The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • APC’s growing ideological clarity

    Are there any fundamental differences in ideological orientation or philosophical outlook between Nigeria’s two hegemonic parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Many Nigerians would say no. Both are essentially two sides of the same coin. Their leading members jump from one to the other with amazing ease. Many of them are more preoccupied with the acquisition of power more for material accumulation than any transcendental purpose. But is this perception of the two behemoths as organizational Siamese twins in terms of underlying motivating beliefs, values, assumptions and policy or articulations true? I don’t think so. What the just concluded elections have shown is the gradual crystallization of both parties along distinct ideological polarities.

    Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), in particular has, at various forums during the campaigns and after, incisively and painstakingly enunciated details of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s policy initiatives that reveal the APC’s emergent progressive ideological character. Under the APC in the last four years, there has been a massive channeling of public resources not just towards public infrastructure but also to succor the most vulnerable segments of the citizenry.

    Professor Osinbajo has constantly pungently reiterated the fact that, although the PMB administration has since 2015 earned far less from oil than the preceding PDP administrations did, the APC has done more in terms of investment in infrastructure and poverty alleviation in four years than the PDP recorded in 16 years. The PDP has found this irritating, annoying and no more than a mantra of excuses for failure to deliver on the APC’s electoral promises. But Osinbajo’s facts seem incontrovertible.

    In the VP’s words, “…lack of integrity in leadership and corruption, in particular, was the reason why we were finding it difficult to make progress. I explained that that’s why we earned $383 billion in four years, 2010-2014, the highest ever in the history of our country, and yet Lagos – Ibadan Expressway was not done. Lagos-Kano railway and all that is being done today were not done then. We cannot point to a single major infrastructure project that was completed in the 10-year period despite the high earnings including power”. On the contrary he reels out verifiable facts about the accomplishments of the PMB administration in infrastructure in its first term in diverse sectors including roads, rail transportation, bridges and power across the country’s geo-political zones.

    The scale of the APC’s investment in its Social Investment Programme (SIP) in the last four years is particularly remarkable. Through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), for instance, loans ranging from N50,000 to N350,000 each were disbursed to more than 300,000 market women, traders, artisans and farmers across the country. This resulted in 349,000 beneficiaries opening new bank accounts/wallets thereby being drawn into the formal economy.

    Over two million petty traders gained access to micro-credit ranging from N50,000 to N150,000 through the Trader-Moni scheme administered by the Bank of Industry (BOI). Another 500, 000 traders operating through cooperatives benefitted from the Market-Moni micro credit scheme. And no less ambitious is the administration’s school feeding programme, which has provided a balanced meal for 9,300,892 pupils in 43,837 public primary schools in 26 states across Nigeria.

    Breaking this down, Osinbajo reveals that “the programme employs 95,422 cooks and over 100,000 smallholder farmers linked to the scheme” resulting in the “procurement, preparation and distribution of 594 cattle, 138,000 chickens, 6.8 million eggs and 83 metric tonnes of fish each week.” The positive implications of this kind of deliberate and unprecedented conditional cash transfer of resources towards those on the lowest rungs of society’s economic ladder cannot be overemphasized.

    It is of course obvious that with this massive infrastructure and social investment expenditure by the PMB administration, it is impossible for the grand larceny witnessed under the PDP, with a few individuals stealing humongous amounts of now recovered funds from state coffers, to take place under the APC. It is not that corruption has ceased to exist. But it cannot be practiced on a scale as injurious to the polity’s collective well being as witnessed during the GEJ administration.

    There is no doubt then that the APC is gaining in ideological clarity and organizational self definition. The party certainly does not derive intellectual inspiration from such extremist free market, neo-liberal economists such as Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek, W.W. Rostow  and his ‘non-communist manifesto’ or their political apostles such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or Donald Trump. For these, society is made up of atomistic individuals involved in a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ struggle. Free market fetishism, like electricity, permits of no feelings. Efficiency as epitomized by corporate profits is its guiding angel. State welfare to cater for the weak is not only indulgent; it breeds inefficiency, hurts business and hobbles progress. The state is an indispensable evil that must only be tolerated and its debilitating expansive proclivity curbed through aggressive privatization, deregulation, public sector downsizing and drastic curtailment of social subsidies. Rather, economically virile individuals and organizations must be given maximum opportunity to thrive and make profit so that wealth can trickle down for the benefit of the less able specie of the free market jungle.

    The APC’s Social Investment Programme would appear to draw intellectual inspiration from progressive economists like Dudley Seers or the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Amartya Sen. It was Seer who posited the three questions: ‘What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? And what has been happening to inequality?’ as the most critical in determining a society’s level of development. According to Seers, “If one of two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would be strange to call the result ‘development’ even if per capita income doubled”.

    Sen contends that inevitable components of any meaningful economic development must include freedom of opportunity, freedom to access credit as well as economic protection from abject poverty for the vast majority. As Professor Osinbajo never tires of pointing out, the APC’s massive social investment scheme would not even be on the cards at all but for PMB’s personal integrity and commitment to prudence, fiscal discipline and transparency in governance. That is why the resources are now available to be channeled for the benefit of the poor.

    Even then, Buhari’s inexplicable ambivalence, even indulgence, towards trusted members of his inner caucus who abuse his trust and taint his administration’s image must have been a factor in the PDP’s surprisingly impressive showing in the 2019 polls. If putting a check on such aberrant aides who constitute an albatross to his government is one of the promised ‘tough decisions’ to expect from Buhari in his second term, he may yet lay the foundation for a long stay in power by the progressives.

    The APC national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, a veteran labour activist and leader as well as brilliant progressive polemicist is no doubt best placed to give ideological direction to the APC. The more dynamic and result-oriented of the APC progressive governors obviously take their bearing from Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s theory and praxis of governance as paradigm- setting helmsman of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007.

    It is certainly for his commitment to the best interest of the party as well as his organizational, strategic and bargaining skills that party members defer to Tinubu honorifically as ‘National Leader’. Even more important and critical, in my view, is his role as intellectual torch bearer who seeks to constantly interrogate and make explicit what should be the ideological framework within which the APC’s vision and policies as a progressive party are grounded. This he did again during his 67th birthday colloquium when he stated clearly his perception of the right ideological course for the party to chart.

    In his words, “People the world over more than ever are questioning the centre-right conservative model that has, with few exceptions, governed the world for the last half century…Our pursuit of the Next Level cannot be achieved by blindly following the economic path of other nations. That would be tantamount to racing to live in a building just as its long term occupants were frantically rushing out, screaming that the edifice was crumbling. We dare not enter”.

    Continuing, Tinubu avers, “Our economy must be redefined to be an efficient yet moral social construct with the primary goal of optimizing the long-term welfare of the people through the sustained, productive and full employment of labour, land, capital and natural resources… To pull the nation from poverty, government must play a decisive role. It must at times direct and even develop markets and opportunities. This is nothing novel. I am only restating what the established economies did when they were young and assumed their trajectories toward growth”.

    This is certainly food for thought for the APC as the party strives to achieve greater ideological clarity even as Nigerians look forward to a better deal under Buhari’s Next Level agenda. It is instructive that as military head of state between 1983 and 1985 and even now, Buhari has continued to evince an instinctual mistrust for the free market orthodoxies of the Breton Woods Institutions.

     

    • Next week: Ideology and PDP’s Electoral Resurgence

  • All eyes on Osun

    If morning is an indication, as it is said, of the potentials embedded in the day, the first hundred days in office of the Osun State governor, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola, offers glimpses of the new heights of mature governance, meaningful development and sustainable prosperity to which the state of the living spring is capable of rising under the new helmsman’s guiding hand. It is certainly not for nothing that Mr. Oyetola holds a B.Sc. degree in insurance from the University of Lagos, an MBA in business administration from the prestigious institution and had a track record of successful and lucrative practice in the private sector spanning three decades before coming into government.

    Easily verifiable information from the administration’s information management team to commemorate Oyetola’s first 100 days in office on Saturday, March 9, shows a lot of solid work that has been done quietly and unobtrusively in diverse sectors including security, education, workers welfare, healthcare as well as roads rehabilitation and construction within the three months span. Feeder roads in rural areas are being graded across the various Local Government Councils to boost agriculture while 10 strategic roads are being constructed to link major urban agglomerations.

    In addition to the Osogbo and Ifetedo General Hospitals, which are being comprehensively rehabilitated, revitalized and re-equipped in the first phase of the healthcare programme, 332 Comprehensive Health Centres across the wards in the state are being rejuvenated with the procurement of HIV test kits, consumables and basic medical equipment worth N87.7 million for these grassroots facilities. To boost education, the governor on Thursday, 7th February, 2019, distributed learning aids, standard furniture, games equipment and computers to schools in each of the three senatorial districts.

    Making the most prudent use of scarce resources, the Oyetola administration resuscitated 20 Armoured Personnel Carriers to enhance the crime fighting capacity of the police in the state while also refurbishing seven fire stations and repairing 15 fire fighting vehicles to boost emergency response capacity. While his administration has been paying the full salaries of workers monthly as and at when due, the prevalent industrial harmony suggests that the workers have full confidence in Oyetola’s pledge to pay outstanding accumulated salary arrears in due course.

    Perhaps the most important initiative in Osun in Oyetola’s first 100 days is the forthcoming first State of Osun Economic Summit, which in the words of Sola Fasure, one of the governor’s aides, is “meant to generate a robust and sustainable economic development template that will launch the state into a boom. With all arrangements already in place, the stage is set to ignite what will be the most significant activity in the state since its creation in 1991. The blocks are being built as the direction the administration is going is getting clear. It is an encouraging one with the governor steadying his feet to provide quality leadership for the state”.

    Against this background of the unfolding purposeful, focused and clear-headed governance in Oyetola’s Osun, the majority judgement of the Osun State Election Petitions Tribunal, which declared the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke, as the winner of last September’s governorship election in Osun is an irritating distraction. Mr. Oyetola and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have since appealed the judgement. In their majority judgement, Justice Peter Obiorah and Justice Adegboyega Gbolagunte returned Adeleke as governor elect. They declared that the rerun election of September 27 last year was unlawful and invalid as there was no basis for it.

    Furthermore, the majority judgement cancelled the results from 17 polling units due to what it described as substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act. That non-compliance was the omission to enter the data for accreditation and ballot papers accounting in the appropriate columns of Forms EC8A in the affected polling units. Thereafter, it resorted to a complex exercise in judicial arithmetic wherein it added and subtracted figures based on what it considered valid and invalid votes enabling it to declare Adeleke as winner of the election.

    Interestingly, the Chairman of the Tribunal, Justice Muhammad Sirajo, demurred. He delivered the minority judgement but did so in a most lofty, mature and even tempered manner saying “I participated actively and contributed immensely by personally writing some portions of the judgement just delivered”. Yet, he strongly disagreed with the major pillars of the minority judgement and, in his minority judgement, ruthlessly demolished them. Was the rerun election of September 27, 2018, unlawful and invalid? Justice Sirajo disagrees completely with the minority judgement on this and compellingly states his case.

    In the process Justice Sirajo referred to the Supreme Court decision in the case of Faleke vs INEC (2016), which upheld the power of INEC to declare an election inconclusive and order a rerun in Kogi State. He quoted the Supreme Court thus in the said Faleke vs INEC judgement: “The first respondent was correct when it declared the election of 21/11/2015 inconclusive on the ground that the margin of win between the two front-runners at the election was less than the total number of registered voters in 91 affected polling units where elections were cancelled”. Can the Elections Petition Tribunal overrule the apex court on the matter? The appeal court will decide.

    Did the non entry of data for accreditation and ballot papers for 23 units in the requisite columns in form EC8A amount to substantial non-compliance weighty enough to compel the cancelation of results in the affected units? Justice Sirajo disagrees. His words, “In this petition, it is not in dispute that about 90 per cent of the processes involved in the conduct of election in a polling unit have been fully complied with.  Voters were duly accredited before they cast their votes. At the conclusion of voting, ballot papers were sorted out and counted. The presiding officers announced the votes scored by the parties, entered the figures in the result sheets and signed. The party agents counter-signed the result sheets and collected copies…I hold that the omission to record columns for accreditation and balloting accounting on the result sheets, though a non-compliance, did not amount to substantial non-compliance”.

    Indeed, Justice Sirajo, referring to the requisite sections of the Electoral Act, had earlier averred that “The degree of compliance required to validate an election is substantial compliance. For any non-compliance to have the effect of invalidating an election, such non-compliance must in itself be substantial and must have substantially affected the result of the election”. His logic seems to me crystal clear.

    Does the Election Petition Tribunal have the power to declare the winner of an election after subtracting and adding votes following the cancelling of specified results? Justice Sirajo says no. He anchors his position on Section 140(2) of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), which provides that “Where an election or tribunal nullifies an election on the ground that the person who obtained the highest votes at the election was not qualified to contest the election, or that the election was marred by substantial irregularities or non-compliance with the provisions of this Act, the election tribunal or court should not declare the person with the second highest votes or any other person as elected, but shall order for a fresh election”. Again, this is crystal clear. But the appeal court will decide.

    Given the commendable, courageous and path-breaking foundation laid by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola for the revolutionary transformation of Osun State particularly through massive provision of infrastructure in diverse sectors, substantial job creation and a comprehensive social welfare scheme for the poor and vulnerable, why did the APC win the 2018 election only by such a slim margin? The problem of salary payment was not peculiar to Osun. It was compounded in Osun by the sheer breathtaking scale of Aregbesola’s investment in the radical modernization of infrastructure as well as the provision of social welfare services to the poor and this is certainly laudable. Perhaps then the problem was some of Aregesola’s avoidable controversial policies particularly with regard to education and the religious sensibilities of critical segments of the citizenry.

    That is exactly why many believe that Oyetola is just the right man to succeed the pioneering visionary Ogbeni. Oyetola as Chief of Staff between 2010 and 2018 was a key actor in conceiving and implementing the Aregesola Osun transformation template. It makes for desirable continuity. He already has a good rapport with key stakeholders especially workers who hold Oyetola in high regard for his calmness, patience, understanding and maturity. Unlike Ogbeni, Oyetola is no impassioned ideologue. He is a technocrat with a subtle, suave corporate approach to governance.

    Ogbeni’s volcanic revolutionary style was necessary to chart a new path for Osun in the face of stiff opposition from entrenched, reactionary political forces in the state represented by the dislodged and very bitter PDP elements. Now is the time for Oyetola’s calm, sober approach to governance in a manner that can keep Osun on the path of accelerated progress with as little avoidable disruption as possible.

    The gift of exquisite dancing skills is certainly not a disqualification for the demanding office of governor. But an individual who cannot summon the ambition to furnish himself with the most basic education is unlikely to inspire any state to enviable heights. All eyes are certainly on Osun as we await the court of appeal verdict on Oyetola’s appeal.

  • Lagos and the O to ge meltdown

    They may as well be aptly christened the “O to ge” elections. I refer to the February 23rd and March 9th, 2019, national and state executive as well as legislative polls, which are being concluded today with supplementary elections in five states. Of course, O to ge has now become part and parcel of the ever fascinating and evolving grammar of Nigerian politics. It is the quaint Yoruba expression for ‘enough is enough’, reflective of the idiomatic phraseology of the Yoruba of Kwara state extraction, in North-Central Nigeria. From east to west and north to south, the new no-nonsense O to ge mood of the Nigerian electorate has seen bloated egos deflated mercilessly and one Lilliputian political David after the other not only felling but ruthlessly decapitating overrated electoral behemoths with pleasurable relish.

    Not surprisingly, Kwara, which gifted the nation the succinct and surgical O to ge sobriquet, has also been the most visible and prominent theatre for the manifestation of this near revolutionary phenomenon in contemporary Nigerian politics. The Saraki dynasty had for close to five decades been the dominant dynamo in the politics of Kwara. In the wake of the O to ge revolutionary gale, the imperious political tactician, who takes no prisoners, Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, not only lost his re-election bid to the Senate, his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stranglehold on the politics of the state was decisively broken.

    Ironically, the prime victim of the O to ge blitzkrieg in Kwara, Dr. Bukola Saraki, must also be credited for, even if subconsciously, sowing the seeds that have become a veritable new Iroko in the forest of Kwara politics. Ever since this writer attained enough political consciousness to serve as a teen age polling agent of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the heart land of Ilorin, (Pakata), in 1979, the late Dr. Olusola Saraki, the one and only Oloye, had maintained an unbroken suzerainty over the politics of Kwara state.

    A most colourful, assured and masterly majority leader of the Senate on the platform of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic, the Saraki patriarch bestrode the politics of Kwara like a colossus. He had a hand in the emergence, and sometimes untidy exit from office, of practically every elected governor in Kwara for over three and a half decades. These include Prince Adamu Attah, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, Mr. Mohammed Shaaba Lafiagi, and Col. Mohammed Lawal (rtd). Oloye’s crowning glory was the election of his ruthlessly ambition son, Bukola, as governor of Kwara between 2003 and 2011. But in that triumph were embedded the seeds of Oloye’s political demystification, a development that reportedly left him heartbroken till the end of his days.

    Apparently convinced of the political impermeability of the political dynasty he had come to personify in Kwara, Oloye most inexplicably wanted his daughter, Gbemi Saraki, to succeed her brother as governor of the state. But Bukola, through wily tactical manouvres said no – O to ge. The younger Saraki ensured that he installed in office after him a successor of his own choosing, Mr. Abdulfattah Ahmed, the outgoing governor.

    In defying and defenestrating his father, Bukola sowed the wind. If the great Oloye could be so easily dislodged and caged, many Kwarans wondered, then the seemingly invincible dynasty must have feet of clay after all. Bukola reaped the whirl wind on February 23rd and March 9th. The O to ge message in Kwara soared on the wings of the inexcusable underperformance and underdevelopment of an otherwise richly endowed state in terms of human and natural resources punching embarrassingly below her weight. The rest is history. Fast forward then, to Lagos.

    On Thursday, February 28th, 2019, a group, the Free Lagos Orange Movement surfaced in Lagos ostensibly to replicate the Kwara O to ge revolution in the Centre of Excellence. Claiming that the group had no permit to organize a protest rally, the police prevented the Free Lagos Orange Movement from staging its demonstration at the Lagos Airport Hotel. However, one of the conveners of the group, a former President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), enunciated its aim to the press.

    In his words, “The Free Lagos Orange Movement is a non-political movement that is aimed at ensuring that we have good governance in Lagos State. We feel that Tinubu has had his time as the emperor of Lagos since 1998, and we are trying to mobilize Lagosians to say no to continuity of Lagos by Tinubu”. This is indeed most astonishing. So Lagos has had one emperor presiding over its affairs since 1999 and not governors democratically elected in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and now 2019?

    Of course, the point that Agbakoba and the Free Lagos Orange Movement are trying to make is obvious. They seek to establish an equivalency between the Saraki and Tinubu political dominance in Kwara and Lagos, respectively, since 1999. Political influence and electoral dominance are not alien to democracy. However, every dominant political tendency will ultimately stand or fall on the basis of the verdict of the electorate on its impact on their lives, positive or native, as determined in free, fair and credible elections.

    It is thus instructive that the APC in Lagos won the March 9, 2019, governorship election by a more emphatic margin than it did in 2015 – a landslide. It was a grievous error of judgement for the Free Lagos Orange Movement to have extrapolated so carelessly from the politics of Kwara to Lagos without a more rigorous analysis. In the first place, the kind of feudal-oriented and essentially backward dynastic politics foisted on Kwara by the Sarakis over the last four decades is impossible to replicate in any South-West State least of all a cosmopolitan megalopolis like Lagos.

    Any dominant political tendency in Lagos can only sustain its relevance and enjoy continued popular support if it is perceived as utilizing its mandate to pursue the greatest good of the greatest number of the people.

    For 16 years between 1999 and 2015, Nigeria not only stagnated but even retrogressed badly on virtually all fronts – infrastructure, security, social welfare, poverty indices etc under the PDP. That fortunately has not been the fate of Lagos. With Asiwaju Bola Tinubu laying a solid foundation for the revitalization of the state and Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) as well as Akinwunmi Ambode building admirably on this inheritance, Lagos has witnessed a steadily incremental improvement in revenue capacity, modernization and expansion of infrastructure, enhancement in the quality and affordability of social services as well as better security among others.

    Equally instructive is the fact that not even the obstacles placed on the path of Lagos by a largely adversarial PDP-controlled centre between 1999 and 2015 have been able to impede the state’s progress.

    It is all too easy to assume that all this occurred through happenstance or sheer magic. In reality, it is a function of careful planning, policy focus and consistency as well as continuity in visionary governance since 1999. This in turn has been made possible partly because in June 1999, the Tinubu administration transformed the previously existing Plans, Programmes and Budget Bureau (PPBB) into a full- fledged Lagos State Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget (MEPB) as the organizational fulcrum for the long term development planning of the state. It is under the aegis of the Ministry that a Master plan has been produced and systematically implemented and fine-tuned by successive administrations with the period 1999 – 2024 as its first phase.

    Furthermore, Tinubu’s extraordinary ability to identify and develop talents as well as give them wings to fly on their own steam and become impactful leaders in their own right has been a key defining feature of governance in Lagos since 1999. This is of course contrary to the feudal ethos that has characterized governance in Kwara since 1999. Over the last 20 years, governance in Kwara has been plagued by policy adhocism, paucity of vision and an ascriptive rather than merit-driven mode of public appointments and elite recruitment with negative consequences for progress and development.

    Could Kwara have charted an alternative development course with more positive developmental outcomes than the pathetic situation in which the state finds itself today? Most certainly. Dr. Saraki has the talent and ability to have charted a transformational path for Kwara during his eight years as governor. The opportunity was unfortunately, in my view, squandered. Those who know him, say that the outgoing Kwara State governor is a man of competence and ability. But what template of governance did he inherit? What legacy of excellence in governance did he have to inspire him to rise above the mediocre? Was he bequeathed a governance ecology that would have enabled merit to thrive? Those are some of the questions that the Free Lagos Orange Movement should have carefully interrogated before jumping into the partisan fray in Lagos.

    Has Lagos then arrived at her Eldorado? Most certainly not. No polity ever does. Lagos is a work in progress. The mega city continues to experience her share of environmental, bureaucratic, ethical and several other challenges. However, Lagos remains the most successful state model of developmental democracy, economic emancipation and social progress in Nigeria over the last 20 years. That is why the O to ge movement that shook Kwara to its foundations suffered an anticlimactic meltdown in Lagos on March 9th.

    It is certainly not for nothing that Lagos remains the prime destination of choice for millions of Nigerians and even beyond who throng the state daily in search of success and prosperity. Perhaps the O to ge revolution will propel Kwara to discover and begin to actualize her immense potentials as a state.

  • Setting Lagos free?

    After one of their meetings to deliberate on the contentious new minimum wage in Abuja, the 36 state governors insisted that there was no way they could afford to pay the proposed N30000 demanded by labour without going bankrupt. But they made one exception. In the words of the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), Zamfara State governor, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, “We are not able to pay N18000 today. When the President assumed office, 27 states were not able to pay; not that they chose not to pay; now you say N30000 how many of them can pay? We will be bankrupt…Like Lagos that is paying about N7 billion as salaries, if you say it should pay N30000 now it will be N13 billion. From our calculation, it will be only Lagos State that will be able to pay N30000”. But then, the question is why will Lagos be able to pay? Her strategic location and population size are not enough to explain the geometric growth in the fiscal capacity of the Lagos State government since 1999.

    When people refer off handedly to the relative fiscal autonomy of Lagos today, they forget that it was not always so. Let us cast our minds back to Y2000 shortly after Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office. He had a running battle with the comrade Ayodele Akele-led Lagos State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) because of the state’s inability to pay the then proposed N7,500 minimum wage. There was a stalemate for close to 3 months. The governor was at least twice pelted with pure water and other assorted items at Alausa. Akele was adamant. Tinubu was unyielding. What was the stark reality? The state’s Internally Generated Revenue was N600 million monthly. The public service wage bill was N800 million monthly.

    Tinubu insisted the federal allocation would have to be expended on infrastructure and critical social services for the populace. He said he could not just pay salaries and shut down the state. At that time, Lagos was so much like a war zone. There were mountains of refuse on the streets. The roads were in terrible state. Residents were carrying assorted basins all over Lagos in search of water. Bank robberies and other crimes were occurring almost on a daily basis. School children were carrying benches and chairs on their heads to and from school every day. Traffic was chaotic. School walls were collapsing routinely injuring and killing children.

    So bad was the situation    that President Olusegun Obasanjo described the city with characteristic lack of charity and perhaps some relish as no better than a jungle. At the end of the day there was a compromise with labour but the state had to downsize the workforce.

    The story of the financial buoyancy of Lagos today is a function of immense hard work as well as bold, innovative and creative thinking. Under the guiding hands of three  successive governors, Tinubu, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), and the incumbent, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the IGR of Lagos State had attained a quantum leap from N14.64 billion per year in 1999 to over N34 billion per month today. It is a feat that did not just happen per chance. What were some of the measures responsible for this achievement? Let us cite some. For instance, the state undertook comprehensive tax reforms culminating in the introduction of the electronic tax Clearance Cards (etCC) as early as 1999, which is a vital, fraud free and convenient vessel of tax payers’ records that significantly plugged revenue leakages.

    Another innovation in Lagos State was the early introduction of the Electronic Banking System/Revenue Collection Monitoring Project (EBS/RCM), which enabled the state in partnership with the private sector to create an enhanced tax payers base leading to substantial increase in IGR. The state’s Board of Internal Revenue (BIR), now Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS), was radically professionalized, modernized and granted operational autonomy again with positive impact on revenue generation.

    After protracted negotiations with stakeholders, Lagos State introduced the Land Use Charge Law No. 11 of 2001, which had yielded a total of N3.5 billion between 2001 and March 2007. The numbers must be more impressive now. Ibile Holdings Limited (IHL) was strengthened and recapitalized as the Special Purpose Vehicle for the state’s investment policy. For example, it was through IHL that Lagos State invested N69million in Celtel (former Airtel) in 2001, grew the investment to N3.48 billion in 2003 and by the time she divested in 2006, Lagos State reaped N19 billion, which was ploughed into the provision of infrastructure.

    Even as the state systematically grew her internally generated revenue, she devised ingenious financial engineering strategies for the radical modernization of infrastructure in diverse sectors to boost economic prosperity. For instance, Lagos State was the first government to go to the capital market in 2002 to source long term funds to finance its long term projects. In September 2002, Lagos State floated its 1st 2005/2006 Floating Rate Redeemable Bond through which it raised the sum of N15 billion at the capital market for scores of critical infrastructure projects across the state.  The bond was finally redeemed in September 2009.  The federal and some other state governments were later to exploit this option for project finance.

    Suffice to say that it is impossible to tell the tale of the still evolving but all the same remarkable radical transformation of Lagos State without mentioning the invaluable contributions of the APC governorship candidate, Mr. Jide Sanwo-Olu and his Deputy, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat. As Special Adviser, Corporate Affairs, Secretary of the State Tenders Board, Commissioner for Economic Planning & Budget, Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pensions and Managing Director of the Lagos State Development & Property Corporation (LSDPC) at various times, Sanwo-Olu, a graduate in surveying and former banker has been a critical part of economic management and governance in Lagos State over the last two decades.

    Under Dr. Obafemi Hamzat as Commissioner for Science and Technology, the Ministry, representing the city of Lagos, in December 2005 and December 2006, respectively, clinched the first position in the Science and Technology category of the prestigious World Leadership Awards, which both held in London. He was no less exemplary as Commissioner for Works in Lagos State and later Special Adviser on Works at the federal level. Both cerebral men had considerable private sector experience before coming into the public sector.

    Running for the office for the third time, the PDP candidate, Mr. Jimi Agbaje, remains as likeable.  A pharmacist, he comes across as a decent gentleman, entrepreneur as well as civil society and pro-democracy activist. His deputy, Mrs Haleemat Busari is a lawyer with invaluable corporate governance experience in the private sector. Apart from being a Muslim activist, she brings the gender factor to the ticket. Neither in private sector nor in public sector governance can Agbaje and his deputy the duo of Sanwo-Olu and Obafemi Hamzat.

    Agbaje’s catchy campaign slogan is ‘Let’s set Lagos free’. The interesting thing is that he seeks to set Lagos free on the platform of the PDP, which for over 16 years led Nigeria deeper into the bondage of corruption, poverty and underdevelopment. Agbaje’s case cannot be helped by the fact that for 16 years the PDP controlled federal government unconscionably abandoned critical infrastructure all over Lagos state, leaving them in a state of utter dilapidation to the socio-economic and environmental detriment of Lagos.  Is it not the Buhari APC administration that has begun to work frenetically on these long abandoned projects in the last three years Agbaje will surely be asked?

    According to Agbaje, “When a formula does not give you the result you want, you change it! Lagosians must change this unprofitable team committed to govern for their own selfish interest”. But Agbaje’s critics will contend that he canvassed support for Jonathan in 2015 despite being intelligent enough to know what most Nigerians knew – he ran a hopelessly corrupt, selfish and inept government. Of course, most Nigerians voted to change the PDP unprofitable team.

    Change at the centre in 2015 had become imperative because of the sheer scale of the venality of the PDP and the Jonathan administration in particular leading to the squandering of 16 years in a nation’s life. But can anybody really go about Lagos except he or she is blind and claim no appreciable progress has been made over the last two decades? Agbaje is a gentleman. I believe that truth is his credo.

    Has Lagos arrived at the Promised Land? No one will say that. But she has certainly crossed the red sea. As the Buhari administration, its flaws notwithstanding, strives to bring the rest of Nigeria out of Egypt, where the PDP had left her marooned for 16 years, will Lagosians heed Agbaje’s call to journey back with the PDP across the red sea? It is unlikely.

  • INEC and conspiracy theories

    Nothing could be more inexplicable. Listen to the words of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Kwara State, Mallam Garba Mamdami, reportedly speaking in Ilorin on Wednesday before the commencement of the distribution of critical election materials from the office of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Local Government Areas in the state. According to the REC, “The result sheets for Kwara were found in our FCT office in Abuja and they are going to be sent today. I will be here (CBN) till they bring it. Also the results sheet of Lagos was found here. I have sent it back, that of Lagos was also found in Nasarawa. You can see the reason the election was postponed”. It is of course reassuring that Mamdami said that the noted lapses had been corrected in the state and that the sensitive polls items were already being moved from Ilorin to the far flung Local Government Areas such as Baruten, Kaiama and Pategi as at Wednesday.

    However, against the background of these kinds of revelations across the country,  it is not surprising that assorted conspiracy theories have been espoused attributing the last ditch postponement of last Saturday’s presidential and national assembly elections till today to insider collusion by elements within INEC with external partisan interests to compromise the polls. In its immediate reaction to the postponement, for instance, the PDP and its candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, alleged that INEC acted under pressure from the APC and the presidency whichallegedly envisaged the ruling party’s imminent defeat had the elections gone ahead.

    Another variant of this allegation was that the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmud Yakubu, preferred to postpone the election rather than cave in to alleged pressure from some quarters to hold the exercise in a staggered manner purportedly designed to favour the ruling party. The forceful condemnation of the polls postponement by the APC National Chairman, comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the party’s National Caucus as well as the presidency, however, seriously weakens the plausibility of this thesis. For, they have remorselessly put down INEC as an epitome of organizational inefficiency and incompetence stressing that the electoral umpire had been provided with all the resources it required to deliver effectively on its mandate.

    Oshiomhole has vehemently interrogated the rationale for INEC to have waited till after 2am early on February 16, when most normal people would presumably be asleep, to announce its inability to conduct the elections despite assuring Nigerians virtually every day till then of its readiness for the exercise. And the Minister of State for Aviation, Mr. Sirika Hadi, has debunked the INEC Chairman’s claim that weather challenges were partly responsible for the logistical glitches experienced by the commission in delivering electoral materials to critical destinations on schedule by air.

    Given the colossal socio-economic and psychological costs attendant on the postponement as well as the grave damage once again done to the country’s international image, it is not surprising that President Muhammdu Buhari has stated unequivocally that the incident will still have to be thoroughly investigated after the polls. Indeed, the APC has gone on to allege not only that the main opposition party had penetrated and compromised critical operatives within INEC to help skew the election in its favour but also that the PDP had prior information about the impending postponement, a development which the ruling party insists caught it unawares.

    The onus is certainly on the ruling party to offer credible proof for its allegations. But then, since Atiku had alleged that INEC was pressurized by a jittery presidency to abort the polls from holding last Saturday, what explains the rather tame and seemingly kid glove treatment by the PDP of an electoral umpire it claimed worked in cahoots with the ruling party to truncate its envisaged electoral triumph through polls postponement? The PDP has inexplicably left the APC to vehemently take on INEC on this lapse as if the ruling party was the one in opposition!

    If the allegations by the APC are true, the ruling party must have naively discounted its own oft-repeated mantra as regards the capacity and desperation of corruption to fight back in the face of President Muhammadu Buhari’s unprecedented onslaught against the monster, a war that has claimed the scalp of many a top PDP big shot.

    Of course, one must sympathize with the INEC and its leadership who are operating in a perennially charged political atmosphere of intense competition for the economically beneficial control of state power, a struggle that is all too often difficult to differentiate from war. In such a context, critical state institutions such as electoral, judicial and electoral agencies tend to be inexorably drawn from their supposedly non-partisan heights into the political fray with unsavoury consequences for their credibility and integrity as well as the efficacy and stability of the political system as a whole.

    In the run up to this year’s election, it has hardly surprising that heavy weather has been made by the opposition of the presence of one of the 12 INEC national commissioners, Mrs Amina Zakari, within the top echelon of the commission. This is because of her purported familial relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari. It has not mattered to the critics that her membership of INEC predated Buhari’s ascension to power or that one electoral commissioner in a complex organization like INEC is unlikely to be able to do much to skew electoral outcomes without extensive internal collusion.

    Yes, there should be cause for worry if there is credible suspicion of external partisan interests having access to sensitive insider information through unscrupulous INEC functionaries who violate their oaths of office. But it would appear that the critics have been most unfair to Mrs Zakari after all. It is now obvious that officials from some other parts of the country play roles even more critical than that of this woman in the elections administration process.

    It is noteworthy in this regard that in the cause of investigating the logistical failures allegedly responsible for the postponement of the February 16 elections, the Directorate of State Services (DSS), controversially invited a number of top INEC Staff to interact with its functionaries, an invitation that was later stepped down obviously for political reasons. Those earlier invited include the Director of INEC’s operations and logistics department, Professor Okechukwu Ibeano, Director of Information and Communication Technology, Chidi Nwafor, Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Osaze Uzzi and the Assistant Director of ICT, Bimbo Oladunjoye.

    The allegation that an individual was specifically planted in INEC to manipulate election for some partisan interests certainly did not take into account the organizational complexities of INEC and the details of functional allocation of responsibilities down the line. Unfortunately, the critics are unlikely to apologize to Mrs Zakari. Sure, the commissioners and staff of INEC cannot be recruited from outer space. It is also impracticable to import expatriate functionaries from purportedly neutral international agencies to conduct elections in a country of the size and complexity of Nigeria.

    Functionaries of INEC will necessarily belong to specific ethnic communities, states, regions, religious faiths and cultural entities within Nigeria. They will as human beings and necessarily political animals also have their individual political views and inclinations. How do we then ensure that officials of this critical electoral umpire adhere to their oaths of office and perform their functions devoid of ethno-regional considerations, religious bias or political partisanship?

    First, the terms and conditions of service of such staff must be attractive and generous enough to reduce vulnerability to financial inducement to sabotage elections. Secondly, the cost of violating their oath of office and succumbing to primordial or financial considerations to manipulate elections must be raised to become exceedingly high. Proven cases of election rigging and manipulation at any stage of the electoral process must attract very severe consequence.

    Election rigging enables governments to come to power in utter violation of the genuine will of the people. It is an act of violence that is the equivalent of military coup. Those who indulge in the atrocity must do so fully aware of the dire consequences if they are caught. Only the most draconian measures can help to force our errant Nigerian political elite to embrace attitudes and values conducive to any true transition to modernity. This is why this column is not unduly perturbed at the thought of ballot box snatchers being shot on sight.

     

    Buhari, Atiku and election rigging

    PMB’s directive to the armed forces and security agencies to deal ruthlessly with ballot box snatchers during today’s elections has elicited outrage in some quarters. He has been accused of exhibiting disregard for the rule law and disdain for due process. His critics insist that the Electoral Act provides sufficient penalties for ballot snatching and other forms of election rigging, which is at least two years imprisonment. But if widespread ballot box snatching provokes large scale breakdown of law and order it may be impossible even for courts to sit to enforce the Electoral Act. Draconian measures are needed to bring about some sanity in this regard.

    In siding with critics of PMB on this matter, Atiku gives the impression that he will be soft on election rigging if he is elected President. This brings to mind Atiku’s recent stunning revelation in Lagos that as Vice President, he was the mastermind behind the massive rigging by the PDP of the governorship elections in the South-west in 2003, an onslaught which only Tinubu’s Lagos was able to understand.Unapologetic, Atiku had asked his audience to give him another opportunity to repeat history perhaps on a scale of grander atrociousness. Ballot snatchers will certainly not be unhappy with an Atiku presidency.

  • Buhari or Atiku?

    As Nigerians go to the polls today to elect a President and National Assembly members that will preside over the affairs of the nation for the next four years from May 29, it is all too easy and tempting to assess the country’s evolving democracy from an overly pessimistic, even cynical, purview. Despite the plethora of parties and candidates, the election is a straight contest between the incumbent All Prospective Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Many consider this a dismal scenario. They contend that we are most likely set to vote mechanically without choosing, as the late Professor Claude Ake would put it, since there appears to be no genuine alternatives to select from.

    Apart from their organizational spread and relative structural solidity, it is argued that the two dominant parties are neither ideologically nor philosophically dissimilar. Again, there are those who would prefer any of the nearly half dozen younger, more articulate as well as rhetorically and sartorially seemingly more appealing candidates to the two leading septuagenarians contenders, President Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who they dismiss as both unsuited to offer visionary, effective and competent leadership at this time.

    Furthermore, the nature of our politics is still seen, to some extent rightly, as  characterized, largely, by a vicious struggle for power by all means and at all costs mostly for self-serving pecuniary ends rather than altruistic, developmental motivation.  Yet, there is still, in my view, justifiable reason to take a more optimistic view of the country’s unfolding political development. The intensity of the political campaigns across the country suggests that no longer can the political class take the electorate for granted. No more can incumbency breed complacency. 2015 remains a lesson to everyone. Despite his age and the acute illness he went through early in his administration, President Buhari campaigned in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Atiku has also run an energetic and exhaustive campaign nationwide.

    Issues of performance and merit have also been significant in the run up to the election and will have an impact on the likely outcome. The speed with which the PDP has bounced back as a force to contend with in this contest, despite its devastating defeat as the party in power at the centre in 2015 and the resultant exposure of its morally repugnant entrails as a result of Buhari’s anti-corruption onslaught, is partly due to the perception of the APC’s performance in the last three and a half years. There has no doubt been a gap between the high expectations of change that the APC aroused during its campaign in 2015 and the party’s actual performance in power leading to some degree of frustration and disappointment among many of its hitherto enthusiastic supporters.

    However, an appreciable number of the electorate is also perceptive enough to assess the performance of the APC against the backdrop of the utter lack of vision, sheer incompetence and monumental corruption of the preceding 16 years in power of the PDP particularly the incredibly perverse six years of President Goodluck Jonathan. No one realistically expected the APC to magically correct in four years the cumulative rot and decay of over and one and a half decades that it inherited from the PDP.

    It is indeed significant that, despite the country earning less revenue from oil as a result of the sharp drop in oil prices under the APC compared to the PDP years, the Buhari administration in three and a half years has achieved more in infrastructure renewal across the country, diversification of the economy as well as massive investment in social intervention projects to benefit the poor on a scale unprecedented in this dispensation. Not surprisingly, therefore, the APC administration’s inexcusable unforced errors are insufficient to prevent what many analysts predict will be its inevitable victory in today’s elections.

    There is no reason whatsoever why either Buhari or Atiku should be offhandedly dismissed as being less capable than any of the other light weight candidates intensely admired in some politically ineffectual elite circles. Both men, no matter their limitations, are the two most exposed in terms of the management of public affairs over a wide scope and range of all candidates on the ballot. They have continually been in the public arena for the better part of the last four decades and their strengths and weaknesses well known.

    Some of the other bright candidates in other parties who clearly can make no impact in this election can always work towards the future. The enterprise of party formation, building and organization is no tea party. It is hard, back breaking work. In politics, it is unrealistic to expect to climb a tree from the top.

    The choices we have before us in this election realistically are Buhari or Atiku. Some cast their lot with Atiku on the basis of perceived competence and ability to run the economy efficiently. He and his running mate, Peter Obi, are successful businessmen. They have promised to bring their private sector acumen to public sector governance and create millions of job even though they have not told us how. Atiku had ample opportunity to display his ability in this regard as Vice President to General Obasanjo. In the first term before things fell apart between the two, he was practically in charge of the economy as his boss gallivanted the globe as an international salesman for Nigeria. Our best memory of that period is certainly not of creative and dynamic economic management. It was of the flawed privatization process characterized by sleazy opacity and debilitating cronyism.

    Others contend that Atiku has a penchant for attracting talent to work with him as well as having an expansive, pan Nigerian network of associates that will enable him run an inclusive administration in sharp contrast to Buhari’s unattractive insularity. Yes, the capacity to attract and utilize talent is good. But that is if a leader does not at the same time espouse as well as embrace lax ethical values that necessarily erode the gains of merit and expertise. In the same vein, an urbane outlook and cosmopolitan reach can become an albatross if at the same time a leader’s philosophy of governance sees nothing wrong in ‘enriching his friends’.

    Rules, standards, processes and procedures will necessarily suffer and good governance will be the ultimate casualty. In any case, if Atiku promises to offer ‘amnesty to looters’ if they invest their stolen money in the economy, does it mean that those from whom tremendous amounts of looted money and other assets have been recovered by the Buhari administration will be free to get their money back as long as they reinvest the money in the economy to create jobs? Will such investment be to make profit and further enrich the repentant looter or will it be an act of philanthropy?

    Again, Atiku has received enthusiastic endorsement from self-styled ethno-regional representatives of dubious electoral value because of his new found love with the idea of restructuring Nigeria. Restructuring means different things to as many individuals and groups as clamor for it. What does it mean to Atiku? It is difficult to say. The government in which he served as Vice President for eight years vehemently obstructed every attempt by the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in Lagos State to deepen federalism in Nigeria through judicial activism.

    In any case, there is a schizophrenic twist to Atiku’s current stance on restructuring. He waxes lyrical about his commitment to restructuring in the Southeast, Southeest and South-south but is curiously silent on the issue in the north. Is it therefore illogical to include that it may all be a vote harvesting gimmick after all, especially as a President cannot singlehandedly pursue and achieve a restructuring agenda without his party controlling an emphatic majority in the National Assembly?

    Buhari is non pretentious. It is not in his character to pander to populist gestures even if it will win him or his party plaudits. His inflexibility on principles he strongly believes in can be irritating, even annoying at times. The APC administration’s commitment to fighting corruption and enthroning greater accountability, transparency and efficiency in governance is a good starting point. As it achieves greater organizational cohesion and ideological clarity as well as hopefully establishes better dominance in the National Assembly in the next four years, the APC administration will be in a better position to pursue the federalist strand of its progressive agenda. This is different from the PDP, which even has no mention in its manifesto of the restructuring promise that its candidate has been so vocal about at least in the South.

    Much ado has been made about a few memory lapses on the part of Buhari during the campaign. But he at least has had sufficient presence of mind to have kept his eyes firmly on the ball of fighting corruption, recovering looted property and raising the standard of ethical rectitude in our public life. That is the critical thing. Buhari has had the presence of mind and character to keep a firm lid on the public coffers and preventing the kind of crazy dollar rain witnessed under Jonathan in the run up to the 2015 election even though as the incumbent that would have given him a substantial advantage over the opposition.

    Buhari does not pretend to be an extrovert or to have an armada of friends. All those are of course quite admirable attributes. But Buhari’s high standard of integrity, no matter his personal failings as a human being, will determine my vote today.

  • Onnoghen and the two publics (2)

    Let us imagine for a moment that the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and, more importantly, the revered body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) had approached the Justice Walter Onnoghen’s non-asset declaration saga in a radically different manner. It is now in the public domain that the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) admitted in writing that he forgot to declare the humongous amounts of foreign currencies found in at least five accounts. Should members of the legal profession thus not be at the forefront of the clamour for Onnoghen to step aside from his exalted seat until he has proven beyond all doubts that he is without blemish? That would have greatly enhanced the image of the legal profession in the public eye. It would have enabled the National Judicial Council (NJC) to take charge of the matter and ensure that justice is done rather than dithering until an impatient President Muhammadu Buhari, suspended Onnoghen purportedly on the directive of the CCT.

    Unfortunately, leading members of the bar sought to delay proceedings at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) through legal technicalities as well as doing all they could to ensure that the suspended CJN did not appear in person before the CCT. The view has been expressed in some quarters that the suspended CJN appearing before the CCT would do grave damage to the high office he occupies. Those who belong to this school of thought clearly do not make a distinction between the occupant of an office as an individual and the office itself as an institution. That the man who sits at the very apex of the country’s justice administration system could be found to have so brazenly abused the law on the issue of assets declaration, is actually the issue that demeans and demystifies the judiciary. Ensuring that Onnoghen quickly comes before the law to clear his name beyond all reasonable doubts as regards the weighty allegations against him is the only way to restoring and preserving the honour and dignity of the office of CJN.

    Though propounded over four decades ago, Professor Peter Ekeh’s theory of the two publics continues to offer a useful and insightful handle for understanding the character of the postcolonial Nigerian State as well as the often dysfunctional behaviors of its political class. Of course, the theory has, not unexpectedly, had its fair share of rigorous critiques. For instance, Professor Eghosa Osaghae, questions the validity of the assumption by Ekeh and some other scholars that an amoral value system is prevalent in the public realm and dominant among a not insubstantial number of the citizenry.

    In Osaghae words,”…what they all fail to emphasize is the dynamic nature of values, and in this case that the pervasiveness of amoralism does not make it a monolith acceptable to all segments of society. It is certainly contested by the more nationalistic elements of civil society, who struggle to set new moral rules for behavior in the public realm. The wide support usually given to ‘strong’ ‘corrective’ governments in fact suggests that the amoral value system is not a settled terrain as is often assumed”.

    Both during his first outing as military Head of State of Nigeria after the collapse of the Second Republic in 1983 and his current incarnation as elected President of Nigeria, Buhari best depicts those elements of civil society committed to fighting corruption and instilling high ethical values in the public consciousness. However, it is instructive that even though every government in Nigeria since independence-civilain or military – has pledged to tame the monster of corruption, they have all invariably left office even deeper steeped in the mire of graft than their predecessors.

    Again, what often appears as strong support for ‘corrective’ regimes at inception is really in my view an expression of happiness by the populace at the fall of another set of ‘big men’. Those who vociferously condemn governments in power and are at the vanguard of campaigns to fight corruption by public office holders, most often, when they find themselves in power, exhibit even more avariciousness than former occupants of high office. Beyond transient euphoria at the arraignment in court of one big man or woman for alleged acts of corruption, amorality is the default mode of substantial segments of Nigeria’s state and civil society.

    That is why President Buhari is often a loner in his war against corruption. Yes, his administration has recovered stupendous amounts of looted funds and assets both within and outside the country. A measure of the new climate of fiscal prudence and rectitude is that, unlike the 2015 elections, when the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administration threw open the vaults for dollars to flow freely into the coffers of those who promised to guarantee him victory in their various spheres of influence, there is today no free money floating around even as the election draws nearer. But then, Buhari’s personal values of prudence and moral integrity are not enough to fight corruption. It is also the responsibility of the administration to device strategies to wean a critical mass of the citizenry away from an ultimately destructive amorality towards the inculcation of and commitment to ennobling values.

    Of course, this cannot be achieved even in the two terms in office of Buhari should he win next Saturday’s election as widely presumed. But he has a unique opportunity to, at the very least, plant the irreversible seeds of moral integrity in our public life; seeds that will bloom and endure long after Buhari has quit the high office of President. To achieve this, President Buhari must urgently address the issue of the alleged nepotism in appointments to public office that has been an albatross on the neck of his administration. In a complex, plural society like ours, skewing appointments into public office in favour of a section of the polity creates the impression that some ethno-regional groups are being given preferment above others and not necessarily on the basis of merit.

    It is certainly as a result of the amorality that underlies both state and civil society in contemporary Nigeria, that the Onnoghen saga has not elicited the kind of widespread condemnation and outrage the occasion demands.That would have forced the embattled jurist to voluntarily quit his office thus rendering unnecessary President Buhari’s drastic intervention leading to Onnoghen’s suspension. In other climes, with a high level of fidelity to positive moral values particularly with regard to those who hold public office, an officer in Onnoghen’s shoes would have long willingly quit his office rather than waiting to be forced out.

    This crisis of morality is also evident in the way aspirants for elective office across parties approach elections. Most of the time, the aspirant prepares a budget to cater for electoral officers, security agents as well as induce voters with money. Virtually all the aspirants from the onset have winning at all costs and by all means fair or foul as their goal. Yet, when a winner emerges, the losing side almost invariably head to the election petitions tribunal claiming that the election was rigged. Thus, we have endless election petition cases putting tremendous pressure on judicial officers who become vulnerable to material inducement. In advanced democracies, candidates for office who see that they have lost immediately make a call congratulating the winner and conceding defeat.

    It would appear that Ekeh’s theory of the two publics is even more relevant to Nigeria today than when it was first expounded in 1975. The theory has even begun to have wider ramifications beyond the public sphere. Now, the substantial number of cases of fraud and criminality by staff of big companies in diverse sectors of the economy shows that corruption is rampant not only in the public sector but also pervades the private sector. Perhaps some enterprising researcher will someday investigate the issue of corruption in the private sector and the implication for the economy.

    Now, what if the suspended CJN was caught fiddling with the funds of his old school association network, his community town union or other such grassroots groups with deep primordial roots? It is unlikely that the matter would be handled with the same indifference and levity demonstrated by those who are more concerned with procedural details than the substantive infraction admitted to in writing by Onnoghen.

    There was a time when the label of thief meant lifelong stigmatization and near total ostracism from respectable society. In contemporary Nigeria, a thief is a thief only if the accused does not belong to my ethno-regional group or yours. To fight corruption meaningfully, the apprehension of indicted persons, taking them to court and recovering looted funds and assets, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success. Equally critical is to tackle the amorality responsible for the condoning of acts of dishonesty by the populace.

  • Onnoghen and the two publics (1)

    What exactly is the most critical factor in the thoroughly sordid and embarrassing ongoing saga of the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen’s alleged criminal breach of the Code of Conduct for public officers? It is simply that stupendous amounts of funds in diverse foreign currencies were discovered in at least five accounts, which the chief priest at the sacred temple of Nigeria’s apex of justice administration claims he forgot to declare. That is the crux of the matter. Every other thing pales into insignificance.

    Some claim, for instance, that the CJN is only a victim of the Machiavellian political machinations and manipulations of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. Distrustful of the political inclinations of Onnoghen and the critical role his office is likely to play should the outcome of the February 16th presidential election become a subject of litigation, it is claimed, the PMB administration is desperate to oust the embattled jurist from office and emplace a CJN more favourably disposed  to it. Thus, the enthusiasm with which the President embraced the Code of Conduct Tribunal’s purported order to suspend Onnoghen and swear in the next most senior judge of the apex court, Justice Tanko Mohammed, as acting CJN.

    This is certainly not an implausible argument. But, the crucial question: Did the suspended CJN admit to forgetfully breaching the code of conduct? Or did agents of the Buhari administration surreptitiously plant those humongous amounts in his accounts? If not, the problem here is certainly not the suspect political motives of the Buhari presidency. For, such alleged political shenanigans would have certainly been an exercise in futility if a criminal act of amnesiac omission had not been committed for Onnoghen’s adversaries to latch on.

    Similarly, the issue of the suspicious timing of the suspended CJN’s prosecution weeks to the February 16th presidential election would not have arisen had there been no offence to prosecute. If the laws had indeed been breached, as Onnoghen has allegedly admitted in writing, then the timing of prosecution is entirely at the discretion of whatever agency responsible for pursuing the cause of justice in court.

    Others have questioned the amazing speed with which the federal agencies have pursued the Onnoghen matter, which is most uncharacteristic for an administration widely criticized for its most often dysfunctional inertia. I don’t see the problem here.

    An administration reputed for its irritatingly slow pace of making and implementing decisions suddenly wakes up to exhibit an unusual burst of energy in a case in which it is obviously keenly interested. This shows that its problem all along has not been capacity but the lack of the requisite will for decisive action. Its supersonic speed approach to the Onnoghen case can always be cited in future to nudge the PMB administration to action whenever it lapses into its somnolent default mode.

    The near absolute focus on technical intricacies and legal procedural complexities to the neglect of the substantive issue – the humongous foreign currency laden accounts allegedly owned by Onnoghen – vividly illustrates the contradiction between the abstract moral values that underlie the legal system over which Onnoghen presides as head of the apex court and under which he is being tried and the moral values that underpin and influence actual behavior in civil society.

    It is, of course, impossible to unravel whether Onnoghen’s alleged immense affluence is the result of a family inheritance or some other legitimate but lucrative activity he had engaged in over the years in the course of his judicial career without the jurist undergoing trial. But his lawyers’ resort to exploiting legal technicalities to impede or delay their client’s trial all in the name of due process as well as Onnoghen’s inexplicable postponement sine die of the National Judicial Council (NJC) meeting scheduled for January 15 to deliberate on the issue unfortunately does not suggest an eagerness to come clean in court as regards the sources of his fortune.

    In discussing the Onnoghen issue, the political scientist, Professor Peter Ekeh’s theory of the two publics was a subject of intense debate at this week’s meeting of this newspaper’s editorial board. In seeking to explain the prevalence of phenomena like corruption, ethnicity and nepotism in Nigeria and other African countries, Ekeh had attributed this to the bifurcation of the public sphere in Africa into two largely as a result of the colonial incursion. The first he called the civic public, which comprises those ‘migrated social structures’ imported from the colonizing west  such as the civil service, public corporations, judicial institutions, universities, police and other security agencies among others.

    On the other hand, Ekeh also identifies the co-existence with the civic public of what he calls the primordial public; these are ethnic, communal, cultural and regional social structures, whose roots can be traced far into the pre-colonial African past. The attitude and disposition of the individual and social groups to these two publics is sharply divergent. As Professor Eghosa Osaghae explicates Ekeh’s thesis, “While the former public operated in an essentially amoral milieu, the latter retained an abiding morality which emphasized the obligations of the individual to his extended family and community. Problems of corruption, ethnicity and their like are then attributed to the fact that the same individuals operate in the two publics working at cross purposes”.

    Thus, Onnoghen operates not just as a judicial officer in the realm of the civic public; he is also a member of an ethnic group, a cultural association or an ethno-regional grouping in the primordial public sphere. As a judicial officer, he is expected to abide by the moral values that underlie the legal codes he enforces in the temple of justice. His ethno-regional constituency also expects him to utilize the influence and resources of his office to benefit his primary community as a true ‘son of the soil’ even if this would imply violating the oath of his office through unethical conduct.

    In this regard, Professor Osaghae, quoting Professor Billy Dudley writes: “…insecurity is guarded against not just by safeguarding the present but also by insuring against the future which, in practice, means the use of one’s office to enrich one’s self…in so far as a successful individual is seen to contribute to the welfare of his community, he is not seen as corrupt”.

    That cuts to the core of the moral dilemma of the post-colonial state in Nigeria and Africa. The state accuses Onnoghen of criminal infractions against the law. But the suspended CJN to most of his South-south compatriots has committed no crime. Indeed, the South-south governors openly urged him not to obey the CCT’s summons. This largely informs the preoccupation even in the most informed circles with legal technicalities and judicial processes and the consequent relegation of the substantive crime committed.

    There are those who argue that Ekeh’s thesis is escapist and indeed seeks to rationalize, even justify, corruption. Morality, they contend, is indivisible and applies in any sphere of society. In other words, stealing is stealing anywhere and everywhere. Agreed. But then, why is it that Onnoghen will most likely be given a hero’s welcome were he to return to his home state today and even in other states of the South-south?

    Why is that most of those who have been indicted or even convicted for corruption across the country remain beloved and influential members of their communities, states and even regions? They are indicted in the eyes of the state and the law. They remain untainted as far as their ethno-regional compatriots are concerned.

    There is even a religious dimension to the two publics conundrum when the National Christian Elders Forum comprising very eminent Nigerians from the Middle Belt completely side stepped the serious infractions allegedly committed by Onnoghen, and chose to depict the jurist’s suspension as part of an ‘Islamic Agenda’ against Christianity in Nigeria! Is what the CJN is alleged to have done in conformity with Christian ethics and values? Until there is a reasonable degree of congruence as regards perception of corruption and the corrupt between the state and the vast majority of the citizenry, it will be impossible to wage any meaningful war against corruption.

  • Treasonous terrain

    In his latest characteristically trenchant and incendiary public critique of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration as well as preparations for this year’s elections, former President Olusegun Obasanjo warned that “What is happening under Buhari’s watch can be likened to what we witnessed under Gen. Sani Abacha in many ways”. The wily Owu chief surely knows that had such an acerbic missive been hurled at Abacha as Head of State, the writer would not dare venture anywhere near the seat of power as Chief Obasanjo did when he attended the National Council of States meeting at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock, on Tuesday.

    For daring to be a relentless thorn in the flesh of the Abacha dictatorship, Chief Obasanjo, along with some other patriots, was roped into a phantom coup, put through a farcical trial, found guilty and given a death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.  This cannot happen in today’s Nigeria not because of the benevolence of PMB but as a result of the gradually but steadily strengthening and resilience of our democratic institutions. Indeed, the closest in attitude, conduct, character and temper of all the occupants of Nigeria’s presidential office since 1999 to Abacha is Obasanjo himself. The sheer impunity and venality that characterized the Obasanjo presidency are too well known to detain us here.

    Once again, OBJ’s latest onslaught against PMB violates the boundaries of civility and statesmanship. Beyond this, OBJ’s epistle dangles dangerously on treasonous terrain. For, he asserts authoritatively, that he is aware of ongoing plans and activities by the electoral and security agencies, to rig the next election in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Now, that is a weighty allegation. Just like military coup plotters, election riggers in democratic polities subject whole collectivities to the political equivalent of gang rape. This kind of allegation coming from a former Head of State who presumably should know what he is talking about cannot be taken lightly. In OBJ’s words, “From available intelligence, we have heard of how Buhari and his party are going about his own self-succession project. They have started recruiting collation officers who are already awarding results based on their projects to actualize the perpetuation agenda in which the people will not matter and the votes will not count. It is the sole reason he has blatantly refused to sign the Electoral Reform Bill into law”.

    He continues: “His henchmen are working round the clock in cahoots with security and election officials to perfect their plan by computing results right from the ward to local government, state and national levels to allot him what will look like a landslide victory irrespective of the true situation for a candidate who might have carried out by proxy presidential debate and campaigns. The current plan is to drape the pre-determined results with a toga of credibility. It is also planned that violence of unimaginable proportion will be unleashed in high population areas across the country to precipitate re-run elections and where he will be returned duly elected after concentration of security officials as it happened in Osun State”.

    Obasanjo’s account of how the electoral and security agencies are planning to rig the elections in favour of the APC is too detailed and specific to be ignored. It is important that the relevant state agencies interact with him to get all the information they can on what Obasanjo has vividly portrayed in his epistle as an ongoing comprehensive plan to rig the elections and illegally keep the APC in power at the centre.  Anybody implicated in any such plan is directly or indirectly guilty of treason by plotting to bring into power a government whose authority and power flow not from the will of the people as expressed through free and fair elections but rather through brazen electoral armed robbery.

    PMB has sworn on oath to defend the constitution and its integrity. He thus has a responsibility to order urgent investigations into OBJ’s allegations to ascertain their veracity or otherwise and take necessary punitive administrative and legal actions against any electoral or security agency officials indicted for such treasonable acts.  It must be admitted, however, that the lack of the requisite professional and operational autonomy of critical state agencies from transient governments in power since 1999 has been a hindrance to their objective and impartial functioning.

    But there is also an obverse side to the coin. OBJ bases his allegations on what he describes as “available intelligence”. He must be prepared to provide credible evidence to back his assertions before requisite investigative agencies. Otherwise, it could be credibly held that his allegations are a deliberate attempt to damage the integrity of the security agencies and INEC, destroy the credibility of these institutions and erode confidence and trust in the electoral process. If true, that is surely treasonable.

    It would mean that OBJ has wantonly peddled fake news to sabotage and undermine the electoral institutions and processes thereby endangering the stability of the political system and the sustainability of democracy in Nigeria.   But what would be his motive? The answer is simple. OBJ’s public epistolary tirades played significant roles in delegitimizing and causing the loss of power by several administrations before PMB including those of Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Goodluck Jonathan.

    However, it seems now, under Buhari, that ‘the times, they are changing’. Last year, OBJ targeted furious fusillades against PMB, raining invectives against him and trying to inspire a political movement to oust PMB from power at the polls and also to dislodge both the APC and PDP from their pole positions as political parties. The initiative was ‘Dead on Arrival’. Meanwhile, the momentum of PMB’s re-election train seems unstoppable. PMB’s teeming supporters are not unaware of the President’s weaknesses and failings but a not insignificant number believe that his worst vices are more preferable to them than his main opponent, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s best virtues.

    A humbled OBJ has craftily meandered his way back to the PDP by endorsing its presidential candidate who was his former deputy and sworn enemy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. OBJ is in the tightest political spot of his life. He has developed a deep seated hatred for PMB, a man whose integrity and incorruptibility he had vouched for in the past. At the same time, he has been forced to reluctantly embrace an Atiku whom he has endlessly vilified, disparaged and denigrated before now as being pathologically corrupt and unreliable.

    Obviously sensing his looming and terminal political demystification should Buhari win the presidential election, OBJ has decided to go for broke. He seeks to discredit the outcome of the polls in advance by destroying the mutual trust that must exist between the electoral umpire and the electorate for credible and acceptable elections to be held. To demonstrate what he tries to project as the bias of INEC, OBJ cites the last Osun State governorship election as an example. According to him, “From what we saw and knew about Osun State gubernatorial election, what was conclusive was declared inconclusive despite all advice to the contrary”.

    He goes on to list the alleged infractions that marred the integrity of the election in his view. Unfortunately, OBJ’s personal opinions and biases cannot be substituted for the decisions of the competent election petition tribunals set up to adjudicate on electoral disputes. In any case, if APC had all the power to manipulate the Osun governorship election with the support of INEC as OBJ submits, then why was the election so tightly fought and narrowly won?

    Why didn’t APC simply utilize its alleged unlimited powers to obtain an easy victory on the first ballot thus making any rerun unnecessary? Why didn’t Governor Raufu Aregbesola utilize the power of incumbency to ensure victory for himself in his native Ijeshaland? Why did the support of Senator Iyiola Omisore with his strong Ife base become critical to the outcome of the rerun election with the APC and PDP lobbying intensely for his cooperation until he opted to go with the former?

    As the inclement weather of his inevitable political winter approaches, OBJ faces the future with trepidation. Preventing PMB’s re-election is clearly a ‘do or die’ affair for him as he famously declared before the disgracefully rigged 2007 election conducted under his perverse watch. But OBJ is no longer either in office or in power and he can now only wield the weapon of impotent letters. His effort to discredit the election and its outcome even before it is held amounts to a brazen incitement of the populace. For, what in today’s Nigeria can justify these words by OBJ in his statement, “Today, as in the day of Abacha, Nigerians must rise up and do what they did in the time of Abacha”.

    In the day of Abacha, peaceful change was made impossible in Nigeria, thereby making violent change inevitable. Today, the likes of OBJ are insisting that the only peaceful electoral change acceptable to them is one that produces the outcome they desire. Such an attitude is not only against the spirit of democracy, it poses a grave danger to the stability of the state. Embedded in this kind of disposition to elections and their outcomes are the seeds of treason.

    Unless there are consequences for the peddling of reckless, baseless and patently fake news that threatens the foundations of the electoral and democratic process, these poisonous seeds will sprout and flourish like weeds capable of ultimately choking life out of democracy in Nigeria.

  • Inexplicable negligence

    When he assumed office as Lagos State Commissioner of Police in 2017, Mr. Imohimi Edgal left no one in doubt of his determination to offer exemplary service and ensure adequate protection of lives and property in the Centre of Excellence. In an interaction with reporters soon after his appointment became effective, Imohimi Edgal said, “I told my officers and men that my passion for this assignment means that if I have to dine with the devil with a long spoon to ensure that Lagosians live in peace and happiness, I will do so. I intend to partner with everybody. I want to assure His Excellency that during my own watch, he will have no cause for complaint or concern”.

    Of course, many of his colleagues in the police force took his pledge with a pinch of salt. It was whispered that Edgal was appointed Commissioner of Police in Lagos State simply because he was a schoolmate and a very close friend of the governor, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode. Those who belonged to this school of thought argued that Edgal’s immediate predecessor in office, Mr. Fatai Owoseni, had performed with distinction and did not deserve to be shoved aside so peremptorily and unfairly.

    There were, however, those who contended that Edgal’s being a classmate and friend to the incumbent governor of Lagos State should not become an albatross on his career in the Nigeria Police Force. What matters most, they contended, was the capability and competence of the man to discharge the duties of the office effectively and efficiently. Even as Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations in Lagos State, Edgal had shown what stuff he was made of ever before his posting as Commissioner of Police in the state.

    For instance, he frontally confronted the menace of the violent Badoo cult group that had terrorized the people of Ikorodu for long kidnapping, killing and dehumanizing innocent citizens. To achieve this objective, he mobilized members of the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC), Ikorodu local vigilante, Directorate of State Services (DSS), Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corp and traditionalists in a collaborative effort that has practically wiped out the cult and brought a halt to its activities. He is also acknowledged as playing a key role in the successful rescue  of the six students of Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe, who were kidnapped from the school premises on May, 25, 2017.

    There is no doubt that Mr. Imohimi Edgal came well prepared for the job both academically and also in terms of rich operational experience. In the academic sphere, he graduated as a student of Art from the University of Jos in 1984 and also obtained a Masters degree in Public and International Affairs from the University of Lagos in 2004. Apart from attending several courses organized by the Department for International Development (DFID) based in the UK, he also obtained a Certificate of National Security for Nigeria’s Defense Intelligence at the Centre of Strategic studies, Galilee International Management Institute, Israel, among others.

    As a police field officer, Mr. Edgal, who enlisted in the NPF as a cadet ASP on February 2, 1986,   has served as Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in Shomolu, Ikeja and Surulere police Divisions in Lagos before his promotion first as Chief Superintendent of Police and later Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Area ‘A’ Command, Lagos. But it is exactly because of his professional experience and track record as well as academic attainments that the violence, which disrupted the Tuesday, January 8th, All Progressives Congress (APC)’s flag off campaign in Lagos by hoodlums on CP Edgal’s watch is inexcusable and indefensible.

    For one, the Lagos State police headquarters is a stone throw from the venue of the rally, which is the Sky Power Ground, Ikeja. Of course, the police authorities cannot claim they were unaware that an event of such magnitude would be holding right behind their headquarters. How could such a large number of thugs armed with knives, cutlasses, guns and charms gain access unchallenged into the venue of the rally? After all, election campaign rallies have taken place at that venue at election seasons in 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015. Not even when the PDP, in control at the centre expressed its determination to ‘conquer’ Lagos by all means and at all costs have we witnessed such horrendous acts of violence as took place at the APC flag off campaign for the governorship election. This kind of atrocity never happened under Imohimi Edgal’s predecessors in the last 20 years.

    Was Mr. Imohimi Edgal aware that the Chief Security Officer of the state, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, would be in attendance at the event? Was he aware that the APC governorship candidate, Mr Babajide Sanwo -Olu and his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, would be in attendance? If yes, what explained the tardiness in the security arrangements to guarantee the safety of lives and property? Is it true that the Commissioner of Police met with leaders of the feuding factions of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and extracted a promise from them to keep the peace at the rally? As a seasoned police officer that he is, should Edgal not have mobilized his men to provide massive and water tight security at the venue just in case the NURTW factions did not keep their word just as ultimately happened?

    This incident remains an indelible stain on Mr. Edgal’s hitherto spotless garment of exemplary professionalism. Unfortunately, all kinds of conspiracy theories are being read into his perceived lukewarm attitude to providing maximum security at the Sky Power Ground, venue of the APC flag off campaign rally. For instance, one theory has it that as a school mate and close friend of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, Edgal was piqued at the governor’s loss in his party’s primaries and was thus part of a plot to cause mayhem at the rally in order to create the impression of the APC as a fractious and badly divided party going into the elections.

    Of course, there is no way to prove this kind of allegation but such insinuations and speculations are bound to arise when such a grave security lapse occurs on the watch of a CP who is otherwise highly experienced and competent. Mr. Edgal, by his inexplicable negligence has done great damage to the image of Governor Ambode, a man who has received high praise in diverse quarters for accepting the outcome of his party’s primaries with equanimity and philosophical calmness.

    Perhaps sensing that CP Edgal has become a divisive, partisan and contentious figure in the unfolding political scenario in Lagos State, the immediate past Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, deployed him to police headquarters in Abuja and moved CP Kayode Egbetokun to Lagos as Acting Commissioner of Police.

    Just as happened when Mr. Edgal was posted to Lagos as Acting CP, there has been outcry in some quarters against Egbetokun’s initial appointment. Those who oppose his occupying the office of Commissioner of Police in Lagos State do not question Egbetokun’s academic brilliance or unstinted professional record over the years. Their grouse is that he was posted to serve as Chief Security Officer of the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration about 20 years ago! They claim that his deployment to Lagos as CP is part of the plan to rig elections in favour of the APC in Lagos.  This is probably why the new Acting IGP, Mr. Mohammed Adamu, has directed that the status quo be maintained in the Lagos State police command.

    Egbetokun joined the NPF as a cadet Assistant Superintendent of Police on March 3, 1990. He has served with distinction in various capacities over the years including Chief Security Officer to the Lagos State governor from 1999-2005, Commissioner of Police Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Commissioner of Police Servicom, the Force Headquarters, Abuja, Deputy Commandant, Police College, Ikeja, Commandant, Police Training School, Ikeja, Area Commander, Gusau, Zamfara State, Area Commander, Osogbo, Osun Sttae, Commander, Rapid Response Squad, Lagos, Squadron Commander, Mopol 5, Benin, and Officer in charge, Anti-Fraud, Federal Capital Territory among others.

    Furthermore, Mr Egbetokun holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, Postgraduate diploma in Computer Science, and an M.Sc in Engineering Analysis, all from the University of Lagos. He also obtained a post graduate diploma in Petroleum Economics from Delta State University and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Lagos State University, Ojo. This is apart from a number of professional training courses he has attended at home and abroad. Should such a brilliant officer be denied his legitimate career progression just because he was posted by the police authorities to serve as a governor’s Chief Security Officer some 20 years ago?

    Egbetokun was not involved in elections in 2007, 2011 and 2015, yet the PDP was unable to ‘capture’ Lagos as its leaders had often threatened to do. Indeed, in the 2018 election in Osun, Egetokun was the DPO who oversaw police operations in Ikire and PDP won in that local government because of his principled commitment to free and fair elections.

    Can critical and substantial sections of the political class trust Imohimi Edgal to be a dispassionate professional in Lagos in the forthcoming election? I doubt it. Just as under his watch gun totting hoodlums and rival NURTW factions could have easy access into the venue of a political rally to kill, maim and cause mayhem, can Imohimi Edgal be trusted to maintain law and order and enforce the peace on election day? I doubt it. Edgal’s professionalism, objectivity and emotional detachment are badly tainted. He has become a liability rather an asset to the NPF in Lagos.