The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Buhari, APC and 2015

    Buhari, APC and 2015

    Until Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, dropped out of the six-horse race to pick the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket for the presidential contest, it was hard to tell whether former military head of state, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, would have achieved runaway victory. I rooted for Hon Tambuwal for reasons I had spelt out in this place at least three times. I expected he would win or come near doing so for possessing believable democratic credentials, for being liberal and gregarious without being populist and pedestrian, and for being modern, expansive, intellectual, intuitive and full of solicitudes, as his fellow lawmakers can attest. But as I warned here last week, would the country still be ready for him some four years or more down the road? Of the five aspirants left in the race, I think that notwithstanding his weaknesses and adeptness at courting controversies, Gen Buhari is today easily the man to beat. This will be his fourth try, and the last. His 2011 effort was his best attempt ever, physically, emotionally and logistically. However, I think he will run the 2015 race virtually in a state of suspended animation, buoyed up by other people’s emotional capital, logistical deployment and physical rigour.

    The other four aspirants can’t hold the candle to Gen Buhari, notwithstanding his advanced age and sworn mendicancy. Abubakar Atiku, for reasons best known to nature, is dogged by bad press, some of it actively cultivated and insinuated by his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nothing was ever really proved against him, but Chief Obasanjo and many others seem to believe that the former vice president lives above his means, procures favours with disarming malfeasance, and dispenses them equally mala fide. Chief Obasanjo is notorious for never proving any allegation he makes, and is in fact never interested in substantiating anything were he to be deliberately and violently prodded. The country has unfortunately embraced the same notoriety, against which Alhaji Atiku will constantly come a cropper. And given the military and political exigencies of the moment, it is doubtful whether the easy-going affirmation of Alhaji Atiku, his self-assuredness, his accessibility and consensual politics, and his talent for head-hunting excellent technocrats will avail much or persuade the electorate to give him a chance.

    Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State holds a lot of promise both as a thinker and as an administrator. In Kano he has provided the state a safe pair of very steady hands, and has handled governance with the care, trust and even-handedness the constitution quintessentially envisages. He has rebuffed the xenophobia rage that lathers many parts of Nigeria, and promoted the kind of ethnic amity Nigerians have always dreamt of, and a commercial city like Kano cannot do without. But Kano has been to Governor Kwankwaso a cocoon, from which he had before his presidential race seldom ventured. His visage and inner qualities show him quite capable of ruling a complex society like Nigeria, but running a presidential race, let alone winning it, requires long preparation, venturing out to other parts of the country, and staying evocatively and munificently in public glare.

    I am afraid I am not persuaded that either of the remaining two aspirants, to wit, the intrepid publisher Sam Nda-Isaiah and Governor Rochas Okorocha, is actually serious or prepared for the race; nor is it clear they can muster enough goodwill to run a race against such an implacable foe as President Goodluck Jonathan, or whether they have the calibre to trigger excitement and emotions in Nigerians seeking romantically for knights and miracles against the unrelenting harassment by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Mr Nda-Isaiah is young, energetic and a gifted columnist. But as his columns indicate, he is also impatient, and often acerbic and cocksure of everything. Owelle Okorocha is eloquent, empathetic but sometimes grandiloquent. But either as governor or presidential aspirant, he is often detached and distracted, quite unable sometimes to match input with output, his modest talents with the lofty goals and accomplishments of his boyish dreams.

    The APC presidential primary will in my opinion revolve around the challenges Nigeria is facing. The economy is not yet in a tailspin, but it is nearly spinning out of control, its managers lacking in the requisite initiative and discipline to rein it in. Insecurity is rife in all parts of the country, with emphasis on the insurgency in the Northeast. If it persist for much longer, there is no certainty the entire country will not be engulfed. Nigeria is at the moment truly distressed, buffeted on all sides by political rancour, socio-economic paralysis and decay, deliberate attacks on the constitution and civil liberties by the government and secret service, and wearied by a terrible feeling of ennui that has lingered for more than four or five years. Few doubt the incapacity of the Jonathan presidency to grapple with these monumental problems, and no one doubts his government’s absolute lack of discipline, motivation and ambition. Whatever doubts exist concern the ability of the APC to give us a candidate able to provide effective leadership at this trying moment. The PDP has offered Dr Jonathan, and he is absolutely feckless.

    Perhaps in quieter times, the talents of Alhaji Atiku, Governor Kwankwaso, Mr Nda-Isaiah and Owelle Okocha would recommend them suitably for the presidency. But at this time of pressing danger and mortal threat to national security, the electorate and the APC would be disposed to someone with a safe pair of hands than the dreamy and distracted Dr Jonathan has offered or is ever able to offer. It seems to me that the only man in the APC able to subdue the threats of the moment is the inflexible and emotionless general from Daura. He has been head of state once, and he has had the experience of many battles from which he never flinched. He has expressed his readiness, even covets the chance, to lead once again and re-establish order in this increasingly fissiparous country. The APC will give him the ticket, for he seems both prepared to do battle, and he appears the only one among the five aspirants able to face Dr Jonathan implacability for implacability, toe-to-toe, head-to-head, and if necessary, malice for malice.

    The APC is not unduly finicky to worry that a Buhari presidency could become intractably distant from constitutional reality, a sentiment the country itself has expressed many times given the general’s antecedents. But if they desire to win the election, and if the country hankers after order and discipline without which development cannot take place, their best bet will be the retired army general. He often seems too set in his ways, surrounds himself with a coterie of often hawkish and insular officials and technocrats, and some of his ideas hark back to distant times and eras. But the party will assume the confidence to mould him and reorient him, and as a disciplined officer and leader, he will constantly remind himself of the supremacy of the constitution. These sentiments will be shared by the country, for the alternative is too grim to contemplate, an alternative replete with Jonathan induced failures, paralysis, indiscipline, mismanagement, cowardice, poor judgement, gaffes, unfathomable avarice, arrogance, nepotism and parochialism.

    I think the choice before the APC is clear. They will have a few misgivings about the stubborn general, but the know which side their bread is buttered. As for the country in February 2015, it is presumed they understand they have reached a fork in the road, where the wrong turn will unleash catastrophic consequences. Unlike the APC which is expected to choose right in their presidential primary this week, the country may still entertain the view that it has the luxuries of time and choice. I don’t think they do. Indulgent and hardhearted as they may seem, they will probably, at the last moment, step back from the brink.

  • Yoruba leaders’ presumptuous OAU meeting and endorsement

    Yoruba leaders’ presumptuous OAU meeting and endorsement

    It is not certain why the Yoruba politicians and conservative opinion moulders who convened a Yoruba conference at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife two Fridays ago described their gathering as Yoruba Unity Conference. Nor is it clear why they needed to bring the conference down to a university in the Southwest simply to endorse President Goodluck Jonathan. However, in line with their customary indifference to the genuine feelings and agitations of the Yoruba, and their natural presumption of what the Yoruba want, they do not really owe us an explanation. For even if they offer us one, it is unlikely to be satisfactory. Indeed, the conference speaks very eloquently to the political decay afflicting the country, a decay that has not spared the Southwest.

    The conferees, all of them PDP members or sympathisers, acknowledged that the meeting was convened by the Committee on Yoruba Progress, an organisation based suspiciously in Abuja and reportedly inspired by the eminent sybarite, Bode George, a former military governor of Ondo State, chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP,) and now vicious hater of the political opposition. Fittingly, the communiqué issued at the end of the conference addressed him as chairman of the conference. In his address, he rhapsodises the Yoruba, quite unmindful of just how painfully derelict he himself is of the values he so copiously attributes to the people he claims to represent. If nothing else, it was clear the purpose of the conference was not any altruistic reiteration of Yoruba unity or advancement of their manifest destiny, as they incoherently and inexpertly suggested in their communiqué. Their aim was to position themselves openly, unashamedly and obscenely as PDP politicians to curry the guileful Dr Jonathan’s favour of.

    Chief George was not unsurprisingly supported by other Southwest politicians purporting to be the leaders of the Yoruba. They include the garrulous Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, a man whose mind is so fevered that it is continuously agitated either by external and internal stimuli; Iyiola Omisore, the troubled and troubling candidate of the PDP in the Osun governorship race; Senator Femi Okunrounmu, the most ardent legitimiser of the recent barren national conference; and Ebenezer Babatope, the former progressive whose conscience has mummified over time into extreme conservatism and reaction. Others were Hon Mulikat Adeola-Akande, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives and servile legislative opportunist, and a host of traditional rulers mouthing dubieties, small-time politicians eager to sell principles they never had, and vengeful elder statesmen roaming and hoofing the Southwest.

    In their haste to organise a conference, they forgot that OAU would be writing their semester examinations, for which the conference would be a major disruption. Naturally, a controversy has broken out about how the peeved students reacted to Dr Jonathan’s disruptive presence. Some students clearly demonstrated against the needless visit; but others, including some leaders of the students’ union, welcomed the president and even gleefully posed for photographs with him.

    It is unusual for OAU students’ union leaders to be so inured to progressivism as to feel honoured to take photographs with a president who has done his worst to destroy the constitution, undermine the rule of law, prove so impotent in the face of insurgency in the Northeast, fatally ignore the fate of the 219 abducted Chibok schoolgirls, and enunciate and implement series of divisively ethnic and sectarian policies. Did such odiousness escape the OAU student leaders? Second, the students justified their hobnobbing with the president on the excuse that they needed to place their protest against hike in school fees before him. If the president agrees to reduce the fees, could the students correspondingly get him to increase the subvention to their school?

    The rot everywhere has obviously spread beyond the political class, a subset of which is the fractious, vindictive and retrogressive Yoruba political elite that convened in Ife simply to endorse Dr Jonathan and massage his ego. Even students now show a disturbing lack of sensitivity to the salient issues of their time and other grave issues with far-reaching implications for the future. Nigeria is in far worse trouble than its people imagine. And the Yoruba, alas, are in the deep end of the trouble. Those who gather at OAU two Fridays ago to endorse Dr Jonathan claim to be more Awoist than anybody else. But would Chief Awolowo in his mildest progressivism ever think of endorsing Dr Jonathan, especially after Chibok, invasion of National Assembly and harassment of the opposition? Would Chief Awolowo ever countenance a shift in election date as Ayo Adebanjo, an Afenifere chieftain has insensitively done?

  • Sad to see Tambuwal abandon presidential race

    Sad to see Tambuwal abandon presidential race

    On November 2, I suggested in this place that should Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, enter the presidential race, I would be prepared to lend him my unqualified support. when I made the offer, I didn’t think his defection from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), nor his principled opposition to both the undemocratic practices of his former party and President Goodluck Jonathan’s uninspiring leadership, nor yet the huge cost to his comfort and esteem in the PDP were all for the purpose of winning the governorship race of his home state, Sokoto. If his exertions were simply to get him the governorship, I felt a little bewildered, it would be like killing a fly with a sledgehammer. At a point, he reassuringly did seem like he actually wanted to run for president. Indeed, when some lawmakers in the House of Representatives bought the expression of interest and nomination forms for him, I exhaled in relief; for even before November 2, I had twice admonished him to run, and asked the APC to lend him a strong helping hand.

    Sadly, Hon Tambuwal has now abandoned the presidential race in favour of the governorship race of his state. Two reasons probably explain his manoeuvres. One is that he had no guarantee he could get the presidential ticket, let alone win in February, in a race where he would have to first crush both the redoubtable Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general and former head of state, and former vice president Abubakar Atiku, a consummate party denizen and schemer, before finally locking horns with the desperate and increasingly autocratic Dr Jonathan. Two is the fear by many APC faithful that his entry into the race could create a lot of disaffection and turmoil that would fracture the party and weaken it before decision day in February. Considering how sensitive the Buhari campaign and image have become in this race, and the huge reputation and expectation of Alhaji Atiku that are on the line in the same race, it is probably true that disaffection could arise. If they lost, the party could not guarantee they would help a Tambuwal campaign.

    A third reason is advanced by analysts, some of whom are probably motivated by inexplicably venomous dislike for the opposition APC. They suggest that Hon Tambuwal was brought into the presidential race by some APC leaders in order to either checkmate Gen Buhari or cajole him into granting indeterminate concessions and future reprieves, since he is believed to be too rigid for party leaders’ comfort and seemed already constrained by a close and hawkish cabal. In all their explanations, there was no hint or mention of the sensible argument that APC leaders could in fact be propelled by the more altruistic reasons of putting forward the best, most modern, youthful and truly liberal candidate who, apart from being intellectually adequate and socially and politically flexible, would also be a firm president and consensus builder.

    I am persuaded that party leaders and analysts like myself were motivated by clearly noble and deeply philosophical reasons in our support for Hon Tambuwal. I do not think any party leader who briefly courted the idea of presenting him for the top race should feel remorseful, as if either Gen Buhari or Alhaji Atiku had been betrayed. Either of these two gentlemen may appear to display grit and readiness for the final jousting with Dr Jonathan, but there are enough reasons to convince everyone of Hon Tambuwal’s bona fides and suitability for the top office. The plain fact, perhaps somewhat sweeping and depressing to supporters of the two ageing politicians, is that Hon Tambuwal, by disposition and intellect, and by speech and human relations, towers above Gen Buhari and Alhaji Atiku. These conclusions are not without sound reasons.

    A consideration of the circumstances of Hon Tambuwal’s emergence as Speaker in 2011 does not reveal someone whose politics and ideas are woven around repaying those who made his elevation possible. His politics and ideas are genuine. Nor does his emergence reek of the idiosyncratic opportunism that lathers and hobbles Nigerian politics. In fact, he has remained uncommonly true and faithful to the goals and objectives that prompted his emergence. He and his sponsors and supporters needed to mould a House of Representatives free of the manipulation and meddlesomeness of the executive branch, and free of the crass mechanicality that compels the ruling party to zone the chamber’s leadership to the point of ridicule. The lower house also needed to be weaned off the servility that tended to subordinate its thoughts and actions unthinkingly to both the party in power and the men in office. Hon Tambuwal’s innate independence therefore combined seamlessly with the defiant posture of APC leaders, leading them to summon the boldness needed to chart an enviable identity for the House of Representatives. Not only has Hon Tambuwal succeeded in maintaining and asserting the lower chamber’s independence, and has steered it towards enacting laws and passing great resolutions worthy of any democracy, he has administered its affairs so evenhandedly that even his enemies grudgingly admire him.

    Closely leashed to his style of administration and lawmaking is the indisputable fact that the Speaker has managed elegantly to adhere to principles and values that define classical democracy. It was not enough for him to protect the lower chamber from unhealthy influences and manipulations; in his view, legislative independence must be harnessed for the promotion of great values, whether practical as in defeating bad laws, or philosophical as in promoting both the doctrine of separation of powers and checkmating the executive’s constant flirtation with dictatorship. He resisted and resented the fawning practice of any member of the lower chamber representing members of the executive branch in ceremonies, as senators and their leaders are wont to do. Under Hon Tambuwal, the lower chamber quickly perceived Dr Jonathan’s dictatorial tendency, and sensibly built legislative and ideational ramparts against it. Until recent events blew up their delusions, many analysts, including the most rabid, never believed that Dr Jonathan exuded only a superficial form of democracy.

    Importantly too, Hon Tambuwal has behaved more statesmanlike than any of his competitors for the top prize inside or outside the APC. Dr Jonathan never gave a good speech, does not in fact appear capable of writing one, and in view of his persistent poor judgement, is incapable of coming across as a president or statesman. When Gen Buhari, Alhaji Atiku and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State  gave their declaration speeches a few weeks back, they were tedious, ponderous, lacking in the stirring philosophy that enriches politics and even ennobles society, and portentously detached from Nigeria’s complex history and cultures. But Hon Tambuwal gives speeches that resonate, whether he writes them himself or not; in any case they sound as he speaks. When in March he addressed lawmakers on the massacre of students of Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State, it was celebrated by many as the speech the president should have given. (See Box). Had he been president, he would have visited the town and condoled with distraught parents. But in his response to the massacre, Dr Jonathan gave a bland and terse statement, and ignored the value of a condolence visit.

    Hon Tambuwal’s exit from the race is regrettable. I do not know whether if he had stayed in the race he would have won, but I think we would have made a great president of him, and he a great nation of us. Now, he has turned his gaze on Sokoto. I suspect that going by his national stature and accomplishment, not to say his character and integrity, he will probably win the governorship race. But I must wonder whether Sokoto, notwithstanding the powerful history of its caliphate forebears, can contain a man of his standing and eminence in this 21st Century. I do not insult Sokoto. As former French president Charles de Gaulle once argued, greatness is not just an abstraction; it is contingent, among other things, upon the importance of the territory a ruler is presiding over, the size of its economy, and the continental or international context in which the ruler is operating. Hon Tambuwal will be frustrated by the smallness of Sokoto, its location in the remote north-west of the country, the size of its economy and the near placidity of its politics. He will have his constant gaze focused on Abuja, and he will yearn for the national tapestry a consummate political artist and social philosopher and engineer like him love to write great history on.

    More, a thinker like Hon Tambuwal will ponder whether time and events, with their often cruelly wrought labyrinth, will wait for him in four or eight years from now to ferry him to the presidential mansion we think he will ennoble. We recognise his talents; but will his principles endure till the time is right for his coronation and canonisation? As many southern lawmakers in the House showed by sticking with him in his face-off with the Jonathan presidency, and northern lawmakers and political elites indicate by refusing to join the nefarious plot to unseat or destroy him, the forces of the moment have been good to him. It is impossible to tell, however, what the future will look like, even if he moves mountains to remain true to the principles and values that have made him an indomitable fighter and politician.

    * Next week: Buhari, APC and 2015

  • Tambuwal on the Buni Yadi massacre

    Tambuwal on the Buni Yadi massacre

    “…On February 25, 2014, the very day the House adjourned Plenary, Nigeria suffered a horrendous terrorist attack that struck a fatal blow at the heart and soul of the nation and desecrated values that decent peoples of all nations hold dear. On that night, about 59 students of the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State were killed in the most heinous manner. Some of our future national leaders were mowed down in gruesome circumstances in their sleep. Some were shot dead while many were burnt beyond recognition…

    “When innocent, harmless and defenceless women and children become the targets of these heartless murderous bandits; when the lives of sleeping children are so callously snuffed out, it becomes clear that these agents of terror have murdered sleep and they henceforth deserve none.

    “Whatever grievances the terrorists harbour against the government of Nigeria, Nigeria’s innocent children have nothing to do with it. Nigeria’s children bear no responsibility for either policy making or policy implementation in Nigeria. It is therefore an act of cowardice worthy of ringing condemnation to target the children, to strike at those who are not only innocent but are unable to strike back or defend themselves. There can be no reason, no justification and no acceptable excuse for this act of mindless brutality. Whatever message the terrorists set out to send to the Nigerian government has been drowned out by the cries for justice by the blood of these innocent martyrs.

    “It is to remember these innocent children and other victims of violence in this country, that the House has declared today ‘A day of mourning’ to express our collective outrage on those killings that have gone on for far too long.

    “My dear Colleagues, please travel with me on an imaginary journey to the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi.

    “Picture the scene as the terrorists creep into the hostels and the children begin to wake up one after the other, with their eyes heavy with sleep, each of them convinced that this is some nightmare.

    Picture the chaos in the rooms and the terror of the faces of the children as they watch the murderers attack the first set of students, the ones nearest to the entrance, and the students begin to realise that what is happening is not a nightmare but a reality far harsher that any nightmare the mind of a child can construct.

    “Hear the panic in the voices of the children as they begin to scream for help, from God, their parents or security. But no help will come tonight.

    “Feel the unbearable horror of this night and hear the fading cries of these children as they finally succumb to the murderous onslaught.

    “Finally, my dear Colleagues, imagine that it is your own child in the hostels at Buni Yadi on this hellish night.

    “I can hear the voice of the Father of Aliyu Yola, one of the victims of the school massacre crying, ‘Aliyu was scared to go back to school after the last holiday. I forced him to resume not knowing that he will never come back to me again.’

    As Jodi Picoult writes in her book, “My Sister’s Keeper”, in the English Language, there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for a parent that loses a child…”

     

    Excerpted from a speech by Hon Aminu Tambuwal on March 11 during a special session on the killing of 59 students of the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State.

  • Jonathan a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship

    Jonathan a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship

    For those who think democracy is alive and well under President Goodluck Jonathan, who believe that organising elections is about the long and short of democracy, Thursday’s combined security forces’ assault upon the National Assembly to bar Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, from presiding over the affairs of the lower chamber should open their eyes. And for those who entertain the fanciful idea that Dr Jonathan is as honest with his protestations of being a democrat as his dramatic gestures and verbal flailing suggest, I offer to dreamy analysts his vengeful attacks against the opposition, governors who irritate him and his wife, the press which he loathes, and a host of other politicians and institutions that dare to sneeze near his majesty. It is doubtful whether we can find a president like Dr Jonathan, not even Olusegun Obasanjo, who effortlessly unites in himself such contradictory passions that pretend to speak to liberalism as they rhapsodise totalitarianism.

    Doyin Okupe, Dr Jonathan’s impetuous spokesman on public affairs, has struggled to dissociate the presidency from the police attack on the lawmakers. But there can be no justification for the horrendous attacks, the tear gas, the intolerable affront to the number four citizen, the display of ignorance of the police who continue to defend their atrocious behaviour, subvert the constitution, and see themselves as the private security organisation of the president and the ruling party. And there can be no hiding the fact that the attacks were inspired by the presidency and executed by presidential aides who have managed to convince themselves that their interpretation of the role and powers of the Nigerian president allow for the sickening brutality they exhibited before the whole world last week.

    The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, it is clear, does not have the strength of character to resist the presidency’s unconstitutional behaviour, nor it seems does he even have the disposition and knowledge to draw a line between the president’s interest and national interest. And though he cannot claim ignorance of the limitations imposed on his office by the Police Act and the constitution, he is precisely the sort of official whose eagerness to please his employer is his lifeblood, as his withdrawal of Hon Tambuwal’s security aides showed shortly before he suddenly merited confirmation as the substantive IGP.

    It is inconceivable that Mr Abba acted independently in planning and executing the disgraceful assault on the National Assembly. The police claimed they received intelligence reports of plans by miscreants to cause mayhem at the legislature; but shouldn’t they have taken the leadership of the legislature into confidence and joined them in thwarting the efforts of the hoodlums and protecting the number four citizen? It is embarrassing the egregious and childish lies the police often tell. However, it has emerged that the real reasons for Thursday’s madness were connected with impeachment moves, one by pro-Tambuwal forces against the president, and the other by pro-presidency forces against Hon Tambuwal over his October defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It would have been foolish of the pro-Tambuwal forces to tamely give in to the police lockout, as some legal and political purists wanted, and then perhaps later resort futilely to litigation.

    The police were doubtless encouraged to desecrate the Speaker’s office and person because they knew the presidency was both remorselessly opposed to Hon Tambuwal and was willing to seize on any excuse to humiliate him. In June, at Hotel 17 in Kaduna, venue of a conference to which the Speaker was invited, soldiers subjected him to an embarrassing and provocative search. That was one of the earliest signals that the Speaker’s independence would not be countenanced by Dr Jonathan’s imperial presidency. The Senate did not see that humiliation as a dangerous precedent, let alone join hands to fight it. The harassments have since continued, culminating in the physical attack against him by the police and hooded secret service agents on Thursday. Since his defection to the APC, and notwithstanding the support he gets from his fellow lawmakers and the constitution, the presidency has been obsessed with unhorsing Hon Tambuwal using the security forces. Unknown to them, such attacks and subversion of the constitution in turn undermine their own legitimacy. They also misread the times, unable to appreciate how dangerously unstable the world has suddenly become, where revolutions and anarchy are precipitated by the tiniest of provocations. The mood in Nigeria is super tense and fragile. Does the rampaging Dr Jonathan know this?

    Though Hon Tambuwal survived the attack planned mainly to unseat him last Thursday, he should rest assured it will not be the last, for the Jonathan presidency will get increasingly desperate in its plans to get rid of the Speaker by any means, fair or foul. The president’s understanding of leadership, like Governor Ayo Fayose’s, is completely distorted by traditional and monarchical influences and a poor appreciation of the concept of multi-party democracy. In spite of his constant expostulation about democratic tenets, much of it lacking in depth and coherence, Dr Jonathan has behaved more frequently like an autocrat. After managing to subvert the Senate and co-opting it as an appendage of the presidency, he has sought to similarly castrate the House of Representatives. He would have succeeded had the Speaker lacked the character to stand up to the anti-democratic tendencies of the Jonathan presidency.

    However, Dr Jonathan’s limited success in stultifying democratic practices in the legislature has not discouraged him from trying over and over again. He is satisfied that the heads of the security services lack the character to draw the line between presidential orders and the provisions of the constitution. In addition, his aides grovel before him, desperate to keep their jobs no matter what principles they are forced to disavow. The Council of State is too polite and soulless to caution the president. Some geopolitical zones, especially the Southeast and the South-South, have also completely surrendered to the president’s whims, eager to dine with him and massage his ego. As a sign of final humiliation, Nigerians have uncritically allowed Dr Jonathan to exploit religious sensibilities, thereby dividing the country largely along Christian and Muslim lines. Even the usually questioning Southwest has embraced Dr Jonathan’s hypocrisies, hypnotised by a barren national conference designed principally to hoodwink and deceive.

    With the entire country taking leave of its senses and metamorphosing into a parched land of sterile thinkers, the House of Representatives quickly became, in addition to a small section of the media, the champion of democracy and liberalism. The situation required the president to seek for imaginative ways of working with the critical House of Representatives, and harnessing the opinions and suggestions of the opposition and diverse critics for the country’s betterment. Instead, he chose not to understand the utility of dissent, and prefers to either compel support or destroy the opposition. Sadly, the president himself is surrounded by aides, security advisers and military chiefs who find it much satisfying and rewarding to tell the president what he wants to hear, indulging in the practiced buffoonery that has laid many African countries waste.

    It is unlikely Dr Jonathan will caution either himself or his overzealous police over the Tambuwal affair. He is also unlikely to find intelligent ways of getting his hostage presidency to relate with critics and opponents in a democratic manner. Thursday’s attack on the Speaker and other lawmakers, the feverish intrigues to undermine opponents, the lack of imagination in the fight against Boko Haram, the reliance on hunters to fight wars, like Sierra Leone’s Kamajors (hunters) were made to do during that West African country’s implosion, and the subversion of opposition states and governors who disagree with the Jonathan presidency, seem all designed to produce perhaps the worst dictator Nigeria has ever had. By every consideration, we are in fact only a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship. If he is allowed, Dr Jonathan will talk wonderfully about the 2015 elections, but will surreptitiously devise means of subverting the polls with all the viciousness he can muster.

    Our carelessness produced Dr Jonathan in 2011, a man so ill-suited to the demands of leadership in a modern and complex society. If he does not drive a permanent wedge between ethnic groups and religions before the next polls, we would be lucky to emerge unscathed should we have the apocalyptic misfortune of electing him into office next year. Should that happen, the first casualty will of course be democracy, followed by an exploding country no one can manage.

  • ‘Baby Doc’ Fayose: usurper, propagandist, despot

    ‘Baby Doc’ Fayose: usurper, propagandist, despot

    Justifying the coup he plotted and executed in the Ekiti State House of Assembly last Thursday, the same day a similar madness was unfolding in Abuja, Governor Ayo Fayose claimed the leadership of the assembly had abandoned work. He was uninterested in what the constitution says, or the fact that he virtually drove the lawmakers out of town. Seven lawmakers out of the state’s 26 lawmakers could unseat Speaker Adewale Omirin and other legislative leaders, the governor and his rebel lawmakers argued. They also suggested that the circumstances of their rebellion and the continuing opposition of the APC lawmakers to the governor were more salient than the issue of whether or not seven members formed a quorum when they sat, or whether or not the constitution supported their actions.

    Mr Fayose’s style is straight from Nazi book of propaganda. First demonise the victim using the most dismal forms of misinformation and disinformation, then savage him by unconscionably distorting the law and constitution, and then finally keep the electorate tethered to lies and sated on a diet of sweeping propaganda, creating a siege mentality and predicating subsequent subversion of the constitution on the victims supposed sins. After Mr Fayose was sworn in I had thrice attempted to draw the attention of Ekiti to the style of their governor and the complex he suffered from. But somehow, they had convinced themselves that the state’s enemy is somewhere in Lagos, as the governor alleges, and the resources of the state are plundered by that unseen and distant enemy.

    Having found the formula efficacious, Mr Fayose is likely to deploy it in all its bitter severity until the state is fed up with his atavism, the upheavals he is stirring, the decay enveloping the state’s democratic and judicial infrastructure, and the extension of his abuse of power to include his erstwhile supporters. Recall that he began his manipulation of the state even before he won the election and before he was inaugurated. He made a bogey out of APC leaders and accused former governor Kayode Fayemi of kowtowing to them in Lagos. He also accused Dr Fayemi of building a palatial mansion and founding a university in Ghana at the expense of Ekiti people. Once he won the election, and knowing he had neither a programme to govern nor the acumen to offer civilised leadership, he began to inflame the Ekiti mob, priming them for attacks against his enemies. Soon he was marshalling an attack on the judiciary, virtually intimidating them into silence. And he has now turned his gaze on the legislature to weaken it and destroy it by a series of intimidating measures. Rather than build Ekiti and make it a pride among states, he is set on destroying its image, dividing its people and wrecking whatever is left of its weakened institutions.

    Mr Fayose, at his inauguration and at other fora, said he was a changed man, sobered by age and his Christian ethic. His government, he promised, would be inclusive, and he would offer Ekiti the leadership it yearned for and probably deserved. Mr Fayose has not only refused to change; his inchoate ethos has in fact considerably declined, even as he has exhibited none of the wisdom and temperament that come with age. If he has any Christianity in him, in view of the spectacular thanksgiving he offered after his inauguration, it is not clear which verses of scriptures he rests it upon. He has mutated into the worst fascist any state can produce, and has become a propagandist and cruel and cynical manipulator of the people’s ignorance. He is cynical enough to continue to feed Ekiti the nauseous diet of fear of outside attackers, and he will stop at nothing to destroy those who oppose him. He will cast his enemies as stooges of Lagos money power, and his opponents and media critics as agents of destabilisation. He will create an atmosphere of fear and resentment, pitting Ekiti people against themselves, and setting the stage for the most pernicious attack on common sense and other symbols of Ekiti civilisation.

    But Mr Fayose, who reminds us of the sybaritic dictator of Haiti, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, will soon exceed even his own theatricality. Perhaps, then, Ekiti will finally wake up to the political nightmare they have brought upon themselves with the connivance of credulous Yoruba politicians and activists battling their own private demons and nursing their pet jealousies.

  • Banire, Bamidele and APC’s Young Turks

    Banire, Bamidele and APC’s Young Turks

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) has an uphill, but not insurmountable, task of keeping its states safe from predators and winning the 2015 presidential election. The party probably recognises the enormity of the task ahead, and may be planning an onslaught against it. But beyond recognising the obstacles, it will have to devise virtuoso ways of tackling the challenges that seem set to doom its efforts. As indicated in this place last week, some APC states are in turmoil, destabilised by internal dissension and plagued by powerful external enemies and neighbours. To retain its hold on its states, sustain unity within its ranks, and expand its suzerainty over hostile states and Aso Villa, the party will have to do almost the impossible, including wishing for a miracle, and looking for means of calming the tempest triggered by some of its radical and younger elements. Some of these younger elements camouflage self-promotion in altruistic, ideological and philosophical colours. And a few others have axes to grind with their party leaders, state and national. But even if the quarrels cannot be resolved outrightly, the overall success of the party in 2015 will depend somewhat on how successfully party leaders manage the rage within.

    A few months before the June governorship poll in Ekiti, Opeyemi Bamidele (ACN/Labour, Ado-Ekiti/ Irepodun-Ifelodun), publicised his war with the APC and looked on imperturbably as the party drowned in the wake that followed the storm he unleashed. His grouse, analysts suggested, was not just the senatorial ticket that was coaxed from him, a loss some said he had reconciled himself to, but the rather uncomplimentary and disrespectful way he believed he was ostracised from the decision-making organ of the party and state government. He and his supporters believed party leaders and government officials played politics of exclusion. What was intriguing about the misunderstanding in pre-election Ekiti was the implacability of the combatants: Dr Fayemi  gave no quarter; and Hon Bamidele, anticipating APC would come a cropper, eventually defected to the Labour Party.

    Hon Bamidele signposted the coming of the Young Turks in the APC, a group of irreverent, sometimes irascible, but iconoclastic politicians unafraid of rocking the party’s boat or provoking its mercurial leaders. While the embers of the revolt triggered by Hon Bamidele was yet to die, Muiz Banire, the National Legal Adviser of the APC and many times commissioner in the Lagos government of former governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Babatunde Fashola, stirred up a hornet’s nest, pockmarking the Lagos skyline with incendiary comments on his party leaders and, in particular, Asiwaju Tinubu. Where Hon Bamidele, the activist, had contrastingly restrained himself from dragging Asiwaju Tinubu into the Ekiti imbroglio, not even in snide remarks and insinuations, Dr Banire has shown less ruefulness, though as a legal practitioner he was expected to possess more conservative and diplomatic skills in polemics and discourse.

    It should not matter to a party loyalist whether a candidate wins on his own merit or is helped by his party’s reputation and organisation, but Dr Banire, perhaps pursuing covert agenda against his party, surprisingly suggested that Governor Rauf Aregbesola won the August governorship election in Osun in spite of the APC. The August 9 win must be delinked from the party, he asserted. Why a party leader should gloat that his party had no significant input in helping candidate Aregbesola to win is hard to understand. It is a needless argument to make. But Dr Banire is a Young Turk, and from his imprecates against his leaders and sweeping dismissal of their relevance and proclivities, some of whom he deprecatingly described as a cabal, he creates the impression of a tough politician, one who can call his soul his own. Though his legal and political arguments fail to persuade completely, and his lexis a little rough-hewn in some aspects, he cuts the image of an intellectual deserving of respect.

    The APC needs internal opposition in order to enable it hammer out better platforms and establish a solid, robust and cohesive party. The likes of Hon Bamidele and Dr Banire are in my opinion invaluable to the APC or any other party for that matter. Hon Bamidele cannot flourish in a somnolent party like Labour, and his organisational skills, not to say his ambition, would be wasted or diminished. And in the PDP, which his inexplicable and indescribable support for Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti makes him gravitate towards, his radical posture would both be repressed and absolutely misapplied. Dr Banire, on the other hand, is the perfect proponent of one eating his cake and having it. His intrepidity may not seem potent enough to lure him into defection, though I could be second-guessing him wrongly, and he seems precisely the sort of man to stay, fight and profit in his party, the APC. He even spent the better part of his stay in the party — a party he now casually lampoons — helped on every step of the way by mentors, some of them mentors of his own choosing. But now he is repudiating the methods by which he himself rose into prominence and by which he came to some comfort. His iconoclasm, sans his bad temper, obduracy and uncivil language, is not misplaced in a party desirous of sustaining its relevance and presenting itself as a change agent.

    However, just like Hon Bamidele proved by his consequential defection from the APC to LP, Dr Banire’s beloved party can ill afford the ossification many party apparatchiks seem to be comfortable with, but which he and his fellow iconoclast have challenged and denounced. They want imposition to end, though they seemed to have profited from variants of its application before now, and are quite unable to appreciate and interpret its complex and adaptable nature and multiple nuances. While their ambition to end imposition and other undemocratic practices within their party is not misplaced, assuming their diagnoses are right, their unpolished style of fighting good causes within their party leaves much to be desired. Dr Banire, from his recent lecture and interviews, is predicting doom for his party if it failed to conduct itself in a manner he believes is unimpeachable. He leaves no room for any error on his part. In fact, he has unguardedly threatened worse consequences for even his party leaders, sparing no one.

    There will be many more Young Turks like Hon Bamidele and Dr Banire, a few of them outrightly impertinent. The APC must learn how to deal with them and manage disaffection within the party. The party must also accept that its leaders are not infallible and can indeed be criticised or castigated by younger and radical elements in the party. But it is also imperative to understand that while they fought legitimately, Hon Bamidele and Dr Banire unfortunately fought blindly and unwisely.  The logic behind their grievances may be right, but the methods of their fight, not to talk of the intended and unintended consequences of their battles, expose them as short on character and lacking in conceptual depth of what their party represents and envisions.

    Judging from the actions and arguments of the two dissenters and perhaps other Young Turks within the party, I am afraid that even in the APC, whether among the leaders or followers, few really understand the visionary and aesthetic import of the party’s foundation and legacy. Many see the party as a vehicle for winning elections and self-promotion, which attributes easily become ends in themselves. But if my reading of the party is right, especially given its lofty promotion of Southwest integration when the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) held the reins, I think the party is an idea grander, loftier, and more sublime than its current methods, organisation and policies exhibit or match. Consumed by their sense of self-importance and distracted by their loathing for certain party practices that seemed targeted against their interests, neither Hon Bamidele nor Dr Banire apparently possesses the rich understanding of what the party is or stands for — an identity far greater and nobler than what is set down in the party’s constitution and manifesto. Had they understood this fact, both gentlemen would have fought differently, with reverence for the party’s grand ideas and great future, and with cultured civility towards party leaders who, though their methods may be shaky and even contradictory, best approximate the party’s spiritual essence.

    Many of the causes fought for by Hon Bamidele and Dr Banire are sensible. Their resolve and courage should be admired and channeled, for their party needs men like them to midwife a greater, bigger, stronger and more relevant political organisation. However,  their methods are unusually strident, and their manners suspiciously discordant, if not entirely objectionable. But party leaders, at least the few who can see beyond today and the chaotic manifestation of what the party represents, must find ways to reconcile the old and the new generation, and forge all of them into an exceeding strong army committed to truly transforming and renewing Nigeria. The party leaders’ vision must make them endure insults, be indifferent to mentee insolence, and enable them handle with perfect equanimity and fortitude the fractious tendency so common among the young and footloose radicals in the party, whether it be Hon Bamidele or Dr Banire, or any other Young Turk flushed with both the anger and unpredictable messianism that so often hobbles the young.

  • 2015: INEC’s indefensible management of PVCs

    2015: INEC’s indefensible management of PVCs

    In matters as fairly simple as registering voters, producing voter cards, and issuing them to owners with precision, it was expected that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would pull the exercise off with only a few hitches. It was also expected that in case of hitches, the electoral body was savvy enough to find adequate ways of remedying the problems. But not only has INEC approached the permanent voter cards (PVCs) matter with as much shoddiness as two or three generations of electoral commissions aggregating their incompetence can manage, it has stubbornly refused to appreciate the magnitude of its lapses, and seems determined to either disenfranchise voters or punish them bitterly. Nigerians are conversant with INEC’s administrative malfeasances, so let me spare readers a rehash. What I cannot understand, however, is that if INEC has no hidden motives as it claims, why is it pretending not to appreciate the weight of the problem it is confronting and is not summoning the urgency needed to tackle it?

    I am among the more than one million registered voters in Lagos whose data were lost for whatever reasons — computer problems and other lapses. At least the sms I sent to them and their reply indicate as much. But the real puzzle is why it took INEC almost four years to realize that the commission faced a data loss/mismanagement catastrophe. Beyond announcing that their computers and servers malfunctioned, as a result of which about a million registered voters in Lagos cannot get their permanent voter cards, INEC has not fully explained how the problem came about. They had almost four years since 2011 to make amends; but they have waited some three months before the next general elections to scramble for a solution.

    Those whose cards are ready have faced an uphill task in collecting them. And those, like me, who have to register afresh are facing an even more daunting battle. INEC officials do not come to polling units on time, and in some cases don’t even show up at all. In many polling units, they showed up only on Saturday for the fresh registration billed to commence days earlier and discovered that their machines were either not functioning well or not functioning at all. It is shocking that a fairly straightforward task of registering enthusiastic voters has become so hugely complicated, as if this elementary administrative exercise is too burdensome for our public officials, or as if it is a deliberate ploy to disenfranchise potential voters.

    INEC claims to have lost computer data. If by a miracle the 2011 manual registers have not also been gobbled up by some goblins, and if it is true they mean well and are not working towards a predetermined end, they should be kind enough to revert to the use of manual register and temporary voter cards for the next polls. But if they are too proud to go back to former mode, they should kindly flood the polling units with functioning machines and prove to everyone they have no programmed agenda to disenfranchise us. The way they have handled the exercise is truly disgraceful. Let them be humble enough to make amends, and stop punishing Nigerians and making a spectacle of themselves before the whole world.

  • Ogun and 2015 polls: APC’s unending conundrum

    Ogun and 2015 polls: APC’s unending conundrum

    After hesitating for many months, the Olusegun Osoba camp in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State has decided to defect to the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Though Chief Osoba himself has not made a formal announcement, the long-standing turmoil in Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s government all but made the defection virtually inevitable. Governor Amosun’s deputy, Segun Adesegun, who belongs to the Osoba camp, had a little over a week ago publicised his deep-seated grudges against the governor, much of it revolving around mistreatment, disrespect and inadequate funding. In the letter, the deputy governor sounded pessimistic the disagreements could be resolved. He may be right.

    The Osoba camp is believed to comprise some leading politicians in the state, including all the state’s three senators and six House of Representatives members. No matter what veneer of optimism the Amosun camp want to spread on the split, the Osoba camp is as formidable out of government as the Amosun camp remains formidable in government. If the two camps stay together, they will be even more formidable and stand a decent chance of defeating the resurgent and obviously well-financed opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state. As far as optimism goes in politics, both camps imagine they are so formidable separately that they can win the next governorship poll based on their individual merits, political integrity and grassroots mobilisation.

    Chief Osoba entertains the chimera that he has with him the state’s top national lawmakers and perhaps a plethora of other state and local government elected representatives. He probably thinks his camp is impregnable. But as some states have shown since 1999, it may take just one election for a grumpy and testy electorate to sweep a whole coterie of lawmakers away. Governor Amosun also imagines that his infrastructural renewal programme, the like of which has probably never been witnessed in the state before, may stand him in good stead with Ogun’s longsuffering voters. He will be misreading the times to think performance is a sufficient condition for re-election. In fact, in reality, apart from their befuddling incompetence in assessing candidates, Nigerian voters may have become unfathomably venal, irritable and impatient. They punish well-meaning candidates for little slights, and reward malevolent candidates for massive deceptions.

    The trouble in Ogun APC appears on the surface irreconcilable. But that is because APC leaders’ attention is riveted, perhaps inadvertently, on the wrong things. They seek ways of mollifying Chief Osoba, who seems in the opinion of many to be desirous of carving a liberal fiefdom for himself in a state where he can exert a powerful pull on the politics and bureaucracy of the state consistent with his national standing, age and political associations; and where he can erect a panoply of political and electoral frameworks to dispense equity and fairness according to his own peculiar understanding of justice and ideology. But it so happens that in the same Ogun State lives and governs someone like Mr Amosun, a man fiercely  independent and unwilling to subordinate himself to man or angel, or to Lagos or Ogun, but a man who was nonetheless probably the party’s best choice to win the governorship in 2011.

    The party’s pragmatic leaders, especially in Lagos, recognised this seemingly contradictory fact and prioritised their preferences. If their major desire was to win in 2011, they were willing to ignore Mr Amosun’s idiosyncratic irreverence. Chief Osoba, it seems, never quite reconciled himself to either Mr Amosun’s candidature or his independence for many reasons dating back to the 2003 governorship election. Every small disagreement has therefore loomed larger than necessary, and the governor’s sometimes complex realpolitik has seemed to the Osoba camp despicable and intolerable arrogance. Making a choice between who to support for a House of Representatives seat, such as the one the party had to make between Lekan Abiola (MKO”s son) and Olumide Osoba, became red rag to two raging bulls.

    Party leaders in and out of Ogun are miffed and bewildered by how quickly a small misunderstanding turns tectonic. They are expending energy to settle acrimonious party congresses, determine who should be supported for elective and appointive positions as well as party executive offices, pacify incensed party men elbowed out of the governor’s tight inner loop, and other long if not interminable list of grievances. I am not sure to what extent party leaders can procure peace by continuing to focus on the long list of grievances from both sides. With every resolution, a new grievance emerges. I even suspect that judging by the severity of the rupture between the Amosun and Osoba camps, party leaders may now focus on how to ensure a tentative peace so that the party can unite for the 2015 polls. If they succeed, it will be because Mr Amosun realizes the inadvisability of relying on his good works to give him electoral victory, and because Chief Osoba appreciates that even if Mr Amosun is vanquished, it would be pyrrhic victory so devastating to procure that even he would be unable to gain from it.

    Nevertheless, party leaders must wade into the fray not by looking at the long list of grievances or setting out broad principles for redress, but by examining holistically the bane of politics in the Southwest, and helping party leaders, both elected and appointed, to have a better and deeper understanding of the complicated nuances of contemporary political undercurrents. The region is gradually moving away from the patrician and paternalistic forms of politics and governance. Unknown to Chief Osoba, APC’s national leaders have had to quickly reconcile themselves to the fact that whether Ekiti under Kayode Fayemi, or Oyo under Abiola Ajimobi, or Lagos under Babatunde Fashola, the governors often and ineluctably resist any attempt by anyone to exercise control over them. Lagos and Osun, however, present an interesting study.

    While Mr Fashola chafes at any outside control, not being a politician dyed-in-the-wool however, he has been unable to summon the ingenuity to take over the state’s political structure. Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, in spite of his well-known fondness for boisterous politicking, seems to be the most successful in the Southwest in balancing his independence with the need to accommodate his party’s national leaders. He has done it with effortless ease, due in large part to the easy-going nature of former Governor Bisi Akande and the ideological affinity he shares with former Lagos Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If restiveness in Ogun is to be pacified, party leaders in and out of the state will have to look closely at the Aregbesola formula, a formula I think, by the way, is more intuitively practical than rational or designed. It will be pointless blaming Chief Osoba or lambasting Mr Amosun. Blame game will only lead into a labyrinth.

    Mr Amosun has obviously not been wise enough in managing his relationship with Chief Osoba’s camp, considering how he has tried to win every battle, overt or covert. He wants to dominate the state and wholly determine its direction in accordance with the constitutional powers vested in him. If his party’s national leaders gave him breathing room, a number of reasons accounted for that pacifying change. But in his battles with Governor Amosun, Chief Osoba consistently makes reference to his age and association with the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, at whose feet he said he learnt politics. Even then, Chief Osoba has not demonstrated the flexibility and restraint that come with the qualities he has ascribed to himself. Southwest history is replete with examples of party divisions preceding heavy electoral defeats. Why does Chief Osoba think Ogun can defy the odds in 2015?

    Chief Osoba may be a great politician and leader, but he is not ideological, notwithstanding the Southwest and APC’s progressive orientation. Indeed, most Nigerian politicians, the Southwest included, are not ideological. Mr Amosun is also ideologically blank, though his infrastructural renewal programme is exemplary. The common ideological causes and lofty visions for a great welfare society that should animate and bind the two political leaders together are thus inexistent. Until APC national leaders can help the two find a common cause, they will continue to undermine each other. Elsewhere, in Oyo, Mr Ajimobi is also not ideological, and he has found it difficult to conceptualise the inspiring common causes that have differentiated Lagos from other states, in spite of Mr Fashola’s lack of ideological affinity with Asiwaju Tinubu — the isolationist governor versus his expansionist and internationalist predecessor. If Mr Ajimobi had had a politician like Chief Osoba to discomfit him, say an aggressive Lam Adesina, Oyo would also obviously be in turmoil.

    The revolution begun in the Southwest some years back is stalling for much the same reasons the Ogun APC conflict is festering. It is uncertain how that conflict will be resolved, both in Ogun and the Southwest. Dr Fayemi has been dethroned, Mr Ajimobi is under enormous pressure and faces an uncertain electoral future, Ondo never really cottoned on to the revolution, Lagos quivers with uncertainty and is dithering, and Ogun now looks set to unravel spectacularly. A gargantuan conflict between idealism and populism is in fact underway in the region, between the so-called stomach infrastructure of grassroots governance and the futurism and inventiveness that epitomised the high points of the region’s development in the First Republic. Neither Chief Osoba nor Mr Amosun is persuaded by the transcendental quality of the causes they should be fighting for, causes that should concentrate their energies in the right direction and diminish the political self-aggrandizement that now propels their politics — a self-aggrandizement that irrationally drives politics in the Southwest and sets APC leaders against one another in Lagos, Oyo and Ekiti.

  • Religious politics, Southwest and general elections

    Religious politics, Southwest and general elections

    In the midst of a rising politicisation of religion under the Goodluck Jonathan government, analysts had speculated that the Yoruba of the Southwest would rebuff the schismatic campaign because of its potential to undermine their culture. The analysts thought that since some Southwest states in the Second Republic were ruled by either a Muslim-Muslim or a Christian-Christian ticket, the region had been inoculated against systematic and entrenched religious conflict. Until about a year or two ago, religion was obviously not a big issue in Southwest politics; now sadly it is inconceivable that any political party, no matter how popular or ideological, could ignore either its political potential or its debilitating effects.

    Under Dr Jonathan, the politicisation of religion is unlikely to abate, and his aides and campaign directors and sympathetic clerics will mine it copiously, as they are already doing with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). It is not surprising that religious leaders like Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor have thrown in their lot with Dr Jonathan. To him and others like him, it is a natural and effortless process, a subliminally divine and even messianic struggle to win and hold down Aso Villa for God.

    But the surprise is that Southwest religious leaders have fully converted to the campaign and are helping Dr Jonathan market it. Whereas the South-South and Southeast can adapt to and project religious politics, seeing their regions are predominantly Christian, it may be counterproductive for their compatriots in the Southwest, who are almost split evenly between the two main religions, to flirt with religious politics. In the event of a religious conflict, the South-South and Southeast may escape unscathed. The Southwest would almost certainly be struggling to keep the peace and stanch the flow of blood.

    Historically, the Southwest had recognised this tangled skein of religious politics, thereby prompting cultural and political leaders to devise means of engendering religious harmony and reining in and even emasculating extremists. Sadly, the culture of tolerance and secularism is fading. Southwest clerics and politicians are carelessly forsaking the balancing mechanisms that have sustained their society for centuries. If they do not begin to take conscious steps to return to the wisdom of the past, but instead allow themselves to be unwisely and sheepishly sucked into the red vortex of Dr Jonathan’s religious politics, present and future generations will hold them responsible for the consequences.