The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • IReV: Fishing for excuse ahead 2027 polls

    IReV: Fishing for excuse ahead 2027 polls

    During and immediately after the 2023 elections, the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal became the most controversial and ready excuse for the opposition to explain their defeat. Two of the opposition parties, the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), seized upon the chaotic real-time results transmission issue to argue the unjustifiability of their losses. But while the LP had no agents in over 41,000 polling units out of over 176,000 polling units nationwide, and therefore knew little of what transpired in those unmanned areas, it insisted that the non-transmission of results through IReV explained their presidential candidate’s defeat. The PDP was less sanguine about the sanctity of that excuse, but rather chose to dwell on the pre-election issue of the qualification of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate to contest the poll. Yet, neither the PDP nor the LP substantially contested the integrity of the Form EC8A result sheets, which, unlike the hackable IReV, was available to be scrutinised by defeated candidates and their agents and lawyers.

    Unusually, more than a year before the next polls, and focusing intently on the amendments to the 2022 Electoral Act, the opposition parties have renewed their bitter campaign against any provision that attempts to circumscribe the real-time transmission of election results to the IReV portal during the 2027 elections. They hold on to the implausible argument that the secret to their electoral success in 2027 lies with Section 60 of the Electoral Act that provides for the electronic transmission of results. By retaining the 2022 Act, which sustains the discretion of INEC to determine how results are transmitted electronically or otherwise, instead of making the IReV mandatory, the opposition seems to think they have no chance in the next polls.

    READ ALSO: Kwara massacre belies end of Mamuda/JNIM terrorists

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar, leader of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) widely believed to be set to pick up the party’s presidential ticket, spoke through his media office by condemning the retention of the 2022 provision for results transmission. Said he: “Real-time electronic transmission of results is not a partisan demand; it is a democratic safeguard. It reduces human interference, limits result manipulation, and ensures that the will of the voter expressed at the polling unit is faithfully reflected in the outcome. To reject it, and adopt the 2022 provision on so-called electronic transmission of results, is to signal an unwillingness to submit elections to public scrutiny.” Whatever former LP presidential candidate Peter Obi thinks of the contentious provision, his views have begun to be subsumed under Alhaji Atiku’s position.

    Their opposite number in the opposition, the flailing Tanimu Turaki-led PDP, is even more lyrical and vociferous in opposing the retention of Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022. Said the party’s spokesman: “After an intentional and protracted delay, the Senate, while passing the amendment to the Electoral Act, rejected the electronic transmission of results at the polling units. This rejection is most shameful and unfortunate, attracting condemnation from all democratic-minded persons…Electronic transmission would have brought an end to the ignoble practice that has been deployed by politicians to win elections against the wishes of the people expressed through the ballot…This is indeed a sad day for electoral democracy.” What would the opposition say of the United States President Donald Trump who is attempting to ‘nationalise’ elections in the US as opposed to state control?

    Regardless of the arguments of the opposition, Section 60 is not the be-all and end-all of elections in Nigeria. There are other provisions in the Electoral Act, including the signing and dissemination of Form EC8A as well as other processes, that are even safer and more important to the success of elections in these parts. Crucially too, Nigeria’s telecommunications sector features uneven coverage around the country, especially depending on the region and the available infrastructure, while internet penetration is still average. The opposition parties do not spare a thought for the sometimes ineffective networks, sometimes unreliable telecoms infrastructure, and the difficulties agencies like INEC experiences in protecting their networks against hackers. In the last elections, IReV was used in many instances but not overwhelmingly.

    It promotes disorder, if not anarchy, to engineer distrust of the electoral body especially when the Electoral Act already makes provision for the manual transmission of results. If the opposition will spend as much time in organising themselves and ensuring that polling units are manned and Form EC8A are preserved, they will stand a better chance of supplying needed proofs of electoral malfeasance should it arise. After all, there was no mandatory IReV in 2015 when the ruling party lost the presidential election to the opposition; while in many states, ruling parties lost governorship and legislative polls.

    It is an improvement of the Nigerian electoral process that despite poor technology and low internet coverage, especially in rural areas, the framers of the Electoral Act 2022 courageously provided for the electronic transmission of results despite lack of electronic voting. It is also reassuring that the same provision has been retained rather than expunged, contrary to the impression given by the opposition. With time, and with substantial improvement in internet and telecoms coverage, Nigeria will get to a point where the method of balloting and results transmission will not be an issue. It is important that Nigerians are not bewitched into thinking that IReV is the single most important factor in electoral outcomes. It is not.

  • Excitable Otti versus unyielding Abure

    Excitable Otti versus unyielding Abure

    Abia State governor Alex Otti and Labour Party (LP) factional leader Julius Abure are indications that the ghost of the troubled LP has not been laid to rest, let alone resting in peace. In late January, the Federal High Court in Abuja, citing the April 2025 Supreme Court verdict, declared the Nenadi Usman-led LP as the authentic caretaker executive of the party. Pursuant to the judgement and tired of factionalisation, Dr Otti reached out to the other faction, asking for reconciliation and unity. Mr Abure was adamant. There would be no reconciliation until the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have had their say, the factional chairman bawled. It is not clear when that would be, but considering the 2027 electoral timetable and the impending party primaries coming up in a matter of months, both appellate courts had better hurry if Mr Abure’s faction is not to lose out altogether.

    READ ALSO: PDP: Wike gets upper hand again

    Mr Abure’s dismissive characterisation of Dr Otti’s request for rapprochement was colourful. He said through his faction’s National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh: “We are not interested in any move by Abia State Governor, Dr Alex Otti, to reconcile the party because he was the one who brought the crisis to the party in the first place…This reconciliatory thing he is throwing around is of no use. What we just witnessed was a judgment by a court of first instance. Why can’t he wait for the outcome of the appeal before deciding on such a move? Why is he suddenly in a rush to call for reconciliation? As far as we are concerned, their celebration is a pyrrhic victory…Let him know that the battle is not over.” By the time the legal battle is over, it may be too late for credible aspirants to fight for the party’s tickets for the 2027 polls. In all probability, however, Dr Otti, who has resisted persuasions to defect, may be fighting to secure a platform for his reelection and political life.

  • Atiku hyperbolic on loyalty

    Atiku hyperbolic on loyalty

    During last week’s public presentation of The Loyalist, a book written by Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), former vice president Atiku Abubakar pontificated grandly on the subject of loyalty. Though his short take was laced with hyperbole, he tried to give the impression that he understood the subject, and even attempted to turn it against his political opponents. As the chief promoter of the party, and consumed with the ambition to preside over Nigeria, especially considering the fact that he sees this election cycle as his very last chance, he has steered the coalition party into vehemently posturing as a government-in-waiting. His pontifications, however, create doubt in the minds of many Nigerians as to his grasp of issues and his readiness to assume high office.

    In penning the book, Mr Abdullahi said on television that the loyalty subject was itself somewhat nuanced. This was probably why he titled it, The Loyalist: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice, substantially different from In the Shadow of the Godfather, which he had originally toyed with. Answering a question on Channels TV, the author insisted that despite still retaining his respect for former Kwara State governor and senate president, Bukola Saraki, he could no longer trust him nor remain loyal to him for a number of reasons. No one should begrudge him his opinion. But here precisely is the crux of the matter. Mr Abdullahi once considered himself loyal to Dr Saraki, or at least to a phantom idea of what he believed the former governor stood for in politics. But in his public disquisition, Alhaji Atiku vigorously posited that unlike in the regimented services, politicians should define and approach loyalty from a normative perspective that is ideologically consistent, if not prescriptive.

    Here is a somewhat lengthy excerpt from what Alhaji Atiku said at the book presentation: “…I have personally faced exile as a result of loyalty. I have survived assassination attempts as a result of loyalty. What you may have found through research is not unusual; it is part of the price many of us have paid. For those of us who come from the military and paramilitary professions, loyalty is non-negotiable. There is no reservation, only absolute obedience. But having joined political life over the last almost four decades, I have realised that loyalty in politics is not as rigid as it is in the military. Loyalty should strengthen the common goal, not narrow the circle of belonging. It requires accountability, transparency, and the ability to listen and learn, especially from those with whom we disagree. True loyalty embraces diversity of thought and protects the dignity of every citizen. As leaders and aspiring leaders, these are lessons we must bear in mind for leadership and public service. The book invites us to examine loyalty to country, community, institutions, and to our own moral compass vis-à-vis personal loyalty. It challenges us to consider how loyalty can unite us in the service of a shared and just future.”

    Read Also: Atiku’s son hails Tinubu’s economic policies, backs re-election

    The former vice president’s friends and enemies will take his disquisition apart, block by block, without even trying so hard. He talked of loyalty as a tool to strengthen the common goal rather than narrow the circle of belonging. He was simply being theoretical. In the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the platform upon which he anchored his ambition for the presidency in 2023, he violently repudiated his own thesis of ideological loyalty by sticking to his party chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, even when it was both no longer realistic to do so and when it seemed poised to cost him dearly. If his ‘loyalty’ to Dr Ayu was not a narrowing of circle of belonging, nothing else in this world qualifies. Alhaji Atiku’s political history is in fact a testament to the most egregious and contradictory understanding of loyalty, his expectation of loyalty from his own circle of belonging, and when it serves his ambition, his provocative and enduring refusal to give loyalty, whether to an idea, no matter how profound, or to a person, no matter how objectionable.

    What is well known about the former vice president’s politics is that his entire understanding of loyalty is whatever serves and advances his ambition to win the presidency. His several junkets in and out of political parties do not demonstrate a clear understanding of what loyalty means, particularly in the ennobling sense he has tried to paint and deploy it. Instead they reflect a man unstable in his ways, a man obsessed with being president, someone consumed with a messianic presumption of his capabilities, a leader eager both to betray others and exact sacrifice of untold proportions, and a conjuror of unsubstantiated tales of exile and assassinations. He spoke last week on a subject he should have stayed away from, for there are many aspects of Mr Abdullahi’s book that offer themselves for easy discourse by someone like him so superficial in his general understanding of policy and strategy.

    In rounding off his brief remarks on the book, Alhaji Atiku says it “invites us to examine loyalty to country, community, institutions, and to our own moral compass vis-à-vis personal loyalty.” Incredible. There was nothing he said or did in his ‘nearly four decades in politics’ that demonstrated his loyalty to country, community, institutions, or moral compass. Nothing. His time as vice president to Olusegun Obasanjo was truly dismaying. The only sense of community he has is his dear and autarkic self, the ultimate John Donne man ‘entire of himself’. As for any loyalty to institutions, he approaches it like a courtesan. And moral compass? Why, it is a miracle the former vice president can still find his way around what is wrong, not to talk of pontificating on a general moral code on what is right.

  • Soludo, Kanu and befuddled Onitsha traders

    Soludo, Kanu and befuddled Onitsha traders

    Anambra State governor Chukwuma Soludo was justified to order a one-week closure of the Onitsha Main Market due to the traders’ defiance of the repeated appeal to end their Monday sit-at-home order emplaced by Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). If they could obey non-state actors who are in jail in Sokoto (Kanu) and Finland (Simon Ekpa), and which obedience is costing the state an estimated and astronomical N8bn weekly, the governor found it distasteful that the traders stubbornly disobeyed lawful state orders to keep the market open for business.

    Even more galling to Anambrarians is the fact that the traders responded to the governor’s one week closure by organising protests to force him to back down. This is utter shamelessness. The so-called unknown gunmen killings and Monday shutdowns in the Southeast never elicited the kind of protests that greeted the Soludo order. This indicates massive elite connivance at IPOB’s self-immolating tactics. Now, the traders are protesting and, together with a sizable section of their elite, have refused to condemn Mr Kanu’s counterproductive legal histrionics and political grandstanding. They objurgate Finland’s legal system for jailing Mr Ekpa, and are threatening Nigeria and the ruling party for jailing Mr Kanu.

    Read Also: Soludo commissions 5km community road, hails public-private-community partnership

    Prof Soludo will be advised not to back down. He has sensibly limited his market closure order to one week. He should let the punishment run its course despite the subterfuge of some analysts cynically equating the governor’s order with IPOB’s Monday order. The Onitsha traders have obeyed years of Monday sit-at-home orders. One week of closure will not kill them. They have after all generated the stamina to stomach the punishment.

  • Atiku, Obi call for truce

    Atiku, Obi call for truce

    Shortly after former Anambra State governor and Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, migrated to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on December 31, 2025, supporters of former vice president Atiku Abubakar began assailing him for eyeing the presidential ticket of a party whose takeover was inspired and financed by someone else. For weeks, both camps in the ADC, a previously existing but fringe party chosen by a coalition of opposition forces to wage the 2027 electoral battle, have engaged in heated exchange of words, insulting and bruising each other in anticipation of the primary to determine the party’s standard-bearer. The reason is that the two gladiators, Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi, know that the 2027 poll will be their last, but feared that they won’t get the traction they received in 2023.

    While Mr Obi, whose supporters resent supporting any other person for the presidency save their champion, had been fairly reticent about the scurrilous Obidients, Alhaji Atiku appeared to have had enough of the heated exchange to post on social media last week of the need for supporters of the ADC presidential aspirants to stop the brickbat. According to the former vice president, “Anyone who insults Obi or Atiku does not mean well for the leaders, the Coalition ADC and for Nigeria and Nigerians. The only people who benefit from such a civil war are the APC urban bandits who want to maintain the satanic status quo. We are better together!” This admonition came on the heels of some Obi supporters damning the impatience of Atiku supporters who denounce the intolerance and irreverence of the vulgar Obidients.

    Around the same time Alhaji Atiku posted his admonition, the convener of the League of Northern Democrats, Umar Ardo, also a fellow Adamawan, told Channels Tv, that Mr Obi was nothing but a pretender to the throne. According to him: “Well, the ADC, as currently constituted, if it goes for primaries a hundred times, Atiku will win a hundred times. There is absolutely no doubt about that. How Peter Obi and his supporters react is what will determine the election. I am not saying that Peter Obi cannot be the candidate of the party; however, he can only be the candidate of the party if Atiku steps down.” Mr Ardo’s confidence infuriated the Obidients, and they doubled down on their precondition for joining forces with the ADC, which is that they expect their champion to get the ticket for the 2027 poll, or nothing else. Mr Obi, they exclaimed, was the only one fit and modern and electable for the presidency.

    READ ALSO: Gov Abba Yusuf’s convoluted defection

    Alhaji Atiku is, however, a more consummate politician. He knows many things the naïve and exuberant Obi supporters don’t. When the former LP candidate was still trying to make up his mind which political platform to use, Alhaji Atiku quietly and efficiently organised the takeover of the ADC and imbued it with life. With his men positioned in key organs of the party, he forbade them from talking about any predetermined presidential ticket. Their singsong was that the ADC needed to be built first before talking of candidacies. Of course he knew there were talks of matching Mr Obi with former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai for the presidential ticket, or failing that, matching Mr Obi with the proud and domineering former Kano governor and NNPP leader Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso for the ticket. And he knew much more that in the Southeast or anywhere for that matter, if push came to shove, ADC members always knew on which side their bread was buttered.

    So Alhaji Atiku sits grimly and contemplatively in near anonymity, poised for the big day when the party would make its choice for the ticket. To him, the priority was to get Mr Obi into the party, and then after that, the bridge. Last December, frustrated that the LP was engrossed in litigations, and fearing he could be left stranded, for he was a joiner not a founder or builder, Mr Obi finally defected and directed his men to join the grand coalition. But he did not burn his bridges. He left room for retreat if it became inescapable, for he knew that there was not a cat in hell’s chance he would be given the ticket either on a platter or even if he schemed for it with all he has. Above all, the former Anambra governor knew that any opposition to Alhaji Atiku would be half-hearted, ultimately doomed by regional permutations and financial necessities. After all, despite his misgivings, Mr Obi knows he has really nothing to campaign with: no divisive religious themes, and no convincing proof he has a clue how the economy works beyond mouthing comparative statistics of global development.

    The former vice president has now called a truce, and Mr Obi has little appetite for any abusive exchanges. But at bottom, their edgy supporters, particularly the implacable Obidients holding Mr Obi hostage to their utopian ideals, have made up their minds which way to go. They will keep a tentative truce; but with their hands on the trigger and their guns cocked, they will fire at will when any provocation arises. However, with both men in the same creaky boat, and sailing midstream in a river with billowing waves, it would be insanity to attempt to bail out. As Mr Ardo mused, the ADC fortune will be determined by how the supporters of both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi react when the chips are down and the presidential ticket secured. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.

  • The Kaduna (Kajuru) abductions

    The Kaduna (Kajuru) abductions

    Last Sunday’s abduction of some 177 worshippers from three churches in Kurmin Wali community in Kajuru local government area of Kaduna State illustrates once again the loopholes in Nigeria’s security paradigm. The abductions took place on Sunday, but it was not until Tuesday before the authorities acknowledged that a crime took place. Did no one lodge a report to the nearest police station? And if they did, why were senior police divisions, local government officials and state authorities not immediately notified? By initially denying the crime, state and local government authorities seemed mortifyingly unaware of any attacks and abductions in Kajuru.

    Unfortunately, much time was lost bickering over whether a crime occurred or not, rather than immediately activating measures to intercept the kidnappers. As late as Thursday, however, according to some indigenes of the area, the kidnappers were observed travelling on foot in the same general area. Though some 11 people reportedly escaped from their abductors, some 166 are thought to remain in the custody of the criminals who are clearly having a hard time moving so many people at once, and on foot. Why can’t they be monitored and isolated?

    READ ALSO; Poor pastor or powerful pastor?

    Not only must states redesign their security architecture and crime reporting methods, they must also brace up for embarrassment now and again as the next election cycle draws near. The Defence minister Christopher Musa hails from the state and is a member of the ethnic stock of the victims. Only recently he publicly condemned the act of negotiating with terrorists. The terrorists and anguished public will watch to see what happens, especially when the kidnappers were quoted as mocking the affected communities for reposing too much hope in security agents. What is clear is that if the response time to these crimes is not shortened, the nation and the security forces will be repeatedly embarrassed.

  • Fubara, Wike: peace, war indistinguishable

    Fubara, Wike: peace, war indistinguishable

    At first, reports suggested that 26 lawmakers in the Rivers State House of Assembly on January 8 had signed up for Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s impeachment for breaching provisions of the constitution amounting to gross misconduct. The governor was accused of engaging in extra-budgetary spending, demolition of the House of Assembly complex, flouting Supreme Court judgement on legislative autonomy, and withholding funds allocated to the House of Assembly Commission, among other infractions. By Thursday, four lawmakers had, however, developed cold feet and called for dialogue to halt the impeachment process. They nevertheless stopped short of dissociating themselves from the impeachment notice. But last Friday, the four lawmakers publicly reversed themselves, accused the governor and his deputy of deliberate intransigence, and renewed their association with the impeachment notice. The lawmakers finally addressed the press late last week and insisted that the impeachment process was proceeding apace.

    The Assembly claimed to have properly served the impeachment notice, but the governor has denied being served. Whatever the status of the notice, it is clear that going into the weekend and perhaps early next week, and regardless of ongoing mediation efforts, the Rivers drama will assume fresh vigour one way or the other. The governor probably reposed too much hope and assumes ironclad protection in his membership, together with the lawmakers, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). He could not understand why members of the APC would undermine an APC governor, obviously because he does not understand what a null hypothesis is. Maybe, instead of wondering why APC lawmakers would want to remove him, he should have asked why as an APC governor better and deeper cooperation with the lawmakers was not expected of him.

    In any case, two main groups are mediating the Rivers impeachment crisis, the first of its kind in the Fourth Republic where members of a party are sworn to removing a governor of the same party. The mediators seem likely to be able to resolve it where everyone else had failed. The first group, a seven-member committee of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), headed by eminent lawyer and former Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Kanu Agabi, will attempt to reconcile the warring parties. By his training and experience, not to say his initial diplomatic statements on the crisis, Chief Agabi seems perfectly placed to make a dent on the problem. Should he and his other six committee members fail to bring peace to Rivers, it is hard to see anyone else succeeding. But as a fail-safe measure, Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers has also empanelled another high-powered nine-man Reconciliation Committee to procure peace between the warring factions. Headed by His Majesty Dr Suanu Baridam, the Gbenemene and Kasimene of Ancient Bangha Kingdom, the committee is expected to plug any other existing loopholes to the forging of peace in the state.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Rivers Assembly directs Chief Judge to raise committee to probe Fubara, deputy 

    When the impeachment idea came to light on January 8, the second time in Mr Fubara’s less than two-and-a half year rule, it was expected that President Bola Tinubu would again wade in and mediate the crisis. Perhaps he still might. But so far, there has not been any open or concrete move from the presidency to find a common ground between the battle-hardened Rivers politicians. The president had twice mediated the same crisis between the governor and his predecessor, Nyesome Wike, and even imposed a state of emergency chiefly to abort the first attempt to impeach the governor. The warring sides reached a truce and gave indications that Rivers would, going forward, begin experiencing peace. Each side knew what it had signed, and what was expected of it. Shockingly, however, though the peace deals were rendered in English, they were as quickly broken despite the absence of ambiguities. Perhaps buyer’s remorse interjected itself.

    If the president intervened twice, imposed a state of emergency, and the war still persisted, it would be naïve to expect that he would rush into another intervention, forge another deal, and go back to sleep. What proof exists that any new intervention would engender the lasting peace Riverians desire so fervently? In fact, the bigger question is to ask what proof exists that the two new committees of eminent Rivers stakeholders would succeed where the presidency appeared to have failed. The answer is that this time, however, the mediators are Riverians themselves. More, they are indeed eminent personalities and individuals who, once they reach a consensus, will not tolerate the violation of their decisions. Indeed, the suspicion is that both mediating groups will at a time during the mediation process harmonise their positions and ensure that no one breaks the truce again. What may in fact be difficult to fathom is how the groups will achieve a consensus in light of the obstreperousness of the combatants and their equally ill-tempered and incompetent advisers coaxing their principals to dig their heels in.

  • Europe, Greenland and Trump

    Europe, Greenland and Trump

    Since his assumption of office in January last year, the unrelenting United States (US) president Donald Trump has continued to insist on annexing Greenland, an autonomous Arctic territory under Denmark, the hard way or easy way. He absolves himself of the huge responsibility of taking the right decision on a matter that exemplifies his personal greed rather than US national security interest. Just when it seemed his interest had waned, it resurfaced even more virulently. He justifies his hard line position by citing competing and countervailing Chinese and Russian interests in the Arctic and minerals-rich territory.

    Mr Trump did not say how many territories he would take if competing great powers showed some interest. Was anyone competing for Canada when he desired to make that country the 51st US state? And would he have shown interest in Venezuela had that country been arid, poor and ridden with problems and disease, like Haiti for instance? And what of Mexico, over which he has shown no interest in making the US’s 52nd state? Why, of course, it is Hispanic, and that race of people war against his racist inclination. But over Greenland, he will likely come a cropper. European countries in NATO have signaled that any attempt to forcibly possess Greenland would spell the end of the Atlantic alliance. Regardless, the US president has sworn to punish with tariffs anyone who stands in the way of Greenland annexation.

    Read Also: Trump as Europe’s nemesis

    Unsure that Mr Trump is not as hard of hearing as he is greedy and megalomaniacal, European NATO members have begun to take tentative steps to back their commitments to Denmark and Greenland with action. Germany and France have sent military teams to Greenland to look at all probabilities and possibilities, including preparing grounds for military deployments. After interacting with Mr Trump for a few years and seeing how mean, intransigent and incorrigible he is, they have probably begun to realise that the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him, not yield inches and yards. In other words, Mr Trump will have to determine whether to fight Europe over Greenland or shelve the greed that has defined much of his adult life.

  • Nigerians love zero-sum game

    Nigerians love zero-sum game

    Moderation, middle of the road, restraint are virtues now almost completely alien to Nigerians. Islamic cleric Ahmed Gumi threatens the republic on behalf of Fulani herdsmen, arguing apocalyptically that going to war with them over banditry and killings would be counterproductive and unwinnable. Pascal Chibuike Okechukwu, alias Cubana Chief Priest, night club owner and former shoemaker, threatens the ruling APC with defeat in the next presidential poll for jailing IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu. Oyo governor Seyi Makinde also threatens ‘to use madness to cure madness’ should the 2027 poll be rigged. His assumption, of course, is that should the PDP lose, then the elections were rigged. And then, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, always hyperbolic and vengeful, Peter Obi, ever so highfalutin, and other African Democratic Congress (ADC) leaders, have also jointly threatened that chaos would ensue if the next elections were rigged. In all, every one of these threateners indicate that their loss would equate with the ruling party rigging the polls.

    READ ALSO; FUNKE AKINDELE: Undisputed queen of Nigerian Box Office

    The social media is not left out. There have been torrents of threats against the republic should the republic persist in fighting bandits laying the society waste. And there is also the owner of Air Peace threatening that if the new tax laws were not repealed or suspended, airline business would collapse inside a month. And finally, Nigeria’s neocolonial elite still bewitched by America and the irreverent President Donald Trump have threatened that should the APC rig the elections, US would give Nigerian leaders the Nicolas Maduro treatment. Truly sad. Flowing from the threats, it is clear that most Nigerian political and business elite are overrated.

  • Sense and nonsense in Rivers

    Sense and nonsense in Rivers

    Barely weeks after they seemed to have put their animosities behind them, Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State and his predecessor Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have unsheathed their swords again. It didn’t take months in the first instance for the war between the two leaders to break out after the 2023 elections. Since then, they had been at daggers drawn until President Bola Tinubu brokered a peace deal between the warring factions. That deal quickly unravelled even before the ink was dry. Then threats of impeachment followed in quick succession, later a proclamation of emergency that stalled the impeachment, and soon thereafter another tentative peace deal presupposing that the combatants had learnt their lessons. Alas, all along, trench warfare had been unfolding, leading once again to another round of impeachment notice served one way or the other, on the governor last week.

    While the war seems to be about political disagreements caused by misdirected loyalties, it is really all about a battle for supremacy between the governor and the FCT minister. Mr Fubara does not appear to know how to sustain a peace deal, in addition to being tactless and insufferable; and Mr Wike seems apathetical to being gracious and patient, in addition to being overbearing. That the war keeps flaring, it is now very obvious, is less a reflection of the contents of the various peace deals and truces reached in the past as it is about the idiosyncrasies of the two politicians unmitigated by time, politics, logic and affiliations. There will perhaps be another round, or even a few more rounds, of making peace, but it is uncertain that any peace penned would last between two men so unalike in their worldviews and so fundamentally opposed politically and behaviourally.

    The war had been simmering for months despite strenuous efforts to keep up appearances and paper over the cracks. But the latest battle began when an unreflective All Progressives Congress (APC) national secretary, Ajibola Basiru, speaking at the commissioning of projects in Rivers State three days before Christmas, indirectly endorsed Governor Fubara for a second term in office. Having defected to the APC on December 9, not too long after a majority of Rivers lawmakers headed in the same direction, the governor, it was clear, had indeed begun to nurse a second term. It was probably not the most prudent ambition to exhibit in the circumstances, but it had been rumoured that one of the provisions in the peace deal Mr Fubara entered into related to his abjuration of a second term ambition. This may explain why Mr Wike kept harping on the ‘agreement is agreement’ mantra. But whether true or not, for the deal had never been made public, Mr Basiru, who was in a position to know the dynamic of the Rivers crisis, should have been more circumspect in his utterances.

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    Last week’s flare up is also speculated to have been partly triggered by Mr Wike’s meddling in the succession battles in a few APC states. Incensed, some APC governors, already aware that the former Rivers governor was resented in President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet due to his rising profile and charismatic politics, threw in their lot with Mr Fubara and let it be known publicly that the governor was being treated contemptuously by a non-APC cabinet member who was becoming too big for his britches. They, therefore, began lending the Rivers governor support for his second term, agreement or no agreement. Mr Wike’s burden is compounded by two militating factors. One is the central role he seems to be playing in the disaffection and distemper coursing through the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), vitiating their politics and rendering them so weakened by dissension that any hope of revival appears foreclosed before the next round of elections in 2027. He is unloved and roundly hated in the opposition, making them wish his downfall. They revel in the animosities he has awakened in the APC and suggest that the ruling party had it coming, and so should not complain after deploying him as a battering ram against the opposition.

    The second factor is more troubling and a little nuanced. His enemies in both the PDP and APC do not pull their punches in suggesting cynically that Mr Wike had rested almost his entire relevance in the Tinubu cabinet on how he swung Rivers State for the APC in the 2023 presidential poll. That race and that victory were of course pivotal to President Tinubu’s election, but some APC leaders now say it is discourteous and impolitic to keep hammering on it as if the entire election was won by that singular state electoral success. The Rivers poll victory was part of a collective, they said, albeit a significant part. Mr Wike’s constant iteration of his role in the Rivers poll success has finally driven many APC leaders up the wall, and they are sick and tired of his preening.

    President Tinubu, a far better tactician than Mr Wike or any other political leader in the ruling party or in the opposition party today, has been more forbearing of Mr Wike’s excesses. He recognises that his stake in winning the 2027 presidential poll is far more epochal in significance than Mr Wike retaining his political relevance in Rivers. The other APC leaders, some of them popular governors in their own right, are more than ready to give battle to the former Rivers governor. And they have signaled their preparedness to fight, regardless of the cost in 2027. For the president to throw caution to the wind, however, and join them in the fray, they will have to convince him that sacrificing Mr Wike or even weakening his hold over Rivers would cost the APC little or nothing.