As the saying goes, whatever has a beginning must have an end. Therefore come Sunday, 16 October, 2022 Governor John Kayode Fayemi would have, to the glory of God, completed his two – term tenure as governor of Ekiti state. For me, writing an article in honour of Governor Fayemi cannot be a hurried affair. Not when this column, in the days immediately preceding his administration, was like a diary of  Ekiti state  affairs as various caterwaulers raised their ugly heads, trying everything they could, to deny him the mandate the good people of Ekiti had given him since 2007 but which, no thanks to the rigging machine of the Obasanjo era, he would not retrieve until a full three years later.

Writing about him can also not be hurried because, at the personal level, governor Fayemi graciously extended to me, such kind courtesies, and generosity of heart, that saw me playing significant roles in his administration, albeit, mostly behind the scenes as he did not appoint me directly into any office in the Ekiti government. However, this article will not be an exhaustive one, but rather, will be limited to the ignoble role of the Nigerian judiciary as a tool in the hands of the Obasanjo government, and the man’s undisguised effort to cast in stone, the electoral abracadabra he had masterminded in Yoruba land during the 2007 general election which has since been described as the most rigged election in Nigeria, using mostly judges of Northern Nigeria extraction, specifically as Chairmen of ALL the election tribunals in the region, together  with, at least, one other  Northern judge as member on each panel. Things got so bad I could not hold back from writing as follows in ‘Judges of Northern Extraction As Weakest Link in A Corrupt Judiciary’ on 13/06/10: “Justice being so sacred and divine, I never thought a day would come when I will have to write about the Nigerian judiciary in this deprecating manner. Never. But what we have here is no doubt a caricature. A judiciary brought low by its own shenanigans through the actions and inactions of weaklings within the system, so nauseating you feel no sense of shame treating it with outright disdain. A system which is on all fours with what the character, Thrasymachus in the REPUBLIC, argues is the interest of the strong – merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler wants imposed on the people, which must be why Justice Hardy in sentencing  Ibori’s crime couriers  in London  could not restrain himself from describing the Nigerian judiciary as usurped”.

“Although there is no clear-cut federal character to  this drama of the absurd, this ‘mala fide’, in which no section of the country can claim innocence, one can, with considerable justification, claim that  many  judges of Northern extraction have proved to be extremely weak and pliable; remorselessly standing justice on the head, egregiously calling their training and/ or experience to question and proving, without a shadow of doubt, that they are the weakest link in a very weak and corrupt Nigerian judiciary.

In ‘EKITI:  OUR MOTHERS CRY OUT AGAIN’, 1 August, 2010 I wrote: “Ever faithful, ever watchful, indeed forever sure of the Almightiness of God, Ekiti mothers, who bear the brunt of the rudderless ness that has taken over the state, especially in the last three years, have once again come out, decrying the plans of the devil’s agents, within and without the PDP to ‘sex up’ the case before the Appeal Court. These sons of Satan, amongst them a former Head of State, retired judges, senior members of the inner bar, some of the royalty and predator-politicians many of who, should long have been put behind bars for electoral malfeasance, are at it again.

Read Also: Ekiti: History beckons as Fayemi rounds off tenure

And these women are not crying out for the first time. They did when the Bwala Election Tribunal, one of the many Election tribunals of infamy, was cooking its injustice. They warned us then in a newspaper advertisement, of the atrocities that were afoot in Ekiti. On my part, I had proceeded, on the basis of that advertisement to do an article appealing to the Ekiti Council of Obas to plead with those amongst their members who were allegedly involved in the plot to have a rethink. But stranger than fiction, however, was the fact that under the lead of the Chairman, HRM, The Alaaye of Efon-EkitiI , an emergency meeting was called where some members proceeded to excoriate my person, even going on prime time television,  but they were saved the greatest  judicial embarrassment ever, when a learned member, indeed, a former Chief Judge of the State, HRM Justice Ademola Ajakaiye (Rtd), the Oluyin of Iyin-Ekiti, succeeded in letting them see the futility of a court action  by pointing out to them that my article contained not a scintilla of libel. Together with The Nation newspaper, we were to have been sued ‘out of existence’.

If only wishes were horses”.

“I cannot recall a more depressing period in the history of the Nigerian judiciary than the present when it has literally become the butt of very cruel jokes. Embarrassed retired judges of the Supreme Court, other jurists, clergymen, and the Nigerian Bar Association which appears totally drenched by the collateral damage, and the decent tens of thousands who are members of that, otherwise, respectable profession, have taken every conceivable opportunity to decry what has become no less than judicial bazaars. You will not but wonder how the innocent ones can sleep peaceably.  It is now like ancient history that this was a Nigerian judiciary that was the toast of the entire Commonwealth of Nations, some of whose members were seconded abroad to the headship of the judicial arm of other countries”.

By the time I wrote ‘These Roforofo Fighters’, on 15 August, 2010, I had simply got to my tether’s end and  had to draw the attention of the bad eggs giving the judiciary a bad name to the views of two Nigerian legal luminaries, writing, inter alia, as follows:

Justice, Kayode Eso:, “It is sad from what the President ( Are Babalola) had said in his keynote address about what is happening in election petitions. He is saying, just in a twinkle of the eye that some judges are becoming millionaires. In fact, those of us who have passed through the yoke of being judges, what we hear outside shatters us, because they are not just millionaires, as we were told, but billionaires”. Are Afe Babalola: “Time was when a lawyer could predict the likely outcome of a case because of the facts, the law and the brilliance of the lawyers that handled the case. Today, things have changed and nobody can be sure. Nowadays, politicians would text the outcome of the judgment to their party men before the judgment is delivered and prepare for their supporters ahead of time for celebration. In some cases, there have been text messages before the judgment day, like, ‘we now have four members to two, we are still working on the fifth”.

In another article ‘The Hammer Verdict’ of 6 May, 2010, I had written: “What I cannot understand is why a judge would sacrifice justice to the detriment of his personal integrity except, of course, the inducement is such that professional integrity no longer counted for anything again. I showed in the article, how Justice Adebara, at the Ekiti Election Tribunal, clinically demolished the majority judgment, citing copious instances of over- voting, complete absence of voters’ register, non-accreditation and, ipso facto, no election known to law etc., all of which nullified their decision.

It was at that point, when I could no longer tolerate the shenanigans, that I wrote my article of 23 May, 2010 captioned “Why Justice Ayo Salami Must Assume Jurisdiction in The Ekiti Case”. Therein, I wrote: “The Ekiti wing of the PDP completely misdirected itself when it took full page adverts to celebrate the Nigerian judiciary in the wake of its so-called victory at the ‘hammer’ tribunal. The judiciary should be left to sink or swim solely on its own record of performance, bearing in mind that for now it has become analogous to the Nigerian army which General Salihu, a one-time COAS, once described as an army of anything goes. It is a shame that it has come to this because for every Naron, Bwala or Hamman, there are thousands of men and women of integrity in the Judiciary. When a judge claims that a man who presented, as exhibit, his own severed leg, backed by a medical certificate, has not sufficiently proved that there was violence at an election, what was the poor man supposed to do? Present the coffin in which he was buried? This is not the first time the judiciary would sink this low only that last time around, Justice Abdullahi, as President of the Court of Appeal, quickly assumed jurisdiction in the Edo and Ondo cases. That way he was able to mitigate the damage. Justice Salami is, therefore, advised to take over, not because anybody knows which way his court will rule, but because Nigerians truly need to know whether there are any redeeming features left in the judiciary or whether next time around, Nigerians should better prepare to fight their own electoral  battles the Adedibu way, machete for machete”.

The highly regarded Chief Ayo Adebanjo, a control freak, now has in his hands, the Afenifere he has always craved; the one he could carve in his own image, control and direct. You doubt this, look round those surrounding him, and ask yourself how representative of Yoruba states they are.  And for an encompassing history of Afenifere, and how much some people had wanted it to be under their grip, I urge the reader to please get any of the following books: Clapping with one hand: June 12 and the crisis of a state nation and The open grave: Nadeco and the struggle for Democracy in Nigeria, both authored by Hon Olawale Oshun,   Chairman of  the Afenifere Renewal Group ( ARG).

Equally, always wanting to be more catholic than the Pope, Chief Adebanjo this past week, rail -roaded his Afenifere faction to a Press Conference where he announced their endorsement of  Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour party.

This was at a time when Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said “It will be childish” to do so.  If Ohanaeze would not endorse Obi, isn’t this Afenifere faction logically being childish?

This, of course, is not the first time Chief Adebanjo is backing a political party, and a people who, historically, did everything to hamstring the presidential ambition of Chief Obafemi Awolowo – Adebanjo’s sole route to political fame – even though he is forever talking of his unmatchable closeness to the Avatar. Not even when the husband of Awo’s grand daughter was on a ticket did Chief Adebanjo feel reluctant to work against a party that is largely supported by Yorubas. He calls it principles, but I call it ETANU.

Much about that later.

In 2015, he tied his faction to the apron strings of candidate Goodluck Jonathan because he said the man would restructure Nigeria,  exactly what he is saying of Peter Obi today even though nobodu can quote the Labour party candidate on restructuring.

But what did Professor Bolaji Akinyemi say recently about President Jonathan and Chief Adebanjo’s promise?

Hear him:

“But when he (Jonathan) then lost courage, we divided the result (of the 2014 confab) into three quadrants; one of which needed executive approval. All he needed was to sign it, but he didn’t. I then met him and asked him to implement his own part, and he said, ‘Oh, I am coming back to the office. When we get in, we will do so”. “And I said, ‘Sir, you’re not God. It’s only God who decides who sits on that chair. He only took it to the National Assembly when he lost the election. And of course, the National Assembly would not sign a document by a president who had lost an election”.

Of course, not even that calamity would mollify Chief Adebanjo who believed he could do whatever with Afenifere.

It was to Atiku Abubakar he next carried it.  Meanwhile, here was an Atiku who never had the nerve to canvass restructuring anywhere in  Northern Nigeria, and had, apart from boasting he has three Igbo daughters, twice chosen Igbo running mates thereby, unequivocally, demonstrating his love for Ndigbo over and above the Yoruba. But not even that too meant a thing to Chief Adebanjo as long as he can oppose whichever party majority Yoruba were rooting for.

But trust him to say he was acting on principles.

Ask me what advantage Yorubas ever derived from his political exertions, and I’ll say he got for us, from President Jonathan, a tokenist appointment – a literally meaningless, as at the time – Chief of staff which went to  Gen Jones Oladehinde Arogbofa (Rtd) who was by no means half as effective as the president President Jonathan’s kinsman,  and  Special Assistant on Domestic Matters, Waripamowei Dudafa.

If to play the lackey to President Jonathan in 2015, Afenifere engaged the candidate at a meeting in Akure, what exactly has Chief Adebanjo, acting alone, discussed with  Peter Obi, this time around, concerning Yorubas ahead the 2023 election, in a putative government Yoruba will be completely absent in its leadership cadre? I guess it is enough that it is Chief  Adebanjo taking Yoruba to the promised land via  their new OHANIFERE, handing them  over to our Igbo bretheren just like Col Emeka Ojukwu asked of Col Banjo when he would have conquered the West with the help of biafran soldiers.

What, indeed, can be better?

It is called acting on principles, and the presidency would be handed to Ndigbo on a platter, even if the people are, themselves, prepared to compete.

Fortunately, however, Chief Sehinde Arogbofa,  the Secretary General of Afenifere, in a 2019 interview, tells us below exactly how Afenifere’s endorsement  of a candidate should  proceed: Question: What is the position of Afenifere on the quality, credibility and capability of the current presidential aspirants?

“We are still watching the aspirants, but one thing is imperative for whoever we are going to adopt. Such a person must not just talk about restructuring but he must be prepared to do the restructuring in a way different from the 1999 constitution. We are also looking at the characters of the aspirants because we don’t want to be deceived again…”

So where, or at what point, did Chief Adebanjo get from Peter Obi, the guarantees for which he has literally, single handedly endorsed his candidacy as a “one leader, and a hundred followers’ diktat? Can he quote Obi’s views on restructuring for Nigerians to see? What are Obi’s views on the 1999 constitution? In case chief Adebanjo is unaware, here it is – quoting Obi in a television interview:” The(1999) constitution might have its own problems but our constitution is not what is keeping us where we are today, it is bad leadership. Not withstanding the constitution, you can drive everybody along and still make the country productive”.

Read Also: Over to you, Chief Adebanjo

Pray, does that look, anywhere, like Chief Adebanjo’s views on the 1999 constitution which he has severally described as: ”fraudulent; did not articulate the collective will of the Nigerian people, having been imposed on the nation by the military”?

Also, in contradistinction to Chief Adebanjo’s endorsement, and somewhat, allying with Chief Arogbofa, let us see the processes Chief Olu Falae, whose cause Chief Adebanjo championed at the infamous ‘De Rovans’ debacle orchestrated by the Afenifere Control Group, said an endorsement  should go through. Speaking through CAPT M. A. RAJI(rtd), his personal Assistant, while  denying that he has, or was one of those who claim to have endorsed Peter Obi, declared as follows:”The attention of Chief

Olu Falae CFR, GCON has just been drawn to a publication that has gone viral in which the former Secretary to the Federal government is quoted as saying that he is supporting the candidature of Mr Peter Obi as his preferred choice in the 2023 Presidential race. Although, Chief Falae admitted that he said that it was true that the South East has not had the opportunity of being Nigeria’s President, it is for them to persuade other Nigerians that they can offer something better than candidates from other geopolitical zones. It is not an automatic slot that can be filled without other important considerations. Chief Falae never canvassed or claimed to be supporting Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party for the 2023 race. As a responsible leader, Chief Falae will consider all important parameters, including capacity, experience and proven track record before endorsing a candidate. This correction is necessary in order not to mislead the public. It is necessary to await the programmes and manifestos of the political parties and their candidates before arriving at a particular candidate to support”.

A million thanks to the Baale Oluabo of Ilu Abo, and the Gbobaniyi of Akure, Chief Olu Falae.

He is, indeed, a master of process.

So I ask: If Chief Falae has not endorsed Obi and we have not read anywhere that our highly regarded elder statesman, Chief Reuben Fasoranti – who treats me like a son – has done so, which Afenifere is Chief Ayo Adebanjo planning to turn to a Peter Obi plaything?

Where exactly can Nigerians read Peter Obi’s views on restructuring, which views  Chief Adebanjo claims fetched him  Afenifere’s endorsement, even ahead of Ohanaeze’s?

Yorubas are no fools and those conversant with the political history of the Yoruba, especially since the translation, to higher glory, of the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, would know that Chief Adebanjo is not  being driven by principles,  no matter how many times he claims that, but by what Yorubas call ETANU, as I indicated above.

In 2011, he had backed candidate Muhammadu Buhari, and his ‘numero uno’ subaltern, the much missed Yinka Odumakin,  of blessed memory, was Buhari’s campaign spokesperson. In 2015, they took Afenifere to candidate Goodluck Jonathan promising that Yorubas would vote for him because of restructuring, but as it turned out,  PDP did not even make restructuring a campaign issue. It , therefore, fell to Afenifere alone, to sweat all over the entire  Southwest, preaching to the converted about restructuring.

Ditto 2019, when they again took Afenifere to Atiku Abubakar, a man who only mouths restructuring, but cannot canvass it anywhere in the core North.

If of a fact Chief Adebanjo is being driven by principles, and Atiku Abubakar is a candidate in the 2023 election, why is he not endorsing him again? Is it that  he so loves Ndigbo?

He must really be more Ndigbo than Igbos because as you read this, not many politically consequential Igbos have endorsed Peter Obi.

Again,  isn’t this being more royal than the king?

Rather than being driven by principles, the following is what is playing out.

Chief Adebanjo, and our eminent, and highly regarded elders of Afenifere used to be the go to people in Yoruba land. We, indeed, swore by their names, and they were the nearest to our pantheon of gods or local dieties.

But no more.

No thanks to the then young and audacious Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who sent them all to political Siberia in Yoruba land since  the Avatar’s glorious departure.

As governor, in his first term, there was no inanity they did not visit on him as they severally stood him up for hours at meetings, questioning him.

But Chief Bisi Akande – former Osun state governor and the first Chairman of the APC,  did not just call Bola Ahmed Tinubu the ‘strategic thinker’, and devoted a whole chapter to that subject in his Autobiography: Bisi Akande – My Participations, Pages 477 – 484.

Tinubu is the quintessential strategist.

He waited and bidded his time. And that time came in 2003 when then President Olusegun Obasanjo sold the entire Southwest leadership of AD, sans Tinubu, a pig in a poke – deceived them all, and ensured he installed PDP governors in all Southwest states, except Lagos during that year’s general election.

Whether at meetings to which Obasanjo came dressed up, to curry their favour, or to the particular one which he attended wearing only shorts, to put all the Yoruba ‘eminence greese’ present in their place once he had successfully screwed them, Tinubu gave them all a wide berth. Never attended one.

But subsequently deploying enormous resources, and putting his  Attorney-General, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, now Nigeria’s Vice President, to the arduous task for which he sent him to the UK , Tinubu got the services of Adrian Forty, the most experienced finger print expert in the entire United Kingdom, who worked with 63 policemen ,to unravel the PDP rigging, using Forensic science. He used it  to demonstrate in court, how the elections were rigged through massive thumb printing and thus enabled Tinubu to retrieve Ekiti, Osun, Ondo and Edo states from PDP, thereby shaming everybody who had a hand in bringing that odium on Southwest’s progressive political history.

That  was how Tinubu became their infernal enemy and a subject of great envy who some of them would do anything in their attempt to put down but rather than go down, its been upwards ever.

Since then, they had fabricated  stories upon stories, cooked up various alliances, all in an attempt to reduce Tinubu’s political influence in Yoruba lañd but all had failed.

And will continue to fail as the Lord liveth because Tinubu means well, not only for Yoruba land, but for Nigeria.

There is no political will amongst Nigerian politicians to conduct a free, fair and credible election” – Femi Falana, SAN, on Channels TV,  Friday, September 23, 2023.

Indeed.

Apart from that, even INEC itself, despite its recent laudable improvement, can hardly be wholly trusted. Experience has shown that several of its officials deliberately compromise at elections.  But much more worrisome is its recent unbelievable poor performance which resulted in massive over voting in the results it declared in the Osun election – a lone state election –  which did a lot to diminish its reliability, amongst Nigerians.

Chief Olabode George described Atiku Abubakar’s response to the Ayu- must – go call as disheartening.

No, it is far worse, coming from a self – declared unifier.

It is absolutely disrespectful of very senior members of their party.

Symptomatic of the garrulity which saw the entire Southern Nigeria described as “our grandfather’s estate”, PDP’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, this past week followed up in the footsteps of  party Chair, Senator Iyorcha Ayu, when he ordered the Wike group of the party, like Ayu’s ‘children’, to retrace their steps, or else …

Forget meanwhile, that among these supposed ‘kindergartens’, being so arrogantly talked down to, are foundation party members like Chief Bode George, a former Deputy National Chairman of the party, and Professor Jerry Gana, former serial minister, not forgetting several former, and serving state governors, as well as senators, and other senior members of the party.

Interestingly Professor Jerry Gana, ever the impeccable English speaker, had described members of his group, who want Chairman Ayu to step down before they could join the Atiku Campaign committee from which they just ousted themselves, as ‘solid men and women’, forgetting that none of them is half as solid as the “person,  in the presidency, which governor Wike told Nigerians, was already working for Atiku’s victory in 2023″. Fortunately, Wike has promised to disclose the person’s identity  at the appropriate time.

And you can trust the governor to do just that.

With all one  has written on these pages about the alleged plot to retain the presidency in the North, why would Atiku, Ayu, or PDP be bothered about whatever the Wike group chooses to do, or not do? They can jolly well please themselves.

Indeed, governor Wike announced it colourfully when he put it as follows:”Atiku, Ayu arrogant because someone at the presidency promised them victory”, adding, however, that “what they don’t understand is that the same person in the presidency backed somebody as APC presidential candidate, but the person failed”. “I will tell Nigerians at the appropriate time who this person in the presidency is”, he concluded.

Read Also; 2023: Is Atiku’s presidential bid anti-South?

Isn’t that ‘person’, whoever he is,  far more  assuring than even a Professor Mahmood Yakubu promise, if he gave one?

Of course, pride, they say, goes before a fall.

Have these people forgotten that President Muhammadu Buhari has promised, even as recently as this past week at the United Nations General Assembly, to leave behind a legacy of a fair, credible and transparent election?

So why would any party be as gullible as to disdain the source of about its surest, and highest, vote haul in the entire South – (Rivers state), given the fact that everything points to the Southeast – its traditional milch cow – as no longer keen on playing the Northern political acolyte. This being so – thanks to home boy Peter Obi, a presidential candidate on whose behalf some of his Igbo compatriots have already, via a Whatsapp video, promised to kill – they actually behead – not just kill, anybody that as much as advertises,  talk less,  of voting for – any non Igbo presidential candidate in the region.

It must be conceded to the PDP,

however, that a lot could still get done behind the President’s back by some powerful people who, unlike President Buhari, do not care a hoot about any legacy.

Or isn’t it said that power is an aphrodisiac?

After all, thanks to Sahara Reporters, it has been alleged that debts owed some people, in billions of naira, had been paid up ahead of the election.

However, since man proposes and only God can dispose,  it will do the Atiku people a lot of good to tread softly, and be far less arrogant since it may be impossible, this time around in the North, to swell votes through children and aliens sexing up the election.

Equally PDP should depend less on Kano, given Kwankwaso’s presence on the ballot, as well as the APC being the ruling party in the state. It thus looks like there isn’t much elbow room for PDP anywhere in the country, and that only an electoral ‘monofiki’ can give it victory.

But Nigerians will be all eyes for any attempt to manipulate the make or mar election.

How did PDP manage to get itself into this bind?

This goes far back to the military influence and mentality that have always dominated it. It was for that reason that early this year, it insinuated

the likes of IBB, Prof Ango Abdullahi and others, into its search for a consensus presidential candidate. PDP has always seen itself as being synonymous to strictly Northern interests and, hence, always externalising what should strictly be its internal affair.

In 2010, this led to the setting up of the 17 – member, Adamu Ciroma committee for the purpose of  selecting a candidate from the quartet of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Lt. Gen. Aliyu Gusau and Governor Bukola Saraki. This was always in the quest to retain the presidency in the North and the committees are always peopled by core Northern hegemons.

Afterall, didnt the Northern Elders Forum (NEF)spokesperson, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, early this year,  declare that the north is unapologetic about its desire to retain power in 2023, claiming that the presidency is its birthright and inheritance, simply because of its largely unproductive population and, mindless of the fact that President Buhari, a Northerner is the incumbent.

Truth be told, many of these people do not see Nigeria as a country of equals, the reason a Senator Iyorcha Ayu does not feel honour bound to resign as PDP Chairman, as he had promised, in the event of  the party’s presidential candidate emerging from the North. This attitude would not have been acceptable, even if the country was largely dependent on the North for its upkeep and economic survival which, incidentally, is not the case.

When  one hears these arrogant drivels,  you won’t but wonder as to how, or why, some people, outside the region, could still be willing, and ready, to play the slave.

The minute, this year, when some of the

people who were championing zoning when President Goodluck Jonathan was seeking re- election, became members of  the search party for a PDP Northern presidential candidate in the ’23 election, I knew they were up to some havoc.

In that era, prominent Northern political leaders like  former President Babangida, former VP Atiku Abubakar, former Senate President Iyorcha Ayu – yes same Senator Ayu, former Chairman of the PDP, Chief Audu Ogbeh, Mallam Adamu Ciroma and Alhaji Bello Kirfi, as members of the Northern Political Leaders Forum were, everywhere, strongly marshalling arguments for the retention of zoning in the PDP, warning that its abandonment would have terrible consequences for the stability of, not just the party, but the polity. While arguing that its mission was not to stop President  Goodluck Jonathan, the forum claimed it was out to safeguard equity and fairness which would give all Nigerians a sense of belonging – the same equity and sense of belonging that no longer mean a thing to them today.

On the argument that zoning is not provided for in the 1999 Constitution, they  argued that there is no section of the constitution that outlaws zoning and rotation.

Such crass opportunism, considering that it was mostly the same people who have now just jettisoned zoning, even though a corner piece of their party’s constitution, which candidate Atiku bandies about as the obstacle to Ayu’s resignation.

With the level of desperation being shown by some in the North to ensure that a Northerner succeeds President Buhari – no matter how immoral and unfair – it is hoped that some people will not go the extra mile of compromising the 2023 election, an eventuality that will not augur well for Nigeria.

A Plea To Fgn and the Ogun State Government.

I received the mail below from Supol Yusuf (rtd), during the week. It will be greatly appreciated if any of the Federal or the Ogun state government would urgently do the needful to put an end to what this very responsible citizen says is fast becoming a killing field. After his first message,  he has written to say that 2 more people had been killed there:

“Please who will help us tell government about this narrow bridge at Iju?

Accident on this bridge is too frequent and is claiming lives and properties . Yesterday it claimed 15 lives involving a trailer and a comercial bus . This is a Federal road from Sango to Idiroko . Please help us”.

I am not sure if the activities of the Sultan and the so called oligarchy have any political traction. The place of Kaduna Mafia in the polity is a hyperbole. The personalities you mentioned have never been on the same page with Buhari politically. During the last elections they went as far as efforts could go to defeat PMB to no avail. They would not make any difference this time around.

You recall how the president’s wife openly embarrassed him for not endorsing her preference. As for me, when I saw one of the closest aides of PMB canvassing for Tinubu, I knew who PMB was supporting and the game was up in favor of Tinubu. The emergence of Tinubu did not come to me as a surprise”  –

I quote the above response to my chat from a very reliable, usually authoritative and impeccable, Northern source on the politics of the North, because he firmly, (and for me, happily) contradicts where I had thought the president might be leaning in the coming election as a result of his government’s very pro-North stance.

The quote, however, does not controvert my viewpoint that the Northern political establishment, that is, the feudal oligarchy which controls the levers of power in the core North, will do everything to retain the presidency in the North.

It is not impossible that the elections slated for February 2023 may be the very last for Nigeria as we know it. The hegemonists are not helping matters at all. And I am not trying to be an alarmist. The times are inclement. 2023 is pregnant with torrid forebodings and if care is not taken or unless some, otherwise, respected elders allow the presidential election be conducted in a manner not suggestive of an intent to continually subordinate other parts of the country, they may just hasten Nigeria’s denouement. This is because 2023 is a far cry from 1960 when the Sadauna described Nigeria as his great grandfather’s estate. The Sadauna had said on that occasion: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather, ‘Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future.”

Not a few Northerners still believe that, and are, this coming election cycle, being driven by that gratuitous wish.

Probably unknown to him, changing that hegemonic mindset is the titanic struggle governor Wike and his group are currently involved in. The struggle will not end soon because those who instigated Tambuwal’s stepping down for Atiku at the 11th hour on congress grounds, and thereby rigorously Northernised the PDP leadership as if it were   some Arewa Groundnut Marketing(AGM) company, forgetting everything about fairness and inclusion in a multi-ethnic country will, out of groundless arrogance, not relent.

Read Also; Drama of 2023 electioneering

You won’t believe that this was the same party they – Kawu Baraje, Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki and co, literally obliterated in 2014, giving the new APC all the help it needed to torpedo their own party. Not even the decision of the entire Southern state governors, across party lines, that for the sake of equity and inclusiveness President Buhari’s successor should come from the South, would mean a thing to them nor would the likely consequences of their disregard for the entire South.

Long before ALAROYE’S lead story in its Vol. 62(No.15) edition of September 20, 2022,  I have foreseen what is going on now as far back as in my article of Sunday, 1 May, ’22,  which I captioned: “Why Are Northern Elders This Overly Concerned With Who Emerges PDP Presidential Candidate?” It was written when I observed that the likes of former President Ibrahim Babangida, Professor Ango Abdullahi and some others had been coopted into what was essentially PDP’s internal affairs.

More about that anon.

ALAROYE in that edition’s lead article whose title can loosely be translated as: ‘Because of Tinubu, Northern Leaders Begin Suspicious Moves, went into the details of the devious rigmarole of some Northern leaders especially as soon as a so – called vote of confidence was passed on Iyorcha Ayu as PDP Chairman. Among such moves were the visit, individually, by each of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the governor of Gombe state to former Heads of state, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdul Salam Abubakar.

The publication is of the view that if the visits were aimed at burnishing Tinubu’s chances, these APC chieftains (?) would not have visited their hosts all alone by themselves, meaning that they probably went there only to subscribe to the plan to retain the presidency in the North. More ominous, however, according to the publication, was the Sultan’s unusual visit to Governor Wike, at the very height of the Atiku – Wike snafu and, immediately after the vote of confidence on Ayu. ALAROYE believes that the visit has since quietened governor Wike somewhat. It wrote in Yoruba: “Sultan ti rin kini na pa”, thereby suggesting that the Sultan’s visit has demobilised Wike’s principled struggle.

With the visits to individuals believed to be influential enough to dictate the voting pattern in the North, it is not beyond conjecture to suggest that the trips were undertaken to swear an allegiance to put region before both party and country.

And if that turns out to be the case, they would not have been re- inventing the wheel as, thanks to former Niger state governor, Babangida Aliya, Nigerians now know that some notable Northern PDP chieftains, governors inclusive, deliberately hung President Goodluck Jonathan in the sun to dry, just to ensure that the presidency returned to the North by voting for candidate Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

Fortuitously, it was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate himself, who only this past week, warned Nigerians to be wary of voting for enslavement in 2023. I can only hope that those who should really learn from Atiku’s warning would do so, lest we all become IDPs in our own country as they wish.

Nigeria is on tenterhooks and the only thing those who love her can do is make sure they do not allow those who would do anything to impede a free, fair and transparent election in 2023.

In the 1 May, ’22 article referred above, I wrote inter alia: “Last week on this column, I indicated that but for the obvious and patriotic selflessness of Northern APC governors, I would have concluded that zoning the APC presidential candidacy to the South was a ruse. I would have based that conclusion on two grounds: First, that given everything that President Buhari has done for the North, he could not, reasonably, be expected to rapidly undo them by so soon handing over power to a non – Northerner who, even if he were an Arewa hireling, cannot allow the North continue to enjoy all those unfair advantages. Not even during the First Republic of both the Sadauna, back in Kaduna, and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, was the North in such total control of Nigeria as is presently the case.

The second reason for my viewpoint is ex- President Ibrahim Babangida’s involvement in the matter of who emerges the PDP presidential candidate. Past master in political trickery and feints, I suspect that General Babangida is actually working for the North, not just for the PDP. And his, and others’ involvement is the climax, not the beginning, of  a plot  which must have started as soon as President Buhari was sworn in for his second term to ensure that the presidency does not move an inch from the North. The kite was subsequently flown by none other than the President’s uncle,Mallam Mamman Daura when he pooh-poohed zoning.

Or when, in Nigeria’s political history, have Northern elders been this involved in who emerged the presidential candidate of any political party?

This is exactly where I have my fears for Nigeria, as any attempt to pull wool over Nigerians, especially in the North where hordes of foreigners and children routinely vote at elections, could backfire spectacularly.

Fortunately, the North is never short of the services of its hard- headed intellectuals. This is the time to press them into service, once again, because even though all their plans may read, and sound rosy on paper, but there are no fools anywhere, any more, in this country.

Nigeria is a multi-ethnic country where none should, ideally, need to be tutored on the need for equity, fairness and inclusiveness.

This brings me back to my article of 21 August, ’22 on these selfsame pages which I titled: ‘Why Are Northern PDP Leaders So Disdainful of Southern Nigeria?

There’s absolutely no reason for it.

Indeed, in Nigeria, with all her challenges of insecurity, terrible economy and with many of its peoples wanting out of the unworking federation, a little spark, just a little spark, especially arising from any attempt to unduly influence the 2023 presidential election, can make her come to grieve.

My prayer is that good sense prevails and that Nigeria survives.

Thanks to a trending WhatsApp video, Nigerians now know that former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose middle name should be meddlesomeness, is not only back, trying to resurrect his long dead,  and buried, ‘Third Force’ of yore, he is also out there, allegedly traversing the length and breath of Nigeria,  trying to recruit persons he had previously ‘demolished’ with both his once mighty, but now numbed pen, as well as with his mouth; the likes of former President Ibrahim Babangida for whom he spared no perjorative word,  into what he now dubs his national agenda, whereas all he had for Nigeria, even  as a sitting  president, was nothing more than  a Third Term project which was to have seen him transmogrify into Nigeria’s Life President.

If only because he never does anything for altruistic reasons, the video producer pleaded with Nigerians to ensure that this, his latest selfish project, falls flat on its face. In particular, he appealed to Northern Nigerians to ensure that  they scuttle his plot to enthrone Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour party, a man who, he alleged that even as a mere state governor, hounded Hausa traders out of Anambra state, and would have done  far worse had governor Musa Kwankwaso, who had visited him, but failed to dissuade him, not threatened to visit every inanity he threw on Northerners in Anambra state on the tens of thousands  Igbos living, peacefully in Kano state.

Obasanjo’s latest act was his attempt  to profit from the crisis in PDP – a party on which platform he became the Nigerian president –  when he chased governor Wike, all the way to London, to try to broker a modus operandi between him and his new fancy, Peter Obi.

I am today, yielding the column to  Professor Steve Egbo, Executive Director, Administration and Training, NTA,  formerly a lecturer in the  Department of Political Science, Abia State University, Uturu.

He writes on the above topic.

Happy reading.

Historians may never arrive at a better title for the London meetings of August, 2022 by some political gladiators of the APC, PDP, LP and some other freelancers. Uniquely and figuratively, they brought back  memories of the London Conferences of 1957 and ’58 which ultimately ushered in Nigeria’s independence. As background, let us do a brief recap of the pre-independence conferences and why our guys had to troop out to the Court of Saint James for the conversations that berthed a free Nigeria.

Chief Anthony Enahoro had,

on March 31, 1953 moved the historic  motion for Nigeria’s independence, with 1956 as the date. The Northern delegation disagreed with the date, suggesting, instead, that it  be replaced with “as soon as practicable”. The South wanted independence rightaway, but the North argued that it needed more time to be ready. This led to a serious altercation between the Southern and Northern delegates. This was the point  at which the Sardauna made the oft- quoted statement: ”the mistake of 1914 has come to light”. That was how subsequent conferences on Independence had to move to London which was considered a neutral territory. It has been suggested that the enduring schism between the ‘two’ Nigeria’s had its roots in the fractious emotions that Enahoro’s motion engendered.

Read Also; The genesis of the Atiku/Wike face-off

All these came to mind afresh because of our political gladiators who recently shifted base to London to iron out their festering political differences.

London, of course, provides a cosy environment and, perhaps a shield away, from the distractions and humbug at home here in Nigeria. Like a child playing under the watchful eyes of its parents, Britain still remains the mother that gave birth to this winowy vagabond. But this London trip must be seen for what it is – a crude national embarrassment which showcased the unwillingness of our political leaders to grow up as well as their inability to let Nigeria take it’s rightful place in the comity of nations.

You would wonder what they were looking for outside of places like  Port Harcourt, the Garden City,  Abuja, the City of Gardens, Tinapa, Ikogosi or the other exotic resorts all over Nigeria. Anyway, just might be they were afraid of the numerous creations of their misrule – kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and their other cousins, who have turned travel within the country to a death wish.

Yet it appears not much was  achieved. Looking at their grim faces as they trooped back home, one can surmise a few things: Asiwaju appeared far more upbeat than the rest of them. Without a doubt, he looked the one with the least to lose. There are many brides, and many suitors, depending on the direction from which one is watching the riveting movie.

From the bits and pieces gathered so far, the quartet leaguers – Wike, Makinde, Ortom and Ikpeazu remain intact. They are, however,  in a dilemma because the choices before them are grim. While not exactly the Devil’s Alternative, there are certainly no saints in the works. They do not want Buhari to hand over to another  Northerner, nor does Atiku’s condescending perch make him a darling of any sort. Even if Atiku agrees to their demands, chiefly to throw Iyorchia Ayu under the bus, it is doubtful if that would be enough to suture the broken larynx (given the outlandish manner in which some so called leaders have intervened in the messy logjam, like the unconscionable calling of Wike’s chief stabber, ‘the hero of the convention’, Wike & co children, and new comer, Bwala, discounting River’s votes even as Kwankwaso and Obi are sure to make mincemeat of Atiku in Kano and the Southeast respectively- Columnist).

Nor are they  sure of their position with the APC either given  the fact that politicians always want to have it all. And, as things stand today, there aren’t many vacancies left in the APC world since you can not successfully play an Emperor when a junior potentate is already holding court.  Therefore, the question has become: should they jump, how would the landing be?

As romantic infatuation gradually gives way to conjugal realities, governor Wike and his team must reflect, acidly, on the prospects of sharing the APC mattress with Amaechi,  Ortom with Akume, or Ikpeazu with Uche Ogah and Co.

Peter Obi’s presence at the talks added another fireworks into the mix. It was, at best, meant to assess him and try to establish some facts amidst the uproarious fictions surrounding him. And certainly, the meeting must have ushered in some new realities. The verdict, it seems, points to the fact that, placed on the mettle, Obi is yet too brittle and superficial. This, notwithstanding, the moralising verbosity and magical statistics which, in its intensity, can mesmerise only plebian orthodoxy.

Outside his usual characteristic meddlesomeness, and his unquenchable hunger to be seen, the essence of Obasanjo’s presence in London is difficult to measure. Apart from his secret, undying cravings, I am not sure he actually has a candidate, but he will always want to latch on to something, as the journey progresses. This is archetypical of him.

In the days and weeks ahead, more interesting things  will happen. The power seekers will continue to duel around the chessboard in furtherance of their interests, while enablers are most unlikely to stop, reflect their age, and stop their rambunctious gallivanting. As we await the campaigns, as already fixed by INEC, we can all very well say that interesting times are here.

I would  advise you to undertake a regular course of History and Poetry in both languages [Greek and Latin]. In Greek, go first thro’ the Cyropaedia, and then read Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon’s Helenus and Anabasis…”– Thomas Jefferson,  U. S President in a letter to his grandson, Francis Wayles Eppes (October 6, 1820).

One of President Jefferson’s picks above, Xenophon (430-350BC), a Greek military leader, philosopher and historian, wrote at length on the qualities that make a leader a success. He identified thirteen of these, namely: Temperance, Justice, Sagacity, Amiability, Presence of Mind, Tactfulness, Humanity, Sympathy, Helpfulness, Courage, Magnanimity, Generosity and Considerateness.  All these, Aristotle later reduced to four – Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude. It was  Xenophon’s view that unless a leader fully understands these, and injects them into the veins and arteries of society, he will be a disaster.

Rounding  up  on these pages last week, I indicated that I would today name my preferred candidate for the Presidency of Nigeria, come May 29, 2023. On second thought,  however, I have concluded that doing so right now  will  be  too hasty.  I have, instead, chosen to comparare the top three presidential candidates who, incidentally, are no spring chicken on Nigeria’s political firmament. As I  wrote in one or two of my recent articles, I shall not  attach much  importance to  political parties, simpli cita, in determining the best candidate, given the fact that neither PDP’s 16 years, nor APC’s 7 years in charge of Nigeria pointed  to political parties as viable parameters on which to hoist our hopes for a recalibrated Nigeria, come 2023. Doing so was the egregious error Shaka Momodu committed in his article ‘Buhari’s Legacy and Tinubu’s Albatross’, in which he sought to heap President Buhari’s personal foibles on the APC. He needs be told that things are no longer like in the Second Republic when political parties, suffused with mental and cognitive acuity and discipline, like the UPN – contemporaneously the best organised political party in Africa – and the PRP, were easily, interchangeable with their leader.

In the circumstances, therefore, Nigerians must go out to strenously search for that individual, not political party, who would best be the lodestar for the new Nigeria  of our dreams. Fortunately, this quest comes at a time when, given the massive exertions of INEC, we can sincerely hope that we have seen the end of what Adebayo Williams calls the ‘selector ate’, replaced by the authentic Nigerian electorate, when no Nigerian sitting president will,  ever again, agonise that the election which brought him into office was rigged.

The characteristics prescribed by Xenophon for any leader who will succeed, all come down to a well-rounded, educated leader; an enlightened leader with the mental acumen, the sagacity, knowledge and the empathy required to lead a multi- ethnic nation where religion and ethnicity will count for nothing in determining government action or policy. That leader must have been who Sam Amadi had in mind when he wrote as follows on the leader that Nigeria needs now: “The ultimate national challenge is to rescue Nigeria and rebuild an effective state that is neutral and uninvolved in any virulent religious or ethnic competition. Only a president whose pedigree, personality and engagement give assurance of a demonstrable commitment to a secular, democratic and egalitarian Nigeria that aligns reward to work, will stop the drift into the type of the violence-ridden state” Nigeria has become.

Who then will be that  Nigerian president  and what are the problems we want him to come and solve for us?

In my view, our number one problem, contrary to what many believe, is not insecurity, but divisiveness,  a problem which President Buhari, unfortunately, accentuated through his appointments into key, and consequential, positions in our country, most especially,  in the Nigerian security apparratti, with no less than 90 per cent of its leadership in the hands of Northerners, who are also mostly of his faith. The appointments very quickly sent the wrong message to Fulani herdsmen, both Nigerian,  and foreign who though, have lived peacefully in every part of Nigeria for a long time, suddenly transmogrified into enemy herders, maiming, kidnapping and killing people all  over the country. They soon began a land grab that has spared no part of the country. That is the crux of insecurity in Nigeria today.

Right that single wrong today, and Nigeria will immediately begin to  see and feel  peace since  those who had believed they could commit any criminality, and go scot free because they have their ethnic compatriots in the right places, will immediately begin to think twice. Indeed, the mad rush of Fulani herdsmen from outside the country would  reduce drastically and peace will begin to return to Nigeria, leaving the overstretched military enough space to deal a lasting blow to banditry.

The pair best suited to effect this change, judging by their track record is the Tinubu/Shettima ticket. Below is what Niyi Akinnaso wrote about the duo in a recent article: “What is more, a close look at their cabinets during their tenure as Governor shows unparalleled diversity of talents from different states of the Federation. Both men are credited as true talent hunters with a knack for recruiting the best for the job, regardless of creed, ethnicity, and state of origin. We have come to know so much about Bola Tinubu in this respect and on Shettima,  here’s a glimpse: Shettima’s cabinet and closest aides in Borno included Christians from the Southeast, South-south, and Southwest as well as a Fulani from the Northeast and Hausa from the Northwest. It must also be remembered that, though a Muslim, Shettima is neither Hausa nor Fulani. He is Kanuri, which partly explains his sensitivity to other minorities and minority issues. To those who know him, his accommodating disposition towards victims of terror attacks, IDPs, and out-of-school children is legendary”.

While it will obviously be difficult for Atiku, a Fulani, to roll back what his people consider advantages, Obi has a running battle with Northerners over how some believed he treated Hausa traders while governor of Anambra state, which will make his attempting a change problematic; whereas Tinubu’s existing relationship with the Northwest would engender trust, and facilitate his changes for the good of the country.

The Nigerian economy which is out – rightly on its belly, is also a major problem the incoming president would be expected to resolve.  It arose, largely, from the inability of government to properly envision things in advance. Visioning, incidentally, is one of Tinubu’s strong points.  According to Bismarck Rewane, a member of President Buhari’sEconomic Advisory Council, “Nigeria is approaching the fiscal cliff with fiscal deficit of N3.09 T, and an actual debt service which was more than revenue between January and April, 2022. In addition, wrote Rewane, the excess crude oil account was depleted to $375,000 in July, 2022 from $35.7M in June 2022”. The Finance minister announced, during the past week, that the Federal Government proposes  N19.76T budget for 2023 which will take  Deficit to N12.4T with oil subsidy alone accounting for over half of that. As the Comptroller – General of Customs, Hameed Ali, just shown during his interface with the House of Representatives committee on Finance, some magic is ongoing with regards to oil subsidy. Asked Ali: why would NNPC claim to release 98M litres daily when it says daily consumption is 60M litres? What happens to the excess 38M litres? A Tinubu – led government will never lack the political will to get to the bottom of this. Indeed, this is one area where, unlike  Atiku and Obi, Tinubu and Shettima’s solid corporate financial background and hands on experience, will come handy in resolving our economic quagmire. And why am I this confident? Let us listen to Dele Alake, their campaign’s Director of Strategic Communication on Tinubu’s ability to strategise.:

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“A leader must be able to think a minimum of 25 years in advance,  and conceptualize what that will entail for the next 25-30, 40-50 years, not just for today. A visionary leader, not cash and carry container leader, must look  at the immediate, the long term, as well as the next generation, and plan accordingly. It is only Asiwaju who has that demonstrable capacity. He has done it, and I will give you this example”. “Many people are now gravitating to Lagos, not knowing that the Atlantic City, which is an icon of Nigeria today, was all water some years back. The Bar beach used to overflow into Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island. At some point, in 2000, the entire stretch of Ahmadu Bello was regularly being submerged and the property value in Victoria Island dropped because people were moving out. The Federal Government was merely sand filling every year, spending billions of naira. I was in the cabinet at the time, so I knew exactly the A-Z of the visioning, conceptualization, monitoring and execution that translated into the Eko Atlantic today. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu insisted that sand filling would not solve the problem. We shopped around, calling experts who brought proposals. We went to South Africa, the Netherlands and almost everywhere there was water problem and ocean surges. Eventually, Asiwaju maintained that a permanent city should come out of the place and that is what we have there today-Eko Atlantic City. That is where the United States of America is proposing to build its largest embassy in the world; a project and investment of  over $500 million, besides the other investments going on. With such a track record, oil subsidy will not have a ghost of a chance of bedevilling the Nigerian economy in a Tinubu – led government.

It is obvious that neither Atiku nor Obi could give Nigerians such a guarantee as it will have no basis.

Thus far will space constraint permit our comparison today.

However, for equity and fairness, I should mention that at the time the above were happening in Lagos state, Vice President Atiku Abubakar was superintending over the Obasanjo government’s Privatization Programme about which cabinet member Dr Okonjo-Iweala, wrote:” …there has been hints of corruption in the implementation of some privatizations in telecommunications, petrochemicals, steel aluminum and other industries”. There were also billions of missing funds as was confirmed by the probe panel chaired by Senator Azuta Mbata ( after the one sponsored by Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan). Most germane of  the several reports on the Privatisation programme which netted a measly $2B (Iweala) from an investment of about $100B public invstments, was the ASUU NEC Communique of 2001( ASUU’s state of the Nation 2001which described the Privatization programme as follows, among others:

It was a hoax to:

• Hand over our public wealth to interests that have exploited and deprived Nigerians over the years.And
• To gift public assets to some Nigerians – politicians, public office holders, military generals and their accomplices, for their closeness to power.

Nor was Mr. Peter Obi idle. Till tomorrow nobody, besides him and former governor, Willy Obiano, knows  exactly how much money he left behind while leaving office.   Questioned by Kadaria Ahmed on the NTA as to why he invested state funds in his family’s  business, Obi claimed he no longer had any dealings with the company once he became a public officer, as if that answered the question.

He said more: “Personally, I have no investment; not even one Naira. Go to Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) today, if you will see Peter Obi as owner of one share; it doesn’t exist”.

That is a man whose name featured prominently in the Pandora Papers.

The destruction of state neutrality and effectiveness is the death knell of the Nigerian state. The ultimate national challenge is to rescue Nigeria and rebuild an effective state that is neutral and uninvolved in the virulent religious and ethnic completion that the present administration has indulged. Only a president whose pedigree, personality and engagement give assurance of a  demonstrable commitment to a secular, democratic and egalitarian Nigeria that aligns reward to work will stop the drift into the type of the violence-ridden feudal states in the Middle East and South Asia, where violent feuding between families and sects continually derails human development.

So, our next president should be someone who can bring Nigerians together and lead them to pursue the collective social and economic well-being of all Nigerians in a spirit of justice and fairness. He or she should be a person who is able to lead a broad coalition of policymakers and managers and must be  determined to recreate Nigeria’s political economy to institutionalise productivity, and focus resources on sustainable development. He must be one who can professionalise the state to deliver on social and economic goods to all Nigerians, strictly on the basis of citizenship, not ethnicity or religion”, quoting Sam Amadi, mutatis, mutandis. – Amadi is an Associate professor of Law, and director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thought.

Three weeks ago on these pages, I indicated to all presidential candidates that their starting point should be the realization that Nigeria is at the tipping point. I redirect that admonition to all of us, Nigerians today, by saying that everything in our country points to a Nigeria actually nearing disaster point. We must, therefore, not deceive ourselves in plotting ourselves away from this imminent road to Golgotha.

At the recent 62nd Nigerian Bar Association. Annual General Conference (NBA-AGC) Peter Obi, the Labour party presidential candidate, aptly described the Nigerian extant condition when he said that the country has qualified to be a failed state. Said he: “Today, we are among the top terrorised countries in the world; we are among the top kidnapping countries in the world. Banditry has taken over part of the country and Nigerians are being killed daily.”

The sheer truth of that statement is why I am always amused each time I hear Festus Keyamo, the APC Presidential Campaign spokesperson, say that “Bola Tinubu will run on the template of President Muhamadu Buhari if elected president in 2023”.

Keyamo should please stop this, if he is not out to deliberately de-market the Tinubu-Shettima ticket since, as a top chieftain of the ruling APC, a cabinet member to boot, he cannot be ignorant of the fact that President Buhari has, since 2015 been running what can only be best described as a personalised government underpinned, mostly by ethnic and insular considerations, both of which have so negatively impacted the Nigerian diversity that, at no point in its history, has Nigeria been as disunited as it is today. Unfortunately, out of sheer respect for his person and office, his party members simply did not complain despite the deleterious consequences.

These consequences have been absolutely benumbing: exacerbated insecurity, pervasive poverty, a collapsing economy, and people being killed or kidnapped daily, in numbers, with life becoming so bestial it has literally lost meaning in the country.

Read Also: 2023: Nyesom Wike as beautiful bride

I am, however, not suggesting that the Buhari years have been all doom and gloom. Indeed, the administration has chalked up some incredible infrastructural developments, especially in transportation, majorly in rails and roads, housing inclusive, and  it will be no exaggeration to say that in these areas, it has outperformed any government before it.

Ditto for it’s Social Investment programme where it has chalked up an impressive performance. As at 2021, verifiable information attests to the fact that millions of Nigerians have benefitted from the programme. Among these are beneficiaries of the N-Power scheme  which doubled from 500,000 to 1 million as well as beneficiaries of it’s Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) which on 24 August, 2021 was restructured to GEEP 2.0, and has since registered over 600,000 potential beneficiaries all over the country. Another vibrant arm of the programme is the Home Grown School Feeding (NHGSFP) which seeks to boost school enrolment, improve nutrition of the pupils while patronizing agricultural and women entrepreneurs in the various communities. It presently feeds no less  than 10 million primary school pupils daily.

Impressive as these are, President Buhari, it is now guaranteed, will be leaving behind, come May 29, 2023, a country that is broken in many respects.

Hence, the great urgency of now is who, of the 15 presidential candidates will be best suited to take

over the onerous, indeed gargantuan, business of fixing a Nigeria that would be very much akin

to a post war country?

Unfortunately, not the conventional war, which our well trained military would have vanquished in no time, but an asymmetrical one in which the enemy is daily being beefed up, in numbers, both locally and  from their ethnic compatriots from outside Nigeria, as well as enjoying considerable domestic support, inspired by ethnic and religious consanguinity.

While individual interests will certainly differ, this is one area where Nigerians cannot afford to deceive themselves because these are not problems tribe, religion,  or political party, simpli cita, can solve as they have become very intricate existential problems for our country.

Our choice must, therefore,  be somebody who has gone through the grill, and whose track record must confirms as a can- do personality.

I do not say this lightly because I am not unaware of the long running debate regarding Holism and Individualism, a debate in which highly reputed scholars, world wide,  have pitched their support on either side of the debate.

What then are Nigeria’s immediate challenges?

According to Sam Amadi, quoted in the intro to this piece, the best diagnosis of Nigeria is that it is a country heading towards disaster and which needs someone to drag it off that course. In his own words, this disaster has three dimensions.

The first, he says, is that past leadership, but majorly the present,  have left a legacy of disunity and bitterness which have landed the country in utter despair, desolation, and distrust amongst its peoples. Left to him, there is no Nigerian state any longer and, to buttress this, he cites the mass exodus of Nigerian youths out of the country,  not in the usual desperate search for greener pastures of old, but rather, as a vote of no confidence, not only in the present, but also on the future of Nigeria.

Therefore, the president Nigeria needs come 2023, in his view,  must be someone who can recreate the country in a moral and social sense.  Someone whose emotional intelligence must reflect in how he treats different parts of Nigeria, and who can resurrect a simple faith that Nigeria is not out to kill its citizens. According to him therefore, the  person must be a unifier – a steady hand on national unity, and equal treatment of all Nigerian citizens.

The second, he says, is economic stagnation which goes far back to decades of weak and incompetent neo-liberal economic management, resulting in Nigeria becoming an unproductive economy, spending more than it earns to service debts.

Finally, his third dimension of the diagnosis of the Nigerian failure is the corruption of its institutions. According to him, since 2015, we have witnessed a consistent degrading of the capability of our state institutions, and their capture, by nefarious tendencies. Every day, he says, we see evidence of the erosion of the integrity and the effectiveness of core state institutions.  For instance, he cites the Nigerian military which is held to ransom by a ragtag Boko Haram partly because of the complicity of the rank and file of our intelligence and security agencies. To retake our country from Boko Haram and such other dangerous forces, he posits, we need a leader whose distance from dangerous ethnic,  and religious, sentiments  and commitment to democratic citizenship, will ensure that he can rebuild the integrity and effectiveness of state institutions.

The above, therefore, represents in a nutshell, the theoretical underpinnings of Nigeria’s multitudinal problems, to resolve which we would need somebody with hands – on experience in demonstrable, and verifiable, leadership qualities, measurable past performance in terms of leadership, social engineering, and mental development, and with a blind eye to ethnicity – indeed, a statesman.

God willing, next week in the final part of this piece, I shall zero in that candidate, justify his pick and await reactions in very civil, and dignified language.

In 2015 when they were trying to get Goodluck Jonathan out, rotational presidency was reasonable for equity. They argued that no section of the country should be allowed to dominate the office of the President. To keep Nigeria one, this position is sound. No doubt, the peculiarities of this country make rotation a necessity at all levels. Not only for the office of the President. I’m talking about political inclusion here. But some people, largely for personal gains, will not let it be. The good thing is that Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, will complete eight years as President next year. Ordinarily, all the political parties should ensure that their presidential tickets are zoned to Southern Nigeria to ensure that power rotates to the South” – Yemi Adebowale, ThisDay.

When in March 2023, Sokoto state Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, vehemently opposed zoning during  his address to  former PDP presiding officers of state Houses of Assembly and those of the House of Representatives ahead his official declaration to run for the Presidency in 2023, he was not being original. Rather, he was merely re -echoing the kite President Muhammadu Buhari’s influential nephew, Malam Mamman Daura, had flown, way back July 2020, that there was no need, any longer, for zoning the presidential ticket to any part of the country.

This coincided with rumours that some elements from the North were already perfecting plans to retain the presidency in the region.

Were these gentlemen being altruistic, or patriotic, or were they mindful of  fairness and equity, they would have, at least, waited till  the presidency had gone round every part of the country.

No, not for them as  that would have made nonsense of their belief that the North owns Nigeria, a lie the Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) has never tired of repeating.

Nigerians were not going to wait for too long  to see the PDP, or those within it Chief Bode George, its former National Vice Chairman,  recently described as “devils, who have taken over the party “  give that chimera the party’s official affirmation. (Kudos here to APC Northern governors who insisted that the party’s presidential candidate must come from the South).

To assert their pride and belligerence, below is  what now subsists in the PDP, aka the Northern Party of Nigeria (NPN), in a country consisting 6 geo- political zones and over 250 ethnic groups:

PDP National Chairman – North

PDP Presidential candidate – North

PDP BOT Chairman – North

PDP Governors’ Forum Chairman – North

PDP Presidential Campaign Spokespersons (2) – Both from the North.

What manner of impudence is this, especially from a political party that was once flaunting how ‘uniquely Nigerian’ it is, arrogantly citing Article 7 of  it’s Constitution which specifically states that the party will adhere to the principle of zoning of its elective offices between the various regions of the country.

Concerning the next election,  there’s hardly any  Northern PDP leader that has not spoken of zoning like Southern Nigeria simply counts for nothing. They have had turns battering governor Wike – one of the arrow heads of the clamour for President Buhari’s successor to come from the South. First, it was Babangida Aliyu who had a dig at him, followed by the, otherwise respected Sule Lamido, who so completely over reached himself, amongst a coterie of others, that in his reaction, Wike couldn’t help describing them as Atiku’s attack dogs.

That, incidentally, was the same Babangida Aliyu who in 2015, when they wanted to shame President  Jonathan out of office, for which reason many of them actually worked for the victory of candidate Buhari, had said that “zoning in the PDP “is sacrosanct and binding in the selection and fielding of candidates”.

That the Northern PDP can be that obdurate despite the fact that  the party has its safest states in the South-south and Southeast, obviously confirms the thinking, in some circles, that the party, probably unknown to its members in the south, as well as its rank and file members, a North – controlled ‘Controlling and Directing mafia whose word is law.

Otherwise, why will the Northern leaders be asking for a leg, and an arm, to have Chairman Iyorcha Ayu, who had himself, publicly, undertaken to step down as Chairman, if a Northerner emerges as the party’s presidential candidate, responsibly  be a man of his words and resign,  even if only for PDP to pretend that there is fairness and equity in its ranks?

No.

They must arrogantly cling to the ruse that Atiku is the only competent man who can win election for the party even if, bar 1999 when he won election as governor of his native Adamawa state, he has not won any other despite contesting in literally all election cycles since  that date, a quarter century ago.

Read Also: Wike whacks Atiku

You would think that this time around, they are presenting to Nigerians, a different Atiku from the one who, as Vice- President, superintended over  the sale of  national assets worth $100B, for a mere $1.5B.

PDP should actually do Nigerians a favour: point out to them those things that can be described as Atiku’s successes in the public service of this country.  When they have done that Nigerians will be able to compare whatever they come up with for “the only man who can win elections for them “ with the “legacies of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reforms in  Lagos State’s Civil Service, judiciary, local government and administration, policing and security system in Lagos State, revenue generation, transportation system, infrastructure renewal and revolution, as well as job creation, all of which remain quite phenomenal and enduring till today”. Or who would forget that “he created LAMATA, LASEMA, LASTMA, LAWMA, LASAA, LASAMBUS, LASRRA, BRT & LAGBUS, Lagos State Water-ways Authority (LASWA), KAI BRIGADE, Neighbourhood police, Lagos State Motor Vehicle Administration Agency and 37 additional Local Council Development Authorities and much more, where several thousands of people now work and earn their daily bread”.

I write here about Ashiwaju

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, “who worked in the best financial consultancy multinationals in the world, including Deloitte, Arthur Anderson, Haskins & Sells and GTE, where he was involved in auditing & setting up fraud proof accounting templates for more than 200 giant corporations worldwide”

“He worked in the biggest oil company in the world – Mobil, where he carried out a forensic and surgical audit of the finances & accounts of the oil giant, which indicted top executives of the oil giant, including the expatriate Managing Director and led to his sack and consequent appointment of Tinubu as Treasurer of Mobil, to implement sweeping changes in the company’s finance & accounts and audit departments because the Board of the oil giant made it clear they could not find anyone more qualified, or with the necessary courage and competence to implement his recommendations”.

That is the man a serving governor, and past Speaker of the House of Representatives,  withdrew for on the convention ground, apparently in obedience to the party’s ‘Controlling and Directing’ mafia, some members of which are believed to be external to the party. Those who know actually say that it is, in fact, being controlled by a slew of aging, retired military kingpins.

Nigerians had better beware if they do not wish to be taken back to Egypt.

I digress.

While the party’s Southern governors were insistent that President Buhari’s successor should come from the South  for the sake of fairness and equity,  believing that in accordance with the party’s constitution, it could not afford to treat zoning with levity, its Northern controllers went beyond all reasonableness, and chose Northerners, not only as the presidential candidate, but had the temerity to appoint Northerners to all the key positions that have anything to do with the elections as shown above.

Are Nigerians being told something we do not yet know?

I personally think so and had hinted at it as far back as 1st May 2022, in the article: ‘Why Are Northern Elders This Overly Concerned With Who Emerges PDP Presidential Candidate?’.

Therein, I wrote as follows:”Give it to the  Fulani for the confidence they have always had in their intelligentsia.  Consisting, in the days of yore,  of the likes of Ahmed Talib, Yahaya Gusau, Liman Ciroma, Ali Akilu, Adamu Ciroma, Adamu Fika, Hamza Zayyad, Muhammad Bello, Mamman Daura, Mahmud Tukur, Ahmed Joda, MT Usman to name a few, they are, to this day: “a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality, high intellect, special skills and experience”, as well as being undiluted Northern patriots. Mostly ascetic, self – effacing and, always working stealthily, their sole concern is power – its acquisition, retention, and its usage for the North.

Anything else matters not”.

“This is where, I suspect, ex- President Ibrahim Babangida’s intervention became inevitable. Past master in political trickery, I verily believe that  General Babangida is  working for the North, not  just for a party. And his involvement is the climax,  not the  beginning, of  a plot  which started as soon as President Buhari was sworn in for his second term. Or  when, in Nigeria’s political history, has Northern elders been this involved in who emerged the presidential candidate of any political party? None, of course, but as I see things, the need to maintain the status quo, post Buhari, has become the urgency of now for the Northern oligarchy.”

In Atiku, they chose very deftly.

But do Nigerians, any longer need a soothsayer to tell them exactly how arrogant, self -opinionated and disdainful of  them, a PDP government under Atiku Abubakar would be, seeing he is already acting like a Sheik? Nigerians will, however, remember that they have been forewarned about Atiku, by none other than former President Olusegun Obasanjo under whom he served for 8 years as Vice President.

In his book,  My Watch – Obasanjo  wrote about Atiku’s: “trust in money to buy his way out on all issues, his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety, truth and national interest for self, and selfish interest”, exactly the attributes we saw on display in his emergence as the PDP presidential candidate.

So disgusted with Atiku was Obasanjo he said later: “With what I know of  him, God will never forgive me if I support Atiku for President”.

I invite Nigerians to think through how, and why, a candidate who had gone all the rounds of Nigeria, campaigning to be the PDP presidential candidate, would suddenly, indeed, at the very last minute, opt out of the election to pave way for another candidate.

But no matter how powerful these people are, or believe they are, do Nigerians deserve all this shambolic treatment, like they are not the ones who are going to vote in the election?

I have news for them.

Since INEC has done everything it could to make our elections credible, I trust that PDP shall have its due comeuppance, come February, 2023.

“When religion is used for political purposes, it empties religion of its eternal meaning and becomes just one more cynical method of acquiring power” -Very Rev Dr Okegbile.

On his now rave of the moment, POLITICS TODAY, Seun Okinbaloye, recently asked Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state whether he would have remained indifferent if it was a party other than the APC – his party – that was fielding a Muslim – Muslim ticket in the 2023 Presidential election, to which he answered in the affirmative, stressing that what Nigeria needs now is competence that can be gauged from a candidate’s track record and, if I may add,  a commitment, and the ability, to right the mistakes which have splintered Nigerians menacingly along ethnic divides.

On the same day Akeredolu was saying that, Governor Samuel Lalong, his Plateau state counterpart, and the APC  Presidential Campaign Director – General, on a visit to the Villa, was also taken up by journalists on the same issue of Muslim – Muslim ticket.

Realising the single minded determination of some misdirected people, in cahoots with thousands of ethnic nihilists who, the other day, turned the otherwise well- intended effort to check police brutality, aka  #ENDSARS#, to an agendum to incinerate Lagos plus, of course, a coterie of CAN members apparently unable to forget those giddy days of very profitable liaison with the Goodluck Jonathan government, to equate the Muslim – Muslim ticket to an Islamisation agenda, I consider it worthwhile to let them benefit from the very timely article below. I hereby crave the permission of the Very Rev. Dr Okegbile to have it published in full, in the hope that knowledge will set these naysayers free.

The much respected Man of God wrote as follows in

TINUBU BEYOND NIGERIA’S ISLAMIZATION:

“Twenty two years ago, I was sent by Methodist Church Nigeria to serve as Presiding Chaplain, Chapel of Christ the Light (Interdenominational), Alausa, and later at the State House Chapel, Marina, Lagos. My pastoral work at the chapel afforded me a close understanding and religious maturity of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate, of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), and a former governor of Lagos, a state that is a microcosm of Nigeria in terms of religious diversity.

His matured management of religion as a way of life, ensured inter-religious harmony in Nigeria’s most industrialised state.

Asiwaju Tinubu’s composition of his state Executive Council was a model of religious harmony, trust and love in Lagos State. Nations fail not due to climate, geography or culture. In the words of leading academics Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson, nation fails due to lack of ‘sound institutions that allows virtuous circles of innovation, economic expansion, more widely-held wealth and peace.’

Asiwaju Tinubu’s ability to blend economics, politics and history as a powerful and persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty has potentials to place Nigeria on the path to peace and prosperity.

Thanks to God for the conclusion of all the political parties primaries and selections of candidates for 2023 general election in Nigeria. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s ‘hard decision’ and choice of a Muslim-running mate is not about Nigeria’s Islamisation or a look down on Christianity in Nigeria. Just as it is understandable and right for the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to express our feelings and fears about the choice of Muslim-Muslim ticket, it is important to note that ‘when religion is used for political purposes, it empties religion of its eternal meaning and becomes just one more cynical method of acquiring power.’

Read Also: Nigeria: Can a nation divided by religion achieve 4IR?

One is very sad about the unabated killings and kidnappings especially against the Christians in Nigeria but we must be very watchful not to allow any blasphemous campaign aimed at provoking anger against the person and aspiration of Asiwaju Tinubu. With practical experiences and encounters with Asiwaju Tinubu and his wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, human life is very sacred.

Asiwaju Tinubu’s leadership vision for a better Nigeria is able to provide an assurance and commitment for Christian safety and freedom of worship. As a former governor who laid the 24 years development plan for Lagos State, Asiwaju Tinubu and his wife also instituted and hosted Lagos State annual Christian Thanksgiving Service at Lagos House, Marina, always led by CAN leaders. It was during the tenure of Asiwaju Tinubu as governor of Lagos State that Lagos State Christian Pilgrim Board was given a lifting up and constituted with members drawn across all the blocs in CAN.

I think CAN should give Asiwaju Tinubu the benefit of the doubt. This is based on the consideration of his political manifestoes, personal testimonies as a husband to a Christian wife and a pastor, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, and his openness to Christian community and leaders across Nigeria. Asiwaju Tinubu while serving as a governor of Lagos State did not stop her daughter, now Iya Loja – Folasade Tinubu- Ojo from being a member of a Christian church in Lagos.

I was introduced to Asiwaju Tinubu by Rev J Abimbola Odunlami, a former Conference Public Relation Officer, Methodist Church Nigeria. Upon my appointment as conference editor, Methodist Church Nigeria in 1993, I was put under the mentoring of Rev Odunlami. It was during one of my visits to Rev Odunlami’s residence at Victoria Island, Lagos, that I first met Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

In 2000, under the leadership of Asiwaju Tinubu, Lagos State government sought the support of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Lagos State, to volunteer a Christian clergy for the pastoral oversight of the newly built Chapel of Christ the Light (Interdenominational), Alausa, Ikeja. Only two churches responded namely: Methodist Church Nigeria and Foursquare Gospel Church of Nigeria. I was sent by Methodist Church Nigeria and became the first presiding chaplain. Asiwaju Tinubu and his wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu were very regular in the chapel worships at Alausa especially during state’s special functions.

Since the creation of Lagos State in 1967, there was no worship place built for Christian worship in the governor’s residence at Marina House except a mosque built by the past administrations. In 2003, under the leadership of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, for the first time, the State House Chapel, Marina was built and dedicated with all the CAN leadership in attendance. Asiwaju Tinubu’s support to his wife enabled her to pray and lead other Christian staffs and friends at the State House in the mid-week, Sunday worships, and monthly all-night vigil at the State House Chapel, Marina, Lagos.

Asiwaju Tinubu’s form of religiosity is filled with love and welfare of others, Christian or Muslim. Asiwaju Tinubu’s adherence to the tenets of religion is about the practice of equality that benefits ‘all because talent is no respecter of faith; intellect is not limited to one religion. Diversity enhances societies while insularity destroys it.’

Asiwaju Tinubu not only demonstrates religious tolerance, he accommodates and ‘believes in that cardinal principle of the Nigerian Constitution that no one should suffer discrimination on the basis of creed or opinion”.

Just as the nihilists were losing their heads, occupying social media space, spewing inanities came forth ‘a man for the moment’, a well- born Igbo, with a well- rounded education, and an elected representative of his people; a  contemporaneous state governor with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to boot, to bear testimony to Tinubu as the “ hardest working Nigerian politician in modern history.”

I refer here to H.E (Dr) Chimaroke Nnamani, a senator of the Federal Republic who, despite the inherent danger, could not shy away from saying it as it is, even though  he may now be a marked man back home.

Nnamani wrote, inter alia, as follows:

“Bola Tinubu, the 12th governor of Lagos State, was a co-governor with me (1999–2007). As colleagues we worked together in pioneering the first meetings of Conferences of Southern Governors which we interchanged hosting the first and second and visited Enugu for the meetings.

That meeting brought to the front burner issues of Federalism both Physical and Fiscal. I still remember the educative contributions of Gov. Bisi Akande.

I must confess of occasional envy as we interchanged ideas and implemented reform decisions. He had more resources and quickly implemented the full requirements of ACCESS to Justice reform project. Making the Lagos State Criminal Justice System, one of the best in Africa.

The Judges stopped writing physical notes. More advanced vehicles were provided and participation in Conferences guaranteed. Our two Attorneys General worked very closely. Mrs Gloria Egbuji steered us through Access to Justice Program, the now famous Dr. Joe Abah assisted and supervised, under the direction of DFID.

I recall a National Competition on Reform advances amongst States covering Governance, Transparencies, Budgeting and Ease of doing business. Supervised by the Economic Adviser to the President ( a guy from Benue State), DFID and other development partners also participated. Enugu emerged tops, followed closely by either Lagos State or the FCT. Enugu also established the first Poverty Reduction Study, Review, Guidelines and Implementation before the Federal Government or indeed any other State, verified by Dr Joe Abah, former DFID staff in Enugu. Enugu tried considering our Financial dilemma. The Justice system also paid close attention to Women and Children welfare.

Both governments pioneered Development Centers. For obvious political reasons he was denied due Federal allocations for years. He kept ploughing on! His Justice sector also provided jobs to many spouses of non Lagosians working and residing in Lagos. I had cause to engage with him on jobs for Enugu spouses. In the Education Sector he introduced Tutor General and raised the bar for earning by teachers. In Enugu we approved that Primary School Teachers could rise to level 16.

We also approved elevation for those who obtained graduate qualifications. I also admired his pupil Governor for a day. Somehow I never got to it. Tinubu also directly intervened in Enugu spouses who had issues as teachers. In the Health Sector,