The Nation Newspaper

Category: UnderTow

Herdsmen killings and spectre of politicisation

IN his brief admonition during an inter-denominational church service to mark the 2018 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebration at the National Christian Centre, Abuja, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo cautioned against politicising herdsmen killings in some parts of the country. He insisted that such politicisation could ignite far worse and uncontrollable crisis. His position is not difficult to understand. Overall, he seems to predicate his warning on what he believes were the factors that fuelled the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast. One of such factors, he thinks, was the politicisation of the Boko Haram crisis. Rather than actively tackle the Boko Haram menace, the vice president seems to suggest in reference to the beginnings and course of the insurgency in the Northeast, it was politicised. He did not, however, spell out how the herdsmen killings have been politicised. It can only be inferred from his remarks.

Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, however sheds some direct light on the so-called politicisation of the herdsmen killings. He argues in a message he posted on his Facebook account that the killings predated the assumption of office of President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani. Said he: “Something that is disturbing that I have heard about it is linking those developments to the fact that a Fulani man is president and so, he is brooking such kind of evil acts. I think that is very unkind. And I will try to back my position with statistics. In 2013, particularly, there were nine cases of herdsmen invading communities in Benue State alone and more than 190 people were killed…In 2014, there were about 16 of such tragic developments, with more than 231 people killed…There was a change of government in May 2015, but between January and May 2015, there were six attacks which left about 335 people dead. Now, the question is, during that period, did we have a Fulani president? This is showing us that the issue of herdsmen attacking settlements, attacking farmers, attacking communities, is pure criminality and it is something that government must deal with…Therefore, let nobody say that all this is happening because we have a Fulani president.”

Mr Adesina’s argument appears sound on the surface, almost indisputable. The killings predated the presidency of President Buhari, and may in fact have nothing to do with him. But the spokesman did not explain why if past governments were indolent and incompetent in handling the herdsmen killings, then it seems inoffensive and perhaps excusable that the Buhari government must reconcile itself to the past lethargic approach. What is indisputable is that the killings have persisted, and whole communities are being sacked. The president may not have instigated these atrocities, but he has done precious little, even as a Fulani man, to stanch the flow of blood. For more than two years since he assumed office, he has brought no real and practicable initiatives, and has not spoken forcefully against the killings. If he thought the governors of the states where the killings are being carried out had passed hostile laws against the herdsmen, as some have argued, the president ought to say a word, present his arguments, and champion a wholesome national effort to rein in the bloodletting.

Indeed, it is inevitable, contrary to what the vice president suggested, that the ethnically and religiously rooted on the supposition that the attackers belonged to a different ethnic and religious group from their victims.

Vice president Osinbajo stands on thin ice in cautioning against the politicisation of the killings. The government he represents possesses the security wherewithal to tackle the crisis but proved spectacularly negligent in squaring up to it with all the competence and efficiency those who voted them into office had ascribed to them. Here is what the vice president said: “We must recognise that as dangerous and as deadly and heartless as these killings are, there is also the danger of our allowing politics to play a part as this could lead to what we sometimes say ‘pour petrol into an already burning fire.’ We must not permit the politicisation of this tragedy. One of the reasons why for years Boko Haram thrived was because of the politicisation of the insurgency. There were those who planned to benefit politically from the tragedy and they painted the opposition then as the perpetrator. We see some today who want to benefit politically from the killing of women and children in Adamawa, Benue, Jos and several other places stoking the embers of ethnicity and religion. By their hate speeches, they want to fix the criminal acts of the few individuals who…hold people, and they would want to create a religious crisis if they are allowed. Our obligation is to stop them from playing dangerous politics that could threaten our unity and stability just as we continue to enforce the peace in the troubled areas.”

Not only have the vice president and the Buhari presidency misconstrued the nature of the crisis, it is indisputable that they have been slow in reacting to what is evidently today the most acute threat to national peace and stability. The problem with Prof. Osinbajo’s position is that the government he represents has not been able to convince victims of herdsmen attacks that it is sensitive to their pains and losses. The losses have been staggering, both human and material. No succour has come from the government by way of words and material help, and, worse, the victims are beginning to fear that their lands are in the process of being appropriated by outsiders in the face of an insensitive and conniving government.

Prof. Osinbajo also seems to think that Boko Haram thrived for many years because that crisis was politicised. His analysis is a little far-fetched. While arguments can be adduced to support the conclusion that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s strange rationalisation of the insurgency as a tool in the hands of the opposition worsened and prolonged the menace, a historical analysis of Boko Haram suggests that the crisis also predated the Jonathan government, and even predated the late Umaru Yar’Adua government. Its roots and course can be located squarely in socio-economic privations, the appalling and reckless misuse of religion, which is still continuing in those regions, and the horrifying mishandling of the law enforcement responses to the menace. To suggest that Boko Haram thrived because the problem was politicised misses the point very badly. The politicisation of the crisis, such as can be gleaned and defended, was a reaction to the nature and course of the crisis.

It is a red herring to argue that the problem of the herdsmen crisis is its politicisation by mischief-makers. If the government had reacted promptly to the crisis as it broke, and had even been proactive in tackling its multiple facets, it is unlikely anyone would be wondering about the role the president’s ethnic or religious background is playing in the crisis, stigmatising the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as an Islamic party, accusing the government of indirectly encouraging the expropriation of Benue State lands for Fulani herdsmen, and giving cover to self-confessed murderers. The government has itself to blame, not to begin to profile the bitter and injured

January 13, 2018
Those Benue killings, again

Whether the federal government knows it or not, and whether they accept it or not, the scale of the killings in Benue State and other parts of the country by suspected herdsmen now clearly constitutes a huge threat to national security. The government, however, seems torn between tackling this grave threat or allowing it to resolve itself one way or the other — and if not torn between the two emotions, then complicit. The killing, last Monday and Tuesday in five communities in Benue State, of about 20 people, marks a disturbing recrudescence of the bloodletting that is permanently scarring politics and ethnic relations in Nigeria. The Benue killings followed another killing spree last week where about 10 people, including a traditional ruler and his pregnant wife, lost their lives in Southern Kaduna. In both incidents, scores were injured. Indeed, in the past few years, the killings by suspected herdsmen claiming to revenge attacks against their people and cattle have not abated.

Alarmingly, Benue is fast becoming a tinderbox. In February, 2016 and for days, suspected herdsmen wreaked havoc unchecked on Agatu Local Government Area, killing some 300 people. Rather than be provoked into upholding the law and applying remedial measures, the government tamely claimed not to be able to substantiate a casualty figure they thought was unreasonably too high. But leaders of the umbrella association of herdsmen were not so similarly incommoded as to be unable to claim responsibility. Indeed the struggle between farmers and herdsmen, worsened by government dithering and unfavourable socio-economic climate, seems particularly fierce in Benue State. There have been no real and lasting initiative, not to talk of even analytical consensus, to help stanch the flow of blood in that state nor in other states where such deathly struggles have manifested. A general vacillation has inexorably followed the inability of the government, opinion leaders and traditional chiefs to reach a consensus on the genesis of the trouble, and the rights of farmers and herdsmen, especially where those rights begin and end.

Regarding the current spate of killings in Benue, it seems almost certain that after a few weeks, after the enunciation of the usual platitudes and condemnatory statements, the government will shift their short attention span to other matters. It is in fact deeply troubling that the scale of the barbarism on display in Benue State has not elicited a vigorous and vociferous response from the highest seat of government commensurate with the magnitude of the killings. Officials, including presidential aides, have of course issued statements condemning the killings and suing for peace and good neighbourliness, but the president himself has neither visited the massacre scenes nor offered the nation his opinion of what he really thinks are the triggers for the killings. This has led many commentators to fear that he is unsure where his loyalties lie. As Samuel Ortom, the Governor of Benue State, suggested when he visited the killing fields early in the week, it is perhaps time the president visited the blighted battlefields, empathise with and reassure the victims, and demonstrate his loyalty to the presidential oath he took.

The massacres have not been brought under control for a number of reasons. First, opinion leaders seem unable to appreciate the issues that predispose the herdsmen and farmers to the bloody clashes that have become a part of their recent history. From suggesting that the offending herdsmen are foreigners to claiming that the killings are justified on account of cattle killing and rustling, some Fulani opinion leaders have seemed to justify the massacres and laud the violent means of settling scores. Second, law enforcement agencies, when they are not accused of taking sides, have been unable to demonstrate the professionalism required to reassure both herdsmen and farmers that their grievances would be tackled firmly and with dispatch. It is for instance inexplicable that the police and other security agencies were in 2016 unable to arrest those who openly claimed the Agatu massacres were a reprisal against farmers who murdered Fulani leaders.

It is also troubling that in the recent killings, the police have seemed to avoid going after those who, in the words of Mr Ortom, claimed they would undermine the recently passed Benue State anti-open grazing law. Third, and very unfortunately, the presidency has not demonstrated its neutrality in those bloody struggles in the Middle Belt, nor shown depth and dispassion in appreciating the socio-economic underpinnings of the crisis. This has in turn led to the adumbration of insensitive and facile measures to solve the crisis, such as appropriating lands in nearly all parts of the country for herdsmen who are private businessmen.

What is clearly on display in the violent struggle between herdsmen and host farming communities is self-help. Since the government continues to dither and is unable to enunciate and implement lasting solutions, the aggrieved farmers and herdsmen, particularly the armed herdsmen, have taking it upon themselves to find a ‘living space’ for their groups, their farms, or their cattle. Until the government appreciates the deeper and wider dimensions of the struggle and killings, it may find it difficult to appreciate the urgency of the crisis and the huge threat it constitutes to national unity, peace and development.

The herdsmen-farmers crisis is now virtually prevalent nationwide. In some cases, whole communities are displaced, economic activities are grounded, while bitterness and a sense of hopelessness are gradually building to a tipping point. Together with a lot of other criminal activities, the herdsmen-farmers crisis has painted the country as one which is clearly unable to resolve its national question, and where a low-scale national insurgency, potentially more destructive than the Boko Haram war, is unleashing itself on the country and making many places dangerous and uninhabitable. Most analysts agree that if the crisis is not quickly checked with the altruism the situation demands, the country might begin to express itself in multiple and perhaps dissociated wars.

If President Muhammadu Buhari will not frontally, expertly and satisfactorily address this horrifying problem threatening to get out of hand, he may soon find the whole country engulfed. The national mood is decidedly against the herdsmen, regardless of whether they have justifiable reasons to be aggrieved or not. It need not be so. But it is so today because the government has unwisely let the problem fester. Its inexpert reading of the crisis, which has obfuscated the climatological underpinnings of the crisis and encouraged the government to ignore the dangers of sustaining an anachronistic traditional dairy farming, has prevented it from embracing the sensible solutions needed to restore peace and development. It has also robbed the government of the neutrality needed to persuade the people of its reliability as an arbiter. Sadly, because of this long irresoluteness, many people have begun to suspect the Buhari presidency of covertly promoting a nefarious agenda.

The military and the police are already overextended because the government incredibly thinks many of these crises must willy-nilly respond only to law and order solutions. They will not. It is time the government began to apply sensible and altruistic policies to tackle some of these problems. The Buhari presidency has a responsibility to demonstrate its altruism, show the people that the ethnic background of those in Aso Villa does not becloud their judgement, and demonstrate firmness and even-handedness in applying the stick and carrot to those who decide to take the law into their own hands, whether as a tool of offence or defence. The government must go beyond denouncing impunity; it must fiercely put impunity down.

The government must also appreciate the urgency of the task ahead. It must understand that the country is dangerously poised to conflagrate, and that indeed any of the ubiquitous farmers-herdsmen attacks could potentially be the tipping point. Should that happen, should the country explode into small wars without properly defined borders, the situation could easily become uncontrollable. Apart from the political consequences of that horrifying scenario, as may become evident in 2019, there is also the regional dimension, a dimension certain to complicate not only ethnic relations but also religious harmony. The elite, including the government over time, have behaved very ignorantly and irresponsibly. They have promoted bigotry, self-centredness, and ethnic and religious favouritism, not only at the national level but also at the state and local government levels. If someone does not rise up to stop the disgraceful and unflattering drift towards the precipice, the crises inundating the country could eventually prove too overwhelming.

January 6, 2018
Earthshaking, disruptive but anticlimactic 2017

Of all the major events that shaped 2017, three stand out for their great impact on the country and on the year. The furious legal gymnastics over who leads the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convulsed the better part of the year and only ended, fairly dramatically, after the party’s December 9 convention. The outcome of the legal fight and the consequences of the convention are bound to influence the shape of politics in 2018 and perhaps far beyond. There was also President Muhammadu Buhari’s illness which took the better part of 2017. The health crisis began almost imperceptibly in January, intensified by midyear, and culminated anticlimactically in August. The politics of that illness has already begun to shape 2018 and will most likely reverberate into 2019, Nigeria’s epoch-defining election year. The third event was the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) agitation that rocked the Southeast and exhumed a hugely disruptive and sweeping ethnic suspicion and bigotry template long thought to have been ameliorated by years of tribal co-mingling, expansive interethnic and interstate business deals, and political alliances.

It is not certain which takes the precedence between the PDP’s fateful events of the year and the president’s equally impactful illness. But it is clear that both events will deeply shape Politics 2018 and Elections 2019. When the president first took ill around June 2016, it seemed to be nothing more than the consequence of overwork going by what was marketed as a thoughtful president engrossed in the humongous task of cleaning the Augean stables left by the PDP. But by early 2017, it was gradually becoming clear that the president was not in such a fine fettle as he and his aides sold to the public. For an illness that first manifested as a simple ear infection, and was apparently believed to elicit nothing more than a week or two of vacation and medical examination in the United Kingdom, it shocked everyone that that trip soon yielded to another trip in May, this time more desperate and urgent. Whereas the January trip was to begin on the 19th and end on February 6, but ended inadvisably on March 10, the May trip took nearly all of 104 days, ending only on August 19.

Both the January and May trips, around which buzzed whispers and rumours of the president’s death or vegetative state, triggered rounds of speculations and permutations about the survival of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the politics of re-election or, more accurately, succession. Presidential aides, supporters, ambitious party officials and other political adventurers had even started to entertain very fanciful projections about Elections 2019. Visit after visit to the president in the UK, not to talk of social media gossips that strained credulity, birthed morbid stories of the president’s debility. It was soon concluded, albeit prematurely, that even if he recovered he would be in no shape to seek a second term. Neither the president, whose voice in those debilitating days never rose above hoary whispers, nor his dispirited aides who pined in agony, talked about a second term.

But when he returned in August looking more sprightly than anticipated, most calculations fell apart. His recovery since August has even been more surefooted, leading to speculations that he might be disposed to re-election. Not only has he now spoken of a second term, for a man and president so naturally reclusive, he has even begun to make trips to states few ever thought he would go. As his health status becomes more robust, he has become more mollifying, more gregarious, more conciliating. It is remarkable how the ebb and flow of his health bore direct impact on the political mood of the country, and particularly the moods of many top politicians. Those who cannot endure the president having a second term, that is if the electorate would oblige him, have embraced radical alternatives. The conclusion in both the APC and the PDP is that President Buhari is interested in a second term, will be nominated by his party, and will give the re-election race his all.

Now to the PDP. After first appearing to be depressed by its terrible electoral loss in 2015, and even seeming to have fractured irreparably, the PDP finally decided to pick up the pieces in 2016. But like a jilted lover falling in love on the rebound, the PDP in desperation climbed into bed with the colourful and rambunctious former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff. He seemed the perfect counterpoise to the fierce and unrelenting APC, and with his immense wealth and generosity of spirit, gave indications he was both prepared to spend the money at his disposal and give battle to the intransigent ruling party. He was not beholden to anyone or group, and was not known to suffer fools gladly, nor to be discomfited by any form of squeamishness. The PDP leaders thus saw in him a champion worth the name and the money. However, soon after a giddy start to a reign initially conceived as a stop-gap only, PDP leaders and apparatchiks whose ways and ideas appeared at variance with that of the former Borno governor began to scheme how to reclaim their party.

After many months of bitter legal wrangling, complete with a Court of Appeal judgement in favour of Sen. Sheriff, the PDP finally reclaimed their party from the ambitious former governor through a July 12 Supreme Court judgement. That final judgement left the party in the hands of the more amenable, but no less enigmatic and mercurial former Kaduna State governor, Ahmed Makarfi. Though also clearly ambitious, Sen. Makarfi was however seen as a team player, a bureaucrat, and an ideologue. He in fact appeared like a more acceptable face of the embattled party, one who could be trusted to organise a convention without seeking at the same time to hijack it. An elective convention was finally held on December 9 after many backroom deals, leading to the enthronement of a new chairman, Uche Secondus. He is trusted. More, he is an insider. If the party can find a standard-bearer to match the APC’s President Buhari in 2019, and find the wisdom to cobble a great and winning platform to take advantage of the ruling party’s complacency, and also atone for their dismal performance in office in years past, they could give the APC a run for its money, and even challenge its dominance.

Though less far-reaching in its impact on both politics and the country as a whole, the pro-Biafra separatist group, IPOB, took the country by storm and with more flourish than both the president’s illness and the PDP’s apparent reincarnation. IPOB was of course not the first nor the only pro-Biafra group in the Southeast, but it was led by the more colourful but less cerebral Nnamdi Kanu. In less than one year, he took separatist agitation to a new height. Acerbic, unfeeling, illogical and extremist, Mr Kanu pompously roused the disaffected in the Southeast into a frenzied anti-Nigerian horde. That the IPOB agitation was more popular than its predecessors, particularly the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), was due less to Mr Kanu’s flourish or talent than to the alienation supposedly suffered by the Igbo under the Buhari presidency. That alienation was glaring and indisputable.

Mr Kanu also cashed in on the lack of closure to the civil war. Virtually none of the issues that engendered the war has been satisfactorily resolved. The Southeast has borne the brunt of infrastructural decay and general developmental stasis. It has also so far been unable to produce a nationally acceptable politician as presidential candidate for any of the two major political parties, and that inability has seemed to accentuate what the region describes as marginalisation. Consequently, and for the foreseeable future, movements like IPOB and MASSOB will continue to agitate, and their agitations will always resonate. Until perhaps a more acceptable political structure is found, one that lessens the value and impact of winning the presidency, and one that devolves power in such a way as to enable the regions achieve political, cultural and social fulfilment, the insane craze for Aso Villa will continue with all its attendant frustrations.

The IPOB agitations and the manner in which the group was put down have sadly worsened the animosity against the Buhari presidency in the Southeast. The president is now struggling to convince the region that he does not harbour a natural dislike for the Igbo. He is unlikely to be able to dispel the anger in that region. Instead, that anger will morph into politics and be transferred into the dynamics of the 2019 polls, with the Igbo and the South-South region likely to embrace the PDP in overwhelming number. In frustration, the APC government in Abuja will also likely abandon every thought of conciliating the two regions while it concentrates its efforts in holding on to the Southwest, consolidating its popularity in the northern parts of the country, and making those regions impregnable.

Last year undoubtedly hosted many more events of seismic scale beyond the three events identified on this column today. The events of 2018 and the polls of 2019 will eventually be found to have taken their roots in the three hugely impactful events adumbrated in this place. Next year is unlikely to be as disruptive and earthshaking as 2017; but it will determine what will happen in 2019 and how far the country can go in its effort to reform the polity and transform the economy under the APC government.

December 30, 2017
Buhari’s appointments: loyalty or conservatism?

LAST week, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the extension of the tenure of the Chief of Defence Staff and the other service chiefs. The extensions, according to the presidency, were predicated on both constitutional provisions, as contained in Section 218 (1) & (2) of the 1999 constitution, and a “careful review of the ongoing military operations across the country”. The military chiefs were originally due to relinquish their offices in July, but were told to stay on till December. As the deadline of the extension loomed, it was widely believed that there would be no further elongation. Not only were new extensions approved, there was in fact also no exit dates attached to the second extension. The presidency did not indicate what parameters were used in the ‘careful review’ to justify not only an extension but an apparently open-ended one.

The double extensions, taken together with other policies and actions of the Buhari presidency in the past two years and more, indicate something very dialectical and nuanced about the president’s style of governance. Is he purely idiosyncratically loyal to his appointees or just plain conservative in a manner that sometimes border on inertia? It will take a deeper analysis of the Buhari presidency to come to anything close to the truth; for it is not even clear that the president is conscious of the elements and essentials of his government, let alone determine whether his actions and policies can be properly and scientifically compartmentalised. What is, however, clear is that a pattern seems to have developed in the past two years or so that sees the president seemingly reluctant to initiate or encourage radical changes, especially in, but not limited to, appointments. And it does not matter whether the appointments are deeply controversial or disappointing.

President Buhari obviously did not overreach himself when he decided to keep the military chiefs he appointed in July 2015 beyond their 2017 tenure. But whether the review of ongoing military operations in many parts of the country, particularly the recrudescence of Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast, justifies his reluctance to infuse new blood into the north-eastern campaign is a different thing altogether. He has the right to do what he did; but it remains to be seen whether it makes sense. Perhaps in the near future the president will clear all doubts as to what informed his decision to stick to his appointees in the face of mounting criticisms and sometimes even controversy.

It is not only President Buhari’s military chiefs that have benefited from the president’s loyalty or conservatism. His close aides, the so-called kitchen cabinet described brutally in some quarters as either a cabal or metaphorically as hyenas and jackals, have also enjoyed his unstinting support and loyalty. Even when there was unanimity of opinion among his family members, the general cabinet, and the opposition within and outside the ruling party, to the effect that it was necessary to do something, the president had kept his composure in the face of strident calls and campaigns to either sack those aides or appoint new ones. In fact, the president seemed completely desensitised. At some point, too, members of the president’s family were sure the president would reshuffle or kept their distance regardless of the impending politics of re-election, it was widely thought that he would reshuffle his ministers, and put a new verve in his effort to reconcile his warring party men and energise his interest in seeking a fresh mandate. But while he has made it all but known that he wants a second term mandate, and is interested in placating disaffected party apparatchiks, he has refused to rejigger his cabinet. Even when there seemed to be an open rebellion in the cabinet, with one or two cabinet members signifying their readiness to jump ship when the time comes, the president still stuck to his guns.

The debate now among his friends and opponents, not to say among his enemies, is whether his conservative approach to appointments, despite the seismic quakes around him, is borne out of pure ideological conviction — such as the conservatism of making haste very slowly — or out of simple and uncomplicated loyalty to his friends and appointees. No one is sure. While some, particularly in his family, would insinuate he had come under some mysterious and even mystic pressures and influences, others outside his family might suggest that for a man so headstrong and self-made, he is simply too obdurate to want to be seen to succumb to any form of frenzied campaigns for change. As his style when he was a military head of state showed, President Buhari seems to detest being second-guessed or predicted.

The remarkable thing about the whole controversy over the president’s appointments is that he seems to have got his second term bid underway despite refusing to bend to the wishes of those he believes are stampeding him to change his aides or reshuffle his cabinet. Of course he has kept up appearances by promising to do something about their complaints, fill board appointments, and encourage the initiatives his friends and supporters advocate. Though he has been very slow in meeting these expectations, somehow, he has managed to encourage his party to believe he is amenable to their wishes. Nearly three years into his first term, no one in the party seems sure he will reshuffle his cabinet, at least not when he is expected to, and no one knows whether he will even fill the remaining vacant board positions he promised.

Unlike the mantra of his party, and regardless of his fascination with the words ‘change’ and ‘progressive’, President Buhari is at bottom a very conservative man and politician. Nothing in his life or career indicates he is really progressive or ideological; nothing in his ideas, nothing in his style, and nothing in his policies. So, in a way, his refusal to effect the wide-ranging changes expected in his general and kitchen cabinets bears some elements of his lifelong conservatism. There is of course nothing intrinsically evil about his preferences. In addition, considering his natural awkwardness in making new friends, which has been evident all his life, it is not surprising that he is reluctant to sack his aides when he is only now getting used to them and appearing to enjoy their unflinching loyalty. He may be truculent, but he is in fact more loyal to those around him than he is acerbic in public. There is, therefore, an element of loyalty in his refusal to reshuffle his cabinet and appoint new close aides.

If President Buhari finally manages to carry out the personnel changes many around him have advocated, he is unlikely to do it on a scale they expect. It will likely be cosmetic. From all indications already, even those advocating radical changes to his team selection seemed to have given up. They are used to the absence of change; they will accommodate it perhaps beyond the president’s first term, should it come to that. They have become used to him dispensing palliatives in place of fundamental and radical personnel overhauls. And they seem to appreciate that should they be the insiders on his team, they would similarly enjoy the stability his inurement guarantees.

December 23, 2017
Gov Bello and probe of Kogi ex-governors

KOGI State, going by the reaction of ex-governor ibrahim Idris to Governor Yahaya Bello’s 2016 probe of past administrations, has curiously become a state where both cynicism and sarcasm reign. There is no other way to interpret Mr Bello’s impulsive decision, more than one year ago, to probe the administrations of his predecessors, starting from 2003. The youthful and exuberant governor did not explain why his probe did not extend to 1999. Perhaps it was because the governor at the time, Abubakar Audu, is deceased; or perhaps because in one of the crazy quirks of Nigerian politics, his own government is in some way an offshoot of the Prince Audu electoral mandate.

It had to be cynicism for Mr Bello to, in early October 2016, justify the composition of the seven-man panel headed by Justice Wada Abubakar Umar to probe his predecessors when he said: “My administration is ready to put Kogi on the path of development. I urge the people to assist the commission in the discharge of its assignment.” It is curious that a governor who assumed office without any plan whatsoever, and who has so far developed none, could speak of readiness to put the state on the path of development. What development? Is a state developed simply by probes and by asseverations?

In about two unfruitful years in office, Mr Bello has relied almost exclusively on probes and staff screenings to give a semblance of governance. When he embarked on a lengthy and repeated screening of public sector workers, the public thought he truly expected to be able to streamline government workers, eliminate ghost workers, and lay the foundation for an effective and efficient civil service. The workers are today disillusioned. They now see his screening exercises, some of them repeated three times, as a ruse to either delay salary payment or avoid it altogether.

The oppressed and long-suffering public sector workers see his screenings and probes as cynical options to his bureaucratic laziness and lack of foresight. In place of plans, which require enormous amount of cerebral work and economic modelling, Mr Bello gives Kogi the impression of activity and assiduousness. When finally the judicial panel on the probes of ex-governors submitted its report, there was no indication of the gross maladministration and financial shenanigans the Bello government hoped to unearth. But perhaps the panel chairman kept those unseemly details under wraps, leaving the governor to disclose them at his own leisure. Kogites hope he will soon expose and publicise the seedy details and justify the red herrings and tactical delays.

But responding to the probe more than seven months after the panel submitted its report, one of the governors whose administration was also probed, Ibrahim Idris, alias Ibro, sarcastically suggested that the exercise was a futile one. In his words: “What have they been able to see? They are chasing shadows. When the time comes, the people of Kogi State will be able to tell where they belong to…We have learnt from our past mistakes and we now know how to arrange our plates and calabashes together so that they won’t break again. Because we are human beings, we are bound to make mistakes; and as human beings, we must accept that. There is no perfect human being, except God. So we should accept that we have made mistakes. This present administration in Kogi State has failed the people. When they came on board, the expectations of people were very high. Unfortunately, Yahaya Bello has failed woefully, and the people of Kogi State are ready to vote him out in 2020.”

It is not clear what the Bello government found in the probes, whether he discovered sordid details of sleaze and inane administration, such as are alien to his own peculiarly incompetent government. Kogi voters are themselves not fond of Mr Idris, nor of his successor, the pilot, Idris Wada. Should Mr Bello find them guilty of gross maladministration, Kogites would be pleased to encourage him to bring them to justice. Indeed, the ardent hope of everyone is that past administrations of the state would be brought to condign punishment on account of the depredation they visited on the state. Having suffered so much under a string of incompetent and abusive governors, Kogites would love to see some of their tormentors tormented in return. So, by all means, let Mr Bello indulge his futile lollipops.

Yet, every kogite knows that the problem of the state is much more than the stealing that has blighted it. They know from experience that what ails the state and unnerves its people is more of incompetence than corruption. The corruption visited on the state is not any more pernicious than that visited on most other states. But, unfortunately, in addition to corruption, Kogi is destroyed for lack of competence. As a matter of fact, Mr Bello is the culmination and personification of that destructive disease laying the state waste.

Mr Idris is, however, right about one thing, regardless of the fact that he contributed immensely by his poor judgement and lazy policies to the retardation of the state: Mr Bello will be punished by the electorate in 2020, and he will be lucky not to end in the jail he hopes by his judicial panels to snare his predecessors. Mr Idris helped to foist an incompetent successor on the state, based almost entirely on ethnic sentiment, and can thus not claim to love the state or possess the vision and intellect required to unify and develop that state. Mr Bello will not even get the chance to foist anyone, competent or otherwise, on the state in 2020. He will be preoccupied with protecting his freedom after the next governorship poll.

The former governor also spoke in fatalistic tones of the inescapability of making mistakes. The problem with the Idris and Wada governments is not that they made mistakes, which they made by the bucketful and remorselessly, but that they simply are incapable of determining what is wrong and what is right. Their cracked moral compass led them down the ignoble path of deliberately failing to appreciate what they needed to do to guarantee a glorious and rich future for the state. Given the chance again, none of those who have ruled the state would choose a different path. They are too prejudiced, too self-centred, and too parochial to know better.

Mr Wada has kept discretely silent. He has nothing to say or contribute, not even to demonstrate the penitence that normally follows the adoption of tragic choices. Indeed, it is not clear what angers Mr Idris more: Mr Bello’s disrespectful consideration of the politics and legacy of his predecessors, or the fact that his ethnic stock has been so sidelined by the vengeful, irreverent and vexatious Mr Bello. Both Mr Wada and Mr Idris were provincial and short-sighted in government. It would be tragic if in deciding to free themselves from the oppression and incompetence of Mr Bello, Kogites should once again submit to the poor leadership and tyranny invoked and propagated by Messrs Idris and Wada. They do not deserve any listening ear.

There will be no end to the tomfoolery of Mr Bello. He is not capable of inspiring even himself, not to talk of rousing his state to the “path of development” he so glibly referred to when he defended his atrocious style of indulging in unending screenings and investigative panels. Kogi should get a respite in 2020, but it is not clear whether the voters themselves understand that their crass ethnic politics and prejudices make them the architects of their own misfortune. They are the only ones who can free themselves, assuming they do not continue to regard the shoe that pinches them as the malevolent effort of their enemies’ transferred aggression.

December 16, 2017
Beyond the PDP convention

IN their euphoric response to the defection of former vice president Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gave the impression of a political organisation thinking beyond its immediate troubles and eager to embrace the future. But whether it is wise to leapfrog over its troubled past without grappling with the attendant repercussions of its failings is a different kettle of fish. What is clear is that the party wishes to forget that arduous, ignoble past, a past filled with huge uncertainties, unanticipated defeats, and a gross inability to come to terms with the signals emanating from the pains and punishment it received at the hands of an angry and disenchanted electorate in 2015.

PDP leaders, many of them undoubtedly men of culture, integrity and quiet dignity, have spoken out in unison about the ambition of the party to reclaim a presidency it lost more than two years ago. They have expended inordinate energy on intriguing for that goal. If they entertain lofty wishes in today’s convention in Abuja, it is only to the extent that it would realign them orbitally to take that coveted prize a second time. But they have, alas, seldom spoken of the far greater need to reorganise their party, refine its ideology, as this column has consistently maintained, restructure its administrative and membership platforms, and expand its base along the enviable lines of great parties in other parts of the world.

Somehow, they seem to imagine that once they are able to conduct a unifying convention and elect, in an atmosphere of peace, new party executives without the despairing rancour many detractors have read into their DNA, they would be on their way to a gilded existence. Why they fail to realize they have been chasing a chimera since losing the polls in 2015 is hard to say. The build-up to their chairmanship election, in particular, may be acrimonious and full of uncertainties, with shifting alliances and permutations mixing with crazy projections of future presidential bids, it is however almost certain that they will pull off the party executive elections with the characteristic aplomb and familial frills they are famed for. Former president Goodluck Jonathan may be on one side, and ex-head of state Ibrahim Babangida may be on another, regradless of which side the governors’ cats are jumping, in the end the party will likely yield to common sense and even exceed its projections of attracting defectors from the languid and now complaisant ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

But a peaceful and rewarding convention, contrary to what party leaders think, will not guarantee a relentless march towards victory in 2019. Despite the misgivings of some party leaders, the PDP as a whole has probably invested heavily in the defection of Alhaji Abubakar. The former vice president is not only a man of stature, in the PDP today, he is probably the most renowned, battle-hardened politician eager and willing to join battle with the fearsome APC machine. The party will obviously profit from his renewed membership. Even though he cannot vote at this convention, he is expected to address it today, and will rouse the faithful to think they can neutralize President Muhammadu Buhari’s populism. They will return home thinking, if not even assured, of how soon they would return to Aso Villa. Whatever differences remain after the convention would be regarded as nothing more than cracks which party leaders have the expertise to paper over.

However, it is unlikely Alhaji Abubakar is that one size fits all which some party leaders imagine him to be. He may be the most recognisable face in the PDP today, and will ensure the party is not starting as an unknown entity, but he is not the only one interested in the presidency, let alone the only rich and ambitious person in that party. Among many ambitious others, even the caretaker chairman of the party, Ahmed Makarfi, also hankers after the coveted prize. Having tasted both executive and legislative powers as a former Kaduna State governor and senator, Senator Makarfi sees his political future as a natural and ineluctable progression to the presidency. He will give battle to Alhaji Abubakar and even probably view his defection as nothing more valuable than the financial heft he is capable of lending the party when the battle with the ruling party is finally joined.

Party leaders last week suggested they would begin to rebuild their party once the elective convention was over. It is not clear whether they have a definite idea how to rebuild their troubled party. Nigerians will, however, wish them well. If they must rebuild, they must go beyond waiting for more defections, especially from the APC, a party they mischievously expect to implode in the coming months. Their calculations must, indeed, go beyond the expected implosion of the ruling party, in case that hideous scenario does not happen as predicted. As a matter of fact, their calculations must go beyond whatever political or financial muscle the likes of Alhaji Abubakar will bring to their party. Defectors migrating to the PDP will undoubtedly be of some help to the frazzled opposition party, especially if the defectors come from the APC and thus help to weaken the ruling party, but it is unlikely defections of any kind will play any significant and novel role like they did in the months before the 2015 polls.

A peaceful and unifying convention is the right place to begin rebuilding the PDP, especially if they can manage to use one stone to kill two birds by electing a strong and vigorous chairman and executive. But they will need to do so much more than emplace a productive and active party executive and attract big political names and defectors like Alhaji Abubakar. As some of their leaders have promised, they must find the intellect to do something about the ideology of their party, cobble together a representative platform that must form a rich kaleidoscope of what PDP standard-bearers stand for, and enrich the content of their politics beyond the desire to win or lose elections. So far, however, their reluctance to make penance for the misuse they put the country’s resources during their 16 years in office does not give hope that they would do right by country if they found their way back into office.

It has taken almost three years for the PDP to reconcile itself to the terrible loss it suffered in the last presidential election. By ignoring the factors that led to that loss, and refusing to even acknowledge the complicity of their leading lights in that debacle, there is nothing to indicate that another loss in 2019 would not altogether and irretrievably fracture the party to smithereens. If in 16 years they could not build the steely core needed to stabilise their party and imbue it with the spirit and direction required to make it a grand party, nor yet find the existential drive to forge ahead into a visionary future, whether continental or global, what is the proof that about three years of disappointment would encourage the party into re-examining its foundations and rebuilding from scratch?

By all means, let the party bask in the euphoria of Alhaji Abubakar’s defection, and let them celebrate him, even if they end up denying him the ticket. In fact, let them ask for and welcome more defectors and empower them to make meaningful and productive contributions in the coming polls. But let them also realize that the country’s political dynamics call for a much deeper and more vigorous restructuring of their party than they recognise or are willing to embrace if 2019 is not to turn into a political tragedy more dispiriting than the losses they have suffered to date.

December 9, 2017
Jonathan finally accepts responsibility for PDP defeat

After many months of soreness and agony over the horrible defeat suffered by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 presidential election, former president Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday finally accepted full responsibility. His argument, not to say its central logic, was syllogistically simple enough: he led the party into battle, and it suffered defeat, therefore, he was responsible. To be fair to him, he had hinted on many occasions that the buck stopped with him, whether of the financial shenanigans that overwhelmed his presidency and for which he is being blamed, or of the electoral debacle that still pains him. But this was really the first time he would put the attribution for his party’s electoral woes in very precise and indeed elegant and candidly self-incriminating language.

Dr Jonathan made his public confession when he received Olabode George’s PDP chairmanship campaign team in his country home at Otuoke, Bayelsa State. Hear the former president: “Whether I like it or not, I must take responsibility for the defeat because I led the party to the election. The only thing that will make me to sleep well is to ensure that the PDP comes back to power.” It was sensible and democratic of the former president to immediately concede defeat in that election; but it would have been even more profound of him to almost immediately accept responsibility for that defeat. In statements after statements, many of them obviously no better than hemming and hawing, he had repeatedly prevaricated on the centrality of his role in that debacle. Last Wednesday, however, he felt the obligation to come clean.

At the meeting between him and Mr George’s effervescent but increasingly dispirited campaign team, Dr Jonathan was not quoted as delving into the nitty-gritty of that debacle, let alone providing details of just what he did or didn’t do that led to that defeat. Was it his poor handling of the economy, particularly the unfettered corrupt practices many of his subordinates allegedly engaged in? Or was it the more potent argument that he ought not to have run for a second term because it looked to many, particularly from the North, like a third term? Perhaps, one day, he would find the humility and candour to again address the composition of that ignoble defeat, one of a few of such electoral losses in Africa, and certainly the first in Nigeria.

It is not clear, however, why Dr Jonathan should still continue to feel personally burdened by that loss, for the party was bound to lose a major election one of these days anyway, nor why he should be reluctant to come clean, accept the adversity that confronted him, and lead his party to a proper and adequate absolution. He was a far better democrat than his predecessors, notwithstanding his inexplicable attacks on newspaper distribution in the build-up to the last general elections, and a far better consensus builder and team player than his successor, notwithstanding his depressing and condemnable irresoluteness. As the years pass, and the shortcomings of his successors are magnified by their abysmal lack of appreciation of democratic tenets, Dr Jonathan has begun to smell of roses. It would, therefore, not have been out of place for him to really and substantially come clean, once and for all.

Even though it is a testament to the former president’s reluctance to provide the kind of leadership a defeated party needs that some of his party leaders and chairmanship aspirants still consult the Oracle of Owu, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, he is in fact best placed to champion the cause of the opposition party rather than encourage it to engage in the recidivism party leaders have embraced and turned into an art. One of those recidivist tendencies is the party’s inexplicable and indefensible zoning politics. Mr George is incensed by the PDP’s zoning politics, even though he himself is grossly mistaken and chimerical. Others have huffed and puffed over the zoning formula which they denounce and laud in equal measure for its dangerous imprecision and terrifying political obfuscations. The zoning formula has in fact seemed to morph so much that it is unclear whether party leaders themselves can tell if the formula is ethical or diabolical.

Amidst the furore of allegations and counter-allegations of hidden presidential ambitions, which has seen the caretaker chairman, Ahmed Makarfi, accused of harbouring venomous ambition, zoning has since moved like a yo-yo from mere zoning to what is, for want of better word, described as ‘micro-zoning’, and again back to zoning. In acknowledgement of the near invincibility of President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the PDP has zoned its presidential position to the North, believing that only a fellow northerner could stand the chance of unhorsing the implacable Buhari. And in consonance with that belief, the vice presidency was then zoned to the South. But while the presidential position has in general retained its zoning integrity, the vice presidential position has oscillated between being zoned to the South to being zoned, as many now speculate, to the Southwest. This new zoning arrangement, it is suggested, led to the refusal of party leaders to ‘micro-zone’ the chairmanship position to the Southwest so that the party could present a perfect zoning counterpoise to the APC’s presidential ticket.

The APC zoning arrangement, which is likely to be carried into the next presidential election if party leaders can forge the reconciliation necessary to reunite the fractious party, consists of ‘micro-zoning’ the presidential ticket to the Northwest/Southwest combination, and zoning the ticket in general to the North/South combination. It is unimaginative that the PDP would rather adopt this sort of ‘micro-zoning’ and general zoning arrangements simply to make their ticket almost indistinguishable from the APC’s. Why the PDP thinks that that peculiar zoning arrangement stands them in good stead, assuming a better stead was not needed, is hard to fathom. The PDP must of course spread its positions and offices, but there is nothing binding them to conventional wisdom on the infuriating and vexatious scale they seem to idolise.

It was hoped that Dr Jonathan, having learnt huge lessons from his lack of foresightedness when he presided over the affairs of Nigeria and his party, would summon the intellect and discipline to gently nudge his party away from the unproductive conservatism (not ideological) of conventional wisdom. But because it seemed apparent that the electoral debacle he suffered two years ago could not be entirely divorced from his unprincipled flouting of the party’s zoning arrangement, he has been wary of embracing a radical overhaul of both the operational structure and ideology of the party. Given his years in power and the many sensible things he said in those heady years of PDP rule, though they warred against his policies, it is fair to say that the former president seems to possess the instinct of a change agent and a decent president.

Concerning the matter at hand in the PDP, Dr Jonathan cannot claim not to be alert to the right but uncharted direction he should coax his unwilling party to take. It is time for them to first atone for their misrule, a part of which the ex-president himself bears the blame, and then secondly to rebuild their party on a more solid, ethical and ideological foundation. For decades, they have been reluctant to make this sacrifice. If despite his education, standing and experience Dr Jonathan still can’t inspire this profoundly existential change in a party that looks up to him for leadership, then he would have once again proved that the gap between his thought and action, which war continuously against each other in his mind, is more disturbingly real and also uncomplimentary to his image than first imagined.

For now, the PDP has opted for the simplistic approach of cloning the ruling party’s zoning formula. It is not clear whether this would bring about the political nirvana they have been dreaming of since 2015 when they suffered that excruciating electoral blow. Their impatience, not to say their impractical politics, may yet be their undoing in the next election. Should that happen, Dr Jonathan will bear a disproportionate part of the blame for not attempting the radical transformation, if not rebirth, that would stand the party in good stead with the electorate. It is apparently far easier to be conservative and conventional; but it is far more rewarding, though probably dangerous, to shift paradigm and change template. In 2019, if care is not taken, the PDP will learn the hard way how not to fear change.

November 25, 2017
Ikoyi cash haul and controversial whistle-blowers

It testifies to the federal government’s slothfulness in the anti-corruption war, and particularly the whistle-blower policy, that the identity of the principal character that facilitated the unearthing of the cash hidden by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) at an apartment in Ikoyi is now well known. He is Stephen Sunday, and he is angry, fumes at being maligned, and feels cheated and misused. It is, however, not only the government that is mistreating him, according to his angry complaint last week, even two lawyers are fighting over him in an unseemly, controversial way. The two lawyers are Yakubu Galadima and No Limit Legal Partners. As if the situation could not be much worse than it already is, the identity of Mr Sunday’s two other whistle-blowing collaborators have also been publicised. They are Bala Usman and Abdulmumin Musa.

While Mr Galadima acknowledges the existence of three whistle-blowers, but was chary of disclosing the identity of the third, No Limits Legal Partners happily divulged the identities of all the three whistle-blowers. Both lawyers were pushed to going public because they suspected the government was trying to renege on its policy of paying five percent of the value of any stolen public funds to any whistle-blower who gives actionable intelligence to the authorities. As the lawyers go for broke, the whistle-blowers themselves have abandoned all sense of decorum and caution, unmindful of the consequences to their personal safety of being unmasked. Mr Sunday gives interviews and, according to some reports, even openly fought one of the whistle-blowers who advocated a different approach to getting the stashed NIA money.

There is no evidence to show that the government is as organised and farsighted as it claims. If they were, they would not allow the situation to degenerate to the sordid level that has become evident, with the possibility of endangering a policy that is widely acclaimed as sensible, timely and rewarding. They would have taken advantage of the open brawl between two of the whistle-blowers to find out whether there is any truth in the allegation that one of them schemed for a burglary or armed robbery to criminally gain access to the cash. Instead, the government has cynically suggested that many more people were coming forward to lay claim to the five percent compensation. From all indications, the compensation may be delayed further.

To demonstrate the government’s inability to implement the whistle-blowing policy faithfully, its range of reactions to the policy has been desultory and peevish. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) openly celebrated the multi-millionaire status of the whistle-blower, asserting, apparently without substantiation, that Mr Sunday, whose name it did not disclose at the time, was already rich. This was the trigger that provoked all the brouhaha that later enveloped the payment imbroglio. In reaction, the lawyers to the whistle-blower insisted that his client(s) had not been paid, challenging the EFCC to give proof. To arrest the controversy, the Finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, explained that the payment was being processed, and listed a number of steps that had to be taken to ensure that the right amount and persons were paid.

While that controversy was still raging, reports suggested that the sanity of the whistle-blower was also being questioned. And after crazily shuffling him between the EFCC and the Department of State Service (DSS), Mr Sunday was eventually dumped in a psychiatric hospital with no evidence of anything more than the hysteria he displayed when he noticed the refusal of the government to fulfil its obligations towards him. He is out of hospital now, and is still hysterical, insisting that he would not relent until he is paid. As expected, he no longer cares about his safety. Meanwhile, he and his lawyers acknowledge that there are two other claimants to the prize with whom he is willing to share the fortune.

But to add fuel to the fire, head of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Itse Sagay, justified the delay in paying the whistle-blowers with a logic the Finance ministry would find befuddling. Estimating the commission on the stashed cash to be some N850m, Prof Sagay suggested that Mr Sunday, whom he said had probably never seen one million naira in his life, could run mad should that huge sum be given to him. He supports and advocates payment in tranches, regardless of what the original whistle-blower policy might be. It may make economic sense to pay the whistle-blower in tranches, but if that is not contained in the policy, it would be wrong of the government to change the rules halfway into implementation. The government may wish to be sympathetic, and there is much to be said for that, and act with motherly care; but whether the beneficiary runs mad or not is really not the business of the government. They should pay him or them first, and only care later. Rules are rules, and the law is the law.

The reluctance, if not outright refusal, of the government to promptly abide by its own rules has led to a lot of complications over the N13bn Ikoyi cash haul. Now there are at least three proven claimants to the huge commission and two legal outfits pursuing the same objective of forcing the government to redeem its pledge. Some even estimate that there could be many more claimants, with the list being elongated as time goes on. By allowing itself to be distracted, the government inadvertently opened itself to allegations of acting mala fide and even endangering the entire policy. It is a crying shame. While no one disputes the government’s right to ensure that the right procedure is followed in paying out the commission, it is sadly also clear that the suspicion is well founded that the government is reluctant to pay because the N850m commission is huge.

But there is a redemptive side to the sad story the controversy over the delayed payment has become. Had the government been careful and altruistic, it would have secretly ordered investigations into how the three claimants got wind of the cash stash. Was there any internal NIA collaboration? How did the three men, one of whom allegedly advocated burglary to gain access to the money, discover the cash? Could they, or one of them, in fact be fronts for operatives of the NIA? And if it is true that one of them advocated for forceful entry into the NIA safe house to seize the money, could he have criminal background? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Instead, the government threw the psychiatry red herring before the public, and then in panic promised to pay the claimant(s) in tranches.

It is unlikely there will ever again be the discovery of such a huge cash stash. But regardless of this, it may be time for the government to look for ways of refining what is otherwise a very good policy designed to discourage and minimise corruption. It has irresponsibly failed to put in place policies and security measures to protect whistle-blowers. Now is the time to establish that framework. It has also not demonstrated finesse and efficiency in paying commissions to those who facilitate the discoveries, whether huge or small. It must now summon the discipline to do so. It must also, finally, put in place watertight plans to discretely investigate the backgrounds of whistle-blowers themselves. The process is as important as the outcome.

Meanwhile, the federal government must urgently remedy the nonsense it has made of the Ikoyi cash haul. It does no credit to its image as a serious government fighting corruption that it gave out contradictory signals and even made cynical statements about the cash haul. If they are not to discourage future whistle-blowers and kill the policy piecemeal, they must find the discipline and good sense to urgently repair the damage done to this extraordinary policy.

November 18, 2017
Maina and the EFCC-DSS turf wars

Until President Muhammadu Buhari cuts the Abdulrasheed Maina Gordian knot, the controversy over his reinstatement will continue to expand until it consumes more public officials. Hopefully, the president will summon the will to cut the knot soon. For a controversy that began almost surreptitiously, it is indeed baffling that the jobs of top government officials are on the line. Mr Maina, Chairman of the defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, had been sacked by the Goodluck Jonathan government in 2013 when his committee got embroiled in the financial malfeasances it was supposed to curb in pension administration. Since then he had been bidding his time, a virtual fugitive from the law after he was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Suddenly, a few weeks ago, the country woke up to discover that Mr Maina had been recalled, reinstated, transferred to the Interior ministry, and promoted. On top of these measures, his campaign posters littered Borno State where he was suspected to be interested in vying for the 2019 governorship race. It was not only Borno State that was disquieted, even the federal civil service was ill at ease over his surreptitious and defiant reinstatement, not to say promotion. After a media storm broke out in consequence, inter-agency turf wars between the EFCC and the Department of State Service (DSS) also followed immediately. Soon, the dual inter-agency wars expanded to become a tripartite war with the office of the Head of Service dragged in. And by the time details of Mr Maina’s reinstatement became public knowledge, reports soon indicated that more than three agencies were involved. There was, in fact, a fourth, the Interior ministry, and a fifth, the Justice ministry.

At the last count, the heads of the affected agencies and ministries were hardly on talking terms. The public always knew that many of the agencies under President Buhari had a difficult relationship with one another. But no one knew the scale, nor how disturbing it had become, nor how fraught with terrible repercussions the rivalries really were. Now, tempers are much more inflamed, and reconciliation almost impossible. For what began as a mere inter-agency rivalry, with its disconcerting administrative connotations, quickly metamorphosed into a deeply emotive and personal animosity. More damagingly, the rivalry now laid bare the divisions that have bifurcated the Buhari presidency in unprecedented ways. Roughly speaking, the Justice and Interior ministries are on one side together with the DSS and possibly one or two close aides of the president; while on the other side is the EFCC together, it seems, with the public, particularly the media and civil society organisations.

Had the war broken out privately and fought behind closed doors, reconciliation might conceivably be possible and even easy. But it is being fought garishly in the open, before gleeful, giggling public, and to the immense satisfaction of interested stakeholders adamant about bloodshed. How the president hopes to forge reconciliation is hard to see, especially with the Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita, becoming collaterally riled by the expanding nature of the conflict. As the war intensifies, with occasional lulls in the fight, the character of each of the combatants comes out in sharp relief. The DSS has maintained its cynical posture, its comments intermittently laced with deep and mystifying sarcasm. When the EFCC was quoted as saying it had no knowledge of the presence of Mr Maina in the country, the DSS scoffed that “Maina had been in the country for some time and it would be absurd for someone who should know to claim ignorance of his being around.”

The Interior ministry, hitherto unused to the brutal jousting of the armed agencies, has waffled and quibbled to no end, sometimes clumsily and unprofessionally passing the buck to other agencies, despite being in the thick of the conspiracy that saw the reinstatement of the luckless pension reforms boss. The ministry simply suggested, armed with relevant letters, that the Civil Service Commission transferred Mr Maina to the Interior ministry. After first claiming that it based its actions in the whole saga on court judgements, the Justice ministry, the originator of the offending reinstatement and transfer letters, later indicated that the time to speak was yet to come. It probably hoped that the controversy would die down if more information was not released. That has not happened because the Head of Service, fearing the matter would sooner rather than later come to a head, had taken the precaution of alerting the president to the dangers and damage Mr Maina’s recall could cause the presidency. The warnings obviously went unheeded.

Mrs Oyo-Ita’s letter indicating the appropriate steps she said she took on the controversy has leaked to the public and triggered a fresh firestorm of its own. The letter seemed to indict the president as well as question the ethics of a few agency and ministerial heads involved in the recall and reinstatement saga. The leakage, rather than the wordings of the letter, has pitted the Chief of Staff to the president, Abba Kyari, against Mrs Oyo-Ita. No one knows how the bitter peripheral quarrels around the president will end, for those arrayed in battle against Mr Magu of the EFCC are many and powerful, regardless of standing on shaky ethical grounds in the unfortunate affair. The turf wars began almost immediately the president’s team was constituted, and Mr Magu was nominated for the EFCC job. The Maina reinstatement is simply one battle in a fratricidal war that seems fated to endure till the closing days of the Buhari presidency, whether in a four-year tenure or eight-year tenure.

Few analysts will confidently suggest that Mr Magu’s EFCC can easily triumph in the ongoing turf wars, especially given the small support he enjoys in the presidency where he has tended to operate like a loner. The armada against him in the presidency may not be anchored on the ethical high ground, but they have the number, closeness to the presidency, and a more coherent and strategic vision of what they intend to do with the enormous power and influence at their command. They have apparently sacrificed Mr Maina a second time, but will protect him for as long as it seems possible and feasible. To save their heads, if it comes to that, they will even offer his scalp to the EFCC. But they are unlikely to relent or to forget how Mr Magu irreverently put them on the spot. They will bid their time to return the favour if the president does not pre-empt them by finding the courage to do a total clear-out.

Mr Magu has spoken confidently of the immutability of his position on the Maina saga. But like he has always done, he has not spoken discretely and diplomatically in a manner that would not offend his enemies or alert them to the danger his appointment to the EFCC throne constitutes to their offices and existence. If he is yet to be confirmed by the Senate, and is hardly loved in the presidency, at least among those closer to the president than he is, it is because he thinks wisdom is incompatible with the strength of his position, the ethical high ground he occupies. For a very sensitive and public post as the EFCC, it is to be assumed that there would always be some tension among presidential appointees, particularly those who are less than straightforward in their financial dealings. But in this case, the animosities between Mr Magu and other presidential aides have reached a boiling point. If the president won’t do it for them, and the appointees themselves are reluctant to quieten the storm, perhaps the uncompromising Mr Magu can find a way to lower the temperature.

If the turf wars were not deliberately programmed by the presidency to help check power aggrandisement by a few individuals or groups within the presidency, then the combatants must all recognise that the public impression about the presidency is quite unflatteringly one of dissonance, disorganisation and paralysis. This impression is unhelpful to the image of the president and his presidency. Mr Maina is unlikely to ever come back to his position or even the civil service. He has left quite a lot of upheavals and destruction in his wake. Mr Magu, on the other hand, is unlikely to vanquish his enemies in the presidency. He must therefore find a way of working with them. Because he was not replaced by a fresh nominee when it could easily and plausibly have been done, he is also unlikely to be vanquished by his enemies, regardless of his impetuousness. His enemies must find a way to ignore his provocations, as much as they can try, and even humour him when the spirit seizes them. If the president is to cut the Gordian knot and put an end to the rancour and rigmarole in his government, it will have to be on a spur he himself will in future be unable to explain. Cutting the knot will come in the shape of a total clear-out and entirely fresh replacements. But it is hard for the president’s idiosyncrasy to either instigate or accommodate such a tectonic measure.

November 4, 2017
Mrs Jonathan’s incomprehensible angst

Patience Jonathan, wife of the immediate past president, Goodluck Jonathan, is a colourful and down-to-earth woman, community leader, and, as the campaigns of 2015 later showed, an excitable politician. Since her unsavoury encounter with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) began sometime last year, she has oscillated between holy rage one moment and chauvinistic indignation at another moment. Her fiery emotions, drawing upon inexplicable logic, have swung wildly from side to side as the EFCC intensified its legal and media assault on her businesses, finances, and apparently her aides and family. She takes umbrage every time the anti-graft agency needles her; but there is no indication that things will not get worse, for the EFCC can’t seem to be restrained from pursuing her, whether out of spite as she insists, or out of institutional obligations as many analysts think.

Early this week, her spokesman cried out on her behalf, bemoaning what she construes to be the deliberate and orchestrated attack on her person and business. She was unsparing in her interpretation of the motives of the EFCC. Indeed, she looked beyond the anti-graft agency to make sense of her anguish. According to her spokesperson, Belema Meshack-Hart, “We believe that she is being systematically persecuted and punished because of her unflinching support for her husband during the 2015 elections.” Moreover, added the aide to the former first lady, “President Buhari should be reminded that his wife also supported him in all the elections he contested against former President Jonathan, but Dr. Jonathan did not at any point in time, carry out personal vendetta or go after Buhari’s wife.

Then pontificating, though a little grossly, it must be pointed out, the spokesperson concluded: “That is the standard practice in all democracies around the world. For instance, Michelle Obama campaigned vigorously for her husband’s party during their last presidential election, but we have yet to see President Donald Trump move against her. One thing is clear: No matter what they do to Mrs. Jonathan, she will continue to stand by her husband, the father of her children, even if it means paying the supreme price with her life.” It never in fact seemed too far from her private and insular idealism to conflate the issue of EFCC’s anti-corruption battle with what she supposed was a deliberate attempt by the Muhammadu Buhari government to rubbish her, her husband and wider family.

This latest interpretation of her woes, especially as rendered by the said spokesperson, is somewhat different from her earlier interpretations. When the encounter between her and the EFCC began, she first responded by suggesting that her husband was being persecuted despite his display of altruism and patriotism in peacefully handing over power to his successor. Everything was being done to rubbish him, she argued, an explanation Dr Jonathan himself seemed to have bought. According to him, Dame Patience was being persecuted because of him, wondering whether he had not made enough sacrifice for the good and peace of Nigeria.

It was clear Dr Jonathan felt inadequate to protect his wife, and in fact blamed himself for allowing a situation that put his wife on the horns of a dilemma. He went further to complain to as many influential leaders as he could, importuning them to persuade President Buhari to restrain state agents from harassing his wife. The harassments have not stopped, and Dr Jonathan, despite his unrelenting interventions, has been unable to help the situation. Unmindful of what any person might say, Dame Patience has, however, bravely plugged on, fighting for her life and whatever integrity she believes she still possesses, and standing in the gap for her much traduced husband. She seems to enjoy the new and versatile role, and has gushed about it repeatedly despite the fatuousness of her logic, the emptiness of her threats, and the futility of her fight.

Aware that all her efforts drew blank and she was unable to mitigate the harmful effects of the EFCC’s campaign against her, Dame Patience has shifted gear by trying to apply a different but suspicious logic to her afflictions. Her latest position is thus reflected in her spokesperson’s statement last Monday in which she argued more forcefully and valiantly that the Buhari presidency was after her on account of her role in the last elections. In one of those campaigns, she had called the eventual winner, President Buhari, unprintable names, and remorselessly described his ethnic stock a sociological nightmare for their unrestrained and reckless fecundity in procreation that is not matched by a corresponding show of responsibility.

Closely leashed to this rather implausible argument is her assertion that harassing first ladies is not fashionable, for not only did her husband not attempt it after the 2011 elections, even other countries also restrained themselves from persecuting first ladies. She is, therefore, mystified that the Buhari presidency broke the mould by targeting her and doing it openly and ruthlessly. She is, however, unconvincing in making a case for herself. She nevertheless cites the example of Michelle Obama of the United States, suggesting that whatever the former first lady did, particularly during the last US presidential campaigns, the eventual winner, President Donald Trump, had left her severely alone. In other words, Dame Patience has concluded despondently that her problem was not her financial dealings, which have raised eyebrows, but the pejorative statements she made during the campaigns.

It is not clear who her sources are, or whether she has any solid grounds for drawing those strange conclusions about her so-called persecution. Perhaps there is some smoke to that fire, for the Buhari presidency has not completely absolved itself of needlessly keeping and nurturing grudges. However, the EFCC has demonstrated openly that Dame Patience’s financial dealings raise suspicion as to their origins and destinations. So far, even if disguisedly, the anti-graft agency has limited itself to the facts of the humongous amount of money in her accounts and a number of properties she is not thought to be able to account for. Again, it may in fact be possible for her to account for some of her holdings and funds, but it seems even the EFCC must have made allowances for those possibilities.

What seems to be the trouble is the question of precedence in the government’s anti-graft war. Dame Patience, like her husband and many of his aides and sympathisers, think that since no past president ever really probed or harassed his predecessor, not to talk of going after former first ladies, then there must be something else to the whole ant-graft campaign. In addition, no former first lady, either because of her politics or financial dealings, has ever been probed, not to talk of being dragged before the courts. In a country replete with a sense of entitlement, both Dame Patience and her husband really think that being the first family to come from the Niger Delta — Nigeria’s main economic lifeline — their egregious malfeasances should be overlooked. After all, no Nigerian first family of northern descent has ever been so humiliated as the Jonathans.

Such arguments are bound to arise given the lack of precedence in such matters and the impunity of many decades past. Legal and institutional purists will be hard put to defend their hard-line position on the anti-graft war in a country and at a time where and when even serving leaders find it testing to maintain neutrality. There is nothing anyone can say or do that will convince the Jonathans that they are not being persecuted, not even if the case against them is ironclad. The challenge is for the government to see how it can manage the past and the present in a way that will ensure that the justice system is not shortchanged and the political system is not irretrievably damaged. Whether the normally unreflective Buhari presidency can manage that delicate and intricate balance remains to be seen.

October 7, 2017