Last week’s nationwide protests by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to express their pains over the government’s biting economic policies, particularly the fuel subsidy removal, had varying degrees of success. On the whole, the protest, which was erroneously reported as a strike by a section of the media, was impactful. The turnout was not low, but it was also not impressive. It gingered the administration into quickly reaching a tentative agreement with the unions, thus staving off more protests. The unions were exultant. It is not clear whether the administration, which is still trying to find its feet and is thus mired in some inexplicable clumsiness, was mortified for having to roll out the president to negotiate with the unions.
But sooner or later, the country will have to resolve the contradiction of a labour union setting up and running a political party. As it sometimes happens, when that political offspring loses election, could union strike or protest, in case it is declared, not be construed as seeking indirect means of winning political power by other probably discreditable methods? Unfortunately for the NLC, its leadership at this point is unduly politicised and has viewed politics from a narrow, impatient, pontifical and insular perspective. It is a question of time before things come to a head.
The last political quatrain, 2019-2023, gave Nigeria the excitable Rivers State ex-governor Nyesom Wike who acted the giddy script to the hilt, producing an indescribable mixture of mirth and gravitas. In the entire political North, neither Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai nor Kogi’s Yahaya Bello, both of whom threw themselves into the art of projecting governance as a controversy, could hold a candle to him. Nobody compared with Mr Wike in the Southwest, and there was none like him in the South-South or Southeast, not to say the North Central. But it must now seem to the dismay of Mr Wike that Osun State governor Ademola Adeleke will step into the large shoes he has left on the national stage. And what is more, former Osun governor Rauf Aregbesola will have the undistinguished honour of playing a subordinate role to the governor in a rural state he had schemed to transcend.
Mr Wike is of course incomparable. A lawyer and workaholic, he infused his government with gaiety and affability without diminishing his achievements. Mr Adeleke on the other hand has a nondescript certificate he has spoken glowingly about, claiming to have a degree in criminal justice in 2021 from Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia. But controversy swirls around his studies and degree. He was in the senate between 2017 and 2019 where he completed his late brother’s term, but was virtually anonymous throughout. With no educational pedigree or legislative proficiency to boast about, and was thus not expected to flourish in the exerting role of leadership, he nevertheless won the July 2022 governorship poll, defeating the more cerebral and even-tempered Gboyega Oyetola. After the Supreme Court finally validated his election last May, Mr Adeleke has set about forming his cabinet, and he has done it with his customary carefree flair.
Before and after the 2022 poll, Mr Aregbesola was at daggers drawn with his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). He, therefore, felt compelled to lie in bed with the PDP’s Mr Adeleke against whom he had worked years earlier. The APC didn’t think the former governor’s betrayal would be consequential. It was, and Mr Oyetola lost, and in addition lost by a gloomier and more severe margin in the following House of Assembly poll. In constituting his cabinet, Mr Adeleke allotted offices to Mr Aregbesola’s men, thus calcifying the separation between the APC and their former leader. The ex-governor, fondly called Ogbeni, attempted a bigamous relationship with both the APC and the PDP. The APC spurned him, accusing him of betrayal. Henceforth, Mr Aregbesola must now play second fiddle to the cavalier Mr Adeleke, a sad declension for the Ogbeni who had feigned rigour and academic excellence throughout the eight years he pontificated with grandeur as governor.
But far beyond the declination of Mr Aregbesola, a tragedy Osun must get used to, the state must now develop shock absorbers to cope with the superficialities of their governor. Other than placating and ultimately skinning and neutralising the APC defectors led by Ogbeni himself, Mr Adeleke has approached his cabinet composition with as much triviality as possible. And he defends the impossible. He now has 30 advisers. And among his commissioners was his sister-in-law, who will manage a ministry dedicated to federal matters, while his nephew will superintend the local government service commission as chairman. His critics say he has 17 Christians in his cabinet to seven Muslims, two women in a constellation of 25 commissioners, a lawyer to head the health ministry, and all the commissioners sourced from 20 local governments, leaving out 10 LGs. Mr Adeleke will ignore these complaints or offer robust defences. Overall, he will simply proceed with the conviviality he has been used to.
Governor Adeleke comes from an illustrious Ede family. That illustriousness paved the way for him into national limelight, but was unable to inoculate him against the frivolity and ideational dullness that now characterises him. Indeed, he broke into national consciousness on account of his flamboyant dancing skills, especially the suggestive way he heaved his rotund frame in dance halls and churches. Yet, he is not particularly religious. Indeed, some think he behaves distinctly polytheistic, and others observe that the controversy he raised at the Eid praying ground in Osogbo during the last Sallah showed his secret longing for syncretism. It is not clear which will have his undivided attention going forward: the church or the mosque, assuming he is proficient in their liturgies. Nor is it clear that both major faiths will not give him the cold shoulder thereby forcing him even more into the embrace of any of the traditional faiths.
But in the end what will task him the most will not be whether he can live up to the fame of his illustrious family, or what faith he will eventually settle for, but how well he can govern. His appointments so far do not give indication that Osun is about to witness a great leap forward. Mr Adeleke’s beginning has been idiosyncratic, but he is of course not solely to blame for what is about to hit the state. Over many election cycles, Osun voters had equally been cavalier in electing their leaders, and have had a penchant for committing electoral suicide with the frenzy of fatalists. It is hard to imagine gloomier reinforcement between two entities.
APC, PDP, LP and semantics of anarchy
In their final written addresses filed before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), the three main contenders for the presidential stool, to wit, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Labour Party (LP), all turned the word ‘anarchy’ into a contentious word. It is clear that no one will draw a curtain on this election cycle without winners and losers exhausting all shades of meaning of words, phrases and idioms. Each contender for the throne is always primed to react to the slightest word provocation.
The APC drew the first blood through Wole Olanipekun. In his final address, he wrote: “Pressed further by this constitutional imperative, the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, is taken as if it is the 37 state, under and by virtue of Section 299 of the Constitution. With much respect, any other interpretation different from this will lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature.” The chaos and anarchy talked about in this quotation seems to refer to interpretational anarchy rather than civil unrest. But both the PDP and LP thought the worst of the word and were unwilling to give the ruling party the benefit of the doubt.
For PDP’s Chris Uche, here is what he said in his final address: “A subtle threat of apocalyptic catastrophe of national chaos and anarchy if a judgement is not given in a particular manner cannot deter a court of law from doing justice. The court must do justice, rather ‘let the heavens fall’, but as courageously stated by the Supreme Court per Oguntade JSC, in the epic case of AMAECHI vs. INEC & ORS (2008) LPELR-446(SC) (Pp. 67-68 paras. D): ‘I must do justice even if the heavens fall.’ The truth, of course, is that when justice is done, the heavens stay in place.” Quite quickly, chaos and anarchy, whether judicial or political, had become the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. Form and meaning took a frightful and indeed apocalyptic leap.
But the LP would not be outdone in flirting with words. They drew upon their legal team’s final address to declare as follows: “Peter Obi’s lawyers led by Dr Livy Uzoukwu and Onyechi Ikpeazu disagreed saying instead that what will lead to anarchy is where the rule of law is trampled upon or truncated, that in such situations anarchy reigns supreme! A sentence in the 2nd-3rd Respondents’ address alarmed the petitioners and millions of Nigerians. The 2nd-3rd respondents went too low and abandoned discretion when they claimed as follows: ‘Our submission is that the petitioners are inviting anarchy by their ventilation of this issue of non-transmission of results electronically by INEC.’ ” Obi’s legal team also noted that they found Tinubu’s outburst “a cheap, misguided, and destructive blackmail clearly intended to target the country’s judicialism and constitutionalism. It also aims at cannibalising our democracy.”
In short it was not only the federal government that acted mala fide in the weeks before the last presidential poll by creating artificial scarcity of petrol and naira. For as long as ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar and LP candidate Peter Obi refuse to admit defeat, there will continue to be interpretative anarchy in the use of words and understanding of the policies of the Tinubu administration. In fact, the election, particularly the fallout, may not end soon. If the PDP and LP still find some accommodation in public angst, they will foment their own anarchies and cavort among them.
When it became clear that both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) would litigate their February 25 presidential poll loss, cyber warriors obviously beholden to both parties took on the campaign with a ferocity that has no precedent in Nigeria. Their primary objective was to ensure that the winner, the All Progressives Congress (APC), must not assume office; but if it did, it must not have peace of mind on the throne. To achieve this goal, the losing parties and their social media warriors, together with a host of silent and shadowy supporters in high places, briefly toyed with fomenting insurrection. That plot collapsed very quickly. It led the anti-APC conspirators to settle for the last and perhaps most vicious strategy left in their armamentarium: discrediting, blackmailing and weakening the judiciary in order to achieve a preplanned outcome. The plotters envisaged three main outcomes: secure total cancellation of the February 25 election, or secure a runoff, or get a declaration that either the PDP or LP won.
The APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was the target all along. If there was a declaration today that the PDP had won, indicating that candidate Atiku Abubakar would be sworn in, the LP would quickly reconcile with that outcome and congratulate the ‘victor’. And if the LP were to be declared victorious, the PDP would respond amicably in kind. It is not certain how the political North would respond to an LP victory, given the ethnic and regional peculiarities of Nigeria’s history, but both the LP and the Southeast would be comfortable with an Atiku victory. Both parties have refused to attack each other since the poll result was declared on February 28. Instead they have focused on subverting the Tinubu victory, and failing that, attempting to bring the country down. Former senate president Ahmad Lawan did not clinch the APC presidential primary, and was even less likely to win the presidential contest; but had he won, the virulence on display against the APC presidential victory, a virulence given fillip by the inexplicable lack of unity in the Southwest, would have been considerably reduced.
It is from the foregoing that the unethical and malignant campaign against the judiciary, particularly against the Supreme Court, the leadership of Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola, and the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), must be understood. The judiciary is merely suffering collateral damage. The courts are not the main target. CJN Ariwoola is in fact not also a target in the real sense of the word. The PDP, LP and cyber warriors are focusing on the judiciary to intimidate that arm of government into playing their script. The plot and the tactics being deployed to achieve a nefarious outcome are explicable. What is inexpiable is the seeming silence of the secret service and the law enforcement agencies in the face of the massive negative propaganda and unmitigated fake news being hurled at the judiciary. Until judgement is delivered in the case, the plots and campaigns will continue without let. It goes without saying that any verdict other than the three outcomes mentioned above would be unsatisfactory to the conspirators.
The campaign to weaken and damage the judiciary began actively in late March when some online media outfits published photographs of Justice Ariwoola on wheelchair at an airport, according to them, in disguise, and pretending to be ill, but on his way to a London hotel for a secret meeting with the then president-elect, Asiwaju Tinubu. Not only was the face of the CJN quite visible and without any disguise, it turned out the president-elect was resting in France. The tendentious story was triggered and circulated to suggest that under Justice Ariwoola, a Yoruba man like the president-elect, securing justice in any petition would be far-fetched. The lawyer who took the photograph later apologised for his indiscretion and the innuendoes attached to the picture, but the opposition parties’ cyber warriors would not be placated. Since then, multiple stories have been deliberately and methodically concocted against the CJN and the judiciary to insinuate bias against them.
President Tinubu was also alleged to have made a phone call to the CJN, and the CJN was in turn alleged to have mounted pressure on the Department of State Service (DSS) in order to subvert or obstruct justice in favour of the president. There were of course no calls of any kind. Then, also, counsels to both the PDP and LP, together with suborned media establishments, have sought to influence public opinion after every court session of the PEPC with snide remarks and twisted interpretations of the ongoing court hearing. The attacks are relentless and malicious, and there is apparently no stopping the opposition and their assignees. Worse, only last week, the cyber bullies reported the resignation, on the grounds of principle, of a member of the PEPC, Justice Boloukuoromo Ugo. It was another deliberate falsehood. There was no resignation but a calculated and orchestrated campaign to sow seeds of distrust and doubts among the justices and in the minds of Nigerians.
Midway into the flurry of attacks and lies, and fearful that the plots were not gaining the traction they had hoped, the PDP/LP plotters raised a brief but furious campaign through the courts to secure live coverage for the PEPC trial. They hoped to make up for their lack of substance with copious application of drama, in fact melodrama. That inane flurry also petered out into fatuity. It was not clear to any rational person how 11 witnesses for the LP and 37 witnesses for the PDP could hope to persuade the election court that election malpractice took place in Nigeria’s over 176,000 polling units, let alone prove that there was substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act. Both PDP and LP leaders, not to talk of their cynical presidential candidates, knew that they were engaged in a quixotic enterprise to overturn the election. To remedy their failings, they have resorted to all kinds of legal and political tricks capable of destroying the judiciary. They have seized upon a few controversial past judgements of the apex court to drive home the point that the Supreme Court could not be trusted.
The presidential election petitions have been consolidated. Try as hard as the petitioners may, it is hard to contemplate any outcome that would send them into raptures. The justices have been maligned and blackmailed. But it would require a greater leap of faith on their part, and a lot of contempt for the facts before them, for the justices to bend the law in favour of calumniators simply because they had the temerity to ridicule the courts and the justices. Unable to prove anything, the petitioners will still continue to rail at the justices before the judgement is delivered and after. The mystery is why the law enforcement agencies have not gone after those who concoct and spread deliberate falsehoods.
It may be time for Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to call their federal lawmakers to order over their love for sponsoring whimsical bills. Many months ago, a member of the 9th House of Representatives, Ganiyu Johnson (Lagos, APC), entered the eye of the storm by sponsoring a bill to compel fresh medical graduates to serve in Nigeria for five years mandatorily before travelling abroad. It was a silly, poorly digested and ill-conceived bill. But he stuck to his guns. Luckily he is not a member of the 10th House, and will not be able to pursue his dogma.
As if Lagos was not jinxed enough, another lawmaker, Kalejaiye Paul, sponsored a motion to compel the Aviation ministry to test intending passengers for their blood pressure and sugar level. Since a statistically insignificant few diabetic and hypertensive travelers had collapsed at airport terminals, it has led Hon Paul to imagine that the way out is to test air passengers. The inanity of that motion is baffling. It beggars belief that the lawmakers would advocate cumbersome and unwarranted procedures before flight when the nation is not dealing with epidemic outbreak.
Hopefully, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas will inspire the 10th House into seriousness and rationality, instead of the frivolity they seem bent on with the baseless invitation extended to the misguided teenager, Mmesoma Ejikeme, to appear before them for forging her JAMB scores a few weeks ago and lying through her teeth. Surely, the lower legislative chamber can’t be so idle.
In his visit to President Bola Tinubu last Monday, former Zamfara State governor Ahmed Sani, the Yariman Bakura, unreflectively advocated amnesty for bandits terrorising Nigeria’s Northwest. Speaking to reporters after the visit, Mr Sani did not, however, indicate how his host responded, whether the president seemed persuaded about the merit of negotiations and amnesty or whether he was tentative or dismissive. All he quoted the president as saying was that the former governor should return to Zamfara and try to stabilise the state by managing the fractious relationship between the governor, Dauda Lawal, and immediate past governor, Bello Matawalle.
Mr Sani did not give irrefutable reasons for advocating amnesty for bandits. But he managed to draw a parallel between the amnesty granted Niger Delta militants and the one he was asking for regarding Northwest bandits. Here, again, he offered nothing capable of illuminating the subject matter, whether the negotiation with bandits implies the inclusion of the humongous payout integral to the agreement with the Niger Delta militants, or whether it was only a ruse to give the bandits a soft landing. The presidency is yet to give an account of the meeting with Mr Sani. But the former Zamfara governor’s visit appears to indicate that top members of the Nigerian elite have confidence in President Tinubu to give a listening ear to complaints and advice. Mr Sani and others like him will test the waters to see how far the president can be mollified.
What is not in doubt, in any case, is that the former governor obviously got his historical equivalence wrong. He likens the aggravation in the Niger Delta to the provocations for banditry in the Northwest. But they do not seem to be comparable. The Niger Delta groaned over the despoliation of their land and the expropriation of their crude oil wealth to develop other states in Nigeria while leaving the oil rivers polluted and impoverished. Their main weapon was blowing up pipelines and occasionally attacking troops. The Northwest on the other hand presents a totally unrelated provocation. Two main reasons – there are dozens more – account for the distemper in that region. One is the ‘civil war’ between the Hausa farmers and Fulani herdsmen over grazing and farming lands. Thrown into the mix is cattle rustling and destruction of cattle herds. The bifurcation of the Northwest crisis is of course not very neat, especially considering that kidnapping and other malicious conduct crept in and muddied the picture, but on the whole the crisis started as farmer-herder conflict and quickly morphed into unmitigated criminality.
The second reason is the abundant mineral resources in the Northwest, particularly Zamfara’s gold deposits, over which natives and foreigners are waging a bloody conflict. Even long after peace has been restored, the temptation to continue illicit mining will be too powerful to resist. And for as long as state and federal governments are remiss in their responsibility to regulate solid mineral mining, non-state actors in collusion with external cartels will jostle for control over those mineral-rich regions, including throwing in occasional abductions. There is no reason on earth to compare the factors that predispose the Northwest to banditry with the reasons that fueled Niger Delta militancy. It is difficult to understand why Mr Sani imagines the same outcome of negotiated and monetised peace for Niger Delta militancy and Northwest banditry.
Days after Mr Sani made a case for amnesty for bandits, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Taoreed Lagbaja, suggested a different approach to the crisis. Said he when the new Zamfara governor, Dauda Lawal, visited him in Abuja: “So, I want to appeal to Your Excellency that as we come up with a strategy to address the issue, the state government should be disposed to the implementation of the measures that we will recommend so that together we will address the activities of these criminal elements. We also have the issue of the amnesty programme that has been instituted, and which has failed, not only in the North but also in many other states. I think we need to look at this issue of the amnesty programmes. The agreements have proven to be untenable and so amnesty has created an avenue for them to reorganise and launch attacks on defenseless citizens. So, I think we need to look at that.” The army chief is right. Both Zamfara and Katsina States had dialogued with and granted amnesty to bandits, while Kaduna State initially tried to placate them by paying them off. All the efforts collapsed in a heap. A frustrated Katsina State even swore at a point never to dialogue with bandits again. Mr Sani appeared worried that air strike could lead to heavy collateral damage. He is right. But such fears should not ineluctably lead to negotiations or paralysis, but to carefully planned military operations.
Two Saturdays ago, Islamic scholar, Ahmad Gumi, also offered to be a part of any negotiating team if the presidency is persuaded about dialogue. According to him, “We need the involvement of emirs, scholars, and university professors who have conducted extensive research on these matters. Let’s all sit down together so that we can achieve peace and enable people to return to their farms.” It is not known what the opinion of the presidency is on the matter, or how the public will react to Sheikh Gumi’s call for dialogue, seeing how he was publicly pilloried for seeming to prioritise bandits’ interest over national interest, and how his associate, Tukur Mamu, who set himself up as negotiator between families of Kaduna-Abuja train attack victims and their bandit abductors, allegedly ran afoul of the law. Both Sheikh Gumi and Mr Mamu were described as bandit sympathisers.
The presidency is aware that previous negotiations failed after initial promise. They will be reluctant to risk being ridiculed. The military may already be planning operations against all insurgents, whether they are unknown gunmen, ISWAP/Boko Haram, or bandits. Troops will be anxious not to be embarrassed again. It is curious that in all previous negotiations, the victims were neither consulted nor even involved. The government knows this, and to avoid repeating a despicable history they will be more interested in pacifying the restive regions before calling in experts to help elucidate and address the crisis. Nothing justified the mindless killings that took place, and are still taking place, in the unknown gunmen, banditry, and Boko Haram territories. That the killings went on for so long, regardless of migration pressures, shrinking Lake Chad, desertification, political alienation, and poverty, was a huge disservice to the image and reputation of the previous administration. The Tinubu administration will be wary of going down that parachute.
Mmesoma Ejikeme, the young secondary school JAMB candidate who sexed-up her UTME scores, is quite obviously not the first student to be punished for cheating in examinations. But having made the indefensible mistake of first ethnicising, politicising and excusing her crime, a host of commentators are now engaged in a plea bargain for her. Had they left the matter in the hands of JAMB, she would have attracted less publicity, mitigated the damage to her psyche, and endured lesser punishment than the global opprobrium to which she and her ethnic defenders have dragged her.
Miss Ejikeme’s sentimental sympathisers want JAMB to treat her with kid gloves, and for the public to forgive her. Have they thought of how JAMB would manage such a dangerous precedent? Scores of past offenders have received varying degrees of punishment; why should Miss Ejikeme get just a slap on the wrist? Would this give retroactive justice to those who received severe punishment, and would it exculpate future offenders? JAMB should be careful not to lay a precedent they cannot follow. Miss Ejikeme and her dad need counseling and moral anchors; the society, including Anambra State, should be magnanimous to afford them one. Would this depressing case prevent a future occurrence? Unlikely. There will still be cheats trying to circumvent the system, and there will be incorrigible students, like thieves and burglars, hoping to get away with their crimes. The society has a responsibility to uphold standards and ensure that bold and lying cheats do not get away with egregious affront to civilised norms.
Edo State, and Edo North in Particular, will find Adams Oshiomhole, their former governor and now senator, enormously effective in projecting them at the national level with a fervour and adeptness uncommon among his peers. He is a member of the national ruling party, was a powerful and respected labour union leader, and even though his English is slightly heavily accented, he is nevertheless a polemicist and an orator. He was also an impactful governor, one with a great instinct, and he has retained his appeal with the Edo public since vacating office, despite leading the party to defeat in the September 2020 governorship election against his former protégé, Godwin Obaseki. Indeed there is something no one can take away from Sen Oshiomhole: his political perspectives undergirded by incredible astuteness and farsightedness.
He will be one of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s key men in the 10th National Assembly. His friendship with the president dates back to the time before he contested the Edo governorship in 2007 on the platform of the Action Congress party. However, the depth of his relationship with the president is sometimes questioned or understated because he is not obsequious. Yet more than most south-western protégés of the president, Sen Oshiomhole has hardly left the president’s side, and in fact displayed admirable resilience in absorbing political punishment due to his constancy. The reason is his instinct. In 2007, the president supported him and stood by him. He has felt obligated since then to repay the trust. It is true that he may not be a potent strategist like the president, which accounted for his loss of the state to Mr Obaseki in the 2022 governorship poll, not to say his humiliation as national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019, but his political character and instinct are admirable and unimpeachable.
As his interaction with his constituency in Iyamho, Edo State, showed last weekend, Sen Oshiomhole is endowed with many more gifts far beyond his resilience, his sound instinct, his brilliant perspective, and his loyalty to any mentor or great cause. He knows how to woo and entrance the public, even if that public hates him. Hear him in Iyamho: “I don’t know what would have happened if you had voted against me. My blood pressure would have shot up, and that is if I’m still alive. The jubilation by the opponent would have been such that they will come and lock my small door and break my small bones and harassed me out, but you said no. I thank Afemai people for that. There were sitting governors who contested for the senate across the country and many of them lost. I left office seven years ago and my people still honoured me with victory, how can I thank you enough?…During the campaign, I told you if you want to give me one vote, give it to Tinubu; I said to you it was better he won as a president even if I lost as a senator than for me to win as senator and he loses as president. In the end, I’m very proud to say and to repeat today here and now that in each of these six local governments, every ward, Bola Tinubu won, every ward Adams Oshiomhole won…Today, I can say I will proudly carry the results of Afemai people and I will say Mr. President this is my certificate; my people voted for you.”
Clearly, unlike many cocksure politicians, he did not take the support of his constituency for granted. He suspected he was still loved by his people, but he gave the impression last week at Iyamho that he could not accurately measure his popularity. Whether he knows it or not, whether he deliberately worked that sentiment or it came by happenstance, the fact is that he came across as humble, sometimes engagingly facetious. Humility before the electorate, as Mr Oshiomhole has consistently showed, assures the voters that legitimacy still resides with them. That is a healthy feeling for voters to have, and it helps to retain the relevance of the politician seeking office. Then of course, too, his hyperbole about dying if he had been rejected in the last National Assembly poll on February 25 was a quaint pointer to, and elaboration of, his expansive humour. And then the tour de force: “How can I thank you enough?” His sound instinct is now famously recognised; but there, in that pithy quote, was his much more resonating sentiment –succinct, resounding, impactful.
Sen Oshiomhole is of course also a resourceful and engaging fighter. But in Iyamho last week, he again spoke with self-abnegating candour about his opponents locking his ‘small doors’ and breaking his ‘small bones’ if he had lost the election. It is not known whether his opponents were capable of delivering the apocalypse he feared, for as everyone saw after the governorship poll, the victorious Mr Obaseki merely spoke daggers against his former boss but fell short of using them. Losing the senatorial poll would probably not have indemnified him against pain and punishment, but at least he spoke his anxiety with rhetorical flourish. That seemed to have painted a piquant portrait of him that he intended; and it worked.
Sen Oshiomhole is 71 years old, and ought really to have had his best days behind him, especially considering that he may no longer possess the kind of energy a naturally boisterous politician like him needs to continue to vibrate everywhere. But given the evident soundness of his mind, his fierce loyalty to both mentor and cause, his political consistency, his brilliant jocosity, the public, not to say his Edo North senatorial constituency, should expect far more able representation from him than he thinks he is still capable of giving. It’s the triumph of mind over matter. He will be a successful senator; and much more, he will play a significant role in the Tinubu administration. His instincts and his character fate him for that central role.
Gov Adeleke prays a storm
Governor Ademola Adeleke and ex-governor Rauf Aregbesola are birds of identical plumage. Both exaggerate their strengths and downplay their weaknesses, a sort of synergy now clearly extended into the cabinet of the governor. But while the incumbent governor is weighed down by his vacuity, the former governor is inflated with a false sense of ideological importance. At the moment, Mr Adeleke is the one in the eye of the storm, regardless of the futile attempt by the ex-governor to reclaim the state All Progressives Congress (APC) chapter. The governor’s plan to observe the Eid-el-Kabir prayer at the Osogbo Muslim praying ground ended in a fiasco when he inexplicably and needlessly disputed seating arrangement with former senate spokesman, Ajibola Bashiru. The complaint of the governor is that Sen Bashiru seized his front row seat at the praying ground. Such bizarre supplantation is unheard of, not when there are protocol officers and governor’s advance party to prepare the ground for a governor’s visit.
Perhaps worried that such old wives’ tale wouldn’t convince anyone, the governor and his aides went ballistic with the phantasmagoria of assassination plots, precisely the kind of mendacity that fascinates Kogi governor Yahaya Bello. But perhaps a more sinister reason for the tiff at the praying ground is that the Muslim Ummah was unsure of the religious identity of Mr Adeleke. Is he a Christian or Muslim? Indeed, can the governor himself tell the difference, who he is? He dances and gives testimonies in churches, but now wants pride of place at Eid ground. The worshippers at the Eid ground were unused to syncretism. At Easter and Christmas, he will probably again lend his august and rotund presence. It remains to be seen how the pastors will treat his proclivity for syncretism, especially given the bold rebuff he suffered at Eid. Mr Adeleke sees himself a governor; the Muslim Ummah saw an impostor. Instead of crying assassination, and instead of pushing and shoving his opponents at prayer grounds, the governor should first resolve his identity crisis.
A few weeks before he was sworn in, Kano State governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, also known as Abba Gida-Gida, disclosed that he would reverse many of his predecessor’s projects and policies, including the decentralised Kano Emirate, and demolish buildings erected upon lands which he angrily announced were improperly allocated. Mr Yusuf’s predecessor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, was theosophic about his successor’s threats. God, whom he understood so well considering His almighty and inscrutable nature, would not permit Mr Yusuf’s revisions, the former governor moaned almost under his breath. But dispensing with the radicalism of the then incoming governor and the sighs, resignation and philosophies of the then outgoing governor, Barometer on May 7 counselled restraint, admonishing Mr Yusuf in Hausa idiom to let sleeping dogs lie.
But Abba Gida-Gida would have nothing to do with Hausa proverbs, idioms and aphorisms, regardless of how cute. Shortly after his inauguration, and still breathing threats and imprecates against his loathed predecessor, Mr Yusuf rolled out the bulldozers and began demolishing buildings and shopping malls erected on lands he argued were improperly allocated. A roundabout he claimed mocked Government House and compromised its security, but was unprecedentedly designed by a celebrated young female architect from Kano, also became a casualty. Sensing that his demolitions received acclaim, the governor intensified the demolitions with abandon. One after the other, the buildings fell, no matter how expensive, and notwithstanding the hundreds they rendered economically prostrate. He was yet to get round to reunifying the emirates before some of his supporters, ardent Kwankwasiyya movement activists, began to complain loudly that the governor had become reckless.
At last the courts have stepped in. A member of the Kwankwasiyya movement, who voted the governor’s party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), into office, went to court to stop the demolitions. The member professed his love for the founder of the movement, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former Kano governor, but vowed to resist the demolitions. The courts have ordered the government to stay action until the case is disposed off. The demolitions are unlikely to proceed as furiously as before. Indeed, it is also unlikely that most allottees would be found guilty of land appropriation. Dr Ganduje may have exceeded his powers in approving allocations with regard to some of the lands, for instance in hospitals, mosques and schools, but the courts would be appalled by Mr Yusuf’s resort to self-help. They may find the former governor guilty of bad judgement, but no one has yet successfully litigated poor judgement. It is not even clear, in any case, that Dr Ganduje was derelict in his duty.
If the courts stopped Mr Yusuf dead in his tracks on the subject of demolitions, the chances that he would casually embark on the revision of the Kano emirate system may have receded considerably. Should he nevertheless embark on that needless adventure, it will be mired in controversy, ill-will and litigations, both in the courts and the House of Assembly. Making promises during campaigns is one thing, fulfilling them is another thing entirely: one is theoretical, the easy part; and the other is practical, the hard part. Barometer had made the following observations on May 7: “Mr Kwankwaso and Mr Yusuf, the governor-elect, will want to bear in mind the Hausa adage: A bar kaza cikin gashinta (Let sleeping dog lie/Leave a fowl in its feathers). When the former monolithic Kano Emirate was split into five, it was unclear how popular the policy was. But when the stools were filled and coronations took place, the emirates burst into raptures, whether real or affected. Now the five emirates have since moved on, and like acquired taste, the people have grown to become accustomed to their new emirs and their cultural and sociological appurtenances. Reviewing this elaborate restructuring will hardly be productive or wise, and returning Muhammadu Sanusi II to the throne, assuming he was popular in the first instance or his explosive and often iconoclastic statements and ideas could be tamed, would come with its own drawbacks…
“Reinstating Kano’s emirate structure and returning Muhammadu Sanusi II to the throne may theoretically be easy to accomplish, but they will prove more disruptive than the hypothetical good Mr Kwankwaso and Mr Yusuf hope to achieve. The new Kano leaders should instead prove that their incoming administration is wise, mature, and progressive, not encumbered by minor issues or petty jealousies. Kano State is widely considered by many political scientists as one of the two or three states in Nigeria closest to the civic culture. Mr Kwankwaso should ride that wave which his movement has begun; but riding it will obviously demand more circumspection and adeptness than his speeches have inspired. And by insinuating a radical policy into the governor-elect’s agenda, not minding what the latter’s priorities might be, the NNPP leader seems unmindful of overreaching himself. If he persists in his present approach, he may get embroiled in the incoming governor’s administration and risk becoming a nuisance.”
Barometer had called on ex-governor Kwankwaso to restrain his protégé, the new governor, and also counselled both men still basking in the euphoria of their victory to moderate their convictions and beliefs. There are ways to revise and even revoke the policies and programmes of a past government; but these must follow the laws of the land. Dr Ganduje couched his actions and allocations in terms of the law and due process, whether they made sense or not, or whether they beautified the state or uglified it. To revise those actions, his successor must follow, not manipulate, the law. In the case of the demolitions, the new governor has seemed to rely on populism, not the law; and he was headstrong. Now the courts have restrained him; it is important that he seize upon that legal encumbrance to realign himself both to due process and the goodwill of the hundreds of thousands who voted the NNPP into office.
Benue governor needs circumspection
Benue State governor Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia is immensely popular, and he rode on the wave of that popularity to win last March’s governorship election. He deserves his victory, especially seeing the dire straits his state has come to. There are obviously tons of issues to look at, programmes to reappraise, allegations to investigate, and incompetence and inefficiencies to indict and punish. It was, therefore, not surprising that among his first actions was the suspension of chairmen and counsellors of the 23 local government areas of the state to enable their probe.
But, as expected, the Association of Local Government (ALGON) in the state has described the suspension as illegal. Its officials headed to court and have, according to their chairman, Mike Uba, obtained a court order stopping the suspension. However, according to the governor’s chief press secretary, Kula Tersoo, the government had no knowledge of the court order. The governor, he added bleakly, is someone who obeys the law, and who will not breach court order. He clarified further that the House of Assembly recommended the suspension, not the sack of the chairmen, and the governor merely gave effect to it. They will stay suspended despite their threat not to vacate office, Mr Tersoo growled.
Clearly, Nigerian states have not transcended the military culture of embarking on radical and sometimes populist actions immediately after assuming office. Consequently, some states in the past few weeks, particularly where there have been changes of ruling parties, have announced and even executed radical measures to show that new sheriffs are in town. Abia, Zamfara, Sokoto, Benue and Kano are examples, and the states are frothing with radical changes, some of them daring or mocking the law. The states, however, must be cautioned to follow the rule of law, transparently and accountably. After all, on a hypothetical tomorrow, ruling parties can and will lose elections, and risk being harassed by their successors. It is important that administrative and legal precedents be set in such a manner that succeeding governors would have no choice but to respect tradition, the law and the constitution, even if indigenes bay for blood.
A little over a week after assuming office, President Bola Tinubu asked permission of the Senate to appoint 20 advisers. Less than two weeks later, the president kick-started his team building effort by appointing some 12 advisers in two installments, a significant number of whom are in their 40s. He did not seem able to put a foot wrong. The assemblage was fairly representative of the country’s diversity, considering that their inputs would be needed to help forge a reasonable democratic and administrative template for the country. And just as he was lauded for appointing the advisers a few days after assuming office, he was also applauded for the list containing a healthy sprinkling of women, some four out of 12 altogether.
Though he promised to hit the ground running once he was inaugurated, he seemed curiously tentative when days after he took the reins he had not yet named his key Aso Villa staff to help him run his administration. But about five days after inauguration, he named the three key personnel of chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, and secretary to the government of the federation. In spacing out the appointments, not to say the sequenced meetings with key policy drivers of the nation, the president seemed to avoid the error of information overload. By last week, the appointments had culminated in the announcement of new service chiefs. So far, even at the risk of many analysts sounding sycophantic, the president has seemed to take measured, pragmatic and representative steps in his appointments. Yes, of course, there was the misstep of announcing a few military and operational appointments as part of the administration’s team building efforts. But that can be pardoned.
The cabinet has not yet been assembled, but in the appointments announced so far, including the change of service chiefs, the tension, anxiety and acrimony created by more than 15 years of skewed presidential appointments have been dissipated. This has led to many critics forswearing their habitual objections to presidential appointments, while some analysts have swooned over the president’s actions. Are they hasty and obsequious in embracing the president’s moves so far? If objectivity is equated with continuous and unbroken denunciation of the president, the answer is yes. But if objectivity is defined in terms of episodic assessment of the merit of any policy or appointment at a given time, it would be uncharitable to describe those who applaud the president’s actions so far as sycophants. That they laud the president’s moves today does not preclude them from condemning his actions or policies on a hypothetical tomorrow.
In his appointments so far, President Tinubu has sensibly recognised and avoided the many pitfalls that circumscribed and distracted previous administrations. He has satisfied religious sensibilities, mollified nearly two decades of ethnic resentment, including gesturing in the direction of minorities, and pacified gender disquiet. For a new administration pilloried during the campaigns with unadulterated vitriol, it is remarkable that there has hardly been a whimper against how sure-footedly and briskly the president has proceeded. The Southeast, long frothing with rage over what it termed alienation of the region, has grunted its admiration. The North, which also bristled with a sense of entitlement under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, has not muttered any disadvantage. And the Southwest, almost completely excluded under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, has exuded a sense of belonging. If there is any stirring at all, it is probably from the Middle Belt. But even that stirring has been muted, as the region’s opinion leaders prefer to give the new administration the benefit of the doubt.
So far, too, the Tinubu administration has not exhibited any sense of triumphalism. Recognising the rainbow coalition that fetched him the presidency notwithstanding a very acrimonious and bitterly divisive campaign, and despite deliberate bottlenecks strewed along his path by friends and foes alike, the president has acted, spoken and proceeded along generally conciliatory lines. He seems almost spookily incapable of taking umbrage at any insult and attack on his person. This behavior has helped him over the years in his political campaigns. That behavior is now expected to stand him in good stead as he presides over the affairs of a complex and implacable country. By the time he appoints his full cabinet, it will be abundantly clear whether his appointments so far were a ruse or at worst a red herring. His policies have been daring and in some instances affronting to established conventions and dictums; should he pass muster over his appointments, those policies would obviously elicit fewer misgivings and perhaps less trenchant denunciations from all and sundry. His motives will likely not be assailed; but the policies will as a matter of routine be assessed and belaboured on their merit.
President Tinubu is proceeding apace in building his team. He seems quite capable of assembling a great and unusual team, one that is representative, technocratic, politically astute, and capable of displaying the character and tenacity required for these times. It bares comparison, unfortunately. Ex-president Buhari was clearly unable to assemble a team full of lustre. So, too, was ex-president Jonathan who brewed an amalgam of minor lustre and incomprehensible opacity. Mr Buhari spent about six months cobbling lackluster, and Dr Jonathan dispensed precious effort tilting at windmills. President Tinubu seems capable of doing far better, going by his character and deliberateness. More, considering how he has shown that he would be his own man, it is likely his team will reflect his character and his even more nuanced and underrated genius.
A week or so before he was appointed a special adviser to the president on security, Nuhu Ribadu, a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), had been rumoured slated for the National Security Adviser (NSA) job. There were further rumours that he wanted nothing less or more. Shortly after the rumours wafted into the media, he got the security adviser role. And a few days after that appointment, he also got the NSA job. It is not clear how long he had nursed the NSA ambition, or why he allegedly wanted nothing else, but it is perhaps years after he cultivated that desire that he has now finally got it.
But first there were arguments about whether it was proper for a former senior police officer to fit into that role. Then it was also feared that he did not possess the temperament to man that office. On both grounds, it was suggested as a response that anyone, including a university professor, such as the United States former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, could handle the job and do it well since it is not a command, but an advisory, position. It was also suggested on the second ground that Mallam Ribadu had matured considerably since his excitable EFCC days. President Tinubu, who has interacted with Mallam Ribadu for more than a decade, will certainly hope that his appointee ticks all the boxes.
Until the president explains why he appointed the new NSA, the public will continue to speculate on why he did so, ignoring doubts and snickers in some snobbish corners. One of such speculations concerns the character of Mallam Ribadu himself. It certainly recommends him that since he took the presidential nomination of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and unsuccessfully fought the 2011 poll on the platform of the president’s former political party, he continued to be a political associate of President Tinubu. He stuck with the president through thick and thin, believing in him and his politics, and despite all the attacks and efforts to undermine the former Lagos governor’s presidential bid, gambling that he would one day wear the diadem. Mallam Ribadu not only demonstrated fortitude, he also showed loyalty. His deeper instincts, an indication of the solidity of his character, told him that it was a safe bet to stay with the former Lagos governor, regardless of how harshly political vicissitudes had treated and emasculated him. The former EFCC chairman’s instincts have now proved more unerringly accurate than those of many of the president’s longtime allies and mentees. Such a man will stick with the president far beyond the limelight and way after the curtains had been drawn and the applause died down.
