The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Gbenga Daniel quits partisan politics?

    IN an elaborate letter to the chairman of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, announced he was quitting partisan politics. He cited a number of reasons, most of them bordering on his disenchantment with the division and acrimony within his party at the national and state levels. He then indicated his resolve to apply himself to charity work and other non-partisan vocations that would be of great benefit to the people. He  is of course at liberty to deploy his time as he deems fit. And if he wishes, he can still re-enter politics sometime in the future. But he must forgive the curiosity of those who wonder whether he would have retired from partisan politics had his party won the presidency.

    What is, however, far more important to the party is what his exit from partisan politics should connote. More than the mere act of abandoning partisan politics, Mr Daniel’s exit should sensitise his party to the urgent need to examine why they lost the election so woefully and whether they will not need to purge and reform their party — including introducing new faces into their party’s leadership cadre — if they are to stand any chance in the next set of elections. Paralysed by their defeat in 2015, and lacking the initiative to take tough and radical measures to reposition their party for the 2019 polls, the party sadly groped its way into the polls weeks ago only to be roundly beaten again.

    More politicians like Mr Daniel should relinquish their positions in the PDP in order to pave the way for a total overhaul of the party. They have their strengths and weaknesses. It is time they began to entrench those strengths and obliterate those weaknesses. Their chief nemesis, the ruling APC, has not been spectacular in government. If the ruling party will not again manage their successes well, and would prefer to entrench the divisiveness they have allowed to flourish for four years, the PDP may yet receive a welcome from exhausted electorate sick and tired of a party unable to summon the inspiration and imagination to put the country on a solid footing. If Mr Daniel’s exit instigates such positive, self-confident tremors within the PDP, and triggers the needed fundamental reforms required to lift the party from the doldrums, the next election cycle may yet prove immensely satisfying even to the most apathetic voter.

  • 2019 polls: Acknowledging the conscientious voter

    WHILE the Southwest was promising to grapple with the numbing issue of voter apathy in their region, President Muhammadu Buhari was at the other end of the pole busy acknowledging the conscientious voter who took his political admonitions to heart. It is not clear how the Southwest would deal with the problem of apathy, which they noticed in the 2019 elections, but at least they know that voting is not a compulsory civic duty. Going by the example some Southwest leaders gave about Lagos turning out less than a million of its more than five million registered voters to elect their governor, and a little over a million to elect their president, those who campaign for higher voter turnout will have to devise ingenious methods to bring about a revolution in voting culture in the future. The task will, however, not be easy.

    But by far more significant in the 2019 elections is the president’s view that voters actually cast their ballots according to their conscience. He voiced this impression to the Katsina State governor, Aminu Masari, when the latter visited him, according to some news reports, to formally intimate him with his election victory. Was the president ignorant of the governor’s victory? Receiving the governor, the president had said: “I have maintained a position that elections must be free and fair and people have the right to make their choices and vote their consciences. I am happy they understood the message and did just that. Power is a public trust that belongs to the people. Power is not by strength or wisdom but by providence. Elected persons must be fair and just. This is the legacy I want to leave behind. A leader must be fair and just. All leaders should strive to do that.”

    The president may still be anxious to justify his noncommittal approach to the desperate campaigns of his party’s candidates in the states where the APC was divided. In reality, however, as he must have heard during his many campaign stops, nothing justified his stand. In Imo State, where he admonished voters and party faithful to vote their conscience because he was unwilling to offend his loyal friend, Governor Rochas Okorocha, his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), lost the governorship election to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). And in Ogun State, the other state where the president also asked his party members to follow their conscience, the APC won by the skin of their teeth. Had the opposition united against the APC in Ogun, the president’s party would have lost the governorship.

    Nothing, not even politics and the fear of losing the presidential election, should have stopped the president from campaigning for APC candidates everywhere. In fact, if he had taken a stand for his party, as his party stood by him through thick and thin, he would have been lauded for that principled stand, whether his party won or lost. What the president was espousing was not conscientious voting, as logical as that might seem, but opportunism. It is also clear that the electorate simply voted for the candidate of their choice, irrespective of the president’s admonition, and going by the dynamics at play in those states. There is evidence to show that voters have become more mature in all the 29 states where governorship elections held, indicating that local dynamics were at play in almost perfect defiance of the president’s electoral casuistry. Without President Buhari on a hypothetical tomorrow, voters would heed their local dynamics to vote their choice, whether that choice agreed with their conscience or not.

    There is very little anyone can do now to dissuade governors like Mallam Masari from ingratiating themselves with a patrician president. It is a cultural thing in Nigeria. But before the next one or two election cycles, as more knowledgeable and bold candidates are elected into legislative and executive positions, the patrician proclivity that has hobbled Nigerian politics and disgraced the image of the country for decades will very likely abate or be eradicated altogether. Governors will consequently not feel the subservient bondage to go to the airport to receive a president who is not on a state visit; elected leaders will respect the rule of law knowing full well that their re-election could hinge on their behaviour and record; the security services will not need to be ordered by any elected leader in order to do their job; and law enforcement will be applied, in like measure, constitutionally to the ordinary citizen as well as the elected leader. That day may already be upon the people.

  • Sanwo-Olu, Agbaje and Lagos poll

    NEXT Saturday’s governorship and Houses of Assembly polls will finally show whether a truly tectonic shift in Nigerian politics, as implied by the presidential and National Assembly (NASS) polls, is in the offing or not. But whether that shift, should it happen, is capable of reinforcing democracy and growing it is another thing entirely. As widely predicted, the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari and the substantial victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the NASS poll are expected to create a bandwagon effect on the next set of polls. Lagos, like many other states, is likely to be influenced by the outcome of the February 23 polls, regardless of the fact that all politics, as pundits surmise, is essentially local. They are unlikely to buck the trend. A state that gave the president a majority of its votes, and made a clean sweep of the National Assembly seats on offer, will likely deploy the same voters to give the House of Assembly to the same party and cap it up by putting the party’s standard-bearer in the State House.

    Lagos State, arguably the most progressive state in Nigeria, appears poised to benefit from the outcome of February’s national elections. Hard as the PDP may try, and regardless of how ingeniously or bitterly they frame their campaign, Lagos voters are likely to stay progressive, decline the hand of fellowship from the opposition, and vote for continuity to entrench the largest developmental efforts any state has ever put together since the end of the civil war. The huge developmental efforts began with Bola Ahmed Tinubu, rolled on through the Babatunde Fashola governorship, and has been further accentuated during the reign of Akinwunmi Ambode. Despite some modifications, these developmental efforts have been sustained for about 20 years. The state will be reluctant to allow the efforts to be hamstrung by needless experimentations, or contemplate a sudden and traumatising turn towards conservatism.

    Lagos is, therefore, unlikely to agonise over what choice to make between the APC standard-bearer, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and the PDP’s three-time contender, Jimi Agbaje, despite the muddying of the waters by a coterie of campaigners bent on midwifing change for the heck of it. Lagos is a vast workshop of projects begun at the outset of the Fourth Republic, projects designed and owned by the APC and its progenitors in trust for the state. If the Agbaje team should campaign on the platform of the ongoing projects in the state, many of which are world-class, the electorate would wonder why they need to fix what is not broken. But should the PDP campaign to start their own new projects, voters would ask whether the party planned to abandon the state’s great and laudable blueprint, including the time it would take to conceive a new blueprint and the attendant cost of delay and transition. Lagos, given its ballooning population, can neither afford the fresh costs nor the time wastage. Recall, for instance, how Mr Ambode became snarled in a thicket when he attempted to reconceptualise waste management in the state.

    The deck is stacked on many fronts and at many levels against the PDP standard-bearer. He will need to overcome many obstacles, including the catalysing effect of the Buhari factor, the electorate’s reluctance to move Lagos into opposition at a time the state had begun to benefit from being a part of the national ruling party, and the complaints about cost and time wastage involved in reconceptualising a new blueprint for the state and reconfiguring Lagos into unaccustomed conservatism. Apart from these, Mr Agbaje was in the last two election cycles unable to dispel suspicion of the problems associated with his inexperience. Twice he had faced candidates who possessed vastly superior experience in the state’s civil service, and twice he came to grief. Now, he is condemned to face another highly experienced public service functionary, Mr Sanwo-Olu, who had twice served as commissioner, headed parastatals and government agencies, and was involved in conceiving many of Lagos’ notable agencies and infrastructure.

    But the APC cannot pretend to be ignorant of the campaign inspired by the PDP to “free Lagos”, especially coming on the heels of the earthshaking shifts in Kwara State politics. The Lagos campaigners imagine that the success of that campaign in Kwara could be replicated in Lagos, perhaps with a little modification. However, unlike Kwara where the Saraki political dynasty had been unable to produce sterling achievers and has little to show for its more than four decades dominance of Kwara, Lagos has successfully and consistently produced men and women who have gone on to make tremendous impact at both state and national levels. Lagos, more than any other state, has in fact produced countless public sector achievers who are showing the value of tutelage and mentoring. This did not happen in the state before 1999, and it has not happened elsewhere. Is this the process Mr Agbaje and his friends describe as bondage and wish to truncate or terminate it? They have framed the sometimes uneasy relationships between contending personalities in the ruling party in the state as one of master and servant. This is a misreading of the process that has adroitly produced new leaders in Lagos.

    The new leaders are not robots; they were mentored in part because they demonstrated brilliance, confidence and judgement. Clashes and misunderstanding are, therefore, inevitable. But the process of producing new leaders and achievers in the state has continued apace, and the leadership mill is being consistently replenished, and more bright minds are still being turned out from the state’s leadership hatchery. The rejection of Mr Ambode for a second term, which Mr Agbaje and his friends are capitalising on as an example to illustrate their arguments, has nothing to do with the leadership culture in Lagos, but is a consequence of his difficult interaction with the party apparatchik.

    But regardless of the implausibility of the PDP arguments, Mr Agbaje will continue to reiterate the view that Lagos needs freedom and that a master-servant relationship exists. The APC will likely counter the campaign by presenting its scorecard in mentoring new leaders, showcase the unassailability of its developmental blueprint, reiterate the enormous value of continuity, and debunk the PDP’s emotional and distorted account of the mentoring and leadership programmes going on in the state. While joining the opposition may not sound the death knell to a state, the APC may also counter the PDP campaign by illustrating the advantages it has derived, in terms of federal concessions, from belonging to the ruling party at the national level.

    Mr Agbaje may be a good public speaker, as he has repeatedly demonstrated during many live interviews, but he has not proved by way of ideas and personal example that he possesses the quality of a great leader and bureaucrat. His opponent in the race has, however, demonstrated by example and training, not to say personal qualities, that he is the safer bet between the two in next Saturday’s election to remain faithful to the state’s developmental blueprint, improve on it, expand and modernise infrastructure, and continue to nurture the Lagos mystique of producing local and national leaders for today and tomorrow.

  • FG profiting from subterranean schisms

    IT is alleged that the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has taken no firm or substantial steps to foster a cohesive Nigeria. The farthest it has gone, observers say, is to suggest that the counterinsurgency operations against Boko Haram and the war against corruption impliedly promote unity. Critics of the government are unlikely to agree. They note that whatever incidental unity certain government policies and actions have evinced is entirely fortuitous. As a matter of fact, they conclude, the reality that strikes them in the face is that in many of its key actions, whether by acts of commission or omission, the presidency has furthered the cause of disunity.

    Moments after the All Progressives Congress (APC) took the presidency and President Buhari assumed office, little or no effort of any kind was made to strengthen the tentative alliances that birthed the new ruling party or unite the powerful groups that struggled for dominance or a share of the cake in the party. Indeed, it seemed to many that the party’s contentious groups had been at war before their momentous victory, and were eager to resume hostilities which they briefly suspended in order to fight and defeat the former ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But by conscious steps and remorseless machinations, the presidency triggered internal schisms within their ranks, alienated powerful domestic interests, and fought brutally to subjugate those whose ideas and cultures were alien to or at cross-purposes with their hypothetical commonwealth.

    While that war was still raging, the government consciously orchestrated a long list of appointments that set brother against brother in the party, sister against sister in the same party, and one part of the country against another part. It got so bad barely one year into the new government that Christians began to see themselves ostracised, the Southeast began to experience renewed marginalisation, and the Middle Belt felt left high and dry, purged from key security positions they had nearly dominated in the past.

    Fast forward to the present. Two factions of Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and political organisation, have endorsed the two leading presidential candidates in next Saturday’s election. Each accuses the other of infamy and heresy, and each describes the other as a traitor or an usurper. No, the Buhari presidency is not responsible for the balkanisation of the Yoruba organisation, considering that in the 2015 elections, the same group had fractured into two and endorsed different candidates. The government has simply embraced and entrenched what it met on the ground. But, far more critically, the Afenifere counterpart in the Southeast, the Ohanaeze N’digbo, a socio-cultural organisation representing Igbo interests, has accused the government of concocting desperate measures to divide the group in respect of which of the leading candidates in next Saturday’s election to endorse.

    The National Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze, Uche Achi-Okpaga, even recently describes the government’s divisive tactics as a plot. According to him: “Part of the design is that some renegades have been assembled to come and endorse the president at the Aso Rock Villa; all in a bid to create the impression that the adoption of the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, by Ohanaeze was not the popular wish of the Igbo…They are planning a meeting in the State House, on Friday (today), where they will induce splinter group in Ohanaeze and representatives of the town unions to counter-endorse Buhari. They are under tremendous pressure now. For Ohanaeze, they are using the Secretary General (Uche Okwukwu), who they induced to countermand Ohanaeze’s endorsement of Alhaji Atiku.”

    Of course it is not the fault of the government that both Afenifere and Ohanaeze have compromised their founding objectives and recklessly delved into politics, ignoring the fact that no one could sensibly or feasibly herd a whole race into any political party. But it is striking that those engineering what the Ohanaeze publicity secretary describes as counter-endorsement are either close to the Buhari government or are its appointees. The counter-endorsement is said to be inspired by both Paul Ikonne, a former Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) governorship candidate in Abia State, and Osita Okechukwu, Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), a government-owned radio station. Overall, the truth about the government’s promotion and initiation of schisms in the polity lies between its deliberate orchestration of that vice and the eager offer of certain vested interests to ingratiate themselves with the government or insinuate themselves into the confidence of the president and his inner circle.

    But perhaps the most remarkable example of that archetypal schism that has become very popular in Nigeria today is the attempt by a new Shiite group, the Rasuul Aazam Foundation, to portray itself as the officially-sanctioned Shiite group in the country, perhaps in contrast to the beleaguered Shiite group led by Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. Last Friday, while advertising its endorsement of President Buhari and informing Nigerians of its existence as a law-abiding sect, it published the photograph of the president in the said advertorial. With one throw of the dice, Rasuul Aazam projects itself as a friend of the government and the state, and also as an endorser of the candidacy of the president. There will be many more like this previously unknown Shiite sect as well as other groups and organisations which the government can count on to attenuate the impact of hostile groups or help balkanise the opposition in a classic projection of divide and rule.

  • ASUU/FG truce at last

    AFTER more than three months away from work, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has suspended its industrial action and returned to work. This is consequent upon a deal between the union and the federal government indicating, among other details, the preparedness of the government to pay some N25 billion arrears of earned academic allowances and another N25 billion to be paid between April and May for the revitalisation of the universities. It is tragic for education in Nigeria that it must take months of industrial action for the government to live up to its responsibility. This simply indicates that the government does not have a forward-looking education policy that takes care of poor funding, collapsed infrastructure, and measures to promote progressive and productive world-class university administration.

    Since 2009, the universities have periodically been on strike. This latest deal will not foreclose a future strike or two in the near future. In fact the coming elections may have forced the government to bend over backward to reach an agreement with ASUU. But because it has no abiding desire to conceive of tertiary education in the grandest sense of the concept, it will not produce a concise and inspiring educational policy capable of fostering a revolution in the sector. This government has no one in their ranks to inspire that new deal that would move education in Nigeria towards parity with the advanced economies. Until people who value education come into office, every deal such as the one reached nearly two weeks ago is a waste of time, and no deal is worth keeping.

    The problem with education, particularly tertiary education, is so deep and fundamental that it will take a revolution to tackle it. No one in the Buhari administration, starting with the president himself, has appetite for that kind of revolution.

  • Grandiloquent el-Rufai still true to type

    KADUNA State governor Nasir el-Rufai is undoubtedly one of the most pompous governors in Nigeria today. He seldom speaks without putting his foot in his mouth. Fumbling from one gaffe to another, he is not deterred by verbal mishaps and policy miscarriages from endlessly coveting publicity and dubious acclaim. Few were, therefore, surprised on Tuesday that the petit governor blew it once again during a live interview on Nigeria Television Authority (NTA). Speaking on the warnings and statements by the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union indicating their reservations about the suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, close to the 2019 elections, the governor told them off in a language that was neither edifying nor diplomatic. The words he used were shockingly direct and deeply troubling.

    Said Mallam el-Rufai: “We are waiting for the person that will come and intervene. They will go back in body bags, because nobody will come to Nigeria and tell us how to run our country. We got that independence and we are trying to run our country as decently as possible and we know the history of those countries that are trying to teach us these things. We have read their history. We also know that at their own stages of development, they went through these challenges. So please, let’s work together, let’s advise one anotherbut don’t lecture us.” Did Mallam el-Rufai mean interfere instead of intervene? It was, however, clear that the governor read the misgivings of the Western powers as an indication of their preparedness to intervene in Nigerian affairs. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had asked the Western powers to begin considering travel ban and other sanctions against top Nigerians who might be tempted to fiddle with the elections, a position Mallam el-Rufai and some others probably construe as hostile and partisan.

    A general uproar, however, followed the governor’s warnings to the Western powers, particularly his incendiary statement that interveners would end in body bags. Few were amused by the governor’s statement, except of course his aides and the Nigerian presidency. Insisting that the governor’s statement was misinterpreted, his media aide, Samuel Aruwan, explained that the alarmist who suggested that Mallam el-Rufai had threatened Western powers with violence actually spoke poor English. Said he: “When Malam Nasir El-Rufai appeared on NTA’s Tuesday Night Live, he stood up for Nigeria’s dignity in the wake of those who would traduce their country and reduce it to the status of a colony in their vain quest for power. The video of his comments does not contain any call for violence. Affirming that a country will defend itself against needless intervention is the kind of statement you expect to hear from a patriot. It is not a call for violence. Warning about the consequences of meddling in another country’s affairs is legitimate. Malam Nasir El-Rufai has issued a powerful call for vigilance and a clear notice that other countries should not mistake the supine posture of the opposition for national weakness.” Mr Aruwan of course glossed over the connotative and denotative meanings of the term “body bags”.

    But surprise of all surprises, the presidency needlessly waded into the fray with an implausible defence of the fumbling governor. Rehashing the Goodluck Jonathan presidency style, when the former president also undiplomatically took umbrage at the many strident remarks made by Western powers shortly before the 2015 elections, the presidency argued that Mallam el-Rufai’s warning was expected of a patriot. According to the presidency: “We have taken note of the clarification to a reported earlier statement by the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufa’i, concerning the opposition’s call for foreign interference in our domestic affairs and to say that latest statement by him should rest the issue for good. There is nothing more to sneeze at. The Governor spoke strongly in defence of national interest.”

    The presidency is obviously not gifted with public relations talents who know when and how to craft responses to controversial issues and provocations. Mallam el-Rufai may be voluble and often indiscrete, even sometimes hyperbolic, but he is just a state governor promoted to an office far beyond his ken, an office that needs diplomatic skills, large-heartedness and foresight which he is unable to give. But to hear a presidency that represents some 190 million people embrace the el-Rufai doctrine of exceptionalism and bigotry, and then declaim insensitively on a subject that did not call for its reaction, indicates very badly how low it had sunk under the weight of its own levity. The Kaduna governor should have been left to stew in his juice. In any case, he is both so unforgiving and intransigent that he is quite able to defend himself. He talks himself glibly into trouble, but he is adept at waltzing his way out of trouble, regardless of the multiple scars and blemishes that proudly serve as indelible mementoes of his superfluous struggles.

    This time, however, it is hard to see him waltzing his way out of the black books of indignant Western powers, most of whom have very long memory and exhibit patrician airs. They know how vulnerable Nigerian leaders are. They know where the Nigerian elite send their children to school, having crippled and forsaken their own educational system, and where they receive medical care, also after abandoning their hospitals to poorly paid doctors and broken and dilapidated equipment. They also know where the elite squirrel their wealth, and how grand their tastes have become, tastes that only Western luxuries can sate. Because they own the English language, and knowing full well that they cannot by bamboozled by its nuances, whether syntax or semantics, they know and will remember that the talk of body bags indicate violence, and that that violence puts the lives of foreign election observers in jeopardy.

    There is no other way to look at Mallam el-Rufai’s fiery statement than to see it as a call to arms against a group he calls foreign interveners. Under Dr Jonathan, no such “body bags” threats against the so-called interveners were issued. Compared with the current government, the past administration could therefore be described as saintly, modest and restrained. And for a government that benefited immensely from foreign powers’ close monitoring of the election process in 2015, it is baffling that this government has suddenly become uptight about electoral standards and fidelity.

    The Kaduna governor is not alien to controversy and incendiary statements. He revelled in scores of such statements in the past and got away with murder as it were. Now, he has stuck to his guns, and is attempting to redefine the rules of English grammar by suggesting that there are many ways to look at what he said. Yet, everyone knows him, not least his long-suffering Kaduna people. They know how he has consistently talked down to them, and how he has berated them when they take exceptions to his newfangled policies. They know how intolerant he is to critics, and how grossly his dictatorial instincts offend the people. They see how pompously he carries himself and his words, despite his government’s lack of ingenuity and lasting achievements. Now, they see him, after misspeaking badly, trying loudly and indecently to curry their votes for a second term.

    Foreign powers can handle themselves well in tackling the governor’s “patriotic” threats. What is left to see in March when the people go to the polls for the governorship is whether Kaduna can tell the difference between a radical government and a discourteous government, or whether they deserve Mallam el-Rufai or he deserves them; whether they are a match for the governor or whether they take the precedence over him in order of importance. Sadly, the presidency has fallen for his antics and excesses; it remains to be seen whether Kaduna will also swallow his rodomontades.

  • Broadcasting commission battle hate speech

    THE battle against hate speech may be revving up in the opinion of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), but neither the organisation nor anyone else has come forward with a fairly acceptable definition of hate speech, at least in these parts. So far, according to the director general of the NBC, Is’haq Kawu, since the beginning of this election cycle campaigns, four television stations had been deserving of sanctions. He indicated why, and in addition disclosed that the offenders had been notified and fined. No one has yet heard from the alleged offenders, especially whether they accept or reject their indictments.

    In the words of Mr Kawu: “We monitored live rallies and campaigns of the parties and in recent times, live political rallies of political parties have been laced with indecent and abusive language, name calling and vehement allegations and use of hate speech. For instance, on January 10, 2019, at the presidential campaign rally of the PDP broadcast by the AIT, the national chairman of the party accused INEC of rigging previous elections and threatened crisis if elections were rigged. Some of the excerpts were: ‘We want to warn INEC, all the previous elections you rigged and you escaped, the 2019 elections, you cannot escape unless you want to cause crisis in Nigeria. Let us warn Prof Yakubu; if you want to cause crisis in Nigeria, rig the elections. If you want peace, elections must be free and fair.’ That is from The PDP.”

    Mr Kawu then added: “At a live APC governorship rally held on Friday, January 3, 2019, and aired on the NTA, a stalwart of the APC, Rotimi Amaechi, was quoted as saying: ‘I will just continue to say the truth. The truth I will tell you is that they are telling Nigerians that Nigerians are hungry. Indeed, if Nigerians are hungry, if these people left money they stole, will Nigerians be hungry? Exactly the $2bn that they stole. At least, I know about that one, we will not be here today.’ The party chairman also added: ‘You must remember that the last PDP government turned Plateau workers to slaves and so on and so forth.’ The expressions in the excerpts captured, can be seen to be abusive and not decent for broadcast contrary to certain sections of the Nigerian Broadcasting Code: 525, 533.”

    The NBC boss is right to identify the premature announcements of election results by unauthorised persons in 1983 as partly contributing to the election violence that convulsed Nigeria that year. Such unauthorised announcements are of course to be deprecated, for they could dispose aggrieved voters and stakeholders to self-help. But it is doubtful whether the election violence of 2011, in which aggrieved voters and vested interests in the North vented their spleen on the innocent, was caused by premature or unauthorised announcement of election results. Indeed, for every election cycle, different reasons may explain the violence that sometimes accompany the release of unfavourable results.

    However, Mr Kawu’s specific examples appear to fall far short of conventional hate speech definition. According to a dictionary, hate speech is “abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.” In the case Mr Kawu sets against the AIT, the referenced speaker, who is probably the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), warned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to beware of rigging the votes. It is of course one thing for the allegations against INEC to be truthful, it is another thing to describe it as hateful. Both lie and hate can dispose any community to violence, and they should be absolutely deplored. But it is also important to correctly identify the problem before proposing the solution.

    In the second example indicated by Mr Kawu, the remarks of both the Transport minister, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman, is even less compliant with hateful speech definition. The NBC boss says the remarks were abusive and unfit for broadcast. It is hard to understand what Mr Kawu is talking about. Yes, the APC statements are strong and unfavourable to the opposition, but they do not in any way amount to abuse or hate speech. Are they fit for broadcast or publication? Absolutely. The NBC must be wary of excessive regulation and needless censorship. Mr Kawu talks of acquiring machines to filter statements. There are equipment that filter cuss words, but to demand for normal statements to be filtered simply because the opposition might deprecate them is asking for too much.

    How would Mr Kawu describe the many statements and labels made by the United States Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaigns against his opponents? During the presidential primaries, Mr Trump, for example, described one of his opponents, Ted Cruz, as lying Ted, and another, Jeb Bush, as low-energy, and yet another, Hillary Clinton, as crooked Hillary. These labels may be deplorable, but to classify them as hate speech is stretching credulity too far. Politicians can call themselves names, and though it would be deplorable, they do not amount to hate speech. They can warn one another against electoral shenanigans; it also does not amount to hate speech. Mr Kawu may have tried to be representative in his examples, but he must be exceedingly careful not to abridge or circumscribe free speech or hamstring the media.

  • Buhari prevaricates on Ganduje

    GIVEN his fanatical posture on corruption, Nigerians had widely expected President Muhammadu Buhari to be unsparing of Kano State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, who was recently accused of bribery and corruption that became evident through a sting operation mounted by a concerned citizen. Either privately or during election campaign, the president has, however, waffled over the allegations against the Kano governor. The president’s timid attitude towards the governor is partly explained by Mr Ganduje’s fanatical support for the president’s re-election ambition.

    First the president cast doubt on the efficacy of the technology deployed to expose the governor’s alleged bribe-taking deals, in other words suggesting that the evidence was doctored. Then, during a campaign in Kano last Thursday, the president performed the role of an advocate for Mr Ganduje, a role he is generally loth to play for anyone else, especially his foes. He argued during the campaign that Mr Ganduje had immunity and must be presumed innocent until a court properly convicts him. Going by the provisions of the constitution, the president is partially right. Admittedly, the Kano governor could not be presumed guilty until a court so declares.

    But how many others, including the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, has the president not already condemned and even virtually sentenced? Who can forget how he pronounced former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and Shiite leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, guilty of crimes against the state even before their trial began? It is true that presumption of innocence is part of Nigerian jurisprudence, but the president sets no store by that presumption, and worse, selectively applies it only when it suits him. But of course there is no changing the president on this delicate matter. He often makes up his mind, regardless of whether there is rhyme or reason to it.

  • Recognising Obasanjo’s split personality

    IN a statement entitled “Points for Concern and Action”, released last Sunday by former president Olsuegun Obasanjo, Nigerians were once again roused to fury over their political condition. The main target was of course President Muhammadu Buhari. Chief Obasanjo is not only incorrigible, he is also characteristically undeterred by abuse, persuasion, or any range of human emotions and feelings. This may explain why he has once again viciously taken on President Buhari, the main target of his fulminations. This time, like he did in January 2018, the former president avoided his usual epistolary. Perhaps he sees letter writing as unduly restrictive. His open statement style may not be elegant, with many of his paragraphs turgid and winding, but he manages very importantly to get his message through, particularly to his target audience. That is probably all that matters to him as he snickers behind the door at the anger his conclusions have triggered.

    His latest statement has undoubtedly not been well received. In fact, this time, critics have been terribly unsparing and unrelenting. Few have reached for his principal arguments. Indeed, most have deployed his words mercilessly against his lifestyle and leadership. Whatever abuse and counsel he deployed against President Buhari, critics suggest he is even guiltier. But they misunderstand the man. Except for a few narcissistic moments, Chief Obasanjo  does not recommend his life as a model of political or social rectitude. Though he professes religion with the affected dogmatism of a convent habitué, he however prefers to hide behind the joyous secularism of his bohemian years, years when his taste in luxury and women found unnatural symphony. He counsels on great leadership, having studied and imbibed a few lessons on the subject, but his irresistible bucolic passion finds accommodation in earthy, eclectic and undisciplined approach to governance.

    Such a man will not be incommoded by critics who lambast him for preaching what he does not believe and never hopes to put into practice. It is his nature, his split personality, his eternal anchor in the midst of terrible storms. When he raged against President Buhari in January 2018, he did not receive a great welcome, for he wrote with poignancy on the mounting failings of a lethargic president. But when he roared again last week, critics were even less tolerant. If his presumptuous sermons resonated a little last year, his homilies this year have grated badly on the stretched nerves of an electorate infuriated by the absence of alternatives. Unable to settle the precedence between President Buhari and former vice president Atiku Abubakar, those who hope to vote in February, or whenever the elections would hold, are sickened to their bones, feeling damned if they vote and damned if they don’t.

    Substantially, Chief Obasanjo addresses five or six issues in his considerably wordy press statement. Of the six or so, maybe two or three deserve any attention. But regardless of his foibles, it is important to pay attention to his denunciations, if by any means a few lessons could be learned, and a few warnings heeded in order to avoid the pitfalls and tragedies poor choices have sentenced Nigerians for decades. Last year, this column joined the few who insisted that the country must learn to disentangle Chief Obasanjo’s person from his sometimes convoluted wise counsel, an apparent misfit as a leader from the rich experiences and personal tragedies of his own making. The same approach must be adopted in tackling his recent admonitions, an tedious task certain to generate controversy.

    Chief Obasanjo speaks about his concerns for free and fair elections, President Buhari’s incompetence, the government’s economic policies, particularly the tradermoni deal, and finally a deconstruction of President Buhari as a person and leader. The vice president’s office, which oversees what some people called the tradermoni boondoggle, has been impatient with the former president, describing him as ignorant and grossly mistaken. However, even if he is painfully short on panaceas, Chief Obasanjo is not hyperbolic in describing the president as a virtual illiterate in economic matters.

    The former president is lampooned also for his gratuitous advice on democracy. “This is a time for vigilance to fight to safeguard our votes and defend our democracy,” he sermonises. “The price of liberty and sustenance of our democracy is eternal vigilance and appropriate reaction to ward off iniquities. We must all be ready to pay that price and not relying on hollow words of callousness. The derailment of Nigerian democracy will be a monumental disaster comparable to the disaster of the Nigerian first military coup.” Critics remind him of his own appalling record in that department. They are right. But he is also right to alert Nigerians to the dangers their democracy faces, despite his reluctance to profit from his own counsel.

    Aides of the president will blanch at Chief Obasanjo’s description of their man as full of contradictions and archaisms. The words the former president uses are truly wounding. Hear him: “It is no use, at this juncture, to keep lamenting about the failure, incompetence, divisiveness, nepotism, encouragement and condonation of corruption by Buhari administration, as there is neither redeeming feature nor personality to salvage the situation within that hierarchy. You cannot give what you don’t have.” But the self-righteous Chief Obasanjo is just a tad better. However, his dismissive characterisation of President Buhari is dead on target.

    It is impossible not to admire Chief Obasanjo for anticipating President Buhari on the judiciary, the third arm of government that has left the government befuddled. Says Chief Obasanjo: “President Buhari and his hatchet men in the coming election think that the judiciary must be primed in their favour. Hence, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, has been harassed and prosecuted for non-declaration of his assets without following the Constitution and the law, just to make him conform or set him aside for a Buhari man to take over or act, since President Buhari and his people believe no stone should be left unturned to rig Buhari in. It seems to be a ploy to intimidate the judiciary as a whole in preparation for all election cases that will go before them. Where and how will all these stop?…” It beggars belief how President Buhari always proves Chief Obasanjo right.

    Finally, Chief Obasanjo psychoanalyses the president. Quoting former associates of the president, he suggests that President Buhari is “inflexible, insincere, dubious, intolerant, never accepts responsibility when things go wrong, and impervious to reason and advice for change…Even when figures, facts and statistics are made clear to Buhari, he keeps repeating what is untrue, either because he cannot understand or for mischief purposes and that places him on the level of a pathological liar”. Quoting another former associate, Chief Obasanjo also agrees that the president “brazenly displays incompetence, insensitivity and irresponsiveness by delusional party, CPC, leadership at all levels”.

    And then this sensational summary where he likens President Buhari to the late military dictator, Sani Abacha. “What is happening under Buhari’s watch can be likened to what we witnessed under Gen. Sani Abacha in many ways…Buhari’s scheme bears eloquent testimony to this road similar to Abacha whom he has praised to high heavens…It is clear from all indications that Buhari is putting into practice the lessons he learned from Abacha. Buhari has intimidated and harassed the private sector, attacked the National Assembly, and now unconstitutionally and recklessly attacked and intimidated the Judiciary to cow them to submission…Today, another Abacha era is here. The security institutions are being misused to fight all critics and opponents of Buhari and to derail our fledgling democracy. EFCC, Police and Code of Conduct Tribunal are also being equally misused to deal with those Buhari sees as enemies for criticising him or those who may not do his bidding in manipulating election results. Criticism, choice and being different are inherent trademark of democracy. If democracy is derailed or aborted, anarchy and authoritarianism will automatically follow.”

    You may not like Chief Obasanjo, and indeed he is truly execrable in so many aspects. But it cannot be denied that he spoke some powerful truths. Let the Buhari presidency not deceive itself that Chief Obasanjo’s execrableness absolves it of blame for the many horrendous actions it has taken against democracy.

  • El-Rufai’s controversial re-election politics

    CITING what he described as a scientific research finding, Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai has suggested that his decision to choose a Muslim running mate was a ploy to take religion out of the state’s acrimonious politics. If he had chosen the Pope himself, argued the governor recently, Christians in the state would still not vote for him. He, therefore, does not see his choice of a Muslim/Muslim ticket as aggravating religious politics.

    Here is how he put it: “What if I tell you that no matter who I choose as my running mate, even if I choose the Pope, 67 percent of the Christians in Southern Kaduna have made up their minds that they will never vote for me. This is what the polls show. So for me, that is not the issue. The issue is this: Kaduna State is divided; it needs to be united. The way to begin to unite it is to take religion or ethnicity off the table. Since 1992, every deputy governor of Kaduna has been a Christian. What has it done for the state? Has it united the state? Has it assuaged the feelings of the Christian minority that they are part of the government? My current deputy governor is a Christian and I didn’t pick him because he is Christian, I picked him because we were colleagues from university and I know him to be a brilliant, focused and just man; but did that change anything? In fact, what it did was to bring disrespect to him. No one respected him in Southern Kaduna because he is in what they call an Islamic party. So, there are complicated issues in Kaduna which people sitting from a distance will not understand.”

    In case you miss the point, Mallam el-Rufai is saying that his political principles are flimsy and dependent on the reaction of his opponents. He has no sensible idea of how to resolve the state’s religious dichotomy, and does not really think he must stay faithful to the state’s cardinal principle of reaching out consistently to other faiths in a state polarised by bigotry and intolerance. He wondered why choosing a Christian deputy since 1999 never changed anything in the state. Why didn’t he wonder why having Muslim governors since 1999 also failed to change anything. He has for a long time spoken intolerance; now he acts it with exuberance. He should not be permitted to put the blame on his intransigent opponents who think his sanctimoniousness and haughtiness must not be tolerated. He cannot fool anyone by pretending to solve the problem of hate and division in the state when he is in fact nurturing it.