The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Rivers crisis: Wike thinks, speaks in hyperbole

    Rivers crisis: Wike thinks, speaks in hyperbole

    Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike is not always right on the Rivers crisis, particularly his camp’s quarrel with Governor Siminalayi Fubara. But, by a stroke of good fortune, and regardless of what many commentators say, the law has always been on his side. The Supreme Court judgement that gave the advantage to House of Assembly Speaker Martin Amaewhule and his loyal 26 lawmakers underscored Mr Wike’s patrimonialism, sending the legitimate legislature into raptures. The camp has not only been ecstatic and eloquent on the judgement, they have also been threatening and flexing. Months ago, the governor used to grandstand; but today, he is drained and sober. Like lions, the legislators sense the vulnerability of the governor and have begun to toy with the prey, locking the gates against him and embarking on indefinite adjournment.

    On Thursday, days after recognising the futility of summoning a meeting with the lawmakers, the governor abandoned the ploy and drove to the Assembly to present the budget. He was locked out, with consequences for the budget and release of statutory allocation. Talks of impeachment, or the likelihood of it, have also begun to rent the air. But both the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), which sought appointment with President Bola Tinubu on the crisis, and the more aggressive Ijaw National Congress (INC) have given hints that the region would burn should impeachment occur. Mr Wike’s response was fierce and spontaneous, unmitigated by the peculiar circumstances of the region and the crisis itself, and indifferent to whatever consequences anybody might hint. Heavens would not fall if the governor was impeached, he thundered in response to threats by some militants to bomb pipelines. On Thursday, the president counselled PANDEF to help nudge Mr Fubara towards accommodation and peace, but it is unclear whether his firm talk about presidential responsibility towards maintaining law and order was not an indirect hint at anyone who might wish to undermine the Supreme Court judgement in any form, either by militant agitation or otherwise.

    Last week, this column admonished both camps and their paymasters to approach the court victory and defeat with noblesse oblige. Neither side has given heed to the counsel. Mr Fubara began by posturing magisterially and sounding tough despite his crushing legal defeat. But after a few days of sensing the reality of his dire situation, he quickly retraced his step and began speaking less about acquainting himself with the details of the Supreme Court judgement, and even declined to use commanding tones in his interactions with the legislators. It is, however, obvious his convictions are only skin deep; but at least he appears more amenable today than he was months ago. On the other hand, the Wike camp is still euphoric and hyperbolic. They have shown little appreciation of the magnanimity their legal victory requires of them, and have continued to press their advantage recklessly, brutally and dishonourably. This column supported them throughout their legal combat with the governor, but it is unable to countenance their actions and statements since they won unequivocally. They have before them a vanquished governor, but they are beginning to show that they might be undeserving of their victory. Mr Fubara would of course have behaved worse had he won the court battles, but the mettle of a man is reflected in how he treats his quarries once he had them cornered.

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    Mr Wike has in fact been far less gracious than the legislature. Apart from attempting to make God sorry for his camp’s victory, he has spoken disrespectfully of both the governor and the state. He clearly takes no prisoners. Yes, he stood on higher moral pedestal when the legal combat lasted, partly because the governor botched the legal contest and displayed unfathomable immaturity; but now Mr Wike seems to find the lower ground curiously enticing. No man worth his salt, no politician who knows his onions, and no leader worthy of the name should exult and speak so condescendingly like Mr Wike has done in the past few days. Though strangely nearly always right in his ratiocinations, he must not forget in the first instance that the Frankenstein he foisted on the state was entirely his doing in the name of instituting fairness in the state’s political leadership. Rather than be mortified by his mistakes, rather than see the tragedy those mistakes have cost everyone, not least his state, he appears fixated on only the court victory. His side indisputably won fair and square; but it has come at a huge cost. Should God and the courts and the people of Rivers begin feeling sorry for the now humiliated governor, Mr Wike could very well end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Even if Mr Fubara wants to follow his instincts to keep fighting a lost battle, thus sinking further in the quagmire, he can’t. He has played all his cards, including the joker, and lost disastrously. Should he engage in self-immolation and pretend to matrydom, it is still impossible for him to display any nobility in defeat. It is counterintuitive. That leaves only Mr Wike to be admonished. He holds the legislature in thralldom. That cannot be contested. He got a deserved legal victory. There is no more appeal. But he can quieten a little to ruminate on the dizzying events of the last few months. He could have lost had the courts been less professional. Instead he won, and got the local governments dissolved to boot. He may want to permute the future of the state without the menacing presence of Mr Fubara. But that would be a terrible miscalculation. In 2023, he made the incalculable mistake of backing the wrong horse for the governorship, followed by his own indiscretions and lack of capacity to judge character. He should now learn to be less forward about his political calculations and less cocksure of everything.

    If he can manage it, let the feisty Mr Wike lower the political temperature of Rivers State by sounding less intemperate and unfeeling. Though he has been described as unappeasable, let him be more subtle about mastering the state. Let him be more sensitive about the feelings of others, particularly the defeated, not to say the sometimes duplicitous leaders and elders in the state who might be secretly chafing at the turn of events. And let him nudge the legislature to sensibly and firmly treat the governor’s budget presentation professionally, and give respect to the office of the governor, even if the lawmakers privately detest Mr Fubara. And in God’s name, let Mr Wike not say or do anything that would suggest he owns the state. He does not, and cannot. But he can lead the state, help define its values, fight for it, even be prepared to die for it, and do what he woefully failed to do in 2023 – chart a clear ideological path and inspiring succession framework for Rivers. It is a thankless job, especially self-appointed, but it is the road to canonisation.

  • They say Zelensky won’t walk alone

    They say Zelensky won’t walk alone

    Incensed by what seemed to be the continuing defiance of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump has, apart from his vacillations, ordered a pause in military aid to and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. It became clear early last week that Mr Trump and his aides merely needed a pretext to coerce Ukraine to do the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s bidding. There was little Mr Zelensky could have done or said to obviate the cessation of help or placate the fury of the boastful and antagonistic US president who has so far refused to put any kind of pressure on the Russian leader. There had been tons of analyses and suggestions indicating that had the Ukrainian president stooped to conquer, and had he flattered the obviously insecure Mr Trump, the fate that befell Mr Zelensky would have been avoided. This is balderdash.

    Once Mr Trump won reelection, his aides and relations had warned Ukraine that they were toast, and should either capitulate to Russia or look elsewhere for help. The US president has an unfathomable and unbreakable bond with Mr Putin, and perhaps too an unearthly fascination with Russia, that has made it impossible for any Ukrainian leader or the country itself to mollify him. While the Republican Party is now ambivalent towards Ukraine, and its lawmakers have seemed to moderate their opposition to Russia or Mr Putin, the US president has been unambiguous in his detestation of both Ukraine and Mr Zelensky. He cites political, 2024 campaigns, and personal reasons. Indeed, the famous but bitter television exchange between the cornered Ukrainian president and the governing US troika of President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and cabinet member and wealthy Elon Musk showed the implacability of the new US administration.

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    During the controversial shouting match two Fridays ago between the US president and vice president on the one hand and Mr Zelensky on the other hand, a condescending reporter ridiculed the Ukrainian president’s wardrobe. At least he was only rude, not tendentious. The Ukrainian was surprisingly calm and adroit in handling that insult about his wardrobe. But then the pugnacious Mr Vance weighed in and heartily insulted Mr Zelensky and lied against him, insisting that he had never once said thank you to both the US and Mr Trump. It turned out Mr Zelensky had actually done that many times. But the vice president would not be incommoded by a few untruths, nor fazed by the appalling breaches of diplomatic protocols as US officials openly and remorselessly harried the Ukrainian president.

    In the heated and foul-tempered exchange in the White House, not once did the president or his deputy remonstrate with Russia, either obliquely or openly, nor attack Mr Putin for the invasion. Instead, Mr Trump kept up a relentless barrage of abuses and threats against Mr Zelensky, denouncing him as a nobody who was posturing as a wartime leader only because of American military assistance. He misinterpreted the Ukrainian president’s boldness and confidence as defiance, fuming that without American help, Ukraine would be wiped out. There was nothing noble about Mr Trump’s beliefs and language; his mind was in fact a kitchen midden of worn out and stale ideas of international relations and strategic power equations. He boasted about US power, abused his predecessors, notably Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and concluded that because the Ukrainian president disagreed with some of his conclusions, his guest was not interested in a ceasefire or a peace deal. He even added later that Russia would be more generous in a peace deal than ‘difficult’ Ukraine. It was not just the callousness of the American president that rankled; even his logic and summations, not to talk of his very soul, were darkened and ignoble.

    Two Fridays ago, Mr Trump’s lynch mob hoisted the Ukrainian president and drew and quartered him. They will not be placated by anybody, not Europe, which is divided and hesitant, nor Southeast Asia, which is also in the throes of its own existential crisis as they stare down China’s irredentist gun barrels. Complacent Europe has suddenly found itself in a position they never imagined in a thousand years: the prospect of losing their Nato security shield; anticipating the fearful consequences of the imminent denudation of American power and influence and the concomitant vacuum which that would create; and assembling a coalition to halt what may turn out to be the rampage of Russia in Europe, starting with the Baltic States. No one envies Europe. Despite their public asseverations, they know that there is no convincing Mr Trump and his mob. The new US administration is impervious to the lessons of history, especially its own history, and commonsensical logic. Perhaps Europe can, after all, forge some kind of tentative unity among its fractious members as well as calm the centrifugal forces among their countries. They may yet discover that they are much stronger than they think they are, and can as a matter of fact foster new economic relations with other countries to lessen their dependence on the increasingly unreliable US.

    Key European countries like Britain, France and Germany, and some Eastern European countries like Poland which fear they might be next if buffer Ukraine is vanquished, will galvanise themselves into action and additional spending. They have promised that Ukraine would not walk alone. They seem determined to walk their talk, but they must hope that their flesh, when it begins to feel the Russian pinch, is as willing as their spirit. Slowly, they will begin to acknowledge that nearly a century of close relationship with the US and dependency on the Transatlantic accord to guarantee global order and security have become anachronistic. They are being called upon to change, and Mr Trump, as his hallucinatory speech to the joint session of Congress last Tuesday demonstrated, is the unlikely and inelegant sentinel. It galls them to have to change so abruptly; but it is either they rally together or they perish separately, as America sinks into isolationism, mercenary foreign policy, and precipitate decline under the leadership of a boastful, inept, frenetic, and divisive president so wholly unsuited for the American presidency. No wonder, in the apocalyptic books of the Bible, there is no unambiguous mention of America’s role at the end of time.

  • Supreme Court and Fubara V. Wike

    Supreme Court and Fubara V. Wike

    As far as the legal aspect of the political discord in Rivers State is concerned, the Supreme Court on February 28 closed the chapter with a hint of exasperation. Whether it concerns the status of the Martins Amaewhule-led House of Assembly or the tangential but nevertheless consequential issue of the validity of the October 5, 2024 local government election, Governor Siminalayi Fubara has been left flummoxed. Even though Nigerians were divided along two main partisan lines on the Rivers crisis, and took their likes and dislikes, and logic and illogic, from each side of the divide, last Friday’s Supreme Court judgement was nevertheless anticipated and unavoidable. The governor, every astute reporter and columnist knew, had no chance at all of winning. The court’s conclusion was that Speaker Amaewhule and his 26 lawmakers defected by word of mouth, it seemed, not in the eyes of the law; and a hurting and uncalculating Mr Fubara had rushed the local government election in order to seize the high ground from his nemesis and former mentor, Nyesom Wike. To lose abominably in one of the two major arguments that became the fulcrum of the state’s politics since Mr Fubara fell out with his predecessor and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister is unsettling. To lose in both arguments is unmitigated disaster. But to the governor, political arguments are neither won nor lost by half measures. He thus managed to lose on both sides, and did it spectacularly and, as the court reasoned, unequivocally.

    There is still a solitary and obviously dismal case at the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt involving the status of the 27 lawmakers filed by the Fubara camp. Until the Supreme Court broke the camel’s back on February 28, the governor reposed some hope in the Port Harcourt court to judge the matter in his favour. Now, even that hope is forlorn. The Federal High Court in question had deferred the case of the alleged defection of the lawmakers when it was brought to its notice that the Supreme Court might be making a pronouncement on the same issue. To expect the lower court to decide the same case with a different outcome is to stretch hope to its inelastic limit. All doors are now shut against Mr Fubara whom adverse situation evidently compels to change tack and produce the highest degree of ingenuity, patience, and tactics. He never seemed capable of demonstrating any of those virtues, and seemed to play scorched-earth politics that harks back to a medieval era. But today he must find those virtues and embrace them if he is not to perish politically. He needs help from some of the country’s best counsellors, but he seems to rely only on his instincts, instincts that have propelled and then betrayed him from one crisis to another, and from one blunder to another. An example of his instinctive approach to politics, especially when dealing with an enemy as implacable as Mr Wike, was his nudging of the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) to hold LG election on August 9 even before he and his team had read and digested the judgement.

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    The Wike-Amaewhule camp has not displayed inspiring political astuteness of any kind, but it has, perhaps undeservingly, enjoyed the most clement of political weathers. He and his loyal 26 lawmakers announced their defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) quite alright, but the governor’s impatience and tactlessness caused them to retrace their steps before they gave legal or constitutional effect to their blunder. By ordering another LG election for August even before he has had the opportunity to study the Supreme Court judgement and reflect on its import, it is clear that Mr Fubara is either reluctant to or incapable of changing tack. He seems bent on self-destruction. Though he matches the Wike camp in displaying triumphalism over the most tentative of political victories, he has not enjoyed any lasting and soothing relief of any kind, either through political solutions moderated by President Bola Tinubu or judicial mediation orchestrated by the courts. To halt the dangerous pirouette of serial failures and fragile victories in which he seems locked, the governor needs a team of uncommon and inspired advisers to help him at least checkmate the rampaging Wike army. Yet, achieving victory after so many failed attacks against the opposing camp appears quite farfetched; the best he can do is achieve a stalemate. But even that stalemate now seems endangered by his unreflective statements and frantic measures.

    Rivers State needs to move forward beyond the tit for tat that typifies the Fubara and Wike relationship. In the giddy early months of the Fubara revolt, before the courts put paid to their clumsy manoeuvres, the state’s elders unfortunately pitched their tents with such mercantilist gusto and total lack of circumspection that they became an embarrassment to the peace process. Their challenge in Rivers, going forward, is how to find the men and philosophy to achieve some kind of peace at least in the interim on a scale that allows for some tranquility and development. They do not have those kind of men, nor the arcane philosophy capable of penetrating their ignorance. For all his posturing, Mr Wike remains angry, impulsive and self-righteous to the point that no advice can seem to get through to him. He festoons his politics with religion, in the same egregious manner like Mr Fubara does; but it is doubtful whether God sides with individuals so mean-spirited and so unrelenting. Indeed, Mr Wike has never accepted responsibility for foisting an unprepared and unqualified successor, and he has carried on as if the governor is entirely to blame for the chaos enveloping the state.

    Mr Fubara has tried unsuccessfully to frame the conflict in the state as one between a forward-looking new governor and an exhausted godfather who stifles and overwhelms his successor, and won’t let him breathe. No, the conflict is a little bit more nuanced than that. It is about two men who can’t seem to find the wisdom and the nobility to navigate through their mistakes and their grandstanding. There is in fact no determining the precedence between the governor’s childish political insurgency and the ignoble and sometimes classless responses of the former governor. One throws tantrums, the other whines in hyperbole. The Supreme Court judgement of two Fridays ago provides an opportunity for the two men to reflect on their fumbles, assuming that Mr Wike and his men can be less triumphal, and Mr Fubara can restrain himself from digging deeper into the quagmire. So far, nothing suggests both men have the capacity or the altruism to take advantage of the court judgement to forge a new beginning for the state they hypocritically claim to love.

    Hon. Amaewhule has been a competent, principled and reliable fighter, and an intelligent person to boot; but he stunned everyone last week when he gave the governor an ill-considered 48-hour ultimatum to represent the state’s 2025 budget. Did he expect the governor to base his decisions on newspaper reports of the court case? Mr Wike needs to prevail on the 27 victorious lawmakers to moderate their stand and approach the smouldering crisis with some class and nobility. But if the former governor cannot find the maturity to douse his own fiery and sanctimonious approach to politics, how can he be trusted to give leadership to the House of Assembly? Nor does it even make sense to expect him to give the lawmakers leadership. In fact, he has no constitutional elbow room to give any kind of leadership to the House of Assembly. He has since late 2023 been obtruding and irreverent, when he should be subtle and magisterial. Whether they have what it takes or not, Mr Wike and his men should go and look for what it takes to manage a state from wherever they can find the subtlety. The country is tired of their self-righteousness, their unending and brutal political and legal battles, and their vexatious impeachment threats. No wonder the Fubara camp has begun another round of foolish litigations to buy time.

    As for the unprepossessing governor, who seems even far more flawed than his enemies, and whose mind continuously seethes with practically every wrong motive, it is time to calm down and use his head instead of his disquieted mind. He has not surrounded himself with the right men, not to say wise elders with requisite experience, and he has shown no inclination to listen to the voice of reason. He has spoken silly threats about ‘giving instructions to youths awaiting his message’, some of whom have already threatened to blow up crude oil pipelines on his behalf. And he gets the naïve impression that those egging him on to more revolt well after the court processes have all but ended are the real patriots. This is incomparable nonsense. If he is wise, he should recognise the face of defeat. More, he must also recognise that it is time to make peace, no matter how tenuous, and palliate his arch enemies no matter how unappeasable. If he cannot get a second term, let him at least try to have a memorable one term.

  • Russo-Ukranian war: Trump bullies Ukraine to submission

    Russo-Ukranian war: Trump bullies Ukraine to submission

    Last Thursday’s press conference by President Donald Trump and visiting United Kingdom prime minister Keir Starmer was quite revelatory, particularly on the subject of Ukraine. Firstly, despite the belief in some circles in England that their prime minister was dull and shifty, a part of which manifested during the questions and answers time, it was clear that he was a more prepared leader than his host. His opening remarks delivered in Received Pronunciation, which Mr Trump swooned over, was brilliant, nuanced, somewhat bold, and probably did not disappoint the European Union (EU). Conversely, the initial remarks of President Trump, while a clear improvement over those of President Joe Biden in the closing months of the latter’s presidency, were rambling, provocative, abusive, and coarse in the extreme. He would easily exceed that congenital coarseness in the course of the subsequent press conference, and the next day’s disgraceful ambush of and jousting with Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky.

    Two, during the question time, Mr Starmer appeared more less assured than his brilliant opening remarks indicated, and his mastery of the subjects in discussion was tentative and superficial. It is a revelation, an indication that despite all the years spent preparing for leadership of the UK, his ideas and style have not enjoyed the dialectical thoroughness the prime minister’s office demand. Yet, he was a far better performer than his host. He spoke of aid to Ukraine, not loans, to help fight off the Russian invasion, and he was empathetic to the sufferings of Ukrainians, hoping for a deal, as he put it, that would not leave the victim holding the short end of the stick. For personal and perhaps other more nebulous reasons, Mr Trump couldn’t care less. He was determined to reclaim the funds ‘loaned’ Ukraine in the ongoing war, and he condemned Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky for embarking on a war that should never have been started. More, and unabashedly, he insisted that the United States would secure a rare earth minerals deal from Ukraine that would help repay the loans he unilaterally spoke about. The predatory deal, however, fell through the next day.

    Sadly, the press conference merely reinforced Mr Trump’s realpolitik as well as absolute disdain for Ukraine, a country still at war, and one which his predecessor backed, rightly or wrongly, selfishly or altruistically, with the resources of the US. As far as President Trump is concerned, however, Ukraine can be damned. What matters to him is making America (or US businessmen and contractors) rich, regardless of whose ox is gored. While obsessing over Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, a deal first mooted by Ukraine to tantalise the American president, he promised nothing in return. He would not give any security guarantees to Ukraine, would not help police any peace deal he was determined to fashion even in the absence of Ukraine from the negotiating table, and was prepared to take the issue of Ukraine’s Nato membership off the table. After all, as he put it about two weeks ago, though he tried to walk that statement back, Mr Zelensky was both incompetent and dictatorial. In fact during the said press conference, Mr Starmer tried to remind Mr Trump, and was bold enough to put it in his remarks, that Russian aggression should not be rewarded.

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    After the euphoria of the past three years fighting a brutal, bloody and destructive war against a meddlesome Russia, Ukraine found itself abandoned and holding the short end of the stick because Mr Zelensky failed to pander to the whims of the oversensitive and pampered US president. Mr Trump was, before the Friday diplomatic catastrophe, pressuring Ukraine to accept a peace deal whose terms had not been fully disclosed. But enough had been disclosed to let Ukraine know that all it has fought for could end up in smoke. It would not recover most, if not all, the land it lost to Russia; it would not get Nato membership; if care is not taken it could become isolated, deprived of Nato and EU membership; and in many insidious ways it faces the grim prospect of being subjugated either by force or circumstances under Russian influence. To boot, its cities and infrastructure lie in ruins, not to talk of the hundreds of thousands killed or injured. The Trump peace deal is probably the most galling ever, a deal that rewards the aggressor and punishes the victim, a deal which traumatises whole generations for many lifetimes. While peace is admittedly always desirable, Mr Trump has, however, made it both transactional and a zero-sum game.

    Mr Trump has done very little to pressure Russia into anything, into even making the smallest of concessions. Indeed, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has become more emboldened to rule out any concession whatsoever to Ukraine. For him, with the help of Mr Trump casting him as the winner of the war, that winner must ineluctably take all. And he is determined to take all. And, as many European nations fear, like Adolf Hitler projecting the policy of Lebensraum, the Russian president will not be satisfied or placated. They fear that for the next four years, and for reasons they cannot quite fathom, Mr Putin will be Mr Trump’s kryptonite. Not only did the US unprecedentedly side with Russia in the United Nations (UN) resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, Mr Trump appears bent on demystifying the EU, dividing them by singling out the UK for trade deals while imposing tariffs on the others, and indirectly furthering Russia’s global agenda. Eastern Europe and the Baltic States will now live on pins and needles, unsure of their fate as Mr Trump shatters, or at least shows his utmost disinterest in, the Transatlantic Alliance that had served America well and helped the world stave off another world war.

    Ukraine may appear to be the only country at the receiving end of Mr Trump’s eccentricities; they are, however, not the only one. It is clear that the world will become less safe and unpredictable, and dictatorships everywhere will flower as long as they can flatter the US president and stay out of his way. But sooner or later, countries which call Mr Trump’s bluff will discover that his bark is far more than his bite, despite America’s military power; and that, worse, there is no method to his madness. The world is also about to discover that Mr Trump and the US are not invincible. Because America is wealthy and militarily powerful, it has turned on its friends and allies who had sided with it since World War I, while lionising dictators and those secretly plotting the collapse of America. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 without a shot being fired, literally; why should America not also collapse from within? US enemies muse.

    What the world may be witnessing in Mr Trump and the US is the difficult, entangled dynamics of leadership. The American presidential system has been fortunate to produce some excellent and visionary leaders like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and a few others who both exemplified and embodied not just what America stands for but also what America should stand for. America’s raison d’etre was not always intrinsic to its founding; it was partly epiphanic, with some of their great leaders experiencing eureka moments and inspiring and imbuing their country with great domestic and international ideals. On its own, the presidential system does not possess the innate quality to guarantee the emergence of great leaders. In fact, the British parliamentary system has had better luck in producing great leaders than the American system, despite the brilliance of the US constitution. As the dysfunctional Mr Trump has shown by his actions, in the hands of a political vagrant, that brilliant constitution can be bastardised. The Chinese system cobbled under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping (Paramount leader between 1978 and 1989) has performed far better in producing competent leaders than both the presidential and parliamentary systems year-on-year. Yet, even the Chinese system, as President Xi Jinping has shown by his 2018 constitutional amendments to remove term limits, is not immutable or infallible.

    A leadership and character portrait of Mr Trump shows that American voters and the rest of the world are dealing with an unusual but greatly flawed personality unable to anchor his policies on great principles. He prefers ad hocism, transactional policies, and sentiments. This explains why Ukraine is in a quandary as it struggles to convince Mr Trump to recognise Mr Putin as the most pressing danger to American values and system in this century. The turmoil is not explained just by the incompetence of Mr Trump, but also by his lack of finesse and ideological mooring. As far as competence is concerned, no leadership institution mentored or apprenticed him, unlike France’s Emmanuel Macron who virtually humiliated him during last week’s visit to the White House. The US president’s private businesses have been products of bluff and bluster, record falsifications, and tax evasions. His first term in office (2016-2020) witnessed horrendous turnover of aides and cabinet members to the point that today many of them still speak ill of his capacity as a leader. It is curious that America elected into office for a second term a man whose ability his extended family and cabinet dismissed with brutal candour. Ukraine may have made many mistakes in its war with Russia, but that war was not always inevitable, despite the turbulence of the preceding years, Russia’s political voyeurism, and the mismanagement of the war of words with an equally deluded Mr Putin who still longs for the years of empire. Mr Biden and the EU recognised that the war might become drawn-out, for after all, there have been wars that lasted for more than four, five, six or even 100 years until a victor emerged. Therefore, seeking peace at the price of humiliating Ukraine and ceding land to an insatiable and rapacious Mr Putin may not help that peace to last.

    A peace deal is sorely needed. But it must be one that is based on justice and can endure. Mr Trump’s lack of capacity, however, complicates the search for peace. His lack of leadership character, shortsightedness, mercantilist approach to politics, and almost total repudiation of Western values and rules-based system present analysts with an irresoluble dilemma of how societies produce one great leader after another? Are great constitutions and brilliant political structures/systems enough to guarantee stability, greatness, and longevity? Every empire from antiquity has had to grapple with that dilemma, whether it was the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, or the Ottomans. There are never any guarantees, as the Chinese also exemplify by sustaining term limits over only four leadership successions. It was always taken for granted in the US that having produced presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, no utter incompetent could ever emerge, at least not someone like Mr Trump. They have been proved wrong.

    Like all fallen empires, the US is also exposing its Achilles heel through a president who repudiates alliances, despises friendships, courts dictators, elevates personal interest above national interest, and displays a shocking and disgraceful lack of understanding of the consequences of the choices and statements he makes, whether regarding Ukraine, the EU, or tariffs. In the Russo-Ukranian war, Mr Trump has indifferently tied Ukraine’s hands behind their back, causing them to groan in private over the enormous losses they have sustained. If Mr Zelensky cannot dissuade Mr Trump from backing Russia and Mr Putin, Ukraine will be left with the choice of either surrendering to American wishes or committing suicide by defying the US president’s wishes. Neither choice is palatable. But the forces being unleashed by Mr Trump, both domestically and foreign, will not only haunt the US for decades to come, it may determine the fate of the American Century.  

  • The Trump and Zelensky televised debacle

    The Trump and Zelensky televised debacle

     The unprecedented diplomatic meltdown between United States president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenski last Friday before the press, obviously at the instigation of the pitiless US vice president J.D Vance, himself a notable Ukraine and European Union hater, will have lasting consequences for Europe and America. Immediately Vice President Vance, as if cued, described Mr Zelensky as disrespectful and ungrateful during a heated televised exchange on Friday at the White House in Washington, the Ukrainian leader unfortunately took the bait by entering into a shouting match with the US president and his vice, losing his patience just when he needed it the most. As a result, the US has called off any deal with Ukraine, jeopardised further military help for the beleaguered nation, mocked them for being powerless in the face of Russian attacks, and signaled that they would not mind the Ukrainian president stepping down. The very public and uncensored falling out on live television played into the hands of President Vladimir Putin who had plotted for decades to drive a wedge between Europe and the US, sunder the Transatlantic Alliance, and regain imperialistic control of Ukraine.

    It is shocking that the US administration has no clue what the implication of a defeated Ukraine would mean to Europe and America. Before the eyes of this generation, the world witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. Now the same eyes are also witnessing the dismantling of the Western Alliance, inspired by the unwise US president, his truculent vice president, and the ingratiating and sniveling Republican Party. The world should simply brace for unprecedented turbulence in the near term. Talking about healing the rift between President Trump and President Zelensky glosses over the dismal fact that the US president and his deputy are fundamentally opposed to Ukraine for different reasons, much of it inexplicable, inscrutable and private. There was little the Ukrainian leader could have done to get the security guarantees his country needed to proceed with a ceasefire or peace deal. Mr Trump had alluded to this impossibility even before he succumbed to France’s pressures to meet with Mr Zelensky.

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    Perhaps there is something European leaders can still do to reset the relationship between an increasingly insular US and a bedraggled Ukraine. In reality, however, Europe is now alone to face the hordes from the East. They will have to reconceptualise their foreign and security policies doctrine. It is not clear how long Ukraine can hold out against a clearly exultant and emboldened Russia buoyed by feuding Western Alliance leaders, but it is now at least obvious that America is returning to isolationism or predatory foreign policy, Europe will begin the process of rearming, thus triggering a new arms race, while powerful dictatorships will begin to give in to temptations to embark on dangerous expansionism.

    In World War II, both US president Franklin Roosevelt and United Kingdom prime minister never liked France’s Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Army, whom they described as supercilious. But they had their eyes on the greater goal and good of checkmating German expansionism, and were willing more than anything to bury their differences. And they did, and won the war. But President Trump and Mr Vance, who have both strangely and effectively become stooges of dictatorships, sadly cite their minor differences with President Zelensky to renege on everything America had stood for. Will the US ever recover from this abysmal new low of its leaders’ appalling personal biases, not to talk of using the ‘shouting match’ at the White House as a pretext to imperil their collective security? Mr Trump does not also have the capacity to understand that the annexations of countries he so glibly speaks about could indirectly legitimise the annexations China and Russia have in the pipeline. The US has its flaws, but it was for a long time the only sound mind superpower not greedy about territories. Now, the world has become a more dangerous place, and Mr Trump is the new and ugly public face of that madness, a trivial man for whom the manners of President Zelensky obviously means so much more than the strategic interest of his country and the sometimes stabilising influence of the Western Alliance.

  • Nasir-el-Rufai unloved by so many

    Nasir-el-Rufai unloved by so many

    Former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai is a naturally defiant and cantankerous politician who does not discriminate between friend and foe. Worse, for him the dividing line between friend and foe has over the decades become much thinner, with the former governor nevertheless retaining the capacity to transit seamlessly between the two extremes. It is puzzling why he does not seem to appreciate the depth of animosity many people feel towards him, why they resent his unpredictability, despair over his amorphous idea of loyalty, and scorn his boastful iconoclasm and self-importance. But despite his grandstanding, his defiance in fact masks both his insecurity and lack of judgement.

    Last week was especially turbulent for him. He sleepwalked into engaging some of his ‘former’ friends, including National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, Shehu Sani, and Governor Uba Sani, his successor, in ugly debates about their fidelity to truth, about their supposed conspiracies to undermine him, and about his now disavowed plan to defect to another party, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He spared none of them; after all, everyone knows he gives as much as he takes. But his latest foes did not spare him either. Speaking on television last week, Mallam el-Rufai had imperiously lyricised: “Look, Uba Sani has been my friend for many years, but he is not my friend anymore. For me, the word friendship is a very important concept. God gave us our relatives. He chose our relatives for us, we have no choice; but thank God, we can choose our friends. A friend is someone that has some fidelity, some ethical and moral standards, and will be there for you when you need him, not when there is time to party or enjoy. Those that are my friends know that I will be there for them when they need me, and I will rise and defend them. That’s what I call friend. Uba Sani is not my friend, (Nuhu) Ribadu is not my friend. They were my friends at some point, but not anymore.”

    It is not known why he does not seem to realise that his supposed enemies have become indifferent to his opinions. They acknowledge his brilliance, but they know how badly that single virtue left in him has been attenuated by his vexatious posturing and poor choices as well as his eagerness to grovel before any mentor or boss. So spontaneous were the responses of some of his critics that they wasted no time in resorting to social media to denounce what they alleged was his fake altruism and patriotism. Activist and lawyer, Deji Adeyanju, dismissed Mallam el-Rufai as a noisemaker, saying , “Nigerian politicians can only fool idiots, not me. All the noise-making and anger of el-rufai is because Tinubu denied him a ministerial position. They don’t love Nigeria, it’s about self and nothing else.”

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    Former presidential spokesman, Reno Omokri, blasted him as a sellout who rewarded murderous foreign herdsmen to stop killing Nigerians. He added: “Nasir el-Rufai’s government was indicted in the Zaria Shiite massacre of Saturday, December 12, 2015, where 438 Shiite men, women, children and infants were slaughtered in one of Africa’s worst human rights violations. Additionally, Mr. el-Rufai was specifically cited for demolishing the homes of his political opponents in Kaduna. Finally, his reckless utterances against Christians, whereby on Saturday, January 27, 2013, he insulted Jesus Christ, and on Friday, January 18, 2019, when he said, ‘Even if I bring the Pope, Christians will never vote for me’”. Shehu Sani, activist and senator, was no less scathing in delivering the coup de grâce. Deriding Mallam el-Rufai, he scoffed: “No Nigerian President in his right senses will ever closely embrace or trust a man who repeatedly celebrated and gloated about sending President Yar’adua to his grave. It’s a case of ‘if you can do this and say this about your own brother what about me?’ No one will ever admit a man into his house who came with a sword stained with the blood of his brother.”

    These are just a few samples. Until Mallam el-Rufai polishes his style, retunes his behavior, and acquires some depth in political judgement commensurate with his book knowledge, his inconsistencies will always impair his ambition and expose him to ridicule in a way no amount of grandstanding and eloquence can ever ameliorate. The former Kaduna governor is boxing himself into a corner by his character shortfall, and his choices are getting fewer. A few days ago he said he could not be caught dead in the PDP, a reflection of the depredation that has befallen that party. No one believes him. He often explodes in sanctimonious rage; but sadly for him, his fickleness, acerbity, and volubility have combined to lower his political stock and perhaps make his time as governor the apogee of his career with no further room at the top. Much worse, soon, he may have no friends left.

  • IBB’s ‘Journey in Service’

    IBB’s ‘Journey in Service’

    Last Thursday’s public presentation of former military leader Ibrahim Babangida’s over 400 pages autobiographical book, ‘A Journey in Service’ unprecedentedly brought together all living Nigerian heads of state and presidents, except Muhammadu Buhari. Given how controversial the author’s reign was, it was thought he would never write his biography, despite promising to damn the consequences and publishing it. In the end, Nigerians waited for about 32 years to get the chance to read him, his thoughts, leadership, controversies, and justifications. No book has been so awaited, and no gathering in the past one or two decades has been so striking. There were many suppositions about him and his time in power; now, nearly all those suppositions have been dispelled. What is left, as the pages of the book unfurl before its readers, may not exactly meet the high expectations of a long wait.

    Other than the reviewer, former vice president Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of law, no one was sure on Thursday that any other person had read the book. In the next few weeks, thousands of people will have direct access to the book, and probably read it, for the author as well as the publishers, Bookcraft, have not gone to any length to restrict access to the book. It is widely available online. The purpose of writing the book was, therefore, obviously not to make money from its sales; it was to get as many people as possible to read it. It will be read in millions of homes, if not for its stylistic elegance, then perhaps for its revelations; or if not for what it reveals or fails to reveal, then perhaps to accentuate the displeasure millions of sceptics who wrote the former military leader off more than 30 years ago have felt for a long time.

    Former president Olusegun Obasanjo warned Gen. Babangida to expect harsh criticisms and blowback over the book. There would be tonnes of blunt, scathing and unflattering dismissals, he said languidly, in contrast to the jaunty steps with which he mounted the platform to give his goodwill remarks. All past and present leaders who said a few things about the author (whether he ghosted the work or not) had been mostly laudatory, whether anecdotes, wisecracks, or allusions. It is in the nature of tributes, either at birthdays or book launches, to be giddy and lyrical about the subject, sometimes saying things the speaker himself would find shocking to his practiced modesty. Prof Osinbajo tried valiantly to balance his review by appointing his allusions to do the work of giving the ‘on the other hand’. But his witticisms seemed more expiatory of the former military leader’s misrule than serve as a harmless and even rhetorical counterpoise. On his own, Chief Obasanjo, who has studiously refrained from speaking about MKO Abiola and June 12, took refuge in his warnings to the author to expect the worst. In the process, he masked and coded his displeasure behind his reservations, and generally sounded unenthusiastic about either his presence in the hall or what the book managed to reveal or hint.

    So many commentators have excoriated Gen. Babangida based on newspaper and social media snippets as well as the author’s brief remarks. They dismiss him, all over again as they did in the past, as overrated, both as a military general who displayed lack of courage in the face of his subordinate’s mutinous manoeuvres, and as a head of state who saturated the country with futile social and political experiments without deeply, positively and fundamentally effecting the fortunes of the country. He touched a number of individuals, mostly businessmen and jobholders, and they have remained eternally grateful; but he did little else. Indeed, of all those who have commented so far on the book outside the launch venue, there does not seem to be any who thought him a hero or a role model. They wish he had not written the book. Great reviews of the book will perhaps come in the weeks ahead, as soon as readers overcome the shock of what took place at the Transcorp Hilton venue. But the reviews are unlikely to be salutary or sympathetic to a man, general and leader who is at once stoical and Machiavellian.

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    Gen. Babangida is also unlikely to care about the hostile and trenchant reviews, for he is too smart and sensitive not to know that he is robustly reviled in many parts of the country, especially in the South and Middle Belt. If he couldn’t be bothered by the unlawful dissemination of the book online, why would he wince at scurrilous attacks against his person or his leadership? For the nine years or so he was in office, and despite his best efforts to curry approval and heroic worship, he received bucketfuls of abuse and hostility. Yet, he bore everything with perfect equanimity. He is now in his twilight years, and he senses without saying it that the verdict of posterity is already sealed, and has in fact been sealed since 1993, regardless of whatever private exculpations he got from his supporters. At this point, therefore, the smooth-spoken and pretentiously genial general has lost all sense of caring. Given the platitudes reportedly redolent in his book, instead of honest admission of truths and uncomfortable facts and revelations, not to say the many reiterations of his presumptions and justifications, he obviously does not hope the book would deodorise his image. He meant the book for other purposes.

    That purpose was contained in the unveiling of his presidential library prototype, a concomitant of the book launch. The complex will cost billions of naira, N17bn or so of which was publicly raised last Thursday. It spoke to his popularity among a class of wealthy people, and the enduring fascination foes and friends alike still have for him, that when he called for donations, they overwhelmed him with cash. As they lathered him with donations and pledges, they also spoke fondly and wistfully of his time in office. He may not be able to explain his talismanic hold on this class of supporters, but he has an instinctive grasp of what he continues to mean to millions of Nigerians, particularly from the North. However, Southerners are so pissed off with him that they loath his book launch and describe as it as gratuitous insult to the sensibilities of ‘Nigerians’. Some of them are in fact so angry with him over how tragically his 1993 betrayal set the country back by many decades, that they do not trust him to tell the truth about his time in office or imagine he could ever be so altruistic as to care what fate befell the country.

    Yes, many people will take the trouble of reading his book in the weeks and months ahead, not because they care about him or think he has the capacity to analyse the country’s existential issues beyond his jaded philosophies and simplistic exonerations, but because they want to satisfy their curiosities, to find out whether he is not much worse than they had imagined. They will want to read for themselves whether they can find any context in the book to explain the widely presumed dichotomy between his regrets or acceptance of responsibility, which he offered fulsomely, and apologies for the poll annulment and execution of Gen. Mamman Vatsa, which he didn’t give explicitly. Many authors wracked by conscience often hide behind lexical facades; readers will want to peruse the book for themselves to see whether they could detect any stirring in his enfeebled gait, let alone his conscience.

  • Obasa opts for litigation

    Obasa opts for litigation

    Some 10 days ago, former Lagos State House of Assembly speaker Mudashiru Obasa went to court to challenge his removal last month while on vacation. He rested his application on nine grounds. His resort to the courts followed his realisation that civil action, which hundreds of his supporters embarked upon in the weeks following his removal, cut no ice. It is, however, within his rights to litigate his removal, especially as political interventions seemed slow and stalemated.

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    But if political intervention appears long-drawn-out, why does he think court action will give him the quick relief he desires so badly? He has had a long spell as speaker, but he has not matched it with experience and quick-wittedness. He seems persuaded that his colleagues are so fickle-minded that should he be restored in office, he could worm his way back into their confidences. Nothing is impossible. But given the manner they repudiated him weeks ago, their true selves appeared to have been on display. They will continue to loath his leadership. If at his age and more than 10 years of his leadership he could not hone his leadership acumen, where does he think his new self would come from?

    Strangely, both the state All Progressives Congress and the Governance Advisory Council (GAC) seem numbed. They should regain their composure and take remedies that won’t cost them dearly in the future, or become pyrrhic. They should take the wind. Whatever solutions they embrace that end up alienating the nearly three dozen lawmakers who kicked out Hon. Obasa will do more harm than good to the party’s fabric. Surely, they must know that the courts won’t give the party and Hon Obasa the respite they seek.

  • Osun conjures electoral crisis, stalemate

    Osun conjures electoral crisis, stalemate

    There is nothing in the Osun State local government election crisis to merit the term ‘crisis’. Absolutely nothing. Shortly before former governor Gboyega Oyetola left office in 2022, he conducted the local government election of October 15, 2022. The All Progressives Congress (APC) won handily. The conduct of the poll was, however, challenged by both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to which incumbent governor Ademola Adeleke belongs, and the Action Peoples Party (APP). On November 25 and November 30, both the PDP and APP got judgements against the APC, ordering the sacking of the elected LG chairmen. The APC appealed the November 25 judgement, but reports suggest they did not appeal the November 30 judgement. The controversy centres on whether the Court of Appeal judgement against the sacking of the elected LG officials based on the PDP suit does not in fact vitiate the judgement on the same matter in respect of the APP case.

    As far as the APC is concerned, the Court of Appeal judgement trumps anything in whatever way it was argued or brought up in the lower courts. It is obviously a case that turns juridical logic on its head. But clever by half, the PDP ignores its own defeat at the appellate court and instead latches on to the allegedly uncontested APP case to sustain the dissolution of the elected chairmen and councillors produced by the 2022 LG poll as well as pursue the conduct of another LG election yesterday. Governor Adeleke and the PDP have, however, not convincingly argued how the previous LG election could be annulled by a lower court judgement when the appellate court judgement continues to sustain that same (not a different) election. It appears to be a conundrum; but in fact it is not. The case is much simpler and unequivocal than the governor and the Osun State electoral commission have made it.

    In Nigeria, contrived legal conundrums remain a threat to democracy, especially when mischievously and persistently exploited by the political elite. There is no reason for Osun to be embroiled in any electoral crisis, let alone be exposed to the spectre of violence such as was triggered last week when the APC LG chairmen, acting on the judgement of the Court of Appeal, enforced their own return to office. They did so because their tenure would run out in October. Worse, completely ignoring the Court of Appeal judgement and instead electing to uphold a lower court judgement using legal subterfuge, Osun announced its determination to hold a new election thereby presenting the current LG chairmen with a fait accompli. They knew that even if the LG chairmen hypothetically get a future judgement against OSIEC and the state government, the trial judges would deem the outcome an ‘academic exercise’. To forestall double jeopardy, the recognised LG chairmen simply took matters into their own hands. If they didn’t, no one would help them.

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    The unfortunate Osun stalemate is a worrisome indication of how readily Nigerian political leaders engage in brinkmanship. They provoked the collapse of the First and Second Republics, and nearly triggered the collapse of the Fourth Republic after the last presidential poll when they called for military takeover. But they are not alone in their excesses. They have in addition managed to secure the buy-in of some judges and lawyers, and have been encouraged by some political parties and sore losers to flout common sense. There is in short little altruism anywhere. But this is where the federal government comes in, particularly the nation’s chief law officer, the Attorney General of the Federation. They must see reining in political extremists masquerading as governors and political leaders as an obligation that must not be shirked for whatever treason.

    It took some time before the Justice minister Lateef Fagbemi rose up to the occasion in the Osun case. But when he did, he offered sound legal and interpretative opinions. He recognised that Osun State was unwilling and perhaps uninterested in getting a superior court to explicate the import of the Court of Appeal judgement. The state’s officials probably feared that if they went for interpretation and the case did not favour them, it would spell disaster. So they latched on to the APP case, not their own suit, interpreted it the way they liked, and proceeded to dig their heels in, threatening fire and brimstone, and issuing dire warnings to anyone, federal or state, present or former state officials, bent on destabilising the state. Mr Fagbemi shunned their threats and insisted that Osun was irrevocably wrong. In any case, he wondered aloud, another LG election was due in October, still under the governorship of the incumbent – so, why the unholy rush? Only Mr Adeleke can solve that puzzle.

    Mr Fagbemi had been wary of rising to the challenge in some other states where the rule of law had been baited and defied, especially in the convoluted case of Rivers State where suits after suits have exposed the soft underbelly of Nigerian politics and judiciary. The Justice minister can no longer shrug his shoulders. It is reassuring that in the case of Osun, he has not equivocated. But he must go beyond offering firm and unimpeachable opinions; he must now take the fight to the ‘enemy’. He needs to light a fire and put it under the feet of the sometimes wary National Judicial Council (NJC) and the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). Too many judges, either due to incompetence or collusion, or even because they are beholden to political officials, have betrayed their oaths and perverted the cause of justice, and had given egregiously fallible judgements. They need to be shipped out. They have persisted in messing up scores of cases in Rivers; now they are ridiculing themselves in Osun.

    It is also time Mr Fagbemi took the fight to governors who in the name of the constitution are enacting farcical dictatorships in their states, thereby undermining the same constitution. He needs to give the federal government, and particularly the president, legal advice as to how to tackle errant governors determined to sabotage democracy. Voters in many states have not always shown gumption in picking their leaders, often voting for politicians for totally wrong reasons. Their indifference has populated State Houses with self-absorbed leaders. It is, therefore, necessary for the nation’s chief law officer to maintain vigilance in the face of excitable political and judicial officers unfazed by the spirit and the letter of the law.

  • El-Rufai’s disguised exceptionalism

    El-Rufai’s disguised exceptionalism

    No one should be fooled by Nasir el-Rufai‘s politics. Much of his politics as a former minister and one-time Kaduna State governor is contrived and convoluted. What is clear so far from his statements, actions, and endorsement of other people’s views in recent weeks is that, despite his strident denial, he has been unable to live down his exclusion from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cabinet. He will be relentless in badgering the administration in the hope that he would get some concessions; but if no concession is forthcoming, he would be willing, even eager, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No analyst has in fact been wrong about him in nearly two decades, for his politics and style are so deeply idiosyncratic that he has become quite predictable.

    In the last two or three weeks, he has launched into a rhetorical and declamatory rampage that it is safe to conclude he has begun to feel like a cornered prey. Whenever he feels assailed on all fronts, he conjures a persecution complex and goes on to extravagantly announce to the public his ‘predators’ exilic plots against him. His enemies in government want to arrest, detain and torture him, he said self-importantly, dragging in the National Security Adviser’s office into the bargain. He and the NSA were once inseparable. Now he gives the lofty impression they have become immiscible, for it is hypothetically in ‘some dungeon’ in the office of the latter he claimed he would be ‘tortured’.

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    Mallam el-Rufai is entitled to his brand of politics and his alliances, new, old or mixed. He can regionalise his views as much as he wishes, limit himself to close-knit friends, and speak untruths, half-truths, and outright mendacities. His audience and supporters are at liberty to doubt him or believe him. It is all politics. So far, there is nothing Mallam el-Rufai has said or done that is not permissible in politics. But there is also nothing sceptics have said or done against him that is not politics. He and his enemies or opponents are engaged in fierce psychological operations. Success will depend on how well each side has been convincing.

    After his February 11, 2025 post on X (Twitter), no one should have any illusions about Mallam el-Rufai’s kind of politics. The post is probably the most revelatory of his recent posts, forged out of bitterness, exclusion from government service, and desperation to remain in the limelight and in the consciousness of the people. The post shows him up as a convinced northern irredentist who has for long anchored his convictions and politics on utterly false premises. This is bewildering. If he does not dismiss this piece as attacking him on behalf of the APC administration, he might find usefulness in it to reorder his politics, purify his views on national issues, and come out a better, less hysterical, and more balanced national politician who overcame regional prejudices.

    Mallam el-Rufai has built his life and politics around the promotion of Northern (read Fulani) exceptionalism. He is so taken with what he claims to be the North’s herculean and central effort in national politics that he continues to denigrate facts and reality. Obsessed with what he termed the centrality of the North in the 2023 presidential poll, he claimed he cautioned the party ‘not to play with the North’, and concluded that ‘common sense prevailed, and we succeeded, unarguably and undeniably with the unquantifiable help of the North (the records of the election results prove so)’. Afflicted by tunnel vision, he didn’t say whether the same margin of ballot intervention from the South had not in fact helped enthrone Northern candidates in the presidency, whether in 1959, 1965, 1979, 1983, 2007 or 2015. It is often forgotten that no one from the South or North had ever won at the centre without the votes of the other region. But because Mallam el-Rufai built his analysis on an egregious fallacy, he surmised that ‘…Less than two years into the (APC) tenure, we are witnesses to how the relationship between the North and President Bola Tinubu or rather his administration is quickly deteriorating, driven by the words and conduct of, unfortunately, many from the President’s geopolitical zone and tribe.’ Of course, he assumes the North is monolithic.

    Still indulging his obsession with the North’s role in national politics, he claims without substantiation that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 election because of the disposition of the South-South people to the North. Nonsense. Dr Jonathan fawned over the North, but alienated the Southwest which went ahead to strike an alliance with a Northern candidate. More, he lost because of insecurity, not because he ‘underestimated or disrespected’ the North. Paragraph after paragraph, Mallam el-Rufai inundates his publics with soaring stories of the North’s exploits, and insinuates that the region remains monolithic, can do no wrong, must be revered, and without it the nation could not breathe. Hear Mallam el-Rufai’s thunder: “While PGEJ lacked equivalent political gravitas and sophistication (with all due respect to him) as PBAT, he had the then formidable PDP behemoth which could have actually seen him through but for the grievous ‘political mistake’ of messing with the North. Love or loathe that fact, the North remains the kingmaker in Nigerian politics, at least, as of today. Any politician or political party that plays with that reality might pay a steep political price for it…”

    But before that election, the ‘behemoth PDP’ had fractured, and was no longer the behemoth it had been many years before. But the former Kaduna governor had a leprous thesis to promote, and he must bring every argument and distortion into its service. All the historical rigmarole he launched into was designed to hint the Tinubu presidency that there are a few persons who personify the North and whose anger must be placated, and ‘condescending’ Yoruba officials whose sins must also be expiated. Since 2023, and in appointments and projects, President Tinubu has projected the interests of the far North (not el-Rufai’s monolithic North) probably more than the interests of any other part of Nigeria. What ails the former Kaduna governor is that he wants his enemies and prejudices to be inherited. It is right, in retrospect, that both the Tinubu administration and the current Kaduna government have rebuffed him, thus helping to expose the real and essential Mallam el-Rufai. The real el-Rufai has sadly not been inspiring; instead, he has been entitled, sectional, ideologically superficial, nasty when shunned, and vituperative when provoked. There is nothing anyone can say or do to mitigate his sense of entitlement. It is ingrained. The country has to live with that reality and continue to manage him at his inflammatory worst.