiscal capacity of the state resulted in a severe fiscal crisis, which worsened when the state’s allocation from the Federation Account dwindled considerably. Not only did the administration have to devote substantial resources to servicing debts that had accumu lated heavily in the pursuit of its projects, it was unable to meet its wage obligations to public sector workers resulting in the payment of half salaries to some categories of public workers which further alienated the latter from the government and constituted an electoral albatross for the APC.

The loss of Oyetola in last Saturday’s election takes nothing away from the governor as a competent administrator and shrewd manager of resources. To his credit, he paid full salaries of workers and met pensions’ obligations of the state from the inception of his administration even though many workers were reportedly unhappy that he did not clear the unpaid salaries inherited from his predecessor as well as not doing enough about backlog of stagnated promotions. The governor’s constraints in this regard are understandable and his performance heroic as he was not only systematically meeting inherited debt servicing obligations of the state, he also made impressive strides in infrastructure provision and social service delivery within the limits of available resources without taking any new loans.

Oyetola is not a charismatic or natural politician given to theatrics, frivolity and garrulousness. He has a serious minded demeanor and approach to issues. This was evident in the gubernatorial debates where he simply stated the facts as he saw them and allowed his more flamboyant opponents to get away with evident exaggerations and willful distortions.  This may not be an asset in our type of political clime and culture especially within the context of pervasive poverty. Oyetola is finance expert and an nsurance professional given to being sober and conservative. His plugging of sources of resource wastage and frugality caused disaffection even among some of his aides and party members leading to meager resources deployed for critical electoral purposes such as payment of party agents and other logistics being diverted to private pockets with negative consequences for the party’s fortunes at the polls in contrast to the reportedly free-spending disposition of his major challenger and eventual winner.

Oyetola in many ways reminds one of the first governor of the state in this dispensation from 1999 – 2003, Papa Bisi Akande. Despite his impressive accomplishments in providing infrastructure for the state and gradually repositioning the finances of the state, Akande lost reelection for a second term largely because he was perceived as too austere by workers and members of the political class and other stakeholders who were unhappy at his stubborn refusal to frivolously spend the scarce resources of the state in dispensation of patronage.

It is also not improbable that the harsh economic climate in the land and the perception that, unlike Oyetola, there would be free money to spend under a governor like Adeleke with an endlessly sunny outlook on life and most likely oblivious of the parlous finances of the state and the tremendous demand this will make on the intellect, seriousness and administrative dexterity of a governor and his team, contributed to the PDP victory. The honeymoon is unlikely to endure.

Since the governor was Chief of Staff in the Aregbesola administration for eight years, does he not also bear some responsibility for the policies of that administration some of which his government reversed? It would appear that Aregbesola’s domineering style and allegedly authoritarian outlook limited the ability of members of his Executive Council to play the necessary collegial role in contributing to policy debates and initiatives with negative implications for the quality of governance during his tenure.  Could the relationship between the two have been more astutely managed especially by the governor? There are those who contend that Oyetola allowed himself to become unduly preoccupied with his tiff with his former boss and in the process being unnecessarily distracted and that he could have done more to carry key members of the Aregbesola faction along in the process of governance without necessarily compromising the imperative of carrying out necessary policy reforms demanded by the public. However, the management of relations between former governors and their successors continues to be a major problem in this dispensation and is not limited to Osun state.

It is obvious that the outcome of the Osun governorship election was influenced essentially by local factors in the state and the PDP is grossly mistaken that this will have a defining impact on its performance in the 2023 presidential election in the state or across the South West. A video that has gone viral shows some voters who were celebrating Adeleke’s victory also affirming that they would vote for the APC presidential flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the presidential election. Of course, the prospects of the party’s victory will be significantly strengthened if it engages in serious conflict resolution and fence mending not just in Osun but across the board before the elections.

Beyond the ethno-regional factor, a key selling point for Tinubu in Osun and elsewhere will be his track record in laying the foundation for the accelerated and sustained transformation of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007 and his demonstrated capacity to identify and utilize the best and brightest brains to run the country and redress the dangerous economic slide, deepening poverty and worsening insecurity that afflicts the country within and beyond Osun and the South-West. The 2023 presidential election will be less a competition between the two dominant parties with nationwide structures than a contest between the candidates and their perceived comparative ability to effectively tackle the existential challenges of contemporary Nigeria.

It is only natural that identity issues featuring such factors as ethnicity, religion, culture and region will always be key determinant influences in the politics of a complex, plural polity like Nigeria. Thus, the extant constitutions of the First, Second, and Third Republics and now this Fourth Republic have always had provisions requiring that the composition of governments at various levels reflect the ‘federal character’ of the country. As much as possible, this has meant ensuring that personnel recruitment and appointment particularly at the leadership levels in the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government at the center and sub-national levels evince a deliberate effort to balance ethno-regional, religious and, increasingly, gender considerations.

A key demand by diverse socio-cultural and political groups since the restoration of civilian rule in this dispensation in 1999 has been the rotation of presidential power between North and South. In picking its presidential flag bearer for the 2023 general elections from the North, namely former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has overridden the loud clamor across party lines that the presidency rotate back to the South after the completion of incumbent President Muhamamdu Buhari’s eight-year tenure next year. The South-East especially, which has been the strongest and most consistent bastion of support for the PDP since 1999, justifiably felt entitled to the party’s presidential ticket but even a good number of delegates from the region did not vote for Igbo candidates at the party convention, which means that other factors can readily trounce conventional expectations in the choosing and balancing of party electoral tickets.

However, this week, Atiku announced the choice of Delta State governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, a Christian, as his running mate thereby fulfilling this time another unwritten power-sharing convention that if the President is a Muslim, the Vice President should be a Christian and vice versa. In sharp contrast to the PDP’s insensitivity to adherence to the power rotation pact between North and South, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had picked its presidential candidate, former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, from the South-West. This followed the insistence of 13 of the party’s influential governors from the North that the presidency shifts back to the South in 2023 in the interest of fairness, equity, and justice and against a bid by a clique to foist Senate President, Dr. Ahmed Lawan from Yobe State as ‘consensus candidate’ purportedly acting with the authority of President Muhammadu Buhari. To his credit, the President refused to throw the weight of his office behind this move thus enabling the APC to keep faith with the power rotation principle between North and South.

President Buhari had earlier charged the governors to consider the demonstrated capacity of a prospective candidate to achieve electoral victory for the party in the search for a flag bearer.

With the emergence of Tinubu as the APC presidential candidate, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and some other solitary voices have demanded that the APC must balance the ticket with a Christian Vice- Presidential candidate since Tinubu is a Muslim. As former Abia State governor and Chief Whip of the Senate, Chief Kalu Orji Kalu, has persuasively pointed out, however, if Tinubu, a Muslim minority from the South picks a Christian minority from the North as his running mate, that would be a perfect recipe for predictable electoral disaster. Nothing would gladden the PDP more. Critical stakeholders and delegates who ensured the emergence of Tinubu as APC presidential candidate know that he is their best bet to fight and win a national election against a candidate of Atiku’s stature. Why should they then cripple the efficacy of such a ticket by presenting a Christian Vice-presidential candidate when their flag bearer has an appeal that cuts across religious boundaries? It will simply make no sense.

Given the strong antipathy of most parts of the South-East and South-South to the APC, there is no guarantee that a northern Vice-Presidential candidate for the APC will attract sufficient electoral harvest from both regions in an election in which maximization of votes by contending parties is key in what will most likely be a closely fought election. Why shouldn’t the APC more rationally do all it can to take optimum advantage of the rich harvest of votes in the North-East, North-West, and South-West while also striving hard to split the votes with the PDP in the North Central, South-South, and South-East?

Tinubu’s urbane disposition and cosmopolitan outlook are well known and admired. His wife of over four decades, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is not only a Christian; she is a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) as others have pointed out. Before Tinubu’s assumption of office as governor of Lagos State, there was no provision for Christian workers at the Government House, Marina, to worship. He built a chapel on the premises for this purpose to complement the Muslim Mosque. Throughout his eight-year tenure, the revered General Overseer of the RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, preached at the State Thanksgiving Service, which was an annual event. The tradition continues after him.

In fulfillment of his electoral promise, Tinubu as governor of Lagos State returned over 20 schools that had been taken over, about two decades earlier from Christian missions by the state government, to their original owners. These schools include St Gregory’s College, Obalende, Holy Child College, Obalende, Our Lady of Apostles, Yaba, St Finbarr’s College, Akoka, C.M.S. Grammar School, Bariga, Howells Memorial Grammar School, Bariga, Lagos Anglican Girls School, Surulere, Awori Anglican Comprehensive High School, Badagry, Igbobi College, Yaba, Methodist Boys High School, Victoria Island, Methodist Girls High School, Yaba, The Apostolic Church Grammar School, Ketu, Baptist Academy, Obanikoro, Shepherd Girls high School, Obanikoro, Agbowa Ikosi Grammar School, Agbowa, The African Church College, Ifako, Lagos African Church Grammar School and Aladura Comprehensive High School.

Ten schools taken over from Muslim Missions were also returned to their original owners by his administration. Although there were unanticipated teething problems associated with the return of the schools following the prolonged period of state take-over, the initiative was enthusiastically welcomed by the missions and showed a commendable fidelity on the part of the governor being a Muslim, especially with respect to the Christian Mission Schools, which were more in number.

When it is pointed out that the Muslim-Muslim ticket of Chief MKO Abiola and Ambassador Babagana Kingibe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) roundly defeated the Muslim-Christian ticket of Bashir Tofa and Sylvester Ugoh of the National Republican Convention (NRC) on June 12, 1993, presidential election regrettably annulled by the military regime, one ready response is that Nigeria is a far more different country today with higher levels of religious intolerance. This is only partially true.

For instance, in his 1995 essay, ‘Religion and Nation Building: The Paradaox of Dual Identities in Nigeria’, the eminent political scientist, Professor Isawa Elaigwu, meticulously documents no less than 20 incidents of religious conflicts involving violence, bloodshed, and deaths between March 1986, and January 1993, occurring among others in Ilorin, Kwara State, Ibadan, Oyo State, Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Katsina, Katsina State and Tafawa Balewa, Bauchi State, to name a few. In October 1991, for example, a demonstration by the Izala sect to prevent Reverend Reinhard Bonnke from holding a crusade in Kano deteriorated into bloody clashes with loss of lives and property. Again, in May 1992, communal conflicts between the Katafs and Hausas in Kaduna State turned into a violent confrontation between Muslims and Christians with large fatalities. True, there are more widespread acts of violence today but these go beyond religious conflicts to encompass banditry, terrorism, armed robbery, and kidnapping.

The broad pan-Nigerian support for the Abiola-Kingibe Muslim-Muslim ticket in 1993 thus indicated that inter-religious violence perpetrated or orchestrated by extremists of a given faith may not necessarily be reflective or representative of religious tempers in the larger population thus making a Muslim candidate like Abiola easily acceptable then beyond his religious profession just like a Tinubu will readily be today beyond Muslim circles.

In any case, ethnoreligious intolerance, extremism, and violence have deep-seated economic roots in worsening material poverty and inequality manifesting particularly in soaring unemployment, pervasive hunger, and rising despair and hopelessness among the vast majority of the populace. A candidate that can convince higher numbers of the electorate that he has the knowledge, experience and demonstrated record of past performance to bring about economic recovery, mass creation of jobs, and the onset of prosperity in post-2023 Nigeria will win widespread electoral support irrespective of the religious coloration of the ticket.

There is nothing Atiku has said or done since leaving office in 2007 and serially contesting for the presidency in 2011, 2015, and 2019 that suggests he will do anything different from what the PDP in its 16 years in power did in terms of reworking and revitalizing Nigeria’s economy. While he talks animatedly about his new conversion to restructuring in the South, he is far more reticent about the subject in the North. I can think of no PDP state that is an inspiring model of the kind of developmental trajectory Nigeria should seek to follow after Buhari, not even the oil-rich Rivers and Delta states which do not have to contend with the kind of population pressures Lagos faces for instance from all over the country and with no derivation allocation to benefit from.

True, the APC has been no less dismal in its management of the economy over the last eight years even though it has fared comparably better particularly in infrastructure provision than the PDP when an account is taken of such debilitating factors as the drastic crash in oil prices towards the end of 2014, the unanticipated coronavirus pandemic and the consequences of the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. Even then it’s well known that though Tinubu is honorifically known as its National Leader given his role in the party’s formation, his opportunity for input into governance in the last seven years has been marginal if not zero. He can therefore rightly claim that being elected President in 2023 will provide him the first opportunity to do for Nigeria the transformational foundation-laying he did for Lagos between 1999 and 2007.

If she has a President who can help tap and actualize her latent economic potential as well as release the trapped energies of her people for accelerated development, the basis would be laid for the drastic minimization of the role and influence of primordial factors like ethnicity, religion, and region in the country’s politics. There will no longer be the large army of the deprived and impoverished to be recruited as bandits and terrorists. Beyond all this, however, we must never forget the late Dr. Bala Usman’s immortal admonition that we must always be wary of those who will always seek to manipulate religion for self-seeking political and economic reasons rather than love for God or Nigerians.

Our state is at the heartland of the northern parts of this country, in every sense of history and culture, economically and politically. But we do not belong to the retrograde north of feudalists, slave-holders, crooks, parasites and foreign agents. We are of the cultured north of democracy, liberation and social progress for all the people of Nigeria” – Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, Tuesday, 22nd June, 1981.

When he made the assertion above, Alhaji Balarabe Musa was the governor of the old Kaduna State, which included the contemporary Katsina State. The uncompromisingly radical and progressive Balarabe Musa identified two ‘Norths’ – the reactionary and retrogressive North, resistant to change and the enlightened and modernizing North committed to the accelerated transformation and modernization of their region and Nigeria as a whole. There is also among the southern political class, a conservative, retrograde and reactionary elite faction, concerned only with their personal aggrandizement as individuals and as a group and a more progressive, forward looking strand who, despite their weaknesses and foibles, are dedicated to the liberation of the potentials of Nigeria in the interest of the vast majority of her impoverished people.

Even as the debates and controversies raged as regards the desirability or otherwise of respecting the informal zoning understanding among the dominant factions of the political class and ensuring the rotation of presidential power back to the South in 2023 after President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year tenure, the northern governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) stepped up to be counted in favour of equity, justice and fairness by insisting that the party’s presidential ticket be zoned to the south.

The northern APC governors could have easily discounted the considerations of equity and fairness to peddle the argument of crude electoral arithmetic to facilitate the perpetuation of control of the presidency by the north after the expiration of Buhari’s tenure. But they said a firm no. Their ability to take this enlightened stand for justice in inter-regional power sharing was also no doubt enhanced by the existence in the party of an aspirant from the South, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who had invested considerable time, energy, steadfast focus and resources over the last three decades in building bridges across regional, ethnic , religious and partisan divides as well as nurturing trust and confidence among a wide cross section of Nigerians.

But the northern governors are the undisputed heroes of the moment. As a block they are largely responsible for the direction of the historic APC presidential primaries. Of course, President Buhari also deserves plaudits for refraining from utilizing the considerable influence and power of his office to impose a ‘consensus’ candidate on the party even when key members of his inner caucus were undisguised supporters of the northern power perpetuation agenda. It is unfortunate that the ceaseless acts of mindless violence such as banditry, terrorism, kidnapping and herdsmen-farmers’ conflicts, which have crippled large swathes of the north, have also distracted attention from the enlightened leadership, which a number of bright lights in the region have offered their states in this dispensation.

For instance, one of the key actors who influenced the position of the northern governors on power shift to the south is reported to be the fiery Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir’el Rufai. Despite the controversies arising from his style and the seeming concentration of insurgent attacks, banditry and kidnapping inhis state, el Rufai is widely acknowledged as having offered modernizing and transformative leadership in his state. Those familiar with the state refer, for instance, to his accomplishments in infrastructure provision, healthcare, education and human capital development. His administration’s urban renewal programme has reportedly changed the face of Kaduna city, Kafanchan and Zaria and apart from completing phases 1 and 2 of the long abandoned Zaria Water project, he has since commenced work on phase 3 of the facility designed to extend water supply to extend water supply beyond Zaria and Sabon-Gari.

It can only be hoped that the over $2.8 billion of investments, which his administration has attracted into the state will not ultimately be jeopardized by the state of insecurity. But some of these investments include the largest hatchery project in sub-Saharan Africa by Olam, the steel plant and iron ore mining complex in Gujeni, Kargako Local Government Area, the Tomato Jos farm and tomato processing plant in Kangimi, the OCP fertilizer plant and the Dangote Peugeot vehicle assembly plant, which have no doubt expanded job and business opportunities. His far reaching public sector reforms have contributed to the phenomenal increase in the state’s Internally Generated Revenue from N13 billion in 2015 to over N52 billion in 2020. But then, el Rufai’s albatross is his famed short temper, sharp, unsparing tongue and seeming intolerance for opposing views.

Perhaps this is why his critics are all too ready to dismiss el Rufai as an unrepentant northern irredentist, religious extremist and inflexible defender of Nigeria’s flawed structural status quo.  I personally do not agree with such categorization of the governor even though, if he is to progress in his political career beyond Kaduna State, he should realize that tolerance, moderation, restraint and empathy are virtues in politics. Let it not be forgotten that el ‘Rufai was Chairman of the APC Committee on restructuring, which recommended far-reaching decentralization of powers, resources and responsibilities in Nigeria as well as the introduction of statepolice among others. The committee’s recommendations have been ignored for inexplicable reasons. He has also been firmly opposed to open grazing of cattle, advocating modern ranching as the indispensable way forward.

It is unfortunate that when the name of Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje, governor of Kano State is mentioned, what almost readily comes to mind are certain corruption allegations against him even though they still remain unproven despite alleged video evidence. This is a moral burden he must bear. But it is beyond dispute that he has offered transformational leadership in Kano in several sectors. For instance, his administration settled the state’s counterpart funding to the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), thus facilitating the initiation of several projects in the sector to enhance the quality of education. In addition to the construction of a 400-bed hospital in each of the four emirate councils in the state, his administration is currently constructing a N7 billion ultra-modern cancer treatment center with the pledge that, when completed, it will be the second to none in the sub-region. Those familiar with the state capital testify to the transformation of the city’s landscape through the modernization and expansion of infrastructure. Ganduje has never opposed power shift to the south and has been one of the most fervent supporters of Tinubu’s presidential aspiration. He is also known to support inevitable aspects of progress such as the provision of ultra-modern ranches for cattle breeding.

Two other names that readily come to mind with regard to the purpose of this essay are the former governor of Borno State between 2011 and 2019, Senator Kashim Shettima and his no less dynamic and achievement –oriented successor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum. Shettima holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the universities of Maiduguri and Ibadan respectively. Before his foray into politics and governance, he acquired invaluable experience in the private sector as head of accounts unit at the Commercial Bank of Africa Limited in Ikeja, Lagos (1993-1997); Deputy Manager and later Manager at the AfricaInternational Bank Limited, Kaduna, (1997-2001) after which he moved to the Zenith Bank as head of its main branch in Maiduguri in 2001. At Zenith Bank, he rose to become Senior Manager/Branch Head; Assistant General Manager/ Zonal Head (North East); Deputy General Manager/Zonal Head (North East) and General Manager at the bank before his appointment in 2007 as Commissioner of Finance in Borno State.

Before he became governor in 2011, he had served as Commissioner in the Ministries of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Education, Agriculture and Health. He was governor at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State and he is widely acknowledged as effectively managing the security crisis for instance through the establishment of the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) made up of young volunteers to combat Boko Haram and supplying large numbers of patrol vehicles and giving other logistics support to the military and other security agencies. The Shettima administration rebuilt over 30,000 homes spread in Gwoza, Bama, Mobbar, Damboa, Nganzai, Mafa, Konduga, Kaga and Maiduguri among others. In the health sector, the administration built seven new General Hospitals, overhauled 18 others and established diagnostic and kidney dialysis centres. It increased the number of medical doctors from the 65 inherited in 2011 to 152 as at 2019 while also increasing the number of nurses and midwives from 980 to 1,850.

In the education sector, the Shettima administration constructed 1,711 new classrooms and other school buildings in over 256 primary and junior secondary schools, established 16 new secondary schools, renovated more than half of the state’s over 80 secondary schools and built 44 Mega primary schools equipped world class infrastructure to cater for over 50,000 orphans whose parents were killed by Boko Haram. Perhaps the crowning achievement of the administration in education was the establishment of Borno’s first state university.

In his farewell speech on May 29, 2019, Shettima told the people of Borno: “I have done my modest part,  I am bowing out. I am happy that the stage is shifting to a great and worthy son of Borno. The stage is shifting to a man who made himself out of a low estate, a man who drove a taxi and sold firewood to pay his school fees, a man with an uncommon touch, a dynamo of a worker. Professor Babagana Umara Zulum is very well prepared for the task ahead”. Zulum has more than justified the confidence reposed in him by his predecessor and the people of Borno State. Though in his first term, he has quickly established himself as one of the most industrious, committed, visionary and passionately development-oriented governors in this dispensation. While some would want him to step up for service at a higher level in 2023, others believe that he should run for election for a second term as governor and carry further the great work he has done thus far.

Kashim Shettima has been one of the earliest supporters of and most committed and articulate advocates as well as defenders of the Tinubu presidential aspiration project. As he ponders who will be his running mate for the critical 2023 election, presumably in consultation with President Buhari and other stakeholders particularly the northern governors, these among others will surely be on the APC presidential candidate’s mind. As this newspaper’s columnist, Jide Oluwajuyitan, pungently put it on Thursday, “The solution to our current challenges is not going to come from a northern vice presidential candidate from the northern 5% Christians but the 95% Hausa/Fulani Muslims and their leaders with pan-Nigeria outlook”.

In the first part of this review, we focused on the impact of Dr Nwosu’s early immersion in childhood into the culture, values and norms of his Igbo ethnic origin on his personal conduct as well as sense of discipline, responsibility and purpose in life. Engineer Professor Anthony N. Nzeako, who hails from the same village and clan as the author in his opening, prefatory testimonial, establishes a link between the values inculcated in Dr. Nwosu such as hard work, diligence and focus on his academic attainments as he evolved into adulthood. In his words, “The culture of hard work, determination and self-confidence, which he imbibed from these drills, not only opened the gates for him into three of the most prestigious educational institutions in the land, Dennis Memorial Grammar School, (DMGS), Onitsha; University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN); and University of Lagos, (UNILAG), Akoka, Lagos, but also saw him through each of these institutions in flying colours, Grade One Distinction in West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE), B.Sc. Honours, Second Class Upper Division in Political Science and Master of Science Degree (M. Sc), in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management at DMGS, UNN and UNILAG respectively”.

It is a testimony to Emeka’s scholastic brilliance that he earned a Federal Government Scholarship based on academic excellence, which covered tuition fees, accommodation, feeding and pocket money, which he enjoyed from the first to the final year at UNN having maintained a cumulative grade point not below 2.1 grade throughout at the institution.  Remarkably, his obvious studiousness did not prevent him from participating fully in students’ union politics on campus as he began to hone his leadership skills along with his academic pursuits. The author recounts that the biographies of great African leaders he had read in secondary school such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere  and Sekou Toure of Guinea among others fuelled his interest in politics and quest to play leadership roles. At UNN, he was at various times elected Representative of Hall D at the Zik’s Flats in his first year, elected Secretary of the Ohuhu Students’ Association, a grouping of students from the Ohuhu clan in Umuahia, elected Secretary General of the Political Science Students Association elected Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Student’s Union Government (SUG) and elected Public Relations Officer of Zone D of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) comprising universities in the old Eastern Region encompassing the South-East and South-South zones of today.

Although he was a child when such tragic incidents as the pogrom against Igbos in the North, which led to the mass migration of people of Igbo origin including his parents back to the East, as well as the three-year Nigerian civil war occurred, Emeka and his family were not spared the agony, pains and scars of these events. Some of the author’s recollections of the traumatic experiences he personally witnessed are deeply emotional and heart-rending. For instance, he writes, “Like I noted earlier, one of the immediate consequences of the war on us as kids in my community and neighboring villages was the truncation of our schooling. Schools were closed down; and many of them converted into military camps or refugee centres…The village was overflowing with a lot of human beings having received many returnees who fled home from different parts of the country, particularly the North where they were being hunted down on the streets and slaughtered by rampaging mobs. My father was one of those that made a narrow escape from the North”.

One of the most moving parts of the narrative are the rendering of the unyielding ‘songs of freedom’ chanted by new Biafran conscripts on their way to the warfront, moving songs of patriotism  and sacrificial commitment to their envisaged fatherland, which were translated from Igbo into English by the author. The deep emotional trauma of the war even on young, impressionable minds like Emeka offers clues as to why Biafran nationalism remains strong and passionate even over five decades after the war. After his eventful National Youth Service Corp  (NYSC) experience in Owo, Ondo State, which the author recalls in characteristically vivid detail, and his one year stint at UNILAG for his Master’s degree programme, Emeka was employed at the Daily Times of Nigeria, the country’s largest circulating and most successful media conglomerate at the time having passed a competitive examination. It was where he commenced his journalistic career and our paths crossed when we became colleagues on the Political Desk of the newspaper.

This was at a critical period in the political evolution of the country when the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida was implementing its ambitious and convoluted political transition programme to an envisaged democratic dispensation that never materialized. The Political Desk was central to the operations of the newspaper and political correspondents on the Desk strove to outdo one another in breaking news stories as well as writing features articles, opinion pieces and news analyses for the various publications in the expansive Daily Times stable in a healthy, competitive spirit. We worked exceedingly hard and had fun no less intensely. After a hard day’s work, the famous ‘White House’ Calabar Restaurant across the road at Agidinbgi was our favorite joint where we engaged in heated political and intellectual debates over drinks and assorted delicacies including ubiquitous exotic dishes of Isiewu and Nkwobi among others. The collegial spirit and professional camaraderie are unforgettable.

Dr. Nwosu’s book offers a concise and pungent history of the Babangida regime’s transition programme, which featured the banning and unbanning, severally, of so called ‘old breed’ politicians, the recruitment into politics of a new generation of supposedly ‘new breed’ political actors, the creation of the two government-created political parties, the National Republican Convention (NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), party primaries and elections into local government councils, state governorships and Houses of Assembly, the National Assembly elections and, ultimately, the historic June 12, 1993, presidential election, which was won by the late Chief MKO Abiola of the SDP but annulled by the regime. Giving an incisive and surgical assessment of the transition programe, Emeka writes, “With the benefit of hindsight, it may be difficult to say whether Babangida actually meant well with the programme. But it must be quickly conceded that the transition package was rich in conception, elaborate in scope, deep in content and innovative in character. However, Babangida, the architect of the programme and his henchmen in the military like Abacha, were lacking in sincerity of purpose”.

In addition to being an active member and later National President of the National Association of Political Correspondents (NAPOC), an association to foster networking and continuously develop the professional skills of members, Dr. Nwosu was an active participant in the activities of the Lagos State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) attending several National Conferences of the NUJ as a delegate from Lagos. He was also a key member of the media and publicity committee headed by respected Editor, cerebral economist and accomplished administrator, Chief Onyeama Ugochukwu, to manage the communications and public relations of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in his successful bid for the presidency in 1999. One fascinating aspect of this book is the author’s documentation of his exhaustive efforts in community service and leadership, which sees him playing active roles in seeking to add value to the life of his community in Umukabia.

For instance, he was elected Chairman of the youth wing of the Umukabia Progressive Movement (UPM) In Lagos in 1990. In 1996, he was voted as the Vice President of the body. He was appointed Executive Secretary of the innovative Umukabia Economic Summit, an inititive of Professor of Electronic Engineering, Anthony Nzeako, in 2017. The purpose of the Summit was to identify the sustainable development goals of the community and proffer strategies for their actualization. The hugely successful Summit was held on 27th December, 2018, and came up with a well-articulated road map for the development and transformation of the community in diverse sectors including water security, security of lives and property, infrastructural development, health care, transportation, rural industrialization and agriculture.

Having served successfully in diverse capacities in various Ministries, Departments and Agencies in Abuja since 1999, including being Special Adviser on Media to a former President of the Senate, Chief Evan Enwerem, it is not surprising that the author made a bold bid in 2007 to represent the Ikwuano-Umuahia Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives first on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and later the defunct Action Congress (AC). That this aspiration failed for several reasons despite the author’s rich academic, professional, leadership and community service trajectory and credentials speaks to the pervasive dysfunctions and systemic failings of Nigeria’s politics and democratic practice. Yet, as Professor Nzeako writes, “These setbacks notwithstanding, he is not done yet because according to him, “this is politics for you”. For Dr. Emeka Nwosu and his political future, it is most certainly still ‘morning yet on creation day’. In addition to portraits of a remarkable family life, the author offers insights in this book on his perspectives on federalism, the national question, the dilemma of leadership and nation building in post-colonial Nigeria.

WHAT can be said to lie fundamentally at the root of Nigeria’s multi-dimensional crises of politics, society and economy that have persisted, even systematically worsened, in the last over six decades of the country’s post-colonial experience? The crisis of politics showcases the lack of vision of the political elite, uncontrolled quest to capture and wield state power at all costs mainly for material aggrandizement and the consequent instability of the polity as well as inefficacy of public policy. At the level of the economy, most Nigerians continue to experience large scale poverty, ever deepening penury and escalating inequality between a microscopic rich political, business and bureaucratic elite and the abysmally poor majority of the masses.

And the ‘season of anomie’ evocatively captured by Professor Wole Soyinka in his novel published over five decades ago, has unquestionably become the defining feature of a society where corrosive materialism, the get rich quick by any means syndrome, moral perversity of the most bizare variety, occultism, kidnapping for ransom, banditry, religious extremism among others have become indelibly etched on the spatial and mental landscape.

Reading though the brand new cerebral offering titled ‘Media, Politics and Power in Nigeria: A Personal Perspective’ by Dr. Emeka Nwosu, journalist, scholar, political communications and public relations practitioner, politician, community leader, devoted family man and opinion molder, one comes inescapably to the conclusion that the fundamental trouble or challenge with Nigeria is essentially a crisis of values. The bankruptcy of values has eroded the sinews of society, polity and economy compounding the crises of citizenship, nationhood and underdevelopment.

In this work, the author critically dissects and exhaustively analyzes the dynamic interrelationship among these three critical elements of the Nigerian extant reality – media, politics and power – from the prism of his personal life trajectory. Incidentally, he shares the same year of birth, 1960, as the country and he masterfully captures the critical intersections, correlations and divergences between his birth, childhood, early youth, schooling, growth into adulthood with the attendant family responsibilities, media career, politics and politicking under military dictatorship, immersion in community development efforts, and his ripening into early ‘elder-hood’ as a maturing statesman in his own right.

This gripping analytical narrative runs into 274 pages subdivided into twenty five chapters and the reader finds it difficult, once he has started, to put down the book with its easy flowing language, meticulous descriptive detail and enchanting story telling. Dr. Nwosu’s memory is almost photographic, his recall of names of persons, incidents and places impressive while the numerous pictures of different phases of his life that dot the book testify to careful record keeping – an eye on history.

Born on 25th February, 1960, at St Geralds Hospital, Kakuri, in the southern reaches of Kaduna metropolis in the north, Dr. Nwosu was the fifth child from his mother who was the first of his father’s three wives. While his father, Chief Yellow, Enyiocha Nwosu, was a prosperous big time merchant who traded in food items like garri and yam, Emeka’s mother made good in the soda soap making business and this economic success enabled both parents to build their own houses in different parts of Kaduna while his father put up an impressive, modern structure in his village, Umukabia, in 1962. The Nwosu’s economic Odyssey was Illustrative of the adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit of the Igbo which saw many of them dispersing to other parts of the country from their landlocked geographical location where they prospered through sheer industry and uncommon tenacity in the face of daunting odds.

Like most other Igbo children born outside the East at the time, the young Emeka was taken back to the village at about 1965 to commence schooling. As he writes, “Apart from introducing the child into formal education, the early home coming was also to enable the child learn the Igbo language and properly understand the Igbo culture, traditions, mores and customs”. Along with his age mates in Umukabia, Emeka got immersed in such daily activities as trekking a distance of about two kilometers to and from school every day, carrying out domestic work after school including fetching water from the nearby stream and firewood from the bush farm, a distance of about 3 kilometers, helping in preparing the farms during planting seasons as well as reading and writing letters for old parents in the village.

The author gratefully acknowledges the positive impact and molding influence which his being taken back to the village from the village at an early age had in shaping the kind of human being and citizen he has ultimately become. Such ethical orientation as sense of discipline and propriety, respect for elders, love for hard work, a high sense of achievement motivation, love for and commitment to family and community, honesty among others were inculcated in the young growing up in the village. In his words, “The core of my personality, I must say, was formed in the village. I believe the decision my parents took to bring me from Kaduna to our home town, Umukabia, at that formative age was a good one. It was that decision that made it possible for me to learn the language and understand and appreciate my cultural roots. And it is obvious to me that I cannot claim to be a better Nigerian without first being a good and well cultured Igbo man. The identity crisis which some Nigerians suffer today can be explained in the absence of such cultural grounding and orientation”.

The author’s mastery of Igbo idioms, language and culture is evident throughout the book. This no doubt is responsible for his strong bonding with members of his immediate and extended families as well as bred in him an abiding commitment to the welfare and development of his community, clan, state, Igbo land and Nigeria as a macro-entity. It is surely difficult for one brought up to embrace the tenets and habits of the fear of God, respect for elders and seniors, love of hard work and honesty, thirst for knowledge and education as well as sacrificial quest for the communal good to be attracted to such vices as cultism, rape, cybercrime, kidnapping for ransom, ritual killing, mindless materialism and many others which today have had such destructive consequences across Nigeria including Igbo land.

This bedrock of positive, life-affirming values enabled the author to succeed and thrive in his trajectory through life from his excellent attainments in education, media practice, political communication and consultancy, legislative aide at the National Assembly, active engagement with politicians at diverse levels as well as his remarkable leadership roles in the diverse spheres of life in which he has distinguished himself. Emeka’s autobiography exemplifies the Aristotelian conception of the exemplary citizen as that individual whose life is intricately intertwined with the pursuit of the communal good without which his solitary existence can have only marginal meaning.

Is there not some peculiar way in which, not just the Political Science discipline, but also the academic political scientists as its practitioners in particular, are implicated and stand largely condemned by the grossly derelict and decrepit state of post-colonial Nigeria 61 years after what the late Professor Bade Onimode derisively described as the attainment of ‘flag’ or ‘nominal’ independence? For, no matter what our leaders may grandiloquently pronounce as her (perennial?) potential as the fabled ‘giant of Africa’, Nigeria, relative to her population and resource endowment remains, in her abysmal failure, an embarrassment to Africa and the black race. But then, why single out Political Science and its scholarly devotees for special indictment for the sorry state of a country which, one of its brightest minds, the late Professor Chinua Achebe, looking back in part nostalgia to its colonial past, bemoaned the disappearance of a country that once thrived at least to a relative degree of satisfaction before it’s much-vaunted independence?

The answer is simple. The discipline’s classical masterminds, Plato and Aristotle, perceived and described, directly or indirectly, Political Science as the ‘Master Science’. Its disciplinary focus is the study of the art and science of the principles of organizing a well-ordered state and deploying its compulsory and over awing power to ensure that all other ‘partial’ associations and groups within its jurisdiction – the professions, economic entities, the arts, culture, academia, sports, culture, etc – exist and flourish.

In his immortal ‘Grammar of Politics’, one of my favorite political scientists, Professor Harold Laski, notes at least two senses in which politics, as the art and science of the organization and management of the state as well as deployment of power, constitutes the master, all-encompassing and most critical vocation. First, in one aspect, to Laski, “it becomes an organization for enabling the mass of men to realize social good on the largest possible scale”. Secondly, Laski posits that the state “exists to enable men, at least potentially, to realize the best that is in themselves”. In other words, the justification for the state’s existence, its legitimate monopoly of the machinery of coercion, and the willing submission of the society over which it superintends to its authority is its ability to create and maintain the environmental conditions for the maximization of human potential individually and collectively. In neither of these senses has the Nigerian post-colonial state justified its existence and legitimacy either under dictatorial or, supposedly, democratic rule.

The late Professor Billy Dudley, in his Presidential Address at the 1974 Annual Conference of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA), at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, also alluded to the ultimate responsibility of the political organization of the state, impliedly on a democratic basis, as inevitable for the attainment and promotion of the common good of society. In his words, “To return once more to Aristotle, politics is also civic education, an education in the way by which a people, in the words of Oakshott, attend to the arrangement of the society. To deny a people of politics is thus to deny them a civic education. It is, in brief, to deny that man can be human and conversely, to assert that we are but a herd of animals to be shepherded and guarded”. Does the visionless, inept, venal, and democratically denuded character of our politics, a function, largely, of the moral bankruptcy of our political elite across the board, not shorn us as a people of our defining human essence by forcing us to exist vulnerably in an anarchic and amoral society in which life has become the Hobbesian ‘solitary, nasty, brutish and

These were some of the central concerns of foremost political scientist and public sector reform advocate, Professor Tunji Olaopa, of the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), at a public lecture  he delivered at the Department of Political Science, the University of Ibadan, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, titled ‘The Legitimacy of Political Science as a Discipline in Nigeria”. Professor Olaopa’s point of departure was a column by the noted political scientist, Professor Ayo Olukotun, in the Punch Newspaper titled: “Elections: where are our political scientists?” It was an article in which Professor Olukotun “lamented not only the glaring invisibility of the Political Scientists in Nigeria on the national conversation about national development and progress but also about the role of public intellectuals in the national discourse.”  Professor Olaopa cited the near moribundity of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) and the virtual comatose state of its once illustrious journal, ‘Studies in Politics and Society’ to support Olukotun’s contention.

Incidentally, Professor Olaopa, easily the brightest and best mind in my political science class at the University of Ibadan both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, delivered his lecture in honour of Professors Bayo Adekanye and John Ayoade, who had just been appointed as Emeritus Professors by the Premier University. This piece is to commemorate the 80th birthday of one of these star scholars, Professor Adekanye, which is coming painfully and embarrassingly well after the date of the event on August 19, 2021. Then better late than never. The eminent political scientist, diligent researcher, meticulous analyst, and rigorous methodologist has been deservedly widely celebrated by the political science and academic community in Nigeria and beyond for his attaining the 80-year landmark this side of eternity.

But again, why celebrate such an accomplished, prolific, and prodigiously productive scholar with a piece that, impliedly, laments the seeming failures of contemporary political science in Nigeria? The reason is that I partly agree with the submission of Professor Olaopa that the discipline of political science, while it remains solid and robust across institutions, is not living up to the standard set by the generation of Professor Adekanye at least in terms of contributions to public discourse on finding enduring solutions to the country’s protracted political problems.

The distinguished professor has made indelible contributions particularly in his area of specialization, civil-military relations, conflict containment and resolution as well as peace remediation. I can still picture the young then Dr. Adekanye as he taught us in an undergraduate course titled ‘Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency’ in the early 1980s.

It was a course in which we studied, among others, the burgeoning anti-apartheid insurgency in South Africa, the insurgency in Algeria at the end of the Second World War, and the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya. Who knew at the time that Nigeria would herself have to contend with an insurgent uprising that has lasted for more than a decade? His collection of selected essays published in 2007 and titled ‘Linking Conflict Diagnosis, Conflict Prevention and Conflict Management in Contemporary Africa’ is an invaluable legacy to students and an invaluable resource for policymakers in conflict-ridden and post-conflict challenged societies.

Earlier, in 1999, Professor Adekanye published his seminal and prescient book, “The Retired Military as Emergent Power Factor in Nigeria”; a book in which he offered a scholarly and systematic analysis of the growing power and influence of retired military officers in contemporary Nigeria with a specific focus on the second republic and the latter Babangida years. His central contention in this book was that the traditional concept of civil-military relations in Nigeria that portrays a rigid demarcation between the civil society and military realms has become outmoded with the retired military elite becoming a growing cohesive power bloc playing key roles in the economy and other commanding heights of civil society. Surely, the investigations and findings of this work have to be extended by further studies that encompass the last two decades of this dispensation.

*This article was first published October 16, 2021

Despite the shift in the scheduled timetable, which would have seen both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hold their respective presidential primaries to elect presidential candidates for the 2023 polls this weekend, the exercise when it holds will be interesting and momentous for both. For this analysis, my focus will be the intra-party polls of the APC. For one, it is the ruling party and the election, in reality, is for it to win or lose just like it was the PDP through its arrogance and recklessness that virtually gifted power to the APC on a platter of gold in 2015. Incidentally, former President Goodluck Jonathan has been pontificating on what he describes as the mess that the primaries of the APC and PDP have been, complaining about the excessive monetization of the exercises. He forgets that it was his utter disregard for the internal democratic processes of the PDP and his utilization of presidential power to clinch the Party’s ticket for the 2015 elections at all costs that led to the party’s implosion and his emphatic loss leading to the APC’s ascendancy to power. Dr Jonathan lacks the moral integrity to preach intra-party democracy to anybody.

Again, but for the unfortunate and avoidable intra-party intrigues, rivalry and mutually destructive conflicts among its various factions and fractions that have hobbled its performance, the APC administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has generally led the country in a better direction away from the utter lack of vision, policy impoverishment and open venality of much of the PDP’S 16 years in power. In spite of earning substantially less revenue in its seven years in power so far than the PDP did in one and a half decades as a result of the sharp decline in international oil prices, the devastations of the unanticipated Coronavirus pandemic and now the implications of the Russia-Ukraine war, the APC has achieved more in terms of infrastructure provision, efforts to alleviate poverty as well as diversify the economy than the PDP did.

Rather, therefore, than completely abandon the policy direction and legacies of the Buhari administration as the PDP is naturally most likely to do if it regains power in 2023, what Nigeria needs after Buhari is a President who will appreciate and build on the successes of the administration while taking effective measures to address and ameliorate its failings particularly in the areas of national security and nurturing a new sense of inclusiveness in governance to revive the spirit of unity, nationalism and patriotism across Nigeria. It is obvious that only an APC candidate can do this. But can such a candidate emerge through a free, fair, transparent and credible intra-party process in its presidential primaries slated for Sunday?

One of the most enduring legacies of President Muhammadu Buhari, which he will bequeath to Nigeria after his tenure, is his respect for democratic principles and strict adherence to stipulated rules and regulations particularly with respect to the affairs of his party. Buhari selected a consensus National Chairman that emerged at the party’s last National Convention, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu, at the instance of governors and some other stakeholders of the party.

It is so easy to forget now that there was a time in this dispensation when a sitting President reportedly forced the resignation of his party’s National Chairman at gun point after a delicious meal of pounded yam in the latter’s residence! The said President imposed and removed party and elective public officials at will. He once publicly said that the eligibility of one of his party’s governorship candidates had ‘k-leg’ and unilaterally disqualified him even after he had emerged through the party primaries. That, fortunately for Nigeria, is not Buhari’s. It is thus ironical that some forces within the APC, obviously not confident   that their favorite aspirants can win open and transparent primaries, are surreptitiously prodding the President to interfere arbitrarily in the ongoing presidential nomination process and impose a ‘consensus’ candidate on the party. In doing so, they obviously pray and hope that they will be such a lucky one.

Others are plotting that those they believe they cannot defeat in competitive primaries be disqualified through opaque processes so that the system can be skewed to favor them. Anybody with this mindset is deficient of moral values and cannot be entrusted with the immense powers of Nigeria’s presidency. At least 25 persons have collected and returned the party’s nomination and expression of interest forms after paying the stipulated N100 million fees. Some of them have been enthusiastically crisis-crossing the country selling their qualities to the delegates and influential opinion moulders. Having done so, none should be scared to face the delegates in transparent primaries. For instance, Vice President Yemi Obasanjo, a major aspirant, has touted his loyalty to the President over the last seven years as his Deputy, the invaluable experience he has garnered in office as well as his achievements in justice sector reforms when he served as Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice in Lagos State during Tinubu’s tenure as governor between 1999 and 2007.

Those who interrogate Osinbajo’s claims point out that his achievements as Attorney General in Lagos State were those of a competent appointee who was under supervision and he cannot credibly appropriate the attainments of the leader of the team, the governor, who gave him an opportunity to serve. Given President Buhari’s style of delegating power and reposing absolute trust in those he assigns responsibilities, they insist that Osinbajo as Chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC), who had considerable role and influence in the management of the economy, a member of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) as well as Chairman of the administration’s Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC), grossly underperformed in these roles. Had he been more competent, creative and diligent in undertaking these responsibilities, the administration would have had a better economic record to parade. Furthermore, it remains curious that, after his re-election in 2019, President Buhari removed the administration of the massive Social Intervention Programmmes involving billions of Naira from Osinbajo’s office and created a substantive Ministry to handle the responsibility.

Another contestant, former Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, in wooing delegates across the states, has referred to his achievements as minister and his vast public service experience over the last two decades as Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly for eight years and then governor of the state for two terms. Amaechi’s critics admit that his performance as minister was impressive particularly in the completion of delivery of stagnated rail infrastructure projects. However, it is difficult to discern what his enduring legacies as Speaker of the House or governor in Rivers State. Furthermore, does someone who cannot offer cohesive and unifying leadership to his party in Rivers state do so for a complex polity like Nigeria? While Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, has engaged in entertaining media theatrics, the Ekiti State governor and Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), Dr Kayode Fayemi, has also been projecting his academic attainment, governance experience and role in the pro-democracy struggle. The first to declare his ambition and easily the frontline aspirant, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has boldly declared himself the best candidate in his nationwide consultations with delegates making ample reference to his achievement in turning around the fortunes of Lagos State as governor of the State between 1999 and 2007 and laying the foundation for the ongoing success story that has made the state a developmental reference point across the country. He has cited his private sector experience as a trained accountant and former Treasurer of Mobil Oil with tremendous positive impact on the financial fortunes of the company. His understanding of the economy and ability to identify and utilize the most competent hands in his administration were responsible for his ability to geometrically increase the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Lagos State from N600 million monthly in 1999 to over N8 billion monthly by 2007 and under successive administrations, it has grown to over N40 billion today.

It is obvious that no aspirant in the race has his cross-sectoral attributes and attainments including his legislative experience as a Senator in Nigeria’s Third Republic and Chairman of the Committee on Banking, Currency, Finance and Appropriations,  his frontline role in the pro-democracy struggle that birthed this dispensation in 1999, his championing the cause of true federalism as governors, his critical contributions along with President Buhari in building the alliance that resulted in the emergence of the APC and his pivotal results in the 2015 and 2019 presidential elections in which Buhari and the APC emerged victorious among others. His all inclusive administration in cosmopolitan Lagos State and his incomparable pan-Nigerian personal and political network will put him in vantage position to pull together a divided country.

An otherwise brilliant Osinbajo has not demonstrated a similar breadth of vision as illustrated by the alleged narrow religious insularity in making appointments to his office. In whose hands will the legacies of the Buhari administration be better protected? Osinbajo claims loyalty as one of his attributes but he has not batted an eyelid in denouncing and distancing himself from his undeniable political mentor and benefactor for personal advantage. Will he not also readily denounce and readily rubbish Buhari’s legacy if it becomes politically expedient to do so and power is firmly in his hands? It is a legitimate question.

Tinubu has stood stoutly by the administration and the president’s leadership through thick and thin over the last seven years even when it has come under intense criticism from diverse quarters. In the final analysis, it is for the delegates to make their decisions on the claims and counterclaims of the contending aspirants. But in the interest of the party’s continued cohesion, its fortunes in the 2023 elections and the stability of Nigeria’s democracy, they must be given the opportunity to make an open, free, transparent and credible choice, which will be easy to respect by all aspirants who are genuine democrats. It is my well-considered position that Asiwaju Tinubu is the best among the presidential aspirants in APC. He has the political infrastructure and intellectual capacity to lead our country to shared prosperity.