The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Labour Party sinks into labyrinth

    Labour Party sinks into labyrinth

    Last Tuesday, the Labour Party (LP) crisis got much worse than its stakeholders bargained. Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja declared that the Julius Abure-led leadership of the party produced by the March 2024 Nnewi, Anambra State, national convention was legitimate. The judgement invalidated the 29-member caretaker committee constituted on September 4 by party leaders who met in Umuahia, Abia State, the only state governed by LP. Governor Alex Otti hosted the meeting. The leaders based their decision to sack the Abure-led National Working Committee (NWC) on a March 20, 2018 judgement by Justice Gabriel Kolawole which ordered the party to organise a convention in one year.

    Why did it then take about six years before the party finally roused itself to a solution that nevertheless failed to placate key stakeholders? It was not until 2022, said party leaders, that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) finally brokered a truce between warring groups in the party to give teeth to the 2018 court judgement. The convention would have been held one year after INEC’s intervention, had the 2023 general election not supervened. As it turned out, even the Umuahia meeting has also been invalidated by another judgement, leaving the party in the doldrums. According to the latest judgement, the Abure-led NWC followed due process in organising their convention, regardless of what INEC did or didn’t do. There was no contention about whether the Abure-led leadership expired last June. The contention was whether the Nnewi convention was valid. The Federal High Court, Abuja said it was.

    It will take days for LP leaders under the auspices of the Umuahia meeting to determine whether to appeal the judgement or not. If they do, it is not clear they will get the relief they crave. If they don’t, they will be signaling their preparedness to make the best of a bad situation. Why they may not get any relief is partly because they will have a hard time proving that they had the legal backing to convene the Umuahia meeting that presumptuously sacked Mr Abure and even more daringly constituted a 29-member committee, led by former Finance minister Nenadi Usman, to prepare grounds for a convention in 18 months. As it stands, the Umuahia 29 and the party leaders who inspired their creation, mainly Mr Otti and the party’s presidential candidate in the February 23, 2023 election, Peter Obi, are in limbo. Indeed, and incomprehensibly, the far-reaching communiqué was signed by both gentlemen, though they had no legal footing to produce something purporting to be legitimate.

    Both legally and politically, LP is now in a quandary. They can’t go forward, despite trying so hard to proceed, and they can’t go backward, because it is too galling and suffocating. They were yet to emerge from the bruising and bloody war with the intemperate leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), their birth parent, when with the war still stalemated, they seem now compelled to open another front. Their former experiences were unpleasant, with NLC seeking to impose a diktat on the party, and the highly obstreperous Abure-led leadership doing its damndest to resist what they describe as trade union infamy. The wars are complicated and seemingly irresoluble due mainly to three factors. One, the NLC is today coincidentally led by an impatient and imperious union president, Joe Ajaero. His manners and politics do not readily conduce to conciliation or consensus. Opinionated and messianic, he believes he is always right and, more, that he is the perfect solution to any logjam.

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    Two, Mr Abure himself is cantankerous, sometimes dissembling and, beyond his genial outlook, actually difficult to browbeat or vanquish entirely. With Mr Ajaero on the opposite side of the divide, the two combatants are fierce and combustible. They could theoretically reach a consensus; but they are loath to do any give-and-take. They would rather fight to the death. Three, unfortunately for the party, they have a former presidential candidate who is larger than life, who is Fabian in his political conviction, and who dithers over infinitesimal matters. What is worse is that he has no legal standing in the party at all other than that he was once a presidential candidate, one who was gifted a platform with which he had no ideological or personal connection. When he signed the Umuahia resolutions that took drastic decisions on the party’s future, he stood on no ground at all, let alone a firm ground.

    Mr Abure is not going anywhere soon; he will continue to stand his ground until he dies in harness. Mr Ajaero, on the other hand, will remain as intransigent as ever. He is too messianic to explore consensus in managing the party’s crises. And Mr Obi is too flighty to be anchored on any political or ideological principles. He will follow the rats when the water reaches the upper deck, as indeed his exploratory discussions with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) are ominously foretelling.

  • EFCC, NFIU, ICPC and the Kogi red herring

    EFCC, NFIU, ICPC and the Kogi red herring

    Later this month, the Supreme Court will be hearing a suit filed by 16 states challenging the constitutionality of the laws establishing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). Kogi State, unsurprisingly, belled the cat by filing the suit. Fifteen states have joined the legal action. They hope to prove that because the statutes establishing these three institutions appear to have their grounding in certain United Nations conventions, it would require processes other than the ones adopted by the drafters of the constitution to legalise their existence.

    It undoubtedly advances the cause of democracy when states or individuals challenge legal conventions and everything the public had taken for granted. Such peaceful challenges promote democracy and advance the cause of the rule of law. The Supreme Court is in short being called upon to determine one way or the other whether the aforementioned agencies were properly set up or not in line with the constitution. The top court is unlikely to fish for extraneous matters regarding the litigants altruism. The states wish to promote the cause of democracy. But given the identity of the litigant, particularly Kogi State whose former governor Yahaya Bello is embroiled in a rancorous battle with the EFCC, there is nothing to suggest altruism is involved. But on the surface – and this is what the court will probably concern itself with – this litigation is a good cause in the service of democracy. It stands little chance of succeeding, but at least the matter is being tested in the appropriate place, in a court that is perhaps unintentionally but fortuitously becoming a constitutional and policy court.

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    Nigeria’s 36 states lack checks and balances. Until the Supreme Court acted in defence of the local governments, on the prompting of the executive branch, the third tier was being suffocated. The state Houses of Assembly have also been castrated and turned into mannequins. It is institutions like the EFCC, ICPC and NFIU that still exercise some modicum of restraint on the wayward state administrations. Now, states consider that little restraint a yoke they wish to throw off. No one should let them, lest they all turn into the remorseless tyrants Rivers State is contending with.  

  • Mixed signals on constitution review

    Mixed signals on constitution review

    Two weekends ago, the Senate Committee on Constitution Review collaborated with the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) to organise a two-day retreat in Kano on constitutional amendments. It was indeed a revelatory retreat, signposting how difficult and tedious reworking the Nigerian constitution has become.  It was fairly easy for the attendees to reach some consensus on the issue of local government autonomy, which they indicated they would back partly because the Supreme Court had already done the hugest part of the task, but it was difficult to reach a similar consensus on the issues of state police and return to First Republic regionalism. Pontificating on constitutional amendment in the press and in other fora is always far easier than contending with controversial constitutional issues in the appropriate for a. The retreat is a both a reminder and wake-up call that restructuring Nigeria fundamentally will task the ingenuity of Nigerians and their leaders.

    The Supreme Court had in an executive suit filed by the country’s Justice minister and attorney general, Lateef Fagbemi, declared that key issue of funding the councils must be delinked from the apron strings of governors. The Court deployed what it called purposive and teleological interpretations of the constitution to arrive at the conclusion that sustaining the status quo would defeat the intendment of the constitution. With the exception of some governors, Nigerians lauded the ruling and indicated they would abide by it. It was a creative birthing of a reformed constitution, but it also triggered the desire to rework the constitution to help erase the contradictions and anomalies it threw up regarding the status and operations of the councils. Sensibly, the National Assembly seems poised to realign the letter and the spirit of the constitution to enable the third tier of government function optimally. For the national lawmakers taking a second and third look at the Nigerian constitution, therefore, the local government amendment was a fait accompli, uncomplicated and even attractive to the populace.

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    However, the more controversial issues of state police and regionalism appear far too demanding of public integrity and probity to lend themselves to quick and easy appreciation and interpretation. It is unhelpful that there has been no legal suit, let alone a widely acclaimed Supreme Court decision, to facilitate a better understanding of devolution of state policing and regionalism. Late last year and early this year, when passions ran high over insecurity, there seemed to be a consensus on state police. Last February, when he met with governors in Abuja, President Bola Tinubu administration lent qualified endorsement to the idea of state police, but insisted that more needed to be done to make it a reality. According to Information minister Mohammed Idris, a consensus seemed to have been formed at the meeting. But months down the line, it has begun to appear that no such consensus was formed, especially given the fact that the idea had become bogged down at the state level. Would it take a spectacular breakdown of security in the states to revive the subject? In fact, at the two-day Kano retreat, some lawmakers cast doubt on the devolution of state police, arguing that it would cost the states huge sums as well as be subject to abuse.

    The subject of regionalism was even more controversial, as the retreat showed, with opinions sharply bifurcated between the North and the South. Even though Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele indicated that regionalism was not on the cards for constitutional amendment, a few lawmakers could not resist the temptation to sound fierce and uncompromising on the matter, perhaps because discussions on the subject were rife on the social media. Two opinions illustrate these sharp, incidentally regional, divisions. In the opinion of Abdul Ningi (APC, Bauchi Central): “I have heard so much about regional government or federalism, and I have heard people advocating such ideas. For a start, no matter how you see it, the current document (1999 Constitution) is still the grundnorm. It has also stipulated how it is going to be amended. Having said that, it is also imperative to know that it isn’t just enough for anybody to come and say they are the representative of one ethnic group or another at the National Assembly. The question that arises is: when was this mandate canvassed? When was it received? You are a representative of a particular ethnic group in Nigeria, at what time were you given the mandate to canvass that?

    He continued, with a hint of sarcasm: “The only people that are given this mandate to look at the Constitution and amend it are, of course, members of the National Assembly. Therefore, it is important for those who go about selling these ideas, false ideas in my opinion, that they are representatives of the people, to let Nigerians know where they are coming from, on whose mandate, and when was this mandate given to them. We have seen how the regional government was operated in the past. My part of the country that I am representing didn’t enjoy the development of that so-called regional government that was based in Kaduna. We aren’t going back there again! I am speaking for my senatorial district. It is either the Nigerian Federation or nothing…As far as regional government is concerned, my constituency, my people aren’t for it…”

    On the other hand, Senator Abdulfatai Buhari (PDP, Oyo North) was enthusiastically and nostalgically pro-regionalism. Said he: Recall that the regions were able to harness their resources in the First Republic. We were able to harness all our resources. There was no dominance of particular resources. In those years, the North was known for the groundnut pyramids, the South West for cocoa. We should be able to do that. When you make the center less attractive, you cut off corruption. You can’t wipe it off, but you can cut it down, because there is what is called ‘watch your team.’ People will watch their team within their locality or within their region.”

    Short of a major upheaval, it is clear that constitutional amendment will not be a cakewalk. Assuming lawmakers can even transcend their disagreements, as the 2014 National Political Reform Conference showed by its many far-reaching proposals, there is nothing to suggest that the general population would go along. The dividing lines have over the years unfortunately hardened, almost irredeemably. Yet, the sooner the country honestly grapples with its existential issues before they spiral out of hand, and while they still have the initiative, the better. It won’t be easy, but there must be substantial give-and-take in order to help Nigerians fashion a better, resilient and stable society.

  • Power minister puts cart before horse

    Power minister puts cart before horse

    Power minister Adebayo Adelabu last week gloated that some 40 percent of Nigerians enjoyed about 20-hour electricity supply daily. He is probably right, and it is indeed a feat unprecedented in contemporary Nigeria. To him he has found and developed a power supply and eco-friendly paradigm that appears capable of resolving decades of inefficiency in the sector. Generators are less in use, and noise pollution greatly reduced. On the surface, he has done very well.

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    The problem, however, is that his probably serendipitous paradigm repudiates his initial promise to do price discrimination that protects the less affluent. It is true that his policy is generating a lot of revenue for power companies, but not only has he started to obliterate the stratification he spoke profoundly and empathetically about months ago, he is today herding everybody – class be damned – into the same Band A category. The objective originally was to provide sufficient electricity to all people, despite paying differential tariffs; now the minister’s goal is to provide power to all people who must pay exorbitantly despite not being able to afford it. It is iniquitously putting the cart before the horse.

  • Yahaya Bello and unending EFCC saga

    Yahaya Bello and unending EFCC saga

    Last week, Kogi State’s incredibly ingratiating House of Assembly weighed in on the running saga between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and former governor Yahaya Bello. Even for the most servile of Houses of Assembly, the language deployed by the Kogi State legislature was excessive, unflattering, demeaning and provocative. The lawmakers alleged that the ordeal faced by Mr Bello amounted to persecution. Worse, they also asserted, a plot to assassinate the governor, Usman Ododo, and former governor was afoot. Not satisfied with that unique hyperbole, the lawmakers then went ahead to equate the attack on the former governor with an attack on the entire Kogi people. In their haste and immoderacy, the lawmakers did not query what their governor was doing escorting the former governor to the EFCC office, obstructing justice, or shielding him from the law.

    Nigeria’s Houses of Assembly were once worth their weight in gold, possessing an inspiring capacity to hold the feet of governors to the fire. But as years go by, they lost their luster and gradually and inexorably became lapdogs to governors, with some Speakers even representing governors at public functions. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the Kogi legislature has been unable to make a name for itself, and has lacked the courage to stand up to virtually all the governors. Indeed, its undistinguishedness and legislative indolence, not to talk of its second-rate principal officers, diminish it in the esteem of Nigerians and Kogites, and make it incomparable to any fair and competent House of Assembly around. Too much farce is at play in the Kogi saga. It, therefore, makes it difficult to weigh whether the Kogi lawmakers were not luxuriating in the same farce, and issuing statements they very well knew to be both farcical and fallacious.

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    Of what use is a former governor described as larcenous by the EFCC to anyone dead? The Kogi lawmakers probably know they exaggerated their view on the former governor. They know he is not been persecuted, and they know no one, let alone the EFCC, wants to assassinate a former governor they would like to see humiliated in the courts for the punishment he inflicted on the state when he was in office, and the unrelenting tyranny he unfurled upon the state for eight undistinguished years. What gave the Kogi Assembly the liberty to give free rein to their appalling imagination is the incomprehensible slothfulness of the EFCC in arresting and prosecuting Mr Bello. They probably assumed the former governor had a sense of shame, and was incapable of enacting incalculable farce. Shortly after the EFCC first trained their guns on him, he produced a string of magical administrative and legal ploys to thwart the agency. When there was nothing left in his magic bag, he orchestrated another round of tricks to foil his arrest and prosecution. It was clear two Wednesdays ago that Mr Bello simply put up an act, together with Governor Ododo, to deceive the country. He had no interest in being taken in to custody, not to talk of trial. But he had accomplices. The EFCC must not assume that the public cannot read the chicanery. They ow the public to come clean on what transpired at its offices when the current and former Kogi governors strolled in to the EFCC headquarters in Abuja and left moments later, feigning compliance with the law. Nigerians await an explanation.

    Last week, Barometer had puzzled over what was clearly a farcical drama between the EFCC and Mr Bello. Said this column: “If it was true that Mr Bello was ready to turn himself in, and had indeed, according to his story, turned himself in, why would he resist arrest a few hours later, assuming the EFCC unprofessionally changed its mind? Shakespeare would be flummoxed. The former Kogi governor had spent tons of documents and arguments in self-exculpation. If he was persuaded of his innocence, and there were no grey areas in his stories, surely he would not be opposed to proving it to the EFCC officials, even if they were dimwitted investigators. After all, regardless of how many days they keep him, and notwithstanding how many years he carefully curated his image as a whiz-kid politician, the matter would still end in court, where he would have all the latitude and lawyers to establish his innocence.

    “The bigger puzzle in all the EFCC/Bello drama is the involvement of Mr Ododo in the appalling farce. It is true that he is beholden to Mr Bello. It is also true that the governor’s unique personality triggers considerable genuflection before his benefactor, a fact he proved when, at his inauguration as governor last January, he prostrated before a beaming Mr Bello. He seems perfectly like one who would eternally be grateful for small acts of kindness. After all, the former governor had shown him great kindness by making him governor which he did little to merit either by dint of intellect or by demonstration of character. The question Mr Ododo has, however, refused to contemplate or answer is why his self-abnegation must involve willfully frustrating the constitution and obstructing justice. He has immunity, but he seems irrationally to be conferring a part of his immunity on the former governor who no longer has immunity. Sadly, Mr Ododo appears to be lending the image of the entire State to the service of a poltroon, a man who feigned overweening courage as governor, and even the dashing bravado of youth, but is at bottom no match for his own posturing.

    “If Mr Ododo, as a former auditor-general for local governments in Kogi State, was not involved in any financial shenanigans with his predecessor, it is time he dissociated from Mr Bello and struck a new path for himself. His repeated abnegations, not to say his open participation in his predecessor’s farcical dramas, need to come to an end. Had he not been governor, it would have been okay for him to continue groveling before anyone that catches his fancy. There is nothing in the constitution, not to talk of even his private principles and morality, should he have both, that encourages him to obstruct justice. It is tragic that Nigerian security agents are also ridiculing themselves before the world by protecting a fugitive under the guise of protecting the governor, an overlap encouraged by Mr Ododo himself. If the governor chooses not to respect the constitution, the heads of the security agents shielding Mr Bello should be directed forthwith to give him up for the law to take its course. Replicating farces in Kano, Rivers, Edo and Kogi should not become the hallmark of the Fourth Republic.”

    In the name of God, the federal government must bring the nonsense playing out in Kogi and Abuja over the Bello/EFCC saga to an end. Kogi governor Ododo may have immunity, but the Government House does not. The federal government does not need to be advised how to pick up a fugitive hiding in plain sight. Enough of the ridicule.

  • EFCC, Yahaya Bello and comedy of errors

    EFCC, Yahaya Bello and comedy of errors

    It is cold comfort for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that, centuries ago, Shakespeare penned an evocative farcical drama he titled The Comedy of Errors (first performed in 1594 and first published in 1623) set in what is today the Western Turkish town of Selcuk. It is not certain how the EFCC drama, at the centre of which is the bumbling former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, will end; but for Shakespeare, the drama, the shortest of his plays, ended happily, with all mistaken identities regarding long-lost siblings and their twin slaves resolved. When on Wednesday the news popped out of the blue that the fugitive Mr Bello had turned himself in at the EFCC office in Abuja and had been asked to go, it reeked of choreography and farce. How, some people wondered, could a former governor declared a fugitive from the law by the EFCC visit the anti-graft agency office on a clear day unencumbered by fog or mist and be asked to go?

    Sometime later, the EFCC would be gracious enough to sequence the news for bewildered Nigerians about what really transpired last Wednesday beyond the terse statement by the agency that Mr Bello was still a wanted man over the misappropriation and laundering of over N80bn. The former governor cannot be trusted to give an account of the event because he embellishes stories and possesses fertile imagination. Court cases instituted by both Mr Bello and the EFCC had been decided in favour of the anti-graft agency to the effect that they had the power to investigate anyone, including sitting governors clothed with immunity, and the power to arrest, detain and prosecute anyone shorn of immunity. The former governor, supposedly enforcing his fundamental human rights, had sought to derogate the powers of the EFCC to carry out its constitutional functions, but met with little success beyond delaying the exercise of those powers. Finally, perhaps sensing he had run out of options, and fearing possible embarrassing arrest, he choreographed his now controversial visit that ended in a farce, and hours later, in a security stand-off.

    Mr Bello’s media aides released photographs of their principal’s visit to the EFCC office, but all anybody saw was his walk with Kogi State governor Usman Ododo in what looked like a busy car park, and a photograph on Instagram alluding to his interaction with Michael Nzekwe, chief of staff to the Commission boss, Ola Olukoyede. Regarding whether he was told he was free to go, it is not clear yet. The interactions on the EFCC grounds were too farcical not to be a conspiracy the Commission should clear the air on soon. Shakespeare, even in his earliest years as a playwright, would be incapable of penning such dissonant and vexatious twaddle. Since it was evident Mr Bello was in Abuja on the day in question, the EFCC brushed aside all misgivings and went at him hammer and tongs, laid siege to the Kogi Governor’s Lodge in Abuja, but waited for their quarry in vain.

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    If it was true that Mr Bello was ready to turn himself in, and had indeed, according to his story, turned himself in, why would he resist arrest a few hours later, assuming the EFCC unprofessionally changed its mind? Shakespeare would be flummoxed. The former Kogi governor had spent tons of documents and arguments in self-exculpation. If he was persuaded of his innocence, and there were no grey areas in his stories, surely he would not be opposed to proving it to the EFCC officials, even if they were dimwitted investigators. After all, regardless of how many days they keep him, and notwithstanding how many years he carefully curated his image as a whiz-kid politician, the matter would still end in court, where he would have all the latitude and lawyers to establish his innocence.

    The bigger puzzle in all the EFCC/Bello drama is the involvement of Mr Ododo in the appalling farce. It is true that he is beholden to Mr Bello. It is also true that the governor’s unique personality triggers considerable genuflection before his benefactor, a fact he proved when he prostrated before a beaming Mr Bello at his inauguration as governor last January. He seems perfectly like one who would eternally be grateful for small acts of kindness. And the former governor had shown him great kindness by making him governor which he did little to merit either by dint of intellect or by demonstration of character. The question Mr Ododo has, however, refused to contemplate or answer is why his self-abnegation must involve willfully frustrating the constitution and obstructing justice. He has immunity, but he seems irrationally to be conferring by open provocation a part of his immunity on the former governor who no longer has immunity. By so doing, Mr Ododo appears to be lending the image of the entire State to the service of a poltroon, a man who feigned overweening courage as governor, and even the dashing bravado of youth, but is at bottom no match for his own posturing.

    If Mr Ododo, as a former auditor-general for local governments in Kogi State, was not involved in any financial shenanigans with his predecessor, it is time he dissociated from Mr Bello and struck a new path for himself. His repeated abnegations, not to say his open participation in his predecessor’s farcical dramas, need to come to an end. Had he not been governor, it would have been okay for him to continue groveling before anyone that catches his fancy. There is nothing in the constitution, not to talk of even his private principles and morality, should he have both, that encourages him to obstruct justice. It is tragic that Nigerian security agents are also ridiculing themselves before the world by protecting a fugitive under the guise of protecting the governor, an overlap encouraged by Mr Ododo himself. If the governor chooses not to respect the constitution, the heads of the security agents shielding Mr Bello should be directed forthwith to give him up for the law to take its course. Replicating farces in Kano, Rivers, Edo and Kogi should not become the hallmark of the Fourth Republic.

  • Tragedy unfolding in Sahel States

    Tragedy unfolding in Sahel States

    Last Tuesday’s attack on two targets in Bamako, capital city of Mali, is another reminder of how tenuous the political situation is in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger Republic. Jihadists had in the early hours of that day targeted a gendarmerie school in the Faladie district and a military zone at Bamako-Senou airport which hosts the country’s drone facility. Shooting lasted for hours in attacks claimed by the Katiba Macina of Jnim jihadist group. They claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Mali military.

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    Since September 2023, Mali has been a member of the three Alliance of Sahel States which severed their regional and security relationships with ECOWAS bloc, France and the United States, and entered into a security agreement with Russia. The new deal has not led to a reduction in attacks; instead the three countries have suffered devastating attacks. If security worsens in the Sahel, Nigeria and other West African States, including Cote D’Ivoire, could become vulnerable in the absence of regional security cooperation. Worse, the AES goals enunciated in their confederation article in July 2024, including common market, monetary union, and ultimately federalising into a single sovereign state, would be jeopardised.

    Apart from endangering the entire region, the AES may soon realise that they needed more tact and less propaganda to defy their regional bloc, overcome Islamist insurgency, and stabilise their imperiled frontiers. The easiest part was plotting coups and denigrating former alliances.

  • The NANS ultimatum

    The NANS ultimatum

    Like many things about Nigeria, there is no unanimity on anything anymore, except perhaps among labour union activists who all seem to lie in bed surrealistically facing the same direction. Just last Tuesday, a faction of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) issued an ultimatum to the federal government to reverse fuel price increase or face street protest on September 15. The ultimatum was almost immediately countermanded by another faction of NANS headed by Lucky Emonofe which decried its issuance, insisted it did not come from NANS, and suggested to the federal government to investigate its origin. 

    The Emonofe-led NANS went as far as hinting that a Southwest governor was sponsoring the other NANS faction to undermine the federal government. The students said: “We have uncovered that a part of this funding is being allocated for a program in Abeokuta, furthering this individual’s anti-government agenda. It is alarming that a state government would go to such lengths, utilising its resources to support and sponsor activities aimed at destabilising the Federal Government, particularly when this faceless agitator is benefiting from the very administration he seeks to undermine. NANS firmly believes that such actions are not only irresponsible but also dangerous.”

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    There will always be agitation, and, alas, the current administration has provided ample reasons for genuinely aggrieved and mercenary groups to organise protests and threaten mass action. Protest is sanctioned by the constitution, but the cavalier manner threats are being issued by sundry groups in the country, instead of protests specifically targeted at unwelcome policies and measures, indicates how deeply divided the country became after the last presidential election, how the embers of that election still burn, and how too many powerful interests appear determined and desperate to bring matters to a head regardless of the implications for national stability. That a faction of NANS seems willing to be bought is perhaps a reflection of how far the country is fraying at the edges.

  • Oshiomhole, Mrs Obaseki and Edo poll

    Oshiomhole, Mrs Obaseki and Edo poll

    Edo will be voting a new governor next Saturday, September 21, 2024. It will be tough, fierce and bad-tempered. While on one side the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) state chairman, Odion Olaye, was threatening that the state would burn if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate was not declared winner, former governor Adams Oshiomhole and first lady Betsy Obaseki were on the other side busy crossing swords on campaign rostrums with ill-natured language about marriage and family. It is now indisputably clear that the Labour Congress harbours many bad-tempered officials at the state and national levels, men and women who believe Nigeria owes them a living, and that without them and their personal wishes, the country should be erased. The subject of interest today, however, is the churlish exchange between Senator Oshiomhole and Mrs Obaseki, an exchange that has drawn much flak and caused disquiet in many quarters, perhaps in excess of the real significance of the words bandied by the two feisty Edolites.

    Mrs Obaseki drew the first blood when she hit hard at the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Monday Okpebholo, whom he derided for not being able to keep a wife. It was a personal shot at the candidate’s family life that in the estimation of many people went beyond politics. According to Mrs Obaseki: “Let us vote for the best candidate in this coming election; and I want to introduce the wife (of the PDP candidate). Incidentally, among all the candidates, only one has a wife, and it’s our own party’s candidate, Asue Ighodalo. Only he has a wife…Edo women know that only one candidate has a wife. Better things come to women when there’s a woman in the Government House…” It was a merciless barb shot at both the APC and Labour Party (LP) candidates. More, there is absolutely no correlation between having a wife at Government House and good things happening to women. But Mrs Obaseki dived into that terrain anyway and hoped to both score a point and get away with her indecorousness.

    The LP candidate, Olumide Akpata, simply ignored the first lady’s fulminations, or perhaps was not even aware until much later that anyone impugned the candidates’ marital rectitude. Sen. Oshiomhole was, however, not one to suffer fools gladly. On learning about Mrs Obaseki’s family jibe, he thundered: “I was shocked yesterday to see Mrs Obaseki, the first lady, saying our candidate has no wife. I’m sorry she had to say that because here is a woman who has no child. Between her and Obaseki, they are childless. They are not even ready to adopt. I don’t blame anybody who doesn’t have a child, but people who have love for children go to a motherless home and adopt. They have not adopted. They are both in their sixties. Our candidate not only has children; he has invested in the education of those children. The first one that spoke is a lawyer, the second one is a medical doctor, and they addressed the crowd in Edo South, Edo Central, and Edo North; and their mother was there.” It was a big punch aimed at Mrs Obaseki’s solar plexus. It was vintage Oshiomhole.

    Cut to the quick, the now subdued first lady blurted out defensively, aiming to curry the women vote: “My words of comfort to you, like myself, who have conceived and experienced miscarriages, painful stillbirths and evacuations of babies who died in our wombs and, as a result, have no children to show for the pain we have endured, is that you are not barren. I dare to call you fruitful. You and I are potential and proud mothers of children that will come in God’s time. Enjoy the life God has given you. Take your mind off your challenge, and before you know it, children will start coming. Being fruitful is not limited to childbearing. It is about impacting lives and creating positive change in society…” Mrs Obaseki completely forgot that she started the muckraking. Few Nigerians know or care about who has a wife or doesn’t, or who has children or don’t. It was, therefore, pointless making both issues campaign matters. One had children but no wife at home, another had husband but no children. Who cares? What have those things got to do with the qualification or competence of the candidates, as expansively as Mrs Obaseki might want to insinuate them into the race?

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    Sen. Oshiomhole sometimes talks nineteen to the dozen, and his political career is dogged by many verbal indiscretions; but no one doubts his charisma and elocution, despite the heavy accent, nor his political sagacity which is sometimes vitiated by his characteristic impetuousness. Mrs Obaseki, on the other hand, also has a strong personality that is enervated by her obtrusiveness, a previously hidden nature exposed by the Edo governorship campaigns. She has a habit of making unguarded statements, is willing and even eager to deploy religious sentiments with Machiavellian conviction, and has repeatedly demonstrated just how perfectly she matches her husband, Governor Godwin Obaseki’s capacity for realpolitik. The irony in all this is how alarmingly Sen. Oshiomhole and the Obasekis are overshadowing the candidates in the September 21 poll.

    Though in his campaigns Candidate Asue Ighodalo exhibits tendency for dictatorship, perhaps more viciously tyrannical than Mr Obaseki, and Candidate Okpebholo displays the instincts of a steady hand, neither their flaws nor their strengths appear to matter as much in the campaigns as the domineering rhetoric and antics of party bigwigs whose names are not even on the ballot.

  • Fubara, PDP and Wike conundrum

    Fubara, PDP and Wike conundrum

    It is hard to tell which political party, between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), is having the worst of times. Both are immersed in fierce battles for their souls, and both lack competent and inspired leadership. Like Siamese twins, they suffered the same discomforts of parturition as they were birthed in the crucibles of opportunism, bonded well before the last presidential election, mimicked each other during and immediately after the poll, and now seem fated to experience the same death throes. Nevertheless, the PDP remains for now the stronger of the two, and the one more likely to adopt salient principles in weathering their self-made storms, at the core of which is what to do with the feisty and tempestuous former Rivers State governor and now FCT minister, Nyesom Wike.

    Apprised that the PDP top hats who met in Jalingo, Taraba State, on August 24 had thrown in their lot with Rivers States governor Siminalayi Fubara, Mr Wike two Saturdays ago threatened to light fires under the feet of PDP governors who take sides with his predecessor in the protracted supremacy struggle in the oil-rich state. Soon after the threat, the PDP Governors’ Forum director-general, Emmanuel Agbo, gave a synopsis of the Forum’s Jalingo communiqué and added a few counter-threats of their own against the former governor. He attributed the fiery and unequivocal sentiment expressed in the press release to the governors’ meetings in Enugu and Taraba States. He said: “The statements and threats to peaceful coexistence made by Wike to ‘put fire’ in the PDP controlled states are unbridled, irresponsible and without ambiguity totally unacceptable, as it undermines efforts to build and maintain peace, cohesion, collaboration and mutual respect amongst leaders and members of the party…Thus, we therefore maintain that our position on the affairs of the PDP in Rivers State, as unanimously resolved at our 2024, third and fourth meetings held in Enugu and Taraba states, respectively, are not subject to review by any individual no matter how highly placed…We are irrevocably committed to working with the National Working Committee (NWC) of our great party, the PDP, in ensuring that Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State is conferred with all the privileges he is entitled to as a governor elected on the platform of our party, both at the state and national levels.”

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    If anyone was in doubt that the battle line in the PDP had been drawn after the governors met in Jalingo, Dr Agbo’s statement last Tuesday dispelled any misgivings. The party is of course no stranger to internecine wars and rebellions, but the latest one harked back to the pre-presidential election when the peregrinator, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, returned to the party and by a political sleight of hand eventually took the presidential ticket. He was then expected to do a little horse-trading or at least sign an electoral pact with some of his co-leaders; but so confident was he of victory that he called the bluff of the aggrieved and alienated in the party, chief among whom was Mr Wike who had spent a fortune sustaining the party after it was orphaned a second time in 2019. Fast forward, the PDP crisis was exacerbated by Mr Fubara who broke ranks with his benefactor and predecessor. It was, therefore, in response to the now clearly intractable conflict in Rivers that the PDP-GF intervention must be contextualised. The intervention has been construed as taking sides with Mr Fubara to the detriment of Mr Wike. Should they have taken sides, and was there any other option? Or could they conceivably have remained neutral without attracting worse scenarios upon themselves?

    Mr Wike sees himself as the offended party in the battle in Rivers, at least on the surface. But by turning the conflict into a zero-sum game, and leaving his friends and some of the PDP governors no room for manoeuvre, he demonstrated undue excesses and implacability. He is a better politician than his successor, and infinitely more charismatic; but his judgement has not been infallible, and his off-the-cuff statements have been grievous and wounding. Mr Wike left his friends no choice but to throw in their lot with Mr Fubara. To side with him was to throw the governor overboard and render the Rivers imbroglio insoluble. On the other hand, to side with Mr Fubara, as they have done, is to embrace middling performance. Not only is Mr Fubara uncharismatic and superficial, his judgement is also poor, and his calculations annoyingly off-key. He, in short, gave his colleague governors a Hobson’s choice. It is, however, uncertain Mr Wike can make good his threat to light fires under the feet of the angry governors, but it is now abundantly clear that the fight in the party, not to talk of in Rivers particularly, will become aggravated. Neither side will take prisoners, and it is unclear whether either side can win outright.

    Undoubtedly too, all the combatants avoided the more nuanced reason for the conflict in Rivers. The fight between Mr Fubara and Mr Wike had in fact pushed the state into a moral quandary, a delicate situation triggered not by the last PDP factional congress in the state and the struggle to win the soul of the party but by the unresolved national crisis in the party engineered by Alhaji Atiku. That moral conundrum needed to be resolved. Instead, it was kept in abeyance. Indeed, if the party had not been too demoralised by its third defeat in a row since 2015, and had produced smart leaders capable of breaking ranks with the toxic politics of the former vice president and his opportunistic cohorts, it would have sanitised its operations, reformed its platform, cleaned up its ideology, and rebuilt its administrative structures to win respectability. It would then have had the moral right to do something ethical and lasting in the Rivers crisis; and Mr Wike, as gravelly as he sometimes sounds, would probably have resigned to fate. What no one will be able to answer, however, would be whether an improbably refitted PDP is capable of ‘refitting’ Mr Fubara whose natural inconstancy is reinforced by the failings integral to his person.