Sentry 

After President Muhammadu Buhari’s spirited reading of the riot act against those who “want the destruction of the system” and his vow to shock them by speaking to them “in the language they understand”, mixed reactions quickly polarised Nigerians. The president had been referring to the unrest enveloping the Southeast and he was not shy of poking the old sore of the Biafran war – a vexing topic for them. He was even disdainful of it. In truth, there can be no justification for the destruction of public property and the anarchical desires of arsonists in the state. Naturally, there were those who were shocked to find that the president had it in him to be severe and stern with perpetrators of insecurity. They suggest that he was more lenient and accommodating towards killer herdsmen and was even willing to take reformative, rather than decisive, action against Boko Haram members. What does the presidency make of this?

Going by Minister of State for Labour and Employment Festus Keyamo’s scathing rebuke of detractors to the presidency’s polarising and selective show of force, the presidency may see them as nothing but meddlesome busybodies too blinded by their private agenda to be reasonable. Taking to twitter, he raged: “I hope some elites who couldn’t find their voices to rein in their wards when their region burnt, will not suddenly find their voices against Mr. President! Those who screamed that it’s Mr. President’s duty to maintain law & order should NOT try to teach him how to do his job now… The anger some are displaying against the President’s resolve to be decisive in dealing with these scoundrels is an indication of their support for the destruction of public infrastructure because they want to cripple Govt. A pure case of cutting your nose to spite your face!”

Not quite done, he continued: “A very unfortunate reasoning you read is that because insurgency is still prevalent in some other parts of the country, the President should just allow some villains destroy another region. It’s like a competition to bring the insecurity in one region at par with other regions! The President has vowed to deal with the scoundrels destroying public infrastructure & killing people to instigate insurrection & some dimwits really interpret this to mean he is threatening INNOCENT citizens! This reasoning is so ABSURD that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

That the ethnic ties which should have bound Nigeria in unity, peace and progress have become a Gordian knot setting the country ablaze should have been enough worry to more prudent public officials. It should have been a reminder of the importance of discretion in speech and engendered reconciliatory speech; but that did not trouble the legal mind of the minister. To the contrary he gloated that the presidency had displayed all that steel and firmness of purpose, and in that gloating he betrayed what may well be the general temperament of the presidency concerning the tempestuous and often incendiary Southeast in particular.

For context, the president’s comments were found offensive and in violation of Twitter’s policy and guidelines. They have since deleted them, prompting the Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, to state that Twitter’s mission in Nigeria is very suspect. He constructed his arguments on the information that Twitter funded the EndSARS protests. So rankled was he by the deletion of the presidency’s tweets that he drew a parallel with the deletion of former United States president, Donald Trump’s, tweets in the events leading up to his defeat at the polls. The minister went on to conclude that the presidency had a country to “rule” and nothing would distract them from that assignment. The real worry is the presidency’s immediate perception of criticism or negative media engagement as an attempt to seize power, hence its announcement on Friday that it would suspend all Twitter activity. The paranoia is as unseemly as it is amusing.

The conflict resolution tactics of the presidency have left much to be desired. In speech, body language and policy, the current administration has stoked the fire threatening to match secessionist agenda with force and by so doing throwing the rest of the country into unrest. Public officials like Mr Keyamo and other presidential appointees should speak the speech, as the nation prays them, trippingly on the tongue. But if they mouth it, as they have been wont to, then Nigeria would gladly have more deserving people speak to them.

Senate legalistic on new constitution

In what many have termed palliative and distracting moves by the Federal Government, the Nigerian Senate called for a constitution review of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to oversee the amendment of 16 structural issues in the country. The general opinion of Nigerians and indeed the wider world is that the constitution is a failed document unable to drive the country forward on a progressive course. Academicians of the law argue that the constitution derives its legal validity from an illegal source, that source being Decree 24 (Promulgation of the Constitution) of 1999. Whether the failure of the country can be traced to the constitution itself or a self-immolating political culture or undisciplined public officials, or even to extravagant and mismanaged institutions of government, public analysts want the constitution done away with. They argue that it is too silent on many issues regarding the diversity of the country and too unitary in form for a federal political entity.

The constitution review having taken off, the calls for a new constitution reached a deafening din with even certain legal personalities calling for the adoption of the 1963 Constitution, often fondly called the Republican Constitution. Among the proposals that the legislators have received for the amendment of the constitution is that of the renaming of the country. No one is sure what to make of that, but Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, Chairman of the Senate committee on the review of the 1999 constitution, knows what to make of the calls for a new constitution.

Said he: “Now, some of our compatriots have urged that rather than amending the Constitution, we should make a new Constitution altogether. We respect this opinion, and we believe it is a most desirable proposition. However, we are conducting this exercise in accordance with the extant legal order, which is the 1999 Constitution. Specifically, Section 9 of the Constitution empowers the National Assembly to alter the provisions of the Constitution and prescribes the manner in which it is to be done. Unfortunately, it does not make similar provision or provide mechanism for replacing or re-writing an entirely new Constitution. To embark on any process without prior alteration of Section 9 of the Constitution to provide the mode through which an entirely new Constitution could be made, would amount to gross violation of our oath of allegiance to the Constitution.”

Many analysts think it is an absolutist interpretation of the current constitution to suggest that the constitution’s silence on the procedure for entrenching a new constitution does not rule out the possibility of creating a new one. If the country feels that the current constitution has failed and that they are no longer interested in avowing it as a statute that they made or enacted, then the senate is duty bound to honour such wishes, they think. But, the senator is right. Trying to create a new constitution outside the provisions of extant laws will expose such a constitution to the same criticisms of the 1999 constitution. Legality must stem from more legality. But what happens when the extant laws cannot satisfy the democratic demands of the people?

Nigerians are sure that the senate will neither assent to any bill to totally alter the nature of the senate to a part-time occupation as optimistically suggested by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, nor will it honour the calls for an amendment to Section 9 of the constitution because they do not know what the proposed new constitution will bring to the table. One thing, however, is sure: between the senate’s legalistic stance on the propositions for a new constitution, the southern governors’ calls for restructuring, and the people’s exasperated cries for a new Nigeria, something must give way.

NYSC now government’s reserve army?

Although Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, is worried about the rate at which Nigerian youths renounce their citizenship in search of greener pasture, others in the government are more interested in the utility of the youths as mercenary in the event of a war. Talking up the validity and relevance of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the Director General (DG) of the scheme, Brig. Gen Shuaibu Ibrahim, mentioned among other things that: “Corps members are on reserve. They are part of the national defence policy of this country. So, where there is serious war, our corps members are educated, they are knowledgeable and they can be trained. You see the drill and so on. You can imagine within the short three weeks in the orientation camps, the corps members are moulded. They are like soldiers. You see female corps members blowing the army horn, playing with the military band. So, if not for the knowledge, where are you going to mobilise such young Nigerians to train them quickly to put in their best for the country? So, corps members are on reserve. They are also part of the national defence policy.”

That will not encourage already disgruntled youths to stay. No. The threat of conscription in a war for a country they do not believe in will make them put more vim into the task of escaping Nigeria. The DG may in fact have misunderstood the policy objectives of the NYSC Act, which is to foster unity in the country. Although the NYSC is often regarded as a paramilitary body, such affiliation with the ministry is only suppositious. He could not point to any part of the NYSC Act that allows the army to conscript youths in the case of an emergency.

Should the government desire a reserve army, then they must look to the Israeli Defence Force which has a similar but structurally different regular service. Every Israeli citizen, with few exceptions, is mandated to participate in the regular service, with males serving up to three years and females serving two years. The nature of their training is also different, and their youths are not drafted after three arduous months into a harassed labour force and sent off to teach in remote parts of the country with insignificant remunerations. The DG may want to reacquaint himself with policy aims and objectives of the NYSC before he makes any more public statements on the scheme.

 UnderTow

 

 

President Muhammadu Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant (SSA) on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, was a guest on Arise TV during the week and, as was expected, tried valiantly to simplify the workings of the presidency. Many critics have noted that the president has seldom been as forthcoming on his policies as many expect; so he does it by proxy. But the rationale behind that style continues to divide Nigerians. There are those who think that the president is not the most natural of orators in the country, so it would be reckless to thrust him before a television camera. Others say that he would not speak extempore, no, not by a long shot. They make particular reference to when the president was asked his plans for inclusive governance and he laboured through it. They also make reference to when he waxed memorably lyrical on his wife’s spousal responsibility, declaring that it was limited to the kitchen and the other room. The president himself will remember those outings, and he will not be keen to play any more media outings by ear. He will, therefore, only grant interviews by proxy; and on the rare occasions he appears himself, it is to read a prepared statement and watch amused as Nigerians split hairs.

But what is to be made of his retinue of misfiring spokesmen, and in recent times, his SSA? For a long time, the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, was always in the news for his caustic and incendiary media excursions. Perhaps time has blunted his pungency; howbeit he has learnt to select his moments. Mr Shehu has not. So exasperating were his biting media exertions that he earned himself a telling off from the repertoire of an angry Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State who has recently tapped into a rich vein of political and administrative form.

After the Asaba Declaration issued by a consensus of 17 southern governors, a matter close to Governor Akeredolu’s heart, silence reigned in Aso Rock as the presidency, shocked, pondered the administrative force of southern Nigeria with regard to the ban on open grazing. Then Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, always venturesome, embarked on a confounding interpretation of the constitution that earned him such public opprobrium that he retreated to think the matter over for a while. Finding nothing to learn from the AGF’s intervention on such a sensitive issue, Mr Shehu sauntered in and offered his unsolicited prejudice on the matter.

He said: “It is very clear that there was no solution offered from their (the Governors’) resolutions to the herder-farmer clashes that have been continuing in our country for generations. But the citizens of the Southern States – indeed citizens of all States of Nigeria – have a right to expect their elected leaders and representatives to find answers to challenges of governance and rights, and not to wash their hands off hard choices by, instead, issuing bans that say: ‘not in my State’. It is equally true that their announcement is of questionable legality, given the Constitutional right of all Nigerians to enjoy the same rights and freedoms within every one of our 36 states (and FCT) – regardless of the state of their birth or residence.”

For Mr Shehu’s troubles, Governor Akeredolu reminded him that he was but a political appointee and that he could not presume to superimpose his suggestions over the affirmative desires of elected representatives of the people. His words: “Anyone who has been following the utterances of this man, as well as his fellow travellers on the self-deluding, mendacious but potentially dangerous itinerary to anarchy, cannot but conclude that he works, assiduously, for extraneous interests whose game plan stands at variance with the expectations of genuine lovers of peaceful coexistence among all the peoples whose ethnic extractions are indigenous to Nigeria… The declaration that the recommendations of the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, a mere political appointee like Garba Shehu, are now the ‘lasting solutions’ which eluded all the elected representatives of the people of the Southern part of the country, exposes this man as a pitiable messenger who does not seem to understand the limits of his relevance and charge.”

That should have been just that for the errant spokesman; but he would soon appear in the media again, this time to give vent to information he was not even sure of. He was neither under duress nor was he subpoenaed. Indeed, he was under no compulsion whatsoever when asked why the president was absent from the burial of the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, who died in a tragic aircraft crash. It is unclear whether Mr Shehu was sensitive to the issue (some Nigerians think the devil is in the detail concerning the crash), or he was simply blasé and could not be bothered about anything, but he answered anyway. Never had a political appointee’s statement been more designed for self-harm.

Read Also: Garba Shehu and Malami as threat to our nation

 

Said he: “I was in Europe myself on an assignment and I have not spoken to the President on this matter. But let me give you just one example. The President is somebody who is very concerned about the safety and wellbeing of ordinary Nigerians on the streets. Do you know why he now prays his Jumaat in the State House and doesn’t go to the National Mosque? It’s because he doesn’t like this idea of closing roads, security men molesting people on the road for the President to have the right of way. These are small things to many people but they are important for President Buhari. So, it is a mourning situation and the President didn’t want to take away attention from that.”

If a president’s mere presence in the streets renders the populace unsafe, does it mean he has become a security threat? If his presence is an inconvenience or an avenue for molestation, then he is a bother, perhaps? Where the president is a self-declared problem, there are several solutions, but the least prudent one is hermitage – a reflection of the severance policy of the current administration. Amputating a leg for a scratch is archaic medical practice, and there is hardly any desirability of the same treatment regimen in politicking. That was the SSA’s excuse, however.

Mr Shehu must learn the discretion that every media aide needs to be successful at their jobs. His job is already made unfathomably difficult by the president’s reclusiveness and taciturnity. But, it is in tough situations that a man’s mettle is known. The SSA is starting to unravel at the seams, except his provocative statements represent the genuine interests of his principal. That would indeed be bewildering.

 

Acting IGP oversimplifies policing woes

 

During a weekly briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team last week, Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba Alkali, complained that the police were weakened since the EndSARS protests which led to a drop in police morale and the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and formation of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT). He is right, but his summation of the police’s woes can be misleading. Truth is a concept that is often subject to the speaker’s vantage point; but a public official occupying such a critical office as the IGP’s is expected to have a panoramic appreciation of the police’s woes. If his narrative is left unchecked, it will create a false trail that conveniently exculpates the police and lays the blame on a section of the populace that was legitimately and almost exuberantly afraid for its life. In a word, the truth can only be established by a careful deconstruction of facts till the first cause of an issue is identified.

According to the IGP: “The morale of our personnel has been a little bit dampened since the ENDSARS came and went away. With the proscription of SARS and the establishment of SWAT, which has not been able to take off fully, we had a vacuum in tackling most of the violent crimes from a position of strength in terms of having a strike force that is dedicated for that, rather than having our conventional police doing the policing in conventional way.”

Evading the causative factors of an issue and blaming an effect of that issue on another resulting effect does not help in solving the problem – something the IGP seems geared to do. For years, Nigerians complained about the oppressiveness of the police force, particularly the disbanded SARS which was accused of several abuses of human rights and violation of the constitution. It would be even wrong to identify this as the first cause of the problem. The root cause of the police’s woes was probably poor management occasioned by a fundamentally flawed organisational structure. Indeed, the IGP touched on the issue of state police, but only in passing, and that was as an effect of the weakening of the police force.

After the removal of former IGP, Mohammed Adamu, one of the hopes Nigerians expressed was that his replacement would be able to marshal his forces together, understand accurately their needs, and give the sort of leadership that would occasion a better and safer work experience for the policemen in the country. Unfortunately, the new IGP may have glossed over that point. Even when his much-desired SWAT becomes fully operational, the current administrative structure of the police force and their penchant for lawlessness in the defence and execution of the law will probably come back to haunt them. He must remember that police brutality caused the EndSARS protests in the first place. The police brutality itself was a result of underlying issues that he must identify. Not all the tweaking of the police force and its component units will help the police force in the long run – except the IGP can employ the disquisitional savvy necessary to address issues weakening the police force he heads if the chickens are not to always come home to roost.

UnderTow

 

FRUSTRATED by the lethargy and intransigence of the federal government in addressing the existential crisis facing Nigeria, lawyer, educationist and eponymous proprietor of the Afe Babalola University Ado Ekiti (ABUAD), Afe Babalola, announced that he would be joining other worried patriots to hold a national dialogue to address the issues fracturing Nigeria. The presidency took the announcement in bad faith, condemning him and many others who advocate a conference, and even suggesting that the call for a national dialogue was treasonous. Presidential spokesmen incredibly anticipated the outcome of the conference and insisted that one of the chief reasons for the national dialogue Chief Babalola was planning was to pass a vote of no confidence in President Muhammadu Buhari. The agenda for the conference was yet to be drawn, and the attendees at the conference remained moot, but a presidential degree of second sight had judged the meeting to be gloomy and foreboding.

Remaining comfortable, therefore, in its denial and operating under the false impression that Nigeria was blossoming into a species of Utopia under their administration, the presidency carried on, to the dismay of the general populace and detriment of life, limb and finance all over the country. Issues were treated symptomatically, rather than holistically, and secessionist cries soon increased to frightening decibels. It was therefore no surprise that 13 governors of the southern states, and an additional two represented by their deputies, came together last Tuesday in Asaba, Delta State to lend their voices to the call for a national dialogue as a “matter of urgency”. That the governors of the federation have been polarised along southern and northern lines is troublingly reminiscent of pre-Lugardian amalgamation politics. However, Nigeria has since moved beyond that level, and governors often meet, straddling geopolitical and partisan boundaries. Not even the placative constitutional review that the administration dangled before Nigerians last week could prevent the governors’ meeting.

No one can fault the governors. It is surprising that certain governors from the North and the Middle- Belt, going by their progressive and even radical views, were not in attendance. The meeting and the ensuing Asaba communiqué read by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu must serve as a timely reminder to the presidency that Nigerian politics is ideally organised as a federation and not a unitary government. For too long, component units of the federation have allowed diversity and politicking to disunite them, consolidating federal might to a frightening degree of absoluteness. Now, the governors have come together to pressure the federal government to dialogue on issues it had long since neglected and relegated. The issues are: urgent and bold steps to restructure Nigeria; full enforcement of ban on open grazing and cattle movement from North on foot; president Buhari should address Nigerians on insecurity; concern over Oshodi/Apapa Road gridlock, activation of more ports across the states; concern over economic implication of another Coronavirus pandemic lockdown; review of appointments into government dept/security agencies to reflect diversity; and united Nigeria on basis of equity, justice, peace. It is hoped that somewhere in the national dialogue they will find time to address the disaster that the stagflating Nigerian economy has become.

Restructuring, had it commenced a long time ago, would have prevented many of the issues Nigeria now grapples with. During the Jonathan administration in March 2014, Justice Idris kutigi oversaw a national conference that came up with a 10,335-page report which the government of the day promised but failed to implement. Had the federal government implemented it as promised by former president Goodluck Jonathan, or had it even commenced the implementation of the conference, then there would have been more hope of a united Nigeria than there is the current public despair of a disunited Nigeria. That Nigeria can accomplish more is evident, but only if the country is restructured with more foresight than was deployed to achieve the Japanese post-war economic miracle. Should the administration approach issues of restructuring with the insincerity of the Jonathan administration and the ungallant show of force that has characterised the current administration, things can get worse than they already are. The level of support that has attended the Asaba communiqué is too extensive for the presidency to ignore and too pointed for it to deflect. The constitution will eventually be rewritten to accommodate emerging realities in Nigeria’s socio-political ecosystem.

Read Also: Lawan, Gbajabiamila, Adamu: Southern governors wrong

 

It is that fading hope of a united Nigeria that Senate President Ahmed Lawan and Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila clung to when they addressed the Asaba communiqué. Said Senator Lawan: “I believe that, as leaders, especially those of us who are elected, should not be at the forefront of calling for this kind of thing because, even if you are a governor, you are supposed to be working hard in your state to ensure that this restructuring you are calling for at the federal level, you have done it in your state as well. What you may accuse the Federal Government of, whatever it is; you may also be accused of the same thing in your state. So, we are supposed to ensure that we have a complete and total way of ensuring that our systems at the federal, state and even local government levels work for the people. We should avoid regionalism. We are all leaders and we are in this together. The solutions to our challenges must come from us regardless of what level of government we are, whether at the federal, state or the local government level. I believe that Nigeria is going to come out of these challenges stronger”.

His appreciation of the issue is academic. Indeed, the theoretical blame should be shared equally between the state governments and the federal government, but that is not the be all and end all of the matter. The federal government, especially the executive, has found ways to appropriate and vest so much power in the centre that the state governments have become virtually useless. Section 215 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) makes the state governor the chief security officer of the state but the power is heavily derogated by the presidency’s oversight function on such power. How then can such a governor tackle insecurity, especially when many of the governors and the presidency are divided on the issue of open grazing? State governors have to defer to presidential directives on the administration of the economy, and have for a long time felt like puppets and figureheads in their various government houses, hence the call for restructuring and a national dialogue. The senate president only needs to step off his high horse to understand that he offends them by appropriating equal blame to a negligent federal government (of which he is conspicuously a part) and helpless, and sometimes castrated, ceremonial state governments.

Although the House of Reps has sprung to the defense of its speaker, his controversial statements initially left Nigerians in doubt concerning whether his loyalty lay with the people he represents or the president he had just finished praying with. Almost echoing the senate president, he said: “If truth be told, we all have equal shares in the blame for what is happening today. Whatever challenges we have, we must all come together to make sure that we resolve these issues we are facing. We must imbibe that spirit of oneness, togetherness, unity and love that would take us through this.” As the English say, “Fine words butter no parsnips.”

Indeed, it is easier to defend the speaker than it will be to defend Senator Lawan, but the expensiveness and urgency of the need for a national dialogue and restructuring make the trading of blames more irksome than desirable. As a matter of fact, contrary to his feeble stance, the federal government, not the state governors, should have been the ones advocating for the national dialogue. The federal government is, however, more willing to take control of natural resources than it is to take responsibility for national woes. This will become manifest if the offensive RUGA policy and the comical Water Bill are juxtaposed with the presidency’s stance on whose job it is to prosecute banditry and kidnapping. No sensible government with a clear path should have allowed the insecurity in the land to fester and gangrene to the odious sore it has become. And why does Sen Lawan preclude regionalism? Should he not allow Nigerians to have the last say, even if they seem nostalgic?

Despite its insistence, the presidency has not displayed a deep enough understanding of the economic crisis convulsing Nigeria. The wilted giant of Africa was already in a bad place prior to the advent of COVID-19. Following the destruction and impoverishment of the national lockdown and the following EndSARS protests, the presidency continually toyed with the idea of another lockdown, while arbitrarily shutting and opening borders to economic activity and placing bans on legitimate sources of livelihood. Until thinkers with foresight direct the presidency, there is no hope that it has the professional resource to chart a course of recovery for the Nigerian economy. The governors hope that the national dialogue will push the presidency to open more ports and decongest the Apapa/Oshodi gridlock. Those are lofty expectations from a federal government that is too obsessed with oil, including exploring it in regions that do not hold too much prospect.

Importantly, the hope of Nigerians is that the state governors’ meeting and the resultant resolutions, which were a hair’s breadth away from being a vote of no confidence in the Buhari administration, will shock the presidency into constructive and progressive action to revivify the socio-economic reality of the country. It would be futile for the presidency to exhibit its characteristic intransigence by taking on the governors. It must mull the situation with all the care and depth of reason the problem deserves before venturing to make any replies. When in fact it makes those replies, the hope and expectations of the governors will be that the response comes from the president himself, repentant of his previous obstinacy to calls for restructuring, and armed with cogent plans for the phoenix birth of a new Nigeria; for already the country is in an uproar.

UnderTow

It took quite some time and several displays of vacillating leadership for Nigerians to come round to the fact that they were hasty in voting the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to get rid of what they believed to be the Goodluck Jonathan laissez-faire presidency. The ripple effect of that unspoken meeting of minds among Nigerians is that the presidency has become defensive and now claims that there is a plot to upstage the administration in a treasonable and undemocratic manner, to wit any other manner than by elections. This fixation has, in turn, left the populace in the remarkable position of being unable to communicate its discontent with the state of the nation to the presidency without constituting, in the presidency’s opinion, a party to the treasonable plot. What the presidency seems unable to appreciate is that there is a fine distinction between citizens who are discontented with the presidency on the one hand and anarchical malcontents at whom the presidency’s suspicion should ideally be directed on the other hand.

Primarily, a congress of factors, including controversial policies, economic imprudence, social tension and friction, insecurity, stultification of the judiciary, and disregard for human lives, have made Nigerians to be dissatisfied with the administration. This discontent is what generally grieves the presidency, whose spokesmen have tried futilely to portray it as the best thing since independence, more so against the backdrop of the secessionist ambitions of agitators for tribal republics. For the citizenry, their primary woe is the activities of malcontents, lawless anarchists who mock the government at every step of the way, and who have no other design than the actualisation of some fundamentalist ideology based on either religion or ethnicity. Nigerians feel that although the government is aware of the activities of these malcontents and the dangers that they pose to the populace, it does not think them a big enough threat, hence the national dysphoria.

It is difficult to blame them: the distressing news that have emanated from Kaduna for instance, where Governor Nasir el-Rufai sentinels an obstinate policy not to negotiate with bandits and kidnappers despite initially holding contrary views on the matter, are enough to have caused a fatal stir in other less accommodating countries. To jog the memory, on March 11, 39 students were ferreted without their consent from their hostels within the premises of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, to an unknown location. Being thus kidnapped, their abductors released a sickening video in which the helpless students were being indiscriminately flogged and harangued with whips and guns. This was to expedite the payment of the N500m ransom demanded for their release. On April 18, however, things took an uglier turn when some kidnappers, under the stewardship of one Sani Idris Jalingo, kidnapped about 22 students from Greenfield University, Kaduna. The criminal outfit asked for a ransom of N800m, and when things were not moving at a satisfactory pace, they killed first three then two students. It was only three days ago that the students from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation were released, after 56 days in captivity. It took the facilitation of former president Olusegun Obasanjo and Sheikh Ahmad Gumi to get them out.

Distressed, the parents of the students from Greenfield University established a forum, the like of which should not happen in a sane country, but which has been the trend since perhaps the Chibok girls kidnap. One of the parents, a widow, appeared on Roots TV and reported that they had in fact gone to prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Gumi, to see what he could do about the matter. The thing about Sheikh Gumi is that everyone wonders how he has portrayed himself as a bandit medium and always seems to be in the picture whenever issues with killer herdsmen, bandits or insurgents arise. He is an expert on the matter, it would seem, and he has been known to advocate for them severally. That he advocates for the bandits, suspicious as that is, is not the problem – every Nigerian is entitled to their political opinions, regardless of how subnormal they are, and the venting of such offensive opinions. Sheikh Gumi’s actions are also guileful. He walks in and out of bandits’ dens and is not questioned by anyone, he speaks fatherly of them, claiming to know who they are, and claiming to understand their griefs. It is unclear how anyone can identify with murderers; but he does it anyway, and the government does not raise eyebrows.

The parents’ entreaties have not moved the abductors, neither will the president’s detached appeal through his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, on May 5 that the bandits should release the abducted Greenfield University students. Although, the other parents have come out to publicly disavow the statement of that distressed widow and apologise to Sheikh Gumi, no one is falling for the smoke and mirrors game. The presidency’s stoic refusal to investigate the Sheikh who clearly has access to some of the bandits is unnerving and has further fuelled suspicion that the administration is simply apathetic. A government that wants to adopt a no-negotiation stance on terrorists must have a plan for rescuing students. Many Nigerians are appalled to see the presidency and the el-Rufai government remain adamant about not negotiating, yet not having a cogent plan to save the kidnapped students.

More than apathy, however, is the worry that the administration is simply mischievous. Reacting to opposition from the People’s Democratic Party that the president should bring kidnappers and bandits to justice, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated that it was not the job of the federal government to prosecute kidnappers. His words: “The PDP alleged that kidnappers and bandits are not being brought to justice. This is apparently aimed at the Federal Government. It is shocking that a party that ruled this nation for all of 16 years does not know that kidnapping and banditry are not federal offences. The PDP should therefore call out the states, including those being controlled by it, to ensure a rigorous prosecution of arrested kidnappers and bandits.”

This legal manoeuvre explains why there has been general lethargy on the issue of kidnapping in Nigeria. Section 364 of the Criminal Code makes kidnapping a crime and offence against liberty under federal law and stipulates that it is punishable with 10 years imprisonment. Section 365 of the Criminal Code allots a punishment of two years’ imprisonment to anyone guilty of depriving another person of liberty in Nigeria. Many states, however, have domesticated the Criminal Code as laws within their jurisdictions. Accordingly, several states have instituted the death penalty for kidnapping. So when the crime of kidnapping occurs within the boundaries of states, it is the attorney general of that state that commences actions in that regard. This does not, however, exculpate the federal government as the minister would like to believe. The governors of states may be the chief security officers of their states, but security apparatus are controlled by the federal government. There are no state police forces, neither are there state armies. The presidency’s belief that it is making headway in the fight against terrorism is also not satisfactory. Prosecuting terrorists and reintroducing them into the society only for them to continue a life of unhinged crime does not sound like success in the fight against terrorism contrary to the minister’s opinion.

Indeed, by pushing the responsibility of bringing kidnappers to justice to the state governments but retaining control of security forces, the presidency cannot recognise that the biggest threats to its administration are the malcontents they are trying to avoid and its own self which is stripped of every vestige of nobility by warring power factions, not dissatisfied Nigerians who seek better governance. Without the foregoing context, the following agitated statement by the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, released on May 4 would have dropped Nigerians’ jaws: “Championed by some disgruntled religious and past political leaders, the intention is to eventually throw the country into a tailspin, which would compel a forceful and undemocratic change of leadership. Further unimpeachable evidence shows that these disruptive elements are now recruiting the leadership of some ethnic groups and politicians round the country, with the intention of convening some sort of conference, where a vote of no confidence would be passed on the president, thus throwing the land into further turmoil. The agent provocateurs hope to achieve through artifice and sleight of hands, what they failed to do through the ballot box in the 2019 elections. Nigerians have opted for democratic rule, and the only accepted way to change a democratically elected government is through elections, which hold at prescribed times in the country. Any other way is patently illegal, and even treasonable. Of course, such would attract the necessary consequences.”

Disturbingly, this amounts to an exhibition of the presidency’s difficulty with appreciating public law, as well as the overarching paranoia that is the result of its ignorance. Section 143 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) dictates the procedure for removing the president or vice-president from office. Mr Adesina’s claim that any other way but presidential elections and tenure expiration for entering and removing people from the office of the president is patently illegal is faux pas. Some Nigerians state that the presidency’s statement does not only reek of ignorance, but is also a reflection of the administration’s disregard of and contempt for the oversight functions of the legislature. Whichever it is, ignorance or disdain for legislative powers, the presidency’s paranoia comes across as the whining of a minor.

The presidency should know that the frustrated citizenry, who send their children to universities in the country with the mind-set of a herd of gazelle crossing crocodile infested waters, who endure woeful living standards in an ailing giant economy, are discontented with the administration and simply want better. They are neither interested in a violent overthrow of government, neither are they anarchists, for they know the failure of the state is equally injurious to their wellbeing. The government should not fix a myopic gaze on them while the malcontents, who compromise the lives and territorial integrity of Nigerians and Nigeria, appear to operate unchecked. Foresight and depth will bring home to those in authority that Nigerians want them to complete their tenures peacefully, but not with the same weakness manifested over six years, which has brought the country to a sorry pass.

UnderTow

Through the past week, polar ecclesiastic positions on the fate of Nigeria came to the fore, making the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), temporarily defensive, and arousing the poet in presidential spokesman Femi Adesina. Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry in Enugu, Ejike Mbaka, a reverend father, had last week asked President Muhammadu Buhari to resign if he had lost the ability to turn Nigeria’s fortunes around and provide adequate living standard and security for the people. In the event of the president failing to resign, the cleric urged the National Assembly to commence the process of impeaching him.

He said: “We are crying because we don’t have a shepherd. All those that will fight what I am saying now will eventually suffer. If you (Buhari) can’t do it, either you resign or you are changed. A good coach cannot watch his team defeated when he has players sitting and watching from the bench. Either Buhari resigns by himself or he will be impeached. This statement is too mysterious and supernatural. I know that people will begin to fight it. The chief security officer of a country will not just be sitting down and not making any comment. Gunmen are attacking everybody. Why are you crying Nigerian youths? As I said, foreign nations have become a dumping ground for our ingenious youths. Young doctors and lawyers are running away from Nigeria to countries we used to be better than. What is the matter? Nigerians are crying, why? Because there is no security in this country.” After Rev. Fr. Mbaka made his angry declarations, Deputy Spokesperson of APC, Yekini Nabena, in turn flew off the handle and threatened to expose the cleric to the Vatican. True, Fr. Mbaka has been the source of some controversial statements, but it is not clear if the APC has any credible evidence to indict him. They would have delighted in exposing him to not just the Vatican, but also to the entire country a long time ago. In politics, no one suffers a sword of Damocles to just hover over their enemy; they instantly deliver a killing blow.

Couching a related but substantially different message in a more subtle way was Pastor W.F Kumuyi, Founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, who noted that Nigerians would need to unite for the country to rise again. He was rather silent on the roles that the presidency and leaders had to play in the quest for unity, but was unequivocal on the role citizens had to play. Without bothering to read between the lines of his statements or meditate on what role the presidency had to play in uniting Nigeria and Nigerians so that the country could “fly” again, Mr Adesina, the presidential poet, tickled pink by Pastor Kumuyi’s prophecy that did not directly indict the country’s leadership, described him as a fine man who knew how to say fine things and who was a model of what the church should be in Nigeria. It was unimportant to him that the church used to be less incendiary than it has been in recent times. It did not occur to him that perhaps the spate of religious intolerance and insecurity in Nigeria could have something to do with the church’s rebuke of his principal’s administration.

Mr Adesina was even more concerned with the positive promises that were attached to the pastor’s statements without paying too much attention to the caveats attached or the provisos that needed to be met before the prophetic declarations would be fulfilled. By his summation, the pastor’s prophecies were as follows: “What did the simple, self-effacing man say? A lot, which can be distilled into the following points: Nigeria is down today, faced by many challenges, but it can still fly again, if only the people can stop hate, killing and divisive utterances; God is still interested in Nigeria, but we must eschew utterances that could damage the expected change; Don’t give up on Nigeria, but believe things will get better with focus on God; Love one another and use resources God has blessed the nation with, for the good of the people.”

Excited by these promises, Mr Adesina struggled not to mention names as he took other ministers to the cleaners for what he perceived was their negative and divisive prophecies concerning Nigeria. It is not clear whether his problem is with the ministers, their messages, or how they delivered their messages. That he is unhappy with the personage and identities of certain ministers is hardly likely. Evidence to support that claim, if it exists, is hidden. That his problem is with their message seems more likely. While he eulogised Pastor Kumuyi, he said: “What deep, penetrating words from the former Mathematics teacher, who heads one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the country. And how perspicacious, encouraging, comforting, unlike the things we hear from some pulpits, organizations, and preachers today. Those ones have become veritable parts of the problems of the country.” But, it could be argued that he has not examined the former Mathematics teacher’s words with the depth it deserved.

Conversely, the words may also be read as follows through Mr Adesina’s lenses: “Nigeria is down today and would never fly again except certain conditions, especially eschewal of hate, killing and hate speech are fulfilled. God is fast losing interest in Nigeria because Nigeria has refused to eschew certain utterances…” The final point speaks for itself – “start to satisfy private interests with the people’s collective patrimony and Nigeria will underwhelm.” This is the same message that many preachers have delivered and suffered presidential excoriation for. Bishop Matthew Kukah delivered something along those lines and was roundly rebuked for it earlier this year. It is, in fact, a message that common sense and knowledge of political science and public policy should dictate to anyone who is not in denial. Against most of the vices mentioned above, laws have been enacted. No, the presidency’s problem cannot be with the messages of other clerics despite the spokesman’s statements suggesting so.

It would appear his grouse is more with the manner in which other clerics deliver their message. Pastor Kumuyi has delivered his message without pointing accusatory fingers at anyone hence the approval that accompanied his message. Many other ministers have not minced words in identifying the presidency as being culpable in the social and economic decline which the country has suffered. This would mean that the presidency is satisfied with enjoying the benefits of leadership but will not take responsibility for the failure of such a leadership. But for how long will it continue to avoid this reality? Is it Greek to the country’s leadership that they were elected to fix any broken parts of the polity, and that failure to fix it after six years of ceaseless tinkering means a general failure of leadership? Why the blame game then?

Several accusations of nepotism against the presidency have been replied with venom. The argument has always been that nepotism is not about the number of administrative appointments but the calibre of such appointments. Has the presidency done much to uphold the federal character principle? For a government that campaigned heavily on corruption, Nigeria ranks 149 out of 180 countries – an unenviable position. For a government that promised to quell inflation, salaries have not increased but prices of commodities have. For a government that condemned its predecessor for high rate of insecurity, it has done damage that would take donkey’s years to remedy. Yet, the presidential and ruling party’s spokesmen think that their problem is with clergymen who have done nothing more than tell it as it is.

It is needless to direct vitriol at men who have only echoed the sentiments of Nigerians and reflected the reality on ground. Contrary to the presidency’s understanding of the Bible, prophets of God were fond of commenting viciously on the leadership styles of errant kings and prophesying doom if they would not repent. King Ahab once referred to Prophet Elijah as a troubler of Israel. Jesus Christ himself spoke against injustice although he paid his taxes. What then is wrong if contemporary preachers speak against injustice?

UnderTow

It is trite knowledge that when a person has, by his own profligacy, sailed into modest, humble financial straits, his sense of economic frugality enjoys some form of growth and development. He acquires newfound dexterity at drawing up his scales of preference and knows what opportunities to forgo. Instead of topping his favourite delicacy with the choice parts of a roasted bird, he is more agreeable to decorating such a meal with the much cheaper egg of that bird. He no longer orders a taxi ride; he stands at the bus stop and hops into something more suited to his lean finances. In a word, they learn painfully how to cut their coats according to their cloth, not their size as previously dictated by affluence. Trite knowledge, that is, to a more judicious country than Nigeria whose senate is currently contemplating a national database for cows.

It is difficult to fault the lawmakers of National Assembly for choosing to perform their duties in accordance with Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution. It is, however, trickier to examine whether or not their interpretations of Chapter 2, or the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy, has not become too strident. The social havoc that the existence, rearing, preservation and economics of cattle husbandry has wreaked in Nigeria is mindboggling. First, governors pontificate all over the place, extrapolating defences of subliminal jurisprudence for the wielding of dangerous weapons by suspected herdsmen. Next, they team up with misled clerics to posit all sorts of illegal justifications for trespass to land, which certain culpable herdsmen should ordinarily be strictly liable for ab initio. They draw inspiration from a compliant government, which has tried to implement the controversial RUGA policy, and whose spokesmen are given to interpreting criticisms against the criminalities of herdsmen as ethnic discriminations or secessionist agenda.

The senate has also nourished this bone of contention. One of its members, Senator Bima Enagi (APC, Niger South) currently believes that a wise solution to the herdsmen and farmers’ crisis in the country is by setting up a bureau for livestock that will be responsible for keeping a national database for cows. Such a prospective national database, which has passed second reading already, is nothing short of controversial. The building of this database would, of course, not be done gratis by well-meaning Nigerians. Funds for such an agency has to be sourced from somewhere in a country whose second legislative chamber is in debt and cannot pay contractors for carrying out repairs. The perceived financial woes of the country are not hidden from any; not even if anyone tries to hide from it. Only last week, Edo state governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki, flippantly, casually, and irreverently accused the federal government of financial recklessness by printing 60 billion naira to shore up or augment March’s revenue. Indeed, he went further to urge the government against borrowing without a repayment plan. Angry and full of federal wrath, Central Bank Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, ordered that states begin repayment of loans given them as budget support facility. Other governors, polarised along party lines, attacked and defended him in turn before huddling together and giving the matter the attention it begged for. Rising from a National Economic Council meeting on Thursday, they unconvincingly stated that no money was printed. Nigerian vaudeville!

Nevertheless, it would have appeared that these lean financial times would sound it to the senate that any penny spent should be able to return a pound. It is no longer time to be pennywise pound foolish – it never was time anyway – but pennywise pound wiser. They have not got the memo. To become an Act, a Bill must meet the procedural requirements of Section 58 of the 1999 Constitution and the National Assembly. It must first be sponsored by a body with capacity to do so, go through an initial review at the National Assembly, be gazetted, go through first and second readings, and the procedure goes on till it ends at the president’s table for ratification. If he refuses to assent, it goes back to the National Assembly, and two-thirds of the National Assembly agreeing to it, is passed if the president does not ratify it within thirty days. The legislators run the show on lawmaking matters, and rightly so.

The National Livestock Bureau Bill is another of a number of piquing bills, which includes The Water Bill, that the Senate has had to consider. The Bill was sponsored by Sen Enagi and he expects that the agency will be in charge of identification, traceability and registration of livestock such as cows and goats to, among other things, curb cattle rustling. It will also ensure the protection, control and management of all livestock in Nigeria and will be charged with ensuring food safety, transparency and information in the food chain, as well as the prevention of cattle rustling to end the prolonged farmer/herder conflict in Nigeria. The bill is expected to help address the diseases and other threats to human lives caused by the movement of livestock while livestock identification by the agency will include ownership and other details including their origin, birthplace, sex and breed.

If Senator Enagi has had a conversation with the Nigerian Identity Management Commission, then the results of that conversation have not conveyed home to him the ridiculousness of embarking on a database system for cows in a country that is still struggling to enroll all its citizens in a database. Not all of the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy’s dithering on the linking of National Identification Number  with SIM cards has deterred the senator from avoiding anything closely related to a database in Nigeria.

Indeed, the establishment of the proposed National Livestock bureau is but an exercise of duplicating offices. Already there are the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the Federal Department of Livestock. None of these agencies, following the senator’s reasoning, can be trusted to do the job. So, funds must be expended anew in the establishment of an agency.

The solution to the livestock issues Nigeria experiences is not lawmaking; it is disciplined implementation of extant laws and policies. Relevant agencies need to be adequately retooled to carry out the functions for which they were created. There is no wisdom in conducting a cattle, goat, ruminant or quadruped census. The lives of these creatures are not sacrosanct or protected by the constitution. At the conclusion of the current Ramadan, many of such ruminants will be slaughtered and eaten; what was the use of entering them, complete with date of birth and gender, into a database? The Bill should never have got to the second reading, and the mere fact that it did is a troubling indicator of the prioritization system in the senate.

 

 

Presidency’s Pantami advocacy

 

Although the country has communicated in many ways and languages that it is fed up with its Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Pantami, the presidency has stuck with him, maintaining in the process that he is a changed man. It has termed the calls for his removal a “cancel campaign”.

Age does not change a person. Academicians of literary studies teach that there are round characters and there are flat characters. If the minister were truly a round character, as he and his defense team, including the presidency, suggest, then there must have been a specific action or series of action that have served to deradicalise him. Not even a deus ex machina can miraculously change a man who found no fault in religious intolerance and homicide. A man who is a legal adult when he makes hate speech has capacity to bear the liability for his actions. It is therefore an unfair estimation of public intelligence for the presidency to chalk off the minister’s past indiscretions as the product of juvenility and expect the country to believe a word of it. That will neither do, nor has it done. Although the presidency reposes a high degree of confidence in the minister, it is oppressive to keep him in power when the entire country has screamed itself hoarse that they do not feel comfortable with his continued presence in the halls of power. The presidency should not be ignobly involved in the defence of the minister but should be the dispassionate judge trusted enough to deliver a final just judgement in favour of public policy and national interest.

 

Fayemi only half-right on insecurity

 

Speaking on Tuesday, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State announced that one of the causes of insecurity in the country was unemployment. In his words, “It is good to be tough on crime. We must be tougher on the causes of crime. You cannot have a 33 per cent unemployment rate in any country and not expect to deal with the sociological implication of that. And that is an area that the Nigeria Governors’ Forum believes we must also work collaboratively with our partners, also work with our financial institutions and the private sector to find the best mechanism to bring our youths to work. If we do that, we would have fundamentally played our role in addressing the causes of this untoward crisis that the country is dealing with.”

Indeed, the governor’s statement almost suggests that unemployed youths are a huge factor in the insecurity crisis dogging the country. That is only half-right. Even if all the youths in the country were gainfully employed, there are extenuating factors that would soon put them out of employment again without effectively curbing insecurity. The kidnap and brutalisation of innocent citizens across the country is not only occasioned by unemployment. In fact, as is the case with some herdsmen, insecurity is also as a result of employment. What about the ethnic undertones of insecurity? Or the underfunding of the police and the demoralisation of the army? Deeper than unemployment, structural issues have congregated to increase insecurity in Nigeria. The governor should perhaps address them before pointing the finger at unemployment.

UnderTow

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State has enjoyed animated media presence since the turn of 2021. Only indeterminists think this is a simple coincidence or the natural consequence of his assiduity. Analysts say someone is strategically promoting his image in the media. No one really knows what he is doing in Kogi State or what political philosophy reflects his entire administration, but he and a few others insist that he has transformed the state to a desirable place. Senator Dino Melaye thinks he is suffering personified, and that his cosmic destiny, as well as all of Kogi, rejects him. Others simply write him off as a comical governor posturing with the air of a statesman bursting at the seams with the most profound ideologies on national issues. Indeed, pontificating on issues within Kogi is no longer enough for the pretender ideologue; he points to phantom and ambiguous achievements he claims to have accomplished in Kogi as reference to his mettle and profoundness to address national issues.

Last week, he went to the presidency and talked about Nigeria’s unity, COVID-19 (a subject he is least qualified to address), insecurity and food supply among other issues. Only a few hours earlier and accompanied by self-professed short-fused politician, Femi Fani-Kayode, he had met with disgruntled representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN) who were upset by certain national issues and were no longer willing to supply food to the southern part of the country. It is amazing that both men believed their intervention to be of any relevance. Somehow Mr Bello magisterially believed he had solved a tricky national issue and his short-fused companion’s comments on the governor’s intervention concerning strong leadership may have coaxed him to visit the presidency to relay AUFCDN’s demands. Prior to that, he had met with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who had extolled imperceptible virtues he thought were commendable about the governor. In all these things, his media aides, able and willing to the core, gave wind to his increasing penchant for sermonising with all the frenzy of people on a mission. But, what mission?

Whether or not he is the architect of the comical calls for him to contest the 2023 presidency, he is actually being called to run for presidency in 2023. Though this is difficult to believe, given the governor’s unconvincing record in Kogi, one errant group, GYB2PYB, laughably laid siege to the Kogi State Liaison office in Abuja and vowed they would lay a more terrible siege to the entire country than the EndSARS protests if Mr Bello did not agree to rescue the country from the doldrums by running for presidency. This was the sort of duress the governor appeared beholden to; so he did not think to urge them against such provocative statements. He simply looked on with the imperial air of an agreeable monarch. Of his achievements, the most popular, analysts believe, is that he has done something to stymie insecurity in Kogi State. His personal account is that when he first assumed office in Kogi State, the place was a hotbed of violence, but in six months, he put an end to all that and Kogi State is now the safest as far as the country is concerned. In a word, he believes that if all the governors would simply sit up and do their jobs, then there would be no insecurity in the country. But he hardly sits in Lokoja himself, let alone sit up to do anything.

No governor will waste any time heeding the implausible Mr Bello who, in any case, denied the presence of COVID-19 in his state for over a year, preventing treatments from going on within his state’s boundaries. They will remember how the Federal Medical Centre in Lokoja was attacked last July by armed hoodlums, probably sponsored. The medical centre was at the time the only institution treating issues related to COVID-19, while the governor had staunchly denied the existence of the virus in the state. In fact, he was of the opinion that the federal government was doing the wrong thing by ordering a lockdown as the country could have capitalised on the pandemic by exporting clothing materials for the production of facemasks. He was also entirely sure that the Chief Judge of Kogi State High Court, Justice Nasir Ajanah, died because he was isolated when he fell ill, and that he should not have been, as there was no COVID-19 in Kogi State. It meant nothing to him that a number of his aides were dying of suspected COVID-19 symptoms; there simply was no COVID-19 in Kogi State, Mr Bello insisted.

Of his meeting with the former president, a statement from Mr Bello’s camp reads: “Former President Obasanjo noted that the fight against insecurity should have everybody on board, stressing that governors should involve everyone to ensure insecurity is curtailed in Nigeria. While appreciating the governor for his developmental effort in the state, especially in the areas of youth and women inclusion in politics and governance, infrastructure, health and education, Obasanjo charged Governor Bello to continue to be an advocate for youth involvement in governance.” It is not clear why the former president, who has himself been fingered as a contributor to the wobbly foundation Nigeria now totters on, alluded to inclusiveness and health development in the governor’s administration. Health in Kogi State remains atrociously underwhelming and inadequate, and ethnic inclusiveness could as well be the Achilles heel for laming the much touted governmental genius of Mr Bello. In fact, it would go a long way for the governor to account properly for the developments and investments he would have brought to Kogi after eight years. Will he be able to? But, spurious calls for his presidency continue to echo round the country.

Posters campaigning for him appeared in Plateau last month, while in Adamawa, Yenagoa and Warri posters have already appeared this month. The posters, like the doltish GYB2PYB, premise his capability on his youthfulness while conveniently failing to tie him to any political party in the graphic design. The bankroller of the futile quest for a Bello presidency is not unaware that there are many people far more qualified than Mr Bello, who has been accused of grandiosity, in his current political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). He will find it herculean to win the party’s ticket to run for presidency. The claim for a youthful leader annoys good sense and it is testament to how traumatic the glacial Buhari administration has been that a speck of grey hair is now viewed as anathema to quality leadership in Nigeria.  There is no wisdom in the claims portraying Mr Bello as a suitable candidate for presidency on account of his youthfulness.

A youthful president could be worse than an older governor, just as badly as an older president could be disastrous. What Nigerians need to examine is the character of a person, and one such person who has given that character analysis of Mr Bello is Simon Achuba, who worked with him as deputy governor during his first term in office. Mr Achuba’s testimony of Mr Bello is not positive, and the only defence the governor’s camp could put up was that his detractor’s services had been procured by enemies of the state to drag the governor’s image in the mud.

According to Mr Achuba, who accused the governor of mismanaging billions of naira, “When you assess the government of Yahaya Bello from day one, it has been fighting and fighting. Anyone that has a different opinion from him becomes an enemy. Anyone that says anything that is not praise to him, he goes ahead to attack the person. In governance, you must give room for criticisms whether good or bad. As a leader, you learn from criticisms and those who criticise you are not necessarily your enemies. There could be individuals who want you to do well but in his case, it is not so.”

It is difficult to fault Mr Achuba, especially when the bread levy plot of last November remains fresh in Nigerians’ memory. The plot had been to impose taxes on every loaf of bread baked in the state. Public outcry saw the government and then the governor in quick succession distance themselves from the offensive policy. No one was really willing to take the blame for it so they scheduled the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Usman Ibrahim, to take the fall for the administrative disgrace. It is not clear what has become of him, but the story has faded away and pro-Bello agents have regained the courage to announce their unattractive proposition that he should lead the country. It is logical that a governor who cannot govern his cabinet properly cannot govern his state with any propriety. How then does anyone or any assembly of individuals think there can be any merit to suggesting that he govern the country? Even the youths he so desperately tries to identify with ignored his ingratiating and bold offer to lead the EndSARS protests of last October. As part of his proposals for leading the protest, he had suggested that the youths should saddle him with the responsibility of meeting the president to probe a missing $16bn, which he claimed had gone into the pockets of a miniscule few for the revivification of the power sector.

There are whispers that there is no secret bankroller of the calls for his presidency but himself. No one knows the truth of such claims, and it is hoped, for his sake, that they are not true. Already the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and his old foe, Senator Melaye, want his head on a platter of gold for money laundering. They have importuned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), United States Embassy, British High Commission and others to investigate him. His former deputy governor, Mr Achuba, will not object to that position. He must therefore ensure he is innocent at all costs of being the one bankrolling the sundry misguided groups and individuals who think he is fit for presidency. He must also tone down his propensity to carry out the thankless political odd jobs he appears besotted to in company with non-state actors such as the incendiary and bellicose Mr Fani-Kayode.