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Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Jonathan quibbles over one-party system

    Jonathan quibbles over one-party system

    Public engagements are sometimes the best chance for former presidents to declaim against public policies they dislike. Former president Goodluck Jonathan seized the occasion of the tribute night and memorial lecture in honour of the late elder statesman Edwin Clark to chafe at what he believed was probably a subtle effort to impose a one-party state on Nigeria. He seemed angrier than he let out on the night, but it was enough that he at least got an opportunity to exhale. He appeared to have thought about the subject, though it is not clear just how deeply. Reading between the lines, he actually sounded like he believed there were subterranean efforts to railroad Nigeria into a one-party state. By self-effacingly suggesting that a one-party goal might not necessarily be nefarious, especially if it was planned, he left room for diverse interpretations of what his personal opinion was or what he thought the country should really embrace.

    A small quote from his remarks on that day of tributes should open a window into his noncommittal view on a subject made needlessly controversial by social media commentators. He said: “When you listen to the news or go through the social media, that is one thing (one-party) that on an occasion like this, one needs to talk about. Yes, countries have practiced a one-party system. It may not be evil after all. But Julius Nyerere of Tanzania used one-party state to stabilise the country in their early days of independence. His country, just like Nigeria, has many tribes and tongues and two principal religions, Christianity and Islam. If he had not done that, some parties would toe the line of region, some on the basis of tribes, and unity would be difficult. But it was properly planned. It was not by accident. If we must as a nation go the one-party route, it must be designed. It must be planned by experts and we must know what we are going into. But if we go through the backdoor by political manipulations, then we will be going into a crisis. So, I will advise that probably in a country like Nigeria, we allow the system to stay as it is, which is a multi-party system. But if we for some reason must go one-party, it should not be an accident.”

    Put simply, Dr Jonathan was saying that if a one-party state was achieved for Nigeria by design, it might be okay. If it was done by accident, or the country stumbles into it, it could be counterproductive. Of course everyone knows that. It was, however, expected of the former president to let his opinion on the subject of a one-party state to be known without any ambiguity. Does he think a one-party state would advance the cause of democracy, however it is interpreted, narrowly or expansively, or does he think it would eventually destabilise the country and enthrone a tyrant? He left that puzzle unresolved, indeed unattended. Instead, he perched on the fence and declared that the problematic part was whether the policy was accidental or designed. But that can hardly suffice. He needed to first resolve whether a one-party state could promote unity and stability in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country, and then secondarily determine how to conjure that magic. Had the unhappy former president availed us his thoughtful opinion rather than walk a tightrope, it would have been debated whether he made sense or not. More, it would have been obvious whether he gave the matter any deep thought as expected of a former president, or whether he glossed over the subject as was his custom when a controversial matter challenged his convictions.

    Read Also: Nigeria deserves high standard ICC – Wike

    It becomes of course a different ball game whether the country was really being heedlessly coerced into a one-party cauldron, as the former president and many others in the opposition sneered. There have been defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) at state and national levels, beginning most remarkably from Delta State, and those defections are still continuing apace. Yes, a few defectors have also developed cold feet, in Delta State and elsewhere, but they are more than countermanded by other even more aromatic defections in different parts of the country, notably in Edo State, to the ruling leviathan. Now, the northern reaches of the country have caught the bug and are exploding in a paroxysm of defections, with no sight of when it would end, or what the country’s political map would look like after the earthquakes have subsided. Yet, these defections are not unprecedented. They are typical of Nigerians politics, from the First Republic till date. Will laws be passed to explicitly forbid defections? It is unlikely. Existing laws appear adequate, regardless of the conundrums those laws have become to jurists. In any case, more relevantly, regarding the current Fourth Republic begun in 1999, there have been times when the country seemed headed either by design or accidental, as Dr Jonathan mused, to a one-party state. In the end the fears proved exaggerated.

    Having ruled Nigeria for about five years, and had he been capable of the introspection many ascribed to him, Dr Jonathan ought to know that Nigeria is too complex and too far gone in multiparty politics to detour to a one-party system. He admittedly indicated preference for the political status quo, but he also seemed open to a different system, if necessary. He, however, should have spent time in his lecture reassuring the country that despite ongoing defections, not to say their dangerous connotations, the country would not go down the one-party chute. More, it was expected that he would spend quality time giving a disquisition on the merits and demerits of a one-party state, probably ending with a suggestion to the country to renew and sustain its multiparty system. But if he had to contend with a country veering towards a one-party system, it is not enough to be indifferent; he should have proceeded to explain the consequences of choosing a one-party system, and do it with everything he has got in his political and intellectual armamentarium. He was right to cite the foundational one-party system of Tanzania, but since that country abolished the one-party system in 1992, it would not be a bad idea for the former president to avail us his study of the lessons Tanzania has learnt since adopting multiparty democracy, particularly within the context of ethnic and regional politics. Might the fact that Julius Nyerere (ruled between 1962 and 1985 as the first president and founding father) came from the smallest ethnic group, the Zanaki, have influenced the adoption of a one-party state? And what role did the two-thirds Christian population and one-third Muslim population play in the adoption of the foundational party system?

    Dr Jonathan continues to be presented with sterling opportunities to shed light on some of the existential conundrums of Nigeria, having ruled for about five years and as the first PhD degree holder. Yes, he might be a zoologist, but his views and the ratiocinations that undergird them have sometimes reflected badly on his scholarship. Even without a proper and systematic education at the highest level, such as Dr Jonathan had the privilege of acquiring, he should still be capable of deep, sobering, and inspiring reflections on the country on account of his experience as a national leader controlling not only the entire country but also the biggest political party in Africa at the time. No, it is not expected that he should do the hard work of researching the building blocks of his speeches, but he is expected to direct the research as well as define the tone and direction of his discourses. He was too overwhelmed to do all that during his presidency, seeing that he was surrounded by too many jobholders and sycophants; but out of office, he now has the time, money and resources to engage in deeper and more productive thinking, finding solutions to the country’s multifarious challenges. His qualifications and presidency should tell him something significant, that much more than his successor in office, the languid and phlegmatic Muhammadu Buhari, he is the reflexive first choice of conference organisers who seek appeal to the cortex rather than the midriff. (Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo is the favourite of noisemakers and headline grabbers).

    It is too late to draw any water from the well of President Buhari. The well is dry and unproductive. And whatever water is drawn from the well of Chief Obasanjo is bound to be muddy and contaminated, brimful with detritus and all sorts of insidious diseases and harmful organisms. Dr Jonathan could summon the capacity, with a little more effort, patience and thinking to serve the country as its pathfinder. If he has so far not risen to that level, if he has quibbled endlessly on issues, and if he inexplicably identifies with the most whimsical choices, it is simply because his character fails him, as it did repeatedly when he was president. Now, out of office, he appears to be finding it even more difficult to locate the meaning of character, a deficiency that caused him last Wednesday in Abuja to speak from both sides of the mouth on a subject that a properly schooled councillor should explicate with passable profundity.

  • Nasir el-Rufai’s vitriol, logic

    Nasir el-Rufai’s vitriol, logic

    There is little any one can do to expunge former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai from the front pages of newspapers or deny them prime mention on social media platforms. As the opening stages of the next election cycle get heated, they will say or do things that will get them good coverage, even if that coverage ends up undermining their political goals. While the former vice president has found it difficult to cobble together the coalition of his dream, Mallam el-Rufai has blissfully rolled out verbal incendiaries guaranteed to get him good mention in the dailies. And while both politicians now try to anchor their hopes on the underperforming Social Democratic Party (SDP), they have had little success in reining in the wild broncos of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP). So far, few notable politicians have openly associated with them, preferring to be tentative about the idea of a coalition, and averse to the brinkmanship that typifies Alhaji Atiku’s and Mallam el-Rufai’s unappeasable, self-centred politics.

    Meanwhile, the former Kaduna governor has developed a unique kind of politics, one that sees him oscillating between fawning and self-abnegation on the one hand and displaying meanness and dispensing vitriol on the other hand. He does not have many political leaders to fawn over at the moment, particularly in the opposition, except perhaps Alhaji Atiku; but there are dozens of hard and soft targets in the Bola Tinubu presidency, particularly the president, at whom to take potshots. And he will shoot without scruples, for he is a wounded lion. In the past few weeks, he has ladled out vitriol, copiously and remorselessly. Backed by the famous abjurer, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who was until recently a special adviser to the president, Mallam el-Rufai is a keen verbal marksman. Unprincipled like Alhaji Atiku, but more profligate with words, it matters little to him what side of the divide he is at any time: he will defend or excoriate either side with equal venom and plausibility, unconcerned with how his constant groveling or contradistinctive iconoclasm is interpreted.

    But Mallam el-Rufai has his head in the clouds. Speaking in Kano days ago, he referenced his consultations with SDP leaders amidst efforts to build a party that would not be owned or dominated by one man, such as the All Progressives Congress (APC) has done, or the PDP that had, in his words, become a spent force. Ignoring his own atrocious record in Kaduna State, where he denounced, alienated and oppressed dissenters, he spoke glibly about ensuring internal democracy in the SDP and eliminating ‘godfatherism’, his bogeyman. Alluding to the Delta State defections which have riled many politicians like him, he averred that sitting governors have one vote and can lose elections, citing his own example in the last presidential election when as APC governor he lost Kaduna to the PDP. He also cited the example of the president who lost Lagos, partly because, as he put it, ‘Lagosians don’t vote.’ Full of theory, disconnected from reality, including his own mordant reality, the domineering and meddlesome Mallam el-Rufai spoke of the SDP appeal as a party that geared towards resisting domination from anyone. He is of course untruthful.

    Fortunately for the country, the newsmen who interviewed him in Kano also asked him what kind of zoning arrangement the SDP would adopt in view of the present political realities of Nigeria. The party had not reached that bridge yet, let alone crossed it, he said. When they get to that point, the party would take a decision, insisting that they were looking for members at this point, people with which they could build the party, not ambitious politicians. Seriously? From Mallam el-Rufai, his imperial majesty and ambitious and grandiloquent politician? But he could never restrain himself for long; that is why he is a reporter’s delight. Sooner or later, regardless of his irreverence, he revealed where he stood. He is often too frank to dissemble. He, therefore, expatiated on the zoning thing; and here is what he said: “This country is facing an existential crisis. We may not have a country for you to contest for president if we continue the way we are going or if things get worse. So for me, I don’t care where the person comes from. But I want a candidate and a ticket that will do two things: that will offer solutions to Nigeria’s problems. Number two, who will excite Nigerians enough to come out and vote and defeat the APC government that is taking Nigeria backwards. So I don’t care if that person is you or anyone, I will support it. I don’t care. I can say it because we championed power shift. But where did the power shift take us? Should we stick to that even though the whole country is falling apart and things are not going well and the people in government are not listening and everyone is struggling other than those in government? I will no longer stand for the ‘president-must-come-from-here’ syndrome.”

    Put simply, Mallam el-Rufai, the closet Fulani exceptionalist, has no patience with propping up a southern candidate. This time, he wants a northern candidate, obviously because he anticipates that the SDP would mostly likely appeal to northern politicians and members at this point. Yes, they will do their best to expand both the base and reach of the party, but given the mood of the country and the suspicions convulsing the body politic, not many southerners of influence would stake their future on the SDP or Mallam el-Rufai’s theories, especially not after former Delta State governor Ifeanyi Okowa spoke ruefully about zoning and the mistakes that undid the PDP. Whether Mallam el-Rufai likes it or not, even if they manage to build the SDP to a fairly noticeable height, the party will come to grief on the Golgotha of presidential ambitions and zoning. Established parties had found it difficult to transcend the zoning crisis, and the APC barely managed to overcome it in 2023, while the PDP came unstuck. Even if they find the money, the SDP is unlikely to find the magic wand to placate its members when the ambitions of their leaders confront them.

    Read Also: El-Rufai: SDP not interested in merger, high profile politicians

    It is inescapable that campaign 2027 will be downright nasty. It will be brutal, tangled, ethnic, and bigoted. While the SDP will struggle to reach the critical mass its leaders intend for it, the party will not lack waspish defenders unafraid to plumb the depths of bitter and corrosive abuse to incite, inflame, and provoke conflagrations. Alhaji Atiku is implacable; he will do his damndest to portray his opponents in putrid light, but his efforts will probably be smothered by his unfulfilled desire to get a platform on which to run. Neither the PDP nor the SDP would avail him half the chance. But the wily, pretentious and equally ambitious Mallam el-Rufai will at the right time demonstrate that the former vice president is dispensable. He will go into alliances within the party and instigate revolts, if necessary, to position himself for rich pickings. He does not possess half as much altruism as he ascribes to himself and his politics. But if the defections the former Kaduna governor scorns continue to advantage the APC, Mallam el-Rufai will be left with the grim and daunting exercise of testing his theory about how many votes a governor can really command. However, in 2027, the governors’ influence will be consequential to the outcomes of the polls, regardless of how bitter and regional the campaigns turn out to be.

  • Delta eruptions: Rethinking Atiku’s 2023 defeat

    Delta eruptions: Rethinking Atiku’s 2023 defeat

    The massive defections enacted in Delta State by elected Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) officials on April 23 have inadvertently triggered the rethinking of former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s 2023 presidential election loss. Immediately after President Bola Tinubu was declared winner of the election, the PDP candidate and many of his supporters cried foul, swearing that their party lost unfairly by an indeterminate stratagem orchestrated by the APC candidate and his supporters. The PDP candidate, not to say the Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, anchored the loss on the APC candidate’s alleged lack of integrity and academic qualifications. Ignoring the argument that pre-election matters could not vitiate an election victory, the PDP went ahead to spend inordinate amount of resources and devoted huge social media, advertisement, and legal campaigns within and outside the country to prove that the APC lost. They pilloried the judiciary, stridently called for a coup d’état, while protesters and labour unions orchestrated industrial unrest and intensified a massive movement for unconstitutional change.

    For more than 15 or 16 months, there was no let up in the effort to stir up a national revolt. Despite the clear statistical import of the voting outcomes, in which the PDP and LP split the votes, not to say the PDP which was split into three factions going into the election, the exponents of the protests appeared convinced that there was no way the APC candidate could have won. They simply ignored statistics, and even tried to rewrite constitutional provisions undergirding the polls. Unperturbed by, or perhaps unaware of, the eerie danger of reenacting the 1993 presidential election with all its unpredictable and attendant tragic consequences, former president Olusegun Obasanjo weighed in by calling for the abortion of ballot collation. But shortly after the electoral umpire declared the winner, he called for mass action. He was also convinced that the APC did not win. However, nearly two years later, the same Chief Obasanjo began calling for a coalition of political parties to defeat the APC, suggesting that the balkanisation of the PDP led to its loss, and a merger or coalition of parties would do the magic.

    The man at the centre of the massive legal and social media challenge to the poll outcome, Alhaji Atiku, also recanted and began to campaign for a coalition to unseat the APC at the presidential level. The former PDP candidate’s pursuit of a powerful or mega coalition presupposes that he has finally succumbed to the logic that his loss was a result of the factionalisation of the party on which platform he contested the poll. He has not openly admitted that reality, but his actions indicate it. If he thought his loss was unrelated to the size and unity of his party, which he is projected to abandon soon for giving him cold shoulder on the coalition subject, he would not be advocating for coalition partners to unseat the APC. His search for a coalition, which he is pursuing without getting a consensus from the PDP, has, however, put him at cross-purposes with his party. His fellow party men, including many of the party’s governors, had whispered but are now saying it openly that they lost the 2023 poll, not because of any rigging by the APC, but because over the years, and unknown to their standard-bearer, he had become jaded and unelectable. They decry the idea of a coalition, and insist that had they reformed their party and respected their own zoning arrangement, they could have won. It has taken the Delta defections to welcome some of these reappraisals.

    Read Also: No grudge against Okowa over defection – Atiku

    No one voices this new reality so powerfully like former running mate to Alhaji Atiku in the 2023 poll, Ifeanyi Okowa, a former Delta State governor. In a remark last week, he asserted that Alhaji Atiku lost the poll because the party violated its own zoning arrangement, a violation he claimed he now regretted because he did not realise it was so overwhelming during the poll. According to him, “Even when we were campaigning, I realised our people were not interested in having another northerner come into power. But the decision had already been taken at the federal level by the party, and I had been nominated. Still, in retrospect, I now believe I should have gone with the will of my people.” He attributed this alienation to the loss of his state during the presidential election and the regaining of the same during the governorship poll.

    Senate minority leader Abba Moro did not dispute the PDP’s loss of the election in his response to Dr Okowa’s recrimination. Reflecting on the new reality suffusing his party, the PDP, from top to bottom, Sen. Moro instead argued that it was in fact the selection of the former Delta State governor that caused the loss of the party’s presidential bid. He was unsparing: “It’s unfortunate today that at his level, having been a senator and governor before on the platform of the PDP, I think it’s uncharitable for him to be expressing regret about being the party’s running mate. He was not forced. He asked for it, and he was given…With the hindsight that we have now, some of us think that the party would have won the election if another candidate — other than Okowa — had been picked as the vice-presidential candidate from the South…I think there was an error of judgment on the part of everybody that was involved in the choice of Okowa as the candidate.”

    It has taken nearly two years of massive shifts in the polity, including defections and factionalisation, and the final realisation that no amount of threats to the republic would cause the collapse of the government, to compel opposition party leaders to accept their loss, whether they like President Tinubu or not. They have also slowly begun to accept the need to re-examine their methods and tactics, which failed them in 2023. It has taken the Delta defections to unearth uncomfortable truths many PDP leaders knew but were reluctant to voice out. But more than 15 or 16 months of living in denial, not to talk of the rebellion they irresponsibly tried to foment, the PDP thankfully failed to provoke anarchy, fracture the country, and orchestrate the collapse of the country in a replay of the 1993 tragedies that cost hundreds of life, birthed two dictatorships, and set the democratic clock back by decades.

  • Burkin Faso’s malevolent propaganda

    Burkin Faso’s malevolent propaganda

    Of the three military officers who forcefully took over the reins of office in the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic, Ibrahim Traore, an army captain, has run the most effective propaganda machine built on what his supporters describe as Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist ideology. At bottom, however, he has merely substituted Western hegemony with Russian hegemony. The latter is operated by Russian Africa Corps, a rechristening of the notorious Wagner Forces. Banded together in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), the three countries kicked out France and the United States, and delinked from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which had denounced the sacking of democracy in those countries.

    Capt. Traore’s propaganda exaggerates or fabricates economic development and social conditions in Burkina Faso, with most of the country’s economic indicators showing no sign of improvements. Even the main coup goals of solving the refugee crisis caused by insurgency, rebuilding the economy, and curbing the jihadist insurgency that has tripled death toll since the coup, have remained intractable. Instead, civil rights have been abridged, and democracy, suspended in 2022 after the coup, has been put on the backburner. Last Wednesday, less than one week after Capt. Traore claimed to have exposed a coup plot, thousands of demonstrators observing a ‘global day of support for Capt. Traore’ marched on Western embassies in London, Paris, Accra, Ouagadougou, Kingston, and other African cities to compel ‘imperialist powers’ to hands off Burkina Faso and the AES states. Some of them even threatened to burn down London should Capt. Traore die of natural causes. Let them try that with President Donald Trump.

    Read Also: ECOWAS to relocate institutions from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger over withdrawal

    The demonstrations, like the propaganda support for Capt. Traore, were reportedly inspired and funded by Russia which has sought to expand its turf wars with the West to the African continent. They have been effective, even if conditions on the ground in the AES have deteriorated. It is a mark of the specious reasoning assailing Africans, their love for showmanship, and their inability to take the long-term view of their future that they have once again embraced dictatorship and submitted and committed to an even more reactionary Russian tyrant. It is a sign of the poverty of thinking that Capt. Traore’s oppressive rule and malevolent and Russian-inspired propaganda have drawn applause from some Nigerians.

  • Atiku and the Delta defections

    Atiku and the Delta defections

    Whether he acknowledges it or not, former vice president Atiku Abubakar is bound to feel more frustrated than ever over the unprecedented and indeed seismic defections that coursed through Delta State last week. He had thought the main battle ahead of him was how to incentivise the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to support his coalition idea or at least to offer him a platform to contest the next presidential poll. He was also mistaken to think that if his first wish failed, his secondary headache would be which political party he could safely and rewardingly defect to in order to build the amorphous coalition he was trying so opportunistically to concoct. Now the defections in Delta State led by Governor Sheriff Oborevwori and seconded by ex-governor Ifeanyi Okowa, his running mate in the 2023 presidential election, are certain to give him permanent migraine. He may try to belittle the import of the defections in a state that had been a bastion of the PDP since 1999, but no one will let his seeming indifference get in the way of observable facts. His last race in this lifetime is being imperiled.

    What Alhaji Atiku is loth to acknowledge is that he ran his last race in 2023, and that both the April 14 PDP Governors’ Forum meeting in Ibadan, which broke free of his strangulating hold, and the Delta defections that clearly repudiated his politics have signalled the end of his political career and public service. Notwithstanding what he thinks or how dismally he feels, the bells toll for him and indeed constrict his chances going forward. Alhaji Atiku never really set store by a merger of political parties even when he was still in good standing in the PDP, for he always preferred a coalition of parties, a grand or mega coalition, as he fondly put it. He knew that his relationship with the leading opposition party, with which he had sustained a specious on-and-off romance, was fragile and it would be presumptuous of him to call on them to make huge sacrifices. That was why he opted for the wafer-thin coalition that would guarantee a pathway for him to the presidency. But he was also experienced enough to appreciate that the coalition, even before it took off the ground, was endangered. It would require so much to put it together, and it would need huge resources to hold it together. He went along with the idea of a coalition, but he managed to never sound like he believed he could pull it off. Yes he spoke it and acted it, but he approached the subject with a wariness and tentativeness idiosyncratic to his politics.

    His fellow travelers, particularly his potential Southwest partners, had been careful not to openly associate with him, preferring to send their apologies when he called for a coalition meeting. Now, they will be even more wary than ever. They think he never really had a Midas touch, despite his vaunting rhetoric about democracy and his many years in the limelight; now, they may finally bolt from the stable and begin to seek pasture elsewhere. Unlike Alhaji Atiku’s many fair-weather associates and friends, former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai may be trapped with him; but even he will be entertaining some pianissimo doubts now. He will doubtless get more truculent as the weeks drag on, and as doors and windows are shut against him, he will in addition also get more desperate and more reckless, eager to make one fateful throw of the dice. He has already announced his membership of the somnolent Social Democratic Party (SDP), though some party leaders dispute his bona fides, but everything considered, as his principal, Alhaji Atiku, wavers, he also will feel some consternation. Having burnt his bridges, it is hard to see him retracing his steps to the Tinubu administration which he had publicly vilified, or rekindling his tenuous association with his successor in Kaduna, Uba Sani, whom he had also cynically dismissed as disloyal. Like the former vice president, he will be wondering how he came to this sorry pass.

    Read Also: Only unpatriotic Nigerians will call for power shift to the north in 2027-Nwosu

    Sensibly, Alhaji Atiku has been less intolerant of the Delta defectors’ actions. He knew that having defected and acted footloose many times in the past himself, he would be hypocritical to condemn the Delta governor’s actions. In fact, he has acknowledged their right to defect to anywhere that catches their fancy, for as he put it, ‘it is part of democratic politics.’ He will, however, be privately miffed that his running mate in the last presidential poll also defected, perhaps without confiding in him. In his statement on X (Twitter), the former vice president swivelled to condemning President Tinubu’s administration, reframing the defection controversy as not just an exercise of democratic rights but an indication of where a politician or political leader stands in the affairs of Nigeria. Nigeria, he concluded, was facing an existential battle for which a liberating coalition was needed to help fight. It is not clear how he would assemble his armada when many of his formerly loyal troops are deserting the ranks. At the current rate of depletion, Alhaji Atiku may be unable to muster a brigade to fight an entire army.

    The former vice president has all his political life embraced short cuts, in addition to a series of miscalculations. He needed to be patient and submissive in his dealings with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, and would probably have inherited the throne in 2007; instead, he made a miscalculated bid for power, and for one dizzying moment had the former president on submission hold. But acquiescing to entreaties, he relented, left the snake scorched, not killed, and naively assumed relationships had been reset. He lost the game. Back to the PDP after fruitless detours to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), he needed to help restore confidence in the party he had abandoned at its hour of need. Instead, he fought ex-governor Nyesom Wike, the caretaker who succoured the party in his absence, brutally fought his way into taking the party’s ticket for the 2023 election, and scorned every entreaty to realign and reform the party for the future. Weighed down by a short attention span, he did very little to salve the wounds of a party that had broken down and fragmented midway into the poll. And nearly two years after that electoral debacle he has still not found the right formula or leadership acumen to rebuild and rearm the party.

    In the year ahead, the former vice president will find it doubly difficult to build a coalition capable of taking on the APC. Alienated from the PDP, unable to return to the APC for obvious reasons, and uncertain where to berth his lumbering ship, he will flail around a little, and hope that his jibes at his enemies, particularly President Tinubu, could help him rouse and inflame his regional faithful to battle stations in preparation for 2027. Just like Mr Obi who has left the Labour Party’s crisis untouched while he perambulates round the country playing political drama, Alhaji Atiku has abandoned the attempt to repair and rebuild the leading opposition PDP. Even if the anticipated coalition is anchored on the two men, having come second and third in the last presidential election, they will still be hard put to cobble together an army of capable followers motivated to give the APC a fight. The simple reason is that they have left the weightier issue of mending their electoral vehicles, without which they would have to walk like political toddlers rather than run like political pros.

  • North, coalition formation and presumptions

    North, coalition formation and presumptions

    Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, former Special Adviser on Political Matters to President Bola Tinubu, managed to get the huge publicity he craved last Sunday when he again stoked ethnic and regional sentiments in respect of the 2027 presidential election. The North would in six months announce its position on the poll, he said gravely in an interview, hinting that the region was at the moment dissatisfied over a number of unresolved issues. He, however, mentioned only one major issue – security. Tangentially, he also referenced the sidelining of the North, a clever term to avoid the more ferocious but jaded word, marginalisation. And finally, he seemed convinced that the present administration, which he served until he resigned in a huff recently, did not understand the needs of the North.

    What came out of the carefully choreographed interview was that Dr Baba-Ahmed, despite all his pretensions, exuded a virulent sense of entitlement. His grandiloquent reference to the North and what it wants, as if the region was ever or still remains a monolithic entity, betrays his incomplete understanding of the shifting dynamics of Nigerian politics. Whenever members of the northern elite are disadvantaged, real or imagined, they often resort to whipping up untested and often malignant theories of the position and relevance of the North. In the interview, Dr Baba-Ahmed did not, however, attempt to define the North which he swept into his analysis of regional disaffection. The fact is that ethnically, religiously or even geographically, the North has struggled like other parts of Nigeria to be monolithic. The nearest it came to being a monolith was in the First Republic. Since then, discounting the decades of military rule, the region has electorally become a variegated pastiche of competing interests and religions, with the competitions becoming fiercer every election cycle.

    Dr Baba-Ahmed was simply grandstanding. Surely he would recall that until former president Muhammadu Buhari expanded his political vista and won the presidency in 2015, he had tried three times earlier to fashion the North into a monolith in order to win the presidential poll without being beholden to the other regions and their power centres. Before he won in 2015, he could not take the entire Middle Belt or North Central, a huge part of Dr Baba-Ahmed’s hypothetical North. Nor could he even take the entire Northeast, another huge slice of the North referenced by the embittered special adviser. All he managed to take wholeheartedly was the Northwest, despite his strong pro-North proclivities. There has not been one prime minister or president of Nigeria who did not need the other regions to win the presidency. But perhaps what the former adviser was suggesting is that it is easier for a candidate to get a substantial part of the North than a substantial part of the South in order to clinch the presidency. But even that supposition would be tentative and contextualised on a number of factors, including political and cultural ecosystems.

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    Unable to predicate his argument and analysis on plausible reasons, Dr Baba-Ahmed excused his rage on the pervasive insecurity in the North. He insisted that if any administration does not act convincingly on banishing insecurity from the North, it would be undeserving of the electoral support of the region. This is balderdash. With all his education, he could not even pass the buck well. More northerners have presided over Nigeria much longer than southerners, yet poverty had increased by leaps and bounds. Poverty is a strong factor in predisposing the region to insurgency and banditry. Incompetent to execute policies that would reduce poverty, and ignorant about the effect of uncontrolled birth rate in fueling poverty and feeding insurgency, Dr Baba-Ahmed’s North wants a southern-born leader to wave the magic wand to defeat the anarchy raging in their region. Elite irresponsibility and ethnic and religious bigotry by northern leaders, rather than southern malfeasance, have been the principal reasons for the existential crisis facing the North. Northern leaders should tackle the madness raging in their midst instead of passing the buck.

    It is true that no southern presidential candidate can win without the support of the North; but it is also true that no northern presidential candidate can win without the support of the South. This political wisdom, which Dr Baba-Ahmed is not ignorant of, has reigned since the First Republic. Indeed, what he may be saying is that at the moment, he and other non-liberals like him are minded to look for a northern candidate to push their hidden agenda. Having been out of office for a mere two years, and seeing how President Tinubu has wielded power with some indifference to entrenched power idols, Dr Baba-Ahmed and his group, including the fiery loather Usman Yusuf, a professor and former National Health Insurance Scheme chief, are impatient to seek out a northern champion to recapture power. They have begun to tout former vice president Atiku Abubakar to run for office again as a one-term Mandela-type president on a ticket with the populist Peter Obi. But even if they manage to cobble together a coalition headed by the two former presidential candidates, it would still be a problematic ticket no sensible political assumptions or guarantees can undergird.

    President Tinubu has placated the core North to no end. But Dr Baba-Ahmed and others like him still feel a sense of loss and emptiness over the power shift to the South, and particularly to the Southwest, not to say to a president who is well schooled in the laws of power. Apart from the fact that the former special adviser and his cohorts cannot put together a convincing coalition, their threats of engulfing the country in flames should the 2027 election prove adverse to their stated interests is also unlikely to make the country quake. Nigeria’s political tectonic plates are shifting constantly, and those shifts require men and women smart enough to resist the temptation of arresting the crushing movements and new and unstoppable realities. If the core North will not admit their responsibility in their region’s stagnation, it is perhaps too late to shift the blame to other parts of the country. Much worse, it is pointless to threaten the other parts of the country, as fragmented as they are, with disintegration. Given the huge resources wasted on tackling banditry and insurgency in the North, it is unlikely the South or even the Middle Belt would feel disturbed by Dr Baba-Ahmed’s threat of secession.

  • Plateau crisis exposes Gov Namadi, Gumi

    Plateau crisis exposes Gov Namadi, Gumi

    In their responses to the mayhem in Plateau State, Jigawa State governor Umar Namadi and Islamic cleric Ahmad Abubakar Gumi stretched logic to the limit. Addressing the root causes of the Plateau crisis, the sheikh argued that laws prohibiting open grazing, as contemplated by the Plateau State government, would be counterproductive. Laws ‘accommodating the traditional practices of herders’ would suffice to eliminate frictions between the various groups in the state, he concluded. After all, he surmised, the Igbo, despite being non-natives, were thriving in Lagos because the state had created ‘inclusive economic environment’. But it is untrue to suggest that no friction and unease pervade Yoruba-Igbo relationship in Lagos, which sometimes erupt in ethnic hatred and bigotry. But while his analogies may be problematic, Sheikh Gumi’s arguments about herders in Plateau may also have been coloured by his hidden prejudices. The Plateau crisis clearly transcends herders-farmers clashes. It has morphed dangerously into ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.

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    Closely related to Sheikh Gumi’s suspect analysis on the Plateau crisis is the equally tendentious and prejudiced summation of Jigawa State governor on the same subject. Governor Namadi had argued that former army chief T.Y Danjuma’s call on citizens to take up arms to defend themselves against kidnappers, land grabbers and marauders was impolitic. According to the governor, asking citizens to take up arms and defend themselves would trigger anarchy. He advocated dialogue, but without explaining why dialogue failed in Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and some other states in the recent past. The incontestable fact is that, given the inability of security agents to protect citizens, the only reasonable deterrence against evil appears to be armed defence. Arming law-abiding citizens will not promote anarchy any more than militant land grabbers, kidnappers and herders, most of whom, it is now established, are foreigners. If the obviously insular Governor Namadi is so empathetic towards rampaging herdsmen, whom Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed once described as citizens of everywhere, he should redirect his energies at persuading them to abandon their scorched-earth policy. 

  • The grand coalition runs into storm

    The grand coalition runs into storm

    In the past few weeks, particularly since former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai was left politically marooned in the midst of nowhere, some notable politicians from the core North have consistently framed their struggles and ambitions in terms of North versus South. For a while, and despite misgivings, they seemed to be making sense. President Bola Tinubu, they argued vociferously, was running a classic Yorubacentric administration. They summed up that as a result the North was disadvantaged in terms of appointments, and would not back him in 2027. According to the politicians, their backing in 2023 made his victory possible. To wrest power from him, therefore, a grand coalition would be necessary to deny him the votes he got from the North and other hostile or swing states in the South. At the centre of that hypothetical coalition are former vice president Atiku Abubakar, and former governors Aminu Tambuwal and Mallam el-Rufai.

    The elephant in the room, however, was the attempt by the political notables to anchor this latter-day Napoleonic Grande Armée on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Indeed, the Alhaji Atiku crowd took it for granted that the PDP was already in the coalition, and all other stray parties they could seduce would easily go along. But last Monday, the PDP Governors’ meeting in Ibadan, Oyo State, scorned that pretentious politicking and insisted with deadpan flourish that while other parties could come under their distressed umbrella, the PDP, as the leading opposition party in Nigeria, was unwilling to dissolve into any kind of extraneous arrangement. Alhaji Atiku had always feared that conclusion, and had equivocated over it repeatedly, unsure where he should go and with whom he should associate in the difficult and hazardous but fading journey to win the presidency. His other notable associates also exercise that fear, recognising that the main PDP, which is still inspired by a few ambitious presidential aspirants like Bauchi’s Governor Bala Mohammed and Oyo’s Governor Seyi Makinde, were reluctant to lend their youthful energies to a faltering presidential aspirant probably now in his dotage.

    Shortly after the PDP met in Ibadan and announced their resolve to proudly stand their isolated ground, the wavering former vice president began hemming and hawing about defecting from the PDP. He has not spoken about any destination, but it is instructive that he has also not said anything about ideology or manifesto in his anticipated move to another political party. Alhaji Atiku is known to be ideologically vacuous, but having mastered the art of political nomadism, his ambition to be president will always weigh uppermost in his considerations for political deals. As this column has consistently maintained, Alhaji Atiku probably ran his last race in 2023. However, if he wants to run again, it will not be on the platform of the PDP. He has former Rivers governor and now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, Nyesom Wike, to contend with. More, he also has two or three other ambitious aspirants to reckon with, most of whom are tired of his lack of principles, repeated electoral debacles, and his sense of entitlement and superficial affections.

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    Mallam el-Rufai and Mr Tambuwal will welcome the PDP Governors’ Forum’s resolve to disavow any coalition. They had impressed it on the former vice president to take a stand regarding which party to associate with and equip for the next poll, but he had consistently pussyfooted. Exasperated by his dissembling, and unnerved by how quickly the next poll appeared to be looming, they hoped that something would happen to force the former vice president’s hand. The PDP governors did just that by finally rubbing his nose in the dirt. Mallam el-Rufai had been engaged in clumsy dalliances with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for weeks, and he was beginning to feel lonely in that mediocre party. He had sold the party to his fellow disaffected political notables, some of them from the Southwest who could help make headline news, but they were waiting for the coast to clear. Now, he may finally get his wish. Once the cautious Alhaji Atiku throws his lot with the SDP, it is likely that dithering politicians from the North and Southwest would also publicly cast their lots with the same party. The coalition hopes to lure the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) legacy party from the APC into their camp, and probably into the SDP. They have, however, had mixed results, with many leading CPC notables publicly disavowing any defection plot. These are obviously not the best of times for the coalition army.

    However, typical of him and his politics, Mallam el-Rufai has personified and projected regional arrogance and ethnic exceptionalism in his political manoeuvres. He will not stop being himself, especially now that he is left stranded and facing the biggest political battle of his life. Alhaji Atiku has hinted of his exit from the PDP, for he understands that the doors and windows are being shut against his ambition. He will probably defect, perhaps in the weeks ahead. Having played a key role in the canonisation of the former vice president as PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 poll, Mr Tambuwal will continue to stand by his idol, though he is loth to stand by principles. For them and all the politicians and leaders threatening to defect from the APC, 2027 is all about winning the presidency and chasing out the APC. It is not a question of what they would do differently or do better; it is a question of gaining the presidency, calling the shots, and distributing patronage. That is why, so far, their politics has brought them little gain and gained little traction. But they will heedlessly follow this beaten path.

    Instead of their obsession with gaining the presidency, Alhaji Atiku and his grand coalition ought to keep faith with the PDP, engineer and implement reforms in the former ruling party, refine its ideological and administrative platforms, build a great consensus out of its warring members, hire some of the best PR firms in the world to sell the party to the electorate, and give it the right kind of inspiring leadership everyone would lionise. But the former vice president and some of his associates have hopped from one party to another, alienated subordinates who declined to worship at their shrine, and reduced the art of opposition to name-calling, sloganeering and unrealistic and sometimes ignorant perceptions of Nigeria’s existential dilemmas. They have made token offers to the Labour Party (LP) and its former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, but the gestures have been half-hearted and designed more to assemble known names rather than knit together ideological kindred spirits. The grand coalition, if it ever gets off the drawing board, will cohere only to the extent that no one else but Alhaji Atiku nurses presidential ambition. Mr Obi has tasted the pudding when he ran for office in 2023; it is not clear to what extent his frenzied followers will let him run as a subordinate to anyone, let alone to Alhaji Atiku, nor be willing to indemnify him against another loss at the ballot in 2027.

  • Countrywide killings: Put Nigeria on war footing

    Countrywide killings: Put Nigeria on war footing

    In about two tumultuous weeks of insane bloodbath traversing Plateau and Benue States as well as bandit-infested Northwest and Boko Haram-ravaged Northeast, hundreds of people have been killed and dozens of communities sacked and occupied. It is pointless pretending that the conflicts in various parts of the country have been contained or that the situation is still manageable. What is truer is that the conflicts are getting out of hand, even if the death toll has not assumed the humongous proportions they reached under the past administration. In addition, despite rampant analytical equivocation by the political elite from all regions of the country, it is also now abundantly clear that both Nigeria’s security paradigm and military doctrine have become inelastic and incapable of responding adequately to the existential threat facing the nation.

    It is time to think outside the box in understanding the foundations of the crises and conflicts and in proffering solutions. The first place to start is finding common ground between the affected states’ and the federal government’s interpretations of the existential threat. While it is conceded that the conflicts differ in origin from state to state, particularly when it involves banditry and ISWAP/Boko Haram insurgency in the Northwest and Northeast respectively, in the fertile lands of the Middle Belt, there is a huge similarity. The states and federal government must call a spade a spade. Responding to the killings in Plateau State for instance, which has gripped the country in the past two weeks for their relentlessness and brutality, the federal government appears undecided what the conflicts’ nature looks like, whether it is ethnic cleansing and genocidal madness or communal, herders-farmers or revenge clashes. Once the conceptual origins of the conflicts are misconstrued, responsibility for containing it may become skewed.

    This may be why the federal government’s statement issued after the second round of killings in Plateau State raised some angry concerns in the beleaguered region. In a statement last week, the federal government had said: “We cannot allow this devastation and the tit-for-tat attacks to continue. Enough is enough…The ongoing violence between communities in Plateau State, rooted in misunderstandings between different ethnic and religious groups, must cease. Beyond dealing with the criminal elements of these incessant killings, the political leadership in Plateau State, led by Governor Caleb Mutfwang, must address the root cause of this age-long problem. These problems have been with us for more than two decades. We can no longer ignore the underlying issues.” While it is true that the problem has festered for more than two decades, the reason is due more to the federal government’s incompetent appreciation of the crises as well as bias. For decades the problem persisted; now it has metastasised. Over 60 communities have been sacked in Plateau, renamed, and most of them occupied. It is a replacement strategy, not communal clashes, and certainly not herders-farmers war.

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    When the sacking of communities began decades ago, the federal government failed to respond appropriately or reclaim sacked communities for their rightful owners. It was clear that a sinister objective was at play, an objective that has seemed to expand over the years due mainly to the acquiescence or/and ineptitude of the security and law enforcement agencies. After many such attacks, certain associations had come forward to virtually claim responsibility and issue warnings and preconditions for peace. Yet, except on one or two occasions, no one was arrested, no real investigations were ordered, and no one was held to account. Sensing complicity, the attackers had grown bolder, more insensitive, more barbaric, and more audacious. Having metastasised, the problem has dangerously morphed symptomatically into ethno-religious colouration. It is, however, only superficially ethno-religious. It is more fundamentally about land, arable land, and about a weak and dishonest appreciation and application of law and order.

    Harassed and bedraggled, Governor Caleb Mutfwang, like many of his predecessors, has spoken from both sides of his mouth. He knows and has argued that the conflict in his state is about land, but unable to wield and project the kind of force needed to deal with the menace and reclaim sacked communities for their rightful owners, he has reluctantly embraced superficial panaceas to stanch the flow of blood. He has talked about outlawing night grazing and limiting the use of motorcycles – just to be seen as doing something forceful to rein in the madness on the Plateau. And unlike the federal government, he has acknowledged that foreign militias, egged on by local sponsors, were mostly behind the mindless attacks. Knocking the foreign militias and their nefarious ideologies into a cocked hat is obviously not the job of states, no matter how dutiful and well-meaning. It is the job of the federal government and its security agencies. It is a job for the heavy lifters, and for the heavy guns. Overthrowing a sinister ideology propagated by foreign elements and their local sponsors is not a job for the small lifters. While the state, as Mr Mutfwang has demonstrated, must be involved and be willing to deploy scarce resources, controlling the influx of dangerous foreign elements and controlling the proliferation of small arms are federal jobs.

    Plateau State may be the exemplification of the existential crises inundating Nigeria from the North and Middle Belt, it is by no means the only one. In different forms, the crises are viciously and unremittingly replicated in the Northeast and Northwest theatres. The military have waged long-running and costly wars in both theatres to control the diseases, but they have been bogged down in waste, desultory executions, and infiltrations. At the current rate of progress, the conflicts could last for another decade. That will, however, be indefensible. The federal government might also in frustration begin to shuffle its cards and replace commanders and service chiefs; but it is a measure they have deployed to no effect in the past two decades. If the government is to see the end of these conflicts, it must step on toes, mobilise huge financial resources, give itself a deadline, embark on general mobilisation of enlisted men and women, and put the country on a war footing. The alternative is too bleak to imagine, for the country appears to be nearing an end game with potentially catastrophic consequences.

  • NBA’s conscience for sale?

    NBA’s conscience for sale?

    The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) executives are not chess players. Had they possessed the competence to anticipate an opponent’s moves, they would have been careful not to mess around with Rivers State, a state so lately pugnacious that everyone appears eager to enter into combat. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, it is said. But it was precisely that combustive state that NBA rushed in to receive a N300m gift it claimed had no strings attached. Such benevolence. But who gives such amount to anyone without strings attached? Governor Siminalayi Fubara, it seemed. Yes, the same governor embroiled in internecine warfare with his party leaders and mentors.

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    NBA is arguably the preeminent bar association in Africa. But, like many other professional associations in Nigeria, it is not averse to receiving poisoned chalices and drinking hemlock. The Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) does it; the Guild of Editors does it; and a number of others. Mendicant, beggarly, unprofessional, entitled, and unmoored, they easily betray their code of ethics and collect all kinds of Greek gifts, selling their consciences and mortgaging their souls. Since nearly every association collects gifts, the NBA, which is supposed to be the leading and guiding conscience of the nation, has also had a history of collecting things. Then they wax lyrical in favour of their benefactors, dissembling over grave national issues such as state of emergency, and behaving like hired guns.

    In short, the NBA has no business receiving gifts from anyone. If they realise how important their role in nation-building is, if they recognise how weighty their voice should be, and if they consider the examples and principles they must set for future generations, they would not equivocate over bribes and hosting rights. They should simply return the ‘gift’ to Rivers State and save themselves from a long-drawn controversy and litigation they cannot hope to win. Their hands have been caught in the cookie jar; it is time to show remorse, apologise to the country for imbibing a lousy culture, and quickly pay penance. The controversy is unworthy of them. Now, who knows what they have done in Enugu where they have taken their annual general meeting? Whoring again?