The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Chimamanda, Obi and Uwazuruike

    Chimamanda, Obi and Uwazuruike

    While the Supreme Court was finally laying to rest the illusion that Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) won the February 25, 2023 presidential election, novelist Chimamanda Adichie was in far away United States eulogising the LP candidate as the rightful winner of that fateful poll. Her infatuation with Mr Obi is irrepressible. It dates back to months before the election in which he, as the sole Igbo man of substance in the race, incarnated her rage against Nigeria and justified her obsessions. When he was announced as the second runner-up in the race, his loss was too heavy for her dainty heart to take. She lashed out at Nigeria, as is her custom, and vituperated everybody that crossed her path, be it President Bola Tinubu himself or, surprisingly, Prof. Wole Soyinka.

    As far as Chimamanda was concerned, there could not have been another winner except the man she idolised and lionised, Mr Obi. In her view, and regardless of what the facts say, including the Nigerian political dynamics which she abhors so much, the PDP candidate could never win.  A worse illusion is hard to find. Mr Obi made scant inroad into the core North, and only had a measurable presence in Lagos in the Southwest. Apart from the Southeast which proved insular in the last elections, and which he took by an unalterable and unchallengeable margin, he made only fair or passable showing in the South-South and North Central. He had preyed on Christian fears and harvested the votes of those superstitious about what the All Progressives Congress (APC) same-faith ticket portended. In the end, the Christian vote, which was balkanised in most regions, was insufficient to hurl him into office. But somehow, Mr Obi’s supporters, educated or illiterate, seemed to think he won the poll. Chimamanda was surprisingly and dismayingly numbered among those who hallucinated about that purported electoral victory. Has she read the opinion of Ralph Uwazuruike, the MASSOB leader who skewered Mr Obi as a dreamer who hoped to win a major election by motivational speaking and social media noise rather than by negotiation?

    Chimamanda’s latest vituperations against the Tinubu poll victory came during a lecture she delivered at Princeton University’s Africa World lecture series in the United States. There she affronted every rule of logic, and thumbed her nose at the facts of history. She was obsessed with Mr Obi, and that was all that mattered, not logic, not history, nor even common sense.  “I want to recognise the presence of a man I deeply respect and a man who I think is a beacon of hope not just for Nigeria but for Africa,” she began grandly, unperturbed by her exaggerations and tragic declension as a novelist and chronicler of human foibles and triumphs. “And he’s the man who many of us know won the election in Nigeria. He’s also an example of that very rare quality in politicians which is genuine humility. I mean there are many other things I’m enraged about…We had an election in February that was deeply flawed, and we have a person who we’ve been told is a winner who did not win the election and this has been shown over and over; there’s evidence for this…”

    While it is not clear where she got her risible notion of Mr Obi’s ‘genuine humility’, perhaps from his affected demeanour, two things vitiate her conclusions about the election in which her hero lost badly. Firstly, she admitted she had been enraged for far too long as a result of the political and perhaps cultural dynamics of Nigeria. In other words, her rage beclouded her reasoning. As her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, portrays, her unhappiness with Nigeria is enduring and traumatic. If she does not see a matter concerning Nigeria from that insular prism, she could not see at all. The last presidential poll qualifies for and justifies her rage. Secondly, at the US lecture, she spoke about ‘a person who we’ve been told is a winner who did not win the election and this has been shown over and over; there’s evidence for this’. Chimamanda proceeds from that disingenuous and lying point of being told something to forming ironclad conclusions. Who told her? The media, the courts, just who? And she spoke the horrendous untruth that ‘there’s evidence for this.’ Where on earth is the evidence? How could she lie so brazenly? If as a non-participant in the election she had the evidence, surely Mr Obi must possess tons of it. Yet, Mr Obi could not produce any, not from the polling booths through LP agents, not from BVAS, and indeed not from anywhere. Yes, Mr Obi made wild claims about the election, but he never claimed he won. All he wanted was for the courts to disqualify the APC candidate, Bola Tinubu.

    Chimamanda may be a novelist, a talented one at that, but so far she is not anything more than a fictionist. Her talents at conjuring things may be widely recognised; but it will take more skill, time and discipline to develop the capacity to document facts and history. She is of course at liberty to indulge her parochialism on the Southeast which she documents has suffered unbearable hurt from the rest of Nigeria, but she does not have the freedom to lie about issues, colour facts or project hatred and animosity indiscriminately. But perhaps she actually has the evidence to prove that the presidential election was stolen. Why did she withhold the evidence from his idol when he was perambulating around the courts with empty hands and sophistry?

  • Pestilential Sheikh Gumi on Wike

    Pestilential Sheikh Gumi on Wike

    Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi is used to incendiary comments designed to provoke religious and ethnic conflict, and he has repeatedly got away with murder as it were. It was not surprising that in August he stoked another controversy about the appointment of former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike as Federal Capital City (FCT) minister. He had described the former governor as a hater of the North, and insinuated that his Christianity weakened his competence to manage Abuja. The cleric was then assailed by many groups in the North, Middle Belt and South-South, while the rest of the country watched in bemusement.

    Read Also: Sheikh Gumi’s attack on Tinubu, Wike malicious, inciting, says Northern Elders

    Undeterred, the sheikh again launched a tirade against Mr Wike for receiving the Israeli ambassador, Michael Freeman, in his office on October 3 during which a request to partner with Israel on security, agriculture and information technology was presented. Sheikh Gumi will have none of these, however, preferring to keep the populace ignorant, superstitious and poor. “The Minister of the FCT is a satanic person,” roared Sheikh Gumi; “I said it before when he was appointed and some people were grumbling. He has gone and brought the Israeli Ambassador, that’s what someone sent, and I am yet to watch it. But what is confirmed is he said they will collaborate with the Israelis on Abuja’s security issues. Abuja will now become an extension of Tel Aviv and when they see anyone with a beard like us, they will say it is Bin Laden and we will be killed.” Sheikh Gumi will say worse until he is arrested and prosecuted for hate speech and incitement.

  • Atiku, Obi upstaging Supreme Court

    Atiku, Obi upstaging Supreme Court

    After days of hesitation, Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the February 25, 2023 election, Peter Obi, has finally picked up the gauntlet of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, by challenging President Bola Tinubu on his alleged certificate discrepancies. Alhaji Atiku had inveigled Mr Obi and the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) presidential candidate in the same election, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, into weighing in on the president’s certificate saga, encouraging them to help create a groundswell of agitation capable of undermining the presidential election outcome. Mr Kwankwaso sneered at the request and thought it beneath his dignity to engage in a futile and ignoble campaign over nothing. Mr Obi initially derided the request and suggested very grandly that he and his party were already prosecuting the matter in the courts. Mr Kwankwaso stands pat; but Mr Obi has dithered.

    On October 11, five days after the former vice president, Alhaji Atiku, solicited the unlawful involvement of his co-presidential contestants in a scheme of doubtful utility, Mr Obi has done a u-turn, embraced the Atiku plot, and addressed a world press conference of his own. Well, he differentiates his press conference by calling it an international press conference. But the objective remains the same: to delegitimise the February 25 presidential election outcome, pressure the Supreme Court into endorsing the plotters’ nebulous wishes, create an artificial stalemate, and ultimately engender a rebellion of some kind. Clearly, they have not given up. Mr Kwankwaso has sensibly dissociated himself from the campaign; but Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have formed a pact of steel against that election.

    Read Also: Strip Atiku of national honours, CSOs tell Tinubu

    Last week, newspapers chafed at the former vice president’s so-called world press conference that disseminated so much piffle about the president’s Chicago State University (CSU) certificate despite the school proving that President Tinubu attended their school and graduated with honours. Alhaji Atiku remained undaunted, for he remains someone never discombobulated by facts, reason, or evidence. This week, the long-suffering people of Nigeria, having been assailed by another certificate and election result denier, Mr Obi, will have the onerous responsibility of chafing at needless provocations all over again. Alhaji Atiku was original in his press conference, though a little flamboyant, self-righteous and conceited; the same could, however, not be said of Mr Obi’s. His international press conference was superfluous, and what he had to say was wistful, sophistic and vacuous.

    Hear Mr Obi: “Having followed the prolonged identity crisis that recently played out in the American Court System and the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Chicago State University credentials of Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I must confess that I am distressed as a Nigerian…To outsiders, the entire CSU matter as well as Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s many lingering identity question marks have further worsened Nigeria’s less-than-glorious image internationally. Uninformed outsiders now see every other Nigerian as a potential fraudster, certain forger, or identity thief…”

    The gravamen of the PDP and LP candidates’ animosities is the declaration of President Tinubu as winner of the poll. Both candidates already have their petitions before the Supreme Court where they headed after their devastating losses at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC). The lower court unanimously decided they had no case, having failed woefully to provide evidence and arguments to substantiate their pleadings. As a matter of routine and to save face, both candidates have taken their complaints to the Supreme Court, but still without any evidence or material of any kind relevant to substantiating their cases. However, while Mr Obi has nothing new, let alone relevant, Alhaji Atiku seems to think that the president’s credentials which he got from CSU could be tendered as fresh evidence material to his case. Why he believes that an allegation which should routinely be tried at a lower court can be tendered and litigated at the Supreme Court, and in an election case, defies both law and common sense.

    What is obvious from the two candidates’ perambulations is that they undoubtedly know that they have no chance at the Supreme Court. They have, therefore, sought to muddy the waters by throwing red herrings all over the place and, by the agencies of their social media warriors, inciting the public into rebellion. Increasingly, the incitement has become brazen and unconscionable. The campaigns have in recent days falsely assumed that a case of forgery had been established against President Tinubu, irrespective of what Alhaji Atiku found at CSU, and that it had led to the diminution of national credibility. But their instincts tell them that going by what they have, there is no way to convince the Supreme Court to find the case in their favour. So, the only way out is insurrection, a rebellion they are determined to procure by any means. For the two leading candidates, whose educational records are also very murky, it says a lot about their leadership style and philosophy that they appear eager to countenance and even promote the collapse of Nigeria than watch someone else be president. They do not mind, in the process, to demolish the Supreme Court in order to achieve their aims.

  • Ohanaeze draws parallel between Igboho, Kanu

    Ohanaeze draws parallel between Igboho, Kanu

    Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the leading Igbo socio-cultural organisation, must be applauded for its tenacity in pleading the cause of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu. The IPOB leader has been in detention since his rendition from Kenya in July 2021. He is charged with offences relating to treason. Since his detention, IPOB has, however, become considerably militarised, especially with the formation of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), an affiliate organisation also based in the Southeast. The previous administration had no interest in releasing him under the guise of any political formula. But Igbo leaders hope the current administration will be more amenable to releasing him.

    Read Also: Tinubu had no hand in Igboho’s freedom, say Akintoye

    Ohanaeze has now seized upon the release from Benin Republic detention of Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho, a Yoruba self-determination activist also hounded by the Nigerian security services in 2021, to request for the release of Mr Kanu. Said Ohanaeze:  “Ohanaeze Ndigbo firmly believes that President Tinubu will be hailed as a national hero if he seizes this opportunity to release Nnamdi Kanu. The organization acknowledges that Nigerians who felt denigrated by Kanu’s actions should find it in their hearts to forgive him, as his release will mark a significant step towards national unity and reconciliation. We express our gratitude to President Talon, Yoruba leaders, and political figures for their efforts in securing Sunday Igboho’s release. The organisation remains hopeful that President Tinubu will embrace this historic opportunity and contribute to the restoration of peace and harmony in Nigeria.”

    But there is no parallel, legal or political, between the Benin Republic case against Mr Igboho and the case in Nigeria against Mr Kanu. The first is unlikely to influence the second. Ohanaeze is right to seek Mr Kanu’s release, on whatever terms, but they are wrong to predicate it on Mr Igboho’s case in Benin Republic. They should look for better reasons and be prepared to give bigger assurances to the Nigerian government to get Mr Kanu freed.     

  • Mali could unravel soon, as Nigeria is hobbled

    Mali could unravel soon, as Nigeria is hobbled

    After three coups in recent years, and the expulsion of United Nations and French military contingents, Mali is on the cusp of military and political disaster. The coups were supposedly in reaction to the flagging anti-jihadist war under two elected or interim presidents, and the allegedly complicit or ineffective involvement of the French in counterinsurgency operations in the northern and central parts of the country. After the expulsion of the UN and French forces, and their replacement with about 1,000 Russian Wagner mercenary forces, the war has still continued to go badly for the Malians, with fresh reports indicating massive gains by al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in central Mali, and the besiegement of Timbuktu.

    Read Also: Africa: Coups, barrack revolts and leadership questions

    ECOWAS may have had a bad time dealing with rampaging coups in the sub-region, including the latest in Gabon and Niger Republic, but they now need to urgently convene an extraordinary meeting to counter the situation before it gets out of hand. This time, they must exude less emotion, and together with their foreign policy experts, the African Union, and the chafing UN, find a solution to the crisis if they are not to be confronted by a nightmare too difficult to handle. The problem is no longer just that of West Africa; it is an African crisis. Nigeria must speedily conclude its election litigations in order to release President Bola Tinubu to provide the needed leadership to confront what may be an epochal crisis.

  • Conspiratorial coalition shows true colour

    Conspiratorial coalition shows true colour

    Halfway into former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s voyage of discovery into President Bola Tinubu’s academic records in the United States, it was all but clear that the expedition was an exercise in futility. The school attended by the president, Chicago State University (CSU), insisted he was their student, and had even finished on the honours list. Disappointed by how unencumbered the real story about the president’s university days was, and miffed by the explosion of all their myths and concocted stories about the records, the coalition of conspirators who had sworn to exposing the president and diminishing his 2023 presidential election victory have embarked on another fruitless journey. This time, apart from trying to damage the president’s personality and destroying his credibility, which they have kept in view, the conspirators have also trained their guns on his supporters or anyone that as much as offers a kind or sympathetic word in his favour.

    The spatial distribution of the conspirators, not to say the victims of the social media-led campaign designed to ridicule and stigmatise, should alarm any Nigerian anxious about national stability. The conspirators may be unaware of their regional locus, and perhaps may calm down or desist altogether if they recognise the regional and ethnic implications of their campaigns, but few people can tell exactly how their minds work. The northern opposition to President Tinubu’s victory, with the possible and singular exception of Alhaji Atiku, has been considerably tame or even silent. Despite the social and economic dislocations the president’s economic policies have unleashed, the Southwest has also been largely silent, save for a few netizens and rejected or diminished Yoruba leaders and opinion moulders. Having spent an inordinate amount of time fighting the emergence of the president, the largely Christian Middle Belt, pleasantly shocked by the distribution of appointments, particularly in the security services, have quietened down and moved on.

    Disturbingly, as if revealing their real identity and objectives, the coalition of conspirators has unleashed a fusillade on Southwest religious leaders whom they allege have lent support to the president. Deploying social media tools to devastating effect, Charles Oputa, aka, Charly Boy, former Aviation minister Osita Chidoka, DJ Switch, an upstart unknown before EndSARS, and Oby Ezekwesili have pilloried Pastors W.F. Kumuyi and Enoch Adeboye for saying nothing more than that Nigeria would prosper and receive political healing. Mrs Ezekwesili mocked the president over the eventual release of his academic records, wondering whether it would not have been far easier for him to have done it willingly than be coerced by US courts. And because the elections did not favour Labour Party (LP) candidate Peter Obi, and instead President Tinubu was declared winner, she advocated the ‘root and branch reform’ of both the electoral umpire, INEC, and the judiciary.

    Read Also: Chicago varsity has addressed all questions regarding Tinubu, says Okeh

    DJ Switch, whose real name is Obianuju Catherine Udeh, was cynical, rude and irreverent. She said: “Pastor Adeboye constantly urging Nigerians to pray for Nigeria… but rarely calls out the cause of Nigeria’s woes! Rarely calls them out for a failure to serve. The Jesus you worship served and called out corruption point blank! Some of una go say touch not my anointed! Anointing wey no dey anoint.” Her sarcasm was directed at Pastor Adeboye after he called for national healing during an October 1, 2023 service in Lagos. DJ Switch was unmindful of her youth and the age of the cleric she gave a full length of her tongue. In fact, weeks earlier, she had had ridiculed Pastor Adeboye for ‘finding his voice’ when he suggested that God would help President Tinubu fix Nigeria. In July, Charly Boy drew inspiration from the street revolt in France over the police killing of a 17-year-old immigrant to urge Nigerian youths to the streets. As far as he was concerned, Mr Obi’s votes were stolen, and the election was badly flawed and not credible.

    Responding to Alhaji Atiku’s success in getting President Tinubu’s records released, and not minding whether what was released was seismic enough to cause any damage or embarrassment, Mr Chidoka weighed in against the president thus: “That all the aforementioned institutions allowed a man to be sworn in without definitive statements about his qualifications is a national tragedy. For 23 years, the issue of President Tinubu has been a recurring decimal in our national equation. Under his reign, a current youth corps member is serving as minister, and people under investigation by the EFCC and made public are sitting in the Federal Executive Council. And they all passed through security screening.” For many like the former minister, every opportunity, real or imagined, strong or weak, had to be seized upon to excoriate the president. It was, therefore, not surprising that the Emmanuel Onwubiko-led Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), which lent itself to the services of Mr Obi in the last presidential election, also responded to the released academic records by describing it as a ‘shameful case of identity theft and certificate forgery’, and asking the Supreme Court to disqualify the president or compel him to resign. The organisation offered no credible grounds for their prejudices and conclusions.

    Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is the latest victim of the regional castigators. Presuming to quote Prof James Gibbs, but it was in fact one of the deliberate concoctions with which the Tinubu antagonists have suffused the social media, they allege that the eminent professor falsely claimed to have got a first-class in Literature from the University of Leeds.

    He has challenged them. However, the more he challenges them, the more he arms them with some relevance. They will not relent; for they are not motivated by anything noble, true or good. Since the professor took on Mr Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, describing their electoral views as fantasies and their excoriation of the Supreme Court as a manifestation of fascism, they have continued to assail him. But the country has taken note of all that is happening, the spatial distribution of the anti-Nigerian and antidemocratic views, the effort to incite youths into rebellion and goad the military into subversion, and Nigeria will speak with one voice in the next election cycle.

  • Ms Martins on Obasanjo: A portrait

    Ms Martins on Obasanjo: A portrait

    English novelist and critic, Samuel Butler (1835-1902), found the persons and characters of Scottish historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle so revolting, and his dutiful but irksome Welsh wife Jane Welsh Carlyle so offensive, that he famously quipped: “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry each other and so make only two people miserable instead of four.” Biographers suggest that Mr and Mrs Carlyle loved each other intensely but frequently quarrelled, with the wife often mulling divorce but sighing in the same breath that she could not bear the thought of separation. (Mr Carlyle authored the enthralling tome “History of the French Revolution”, which Mark Twain once said no one should die without reading). Today, however, the focus is ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and Ms Taiwo Martins, and their romantic escapades, complete with public demonstrations and equally public squabbles. Perhaps they were well paired and thus made each other miserable. After all, both have had very chequered romantic lives.

    Mrs Obasanjo fired the first shot on September 17 when she took issue with the man who fathered her sons. She declaimed against his humiliation of Oyo State chiefs at a public function in Iseyin, Oyo State, two days earlier. In her rejoinder titled “Oyo Kings: A plea for forgiveness” she says: “I want to publicly state here that on behalf of the family, the children, the wives, the grandchildren and all members of the family of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, l am offering a big and genuine apology both spiritual and physical to all the kings of Oyo State, all the kings of Yoruba land and the entire Yoruba race both in Nigeria and Diaspora. Please, l beg for permanent and eternal forgiveness and pardon from all Yoruba sons and daughters worldwide…”

    Never one to take any provocation lightly, Chief Obasanjo berated Ms Martins, as she is now known, denounced her apology, refuted her wifely label, and insinuated she was unhinged. But angry over the repudiation, not to say the description of her as being unstable, she launches into a fiery and unflattering character portrait of the former president whom she describes as insatiable, unappeasable, irritable and envious. She reminds him of the dynamics of their relationship, and insists that his portraiture of her was influenced by his being scorned by her, despite repeated entreaties. She is not deranged, she insists; on the contrary it is Chief Obasanjo who is. According to her, “…it must be noted that any leader like you who justifies indecency, humiliation of leaders, talks and acts like a tout or an area boy with uncouth mannerisms, shows us his mental state…”

    Read Also: Obasanjo should apologise to monarchs, says Afenifere

    Ms Martins then launches into a political tirade against the former president, perhaps an indication of her exposure, and a pointer to why Chief Obasanjo found her cosmopolitan enough to father her sons. It is hard to fault her. She says: “You are the real problem, troubling Nigeria, the people of Nigeria, troubling families and homes and the society at large. God gave you long life, good health, made you famous, gave you wealth, made you three times President of Nigeria, yet you couldn’t give us beautiful roads and 18 or 24 hours electricity which others could build on. All you do is fight, fight, fight every president who comes to power after you instead of embracing them as your loving children to be mentored, supported and guided by you to give us excellent service that will bring comfort to us all in the whole nation. The only leaders you couldn’t cage or render impotent in Africa are the current Presidents of Nigeria, Tinubu, and that of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.” Phew!

    Surprisingly, almost as if the security agencies ignore the former president’s incitement of youths and other political actors over the 2023 presidential election, Ms Martins preempts him by cautioning those being misled into insurrection against the constitution, a goal the former president has not hidden from public view. Says Ms Martins: “Please Charly Boy, Donald Duke, Sahara Reporters, the youths of Nigeria and others – l appeal to you humbly – don’t join forces with Daddy Olusegun Obasanjo again to bring war and chaos into Nigeria in order to remove President Tinubu. God gave the Presidency to Tinubu, not man. Daddy Olusegun Obasanjo was made President in 1999 by the North. Generals Babangida, Abdulsalami, my twin brother, Chief Kenny Martins, and many others provided the money, the people, the support nationally and internationally, and all needed resources and platforms to become president, and he betrayed them all. He rewarded them with evil…He didn’t win the election. When he now wanted third term, God shoved the evil, ungrateful Obasanjo out. Today he will not allow us to breathe.” Ms Martins says so much more, revealing information and characterisation that could only come from someone who knew the former president at close quarters.

    It is not certain that Chief Obasanjo will listen to any admonition. To him and others, the presidential election has not ended, and will not end until either his group or the winners of that election are destroyed. It is against such zero-sum game that Ms Martins ends her admonition homiletically. According to her: “Daddy Olusegun Obasanjo, stop your rantings; you are an old, wounded, dying, roaring lion. Stop barking. Let me and my children live; stop afflicting me and my children because you now hate me. Let us breathe in Nigeria. God will judge you soon. My family and I have supported you powerfully. At close to 90, you are fighting President Tinubu. You fought Yar’adua, you fought Jonathan, you have fought every President in Nigeria since you left Dodan Barracks. Are you the only ex – president we have in Nigeria?” Indeed, at close to 90, the now frail but no less bilious and self-satisfied former president will not relent. He is unbothered about his end. He seems perfectly the only man, misanthrope, and former president capable of sustaining rage and bitterness to the very end. Most people at the age of 70 have abandoned their truculence. Chief Obasanjo’s has become more potent.

  • France’s Niger Republic dilemma

    France’s Niger Republic dilemma

    For all its decades of subordinate relationship with France, Niger Republic enjoyed no special privileges. Nearly three months after the palace coup in that arid and impoverished Sahelian country, France has grudgingly decided to comply with the coup leaders’ quit order. On the whole, more than a century of imperialist control of Francophone countries is ending on a dismal and ignoble note. Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and now Niger, are out of the French orbit. The severance will have devastating consequences for all the parties. And, sadly, it has taken the military and their coups to engineer that seismic change. But it will take a while to know who will suffer the more between the neocolonial ruler and former colonists.

    Read Also: Still on ECOWAS dilemma in Niger Republic

    French West Africa is likely to substitute France with either China or Russia or both. That abysmal substitution is unlikely to augur well or end well. President Tinubu of Nigeria has warned about that substitution; but neither he nor the rest of West Africa can do anything about it in the near term. More than a century of pillage cannot be corrected overnight. Had the new military rulers been equipped for civil governance, there would have been hope. But they are full of rhetoric, are as incompetent and shortsighted as the civilian elite they replaced, and are destitute of vision. West Africa should brace up for a cataclysm in the years ahead.

  • APC, PDP, LP and unending firefights

    APC, PDP, LP and unending firefights

    The needless jousting between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the watermark on the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) judgement indicates that long after the dust must have settled and the guns fallen silent on the 2023 presidential election, the war will still continue by any other means possible. The problem clearly is not the erudition of the justices in delivering the judgement, though some analysts unbelievably took issue with their elocution, nor the promptness and comprehensiveness of the court in coming to judgement; the problem is the obstinate refusal of the defeated to admit that their campaign ineptitude and incompetent legal challenge doomed their chances. The defeated, deploying all contrivances, no matter how farcical, including jostling over watermarks, are determined to make water flow uphill.

    Two Thursdays ago, the parties collected their copies of the judgement, a very simple and uncomplicated process. But, given the already foul mood of the defeated parties, nothing is direct and simple anymore. Hence the battle of the watermarks. The PDP fired the first short by suggesting that every certified copy of the judgement bore the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team (TPLT) watermark, insinuating that either the APC provided secretarial services for the court or originated the document. The PDP then drew a distinction between watermark and a header, arguing that what was inscribed on the now controversial document was a header, not a watermark. It then proceeded stealthily into a definitional maze waxing hot about headers, footers and watermarks. The party refused to address the inane suggestion that the ‘unintentional’ watermark made the APC to exhibit its ‘crime’. Yet the PDP refused to respond to APC rebuttal that the opposition party actually collected the first certified copy.

    Read Also: Ganduje commissions APC Campaign Council Secretariat in Imo

    The questions then remain: who collected the first copy, and does that copy reflect any watermark, or header, as the party prefers to label the inscription? The PDP said it had no wish to trigger a controversy, but in rushing to town with accusations it had not fully investigated, the party did nothing but stirred a storm in a teacup. The APC claimed that the certified copies issued to the parties, including its own, bore no watermark, and that the Tinubu team merely embossed their copy to differentiate it from those of others. Days after the PDP allegation, neither the LP nor the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) was yet to comment on the infamous watermark. If the two other defeated parties also applied for and collected copies, surely they should be in a position to say something. Moreover, though the LP began the campaign of scurrility, escalating it to the point of even insinuating that a coup would be desirable, the PDP has taken over the plot to delegitimise the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.

    The watermark controversy is thus merely the latest weapon seized upon by the opposition parties to cloud and foul the 2023 election cycle, wrong-foot the ruling party, and put the APC presidential candidate perpetually on the defensive. The opposition has been largely successful. Then candidate Tinubu’s birth was never real or, if real, not good enough. Perhaps he was a phantom. His certificate was equally dubious and illegally procured, and the university he attended, had the PDP had its way, would also have been passed off as fictional. After their shock defeat, which they tried to abort using the devices of election annulment, the opposition parties fiercely transited into maligning and defaming the judiciary, and then zeroing in on the justices who would hear the case, including questioning their competence, morality, sense of fairness and patriotism.

    Sensing that these campaigns were still not yielding the expected results, the opposition started a blitzkrieg of threatening and inciting billboard campaigns against the judiciary in order to procure a predetermined outcome favourable to either the PDP or LP. It is instructive that nearly throughout the campaigns and incitements, the PDP and the LP never attacked each other. They would be satisfied with either party taking the presidency, anyone but the APC. So they have focused their attacks on the APC, especially the president, and have remained undaunted. The PEPC judgement, rather than weaken their attacks and sober their intentions, has spurred them to further malignity. Increasingly, unable to find any legal or political leg to stand on, the opposition has inched dangerously into the province of insurrection, even wishing the entire system to collapse. If they cannot intimidate national institutions into the service of opposition objectives, then, in their view, they have either been compromised or are undeserving of sustenance. At no time in the nation’s history have opposition parties engaged in such open and bitter campaigns against national stability.

    Will the campaigns stop even after the Supreme Court might have denied them their wish? Certainly not. What is fuelling their fanaticism is not political virtue or moral principle; they came to that realisation barely weeks after the election. Instead, they are propelled, together with many powerful individuals who connive at their malevolence, by their irrational desire to destroy the suitress if they cannot have her. Ultimately, the opposition campaigns will fail, but given their dominance of the social media, the inanity on display on the social media, and the inability of the APC to launch effective counterattack, the campaign of scurrility and mendacity will continue for a little longer than it deserves.

  • Obi takes refuge in poetry

    Obi takes refuge in poetry

    After losing the 2023 presidential election, coming an unbridgeable third, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) has kept up a fusillade of verbal and rhetorical attacks on the ruling party and anyone and institution standing in the way of his ascension to power. In the process, he has painted himself as the sole Nigerian paragon, and every other person evil and unfit to live. There is of course no basis for his sanctimoniousness, but the LP candidate has never been incommoded by illogic, falsehood or exaggeration. Now, tired of stirring his people to strong indignation, and unsure how else to proceed, given the ineffectiveness of his post-election campaigns, he has taken refuge in literature to appeal to his supporters.

    Read Also: LP knew Obi didn’t win, says Soyinka

    He said in a message probably crafted by one of his troubadours: “Understandably, there has been a note of general disappointment within our fold and indeed the general population of Nigerians who hoped that the outcome of the February 25 presidential election would usher in a new and different Nigeria of our dreams. That dream has only been deferred for now but remains alive for all times…Since the tribunal verdict, there has been a note of general despair among Obidients and the generality of our supporters but let me assure us all that on this journey, despair or surrender is not our options. Today, I want to personally reach out and encourage you all to keep hope alive. Considering the challenges that lie ahead of us as a movement, despair is not an option.”

    Mr Obi is fond of exaggerations, not to say presumptions about the size of the population he claims to represent. A practical but unideological man, it is paradoxical that his self-portrait as a realist leads him inescapably towards projecting the galling contrasts that have influenced and attenuated his politics for decades.