Femi Fani-Kayode is not the most temperate of men or politicians. He easily flies off the handle when nettled, but flaunts his elocution with bewitching style and gravitas. That he made a success of his last outing as a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) must mystify and even humiliate his detractors. But when the subject is Mr Fani-Kayode himself, better err on the side of caution, for it seems the former minister has returned to default setting with his grandiose and quick-witted endorsements. Eager to wade into the Byzantine politics of the National Assembly’s principal officers, and perhaps wearied by the slow and serpentine pace with which the APC was handling the matter, the huffy Mr Fani-Kayode has jumped the gun eloquently and peremptorily.
Said he on his Facebook page last week: “Senators Orji Kalu and Sani Musa are both close to me and I am proud to call them my brothers. I believe that the Nigerian Senate would be safe in their hands as Senate President and deputy senate president. Their loyalty to our great party, the APC, and to our leader and President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is unambiguous, total and second to none, and they are seasoned, brilliant, courageous, tough, wise, and experienced public officers. What an extraordinary combination they would make as senate president and deputy senate president. This would be innovative and refreshing. Under their leadership, the opposition parties would have sleepless nights, the Senate would be strong, bold and reliable, the APC would flourish and go from strength to strength and the Nigerian people would be the better for it. I wish them well in this race and they have not only my support, but that of millions of other party leaders and supporters.”
In other words, Mr Fani-Kayode’s chief reason for endorsing both gentlemen is that they are close to him. Of course he believes they have other great qualities. Perhaps they do. But when it comes to any of Mr Fani-Kayode’s endorsements, err on the side of caution. Nothing, not closeness nor brotherliness, is strong enough to prevent him from recanting his panegyrics.
Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) came third in the presidential race, after second-place ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, and the winner Bola Ahmed Tinubu, president-elect. Yet, the third-place Mr Obi has skipped the second-place Alhaji Atiku to take on the winner, Mr Tinubu. Not only has Mr Obi skipped the first runner-up, he has also directed unquantifiable venom at the winner while conveniently omitting the second-place former vice president with whom he ran for president in 2019.
The safe conclusion is that Mr Obi is actually not fussy about being declared winner should the president-elect be unhorsed, nor does he care a hoot about the fate and health of democracy. Instead, in line with the agenda of powerful and faceless Nigerian leaders, he is more interested in capsizing the national boat, even if it costs the country its stability. Mr Obi’s running mate has spoken with such severity that political extremists have winced, while Mr Obi himself has said nothing inspiring about democracy, even as some LP supporters have tried to enlist the military in their ignoble and anti-democratic schemes.
By now, they must have seen the futility of their legal case. Nevertheless they will persist in their legal or illegal schemes till the day of inauguration, hoping that their efforts would yield fruit. Don’t be misled into thinking the LP is fighting for democracy or a better Nigeria. Neither goal means anything to the party or its superficial leaders.
In a March 26 piece entitled “Binani: The revolution that nearly was”, Barometer rhapsodised the place of women in the politics of old Gongola State, now comprising Adamawa and Taraba States. Senator Binani’s surefooted advances in politics in a ‘man’s world’ served as a peg for the short piece. The column will recall the piece today because of the depressing drama that surrounded the last supplementary governorship poll eventually won by the governor, Ahmadu Fintiri.
Here it is. “Some days ago, when unsubstantiated reports gave the Adamawa State governorship election victory to Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (also known as Aishatu Binani), the 51 years old Adamawa Central senator was jubilantly believed to have broken the glass ceiling. It was a significant breakthrough for women, exultant analysts suggested. And for that electoral triumph to occur in northern Nigeria was described as revolutionary in scope. Adamawa has produced a slew of women senators: Senator Grace Folashade Bent (Adamawa South, 2007-2011); Senator Binta Massi (Adamawa North, 2015-2019); and now Senator Binani (Adamawa Central, 2019-2023).
“Two things are very significant here. One, all Adamawa’s senatorial districts have produced women senators in a state with majority Muslim population. Something is clearly happening in Adamawa State in terms of its closeness to approximating the civic culture. No other state in Nigeria, not even the so-called cosmopolitan and Christian states of the South, has achieved the Adamawa feat. Two, one of the three women, Sen. Bent, hails from Osun State but is married to an Adamawan, while a second, Sen. Binani, has pitched very strongly and confidently for the governorship. Days ago, she was thought to have won, and had even begun receiving congratulatory messages, before the election was declared inconclusive.
“Before the election stalemated over disputes concerning votes from Fufore local government area, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri had 421,524 votes to Sen. Binani’s 390,275, a difference some analysts believe may be unbridgeable. But whether the supporters of the senator celebrated too early or not, they can take pride in how their amazon has fared in this election season. In nearby Taraba State, another woman, the late Aisha Alhassan was elected senator representing Taraba North senatorial district between 2011 and 2015. After her senatorial tenure, she also contested the 2015 governorship, lost, won back the seat at the election tribunal, but lost it again at both the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
“Sen. Alhassan may have lost the Taraba governorship poll, and Sen. Binani may have an uphill task winning the Adamawa governorship election, but given the trajectories of women politicians in the former Gongola State, which now comprises Adamawa and Taraba, something clearly revolutionary and heartwarming is afoot in those hilly and politically advanced and pacesetting regions. The country had better pay attention.”
Mr Fintiri, as this column expected, sustained his lead by winning with 430,861 votes to Sen Binani’s 398,788 votes, a difference of 32,073 votes. Before the supplementary election, the governor had secured what this column described as unbridgeable margin of 31,249 votes, implying that he even added a few more votes to the margin two Saturdays ago. Despite all the drama, the Adamawa rerun was a success, both in terms of freedom of choice and in terms of security. Both candidates behaved responsibly while polling lasted, until collation began and, midway, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of the state, Hudu Yunusa-Ari, enacted his bombast. After a contrived stalemate during the collation, Mallam Hudu simply got up during a recess and peremptorily announced Sen Binani elected. The agitated APC candidate was to explain later that chicanery was afoot to truncate the collation, thus necessitating Mallam Hudu’s intervention.
If she felt aggrieved, she had the option of litigating the entire election, not just the rerun. By scoring a wholesome 398,788 votes, Sen Binani acquitted herself creditably. She not only demonstrated that her strong showing was durable and remarkable, she also ensured that her image as a statewide politician transcended her senatorial district. She is a politician to watch. But she was misadvised. Her strong showing, despite her defeat, could have been construed in her concession speech as a pedestal for a future governorship contest, had she the noblesse oblige to make one. She didn’t have to win two Saturdays ago. She had not been disgraced, and she was obviously not a pushover. She also had the option of constituting herself, and to some extent her party, into Mr Fintiri’s main opposition.
Instead, by playing along with those who needlessly plotted the stalemate and by seeking inelegantly to profit from Mallam Hudu’s clearly illegal and controversial announcement returning her as elected without any substantiation of vote count, Sen Binani displayed desperation. Apart from being humiliated in the manner the Adamawa rerun was finally resolved, the senator has got herself enmeshed in a controversial N2 billion bribe. The bribe story was likely to be mendacious from the outset, but given the way she was illegally returned as elected, not to say her mistimed and ill-conceived ‘victory speech’, few were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She ought to have distanced herself from the illegal announcement.
However, she is human. Having been reported on social media and a few online publications as elected, that is before the March 18 stalemate, and having received congratulatory messages as the first woman governor in Nigeria, thus breaking the glass ceiling, it seemed galling to her that the electoral body ordered a supplementary election which she was in danger of losing during the collation last Sunday. To come so close to being a revolutionary first shortly after the March 18 poll, and being in danger of losing that accolade on April 15 in the supplementary poll, were fantasies her mind could simply not process adequately. While the drama lasted, she lost weight, and an otherwise beautiful woman began to look disheveled and gaunt. She put herself through a needless trauma.
Mr Fintiri won the election, and Sen Binani’s time was probably still sometime in the future, perhaps in four years’ time. If she can manage to reframe her loss within the overall ambit of her politics, and canonises her attitude towards that loss in saintly and futuristic terms devoid of the desperation and electoral ugliness that lathered the rerun, she may yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. A few reputations have of course been shattered, not least those of Mallam Hudu and the police commissioner on election duty in the state, Mohammed Barde. The courts, to which the senator headed for quick relief, wisely sidestepped the Adamawa election landmines. Even Sen Binani’s party, the APC at the national level, has sought to distance itself from the quagmire. It is time the senator herself did the right thing. She knows what to do, if she can summon the will.
Desperate efforts against inauguration
It is perhaps time President Muhammadu Buhari saw the continuing efforts to thwart the May 29 inauguration as a challenge to his bona fides, and an unflattering indication that some powerful individuals think if they pushed him enough, he would baulk at handing over the reins of office to his successor. He has said on many occasions that he would hand over; yet, the desperation to undermine the democratic process continues apace. It will continue till May 29. It began with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo calling for the process to be aborted midstream. Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi and his running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed have taken courage from the ex-president’s sinister ploy and have spoken stridently against the inauguration. So, too, have some faith leaders whose election predictions miscarried. They are also calling for apocalypse. By mid-May, however, the desperation will likely yield to resignation, as the handover ceremony begins to take shape, regardless of the efforts of anti-democratic forces.
But it is curious that Mr Obi and the LP are claiming victory despite coming third. If they win their case, would the courts not face the dilemma of who to give the crown: the second runner-up or the first runner-up. The shiftiness of the whole judicial quest by the LP is that if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate had won, Mr Obi and his Southeast and religious supporters would not question the victory. How then can they prove that the whole quest is not targeted at the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and to some extent the Southwest?– Chief Obasanjo for entirely private and conspiratorial reasons, and Mr Obi for entirely regional and childish reasons.
It is presumptuous to conclude that the humiliation of the factionalised Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last presidential election could cause the party to regain its senses and unite for the future. Months before the fateful poll, and especially shortly before and after the PDP primary in May 2022, the main opposition party was unable to unite its fractious members. A few of the aggrieved leaders left and found special purpose vehicles to achieve their electoral and particularly presidential ambitions. Unseating the ruling and aggressive All Progressives Congress (APC) from the presidential stool would require unity and humongous resources. That feat was ordinarily a very difficult proposition. But to carry out that unprecedented upset while being factionalised into four parts was even more far-fetched. Disregarding logic and commonsense, and defiant of the rebellious and quarrelsome parts, the rump PDP nevertheless blundered into the election isolated and, predictably, lost woefully.
At least two of the PDP breakaways, to wit, the PDP itself and the delusional and overly optimistic Labour Party (LP), have sought to litigate their losses. The litigations, as expected, are not being carried out by the defeated political parties as such; the suits are essentially the preserve of the PDP and LP presidential candidates. Their parties are going along with the court cases in the dismal hope that what they describe as ‘stolen mandate’ could be recovered. No such miracle will happen, however. But what the parties, much more than the defeated presidential candidates, will concern themselves with going forward will be their fortunes as outsiders under the coming dispensation. They are left holding the short end of the stick as far as the presidency is concerned. However, they will hope to pull some weight in the legislature, having secured some significant victories, particularly in the House of Representatives.
But it is in the House of Representatives that indications of the fractiousness of the PDP continue to manifest, where their internal dissension will continue to endanger their future, and where, if no answer is found to their acrimony, the next set of elections will see them experience far worse beating. More significantly, it is in the House of Representatives that evidence of the leadership tussle within the party becomes at once axiomatic of their real character and symptomatic of the decay sapping them of oppositional energy. Of the 325 seats declared so far, the PDP has won 102, and could potentially go into alliance with LP, which has 34 seats, and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) with 18 seats. Nothing of course is cast in granite. But for the APC, which so far has 162 seats in the 360-seat assembly, it will need to win 18 more seats in the lower chamber in the remaining 31 seats to be decided in yesterday’s supplementary election in order to have a majority as it does in the 10th Senate (57 seats to PDP’s 29 seats).
However, concluded elections or not, the PDP is poised for another round of attritional war in the House of Representatives. Since the APC has been unable to get an outright majority in the lower chamber, fierce politicking similar to the leadership struggle in the PDP has already erupted. The APC is unlikely to have it smooth sailing in securing the prized positions of principal officers. It must, therefore, engage in the most ingenious horse-trading or electoral pacts ever, especially in the face of threats by other parties to conspire for the same offices. The opposition will not only have to ensure unity in their ranks, including forming an alliance with the other minor parties, it must also win a majority of the undecided seats in the supplementary elections. That is a tall order. For not only will unity within the PDP, with its 102 seats so far, remain far-fetched, it must also lure the other minor parties with goodies which at the moment only the ruling party is best placed to offer.
This is where the ongoing battle between the G-5 and PDP leaders becomes hugely significant. Two reasons explain this significance. One, the G-5 House of Representatives members can theoretically help give the APC a legislative majority, assuming the ruling party is unable to secure more seats in the supplementary elections. To help the APC achieve its aim, the war between the G-5 and the PDP leadership represented by the party’s presidential candidate in the last poll, Atiku Abubakar, must continue. The arrowhead of the G-5 faction, Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike, has already signaled his readiness to cooperate with the APC. According to him, the APC won, and they deserve to have untrammeled advantage of their victory. Two, it is difficult to predict the outcome of the G-5 versus PDP war, in the short and long term. If the table turns against the Atiku caucus, as expected, and the Wike tendency in the party regains the momentum, the opposition could strike out in a different and assertive direction inimical to the APC. But if the table does not turn, and the Wike tendency is attenuated by his exit from Rivers Government House, a number of unforeseen variables could come into play in ways that are both unforeseen and unsalutary to the G-5. After all, nothing suggests that even the G-5 itself would remain intact and focused on a cause or causes that are morphing constantly.
What is almost certain is that the shape of the 10th National Assembly will favour the ruling APC in the Senate; but while its fortunes are not so predictable in the House of Representatives in the short term, the party is nevertheless expected to survive opposition plots to snatch the diadem. But keeping the diadem in the lower house will mean constant and unrelenting horse-trading and deft political machinations. If the APC enthrones a Speaker who is less than savvy in walking the tightrope, the House of Representatives will be in constant turmoil. So, far beyond merely taking the speakership, the APC must put forward a brilliant and intuitive man to head the lower chamber. For nothing, it is obvious, will remain static for a considerable length of time. Whatever help and advantage the G-5 and Mr Wike can confer on the APC will only sustain the ruling party for the initial months. What is more, no one knows at the moment how Mr Wike himself will fare in the ensuing battles in the PDP, especially after his exit from Government House. He is smart and daring, and his hunches are often flawless; but he must hope that both qualities will carry him very far in the tempestuous waters of South-South politics and the shark-infested rivers of national politics hell bent on castrating and sequestering him as a provincial politician.
Elections and FCT’s super beings
BOTH the PDP and the LP know they didn’t win the last presidential poll. But they desperately litigate the APC victory for only one reason: to cause a run-off that would allow them to enact the cooperation which their two presidential candidates urgently covet. Had they not miscalculated badly, had they buried their hatchets and pride to forge unity between their standard-bearers, they would probably be in the shoes of the triumphant APC candidate now awaiting coronation. Chastened by their mistakes, but still defiant, they have resurrected the uncontroversial and even commonsensical constitutional status of the Federal Capital City, Abuja, especially in connection with winning 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of the 36 states in Nigeria and the FCT.
The courts will decide once again on the subject, since desperate Nigerian politicians and their fanatical supporters are hard of hearing. What matters to this column is the absolute lack of sense of those who suggest that the framers of the constitution could conceivably project residents of the FCT as super humans. What on earth will make that territory or its inhabitants more special than the rest of Nigeria? And why would any constitution confer such special privilege on them to the point of wielding veto power over the rest of the country? That laughable interpretation of Section 134 of the Nigerian constitution is unlikely to impress a college student, let alone mystify constitution drafters, or confuse judges. But desperate politicians and their lawyers are not made from the human stock everyone is familiar with. They are a special, obtuse and incorrigible breed. They will mouth any jargon and clutch at any straw.
With an emphatic 107,110 votes to his opponent’s 55,344 votes in the Edo North senatorial race, Adams Oshiomhole again proved not only his popularity with the Edo State electorate and particularly his constituency, he also revivified his politics, presumed comatose as a result of his long and bruising battles with Edo governor Godwin Obaseki, and sustained an enduring image of himself as a progressive and likeable politician. His opponent in that February 25 race, Francis Alimekhena, was no pushover. As a two-term senator since 2015, the retired army major and foreign-trained lawyer was pushing for a third term in the senate on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he encountered the union juggernaut, Mr Oshiomhole, a former two-term governor of the state from 2008 to 2016 and one-time National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The former governor and party chairman is now 71, and it is significant that he has not lost any of the idiosyncratic feistiness and gregariousness that have hallmarked his political career since 2007 when he first threw his hat into the ring. Since then he has become accustomed to winning, though sometimes chequered by the usual electoral heists that typify Nigerian politics. He was robbed in the 2007 Edo governorship poll, but he regained his mandate in November 2008. Four years later he won a handsome and indisputable victory gingered by a boisterous performance in office uncommon since the iconic Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, an army brigadier, ruled the combined Midwest/Bendel state as military governor.
Mr Oshiomhole’s gregariousness had its drawbacks. He was sometimes voluble and impatient, perhaps a carry-over from his trade union activism days begun in the 1970s, culminating in his election as the General Secretary of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria in 1982, and more remarkably and powerfully, in his election as chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in 1999. His tenures were distinguished by activism and a doggedness that nearly became superlative and unsurpassable, and they helped propel him into a fulfilling and rewarding political career. In politics, he also sustained his common touch as labour union executive, and he never lost that touch as governor for eight years. He was not infallible, but he sustained an uncanny connection with the Edo electorate, both by his endearing performance and by his inimitable earthiness.
Propelled by stellar achievements as governor, and in combination with his labour union background, he soon found himself in 2018 the practical and commonsensical replacement for the dour but disfavoured John Odgie Oyegun, a former Edo State governor, as APC chairman in June 2018. But barely two years later in 2020, after enacting a series of tumultuous but sometimes tactless measures that threw his party into upheaval, causing distress to party behemoths, including President Muhammadu Buhari, he was ousted in a civilian coup orchestrated from his ward and sealed by controversial court judgements. The fault was hardly his; his problem was his lack of strategic approach to complex political dynamics that required diplomatic and subtle handling. Mr Oshiomhole was, however, too candid to be subtle, and too impatient with humbug to suffer fools gladly. Yet there are always too many entrenched fools in politics.
Going forward, there is nothing in the former governor’s politics or life to suggest he had acquired the subtlety required to launch his career to the very peak. He has been successful so far, and has chalked up remarkable signposts in the past decades, whether as union leader or politician. Changing his style and politics now at 71 will not only prove costly and stressful, it will also push him to territories he is neither familiar nor comfortable with. There is no apparent indication of any serious health challenge etched on his face, and he must have enjoyed very robust and rambunctious middle age enabling him to even take a much younger wife Iara, the Cape Verdian. His energy level remains the envy of his contemporaries. And though he is not naturally sculpted an Adonis, he has captivated women over the decades and has given of his time and resources, indeed an ample much of himself, to please and even titillate them.
Mr Oshiomhole is unlikely to angle for the presidency, given his age. Had he been a little younger, and had he been advantaged by Nigeria’s regional political dynamics, he would undoubtedly have appealed to a sizable portion of the country to enable him fetch the ultimate prize. To him, at 71, the presidency is, therefore, illusory. But he retains an excellent grasp of issues, a deep and unfettered capacity for polemics which should serve him well in the National Assembly, an unquestionable rhetorical fecundity catalysed by a rich microphone voice, and an even more didactic tone capable of penetrating the armour of his worst enemy.
No, the former governor is neither infallible nor above reproach. He has his weaknesses, failings that neither age nor new ideas could attenuate. But his uncanny talent for associating with the winning side, his untrammeled loyalty to friends, and his immense potential to socialise without being judgemental will likely help his politics in his evening years. And as his tenure as party chairman showed when he took on blustering party leaders and brought them to heel, Mr Oshiomhole also possesses that ethical forte that enables him to side courageously and effortlessly, though not always unerringly, with what is right, with what is just, and with causes that are popular.
For four decades, the former governor had been used to executive positions which afforded him ample room to take the final decisions. In the twilight of an illustrious career catapulted by his immense talent but modest education, he will now have to get used to being led by others in the legislature. He will of course belong to one senate committee or the other, but if he chairs any, it will be on account of his membership of the ruling party and his unquestionable capacity for zesty leadership. Yet, that modest legislative leadership will be a far cry from the pontifical positions he had occupied since 1982. For Mr Oshiomhole, it has been 71 years of the best of the very best; a bohemian who contradistinctively rose to positions of splendour by his extraordinary but sometimes flawed personality than by his education or birth.
Mysteries of Poll 2023
It is one of the unexplained contradictions of this year’s election cycle that it is buffeted by so much illogical internal and external criticisms. In the presidential poll, three contenders did so unprecedentedly well that they virtually split the country in three equal parts. And in the National Assembly elections, the three leading contenders did remarkably well, only stopping just short of producing a hung parliament. And in the second tier of polls on March 18, again the three leading contenders and their political parties did not do very badly, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the first runner-up, avoiding the catastrophe that initially loomed over it as a result of failing to win the presidency.
Strangely, though the first runner-up and second runner-up came from the same stock and only split before the primaries season, each of the parts expected to have won the poll, and has since spoken and acted contemptuously of the country and the electoral process, insisting that the election was stolen. It is indeed passing strange. And for the second runner-up, the Labour Party (LP), which presidential candidate, Peter Obi, took 25 percent in only 15 states out of the expected 25 states – 10 short of the mark – to speak so militantly about a stolen mandate must be a mystery that no one, least the LP itself, can sensibly explain.
The parties which supposed themselves to have been cheated have, however, been unable to explain why they think they deserved victory. Neither their dissonant intraparty politics nor the final electoral figures favoured them, not in the least. Yet, they have spoken militantly about reclaiming ‘stolen mandate’ or pushing the country over the precipice, perhaps on the instigation of faceless but powerful backers. Surely all the leading parties could not have won the presidency at the same time. The courts will now have to try and cut the Gordian knot, that is if the militants let them without intimidation.
FOUR days after former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman Iyorchia Ayu drew first blood by suspending a few leading members of the party for anti-party activities, and a day after his Igyorov Ward in Gboko local government area suspended his membership of the party, a Benue High Court ordered him to stop parading himself as PDP chairman. In almost one fell swoop, Dr Ayu’s controversial tenure came to a crushing end. The party’s Deputy National Chairman (North), Umar Damagum, has stepped in with the support of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC). The orchestration of Dr Ayu’s ouster followed a similar pattern deployed against former All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, in 2020.
With the defeat of Atiku Abubakar in February, it was expected that ‘civil war’ would break out in the leading opposition party. But combatants barely waited for the smoke of electoral war to clear after the governorship polls before they unsheathed their sabres. Noblesse oblige required Dr Ayu to quietly fall on his sword, having led the PDP to another slaughter in its third election attempt to regain the throne. Instead, he attacked his grandiloquent enemies first, and was cruelly put to the sword instantly. The court may have adjourned hearing to April 17, but it is all over for the former chairman. He will now be addressed in the past tense, a victim of the third in the series of defeats suffered by the opposition party.
The suspension of former Ekiti and Katsina governors, Ayo Fayose and Ibrahim Shema respectively, has of course been reversed without much ado. Dr Ayu’s dethronement may not have followed the party’s constitution, for Article 57 (7) limits the ability of ward executives to suspend national officers, and in any case the court was yet to adjudicate, but once the ex parte motion brought by an interested party to the dispute succeeded in shoving the chairman aside temporarily, it was game over. The pugnacious Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike will now have cause to smile, for he was the chief architect of the campaign to put Dr Ayu’s nose out of joint. It is not clear that Mr Wike pulled the strings in the events that transpired in Benue State, but all eyes are on him both to hear what he has to say on the dethronement and how next the PDP would proceed.
If the suspension of Messrs Fayose and Shema, et al, was the first shot in the war within the PDP, and the second was the inglorious and rapid manner Dr Ayu was hoisted with his own petard, the third obviously will be how the PDP’s NWC will navigate the waves certain to block their path sailing forward. Dr Ayu was really never popular in the party, especially after he refused to relinquish the chairmanship position after the party’s presidential primary last May. Unfortunately for him, those who could have rallied to his help, including Alhaji Atiku and Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, are preoccupied with their own problems. The presidential candidate simply can’t fathom why he should spend money and time fighting a war that is, going forward, of little benefit to him. And Mr Tambuwal, hobbled by the defeat his anointed governorship candidate suffered in the March 18 poll, is too politically unsettled and his hands weakened to go into any battle now. He has neither the stamina nor the funds to saunter into war.
But these are just early days in the PDP civil war. The combatants may be fairly well known, but they are yet to be neatly divided into fighting camps; nor is the war front clearly delineated yet. Coalitions of willing fighters, some of them returning and outgoing governors, will have to be formed in the weeks ahead, and an agenda worth pursuing will have to be cobbled together. Nothing is by any means guaranteed. Mr Wike may sometimes appear like an obtruding politician, and his speech and ideas, sometimes also grandiose and peremptory, but there is no doubt he will be a factor in the war. How far he can go remains to be seen, especially if the task of cobbling coalitions does not end quickly before May 29. If the war gets protracted, serving governors may bring out heavy guns against former governors, since the PDP is, despite its failings and contradictions, actually a pan-Nigerian political party. It does not have a single mastermind, nor a single philosopher. It must, therefore, always answer to a collegiate of thinkers and activists. Indeed, the party will likely yield more to those who can provide the funds to run it. No one at the moment knows who those financiers might be, other than of course to suspect serving governors.
What matters now is that Mr Wike and the other vocal and aggrieved section of the party have got their revenge. In their combat with Dr Ayu, they are having the last laugh. Alhaji Atiku will be of no help to anyone now or in the medium run during the duration of his legal case against his election loss. With 25 percent in 21 states instead of in 24 or 25 states, it is hard to see his suit against the APC succeeding. Success in that suit is the only thing that will rekindle his interest and cause the PDP to renew their bond with him. Mr Wike was at the head of the group of five governors who battled Dr Ayu to submission. The G-5 is also laughing last. More, the group will clearly retain its relevance, even though no one is sure just how strongly the core that binds them together will continue to cohere.
Obasanjo on discrimination against Igbo
EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo customarily offers little corroboration for his wild summations. Speaking at the one-year anniversary of the Chukwuma Soludo administration in Awka, Anambra State, two Saturdays ago, the former president decried what he believed was the continuing discrimination against the Igbo in Nigeria. He offered no proof for his conviction save that when he appointed both Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Finance minister and Charles Soludo as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, someone came to him to denounce the appointments using the ethnic argument. Igbophobia exists, he says, and it remains, it persists. Meanwhile, he continued, both appointments were probably the best he made during his presidency.
He is entitled to his beliefs and self-adulation. What is not in doubt, however, is that he neither imbued Nigeria with the right philosophy of governance nor inculcated in his special appointees any ideology or school of thought to turn them into credible and lasting disciples. He gave nothing, and the so-called disciples received nothing. Yes, a few things bind him and some of his appointees together, but those things were neither solid nor unforgettable. What is even worse is that he never feels obliged to substantiate or defend his pithy and often wayward remarks, such as his conclusion that Igbophobia continues to this day.
Decades ago, the Yoruba also embraced victimhood, insisting with a tinge of entitlement that the nation owed them a living and must cede the presidency to them. It never happened until M.K.O Abiola experienced the epiphany that to win a presidential election, a candidate must build bridges, nurture networks, and help others to succeed through self-sacrifice, in addition to enunciating a philosophy of life and government. Presto, Chief Abiola won the 1993 presidential election, an election that was tragically aborted with the collusion and connivance of men like Chief Obasanjo himself. Some 30 years later, Bola Ahmed Tinubu dusted up the Abiola template by devoting about three decades to practise the same craft. Again, deploying the same tactics with minor modifications helped another Yoruba man to win the February 25 presidential poll.
Both Chief Obasanjo and the Igbo appear to be waiting for a time when the country will with one accord gift the Southeast the presidency, as an entitlement, considering that the Igbo are regarded as one of the tripods upon which Nigeria rests. Sadly, it will never happen until a detribalised Igbo man appreciates the dynamics of the Nigerian presidency, recognises that it is not a one-year project, and begins to take measured and consistent steps to actualise that dream.
Well, Chief Obasanjo is never one to reason a matter through logically and philosophically. Specious, self-aggrandising, shallow and often pedantic, he will continue to muddy the waters, instigate malice, and incite one group against the other. If the Igbo feel flattered by his dangerous incitement, they will wait for far longer than they imagine to win the presidency.
EARLY last week, after results of the March 18 governorship elections in 28 states began to trickle in, it seemed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was completely undone. By Monday, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was cruising away with 15 states to the PDP’s six, a difference of nine. But as that politically dreary week drew to a close, the PDP had salvaged a few more states to bring its total haul tentatively to nine. The preceding presidential election had seen the PDP, which was fractured into four angry and irreconcilable parts, trounced. The party was outdone, outclassed, and outthought so comprehensively that even its defeated standard-bearer’s recourse to litigation appeared to be nothing more than a face-saving device to ameliorate the damage done its pride by the APC defeat. For the 16 years it spent in office between 1999 and 2015, the PDP was unable to manage its success and power. Defeated repeatedly since 2015 over three election cycles, it has proved even more inept at managing its defeats.
Once again, the PDP has begun a knee-jerk response to the terrible defeat it suffered in last month’s presidential election and the equally unflattering governorship poll. Lightning, it seems, is going to strike the same place twice. The ink was not yet dry on the result sheets of the two sets of elections, and details of the polls as set forth by the electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), were yet to be made available, before PDP leaders led by the presumptuous Iyorchia Ayu began wielding the big axe against those it believed sabotaged the elections for the party. To that end, the party has suspended former Ekiti and Katsina States governors, Ayo Fayose and Ibrahim Shema respectively, as well as former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim. They were accused of anti-party activities and shoved aside.
It was assumed that after failing a third time to win the presidency the PDP would engage in deep soul-searching to find out the reasons for its poor performance and defeat. Such a reflection needed to be done scientifically in order to ascertain the panaceas needed by the party to re-engineer itself. In 2015, tried as hard as many well-wishers did, including this column, to nudge the defeated PDP to the path of rectitude, the party preferred to paper over the cracks, ladled out a generous dose of lavender to suppress the cadaverous stench coming out of its body, and thirsted after the sorceries of all sorts of journeymen and a mixed multitude of tinpot political messiahs. The rambunctious Ali Modu Sheriff, a former Borno State governor, waved his talisman before the gaping rabble of the PDP who were seduced by the magic for three months in 2016. The staider and humourless Uche Secondus followed quickly in 2017, oblivious of how effectively science always trumped magic, as he stupefied party members with his somnolence for four years, convinced that after the rancourous leadership of his predecessor, they would be grateful for some peace and quietude.
Finally, the inimitable Iyorchia Ayu sauntered in, cold, detached and full of deceptive bombast. He combined the fiery meddlesomeness of Mr Sheriff with the distressing iciness of Mr Secondus to produce an unrecognisable amalgam totally unsuitable to the needs of a confused and dying party. Of course, the party was humiliated a third time. They will be finally entombed if they fail to pay heed to the crying needs of their party. After the 2015 defeat, they needed to purge their ranks, fine-tune their ideology and renew their platform; instead they went for unprofitable quick fixes. In 2019, they ran for the presidency with returnee politicians and borrowed ideas, and again came to spectacular grief. And in 2023, having not learnt any lesson, but yet reposing hope and confidence in all sorts of political trickeries backed by colluding cabals, it was not surprising that each of their fractured parts was worsted separately and comprehensively.
But wonders never end. Defeated thrice in eight years, they now need reflection and patience more than ever. Instead, the gasping and grasping old guard of the party is pushing the panic button, flailing, cursing, scapegoating and suspending leading members stigmatised as agents provocateurs. So, rather than fall on their swords, those who have led the party to defeat over and over again have taken the quixotic option of lashing out at phantoms. They may have preempted the rump of the party by lashing out at presumed enemies, but they are unlikely to get away with the hasty measures. They were served a reprieve by the admirable number of states they have taken or held on to, in addition to their share of the off-cycle election states, to wit Osun, Bayelsa and Edo, but they have shunned the golden opportunity. It is unlikely they will have the last laugh. The civil war within the party is just about to break out. The war will be fought brutally, cold-bloodedly and remorselessly. The combatants will not take prisoners.
Three defeats in a row are enough to nudge the party in the right direction. A new party leadership may yet rise from the rubbles of defeat, and they may begin flexing muscles in the coming weeks and months. Like a big bank, the PDP is too big to fail. Labour Party (LP) was a flash in the pan, lacking the ideology and personnel to constitute, whether alone or in collaboration with others, the opposition to the ruling APC. So, for now, no one can take the place of the PDP. The PDP standard-bearer in the last presidential poll, ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, is too enfeebled and unmotivated to summon the funds and energy needed to rebuild the party. He will be away for much of the time. The task of rebuilding the party will fall on much younger and sturdier politicians, some of them governors, others ex-governors. They will soon congregate and push out the sniveling old guard. Wait and see. For as former Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, said last week in reaction to his suspension, the panic measures being taken by PDP leaders are the last kick of a dying horse. He couldn’t be apter.
Binani: The revolution that nearly was
SOME days ago, when unsubstantiated reports gave the Adamawa State governorship election victory to Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (also known as Aishatu Binani), the 51 years old Adamawa Central senator was jubilantly believed to have broken the glass ceiling. It was a significant breakthrough for women, exultant analysts suggested. And for that electoral triumph to occur in northern Nigeria was described as revolutionary in scope. Adamawa has produced a slew of women senators: Senator Grace Folashade Bent (Adamawa South, 2007-2011); Senator Binta Massi (Adamawa North, 2015-2019); and now Senator Binani (Adamawa Central, 2019-2023).
Two things are very significant here. One, all Adamawa’s senatorial districts have produced women senators in a state with majority Muslim population. Something is clearly happening in Adamawa State in terms of its closeness to approximating the civic culture. No other state in Nigeria, not even in the so-called cosmopolitan and Christian states of the South, has achieved the Adamawa feat. Two, one of the three women, Sen. Bent, hails from Osun State but married to an Adamawan, while a second, Sen. Binani, has pitched very strongly and confidently for the governorship. Days ago, she was thought to have won, and had even begun receiving congratulatory messages, before the election was declared inconclusive.
Before the election stalemated over disputes concerning votes from Fufore local government area, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri had 421,524 votes to Sen. Binani’s 390,275, a difference some analysts believe may be unbridgeable. But whether the supporters of the senator celebrated too early or not, they can take pride in how their amazon has fared in this election season. In nearby Taraba State, another woman, the late Aisha Alhassan was elected senator representing Taraba North senatorial district between 2011 and 2015. After her senatorial tenure, she also contested the 2015 governorship, lost, won back the seat at the election tribunal, but lost it again at both the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
Sen. Alhassan may have lost the Taraba governorship poll, and Sen. Binani may have an uphill task winning the Adamawa governorship election, but given the trajectories of women politicians in the former Gongola State, which now comprises Adamawa and Taraba, something clearly revolutionary and heartwarming is afoot in those hilly and politically advanced and pacesetting regions. The country had better pay attention.
No one can stop Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike from gloating over the defeat of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar in the February 25 poll. The two politicians have had a running battle since the former vice president upstaged the governor during the party’s primary last May. The Rivers governor and a section of the opposition party had insisted on the PDP respecting the informal zoning arrangement guiding the nomination of the party’s presidential ticket. The deal was not respected. Worse, instead of shuffling executive positions within the party, in this instance the chairmanship, to compensate the Southern chapter for the loss of the presidential ticket, party leaders, particularly Alhaji Atiku, deferred the reshuffle till after the party must have won the February poll. In reaction, the party fractured irretrievably, while party leaders mocked the Rivers governor and dared him to do his worst. The PDP then lost the poll, leading to Mr Wike gloating on March 6, the day PDP leaders organised a protest rally to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office in Abuja.
Incensed and chastened by the peculiar manner in which Mr Wike expressed his delight at the frustrations of the PDP leadership, Alhaji Atiku called the sanity of the governor to question and dismissed him as irrational and feckless for abandoning his fellow ‘rebel’ governors in the Group of Five (G-5). But addressing his supporters after the PDP protest, Mr Wike had said, “As they were protesting, I just sat down and took a 40-year-old whiskey. I called some of my friends and opened the 40-year-old whiskey as they were protesting.” Unable to stomach Mr Wike’s insolence and the indignity of being described as a bad loser, Alhaji Atiku’s communications adviser exploded in fury: “The protest that was led by Waziri Atiku Abubakar on Monday, March 6, 2023 was against the stealing of the mandate of the Nigerian people, which in itself was a noble cause.”
The adviser, Phrank Shaibu, added: “At this point, I would love to commend the nearly 300,000 Nigerians who have signed the petition for Wike’s visa sanction. This is a step in the right direction. This is a man who in every election he has ever been involved in has been characterised by rigging and violence so much so that under his watch, the media tagged his state, ‘Rivers of Blood’.” Mr Wike’s gloating was probably anchored on the fact that as a lawyer, he knew that the objective of the protest was unachievable. He knew that Alhaji Atiku’s call for poll cancellation and fresh elections would be impossible to actualise. It cost billions to conduct the February 25 presidential and National Assembly polls. No elected lawmaker would back such reckless advocacy. And no government would appropriate fresh funds for an election that was conducted in largely peaceful atmosphere and which ended with variegated outcomes that benefited all the parties, including the undeserving. More importantly, neither the government nor INEC could on their own cancel the poll. The law is clear on that. Mr Wike knew all that, noted the finality of the poll, and exulted over the outcome. He will continue to gloat.
After weeks of futile campaign for the cancellation of the poll, not to say two days of feeble protests in Abuja, the PDP has retired to the courts where it first sensibly made recourse. The real battle will start and end in the courts, not on the streets, nor in flimsy barricades. Here again, Mr Wike is set to gloat. He knows that given the manner the PDP was badly fractured into at least four parts during the February 25 poll, it was impossible for any one part to triumph over the fairly united and single-minded All Progressives Congress (APC), the party in office. It is of course impossible to prove mathematically that had the four parts united to flush out the APC from office they would have succeeded. But united, their chances would have been far above average, and given the contradictions exhibited by the departing Muhammadu Buhari presidency, those chances would have received catalyst. Clearly, Mr Wike knows all this. Sadly, too, Alhaji Atiku senses the hopelessness of his cause, hence his resort to street advocacy and legal options. Neither, in the end, is likely to yield fruit.
This may be the main reason the Atiku camp is backing the imposition of visa sanction on both INEC officials and Mr Wike: INEC men for organizing a shambolic election, and Mr Wike for using strong-arm and underhand measures to ‘thwart’ the will of the electorate. Here, also, Alhaji Atiku will come to grief. The Western countries the PDP and Labour Party advocates are pressuring to extend visa ban know through diplomatic communications and cables that the elections were on the whole free, fair and credible. They have said as much in their responses to the February poll, even though their few misgivings have been twisted out of context and proportion. No visa ban is likely to be imposed on anyone, regardless of the number of people who signed the petition. Those countries are not as frivolous, sentimental and irrational as the petitioners hope. It is shocking that ex-vice president Atiku lends his diminishing and litigious weight to a futile campaign.
But perhaps Alhaji Atiku’s main dilemma is how to save face from a loss that flowed from his miscalculations and political awkwardness. He was unable to heal the fractures in his party before the polls, and he also backed the unpopular naira swap policy in the hope that it would favour his bid for the presidency. Everything failed him, his magic touch having departed him in what is evidently his last race. There will be no recovery. And for now, Mr Wike, to Alhaji Atiku’s immeasurable exasperation, is laughing last and best.
Obasanjo’s last hurrah and miscalculation
ONCE, his letters nearly carried the force of law; now after the last hurrah eulogising LP candidate, Peter Obi, and midway into the election calling for the abortion of the electoral process in February, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo may no longer be able to write letters that will command attention nationwide. He overdid it, after many years of unnerving his successors. He had done his best to intervene in the last presidential poll by supporting one of the candidates. His reasons were less surefooted than was characteristic of him when he launched at his victims, whether ex-president Goodluck Jonathan or Muhammadu Buhari. But whether he knew why he did what he did or not, he was at liberty to support whomsoever he liked. He chose Mr Obi, citing not the candidate’s competence but the suggestion that it was the turn of the Southeast to produce a president. Well, even if it was the turn of the Southeast, why Mr Obi? Chief Obasanjo simply muttered an unintelligible answer.
The former president had years ago angrily shredded his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) membership card, citing irreconcilable differences with party leaders and their predilections. He promised to maintain benevolent neutrality, becoming a statesman par excellence. He didn’t quite summon the discipline to keep to that neutrality, as different party behemoths lobbied for his support or counsel. Thus in 2015 he supported then candidate Buhari, who went on to win. Few scathing letters later and after a spectacular falling out, he withdrew that support and in 2019 gave it inexplicably to his hated former vice president, Alhaji Atiku, with whom he had once fought like Kilkenny cats. Many commentators and critics were stupefied and wondered what on earth led to that seismic shift. Chief Obasanjo was, however, not one to take responsibility for his flip-flops: he had given his approbation; whoever did not like it could go to court.
Last January, he played his joker and wasted his capital by betting on the unlikely candidacy of the flighty and sophistic Mr Obi, and lost. Compounding the error, he called for cancellation of the election, and was excoriated by nearly everyone, including, to his horror, many of his fellow civil war commanders, including Generals Alani Akinrinade, Godwin Alabi-Isama, and Olu Bajowa. He was even described as a hater of the Yoruba. He has since kept his peace, probably shocked by the din. His last letter lacked nobility and coherence; any letter he chooses to write in future after the dreadful miscalculation of February may meet a worse fate. He will think twice before he ventures near the sun again with waxen feathers.
FOR all their grandstanding, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) never meant their naira swap (or currency redesign) policy to be deployed as a tool for achieving monetary policy goals. Without a shred of doubt, and especially following their resistance to and defiance of three separate Supreme Court orders and ruling on the subject, the naira swap policy remains a political tool to achieve political outcomes. No country swaps currency in 45 days, none; and certainly not a country of over 200 million people. More, no country withdraws the equivalence of three trillion naira from circulation in about three months and replaces it with the equivalence of N400 billion, assuming in the case of Nigeria what was printed and circulated was actually up to the amount publicly stated.
The deadline for the swap was initially January 31. But as though the administration was doing the country a favour, that deadline was grudgingly extended by 10 days. Since then, the story of the swap has been one of defying the Supreme Court and inflicting cruel punishment on the people and their businesses. Analysts had believed that after the presidential election, more money would be pumped into circulation or at least the administration would relent and acknowledge and perhaps obey the apex court ruling extending the naira’s legal tender till December 31. Since the presumptive political aim of the naira swap policy was two-pronged, to wit, to alienate voters from the All Progressives Congress (APC), and to make it impossible for the party’s presidential candidate to win the February 25 poll, it was hoped that the country would return to normality after that election.
Few, if any, now think the naira swap was an economic tool to stabilise the naira and rein in inflation and other monetary problems. By its own admission, even the CBN included among its reasons for initiating the policy such tangential goals as frustrating kidnappers and ransom takers as well as forestalling vote buying. It was, therefore, not unexpected that the apex bank and the administration would deliberately starve the country of cash and insouciantly disregarde the pains borne by the people as they struggled with network interruptions in online, so-called cashless transactions. For a few dizzying moments, the CBN even instigated the people against the commercial banks, insinuating that they were hoarding cash or funneling it to politicians desperate to get cash for elections. Angry citizens bought the boondoggle, until cash-strapped banks began to shut their doors against customers.
Finally, everyone thought that once the Supreme Court gave a definitive judgement on March 3 on the suit brought before it by the three states of Zamfara, Kogi and Kaduna, the country would be relieved. That judgement came two Fridays ago on the heels of two interim but explicit orders, and it was equally explicit and cathartic. The Buhari presidency, which had directly waded into the crisis twice by granting a reluctant extension in January to last till February 10 and then redacting the second Supreme Court order to allow for the N200 note to remain legal tender, has kept spectrally silent. The conspiratorial and highly politicised CBN, whose goals became coterminous with the political aims of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), has also kept defiantly aloof. Perhaps it is waiting for a certified true copy of the judgement. It had earlier issued a flurry of notices and memos to the commercial banks when the apex court was yet to rule on the naira swap suit, but since March 3, it has become frustratingly reticent and defiant.
Even the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, who was at first glib in defending the administration and mischievously interpreting the CBN Act, has suddenly begun to stammer about the strict autonomy of the apex bank to propound monetary policy. Speaking about or deliberating on monetary policy was not in the remit of the AGF’s office, he exulted. He conveniently forgot that as the nation’s chief law officer, not to talk of being the number one legal adviser to the administration as well as its lead legal defender, he had no option but to make the administration to obey the highest court in the land. By last Friday, one full week after the apex court had spoken, no one in the administration had said a word, and the pains continued. It is not clear exactly what has angered the administration. Could it be the tongue-lashing by the apex court describing the president’s action on the naira swap, particularly his refusal to consult with the relevant agencies and bodies, as dictatorial? Or could it be that the administration hoped that its policy against vote-buying needed to be extended to the governorship and state elections, regardless of the policy’s failure in the presidential and national assembly polls?
Whatever the reasons for the administration’s and CBN’s intransigence, the naira swap policy has been an unmitigated failure. Worse, the government now appears set to go down in history as the most lawless since the founding of the country. No administration, and certainly no agency, has tried so flagrantly to disobey the laws of the land. For one full week, they refused to give effect to the court judgement. Worse, they have pigheadedly refused to countenance the sufferings of the people whose money remains impounded by the CBN to the detriment of their small businesses. Their naira swap policy is coming to a chaotic end, and the image of the administration itself is at its repugnant worst. They have, therefore, continued to dither, unable to retreat or advance. The president may escape censure after he leaves office, for he will find convenient ways to avoid retribution. Godwin Emefiele, the CBN governor, will not be so lucky in ending his abysmal career on the high note his exaggerated talents make him dream about.
PDP, Atiku protests overruling the law
NO one knows why the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and his fellow party leaders think standing sentry at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Abuja would put pressure on the electoral body to annul the presidential election won by the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. There have of course been elaborate attempts and efforts to delegitimise the election, in massive newspaper reports and essays, and on the social media. It is possible that PDP leaders hope that a little more effort, perhaps in line with the wish and incitement of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, could help galvanise massive public outrage. This wish has not been granted, nor is it likely ever to be granted. The laws of the land already made provisions for any aggrieved candidate to explore redress. The PDP has already embraced that option. So, why the protests?
The only answer possible is that Alhaji Atiku and the PDP leaders had hoped that once the protest got underway, the public would rally behind their banner. But Nigerians note that the PDP candidate is torn between two options. One, he insists he won the poll, and would adduce evidence in court. Until he does that, no one will believe him. Two, in the same breath he calls for the cancellation of the poll. Well, how could he call for the cancellation of a poll he said he won? Does he not trust the case his lawyers would present? The engaging fact is that Alhaji Atiku has gone to court as an afterthought. He knows at bottom that he lost the election, but to lessen the pain and the humiliation of winning only one geopolitical zone, not to say witnessing the unraveling of his party before his very eyes, the candidate badmouths the poll and wants it annulled. He knows he is fighting a lost cause, and will in the near future suffer the additional pain and indignity of throwing good money at a bad venture. Whether he can stand the long and grueling legal haul remains to be seen.
However, at the end, he knows that as is customary with Nigerian litigants, he can declare victory by condemning the courts for not giving him victory. In the press conference he gave where he served notice of the suit he was about to file, he blamed the LP for taking the PDP’s traditional votes in the Southeast and South-South. Yet he says he did not lose, and would soon prove it. Since he is used to chasing chimeras, let him continue to indulge his fantasy by trying to overrule the law and annul commonsense.
On Friday, the Supreme Court finally laid to rest the controversy surrounding the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) naira swap policy. It took three sittings of the apex court, two attempts by the federal government to tweak the deadlines beyond which the notes would cease to be legal tender, and massive political and socio-economic disruptions to bring the suit initially brought by Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara States to an embarrassing close. The CBN had unveiled the new naira notes in October, ordered Nigerians to swap their old notes with the new ones beginning from mid-December, and had set a January 31 terminal date for the notes to remain legal tender. The deadline was suffocating and immensely disruptive, but after one extension terminating on February 10, the administration put its foot down and refused to budge, except for President Muhammadu Buhari’s February 16 concession to allow the N200 notes remain in circulation following the apex court interim order keeping the notes in circulation until the end of the suit.
Well, all is well that ends well. The apex court has finally ruled that the notes will remain in circulation until December 31, a great relief for bank customers who had been unlawfully denied access to their money. That new date should give the CBN, no matter how malicious it is, enough time to withdraw the old notes and replace them with redesigned notes. It was thought that when the court sat on February 22 it would give a definitive order on the naira policy consequent upon the Buhari administration’s refusal to obey the interim order to keep the old notes in circulation. Instead, the court adjourned till after the presidential poll, a move many thought showed a reluctance to take on the administration or an indication that the court connived at a policy suspected at the time to be largely political. The apex court, analysts also expected, should have guarded its reputation and powers more jealously by hammering the administration’s impudence in retaining only the old N200.
By describing the Buhari administration as dictatorial and autocratic, and the naira redesign policy as unlawful and maliciously executed, the Supreme Court finally left no one in doubt how strongly it viewed the government’s malfeasance. The judgement not only restored the court’s integrity and dignity, it also reestablished its powers, especially going by the logic of the judgement and the harshness of its denunciation of the administration’s disobedience. The poorly executed naira swap policy should have led to the resignation of the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, and the Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. But two interim orders later and the pains the policy inflicted on the country have proved insufficient to push the two officers out. With the apex court judgement, not to say its harsh excoriation of the administration’s abuse of power, it is incredible that both Messrs Emefiele and Malami are still sitting pretty in office.
Few Nigerians, however, expect both the CBN governor and the Justice minister to resign or be fired. This is because the naira swap policy is widely believed to have been designed to undermine the campaigns of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate. But by early February, it seemed the plot to undermine the party and whittle down its chances in the impending poll was not succeeding. This was because the APC and its presidential candidate sensibly distanced themselves from the naira swap policy, sided with the suffering masses, and rallied against the poor execution of the swap. By February 25, it was clear that the plot against the party and its candidate had virtually failed. The party went on to win the presidential poll by about 1.8m votes, and so far had also secured more than 50 Senate seats. Its commanding lead was unassailable. If despite the punishingly tight deadline given for the naira swap policy the APC still won, and won handsomely, administration officials must wonder what came over them.
APC governors, many of whom joined the suit, have strenuously attempted to distance the president from the ill-fated policy. They are unlikely to succeed. Nigerians see the entire administration as culpable. President Buhari has less than three months in office; it is worrisome that he got himself embroiled in a messy and doomed policy. No one thought of impeaching him for disobeying court order, and no one could haul him in for contempt; but his administration will be stigmatised with a nonsensical naira policy and flagrant disobedience to court orders. For an administration that has chalked up a fair amount of great infrastructural interventions, conceiving and executing the naira swap policy and disobedience to courts are not the kind of legacies to flaunt as it winds down.
Obasanjo, youths and presidential poll
EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo manifested his idiosyncratic bitterness once again when he inspired a three-pronged response to the February 25 presidential poll. First, years after indicating that he had retired from active politics, he publicly and actively endorsed Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) for the presidency. He gave indication that he was dissatisfied with the other two leading aspirants, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Mr Obi had no inspiring track record, and had no coherent and plausible answers to Nigeria’s existential crisis, but was determined to harness divisive religious votes. Nevertheless, Chief Obasanjo embraced his aspiration. It was clear he loathed the other aspirants and would do everything to undermine them.
Second, he incited Nigerian youths against their elders, urging them to take over the country because they constitute the largest voting bloc. He gave no sensible or practicable roadmap, except to suggest that the youths could furnish their own revolution within the ambit of Mr Obi’s naïve and utopian aspiration. And when it looked like the presidential election votes were going the way of the APC, Chief Obasanjo cried foul and called for partial disruption of the electoral process. Again, he did not indicate how constitutionally feasible that would be, or what facts were available to him to make him suggest such drastic and catastrophic remedies. Both the PDP and LP, knowing they were losing or had lost, embraced the former president’s scheme and began to campaign for vote cancellation. In the end, no one listened to them, not least the electoral umpire, INEC.
And third, after failing to truncate the election, Chief Obasanjo was reported as advocating for mass action to undermine the May 29 inauguration. He is inciting youths and any other aggrieved group to join hands to disrupt the march towards May 29. Again, he does not indicate how that would not fit in to his appalling interim government gambit, just like he and others had embraced in 1993 to the country’s dismay and anguish. As a former president, especially one who had superintended and defended perhaps the worst election in Nigerian history, he has not shown by logic or evidence how he and others hope to manage the new and complicated but unconstitutional process.
Clearly, his unsolicited intervention is not because he loves Mr Obi or because he thinks him fit to occupy the highest office in the land winning essentially Igbo and Christian votes. It is also not because he loves Nigeria so much, as indeed his own leadership records have shown. It is simply because he cannot contemplate being sidelined or submitting himself to the rule of any elected president who does not owe him an obligation. He should be watched closely, for he would not mind bringing the whole democratic edifice down.
