The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Bisi Akande as political archetype

    IT is hard to observe the 80th birthday celebrations of former Osun State governor, Bisi Akande, last Wednesday and not be struck by the paradox of Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai delivering the keynote address, a polarising politician speaking, with his customary bombast, about a unifying politician known for his measured cadence and dignified mien. Mallam el-Rufai may be a leading All Progressives Congress (APC) governor and politician, partly and mostly because of his outspokenness, but in all his years in public office, he has said nothing truly substantial or inspiring, nor done anything greatly impactful, to merit addressing the colloquium organised in honour of Chief Akande. The Kaduna governor did not of course manage to say anything worth the trouble of anybody remembering, even with his sanctimonious talk about power devolution and the APC, but it took little away from the august gathering chiefly because the celebrant is known to exude  style, carriage and grace.

    A day later, at a civic reception organised in his honour in Osun State, Chief Akande spoke of the reasons he squeezed himself through the punishing funnel of achieving greatness in life early enough. He feared he might die young, he intoned gravely. Mercifully, he lived far longer, and exultantly far larger than he dared to hope. Not only that, as proof of the solidity of his character and the great image he had carved for himself in all he did, the former Osun governor and first national chairman of the APC went beyond living for more than 50 years to becoming one of the most pivotal politicians of the Fourth Republic. His legacy in the APC has endured, to the point of even becoming the main ingredient cohering the party together through the divisive and controversial years of the John Odigie-Oyegun and Adams Oshiomhole leaderships.

    Given the statures of those who joined Chief Akande to celebrate his 80th birthday, it is an indication of his wide acceptance, political stamina, doggedness and commitment. He was not the most perceptive of politicians when he was governor, nor the most sensitive, especially considering his inability to balance the financial requirements of the state with the welfare and employment needs of the people he governed. But he more than made up for his lack of political acuity with his unquestionable fidelity to truth and financial rectitude, neither stealing state resources nor permitting anyone to steal. The state found his style and philosophy restrictive, strange and off-putting, but despite knowing or at least fearing that it could cost him votes, he stuck stubbornly to what he knew was right. It was bravado.

    In retrospect, he should probably have been less presumptuous and self-righteous in right-sizing staff of the civil service, during which he disengaged thousands of state workers in a state that was and has remained essentially civil service. But in those days, when voters in the Southwest were thought to be remorselessly leashed to their political parties, it was hardly surprising that Chief Akande embraced brinkmanship. It was lawful and economically justified to right-size as he did, but it was definitely neither politically nor socially expedient. He was, as is well known, punished during the 2003 governorship election for his brashness. But years of ineffective and controversial leadership in Osun have attenuated the misguidedness and impact of the civil service purge he initiated, and restored him into the confidence and high esteem of many in Osun and around Nigeria.

    Chief Akande may have been around for a long time in politics and acquired some reputation, but what stands him out is not even his political or biological longevity. What is most remarkable about the former governor is his character. He is unimpeachable, reliable, trustworthy and a democrat who believes in consensus. The APC could not have produced a better founding chairman, a man so moderate in speaking and uncontroversial in both his ideas and politics that he deserved a far better keynote speaker than the controversial and intemperate Mallam el-Rufai. (See next piece). It is a tribute to him that though his strength has tapered off over the decades, his robust mind and agreeable personality have retained their vibrancy and force, undiminished by age and the muck that swaddles Nigerian politics.

  • Borno, Zamfara, Katsina and their leitmotifs

    NO part of Nigeria is immune to the ongoing rampage of anarchists, but in the past few weeks, the stories about violent bandits and rebels relentlessly practicing their sorceries on Borno, Zamfara and Katsina States have become dizzying and astonishing. The governors themselves have reacted quaintly to the sorceries to the point of becoming news in their own right, with the Borno governor weeping, Zamfara governor expressing surrender, and Katsina governor sounding despondent. All in the past two, three weeks.

    Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State visited Aso Villa last Monday to confer with President Muhammadu Buhari on the insurgency convulsing his state, and insurgents putting soldiers to flight in a few notable battles publicised embarrassingly far beyond their strategic import. “Our hopes are very much alive and they are very high,” began the governor obliquely. “We came with some observation and 10 requests for urgent presidential intervention. These observations and requests are products of discussion in the aftermath of our extraordinary security meeting held one week ago. We didn’t rush to come after the meeting. We felt the need to travel to northern Borno, interact with displaced persons and the military so as to strengthen public confidence.” He warned of impending military and social disaster if the battle was not taken to the insurgents with extra vigour.

    Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State feels even more terribly beleaguered. Accused of indifference, or at worst, incompetence, over the rampant activities of bandits in his state, the governor has abandoned his complacency and defensiveness, and has since embraced every measure anyone could propose, sensible or otherwise. A few weeks ago, a group of academics, in desperation, suggested the proclamation of a state of emergency in Zamfara, perhaps believing the suggested panacea was so extreme that it was bound to be controversial. But not only did the public receive the suggestion well, despite the embedded constitutional flaws, even the governor who should be conversant with the provisions of the constitution simply abandoned all pretexts and whooped for emergency. He failed to differentiate between a state of emergency and emergency rule.

    Still reeling from the nefarious activities of the bandits that have made whole sections of the state unsafe to live in or travel through, the governor even went as far as suggesting that he would gladly relinquish office if that would bring peace to the state. He was perhaps reacting more to the allegations of incompetence levelled against him than the failure of governance or the slow and inadequate response of the security and law enforcement agencies. The government has deployed troops in the state hoping that their presence would stop the flow of blood. The bandits, going by the last reports available, do not appear to be impressed by the deployment.

    The case of Katsina, the president’s home state, is even more dire and symptomatic of the national malaise that has overtaken the country. The governor, Aminu Masari, was too burdened by the attacks to which his state has been subjected in the past few months that he wailed for the federal government to do something about the problem. Said he when he convened a state security council meeting on January 3, 2019: “…No one, not even myself, is safe…So, this is the situation and that is why we are here to find a way out, which is a must. There is no option because we are thinking of the survival of our people and state. The citizens are on a daily basis being harassed by bandits and kidnappers on rampage in the state. The Katsina Government organised this one-day joint security and stakeholders meeting to proffer solutions to the state’s current insecurity challenge. Our state is currently under serious siege by armed robbers, kidnappers and armed bandits who arrest rural people at will and demand ransom, which if not paid, results in the killing of their victims. The people of Katsina in the 34 local governments now sleep with one eye closed and the other opened. Our state is in a dangerous situation. Travellers are afraid of being stopped on the highway and arrested by kidnappers who demand ransom.”

    The leitmotifs ignored in all the dire reports are that the country’s present structure is simply unworkable, the people’s socio-economic conditions have deteriorated precipitously, and the security architecture is completely outdated. These situations call for radical but nuanced and intelligent responses. Instead, the federal government is preoccupied with military, strong-arm approach only. But this approach has proved essentially ineffective or at best partially successful. So far, too, there is no holistic approach to a problem that has become multifaceted, multidimensional and unresponsive to all the panaceas the government has thrown at it. It is urgent for the government to change tack. Except that is done, the situation may very well deteriorate to the point of uncontrollability, especially considering that no state is spared the insecurity tragedy unfolding over the country.

  • Dynamics of ASUU strike resolution

    LABOUR minister, Chris Ngige, announced last week as part of a package to end the strike embarked upon by ASUU last November that the federal government had approved the release of some N35.4bn owed university teachers. Incredibly, part of the money had been owed since 2009. Why then were the government and the people surprised that university teachers went on strike, or critical that ASUU had been unflinching? Indeed, why would university teachers be owed so much for so long when political appointees and federal civil servants are hardly owed so much and so systematically?

    ASUU will, however, soon discover that after the strike ends, the condition of universities, not to say the funding deficit that has crippled their operations, will barely respond to medication. The reason is not just because the government owes the universities and their workers, in itself criminal negligence, it is essentially because the Muhammadu Buhari government, like its predecessors without exception, has no overarching and coherent programme and policies for tertiary education. They do not know education’s great value, nor can they situate their puny programmes within a greater vision for today and the day after tomorrow.

    The situation is truly hopeless. And from all indications, even the settlement controversially reached but not yet given life between ASUU and the federal government will be insufficient to reclaim lost educational grounds, not to talk of attempting to catch up with the rest of the developed world. No; Nigerian leaders are not so ambitious. Indeed, ASUU and other patriotic organisations in Nigeria will continue to tilt at windmills in their struggles to reinvent the country and reframe its despairing narrative.

  • Ajimobi and his Adelabu choice

    GOVERNOR Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State is an enigma. Speaking to the press last Monday, he disclosed that his mind was not quickly made up on which aspirant to support for the 2019 governorship race. The indecision was so acute, he volunteered, that 12 hours before the crucial primary election, he still did not know who to back. Many of his detractors do not believe him. They suggested that he was either paid to throw his weight behind Adebayo Adelabu, the eventual winner, or cajoled by external forces to embrace that predetermined outcome. Nonsense. Mr Ajimobi is quite believable, especially for those who know him very well. If he says he did not make up his mind 12 hours before the primary vote, he is probably telling the truth.

    In any case, here is how he painted his dilemma. “I asked various groups of people, traditional rulers, elders, but they said it was difficult for them to chose for me, that they will support whoever I choose. At a point, I withdrew from everybody. I then asked my wife to meet with Christians, and she returned with the name of a Christian. Similarly, I asked someone to meet with the Muslims to give me their choice of candidate and he also returned with the name of a Muslim. So, the confusion remained. I looked at their credentials, I saw that three had First Class, one in accountancy, the other in engineering and another in economics. In terms of stature, I looked at the candidates, several of them looked well fed, even pot-bellied in like manner. So, I remained undecided on whom to support. About 12 hours before the primaries, I went to God for direction in my room and something hit me that Adelabu was the right choice. He will become the next governor.”

    Those who know the governor fairly well know him to be quite forthright and simple. Lying is not his forte. You may not agree with him, as his recent quarrel with the Olubadan showed, and you may even sneer at his religiosity and other pretensions, but when he disagreed with the Olubadan, he gave the public and the president his own simple and truthful though disagreeable account. And when he duelled with musician Yinka Ayefele, he also gave his own side of the story, a side many, including this columnist, found indefensible. So, why would anyone think Mr Ajimobi was lying over the governorship primary?

    Is it not true that he looked at the impressive CVs of the aspirants, all of them first class brains? Did he not ask his wife what her take was, and what came out of her consultations with Christians? Perhaps observers laughed at the governor’s claim to have prayed. But leaders do pray, whether they are religious or not. It is likely that “something (actually) hit him”, and he described the event most colourfully. He and the Oyo people must hope that whatever it was that hit him would serve the people well and take Oyo to greater heights. If only Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State and Rochas Okorocha of Imo State had prayed or craved a similar epiphanic encounter.

     

  • Kogi bleeding under Yahaya Bello

    NO matter how hard a lexicographer tries, he will never be able to define the word ‘incompetence’ when it comes to categorising the administration of the Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello. Beside the governor the word is diminished and disgraced. In him the word is twisted and rendered impotent. And after him, it will take a special dispensation to restore its true meaning. There is no other way to examine and explain the chaos introduced into the Kogi State system by Mr Bello but to ponder just how inadequately the word captures his flaws. Caesar Nero, who played the fiddle while Rome burnt? Not even close. So, who else in history comes close to the Kogi governor? Analysts will have to think very hard, and still fail to find a parallel.

    But meanwhile, consider Mr Bello’s definition of generosity and patriotism. At a time when most states were hard up for cash and were battling to pay state and local government workers owed salary backlogs, the fiddling Mr Bello decided it was the best time to offer to host the 37th edition of the annual Federation of Public Service Games (FEPSGA) in Lokoja, the state capital, where thousands of athletes are participating in the games. Mr Bello has not paid public service workers for many months, some even more than a year, and others are paid only fractions, and judicial workers who are owed about five months pay are also on strike. The state civil service, bludgeoned into submission by the most reprehensible trickery ever instigated by any state government, has lost its soul and nerve and has completely given up hope of surviving the Bello government.

    Last week, Mr Bello also put pressure on the Speaker of the House of Assembly to engineer the removal of the state’s chief judge. He got the Secretary to the State Government, Ayoade Arike, to both notify the legislature of the refusal of the judiciary to participate in the preposterous “ongoing table payment and pay parade in the state”, and to investigate what the state has described an impasse. Observers quickly deduced that the steps being taken by the state government  formed the prefatory part of a plot to remove the chief judge, Nasir Ajanah. It was not surprising that on Tuesday, the Assembly dutifully obliged the governor by setting up a seven-man ad hoc committee to investigate the complaint.

    But the judiciary is not ignorant of the devices of the state government. Its officials knew the objective of the state government. They, therefore, approached the courts to mediate the contrived stalemate. On Thursday, Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye of the High Court of Justice, Koton-Karfe, Kogi State, restrained the governor and the House of Assembly from doing anything injurious to the interests of Justice Ajanah and the Chief Registrar of the High Court of the State, Yahaya Adamu, until the case is determined. What is evident is that though the constitution is clear on the independence of the judiciary, Mr Bello is obviously not interested.

    After subjugating the legislature, humiliating and starving the civil service, and depriving the state of any developmental projects, the rampaging and constantly travelling governor is bent on disembowelling the judiciary, perhaps the only arm of government left which can look him in the face and tell him to go to blazes. Such effrontery hurts his ego. There will be no election in the state until 2020. For Kogites, that is a long, long time. They have made up their minds to throw him out when the time comes, but before they do, the governor himself has made up his mind to completely humiliate them. But he is just one man, and he is transient. The state is, as it were, eternal, and legitimacy belongs to the people. They will see his back.

    Mr Bello may have castrated the House of Assembly, given the way the lawmakers quiver before him and tremulously oblige his every foolish request. And he may also have starved the civil service into ghostly silence, reducing them to subhuman persons and beggars. He is, however, unlikely to successfully compromise the judiciary. They can still call their souls their own, and they will stand toe-to-toe with him, and look him in the face and call his bluff. They know that he does not know the law and is an incompetent administrator. They will therefore stand their ground.

    In the end, Mr Bello will capitulate. He is after all an absentee governor, eternally rubbing shoulders with the top guns in the presidency, and doing everything possible to be the president’s zany. And because Aso Villa sets great store by loyalty than by competence, politicians and officials like Mr Bello will always get a welcoming in powerful circles. That is the tragedy of Nigeria, a tragedy underpinned by the country’s distorted presidential system, a system that tolerates and promotes fifth-rate politicians.

  • Buhari’s Polish epiphany

    IN his interaction with Nigerians in Poland during his recent trip, President Muhammadu Buhari finally took the admonition of those who insisted he could accomplish so much more by focusing on the task before him rather than complaining about the rot he met on assumption of office. “We inherited so many problems,” he groaned. “Actually, I have said I would not complain because I asked for it. I tried to become president three times and I lost, but I was lucky the fourth time, I won. So, I can’t complain.” It was about time he came to that realisation.

    But as epiphanic as his latest conclusion was, he still managed to indicate that his previous electoral losses were contrived by the opposition. He has obviously not lived down his losses, even though no one else, except he and a few of his close associates, believed he won those elections or could conceivably have won. He did not have the structure in 2003, 2007 and 2011, lacked the requisite programmes and ideas, and displayed none of the charisma and rhetorical fluidity capable of bewitching the electorate.

    It is reassuring that President Buhari has finally realised that complaining rather than working won’t get him anywhere. Sometime later, he will also come to the full understanding that the three polls which reference his epochal losses showed clearly that he said and possessed nothing capable of giving him victory. His 2015 victory was not only due to technology and God, as he put it, it was also due to his formation of a more sensible and practicable electoral alliance. He should move on now that he has won and quit grouching over losses no one believes he did not deserve.

  • Reviewing police emolument

    LAST Tuesday, probably against the run of play, the Buhari presidency suddenly reviewed and augmented the salaries and allowances of policemen. It took effect from November. There are suggestions the review was politically motivated, just like the eagerness of the same presidency to effect a review of the national minimum wage is thought to be electorally targeted. But whether politics or not, the police and Nigerian workers deserve new pay and allowances structures. In fact, they deserve even better, for their conditions had been depressed for far too long.

    However, no one should think that whatever review is done would substantially ameliorate the conditions of policemen and workers, or even more nobly affect their work ethics. No, given the present structure of the country, a structure that is counterproductive, unstable and unworkable, no augmentation can lead to any significant ethical change. Not only is the augmentation insufficient, its authors never pretended to design it for a fundamental change in orientation of the workers and policemen. Had they planned such an objective, they would have failed miserably.

    Before the end of January, the Buhari presidency may yet surprise Nigerians by giving more sops to some other target groups. The baits may be politically inspired and directly targeted for votes, but there is no question that Nigerians, long hounded by poverty and oppressive economic conditions, deserve any augmentation they can get in this season of politics and elections.

  • Yoruba colloquium, George and 2019 polls

    THE statement announcing a Yoruba colloquium for December 3, 2018 was carefully crafted. It would involve Yoruba leaders across party lines, said the announcer who is an adviser to Bode George, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain. Some of those expected at the occasion include Chief George himself as the keynote speaker, Afenifere leaders like Ayo Adebanjo and Femi Okurounmu, and Bode Olajumoke and Ebenezer Babatope, both PDP leaders. How that eminent list constitutes Yoruba leaders across party lines is hard to say. The list is doubtless longer, but the attendance will likely be one-sided.

    The objective of the colloquium, it must be conceded, may be salutary, if a little idealistic in view of the contemporary political developments upending structures and processes in Nigeria. The meeting hopes to examine the position of the Yoruba yesterday, today and in regards to the 2019 polls. They hope to find ways of engendering unity of purpose and preparing the race for leadership now and in the future. They also worried that the Yoruba seem to have declined so badly as to become rudderless.

    It is not clear what Chief George is going to say in his address, considering that he seems to have inspired the colloquium, or whether what he has to say will be earthshaking and definitive. As the inspirer of the meeting, Chief George will dominate the gathering, use it as a sounding board for his pet ideas, and, given his temper and worldview, hope to mould discussions along his political and social makeup. Nor is it clear what he hopes to say that he has not said before. He is domineering and opinionated, and he will leave no one in doubt that he and others like him truly represent the Yoruba worldview, particularly politically and ethically.

    Chief George’s bona fides cannot be questioned. He earnestly desires a prominent role for the Yoruba, and wants them in leadership positions because he believes that they possess the robust ideas and philosophies which Nigeria requires to forge ahead in the world. The problem, however, is that regardless of his sometimes noble intentions, Chief George lacks the discipline to accommodate other points of view, tolerate dissent, and is quite unable to see all sides of a story, especially when that story wars against his preferences and senses.

    The colloquium is unlikely to end as loftily as Chief George hopes. The list of attendees is in fact likely to be one-sided, as news clips already indicate. And having reinforced one another in the PDP, particularly their support for former president Goodluck Jonathan, and having suggested at various fora that the Southwest’s endorsement of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 was a mistake, the possibility of suddenly being open-minded, as the colloquium would require to make it successful, is very slim. In short, despite their noble intentions, the meeting may sadly end up as a gathering of PDP or pro-Jonathan supporters.

    What is in fact questionable about the colloquium is the method deployed by Chief George and his group. In view of current political realities, there is also nothing to suggest that his fundamental assumptions about Yoruba unity, the kind that existed during the Awolowo era, are both relevant now and even required. As Chief George must have found out, seeing that his meeting will unavoidably be one-sided, it will take much more than he is willing to give to call a meeting that will be truly representative of the Yoruba. It is no longer even desirable.

    Instead, Chief George and other Yoruba leaders should focus their search on aggregating, disseminating and marketing the principles and values that have ennobled the Yoruba over the centuries. This is a more difficult route to traverse, but it takes care of present existential realities and transcends the political divisions and schisms that now inundate the Yoruba and obviously agitate Chief George. Yoruba politics is bifurcated; there is little Chief George can do to ameliorate or heal those divisions. But there is much more he and others can do to sell those seemingly abstract realities that occupy the subconscious of every Yoruba person and politician.

    The Yoruba may be facing collective threats even now; but those threats will need to concretise in unmistakeably alarming way to engender the kind of unity of purpose shown under Chief Awolowo, Michael Ajasin and Abraham Adesanya. However, once that threat is neutralised, the Yoruba always return to their factionalised and regicidal default setting. In calling the meeting, Chief George spoke of notable achievements recorded by eminent Yoruba people, hoping that when the race comes together and speaks with one voice, such feats could be re-enacted. He must however understand that those feats, nearly all springing from individual enterprise, did not owe anything to Yoruba unity or common purpose. There is a limit to how the Yoruba can return to the past; and there is an even greater limit to how partisan political leaders, some of them quite undisciplined and uninspiring in their personal lives and philosophies, can midwife that ethnic utopia.

  • Jonathan writes into a storm

    FROM the look of things, weeks may be insufficient to quieten the raging storm enveloping ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s book, My Transition Hours. The controversies began last Tuesday during the book presentation in Abuja. They will intensify in the weeks ahead, perhaps until every gem in the book has been put through the furnace and every poisonous substance drained to its bitterest dregs. Dr Jonathan himself will not help the controversies: he is too serious and defensive to find the mirth and bonhomie to deploy the kind of wit necessary to disarm opponents, and also too full of conspiracy theories to see any altruism in the perspectives of his critics and those who like to needle him for sheer fun.

    Take just one of the controversies, the one that concerns foreign meddling in the 2015 elections. From the temper of his writings on the matter, it is clear that Dr Jonathan has not overcome what he describes as the United States’ humiliating meddling in the polls. Here is how he puts it: “I can recall that President Barack Obama sent his Secretary of State to Nigeria, a sovereign nation, to protest the rescheduling of the election. How can the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, know what is more important for Nigeria than Nigeria’s own government? How could they have expected us to conduct elections when Boko Haram controlled part of the North-East and were killing and maiming Nigerians? Not even the assurance of the sanctity of May 29, 2015, handover date could calm them down. In Nigeria, the Constitution is very clear: No President can extend his tenure by one day.”

    Dr Jonathan’s worst enemies cannot deny that the former president has a fairly plausible perspective on the meddling matter, at least in some ways. The US may have suspected Dr Jonathan’s motives in postponing the polls, but were they right to have come to read him and his government the riot act? When Mr Kerry came to speak strongly to the Nigerian authorities, obviously with Dr Jonathan in mind, the opposition exulted. Even this writer also suggested that the Americans were sensible in intervening in a poll that seemed increasingly, at the time, susceptible to official manipulations. The issue of sovereignty took back seat. But it should not have. The opposition, including their standard-bearer, exulted over the American intervention. It was, sadly, short-sighted.

    But if foreign meddling in Nigerian polls and affairs are to be avoided, the country’s leaders, whether ruling or opposition, have a responsibility to manage national affairs and conflicts in ways that sustain and nurture national sovereignty. Dr Jonathan, from all indications, possessed that understanding and depth of perspective much more than even his opponent in that election, but he lacked the discipline and administrative acumen to embark on actions or enunciate policies that undergird the country’s freedoms. It is true that the opposition were unwilling to grant him any quarter, and foreign powers condescendingly wished to teach ‘lowly’ Nigeria a thing or two about running a democracy, but Dr Jonathan had more than four years in office to set the machinery in motion to defend the country’s independence. He is now wise after the fact, but it is too late. The issue today is finding out whether his successors have learnt any lesson.

    There are enough lessons all over the world for Nigeria to learn from, especially concerning how countries with enormous self-pride fiercely defend their sovereignty. If there would be any meddling at all, as the 2016 US elections showed, it should only be done by influence peddling and cyber subversion rather than by direct and offensive control. In the case of Nigeria in 2015, Nigeria was humiliatingly and forcefully transformed into a vassal, and Nigerians themselves approved of it because they distrusted Dr Jonathan and wished to replace, by all legitimate means possible, a government they concluded had become corrupt in managing the economy and hopelessly ineffective in tackling the insurgency wasting the north-eastern part of the country.

    Undoubtedly, Dr Jonathan has matured after his dizzying spell in office. He has the advantage of possessing a PhD, and so can see and think beyond the superficial. His learning, for whatever it is worth, has enabled him to introspectively look at his time in office. Even though his book is not a biography as he warned, it is certain to contain a few critical perspectives on his presidency and leadership style. It is expected that when his autobiography is published he will be harder on himself than the expiation his new book has appeared to undertake. There may be question marks on whether the book has come too soon; but given the fact that a new election season is upon Nigeria, he probably hopes that Nigeria’s current rulers may learn a few lessons or so. If that is his hope, it is not misplaced.

    Much more, it must warm the cockles of his heart that many former leaders, including his arch enemy at the time, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, had very kind words about him, not to talk of how thoughtfully they turned out en masse to honour him. Their kind words were neither contrived nor laboured, and were not designed to give the audience the impression that the speakers were merely being kind to him on that occasion. No, from all indications, they were genuinely proud of how he conducted himself in his last months in office, and would recommend such nobility to all African leaders who find themselves facing re-election battles. As a matter of fact, the kind words spoken about Dr Jonathan seemed more like signals to President Muhammadu Buhari to never let the standards of presidential re-election behaviour fall. The leaders who spoke during the book presentation did not give the impression they had full confidence that that standard had not already fallen.

  • Saraki and Offa robberies

    THE police are at liberty to prosecute Senate President Bukola Saraki whenever they want to, particularly after they have completed their investigations of the Offa, Kwara State, robberies. Some of his supporters were alleged to have been involved in the heinous crime that led to the death of some 22 people. But the police have no right to mix the allegations against Dr Saraki with the death in custody of the principal suspect, one Michael Adikwu. Yes, there may be others who can testify against the senate president. Good for the police, if they can manage to keep them alive. But the police cannot just declare to the public that a suspect slumped in their custody and died, someone who was healthy enough to lead a rampage against the law, and was captured intact. Nor can they simply conclude that because they conducted an autopsy on his body, that should be the end of the story. No, it is not.

    Nigerians must demand an investigation into the death in custody of the robbery suspect. That he was a robber and claimed to nurse a deep grudge against the police are not enough to make the country overlook his suspicious death. It is disgraceful that the police failed to inform the public of the suspect’s death, refused to invite independent bodies and doctors to witness the autopsy, and have so far failed to disclose what led to his collapse in custody, how it happened, and what caused it. They can continue all their prosecution of Dr Saraki for all anyone cares, but they must be made to account for the death of Mr Adikwu. The matter must not end arbitrarily and summarily simply because the suspect was a robber.