The Nation Newspaper

Category: UnderTow

  • Southeast’s problematic approach to 2019

    Despite Governor Rochas Okorocha’s warnings and fears, the Igbo leaders from the five Southeast states who met in Enugu on Wednesday had the right and justification to endorse the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket of Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, and Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor. What is controversial, however, is whether that right and that justification amounted, in combination, to wisdom. Almost immediately, Mr Okorocha, the Imo State governor and founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), responded to the Southeast leaders’ endorsements by suggesting to them that they were both incautious and indiscriminate in their endorsements. He argued further that the leaders appeared to be putting all their eggs in one basket as they did in 2015. But had they endorsed the APC presidential ticket of Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo, nothing suggests that the Imo governor would have chafed at the move.

    The Southeast leaders who met in Enugu to discuss the place and future of the Igbo in Nigeria constituted a broad spectrum of Igbo elders and statesmen, of course minus their wary and often fearfully cautious governors. Egged on by the impassioned plea of elder statesman and eminent law professor, Ben Nwabueze, 86, who asked the elders to honour his age by working for the success of the Atiku-Obi ticket, the gathering seemed to believe that this time, unlike 2015, they could pull off the impossible. Speaker after speaker whooped enthusiastically for the ticket, suggesting that its success might bring the alienation of the Igbo to an end. In general terms, they expect without saying so that the Igbo should take advice from the resolutions of what they described as their non-partisan meeting in Enugu. Even Mr Okorocha knows that the meeting was probably more representative of the Igbo than his own camp of tentative ideologues.

    However, the Enugu resolution is more revelatory of the problem with the Igbo political logic than indicative of either their common purpose or their overall objective. Consider the following excerpt from the communiqué: “…The summit deliberated on the state of Ndigbo in Nigeria today, especially after years of exclusion from the centre.  This country has never been so divided as it is today. We Igbos have always yearned for a level playing field with justice, equity and fairness. The summit recognised the nomination of His Excellency Mr. Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State, as the vice presidential candidate of the PDP and fully endorses this nomination. It was acknowledged that this nomination puts Ndigbo back in the centre of governance.  It is, therefore, important that Ndigbo should rally behind the Atiku/Obi ticket. We identify with the Atiku/Peter Obi ticket on the restructuring agenda as has been reiterated by four zones of the country, namely: South-South, Southwest, North Central and Southeast. We believe that as long as the federating units remain weak the centre will continue to be weak. We equally move to appreciate the position of the Atiku/Obi ticket in promoting national unity. In conclusion, the summit reiterated that the time is now for Ndigbo to mobilise and organise effectively to realise the Atiku/Obi ticket. We are not campaigning against anybody, we are simply campaigning for our very survival. Igbo votes must count wherever Ndigbo live in Nigeria.”

    On the surface, the main trigger for the Igbo disaffection is their alienation. That alienation is real and cannot be disputed. Even Mr Okorocha knows this as well. It is indeed doubtful whether any Nigerian but the most rabidly sectionalist will dispute that under the Buhari presidency in particular, the Igbo have been marginalised and alienated. So, no concrete steps have been taken to lessen the alienation, nor to heal the deep wounds of the 1967-1970 civil war, not to talk of finding ways and formulae to integrate the Southeast seamlessly, continuously and permanently into the system. The divisions have been accentuated, have become more noticeable in the past three years, and there does not seem to be any hope that soon the fractiousness and chaotic approach to socio-economic and political integration would be straightened out.

    Furthermore, the Enugu meeting also correctly identified the urgent need for restructuring, given the political imbalance and disarticulation an untenable structure has horribly engendered. That the Atiku-Obi ticket promised to address the restructuring agitation undoubtedly and unavoidably holds some appeal to the Southeast. In the face of APC dithering over the question of restructuring, not to talk of the implacable opposition of the president to anything that would as much as give a hint of even tinkering with the country’s wobbly structure, it is only natural that the Southeast would gravitate towards the Atiku-Obi ticket, regardless of Mr Okorocha’s hysterical denunciations. In addition, whether the APC likes it or not, or whether the PDP is able to grab the chance to do something about the controversy or not, the restructuring controversy will only die when something concrete has been done to exorcise the ghost of imbalance from the body politic. The Enugu meeting was, therefore, not opportunistic, self-serving or irrational in putting the interests of the Igbo or their region ahead of any other consideration.

    But the Enugu resolutions were also revelatory in a disturbing and unflattering way. In their communiqué, the Southeast leaders painted a picture of an alienated region that must single-mindedly look out for number one. They hoped to advance that interest by promoting the candidature of Mr Obi, over which they exulted. Why they equate the promotion of their regional interests with the promotion of the political career of a politician from the region is hard to say or defend. It is uncertain that such equalisation or conflation even makes sense. The effort falls dismally into the same trap that has held Nigeria captive for the past five decades or more, wherein regardless of the incompetence of the president, his failings are excused by his tribesmen. Could the Southeast, which has produced some of Nigeria’s notable statesmen and intellectuals not find — and verbally promote — refuge in a ticket that appears competent, ideological, and patriotic, whether Igbo or not?

    There is of course nothing to indicate that the Buhari-Osinbajo is more competent or ideological than the Atiku-Obi ticket. What is dangerously amiss is the grounds upon which the Southeast leaders base their infatuations. Whether it is obvious to them or not, they seem to be promoting the same insularity and clannishness the Buhari presidency has found so natural and comfortable to exhibit and adulate. If the Southeast wishes to replace the ruling party because of the latter’s dangerous failings, it must take care to promote that noble objective in ways that elevate their region and the nation as a whole. The Buhari-Osinbajo ticket is not even a tad ideological, and does not possess the nobility of purpose a driven nation must promote as its lodestar, but neither the Southeast nor the Atiku-Obi ticket has proven that it is inspired by a greater sense of nobility and purpose than those of the party they seek to replace.

    It is perhaps too late to persuade the Southeast to vote APC in the next presidential election. Nothing Mr Okorocha does or says will deliver the Igbo votes to the ruling party. As a matter of fact, almost from the beginning, the Buhari presidency had seemed to write off the Southeast as a factor in their quest for a second term. Having been consigned willy-nilly to the opposition, the Southeast has taken the natural and most plausible course of embracing the Atiku-Obi ticket to actualise its ambitions and yearnings. Nigerians had hoped that those ambitions and yearnings would be undergirded by principles and values that are hard to impeach, let alone gainsay: values that bring out the best in the Igbo, principles that do justice to their huge contributions to the nation and the continent, and logic that do not give dark hints to other nationalities that the Igbo votes outside the Southeast  could be used conspiratorially and disingenuously to affect outcomes in ways that irritate and provoke host communities. The Southeast is far better and more endowed than the politics it is playing.

  • Better late than never on NHIS

    After more than one year of dithering over the retention of Usman Yusuf, a professor of medicine, as executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has finally suspended the embattled appointee and ordered that he be investigated for alleged serial infractions that prompted protests against his leadership. The suspension order, dated October 30, 2018 and coming from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), added that a seven-man panel had been constituted to look into the allegations against him. The panel is expected to submit its report in two weeks.

    But shortly before the statement from the SGF office, Prof Yusuf, exasperated by the controversy surrounding his headship of the agency and feeling quite beleaguered, decided to seek judicial interpretation regarding the powers of the Health minister and the NHIS Governing Council to suspend him or even discipline him. The suit was registered probably a few hours before the SGF’s statement on the same issue hit the public. Even though the presidency has now stepped in, the NHIS boss is unlikely to withdraw his suit partly because in tone and logic, it seems to agree with the position of the presidency on the powers and limits of governing boards of agencies and parastatals. Prof Yusuf should have taken this judicial option much earlier, perhaps last year when he began to dispute the powers of the Health minister.

    In July 2017, acting on widespread discontent against the leadership style of Prof Yusuf, the Health minister, Isaac Adewole, a professor of medicine, had ordered the suspension of the NHIS executive secretary. The minister probably apprised the then acting president, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, with the measures he was about to take. The NHIS boss threw a tantrum at the time, but he eventually but reluctantly vacated office. In February 2018, 2018, however, the presidency summarily reinstated him without so much as seeking to carry the Health minister along. It was obvious that though the presidency was in a quandary over the weighty allegations levelled against the NHIS boss, they still believed that no one but the presidency had the power to suspend or investigate their appointee. They should have come clean and stopped pussyfooting on a matter they apparently had a clear and fixed opinion.

    The presidency could still have gone away with their hesitations and doublespeak had the NHIS boss not stoked controversy again and again after his recall. Citing serial malfeasances against him a second time, the NHIS governing council again ordered the suspension of Prof Yusuf on October 19. In a strongly worded statement, the chairperson of the council, Ifenne Enyanatu, claimed to have had the backing of the Health minister to order the suspension of Prof Yusuf for violating procurement laws and dishing out contracts without regard to extant regulations. This time, with the president around, Prof Yusuf resisted the suspension and got policemen to escort him back into his office. The situation became very messy, with insinuations flying around suggesting that the presidency’s anti-graft war was imperilled and the president himself nepotistic.

    It was partly to quieten the rage of the public that the SGF, Boss Mustapha, at a retreat late October, insisted that governing boards of federal agencies had no legal or constitutional powers to discipline erring chief executives of agencies appointed by the president. It undoubtedly sounded logical. But NHIS labour union leaders in turn argued that suspension and investigation do not amount to removal. The back and forth over who was right or wrong may explain why Prof Yusuf headed to the courts to seek judicial interpretation. However, neither the NHIS council, nor the unions, nor the Health ministry, nor yet the presidency acted fast and sensibly enough to ensure that rumours and insinuations did not muddy the waters in NHIS. In particular, until it took certain steps on October 30, 2018, the presidency also acted mala fide. It should have taken ownership of the controversy when it first broke, taken firm control of the process of finding a resolution, acknowledged the malfeasances of the NHIS boss rather than appear to defend and back him, and taken the right steps to restore sanity to the embattled agency.

    The presidency was clear where its powers started and ended, and where the authority of boards also started and ended. It did not need more than a year of confusion and hesitations to come to the point where it has now ordered Prof Yusuf’s suspension and constituted a panel to investigate the allegations against the controversial executive secretary. Prof Yusuf may be an accomplished medical practitioner with global experience, but he gave no indications whatsoever by his haughty demeanour, insensitivity to NHIS staff and matters, and insubordination and foul language, that he was a sound administrator able to command the respect and loyalty of his staff. His imperial carriage grated badly with both staff and unions, not to say with the Health ministry and NHIS governing council. Had he taken a cue from his first suspension, remedied his faults, and restored confidence in his leadership, no further controversy would have been stoked, let alone attract a second suspension. He may win his case in the courts, especially given the government’s concurring interpretation of the limited powers of presidential appointees, but it remains to be seen how he would be exculpated from the procurement breaches alleged against him, or how he could regain the confidence of the staff and unions of the NHIS.

    Regardless of the outcome of the legal action he belatedly instituted against the Health minister, Justice minister and NHIS governing council, Prof Yusuf’s reign at the NHIS has come to an inglorious and ignominious end. Neither he nor the presidency can force him on the NHIS staff and unions who view his administration scornfully. He had carried himself with pointless arrogance before the staff of the agency, and insulted his way upstairs to the Health ministry and governing council. There will be no peace in the agency should he be reinstated, for even as adamant as the Buhari presidency can sometimes be, its officials doubtless understand the futility of foisting a peevish boss on intransigent staff. They will not dare stake the battered image of the presidency on a person and on an issue that promise very little political or even economic returns.

    It was not only Prof Yusuf that mismanaged the misunderstanding; the presidency is also guilty, by its desultory response to the crisis and by its lack of surefootedness, of accentuating the disharmony in the NHIS. The presidency does not have a great track record of resolving administrative squabbles, and finds it even more difficult to put to rest lingering doubts about its capacity to handle ethnic suspicions and rivalries among Nigeria’s sometimes fiercely competing groups. Yet, in politics, an elected government must summon the adeptness to mediate group wrangling and convince a vast majority of the people that its policies and style are respectively truly altruistic and pragmatic. Nigerians did not get the impression that in tackling the NHIS controversy the presidency acted with dispatch, wisdom and fairness. They must now hope that the government’s belated step in addressing the needless NHIS crisis is sufficient to put the matter to a noble rest. The onus is always on the government to quickly right wrongs, particularly in the face of academicians in government whose administrative awkwardness puts the presidency in an embarrassing position.

  • Shehu Sani’s political scar may take longer to heal

    Despite many months of struggles and manoeuvres triggered by a determination to embrace sound political principles, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was by last week still unable to degrade the suffocating hold Governor Nasir el-Rufai exercises on Kaduna State politics.

    Shehu Sani, the senator representing Kaduna Central, exemplifies that bitter conflict between a powerful but helpless party and a cocksure and imposing and scheming governor. Conflict was inevitable. S

    en Sani fairly approximates the modern political archetype of lawmakers who can call their souls their own, while still representing their constituencies robustly, walking many tightropes, and balancing all sorts of interests. Mallam el-Rufai on the other hand represents the monarchical proclivities of Nigerian politicians, for whom power and order must flow from the top down, brutally and relentlessly. All the three Kaduna State senators have had one axe or the other to grind with the unrelenting governor. In May, the governor even described them as useless for objecting to a $350m World Bank loan request by the state. “Today,” he began dismissively, “there are no haters of the masses of Kaduna State like Shehu Sani, Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC–Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (PDP–Kaduna South), God will curse them. God will reward their wickedness against the masses, may God never bless them.” Well, no one ever accused Mallam el-Rufai of elegance or moderation.

    The battle for the soul of Kaduna State has been smouldering for more than a year. But the crisis came to a head in July when one of the three state senators, Suleiman Hunkuyi, defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). One of his houses, which had served as a temporary headquarters of his faction of the APC, was demolished at short notice in February on flimsy grounds. Since both the law and the party could not mediate the conflict between the governor and the APC senators in the state, it was not surprising that Sen Hunkuyi defected. But the governor had even heaped far bigger insults on Sen Sani, hoping and expecting that he would jump ship during the gale of defections that convulsed the APC countrywide between late July and early August. The Kaduna Central senator was, however, prevailed upon by party leaders to stay put in the party, with a promise, albeit unwritten, that he would be returned as APC’s senatorial candidate for his constituency.

    In the opening weeks of the primaries season, when the parties elected their standard-bearers through direct and indirect primaries, it seemed all but certain that the APC would honour its pledge to Sen Sani. Indeed, the party engaged in such inspiring subterfuges that the senator was for a few crazy and satisfying days even returned unopposed, perhaps to make doubly certain that no one undermined the ticket, either within or without. The senator did not rest on his oars, for his main detractor, the impertinent and impulsive governor himself, was up in arms against the senator against whom he whipped up such a frenzy in the state that no one thought a politician, let alone a governor, could so brazenly transcend the bounds of reason and decency. But vigilance or no vigilance, Senator Sani did not prove a match. No one is sure how Mallam el-Rufai pulled off the joker, but when the APC submitted its candidates’ list to the electoral umpire, INEC, Sen Sani’s name, the man earlier returned unopposed, was conspicuously missing.

    But on Wednesday, the APC gave a hint of what transpired in Kaduna that led to Sen Sani’s exclusion. In explaining the abracadabra that took place over the Kaduna list, the befuddled party waffled the following excuse to unravel the conundrum: “It was the outcome of the primary, properly conducted. The party tried to protect its members in the National Assembly for obvious reasons, following what has been going on at the National Assembly. We know the carrots that had been dangled before them. We have a responsibility to ensure that we have a grip on the legislative arm of government so that we can run a smooth government. So, we tried to protect our legislators. But the other people can only understand and accept that. If they say no, there is nothing the party can do, it is within their right to say we must go to the field. The initial effort of the party did not get the blessing of other people in that area who are also entitled to bid for positions. The primaries were eventually conducted, Senator Shehu Sani opted out. He relied on the earlier decision. At the end of the day, no matter what plan you have, even though you are acting on expedience, rule of law and democracy will prevail. It was democracy that prevailed in Kaduna.”

    No party worth its name should ever grovel in that fashion. The APC not only reneged on its promise to the senator, it virtually acknowledged that it fought bravely but hopelessly to establish sanity and order in Kaduna State. It explained why it tried to coax the party’s Kaduna chapter into thinking futuristically, but agreed that it had to resign to fate, having failed miserably, and having capitulated indecently. Mallam el-Rufai, who appears set to become a liability to the party in that embattled state, has been left with a carte blanche to write his will and misshapen goals. Like other governors, he sees himself as an imperial leader who must neither be questioned nor the governor perceives Kaduna as a bride adorned for him. Governor el-Rufai is grandiloquent. By his strange logic, he sees himself as a great asset for his party, particularly for the next elections, but perhaps next only to the president. He is not perturbed that many people in the state doubt his assertions and conclusions. All he sees are his own strengths, attributes, actions and capabilities. But incapable of any kind of introspection, he stubbornly refuses to see the other side of even his own coin.

    It will be strange indeed if the defecting senators and all other people who bristle at the governor’s impetuousness and arrogance have no electoral value. The national APC fears that these estranged members vexed by the governor’s style or pushed out of the party possess enough electoral strength to cause incalculable damage. This was why the party tried to mollify the governor’s rage and forge an agreement between the warring politicians. But since the governor does not take prisoners, and since he prefers a political environment where his words and laws are unquestioned, it was impossible to find common grounds between him and his opponents. They have fought, and he has triumphed, thus bequeathing a divided and probably weakened party to the next plebiscite. The next elections will, therefore, tell whether his victory is as substantial as he paints it or as pyrrhic as many fear it truly is. There does not seem now any chance that peace can be curated between the warriors. One way or the other, in the coming polls, Kaduna will say what it thinks. But it is doubtful whether what it has to say will be pleasant, regardless of the medium and language by which its decisions are couched.

    It speaks volumes of the principles, strengths and ideology of the ruling APC that some of its governors have become so powerful that the party is unable to operate in tandem with its own rules and regulations, not to say curb the predilections of its boisterous governors whose short-termism is as offensive as it is bewildering. That Governor el-Rufai was able to twist the arm of the party to get what he wanted, even if it should endanger the future and health of the party, is a sign that both President Muhammadu Buhari and party chairman Adams Oshiomhole have still been unable to build a party of their dream. Well, it is not quite known what kind of party the president has in mind, nor has he taken any deliberate step in bringing it about; but Mr Oshiomhole is widely believed to be a dreamer able to conceive a party in the grandest fashion Africa can deliver. The APC national chairman may not be as exposed as his oratory has sometimes given indication of, and certainly not as wise as his conciliatory but rather fluid politics suggest, there is, however, no doubt that he means well for the party, and has since he assumed office been fired with the zeal to cobble together a party second to none.

    Mr Oshiomhole has tried valiantly to forge a disciplined and pragmatic party anchored on rules, sometimes on expediency, but nevertheless on lofty ambitions. Unable however to match those great goals with a highly efficient set of undergirding principles, the party chairman has encountered frustrations and disappointments. Worse, he is being resisted by many governors and disaffected members, all of whom are fomenting rebellion with gusto and plotting to bring the whole edifice down. The rebels, some of them leading governors and top party members, are encouraged to dare the party because some others like Mallam el-Rufai fought their own battles against the party and, strangely, won. Ogun, Imo, Zamfara, and that most cantankerous of states, Rivers, have resolved to take the battle unflinchingly to the national leadership. They hope to prevail.

    Sen Sani is perhaps the most unexpected and accomplished victim of APC’s internecine war, save Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, who was shocked to see himself disrobed so publicly and so ingloriously after the Ogun State governorship primary. The Kaduna senator has finally defected to the People’s Redemption Party (PRP). No one is sure what fate awaits him. Sen Hunkuyi, sadly, came a cropper in his new party; Sen Sani is unlikely to be so fatally wounded, even though some of his supporters felt it would have been more honourable had he defected in late July. Mallam el-Rufai thinks the image and popularity of President Buhari and the size and money of the APC can swing any election in the North, including Kaduna’s. No one can be certain. But except the disaffected and alienated Kaduna senators can find the muscle and tactics to beat the governor in 2019, or at least divide the vote so badly that no victor can afford to gloat, they will find their political reawakening from the dead fraught with more dangers than the punishment inflicted on them by the hubristic and divisive Kaduna governor when they lived.

  • The unending Boko Haram murders

    ON September 2, 2018, the Sunday edition of this newspaper published a piece entitled “Leah Sharibu and presidential fatalism”. Written by Barometer, the brief essay bemoaned the inscrutable approach adopted by the Muhammadu Buhari presidency in rescuing three abducted healthcare workers and a schoolgirl taken from Dapchi Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Yobe State.

    The columnist was unhappy that the government’s approach did not seem as urgent as the situation demanded, nor as optimistic as was expected of a government on whose shoulders the fate of the four young women rested. Less than two weeks after the piece was written, one of the three healthcare workers, Saifura Hussaini Khorsa, was murdered by her abductors, a splinter Boko Haram group called the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP). Apart from Leah Sharibu, the Yobe State schoolgirl, two other abducted women, Hauwa Liman and Alice Loksha, remained in the custody of their abductors. But on Monday, after a deadline given by ISWAP expired, Miss Liman was also murdered.

    Responding to the execution, the presidency said they tried their best to secure the ladies’ release. According to the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, “everything a responsible government should do to save the aid workers” had been done. Few believed them; even fewer still felt comforted by the government’s failure. Both Miss Liman and Miss Khorsa worked in a hospital supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Rann, Bala Kalge Local Government of Borno State, while Miss Loksha works in a health facility supported by UNICEF. The healthcare workers were abducted on March 1, 2018 during a raid on the town. However, the ICRC had alerted the government 24 hours earlier on October 14, 2018 of the impending execution of one of the healthcare workers if the government did not accede to the terms of the insurgents. According to a release issued by ISWAP after the October 15, 2018 execution, the healthcare workers were executed because they had converted to Christianity and the abductors had no religious obligation to ensure their safety.

    The September 2, 2018 Barometer column in reference took exception to the government’s approach to the Miss Sharibu abduction with the following arguments: “When he was asked how much longer the last abducted Dapchi schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu, would remain in captivity, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, offered a theological answer. ‘For how much longer?, Mr Adesina asked rhetorically, “I think that question can only be answered by God, but I believe God is interested in that young girl and will ensure that she is preserved and at least by the time that clip is verified, one will be sure that it is her actually, and once that is determined, we should all be glad that she is alive. When will she return? By the grace of God, the government is working on it and we believe she will be back.’

    “The question no one has really asked, and for which the government would be hard put to give an answer, is why Miss Sharibu was left behind. About six months ago, a faction of Boko Haram, abducted some 105 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Dapchi. About a month later, the federal government negotiated their release from captivity, leaving Miss Sharibu behind. There was no indication the government negotiators knew a girl was left behind, presumably on account of her Christian confession, until after the dramatic return of the rest by a cavalcade of insurgents. But even if it is suggested that the government knew, it is even more inexplicable that they did not recognise the immorality of leaving, perhaps abandoning, Miss Sharibu. If the government knew but chose to accept Boko Haram terms, it was indefensible; if they didn’t know, it was indefensible still and, much more, unforgivably negligent.

    “Of course God knows everything. This is unquestionable. But for Mr Adesina to put everything about the rescue of Miss Sharibu at the doorstep of God in the typical and almost offensive religiosity of Nigerians and their leaders is to embrace the abrasive fatalism that dogs religions in these parts and is often deployed as an extenuating factor to explain poor leadership.”

    The abductors, it turns out, have shown no mercy. After executing the first healthcare worker on September 16, 2018, public outrage was insufficient to discourage the terrorists from going ahead to carry out a second execution in line with their twisted religious ideology. They swore to turn Miss Sharibu into a slave after the expiration of the deadline given the Nigerian government to come to terms with ISWAP. In their announcement of the execution of Miss Liman, the group also declared that Miss Sharibu had become a slave. No one has controverted their statements. In fact few now doubt them. They could yet come out on a portentous tomorrow to issue another deadline in connection with the freedom of the abductees. Should they give another deadline, and given their antecedents and evil reputation, there will be no reason to doubt their readiness or callousness to carry out their murderous threats.

    So far, the government has not disclosed just what their best was in fighting for the freedom of the abducted aid workers and the Dapchi schoolgirl. They met the terms for the release of over 100 abducted Dapchi schoolgirls last March, from which Miss Sharibu was left behind because of governmental carelessness, and those terms were truly cheeky and humiliating. What other terms could be so galling that the government cannot meet? Perhaps the terms are stupendously humbling, and the government is wary of meeting them. But after meeting the terms given by Boko Haram in other abductions, starting with the Chibok schoolgirls, some of whom were freed in October 2016 and May 2017, it no longer remained a question of the propriety or morality of negotiating with terrorists or of negotiating under duress; it became one of whether the terms were such that the government could meet or not meet them. In the case of the three healthcare workers and the Dapchi schoolgirl, it is inconceivable that the government could not meet the terms set by ISWAP. From all indications, there will be no end to abductions, nor, apparently, an end to setting galling terms.

    The federal government said it did its best to negotiate the freedom of the ladies. Its confessions do not exculpate it of responsibility for the death of the girls, both in constitutional terms involving its responsibility in ensuring the safety of citizens and its responsibility of taking a second chance (deadline) given the government by terrorists to free abducted citizens. Someone absolutely has to take the blame. The government cannot disclaim responsibility. The terrorists at least let it be known that they were willing to negotiate, and they even gave deadlines. So, the government cannot suggest that there were no communication channels to negotiate the freedom of the ladies. What indeed seemed to have gone wrong was that the government could either not sense the urgency of the whole matter or it felt unable to meet the terms of the terrorists. Either way, they owe Nigerians an explanation. If the terms were too severe, then what were those terms? The ladies are being executed one after the other, the government can no longer claim to be entitled to secrecy of action or negotiation. It is time the public judged whether the terrorists were being too unreasonable or the government was being too lackadaisical, contrary to claims.

    One aid worker is still with the abductors, and the schoolgirl Miss Sharibu has presumably being turned into a slave. It would be tragic in the extreme were these two ladies to be executed while the government claims to be doing its best to rescue them. Hopefully the terrorists will announce their next deadlines. When they do, Nigerians must hope their government will feel both the sense of urgency and the obligation to let the world know what the ‘unreasonable’ ISWAP terms are and why they cannot be met, thereby justifying future executions. It is hard to imagine that the presidency can satisfactorily explain another failure regarding the fate of the last two abductees. Perhaps the government never thought ISWAP could go so far. Now that they know, it may be time for them to eschew their fatalism and do more than their customary best in rescuing the last abductees.

  • Wike, Fayose and PDP convention

    WEEKS before the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convention was held in Port Harcourt last Saturday, few party members and analysts were sure who would win. There was talk of an Aminu Tambuwal victory, and there were also feelings victory could swing in the direction of either Rabiu Kwankwaso or Bukola Saraki. But some key party leaders and critical stakeholders who knew a thing or two about political permutations and the dynamics of presidential nominations believed former vice president Atiku Abubakar would be best placed to win and not let the victory go to waste. In the end, the former vice president took the nomination and is set to run with it. But, beyond the nomination, something else quaked through the convention and attracted the attention of party elders and members, something that had to do with the influence peddling of Nyesom Wike and Ayo Fayose, governors of Rivers and Ekiti States.

    Both governors had for some years exercised what some long-suffering members describe as overbearing influence on the party. That influence, it turned out, had not always borne good fruits, but the two governors nevertheless wielded it relentlessly and remorselessly. They backed the Sokoto State governor, Mallam Tambuwal, for the nomination, but he lost. They have not taken the loss tamely; instead they seem even set on fomenting terrible distractions in the oncoming presidential contest between their party’s candidate and the ruling party’s candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari. All the PDP contestants have congratulated the winner, but the two disconsolate governors have continued to sulk and cry more than the bereaved.

    Shortly before the convention was held, there was talk of holding it elsewhere other than Port Harcourt, the initial choice of a cash-strapped party looking for a state with enough financial muscle to underwrite the expenses. Those campaigning for a new venue were thought to be worried that Mr Wike was bent on foisting a candidate on the party, preferably Mallam Tambuwal. To that end, Mr Wike apparently secured the support of Mr Fayose, but party elders were uncomfortable with the thought of embracing an oligarchy within the party whose ideas and yokes they would find difficult to throw off. However, suspecting their agenda and describing party leaders as ungrateful, an incensed Mr Wike threatened to torpedo the party’s plans should the venue be changed.

    His statement bristled with venom. According to him, “Nobody should dare Rivers State any longer. Enough is enough. PDP should know that we are not a punching bag. We are not a people you can use and push. We are not harlots — whenever you want, you come, when you finish, you push us aside.” This was emotional bilge, but it seemed to work. Not only did party leaders frightened about fracturing the party shortly before the convention reverse themselves, they also chose to be sanguine about the whole convention. Perhaps they had a joker in their hands, a joker they intended to unleash with all elegance and indescribable sang-froid. In the end, the convention went on far better and calmer than party elders dared hope; but Mallam Tambuwal, the candidate of Governors Wike and Fayose, was beaten fair and square, by a galling margin properly described as provocative and humourless.

    Numbed by the rejection their candidate suffered, and perhaps unaware they were exuding unbearable arrogance, Mr Fayose, speaking the mind of Mr Wike, chafed in muted criticism at the victory of the former vice president. Said he: “We have no regret aligning with Governor (Nyesom) Wike to support Governor Tambuwal for the presidential ticket, and no apologies either. We kept the party alive and strong when most men became ladies. We never compromised. If any group feels it can do it alone, we will see how far they can go. I may renounce my membership of the party if the need arises. In the meantime, myself and others will continue with our consultations while watching the turn of events. We cannot but appreciate leaders that have intervened so far, but this release became necessary to avoid fresh crisis or misrepresentation.”

    Both Messrs Wike and Fayose could clearly not hide their disenchantment, if not resentment. By insisting the convention be held in Port Harcourt, it was obvious Mr Wike felt a sense of entitlement as he expected to be rewarded for, as he and Mr Fayose put it, saving the party in its hour of need. In any case, the Ekiti governor did not mince word. He directly indicated that he and Mr Wike ought to be rewarded for holding the party erect after the 2015 electoral loss that threatened to obliterate it and castrate its leadership. It became clear to party elders that, given the manoeuvres of the two governors, their objective was not as a matter of fact altruistic. They saved the party, it has turned out, because they wished to hold it in thrall to their political calculations and goals. But did they really save the party?

    It is true that after the 2015 electoral debacle party leaders were dispirited and inconsolable, and their anguished national chairman at the time, citing extenuating reasons, had to step aside. At a time few party elders were willing to carry the burden of the shell-shocked party, Messrs Wike and Fayose grandly but a little grossly stepped in. But rather than being saviours, some party elders alleged, the two governors acted as opportunists eager to claim a seemingly forlorn party they could remould according to their amorphous and obnoxious worldview. But in their eagerness and feistiness, instead of joining hands with others and viewing with dispassion the whole exercise of resuscitating and remaking the party scientifically, they foisted the itinerant opportunist, former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, on the PDP. The pugnacious Mallam Sheriff wasted no time in wreaking havoc on the party and riding roughshod over its principles and traditions. The Borno politician, a redoubtable political nomad himself, is now back in the APC after crisscrossing about two or three more parties. It took many lawsuits to extricate the party from the stranglehold of the ambitious and imposing Mallam Sheriff.

    While the PDP convention was still in progress in Port Harcourt on Sunday morning, and sensing that his candidate had lost, Mr Wike abruptly left the stadium venue with his aides. His absolute lack of sportsmanship and respect for democratic values were matched in some ways only by the whining of Mr Fayose who threatened to defect from the party he claimed he and Mr Wike laboured to free from slavery and restore to life. It is evident now to the PDP that neither of the two governors who appointed themselves as saviours to the party is a democrat. Their candidate lost unequivocally, but they seem unmindful of the implications of destabilising a party they claim to love, or of openly demonstrating their lack of respect for democratic values, or of indicating to the whole world the puerility of their politics.

    Mr Wike will of course have no choice but to reconcile with his party and party leaders. He will in addition work assiduously to bring about PDP victory at the presidential poll. If that victory is procured, it will make it far easier for him to keep Rivers in the ambit of the PDP. Moreover, his future and peace of mind against persecution and investigation rest on procuring that victory. Mr Fayose throws a tantrum; but even he will come round to rekindling his faith in the PDP. He will be leaving office in a few days. He is certain to be assailed by the ruling APC who have an axe to grind with him. They have not forgotten nor forgiven his vituperations against their leaders, and they are eager to exact their pound of flesh from him. Indeed, as the handover date draws near, they revel in that vengeful thought. Mr Fayose will, therefore, need a strong party to come to his aid, to champion his cause, to keep his tribulations in the public eye, and to give him the succour he will badly need in the months ahead. No, neither Mr Wike nor Mr Fayose has anywhere to go. They will stand pat in the PDP, and in addition work and pray for the victory of their candidate in 2019.

  • APC and Oshiomhole’s many headaches

    On Thursday, some eight or nine All Progressives Congress (APC) governors met with President Muhammadu Buhari over the stalemated and deeply divisive governorship and legislative primaries in their states. Some of the governors complained about the omission of their loyalists from the list of screened legislative aspirants, and others bitterly resented the national APC’s role in, and even conduct of, their states’ governorship primaries. There is deep dissatisfaction in some of the states with the role being played by the party’s national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, who is regarded as dictatorial and meddlesome. The visit to Aso Villa followed the lingering inability of the party at the national level to resolve the crises-ridden state primaries.

    But whether the presidency can placate the aggrieved governors  is anybody’s guess. For a long time, the presidency restrained itself from interfering in the affairs of the party at both the state and national levels. Inspired by the president who initially argued that it was undemocratic to meddle in the affairs of the party, just as it naively hoped the party would not meddle in the business of the presidency and the executive, the presidency put a huge gulf between itself and the party until major fissures, albeit contrived, began to appear and vested interests plotted the usurpation of offices and power in the party and particularly the national legislature. By the time the presidency experienced the epiphany of involving itself in the affairs of the party, incalculable damage had been done, and cracks had widened and ossified.

    The governors were not as squeamish about getting involved in the affairs of the party in their states as the presidency was. They not only meddled in the running of the party, in many instances, they virtually reduced the party to a department of the state government, and chairmen were turned into glorified errand boys. Unfortunately, the incongruous relationship between the party and the executive was instituted right from the beginning of the Fourth Republic when the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, unadvisedly took strong-arm measures to subordinate the party to the executive. Observing what was being done at the federal level, the states quite eagerly took extraordinary measures to also subjugate the party in their states.

    While the presidency has not witnessed any revolt of any kind in the party at the national level, with the party still deferring by and large to Aso Villa, the states for the first time are witnessing terrible unease and stirrings in their territories. The battle for succession and the struggle for nominations have pitted powerful individuals against either their party leaders or their apparently overbearing governors. Ambitious politicians are not afraid to dare meddlesome governors determined to write the future of their states. In the past, governors largely determined who took the tickets; now, the situation appears to be morphing in ways that challenge the status quo and the conventional wisdom of monarchical governors, a dire process revolutionarily given fillip by the iconoclastic Mr Oshiomhole, himself a former governor.

    The public and the ruling party may be alarmed by what is happening, particularly the dissension in the APC, fearing that the confusion might affect the party’s electoral chances as indeed it affected the fortunes of the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But they should be grateful that the schisms are manifesting now, and they must hope that they can sort out the mess integral to their founding. The PDP came to grief over imposition of candidates and the associated confusion and rebellion that accompanied that patently undemocratic style. It is not a bequest anyone should embrace.

    The APC, particularly its governors, has not learnt any lesson from the debacle that confronted and sundered the PDP. But circumstances are now conspiring to help them confront their inbuilt and orchestrated monsters. Those circumstances are indeed quaint and unique. First is the presence in office in Aso Villa of an apathetic president who seems not fully persuaded about meddling in the day-to-day running of the party, unlike Chief Obasanjo. President Buhari is thus likely to be highly amenable in his involvement in the misunderstanding within the APC. He will genuinely seek peace once he is convinced of the course of action the party should pursue. Had President Buhari been seized by the itch to control things, he would be more interested in demonstrating power and getting his way than coaxing the combatants to reach some accommodation. Second is the election of the charismatic though somewhat flawed Mr Oshiomhole as chairman. Not only was he a governor, but having also ruled Edo State for two terms, he knows a thing or two about deploying and projecting power, and embracing every propaganda measure possible. He knows the tricks governors are capable of, and he knows just how elastic their bluff is. He will counter their bluff and also defang their blusters until he forces a rapprochement.

    But more importantly, both the president and Mr Oshiomhole are unlikely to feel apocalyptic about the dissension quaking in the APC for the simple reason that they fairly anticipated the crisis and believe sensibly that it is much better to endure that danger than the flaky peace governors and the former party chairman had tried to confect. Beginning from last year, and running through the early parts of this year, the former chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, and the governors had attempted to circumvent what they feared was a potentially acrimonious and explosive elective convention. They voted for managed congresses, controlled convention, tenure extension and consensus candidates. Regardless of the provisions of their party constitution, they loaded these dramatic measures under the so-called doctrine of necessity, and felt absolutely certain that the foretold implosion many feared would course through the party could thereby be deflected.

    The party must indeed be thankful to naysayers who insisted that no matter how tumultuous and damaging a revalidation process might be, the party must periodically subject itself to that carnival enjoyed by its members. That process of revalidation may open up unhealed sores within the party and create fresh wounds and fissures, but, argued the critics and dissenters within the party, it was better for such problems to be ventilated, no matter how searing the molten magma flowing from its bowels, than to be repressed with the possibility of later triggering conflagrations of untold consequences. The controversy over direct or indirect primaries, or elected or consensus candidates, for instance, are all indicators of the cracks existing deep down in the party’s tectonic plates. Had these problems not manifested now, a future earthquake deep under its crust would probably have unleashed an unmanageable Tsunami.

    Party members, including recalcitrant governors, must not harbour the dangerous illusion that the refusal to endorse Mr Odigie-Oyegun’s continuation in office or their preferred  candidates and mode of primaries were the causes of the terrible dissension unsettling the party. No, these cracks were intrinsic to the party and its founding, and they were bound sooner or later to manifest. The party now has an opportunity to address these foundational issues. What will determine how successful they are, and whether the party would stabilise or not, especially going into the future, will depend on the administrative acumen of their leaders and the president, and the subtlety with which those saddled with the responsibility of reconciling the combatants and forging peace go about their onerous task.

    The APC may cast wary glances at the PDP, fearing that the opposition could take advantage of the distress in the ruling party, but the PDP is also battling its own demons, and is even more fearful of the magnitude and intractability of its existential troubles. They have now been out of office for four years; they are anxious that eight years in the wilderness could weaken the resolve of their members to summon the gumption and fortitude to stay the course and take the battle to the cantankerous ruling party. It is crucial for the PDP to regain its composure and cobble together the right and potent winning platforms and formulae. This would be good for the country’s democratic health. But it is also apposite for the ruling APC to eschew the paranoia buffeting its processes, particularly in conceiving and sustaining a durable and pragmatic democratic ethos. They can surmount their troubles if they try hard enough. But they can also fail if they give in to fear and desperation. The choice is really theirs to make.

  • Buhari, Saraki and caustic electioneering

    President Muhammadu Buhari, the presumptive All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate for the 2019 election is lucky to have to eventually face only one of the more than half a dozen presidential aspirants of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). More than three years in the presidential saddle and three times as presidential candidate during very bitter and unrelenting campaigns have quite curiously not toughened him enough to make him develop thick skin to criticisms, especially from boisterous and flippant presidential aspirants. His aides’ reply to Senate President Bukola Saraki’s damning speech a few days ago gave no indication at all that the Buhari presidency had developed the temper and sophistication needed to checkmate unfavourable or even hostile views of his government and person.

    Dr Saraki had during his sensitisation trip to Bayelsa State, when he apprised the state government and PDP members and leaders of his presidential ambition, suggested that the country needed a man with the capacity and vision to lead Nigeria. It was a frontal and direct allusion to the opinion in certain key quarters that President Buhari was too archaic and divisive to preside over the affairs of Nigeria. Said the senate president: “Wherever you go, people ask questions: where do you belong? We need to address the issue of unity in this country; it is time for everybody to have a seat on the table, a time for everyone to have a sense of belonging in this country. It is not about me. There is a new order in the world today, wherever we go, we see leaders that have vision, that are ready to develop their countries. A lot of us talked about the Asian Tigers, but they did not come by chance, or trial and error; they became tigers because they have visionary leaders. They are leaders that are ready to defend their countries that have an idea of what they want to do.  As I keep on saying, you cannot give what you don’t have. Where we are now, we have a leadership that has no vision for us. We must bring visionary leadership to the presidential level so we can move this country forward.”

    Cut to the quick, the presidency issued an angry, patrician rebuke suggesting rather curiously that Dr Saraki was rude and offensive in his language. Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, whose idiosyncratic inability to moderate his own responses is legendary, signed the response. Hear him: “The Presidency wishes to react to the crude speeches hitting the news from Senator Bukola Saraki who recently joined the Peoples Democratic Party with the sole ambition of running for the president of Nigeria. In response to the condemnable and extremely derogatory speeches by the PDP aspirant, we urge all Buhari supporters to display restraint in language and conduct and to always put across their points of view in a decent language. Throughout his political career, Senator Saraki has shown that he is a very dangerous person who can go any length to promote his personal interests. The language of his campaign is such that cannot be used against a domestic help. Is he just knowing that the President lacked vision? This is someone that the Senator had worked with very closely for more than three years. Amazingly, he never said all that he is now saying against him. Rather, his word for and on the President were always respectful and reassuring. That’s the man he called ‘My Father’. About him, ‘there is no cause for alarm…a President who is healthy, witty and himself.’ What then changed, all of a sudden?”

    It is not clear how Dr Saraki’s admittedly vigorous, perhaps even caustic, view of the president has made him dangerous. He thinks the president lacks capacity and vision. That is harsh and wounding. But it remains his opinion, right or wrong. He says the president cannot give what he does not have. Again, that is lacerating; but it is neither offensive nor derogatory. He suggests that under President Buhari, not everyone feels a sense of belonging. Given that Dr Saraki addressed a Bayelsa State audience, a people whose son, Matthew Seiyefa, was brusquely shoved aside in favour of a retired Department of State Service (DSS) operative from Kano State, Dr Saraki’s hint that the president was dividing the country was understandable, even if it was opportunistically political. How Mr Shehu construes this as making the senate president dangerous is hard to explain. Indeed, none of the views publicly attributed to Dr Saraki in the media portrays the incendiarism Mr Shehu struggled to assign to him. The senate president’s views of President Buhari are undoubtedly unflattering and corrosive, but they are not rude or dangerous. Others, including ex-president Olusegun Obaanjo, have said worse things about the president. As a matter of fact, except to his ardent and uncompromising supporters, most commentators think the president’s style and appointments, not to say his views, are archaic, divisive and mostly inappropriate.

    In responding to Dr Saraki’s harsh dismissal of the president, Mr Shehu may be confusing the senate president’s failings with the so-called disrespectful views he has publicly expressed about the president. The senate president is very ambitious, in fact too ambitious for many of his contemporaries to accommodate within their worldview. They see him as Machiavellian, untruthful, larcenous, and even politically amoral. Yet others see him as really not an exponent of democracy or of the libertarian values the constitution tries to promote and defend. Worse, some others think he is precisely the kind of politician quite eager and capable of plumbing the lowest depths of political wickedness in furtherance of his private and narrow interests. He will of course disagree with these conclusions about his person and politics, but he is unlikely to convince many Nigerians that he unfairly vilified.

    But by conflating the senate president’s attributes — mostly the negative ones — with his politics, and in particular his trenchant conclusions about the president or the APC he had just angrily spurned, Mr Shehu misses the point badly. In the process, the presidential spokesman also seems to give the impression that the moralisation of politics embraced by President Buhari and his aides, to wit, the elevation of the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility, necessarily makes the president, his party, and his aides superior to the urgent need for capacity and vision in leadership. While a honest and incorruptible leader is desperately needed, especially given the country’s disruptive penchant for corruption and all sorts of financial malfeasances, it does not make the need for capacity and vision less valuable or subordinate. By all means, let the country be governed by honest and untainted leaders, if they can be found. But by all greater means, let those leaders possess the capacity and vision without which neither honesty nor integrity would avail much.

    It is unlikely, however, that President Buhari or his spokesmen and aides would find the motivation to redress the president’s political and leadership weaknesses, especially of his alleged divisiveness, policy archaism entwined with both lack of vision and considerable unease with modern ideas and methods, and quaint worldview. Unlike the PDP which boasts of at least six powerful aspirants, each of whom possesses the capacity to dexterously hurl barbs at the president, the APC has only one aspirant, the candidate-president himself. Were the PDP aspirants spread over some six or more parties, with the distinct chance that each would direct his barbs at the president, it is hard to see him surviving the fusillade, especially considering that he has found it tough going weathering the pot shot from Dr Saraki. In a month or two, the battle will be finally and brutally joined. If the president cannot find the shrewdness and tolerance to respond brilliantly to the attacks from one or two quarters of the PDP, how would he fare when the opposition finally chooses one formidable rival to assail the APC at its weakest points, many of which points are open and gangrenous?

  • Premium Times, SARS and rule of law

    LAST Tuesday, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo directed the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, to overhaul the structure and operations of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit unfortunately more famous for rights abuses than success in fighting robbery and kidnapping. Just one day after, Mr Idris announced a number of measures to restructure and refocus the anti-robbery squad. The measures were of course largely cosmetic, considering that they neither go deep enough nor offer fundamental understanding and revitalisation of the controversial squad. One proof that Mr Idris does not intend a fundamental reform of the squad is the arrest and detention of the Premium Times reporter, Samuel Ogundipe, by the police, with SARS deeply involved, for alleged offences unrelated to robbery and kidnapping. It was clear all along that the squad had achieved notoriety, and the police were content and frequently eager to deploy that fearsome notoriety for objectives that were in many respects unconstitutional and less than salutary and patriotic.

    Mr Ogundipe’s arrest came on the same day the acting president gave the directive on SARS. In a statement issued by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, Prof Osinbajo said: “Following persistent complaints and reports on the activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) that border on allegations of human rights violations, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has directed the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to, with immediate effect, overhaul the management and activities of SARS and ensure that any unit that will emerge from the process, will be intelligence-driven and restricted to the prevention and detection of armed robbery and kidnapping, and apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences, and nothing more. The acting president has also directed the IGP to ensure that all operatives in the emerging unit conduct their operations in strict adherence to the rule of law and with due regard to International human rights law and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of suspects. The operatives should also bear proper identification anytime they are on duty.”

    The directive is unambiguous. In fact, one of the sentences contained in the directive to the police is poignantly specific. It orders the reformed squad to restrict itself to the “prevention and detection of armed robbery and kidnapping, and apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences, and nothing more.” Nothing in the allegations against Mr Ogundipe, not to talk of the charges filed against him in court, suggests robbery or kidnapping. Yet, SARS played a leading role in his distress. Indeed, many analysts who grudgingly welcomed the directive to reform and restructure the squad showed deep scepticism about both the capacity of the police leadership to carry out the ordered reforms and the willingness to remedy the damage the squad has done to policing in Nigeria. The sceptics were even more afraid that going by the appointments made into police leadership over the years, the law enforcement agency did not seem able to demonstrate the emotional and intellectual capacity to reform the entire Force, especially the squad they love to describe as dreaded.

    Less than 24 hours after the presidential directive to restructure and revitalise SARS, the police hierarchy immediately announced wide-ranging measures to demonstrate their compliance. They did not give themselves time to study the problems they were being asked to manage and reform, and they also took no time to empanel some of their best brains — surely they have them — to meet minds on the abuses Nigerians had complained about, and which the presidency latched onto to order fundamental remediation. Instead, more officiously than substantially, the police hastily centralised the operations of SARS under a commissioner of police answerable to the IGP in the mistaken belief that one of the squad’s weaknesses was the lack of high-level supervision. The police hierarchy then listed a number of measures that do nothing but tinker with the structure and operations of the squad along lines that had proved nugatory in the past years.

    The cosmetic police measures, more than anything else, indicate that it will be business as usual. The treatment meted out to Mr Ogundipe, the arbitrary freezing of his bank account, the hostility of the SARS operatives who interacted with the Premium Times editors, and the intimidation of the detainee and his media establishment all point to the fact that fundamentally nothing has changed or will change in the structure and operations of the police to elicit the new police envisioned by the acting president. The problems of the police are deeply fundamental, and involved the anomalous and inoperable political structure of the country itself. Neither the acting president nor the police boss has suggested in words or actions that they acknowledge this problem. Even as far as tinkering goes, the police, as currently constituted, are not properly managed, supervised and funded to deliver the change the country desires.

    The directive on SARS is unlikely to deliver more than a short-lived cosmetic change. Mr Idris cannot give what he does not have, and his men are too far gone to help him or help nudge the Force in the right direction. The police will continue to expose a few of the bad eggs in their midst, but they have proved incapable of asking themselves why the corruption and brutality in SARS and the wider police establishment subsist, or why these maladies have proved difficult to tame for so long. Even the presidency has been incompetent to ask itself why the police have been unamenable to change, why the military have nurtured a culture of brutality over the decades, as the 2015 Zaria killings illustrate, and why the Department of State Service (DSS), especially under its immediate past director-general, perpetrated appalling abuses right under their noses.

    This is, however, not to say that Premium Times could not have managed the story that pitched them against the police better. Publishing the bromide of the IGP’s official report barely a day after it was submitted to the acting president seems to be sailing near the wind. Premium Times could have paraphrased the outcome of the investigations, intentionally omit some of the details, and attribute items of the report to sources within or close to the police hierarchy. It is not clear whether it was altogether a wise idea to slam everything on their web site.

    Nevertheless, the media in Nigeria must be grateful that Premium Times baited the police and helped to expose their dilatoriness, not to say their incompetence and lack of professionalism. When the smoke of battle clears, the media are likely to embark on rigorous self-examination to help them determine whether in the circumstances and chronology of events surrounding the IGP’s interim report on the DSS invasion of the National Assembly, the news reports and journalistic investigations, complete with evidence of bromides of official letters, were well handled.

    Given their customary haughtiness and lack of vision, the police are unlikely to embark on that beneficial and extraordinary self-scrutiny.

    Even though Prof Osinbajo has understandably not taken far-reaching measures on SARS as an ailing subset of the police, he must be commended for broaching the topic and doing something about it, no matter how ephemeral, and regardless of the vacillations of the past. Given his law background, it is doubtful whether he does not appreciate that it will take more than a directive and a few suggestions to get the police performing its role in accordance with the rule of law and the constitution. He must know that very fundamental measures are required to birth a new and effective Police Force.

    The presidency of which he is a ranking member has done little to midwife the change required in that law enforcement sector. After all, the long-standing complaints against SARS and the campaigns of the #EndSARS warriors that lasted for many months did not receive any serious attention until early this week, probably against the run of play.

    Worse, who can forget that the police themselves feigned ignorance of the issues advocated by critics of SARS, even as they attempted to blackmail the public for demanding an end to the high-handedness and arbitrariness of the police and the anti-robbery squad? Hopefully both Prof Osinbajo’s directive and the desultory response of the IGP will constitute the first tentative steps in getting an elected government to respond appropriately and sensibly to the yearnings and aspirations of those who voted them into office.

  • Moralising the gale of political defections

    In the past two weeks and more, Nigeria has been inundated by defections as politicians continue their jostle to be relevant and achieve strategic placements within and across party lines. The defections have been fairly osmotic, with the solvent political gladiators moving more from the burgeoning All Progressives Congress (APC) to the breathless, diminished and somewhat disoriented Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Similar movements were observed in 2014, before the 2015 elections, as angry and displaced politicians moved cheek by jowl from the then ruling PDP to the impressionable and hesitant APC. Few are surprised that the annual peregrinations have now begun in earnest.

    There will always be defections, perhaps not on the scale witnessed before the 2015 polls and this year’s, but the defections will in all likelihood continue to be anchored on extraneous and sometimes flimsy reasons rather on solid and ideological factors. As long as poverty subsists and overwhelms, and the country’s political and economic structures are not radically reformed and transformed, the attitude towards public office and politics will remain fundamentally narrow and predatory. Politicians will, therefore, subordinate the more ennobling task of public service to the demeaning and amoral search for pork and greener pastures.

    It was important that both the ruling party and President Muhammadu Buhari correctly gauge the mood of the country and examine the factors that predispose Nigerian politics to the constant display of amorality witnessed in the past few weeks, and earlier in 2014. Instead, the APC has been scurrilous in its dismissal of the defectors, and the president has on his own embraced grand moralisations, even viewing the defections as God’s pruning hook to sanitise and sanctify the ruling party. It is not clear that they have accurately depicted a process that has become, to many, sickeningly familiar, for the defections, while sometimes and even often objectionable, are not a moral issue. Going by the scale of the defections, they in fact indicate deep fissures within the polity and the grating mismatch between the yearnings of the electorate and the ambitions of their representatives.

    Speaking at a rally in Bauchi organised to support the candidacy of Lawal Gumau who is campaigning for the Bauchi South senatorial bye-election, President Buhari alluded to the defections as God continuing “to fish out the bad eggs among us.” In a statement credited to his spokesman, Femi Adesina, the president said: “The work we are doing is because of God, our country and you. I want to inform you that with the knowledge we have garnered over the years, we won’t allow you to be cheated. Like we promised, what will determine a good future for the country are security, strong economy and to stop corruption. We campaigned on these things, you voted for us and we will never forget…”

    The problem the president did not address is why God should pay special attention to his party above the others, or view his party as more righteous than any other. It is always problematic infusing religion with politics in a secular country, and where even atheists reserve the right not to be discriminated against on any ground. The president can speak of ideology, if he has one, propound political theories of his choosing, assert his party’s rights anyway he deems fit, sell his party’s manifestoes and programmes in glowing terms, and love his party to unfathomable end. But to insinuate that God is not at work in other parties, or to suggest that after the defections only the righteous would remain in the APC, is stretching the controversy beyond polemical limits.

    It is not surprising that the proselytising approach to politics adopted by the president has triggered unsavoury, excessive and unconstitutional responses from law enforcement and security agencies. Shortly after Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State defected from the APC, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) swooped on the state to initiate probes and investigations. Some of the probes are believed to have resulted in the unconstitutional measure of freezing the accounts of the state. Not to be left out, the police, as is their custom, and presuming to be only interested in forestalling the breakdown of law and order, aided and abetted a futile attempt to impeach the governor. They incongruously provided cover for some eight Benue State lawmakers to work on the impeachment effort, and barred the majority from gaining access into the legislative chambers. The desperate attempt has miscarried, but not before indicating clearly that the federal government is unable to have a proper understanding of the defections saga, not to talk of adopting the right approach to building a great and enduring democracy.

    The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, is undoubtedly Machiavellian, and his politics often lacks substance and is destitute of ideology. Most other defectors to the PDP are hewn from the same morally and ideologically barren rock. But there is no denying the fact that the APC has itself been ideologically inconsistent, administratively incompetent, and in large parts ethically indistinguishable from the PDP. For the past three years, it has not propounded or provided any new insight into the concept of the rule of law, or of justice both within the party and outside, or of the rights of the people and the obligations of government. Indeed, the jury is out on which of the two leading parties is more ethically challenged.

    With the president unable to develop a proper understanding of the dynamics of the defections, and with APC leaders downright peevish about politicians migrating from their fold, it may take much longer for Nigeria to put an end to the political opportunism that undergirds and frequently convulses Nigerian politics. The feisty new chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole, has averred that ideological politics would curb defections and opportunism. At least he is original and thoughtful. But even then he may have oversimplified a problem that is evidently rooted in the complex and malformed structure of the country. In fact, apart from the calls for restructuring, indications are beginning to emerge that Nigeria may be faring much worse under presidentialism than it fared under parliamentarianism. What these suppositions imply is that without a fundamental rearrangement of the country, and with increasing poverty and incompetent leadership, the spectre of defections and opportunism will neither end nor be minimised.

    It is unlikely that the president will change his perspective on the defections, even though he has in the same breath contradistinctively welcomed defections into his own party. In addition, no one should expect the APC to be less strident about denouncing the defectors as it goes to extraordinary lengths, like the president, to welcome defectors from the PDP. And it would be overly sanguine to hope that the APC, which could not even summon the discipline to implement its manifesto on the so-called true federalism, would develop a blueprint to sanitise Nigerian politics and structure it for the long visionary haul. With the situation remaining very desperate and confused, with the country unable to produce great leaders across the hobbled parties, and with Nigerians themselves yielding supinely to the execrable politics that has impoverished the country and turned it into a continental laggard, there seems to be little hope that politics in these parts would ever be sanitised or regain scrupulousness.

    But rather than engage in a war of words with the PDP, the ruling APC must make greater efforts to deconstruct the defection phenomenon within the context of Nigerian politics. The party needs to eschew its simplistic understanding of the crisis; and it needs to ginger its leading apparatchiks, particularly the president who wields inordinate influence over the party, to adopt a saner, more sensible and level-headed approach to reorienting Nigerian politics. It must not think it can bludgeon the opposition and defectors into submission; nor should it sanctimoniously hope that in the end it can ethically outlast and outperform the PDP. It is a chimera. For 16 years, the PDP carried on recklessly and superficially as if another day and era would not come, as if it could self-perpetuate endlessly. It is truly tragic that the APC, sensing that they cannot play the sublime politics evinced by their manifesto, appears to be treading the same thorny and sanguinary path that ultimately doomed their predecessor.

  • Defectors stir up a great political storm

    A day after potential defectors from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) met in Ilorin, Kwara State, ostensibly to condole with Kawu Baraje over the passing of his mother, but in reality to fine-tune arrangements for their defection to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), President Buhari and his party also met with roughly the same aggrieved politicians in Abuja. The politicians — defectors and loyalists alike — are likely to feel giddy from being courted by Machiavellian suitors. The meeting in Ilorin last Wednesday was as high-powered as they come, with the PDP chairman, Uche Secondus, in attendance.

    They deliberated on a number of wide-ranging issues concerning the planned defection, and the attendees all seemed to be quite at ease with one another. No one postured grandly with superior airs, and no one felt badly used. But nothing was cast in stone at the end of the meeting that involved Senate President Bukola Saraki and at least four governors. The Abuja meeting was equally high-powered, with President Muhammadu Buhari who had at first forsworn such a meeting presiding over the discussions.

    The Abuja meeting had the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, four governors, and governor-elect Kayode Fayemi in attendance. While the Ilorin meeting was clear about its objectives, to wit, how to seamlessly migrate into the opposition fold without loss of face or status, the Abuja meeting, which seemed foisted on the president by anxious party apparatchiks, kept its goals under wraps. Nevertheless, observers imagined that the Thursday meeting was probably designed to persuade the potential defectors to stay put in the APC. No one knows why the president was desperate to host the meeting. He had given the impression mid-June that he had no wish to meet with the aggrieved politicians led by an implacable surrogate of Dr Saraki.

    The president, according to unverified accounts, also added that if anyone wished to defect, such a person was free to indulge himself. Now, the defection talks have grown in frequency and intensity, and with these come palpable fear and commotion within the APC that the coalition being engineered against the ruling party could in fact balloon into a dangerous and unrelenting ogre. Having tasted the perquisites of Nigeria’s monarchical presidency, the APC seems totally loth to surrender the reins of power, or for anyone to remove their snout firmly locked in the nation’s trough. Faced with the danger of a ballooning coalition and the unthinkable possibility of losing the presidency in 2019, the resolve of the president to call the bluff of defectors has simply collapsed like a pack of cards. No one knows for sure what the outcomes of the Ilorin and Abuja meetings are. Nigerians have only a general indication of what the meetings set out to achieve. But whether those goals have been achieved or are even partially achieved, or still whether they are achievable, is hard to say.

    The potential defectors are weighing their options and will try to balance their fear of governmental terror, against which they now appear inoculated, with the allure of associating with a party capable of giving them a sense of belonging and equality. They know by instinct what the PDP represents to them: a party they are familiar with, one now so sobered by defeat as to enthrone a level playing field for its members, and one which at least for the moment does not have a monarch at its helm. And they also know that whatever they do, and regardless of the agreement reached by the APC leadership to placate them, the ruling party is always capable of surprising them and treating them, in the days of trouble, with cold and stultifying detachment. The potential defectors have congregated under the banner of the Reformed APC (R-APC), and they consist mostly of those who left the PDP in 2014 or thereabout under the banner of the new PDP (nPDP).

    The nomenclatural ingenuity of the footloose political warriors may not have advanced considerably in the past four years, but their potential to cause huge disruptions in partisan calculations has not abated at all. Whether nPDP or R-APC, the potential defectors retain enough political amperage to scald any ruling party. The APC may wish to keep their fingers crossed should the defectors make good their threat, but it is not clear they would want to find out what the consequences of that mass  defection would be for the ruling party’s chances in 2019. They would rather try everything in their power to keep the status quo, hoping that a bird in hand would always be worth more than a dozen in the bush. Such even-tempered suppositions are not misplaced at all. Why fight a war when you can make love? The desperate PDP are, however, clear what they want.

    Not only do they not have a presidential candidate they think can readily beat the APC’s President Buhari, they do not believe they even have a coalition strong, severe and nimble enough to unhorse the ruling party. If they cannot at the drop of a hat produce that supernova candidate, they at least reason that they should be able to produce an intimidating coalition that can put fright into the ruling party, confuse their calculations, and put them on tenterhooks. Moreover, they are unable to carry out the reforms and repositioning that could fetch them the respect and reverence of the electorate, while their officials appear to lack the verve and ingenuity to displace the APC with the aplomb they claimed their 16 years in office had imbued them. In the absence of these virtues, PDP leaders reasoned, and given their desperation and the temptations that assail them, a powerful coalition consisting of some of Nigeria’s political heavyweights must be their best bet to dismantle the ruling party.

    If that coalition eludes them, and if the reforms and regeneration needed to reposition them in the hearts of the electorate do not take place, the PDP could suffer irreparable damage. Indeed, it is hard to see the coalition being put together by former president Olusegun Obasanjo and the PDP amounting to anything significant if Dr Saraki and his fellow R-APC discontents are not part of the equation. So far, given the back and forth between the R-APC and the PDP on the one hand, and the R-APC and President Buhari and the APC on the other hand, no one knows where the pendulum will swing in the next few weeks. The potential defectors, some of whom like Benue governor Samuel Ortom have become emotionally dizzy from considering too many options, will have to damn the consequences, close their eyes, and throw the dice. If they are unable eventually to rationally make up their minds, they may approach the issue of defection with the casual guesswork conversant with Nigerian politicians. The APC is, however, not throwing up its hands in resignation.

    They will keep up the pressure on the potential defectors until they change their minds. Party leaders have even managed to persuade the president to smile at the aggrieved politicians, hold peace meeting with them, and probably offer them some assurances. There are no immediate indications they will succeed in reining in the R-APC. If they succeed, the 2019 elections will become much harder for the PDP coalition to crack. But if they fail, unfortunately for them, there is little left by way of harassment they can inflict on the defectors. Having unsheathed their swords against those they hate far too early in the titanic race, and having made little impact on the economy and also failed to promise the societal re-engineering and restructuring most Nigerians demand, the departure of the R-APC could constitute a major danger for their hold on power. In short, despite their smugness and bravado, both the PDP and the APC cannot really afford to treat the R-APC with levity. The aspiring defectors are the beautiful bride; they will be courted with the assiduity the president finds discomfiting and the PDP finds enervating. But courted they must be. Yet, if the defectors take perverse delight in foot-dragging for much longer than is desirable for their own self-preservation, they may end up losing on both ends. They are however unlikely to keep both sides of the political divide guessing for too long. They will cut the Gordian knot and hope that enough of the rope would remain in their grip to climb to safety.