The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • If Tinubu had caved in (2)

    If Tinubu had caved in (2)

    From his birthday remarks, President Bola Tinubu disclosed he was close to quitting the 2023 presidential race. But he didn’t quit, and for reasons he has not fully explained. One day he will. The first part of this piece examined the spiritual dimension of the president talking and speaking his way to victory in a race that was loaded against him in every area and ramification. In retrospect, and despite the divisive and hypothetical postulations of his leading opponents in the race, Nigeria is fortunate that the president stayed in the race, won, and assumed office. Scores of former leaders and leading politicians desperately worked to get the victory annulled or the swearing-in abandoned, but former president Muhammadu Buhari and eventually the country stayed the course.

    Two major factors indicate how fortunate the country is that President Tinubu held out and eventually won. It does not matter whether he was hated before the poll or is still hated after, nor whether some analysts rate his economic and political measures and interventions high or low and disastrous. What matters is whether his two main opponents in that race would have added value to Nigeria on the scale and existential issues President Tinubu’s election has done. Secondly, it also matters that he is idiosyncratically suited to taking the huge and seismic measures needed to reposition the economy, which measures his predecessors had scorned. Consider, for instance, what the election of former vice president Atiku Abubakar or former Anambra governor Peter Obi would have meant for Nigeria had President Tinubu abandoned the race. No matter how the 2023 race is analysed, Alhaji Atiku would have won if President Tinubu did not run. He had better network than Mr Obi, had selected a Christian running mate, thus rendering the same-faith factor nugatory, and was far more experienced than his theorising opponent. Mr Obi would have stood no chance.

    But much more than that, what would have made President Tinubu’s exit from the race impactful for Nigeria is what an Atiku presidency would mean for the country. He tried to galvanise northern support by appealing to ethnic sentiment, a factor he has not quite abandoned in his persistent desire to re-enter the race in 2027. Had he run and won, he would have succeeded another Fulani man who presided over Nigeria for eight years with devastating consequences for the Middle Belt and the South. His presidency, whether Nigerians like it or not, would have reinforced not only the myth of Fulani leadership over Nigeria, but also the myth of the indispensability of the endorsement of a few oligarchs. President Tinubu shattered those myths, in addition to consigning the religious balance requirement to the dustbin. Worse, an Atiku presidency, which would probably have run for another eight years, would have destroyed the confidence and psyche of other aspiring political leaders from the South and made them and other minority groups obsequious and defeated.

    As it stands, any aspirant who understudies how the late MKO Abiola and President Tinubu crunched the political numbers and ran their races, and that aspirant perhaps does even better than the two eminent politicians, would stand a good chance of winning. Had Atiku run and won, it would have taken an epiphany sometime in the far future to appreciate that as a matter of fact, no northern or southern politician could win office without receiving substantial support from other regions. President Buhari tried it three times and failed because his campaign was insular and based on the unfounded myth of overwhelming northern electoral numbers. President Buhari had that regional dominance but still failed, until he reached out and expanded his horizon. Had President Tinubu exited the race and Alhaji Atiku won, that salient and all-important geopolitical dynamics would have been lost in the tumult of the race. Now, it is abundantly clear that President Tinubu, like him or hate him, understood how to win the presidential race, a lesson particularly useful for future southern aspirants, and humbling for future northern aspirants who can’t draw the right examples.

    In 2027, Alhaji Atiku will still not stand a chance, assuming he becomes a standard-bearer, and not even if he promised the Mandela option of a single term. His politics are too jaded, and his worldview unfortunately too parochial. Likewise, Mr Obi stood no chance in 2023 and will stand no chance in 2027, despite his risible politics of trying to be all things to every region and every person. His politics was fatally damaged in the last presidential race when he framed the election as a religious war. The electorate will confront him with his fervour if he joins forces with Alhaji Atiku.

    Read Also: Okpebholo, Edo PDP clash over Tinubu’s re-election campaign kick-off

    There is yet a second calamity Nigeria was spared by the participation and victory of President Tinubu in the last poll. The pains that accompany his economic measures may prevent many Nigerians from valuing his boldness, while his appointments may incidentally stoke ethnic apprehensions and anger proponents of ethnic exceptionalism, but there is no denying the fact that his controversial measures have completely rejigged the fundamentals of the Nigerian economy and positioned it for extraordinary growth in the years ahead. The measures have started to yield dividends, particularly in terms of opening up the economy and reclaiming lost grounds, but the accompanying early pains had made some Nigerians to be dismissive about his person and policies. Yet, neither Alhaji Atiku nor Mr Obi, who both unreflectingly confessed that they would not have embraced such measures, would dare reverse the policies should they win in 2027. Of course they won’t run, let alone win, but it bears restating that the tectonic shifts the Nigerian economy is witnessing today, and enduring stoically, would never have occurred had President Tinubu abandoned the race as he hinted.

    Today, and going forward, Nigerians may be acculturating to the fact that anyone one with enough savvy and grit can run for the presidency. President Tinubu, much more than Chief Abiola, shattered so many myths and made that realisation possible. His staying in the race and winning it also shattered the myth that a president must be a captive or stooge of shadowy principalities both to run for office and revert to them for support over difficult and controversial policies, especially economic policies. President Tinubu is turning the economy inside out in a way neither Alhaji Atiku nor Mr Obi could have dared. Thank God for that. This does not of course mean that all his policies are infallible or that the president himself has become a mythical figure. It is, however, important to note that his presidency has greatly affected Nigerian politics in ways no one else could have done. How he reinforces the great highlights of his presidency to leave the country and the people changed forever will depend on what he does in the years ahead. For now, he must have the satisfaction of knowing that his staying in the race in 2023 has done for the country what his exit could never have done. It is a milestone worthy of reminiscing at 73. He needs many more such milestones, including remaking the country’s structural foundations, to cement his place in history, whether his policies are understood and appreciated now or not.

    •Concluded

  • The bloodletting resumes

    The bloodletting resumes

    Even before the anger and the remorse died down over the Uromi killings in Edo State, Plateau State erupted in an unrelated orgy of violence that claimed dozens of lives. Then came the unpalatable confirmation from Borno State officials that the Boko Haram wars had recrudesced, with three local government areas unreachable by the state government. On the other side of Nigeria, to the Northwest, bandits have continued to lay spectacular siege to scores of communities in the region, taxing, levying, abducting and maiming hapless indigenes. In all this, as far as the victims are concerned, the government has been caught flatfooted.

    Read Also: Tinubu charges heads of education agencies to protect integrity of sector

    Two hypotheses have been bandied around for the recrudescence. One, that the government has continued to deploy weak and ineffective security paradigm which prioritises defence and occasional attacks, instead of massive and unrelenting offensives until the enemies are vanquished. Two, that as the 2027 election cycle draws near, some enemies and political opponents are sworn to make the government look weak, incapable and unelectable. The truth may contain elements of the two hypotheses. However, the government was not elected to find excuses, no matter how genuine, but to deploy all state resources to extirpate the cancer. The current security paradigm is clearly not working. It should be replaced. Battle plans need to be drawn and executed relentlessly, without pause or hesitation until the objectives are realised.

    Insecurity has spread to all corners of the country, and the people are frustrated and angry. If the centres of provocation are not dealt with in all the regions, the people may brush the government aside and resort to self-help. The fact staring everybody in the face is that the country is on edge. A little push would set it on a point of no return. It is time the government got fed up, set timelines, and mobilise the country for a final push. The country is not contending with skirmishes or minor provocations; it is at war. Let the government, therefore, put the country on a war footing and mobilise thousands of young men willing to fight to end the bleeding. It is time to end the pussyfooting.

  • APC more troubled than leaders admit

    APC more troubled than leaders admit

    Judging from media reports, too many Nigerians are obsessed with the demons troubling both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) to care what is happening elsewhere in the polity. The main reason is not far-fetched. Both parties are immersed in intractable civil war, and have managed by dint of their incompetent leadership to project their griefs and tardiness on public consciousness. Voters take note, and are entertained by the buffooneries which quarrelsome PDP and LP leaders play. There is of course the unpretentious sidekick, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), sometimes half-wake, but often sleepwalking through Nigeria’s electioneering epochs. It does crazy things to be noticed, and like the LP has offered its bed to all kinds of pimps and whores. And so, consumed by these avoidable distractions, potential voters do not notice that hard talking and deep swearing opposition leaders are casting a sheep’s eye at the APC.

    No one can accurately predict how long the buffooneries in the main opposition parties will last. The PDP is rent in two, each side digging its heels in, resolute against any kind of reconciliation. All the party’s governors are not on one page, and the ones who might wish to take a shot at the presidency are too irredentist and ethnically fanatical to be of any use to the party or the country. Its political leaders, whether previous or new presidential aspirants, lack the political and diplomatic pizzazz to drive the party in the right direction or help foster peace and amity. The party pretends to some kind of conservatism, but at bottom, and particularly for its leaders, most of whom are either mercantilists or opportunists, ideology is an inconvenient abstraction. They are desperate to unite in the face of the existential threats the APC constitutes, but they lack the wherewithal to enforce administrative discipline within their ranks. In fact they seem to now wish for a celestial intervention to help them resolve their longstanding logjam, or at least conjure a deus ex machina to whip everybody into line. But given the intractability of their fight, they seem absolutely ill-suited to cutting corners. Instead of wishing the implosion of the ruling APC, they will have to sweat out a consensus or carefully and tediously rebuild their party, a prospect and hard undertaking that unfortunately seems repugnant to their casual approach to politics.

    As expected, and partly because it has nothing to boast about, the LP has concerned itself more with disparaging the APC than mending its own cavalier politics. It is more disunited than the PDP, has no known ideology to anchor its soul, and possesses no skills except perhaps the eclecticism of their former presidential candidate, the overrated Peter Obi. Constantly wrong-footed by two intransigent factions, party leaders, including the parent Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), have switched between strong-arm tactics one day, and half-hearted conciliation the next day. Neither tactics has worked. Deflated and exasperated, they have allowed themselves to embrace solutions completely alien to the nation’s laws or even their own ground rules. Like their opposition cousins in the PDP, they have reduced their initiative to hoping that the APC would implode sooner than later, at least before the next round of electioneering. But that next round is already here, and the opposition parties have remained paralysed and flustered by deep mutual loathing and internal dissensions.

    Nigerians may be close to writing off the two blundering opposition parties, but they also appear nervous that the APC’s unity and strength may be nothing more than a make-belief. Last week, the country was abuzz with speculations that the seven governors’ courtesy call on former president Muhammadu Buhari at his Kaduna home might not be as altruistic as the visitors themselves painted the occasion. They paid the visit, speculators on social and traditional media said, to prevail on the former president to restrain his fretting associates who once belonged to his legacy Congress of Progressive Change (CPC). The associates, it had been speculated, were on the verge of bolting from the APC, the ruling party having been formed by a merger of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), factions of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). If the CPC faction breaks away, the speculators reasoned and concluded, the APC might be in trouble, especially with the 2027 poll in view.

    Read Also: Okpebholo, Edo PDP clash over Tinubu’s re-election campaign kick-off

    Characteristically, ex-president Buhari has reportedly remained sanguine about the whole news. As far as he was concerned, he would remain a loyal party man, the APC having given him the opportunity to be elected twice as president. As for the so-called footloose others, he was quoted as saying, they were perfectly within their rights to determine their political future. It is not clear whether that was the answer his visitors wanted; but that would be vintage Buhari. As president, he did nothing to substantially help any faction or presidential aspirant in their bid to become presidential candidate, and did even less to campaign wholeheartedly for that candidate once he emerged. Asking him to prevail on potential defectors at this day and his age is like asking him to foreswear who he really is. He is contented, untroubled by the din around him, and unwilling to take risks he never took as a fledgling young military officer or an ageing and staid elder.

    Should the CPC faction bolt from the stable, the APC would of course quake. That quake would be seismic only if those who bolted are significant in status and number. The potential defectors may be disaffected and annoyed, especially as they now watch from the sidelines how technocrats seem to be taking plum appointments, but they are unlikely to be rash in taking a decision as weighty as defecting from certainty to uncertainty. In their calculations, they would want to be sure that their defection would cause an exit avalanche big enough to cause a run on the ruling party. Nothing guarantees that ruinous outcome. If they defect and the ruling party manages to attract a significant number from other parties to fill the void left by the departing CPC members, then the defectors’ goose would be cooked. Nothing is more calamitous to a politician than to be left stranded. The APC probably has its scenarios worked out, and will do everything to keep its aggrieved members. But if the potential defectors stick to their guns, the APC will wield the big stick. It will be a great gamble, but the ruling party seems to know that the alienated CPC men, assuming they are significant in number, may not be as valuable as they have sold themselves in the media.

  • If Tinubu had quit 2023 presidential race (1)

    If Tinubu had quit 2023 presidential race (1)

    On the day he turned 73, President Bola Tinubu reminisced on the 2023 presidential race and confessed he nearly quit. The man widely believed to have a steely interior stunned his audience at the State House in Abuja on March 29 when he disclosed just how close he was to abandoning the race. It was an interesting revelation that quaintly humanised him during the crisis triggered by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s currency redesign. Everyone, he indicated, thought the crisis was a product of his ambition to run for the presidency. Should he quit, they believed, the crisis would abate, especially because they didn’t see an immediate end to the naira shortage madness. The reports did not, however, say whether the president’s eyes moistened as his visitor spoke to him about dropping his ambition because the naira crisis was all about him.

    Historians recall that during World War II, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, flagged off the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, his eyes moistened with barely concealed tears, and his hands shook very badly as he held a cup of coffee. He moaned that he knew that some of the ‘boys’ he was seeing off that day would never come back. President Tinubu gave no hint about what else he felt about the presidential race beyond wondering whether it was not time to quit the race as he saw wealthy people reduced to nervous wrecks over the naira crisis. While candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi openly extolled the naira redesign measure, knowing of course that it was expected to hurt the chances of then candidate Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress standard-bearer was agonising over what fateful step to take to mitigate disaster. The president did not also reveal how long he contemplated the option of withdrawing from the race, but it is fitting that when his relative told him he would be defeated, he was spiritually smart enough to vigorously assert that he would win.

    Many people are today spiritually aware of death and life being in the power of the tongue, and have learnt to confess unwaveringly from the depths of their souls their victory over hostile circumstances. The time may come soon when President Tinubu will give further insight into just how he steeled himself to victory despite nearly the whole country and the entirety of the federal government being against his presidential ambition. That story has not been told. Yes, the country remembers how he organised and funded his campaign, posted sentries to various lookout mountains in the North and Middle Belt, and shuffled his men as well as his cards to take advantage of various positions and situations. Yes, they have reviewed his calculations, especially where he planned to win the most votes, where he planned to place second, and which regions to focus on in order to eventually place first overall. Yes, also, the country remembers how the balkanisation of opposing parties helped ensure his victory ultimately.

    But so far, neither he nor anyone else has spoken of what went on in his mind, where and how he conjured the audacity to speak out about his turn (emi lokan) in Abeokuta, and where, despite knowing how well he was encircled by enemies, he found the courage to deprecate the naira redesign measure and pronounce that voting would take place and he would win the presidential poll. By his unmeasured and cavalier remarks, he seemed to wave a red rag to a bull, yet seemed all the more confident he would win. Did he place the confidence for victory in his calculations and permutations or was it something more ethereal, more spiritual, more transcendental? His opponents in the party, he knew and saw clearly, had a head start over him, as they removed former Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole from the chairmanship of the ruling party, stifled the chances of the APC’s Osagie Ize-Iyamu who was comprehensively beaten by then Governor Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party, and engaged in fierce manoeuvres to whittle down his influence and reduce him to pulp. And he saw just how bitterly his party’s leadership, interim and substantive, resented him. Yet, he shouldered on inexplicably.

    By far the most damaging to his ambition was how most of his high-flying mentees in and around the corridors of power broke ranks with him and plotted his defeat. Where did he get the courage to plod on? Citing implausible theories about political liberalism, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who was then vice president, simply scorned history and culture and vied for the same stool with his mentor. Former Osun governor and Interior minister Rauf Aregbesola turned vindictive and scurrilous; former Ekiti governor and one-time Mines and Steel Development minister Kayode Fayemi also actively undermined his mentor; and a host of other officials who had received a helping hand from him at one time or the other lacerated him. But it got even worse. Many of those close to him, who did not actively undermine him, were either indifferent to his ambition or insistent he could never win the 2023 presidential race. After all, did not his relative, the president mused, turn to him and told him pointblank that he could not win the race. In other words, he knew that some of those skeptical about his chances did not come to that conclusion out of malice; yet he neither wavered nor relented.

    Sometime later, perhaps the public would catch a glimpse of how his mind worked and still works, and the spiritual insight that underpins his ambitions. It may be assumed, however, that his spiritual insight is the product of his own deliberate and orchestrated efforts to get into realms the ordinary politician would find inaccessible. Or perhaps it is a mixture of both divine and personal orchestration. It would be interesting to know what he saw when he announced his interest in the race, especially when his party leaders had virtually given him up for dead, shut him out of the corridors of power, denuded him of influence within the party he laboured more than others to build, and largely stripped him of the support of those he had helped to prominence. Even his Yoruba kinsmen became his chief opponents, hating, despising, denigrating, and ridiculing him with passion, composing spiteful hymns about his childhood, educational background, family dynamics, and political trajectories. It is unclear whether most of those who resented him even knew why, especially the unmoored youths of the Southwest who paradoxically roam and idolise the Lagos he helped to elevate.

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    To throw his hat in the ring, shrug off the insults, turn a blind eye to the massive betrayal of mentees and friends, repose faith in the unconventional and provocative Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, contend with overwhelming internal opposition from the ruling party and the presidency, and go on to announce that it was his turn to assume the presidency and would win the office is either sheer political lunacy or a far deeper and inscrutable appreciation of how spiritual and celestial constellations align in favour of an individual. More, having gone through a particularly tough and chastening childhood, he had been forged in furnaces fiery enough to empty a normal person of hope and purpose. If he emerged through all the trials fairly unscathed, perhaps he felt he had become adopted by the ‘gods’. Indeed, throughout the presidential race, he spoke the language of the spirit, and did not for once spoke about or make room for doubts or contemplate the thought of defeat. While his closest and most faithful allies oscillated between days of highs and weeks of lows, aspirant and later candidate Tinubu fixed his gaze on possibilities and outcomes which were fairy tales to the ordinary man.

    Until President Tinubu gives unfettered insight into how his mind worked before the poll and what factors have shaped his outlook over the decades, or how he became inured to the demons that torment the ordinary man, the public would never know what transpired in the last poll beyond the arithmetic of the votes or the regional dynamics that thrust him into the presidency. Nigerians catch glimpses of his real but hidden self in some of the policies and appointments he has made so far, whether it was the subsidy removal measure, the currency float, or the tax bills. And they also catch glimpses of the hidden hands of the spiritual forces arrayed on his side, whether it pertains to defeating ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s coordinated efforts to scuttle the presidential poll result, the massive calls for coup and revolution, and the continuing sabotage in various sectors of the economy and society. Whatever it is, on the occasion of his 73rd birthday, he gave a hint into the other, unspoken and hidden side of how he nearly turned himself into an alien to win the election. Meanwhile, he has taught many a Christian leader a lesson in how to resist the portents of failure and disaster, by asserting that there is a lifting up when others speak about casting down, and by turning words into spirits.

    • To be continued
  • Atiku, Wike: the jousting continues ad nauseam

    Atiku, Wike: the jousting continues ad nauseam

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s 2023 presidential race is a story of what might have been. Does he regret how he ran the race? Does he know a different outcome was actually within his reach, had he been less presumptuous? Or was he just plain incompetent in political strategy? There is nothing in the former vice president’s public statements, now or in the past 20 months or so, that gives any indication he was remorseful about the tactics he used in the race. If he suffered pangs of remorse privately, he has been clever and successful in masking it. If he didn’t feel any remorse, then he must be more stoical than many people give him credit. But any normal and clever politician in Alhaji Atiku’s worn shoes would have pined away in regret for frittering away what was undoubtedly his best chance to clinch the race.

    Last week’s verbal jousting with Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike indicates that the former vice president actually remains sanguine about his monumental electoral loss. He may never get the chance again, whether to run for the top office or win. In 2023, all he needed to do was indulge in the realpolitik that had hallmarked his decades-long political career. He was not the most perceptive and principled of leaders, but nature at least afforded him chances upon chances in two or three dizzying months in mid-2022 to win the diadem he had coveted all his life. Uncharacteristically, for someone so placid about political morality and so unfeeling about other people’s opinions, he flung it out of the window and failed to seize the moment. Last week, in their verbal jousting, both men showed who was to blame and what that critical factor that would have produced a different outcome was.

    Alhaji Atiku drew the first blood in a television interview where he insisted that Mr Wike’s character disqualified him from being picked as running mate. He was not only the second pick by a committee the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) set up to do the sieving, the former vice president said dismissively, his role in the Rivers State crisis and his giddy display at the FCT made the former Rivers State governor a misfit for the onerous responsibility of deputizing for the president. Now, of all the criticisms anyone might level at Mr Wike, assaulting his character is the most intolerable. He believes he is a political purist, and more, he believes his judgement is generally infallible, moored, he thinks, on the most indubitable ethos any system could forge. For instance, in his diatribe against Rivers governor Siminalayi Fubara, the issue of character failure of his successor remains the recurring theme. To, therefore, be accused of character failure was a gauntlet he would never fail to take up.

    The former vice president had obviously forgotten his facts or mixed up his story, thundered Mr Wike through his spokesman. The PDP committee in question, roared Mr Wike, actually had the FCT minister as the number one pick, with 13 votes, and former Delta State governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the number two pick with only two votes. The former vice president, he said, mixed up his facts or lied sacrilegiously in the time of Ramaddan. Incidentally, PDP spokesmen later shamefacedly admitted that Mr Wike was first pick. And as for impugning his character as governor, former governor, and now FCT minister, the former vice president, he said, simply evaded the truth, avoided blame for his 2023 humiliation, and pursued red herrings. Mr Wike said he had since moved on beyond the 2022 mishap, advising Alhaji Atiku to do the same.

    Unfortunately for the former vice president, Mr Wike, despite his own private failings, many of which are obvious, was right in his summation of why the PDP lost the presidential election. It was tactical folly for the PDP presidential candidate to have imagined that picking Dr Okowa would enable him to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. He had thought that the Ifeanyi in Dr Okowa’s name would help him appeal to both the Igbo and South-South votes. At another time and perhaps era, theoretically, he would be right. But not when a certain Peter Obi was also in the race on the platform of the Labour Party (LP), and certainly not when the Southeast’s herd mentality could not be immediately discounted or mitigated by any known factor. What is even more flummoxing is that everyone, save the former vice president, knew that the ideologically superficial Mr Obi was nevertheless sensible enough to know that all he needed to do in the race was lock the Southeast down and make a dangerous, if fatal, pitch for the Christian vote. The LP candidate was in fact coherent and largely successful in both efforts. It clearly sounded the death knell to a presidential ambition to ignore the damage Mr Obi was capable of doing, and to pick an intelligent but largely uncharismatic running mate with no strategic appeal.

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    If Alhaji Atiku had picked Mr Wike, as the more politically savvy PDP committee suggested, he would have saved the party from fracturing, thus defanging the nuisance value of the Group of Five (G-5), kept the usually conservative South-South in the bag, set the cat among the Southeast pigeons who would doubt their insular champion, and convinced enough Middle Belt and core North voters to put all their eggs in one basket as he parochially preached. He had the clearest and most enticing pathway to the presidency in the 2023 poll. But instead, he was sure, without any basis, that his main opponent, the then candidate Tinubu, would falter. He then reinforced the farce by reposing confidence in the promises of many presidential insiders of the day, leading him to defy the threats of the G-5 and Mr Wike. No one so more willingly committed political suicide.

    Alhaji Atiku may be unprincipled, but he is not stupid. He probably knows that he made a big mistake in 2023. He also probably suspects that the last presidential election was his best and last chance to run for the coveted office. But he needs a sacrificial lamb to convince the world that too many ‘traitors’ doomed his electoral chances, and also needs any ointment wherever he can find it to salve his wounded conscience. He has never wished to be a statesman, and would, therefore, be loth to admit his error nobly and bravely. He will, therefore, continue to joust with Mr Wike, abuse him at every turn, and nitpick his faults. Redirecting the attention to the FCT minister will, however, not mitigate his failure to make hay while the sun shone in 2023. Whereas hope may be rising for Mr Obi at the LP as the Supreme Court has weighed in against the intransigent party chairman, Julius Abure, in the PDP, and in the foreseeable future, the pall is unlikely to lift anytime soon, regardless of how mendacious the former vice president can be.

  • Obasanjo, Jonathan, Soyinka on Rivers emergency

    Obasanjo, Jonathan, Soyinka on Rivers emergency

    If newspaper headlines are to be believed, three eminent Nigerians were reportedly among those who made fiery comments on President Bola Tinubu’s state of emergency proclamation in Rivers State. The headlines were, however, strident and difficult to correlate with the tone and nuances of their views on the controversial subject. In fact, in the case of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the one many Nigerians love to despise for his disdain for consistency and truth, it is difficult to understand from his brief remarks at the Emeka Ihedioha 60th birthday colloquium in Abuja where he spoke pointedly about the state of emergency in Rivers. From the time he took the microphone and defused tension by joking with the compere, to the very end when he spoke soberly and frankly about the fate of liberal democracy, there does not seem to be anywhere he talked about Rivers State directly or even obliquely. He generally limited himself to the colloquium’s theme which addressed Africa’s ‘failing democracy’.

    Chief Obasanjo spoke about democracy not just failing, but actually dying, considering how deeply conceptually flawed it had been almost from the beginning. He called for definitional exactitude, insisting that it was disingenuous to expect Africa, going by its long and illustrious history, to practise with any degree of success Western liberal democracy. He may be overly simplistic to suggest that corruption had become the bane of democracy, but at least he embraces this correlation without throwing his customary tantrums. And though he regarded democracy as conceptually weakened by borrowed traditions, he felt no sense of urgency to do anything about it for the eight years he spent in office. It is also not clear why he leaves the job of fashioning African democracy to unidentified experts, while failing to provide at least a skeletal rubric for general understanding. Then he finally lathered his remarks with wisecracks and almost fooled everyone by doting on Mr Ihedioha, yes the same Mr Ihedioha, former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives between 2011 and 2015, and for almost a year Imo State governor between 2019 and 2020.

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    On his own, and complete with foreign proverbs and other literary ornaments, former president Goodluck Jonathan also offered his perspective on the emergency matter on the prodding, he said, of the people who wanted him to say something. Two Saturdays ago, as Chairman of the Haske Satumari Foundation Colloquium, a foundation that focuses on promoting social change and empowerment through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), he remarked: “Of course, what is happening in Nigeria today regarding the situation in Rivers State is like an Indian proverb which says that if somebody is really sleeping, you can easily wake up that person, but if someone is pretending to sleep, it will be difficult to wake the person up. They are pretending to sleep and waking up such a person is extremely difficult. Whatever happens in a country, the decisions taken by the executive arm of government, the parliament and the judiciary affects everybody. Whatever we do affects everybody, and if we must build a nation for our children and grandchildren, no matter how painful it is, we must try to do what is right.”

    Characteristically, the media blew his remarks out of proportion, suggesting that he had denounced state of emergency. It is true that he neither praised it nor considered it the right or appropriate response to the Rivers crisis, but the stridency insinuated into his speech was simply impalpable. Instead, he waffled, perhaps torn between placating his Ijaw kindred and unsure whether to denounce the Tinubu administration. In his opinion, after arming his point of view with an Indian proverb, Dr Jonathan blamed everybody, rather than one arm of government (presumably the executive). Unlike Chief Obasanjo, however, Dr Jonathan was more homiletical as he admonished everyone to recognise that all Nigerians bear the consequences of bad governance. The treatment given holders of Nigerian passports, he summed up, is perfect proof of how Nigerians incompetently conduct their affairs.

    If newspapers and the social media could not handle the less nuanced remarks of Dr Jonathan, they fared much worse in handling the deeply nuanced remarks of Prof. Wole Soyinka on the same Rivers subject. He was quoted as blasting, condemning or kicking against the state of emergency. But here is what he said. “If it is constitutionally right, then I think it is about time we sat down and amended the constitution to ensure that it operates as a genuine federal entity. The government is over-centralised. The debate will continue on whether this (state of emergency) was, in the first place, a wise decision, but in terms of fundamental principles, I believe this goes against the federal spirit of association. I find that the constitution has placed too much power in the hands of the president. The system we are operating right now is not the best for a pluralistic society like ours. That is a fundamental principle I have always held…The federal spirit of association is a cardinal principle and, for that reason, some of us have called again and again for a national conference to really accord ourselves an authentic people’s constitution. Right now, in principle, this action is against the federal imperative.”

    The eminent professor took a more structural rather than legalistic approach to the crisis. It was only Daily Trust newspaper that captured that nuance on its front page. The professor did not pronounce on the rightness or wrongness of state of emergency, for he was unaware of the whole facts of the case. He acknowledged that in a democracy a state of emergency proclamation was both an aberration and overkill, but in the case of Rivers, and without prejudice to what the constitution provides, the crisis, he believed, beckoned for a reconsideration of the country’s founding principles to help procure sound federal principles and arrangements. He also spoke about federalism as an abstract concept and made reference to what he believed was the unfettered power located in the presidency. And speaking directly about the state of emergency proclamation, he summed it up ‘in principle’ as negating the ‘federal imperative’. The professor was wise not to get bogged down with the legal interpretation of the constitutional provisions regarding state of emergency. But the media assumed they knew where he was headed.

  • Rivers Emergency: Fubara misses the point

    Rivers Emergency: Fubara misses the point

    Suspended Rivers State governor Siminalayi Fubara has continued to act and speak as though he voluntarily stepped down from office for a few days or weeks. He needs to be reminded that he has been duly suspended for six months in the first instance with the backing of the constitution, partly because he was central to the state’s multidimensional political crisis. He had been pressured by former governor Nyesom Wike since 2023, barely three months after he assumed office, but his predecessor had limited himself to talking up a storm. On the contrary, Mr Fubara had been actively engaged in acting the storm. The rhetorician could of course not be suspended, for he was not the one who directly governs the state; that punishment was reserved for the habitué of the storm, the governor himself.

    Last week, this column argued that Mr Fubara was actively undermining the Supreme Court judgement which ordered him to take certain actions to align governance in the state with the law and the constitution. He was unwilling to heed the judgement, believing that he had more support than he actually did, and could create events and circumstances potent enough to tie the hands of the federal government while he gets away with murder. His actions and words, not to talk of his feints as well as the provisions of the constitution, led this column to support the proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers. The column also warned that if he hoped to return to office, he would need the circumspection he had been incapable of showing. Alas, Mr Fubara and his moribund administration may be too far gone to be salvaged. His suspension is for six months in the first instance; it may last for much longer, assuming he does not talk himself into jail as he seems bent on doing.

    The suspended governor denies the allegation of sponsoring militants to blow up crude oil pipelines, an action that tantamount to levying war against the country; but he has been unable to deconstruct his statement to youths at a public function in Port Harcourt to wait for instructions over the political impasse in the state, particularly after the House of Assembly renewed their impeachment plans against him and his deputy. The federal government was not fooled. Next, Mr Fubara was at Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, where he and his supporters tried to rally the Ijaw to his side, thereby attempting to paint the Rivers crisis in ethnic colours. Then, as if playing a script, he attended a church in Port Harcourt to demonstrate he was unfazed by the whole tumult. He obviously hopes that he and his supporters can rally the state, neighbouring states, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or a faction of it, and possible the rest of the antagonistic public and country to defeat the presidency and end or shorten the state of emergency.

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    By now, even his diehard supporters must be having second thoughts. Like everyone else, they have had enough time to study the constitution and come to some tentative conclusions indicating that the proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers was in line with the constitution. The constitution may be silent on a number of things, including suspending governors and legislatures, but no matter how the document is read and interpreted, it is hard not to agree with the proclamation. Mr Fubara was the problem; he allowed the pressures on him by external bodies to expose the beast in him, leading him to compromise governance and predispose the state to violence of unimaginable magnitude. So far, there is nothing about him that enables him to reflect on what went wrong, what he didn’t do right, and how best he could have managed the crisis. He believes he has managed to deflect public anger to his sworn enemy, Mr Wike, and successfully covered his own appalling lack of judgement, not to say apocalyptic predilection for violence and mayhem. He still goes about thinking he can produce a violent endgame for the federal administration from the Rivers imbroglio.

    In all this, Mr Fubara does not seem to realise he is in exile. That he has not been leaned on by the security services is an acknowledgement by the federal government that all efforts must be geared towards retaining a semblance of democratic governance in Rivers. Ideally, since there cannot be two heads of state or sheriffs in a polity, one must leave town. But the government has indulged him by turning a blind eye to his nomadic escapades and posturing. But their exasperations may start to show soon. He has refused to keep silent and appears ready to defend himself at every turn, even if he must lie in the process. Since he has chosen to be imprudent and sanctimonious, it may be time for the government to open the books of his dealings over the burnt and demolished House of Assembly buildings, and perhaps too his not-so-hidden fraternisation with militants during which he forgot himself and acted like he was not governor of Rivers. He appears impervious to learning, and he does not seem to recognise that he is in the wilderness. A time in the wilderness calls for deep reflections and study, the rebuilding of reputation, and finding the formula to control his moods and mollify his unnatural rage.

    Mr Fubara is an accountant, and there are indications he is a competent professional. That makes him a numbers man, and most numbers men, as everyone knows, cannot be trusted to philosophically outthink their opponents. They may toy with mathematical scenarios, and be adept at jigsaw arithmetic puzzles, but they are often incapable of projecting the nuances of leadership that deal with the nexus between politics, economics and society. What the Rivers crisis has revealed is a governor unable to rationally respond to complex pressures from enemies or the blandishments of friends. He hated one with a passion, and succumbed to the other with amateurish glee. With a chaotic mind seething with mischief, it is unclear whether he can appreciate that his time in the wilderness, an affliction as it were, affords him the opportunity for soul cleansing. He needs to calmly analyse his predicament, and find answers to the political puzzles that have projected him as a neophyte. Despite the tons of advice given him by many state elders and columnists on how to respond to the situation that assails him, it appears sadly unlikely that he possesses both the gumption and the willingness to make amends. He will continue to talk nineteen to the dozen, obfuscate as much as possible, twist stories and tell tall ones with proactive and effective propaganda, and continue fighting without knowing how to stop.

    From all indications, the state of emergency in Rivers State will last a full six months, with the distinct possibility of an extension. The security services have let Mr Fubara run riot with plots since last year, and he has not relented. While, the House of Assembly has sensibly kept silent, and Mr Wike, whether pleased with the state of emergency or not, has let off only muted groans, the suspended governor has not let bad enough alone, as the Americans say. He has managed to get embroiled in another bitter and needless controversy with the former Rivers State Head of Service, George Nwaeke, in which again he has demonstrated a galling lack of capacity to measure his words and tame his emotions. Convinced that the public seemed to be on his side, and certain in his mind that he has enough time to make the emergency proclamation difficult to manage, he has engaged in public demonstrations of show of confidence and imperturbability. A faction of the PDP and a few leaders of the Labour Party as well as haters of the Tinubu administration have viewed the whole brouhaha from the partisan angle, in the same depressing manner top political leaders are embracing ill-mannered youths disseminating rant campaigns or truth-or-dare contests on social media. The whole environment is being badly and irretrievably polluted.

    The federal government and its security agencies should earn their pay by intelligently responding to the many subtle and multifaceted existential threats facing the country. Too many law breakers have been indulged in the name of democracy, including those advocating revolutions to overthrow the same constitution whose protection they feel entitled to. Because of the spontaneous fury that erupts on social media, mostly anchored on ignorance of the socio-economic and political conditions the new administration inherited in 2023, the government has been reluctant to clamp down on lawbreakers. No thanks to the social media, the country is today teetering on the brink. And no thanks to a warped and fearful interpretation of what democracy connotes in these parts, discipline is breaking down, and politicians like Mr Fubara as well as men, women and youths of all classes and persuasions are taking advantage of what they sense is the government’s weakness and timidity. Rivers State sole administrator, Ibok-Ete Ibas, a retired naval admiral, may not have time to probe the suspended governor, but he needs to invite him to shed light on some of the discrepancies clearly evident in his administrations dealings. If Mr Fubara likes to talk, including directly intimidating the wife of the former Head of Service through a phone call, they should give him matters to ponder. After all, for the next six months, he does not have immunity. But he can also contest that in court, as his supporters are futilely contesting the proclamation of a state of emergency.

  • Opposition coalition finally birthed

    Opposition coalition finally birthed

    The much-awaited coalition of opposition political parties expected to give the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) a run for its money in the 2027 elections may have been birthed. The birth was, however, inauspicious. Some of the key inspirers of the coalition were absent from the first media engagement purporting to have been carried out at the behest of the coalition. At the head of the coalition’s press engagement were former vice president Atiku Abubakar, former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir David Lawal, and a representative of Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), Tanko Yinusa. The other names mentioned in association with the coalition, to wit, Kayode Fayemi and Rotimi Amaechi, reportedly took permission to be absent.

    As this column suggested last week about the coalition, other than the glacial Alhaji Atiku and the imperious Mallam el-Rufai, the other political big wigs associated with the coalition would bide their time and hedge their bets in a clever demonstration of extreme caution. They would like to see which way the cats jump before leaping into the chasm. They have not disappointed. Going by the inauspiciousness of the coalition’s birth last week, and the damp squib it turned out to be, they would be glad they showed foresight. The coalition’s media engagement was fixated on the Rivers State emergency proclamation. Predictably, the leaders launched into a tirade against President Bola Tinubu whose administration they described as autocratic. The group called for the reversal of the proclamation. They said little else. They probably sensed that the emergency issue was the hot-button issue of the moment, and it would live up to its billing of serving to launch the coalition and impress its aims on Nigerians.

    The coalition’s timing was awful. Not only are Nigerians largely ambivalent to the proclamation of emergency in Rivers, even those who oppose it have shown less vehemence than those who support it. If the coalition would oppose the proclamation, perhaps they could offer the public a less partisan and demonstrably clear-sighted analysis of an alternative way of managing a very bad and potentially explosive situation. Emotions and hysteria were unlikely to help the coalition strike a powerful public pose or convince Nigerians that they were not witnessing the antics of desperate power grabbers. In short, the coalition did not make an impression, certainly not a positive impression. They could of course address the subject matter, for it was clearly relevant, but they should have done it as concerned patriots and delinked it from any electoral coalition.

    It was clear last week that the so-called coalition was inchoate. Does the country need a coalition or even a merger? Absolutely. The ruling party needs to be kept on its toes, and the public would appreciate any group that opens their eyes to credible alternatives. Indeed, the problem last week was not that Alhaji Atiku and Mallam el-Rufai stoked the embers of discord or tried to present an alternative; the problem was that they chose a topic they were neither emotionally nor intellectually capable of addressing with conviction. They misjudged the country’s mood, having spoken to their inner caucus and listened only to themselves. The painstaking consideration and dissection of issues that should presage their press engagement was obviously not done. Having adopted a tunnel vision of the issue in contention, they went prematurely public on behalf of the coalition, making a hash of it that newspapers of the following day struggled to accommodate the news on prominent pages.

    But perhaps the most damning part of the whole fiasco last Thursday was that the two or three eminent political personalities who conducted the media engagement – all of them controversial figures and perhaps long past their ideational prime – gave the impression that they did it on behalf of the coalition. Some excitable social and print media analysts suggested that the coalition leaders who addressed the media spoke to a political storm gathering in the horizon, and palpable anger wafting through the atmosphere; but in reality, the men at the high table cut a dismal and isolated picture, nearly all of them wearing forlorn looks. The said analysts spuriously likened the coalition to the one that birthed the APC in 2013, a comparison that is so far-fetched that it is incredible any reporter could make that mistake. When the APC eventually went public, their outing had been preceded by hard and comprehensive cogitations about the aims and objectives of the coalition, its ideology, finances, and leadership. They were clear what they felt was impracticable: a coalition. They, therefore, opted for merger. The Alhaji Atiku-led coalition has neither engaged in any such cogitations nor found an ideological or administrative fulcrum to balance the group. All the men at the high table last Thursday are expert joiners who thrive on other people’s foundations, not founders, and certainly not ideologues, despite Mallam el-Rufai’s vaunted oratory and academic brilliance.

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    It was only a few months ago that the group’s potential leaders considered the idea of merger. Many of them, including New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) leader Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who was also approached, dismissed the idea as a flight of fancy. Worse, after many false starts and fainthearted attempt to retake the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a task now complicated by the judicial loss to the Nyesom Wike camp of the national secretary’s position, Alhaji Atiku has probably come to the conclusion that he seems partyless in the real sense of the word. He could, therefore, not influence or control the PDP. He might soon defect to another party, perhaps the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and join the fierce and unabating struggle for dominance and positions. Mallam el-Rufai was himself in the throes of migrating from one party to the mutant SDP, and was not well placed to inspire any merger deal. The former SGF, Mr Lawal, had been perpetually fulminating on the political sidelines, and was for all intents and purposes also partyless. They were, therefore, realistic enough not to contemplate a merger. They were all best suited for a coalition. Yet, a coalition needs abundant spade work by brilliant and gifted founders who could concretise a vacuum, men and women who could conjure something from nothing, leaders who could suckle, wean and nurture any organism. As it stands today, none of the so-called coalition leaders fits the bill.

    As indicated in this place last week, except some phantom lightning strikes the primordial soup located in the imaginations of the coalition leaders, nothing of substance would emerge to present a serious, let alone formidable, opposition to the APC. The ruling party knows this, hence the party chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje’s sweeping and boastful assertions. The opposition coalition leaders also suspect this, and are dismayed by their own self-imposed impotence. Alarmingly, the public also know this and are mystified by the ineptitude of the hefty political leaders determined to unhorse the gifted equestrian, President Tinubu and his party, the APC. If Alhaji Atiku and Mallam el-Rufai wish to be taken seriously, they will need to return to the drawing board, assuming they can become what they are not built for, and manage their obsessions far better than they have done.

  • Fubara and state of emergency

    Fubara and state of emergency

    On Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu suspended the main democratic institutions of Rivers State when he proclaimed a state of emergency pursuant to Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution. The House of Assembly, Governor Siminalayi Fubara, and Deputy Governor Ngozi Odu were asked to step aside for six months. A sole administrator, former Naval Chief of Staff Ibok-Ette Ibas, was appointed to run the state for six months in the first instance and restore normality. The National Assembly, in approving the president’s action, anticipated a shorter state of emergency period. In his broadcast, the president predicated his action on the implacability of the warring sides in the Rivers crisis, and the implications for critical national infrastructure, particularly two pipelines vandalised in the Ogoni area of the state on Monday.

    The proclamation was almost spontaneous, coming on Tuesday hours after suspected militants blew up sections of the Trans Niger pipeline in Gokana Local Government Area of the state, disrupting electricity supply to parts of Abia State. Given the elaborate preparations necessary to deploy resources and troops to police the emergency, it is unlikely the pipelines vandalisation was anything more than a trigger. The president must have authorised the plan for a state of emergency days ahead of the proclamation. He was more likely to have been influenced by Mr Fubara’s frustrating and deliberate refusal or reluctance to give effect to the Supreme Court judgement of February 28 that compelled him to relate with the legitimate House of Assembly in budget presentation and screening of commissioners. Regardless of the propaganda the governor deployed, much of it not as clever as he thought, it was clear he had only feigned to implement the judgement.

    It is one thing to instigate a welter of court cases, many of them ending in a cul de sac, but it is another thing to deploy propaganda and arm-twisting to undermine the Supreme Court judgement. The governor was clever enough to understand that his tormentor and main antagonist in the Rivers crisis, former governor Nyesom Wike, was not as magnanimous in victory as the situation demanded. Recognising that the former governor’s triumphalism and hysteria had struck a negative impression on the minds of Riverians, Mr Fubara hoped that if he baited Mr Wike long enough, circumstances in the state could tilt the argument against both the House of Assembly and their main backer in Abuja. For the governor, the court defeat was too humiliating, perhaps unfair, and undeserving of implementation. He simply did not see the plausibility of relating with an enemy who had rubbed his nose in the defeat and kicked him in the groin.

    The pipeline vandalisation obviously took the crisis a notch further, with Abuja understanding clearly that Mr Fubara had remorselessly turned the ‘guns’ on the nation itself, a heinous crime against national security. But it is even more likely that the state of emergency proclamation was contingent upon factors more insidious. Apart from the governor’s plot to weaken or even invalidate the court’s judgement and render it ultimately nugatory, the presidency also suspected or feared that impeaching the governor could tilt the state into almost irreversible anarchy. Mr Wike had hyperbolically declared that heavens would not fall should the governor be impeached, oblivious to the fear that the state could indeed explode, but the federal government was unprepared to take chances. The presidency would not tie the hands of Mr Wike’s camp to fight back against Mr Fubara, for many reasons including politics, but it knew it had a more salient responsibility to the nation than considering and acknowledging its own political interests. It knew, probably from security reports and even common sense, that Mr Fubara would not go down quietly in the face of impeachment threats, an action that appeared to materialise in the pipeline vandalisation.

    Unfortunately for the governor, he had been quoted at a public function as instructing youths of the state not to be ‘perturbed’ about events in the state, but to ‘await instructions’ at the appropriate time. The vandalisation of the pipelines was interpreted as ‘instructions’ given to the youths or militants, while the governor did not condemn the violence or take proactive or reactive steps to ensure peace and order in the state. Mr Fubara’s serial tragic missteps, more than Mr Wike’s grandstanding and loquacity, contributed enormously to the proclamation of a state of emergency. With one stone, the president defused the violence anticipated over the fear of impeachment and the pipeline vandalisation that could have spiralled out of control damaging the economy and reinforcing other forms of violence if militants and other disaffected Nigerians sensed the weakness or dilatoriness of government. President Tinubu was more than willing to act in ways some legal experts interpret as constitutionally controversial rather than indulge a governor who sadly has a record nearly two years long of defying the law and the constitution.

    The proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers State was unavoidable. The governor, much more than his enemy, Mr Wike, made that outcome inescapable. But there have been a lot of discussions about whether a state of emergency should involve suspending elected officials, in this case, the governor and the legislature. In the first instance, neither the president nor the constitution talked about emergency rule. Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution provides for the proclamation of a state of emergency, and the president in his speech also talked about the same thing. In addition, the constitution does not define the parameters of a state of emergency, how wide or deep. It only defines the conditions precedent to the proclamation. The president, too, perhaps anchoring his wide-ranging action on historical examples, simply left the public to infer the plausibility of how expansively the administration had gone in suspending democratic institutions.

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    Clearly, after the furore has died down, the National Assembly will take another look at Section 305 of the constitution and attempt to define its parameters, perhaps a little bit more rigidly than currently provided for. They will try to remove all ambiguities. But they must caution themselves in doing so because if the hands of a president is restrained or shackled too much, it could lead a governor as incautious as Mr Fubara to test the constitution to its inelastic limit. The Rivers governor was completely inured to the dangers constituted by his defiance and instigations. Right from when he allegedly inspired the arson on the legislative building, to when he approved its demolition, not to say his serial defiance of court judgements as he chose which judgements to take and which lawmakers to deal with, it was a mere short walk to constitutional and national security disaster. He indulged in these provocations because he was sure he had wrong-footed Mr Wike who had been painted as greedy, insatiable and meddlesome. Backed by a sizable percentage of Rivers elders, Mr Fubara paid less attention to fighting his cases in court than harnessing public anger against the Wike camp.

    If commentators on the Rivers crisis had been less partisan, they would have seen clearly that the emergency proclamations in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa under the Goodluck Jonathan administration differed markedly from that in Rivers. In the earlier three, they were designed to defeat insurgency or checkmate enemies without. In the 2004, 2006 and First Republic state of emergency proclamations, they were designed to quell internecine political conflicts threatening the republic in the affected states and regional administrations. In fact, the Dr Jonathan emergency proclamations had no pretext to be called state of emergency. They were nothing more than heightened military exercises heavily supported and bankrolled by the relevant state governments against Boko Haram insurgents. The classical definition of a state of emergency actually involves the suspension of civil and constitutional authorities. If the constitution left the definition unresolved or ambiguous, it is probably because it never countenanced the day when a Mr Fubara or Edo State’s Godwin Obaseki would destroy the legislature, bar lawmakers from doing their work, and instigate the populace in the classical dictatorial sense into taking the law into their own hands.

    There was no saving Mr Fubara last week. He should now concern himself with ensuring that he changes his mindset completely away from his natural instinct for autocracy to that of a democrat, even if it makes him a very awkward democrat. His statement rebutting the president claim about his involvement in Mondays vandalisation of pipelines does not show a man willing or capable of learning from his mistakes. He is fixated with Mr Wike, but the latter is not the governor. He is. To hope that the public would continue to conflate their distaste for Mr Wike’s obtruding methods with their support for his rashness in such a manner that extenuates the governor’s authoritarian methods is to chase shadows and doom both his return to office and his first term.

  • SDP and the mythical 2027 coalition

    SDP and the mythical 2027 coalition

    Weeks after complaining that the All Progressives Congress (APC) had lost its way in the thicket of intraparty politics, and days after defecting to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai has invited a number of political heavyweights to join him in his apostasy. He wants former vice president Atiku Abubakar, former Anambra State governor and past Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi, former Osun and Ekiti States governors Rauf Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi respectively, and a host of other aggrieved APC leaders as well as ex-president Muhammadu Buhari loyalists to join him in some form of coalition inspired by the SDP to dislodge President Bola Tinubu from office and unhorse the APC. If they cannot cobble a coalition of parties to do the job, but must restrict themselves to the SDP, they can at least assemble a coalition of powerful political personalities.

    Of the lot, however, only Mr Aregbesola is as impulsive as he is, and might join him in the new hunting ground. The others are too cautious and calculating to leap without seeing which way the cat jumps. Mallam el-Rufai sees himself as an intrepid forerunner. Like Mr Aregbesola, he is really without a political party after he exited the ruling party. Before he officially left the APC on Monday, he had met Mr Aregbesola and Pastor Tunde Bakare in Lagos for undisclosed reasons. One of the reasons was probably his impending defection.

    As soon as both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi sense the irresolvability of the crises in their parties, and mortifyingly conclude they lack the capacity or influence to change the fortune of the parties, they will jump ship. Their destination may in fact be the SDP. Unfortunately, the common denominator of the aggrieved politicians is their lack of capacity to manage party disequilibria. The opportunistic Alhaji Atiku prefers a peaceful political atmosphere to thrive. The discipline, ideology, financial resources, administrative acumen, and diplomatic bargaining he needs to midwife peace in an unstable party are tedious and thankless to him. He has tried to browbeat the quarreling leaders of the PDP, but failed. Consequently, he is now so flustered by the intransigence of his fellow party leaders that he appears on the verge of giving up. Mr Obi, on the other hand, does not have any reputation for managing a political party, indeed any huge enterprise other than trading concerns, but he continues to give the impression he can run a huge country. His attempt at restoring order and purpose in the LP, which he and his coterie hijacked from their disenchanted leaders, was so desultory that it beggars belief he was once a governor. Mr Obi is also on the verge of leaping into the void.

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    All the big names mentioned in respect of the so-called mega coalition are individuals whose political ideals have remained either tenuous or inchoate. Mallam el-Rufai talks glibly about progressivism, but there has been nothing in his politics or his administration as a governor that boasts an iota of progressivism. As governor in Kaduna, he was to all intents and purposes a reactionary leader, so vicious that his fellow party leaders despair of his style and messages. The indigenes, particularly from Southern Kaduna or those who differed from his sectarian worldview, were constantly disquieted by his methods and insults. While Alhaji Atiku has never been ideological or faithful to an ideal, Mr Aregbesola, of course, flowers only under supervision. Left alone, both leaders will cavort among theories of society and order, and immerse themselves in all kinds of political contrivances. How would they, therefore, fare in the SDP should all three and many others like them berth in that previously inactive and for now precarious party?

    It is possible they might fare well. There was no reason for Alhaji Atiku to dump the PDP for the APC in the 2015 elections, but he did, with gusto and utmost indifference. And there is no reason for Mallam el-Rufai to dump the APC now, but politics for him is about instant gratification, about immense satisfaction derived from calling the shots and playing God. Setbacks are temporary in politics, and one who is disfavoured today can bounce back into favour and reckoning tomorrow. For the former governor, that is an unnecessary gamble. (The president they are trying to unseat today demonstrated resilience in both the 2015 and 2019 elections when he stood solid behind the APC despite being twice sidelined immediately after the elections). Of the long list of those rumoured to be heading to the SDP, there is not one of them who possesses the staying power or loyalty to ideals and ideology. If they suffer any setback, they become incandescent with rage. They may stick together in their new party if they decide on defection, but because they behave the same way and boast a restricted repertoire, it is hard to see them reinforcing one another’s strengths or harnessing their collective potentials for a common good. Proud, intolerant, impatient, and completely averse to political altruism, they may end up being torn apart by their common resentments and ambitions.

    Alhaji Atiku has sworn to stay in the PDP. Months before he defected, Mallam el-Rufai also swore to stay put in the APC. And when directly or through their allies they had interactions with the leader of the SDP, Shehu Musa Gabam, they still insisted their visits were nothing but mere social interactions, having been friends for a very long time. The deception was unconvincing, but they could not care less. Weeks later, Mallam el-Rufai jumped ship. Who can tell whether months later, if the stalemate in the PDP persists, the former vice president would not himself jump ship with the same cavalierness he has been accustomed to nearly all his political life. But before the long list of potential defectors cross the Rubicon, they will do their best to placate the feuding forces in their current parties. They will savage the dissenters, mollify the amenable, and make one desperate last effort to snatch control of their parties. Alhaji Atiku, however, stands a better chance of succeeding in reining in the cantankerous leaders in the PDP than Mr Obi in the LP. As for the remnants of the aggrieved in the APC, they are painfully aware that the party could neither be undermined nor snatched. So, they will dither until the coast is clear, when it becomes plain they would be damned if they stayed in the party or damned if they didn’t. In line with their capricious politics, they might prefer to be damned outside the party where tantalising opportunities and errant cash probably await them.

    Worsening the dilemma of the defectors is the question of what dynamics are at play in the SDP, their new special purpose vehicle. The APC was founded in February 2013, some two years before the 2015 elections. Now would probably be the best time for the mass defectors led by Mallam el-Rufai to found a new party, had they possessed the capacity and conviction to lead a political revolution anchored on principles. But no, they are flighty and impatient. Yet, the SDP, a revived party first founded in 1989 but which went somewhat comatose in the intervening years, has remained a fringe phenomenon, receiving a marginal number of elected House of Representatives members totaling two in the 10th House, compared with LP’s 35. By every yardstick, Mallam el-Rufai and his potential or co-defectors should have embraced LP. But SDP is led by a northerner, and has been wooing defectors for years. The defectors will come in droves, as the late Gen Sani Abacha’s loyalists are beginning to exploit, including Major Hamza el-Mustapha, and they will bring tons of money. But they will lack integrity, ideology (contrary to their founding platform), and cohesion.

    Do not, however, rule out the migration of the motley Atiku crowd and aggrieved Southwest politicians with an axe to grind. If speculative reports could mention former vice president Yemi Osinbajo as a potential defector, then prepare for surprises. Most of the rumoured defectors will for now denounce any mention of their names, but at the right time, the fog will lift and the shape of the new SDP will become clear. What is, however, indubitable is that politicians who emerged from the 2023 elections aggrieved will attempt either a merger, which is increasingly looking unlikely, or assemble a grand army of coalition politicians. Their sole aim, as Mallam el-Rufai himself indiscreetly announced, is to unseat President Tinubu who they insist has offended them or created hardship for the common man, irrespective of what recent economic indicators say. It is too early to surmise what the prospects of the coalition would be; but judging from the men that would rally under the SDP banner, and their rather narrow aims, it would require a miracle for the party to walk well, not to say soar.