The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • NLC strike: lawlessness at its peak

    NLC strike: lawlessness at its peak

    Of all the top hats in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, only George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), has had the boldness to describe the methods employed by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) in their last strike as treasonable felony. He of course stands on very shaky legal grounds to describe the total shutdown method used by the NLC/TUC in their agitation for a new national minimum wage as treasonable felony, but there is no doubt that the unions scorned the law in fighting for what was on the surface a good cause. They hid under the freedoms granted by the constitution, particularly Section 40, and pretended not to know or remember the constraints enunciated by Section 45 and both the Trade Unions Act, the Trade Disputes Act and more relevantly and ominously, the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, ETC) Act, 2015. Barely a day after the SGF’s treasonable felony comment, the unions reacted trenchantly and asked him to recant. Mr Akume is unlikely to dignify them with a response. The sentiments he expressed are probably popular in government.

    After many industrial actions in less than one year of the Tinubu administration, why has the government been chary of confronting the unions’ methods? There may be many reasons. In the last strike, which was executed last Monday, the NLC/TUC shut down the national electricity grid, the airports and other major public facilities, and chased uncooperative public sector workers from their offices, sometimes with whips, including staff of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). It was probably their most effective and comprehensive shutdown ever. By Tuesday, the strike was all but over, either because the unions had reached a tentative agreement with the government or because their sixth sense told them they were sailing too close to the wind. For months, the Tinubu administration had been reluctant to confront the now heavily politicised unions; but if the total shutdown had persisted beyond Tuesday or Wednesday, there was no telling what extraordinary measures the government would have been goaded into taking, either by hawks in the administration or the deeply exasperated public.

    Every time the unions struck, the administration had yielded ground, with both the NLC and TUC only relenting after extracting some concessions from the government. And every time the unions took matters into their hands, they had felt increasingly emboldened to ask for more, to call out a strike at the drop of a hat, and to paint the administration as contradistinctively profligate and parsimonious. Probably aware that it had not been able to get its act together, and also keenly embarrassed by how it had seemed to add flame, if not legitimacy, to the demands of the unions, and sensing that its efforts to reset the economy had impoverished more Nigerians and not proceeded at the pace they would have liked, the government has been unable to predict whether combating the unions would not give fuel to a popular revolt. This may be why uncharacteristically the National Security Adviser (NSA) had always been a part of the negotiations to restore industrial harmony.

    There may be wisdom in the administration treating striking unions with kid gloves. Inflation, in every material particular, has reached an obscene height, employment rate has not responded to all the government’s goading, and the troublesome exchange rate has been spectacularly bad-tempered. In a way, therefore, the unions actually have a good cause which, in the estimation of the public, no law or constitution could vitiate. On top of these, the country is now more divided than ever, with the unions throwing their lot with the Labour Party (LP) whose fiery rhetoric divides and inflames the country, and with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) becoming more impatient and cantankerous. The administration may have sensed that it is far easier to placate the unions whose members and leaders can be counted and even possibly cocooned, than mollify the untamed rage of poor and angry Nigerians eager to serve the interests of some political parties, given the right temperature and pressure.

    The massive shutdown enacted by the trade unions last week may, however, be the unions’ last. Their rights to strike or protest can of course not be abridged or derogated, for they are constitutionally guaranteed, but henceforth the NLC/TUC tag team will be disabled by the vivified Cybercrimes Act. The law had been promulgated since 2015, but because some presidential orders needed to be given and gazetted for a complete interpretation of the according sections, the unions simply circumvented them. A combined reading of Sections 3 & 5 of the Cybercrimes Act (2015) makes it a crime for any party, more so a party with intent and premeditation, to shut down critical national information infrastructure to the security and continued enjoyment of safe national public health in Nigeria. According to Section 3(1), “The President may on the recommendation of the National Security Adviser, by Order published in the Federal Gazette, designate certain computer systems, and/or networks, whether physical or virtual, and/or the computer programs, computer data and/or traffic data vital to this country that the incapacity or destruction of or interference with such system and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national or economic security, national public health and safety, or any combination of those matters as constituting Critical National Information Infrastructure.”  

    Also, according to Section 5(1), “Any person who with intent, commits any offence punishable under this Act against any critical national information infrastructure, designated pursuant to section 3 of this Act, shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years without an option of fine.”  Meanwhile, Section 4.2.1 of the National Cybercrimes Policy and Strategy (NCPS) signed in 2021 by both President Muhammadu Buhari and former National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, identifies 13 critical sectors under the scope of Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII). These are: Power and Energy; Water; Information, Communication, Science and Technology; Banking/Finance and Insurance; Heath; Public Administration; Education; Defence and Security; Transport; Food and Agriculture; Safety and Emergency Services; Industrial and Manufacturing; and Mines and Steel. It may thus be argued that the NCPS represents the position of the directing mind and will of the government till date on what should amount to CNII. Any obstruction to the smooth functioning of this, especially one of a premeditated nature, puts such a disruptor in violation of Section 5 of the Act.

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    The Tinubu administration will expectedly proceed with haste to look at the Cybercrimes Act, 2015, designate what constitutes critical national infrastructure, and gazette it. The unions can of course have their protests, and some of those protests are undoubtedly in national interest, but they will no longer have the leeway to shut the country down, as the unions did in Kaduna in 2021 to the consternation of the governor, Nasir el-Rufai, and the public. It is time to put some order in the system and curb the maladies which no country permits. Last Monday, the trade unions exceeded themselves and sabotaged the country to press for wage increase. Their method was indefensible, laced with political undertones, and hugely costly.

    While Mr Osifo has seemed more grounded in the application and exploitation of trade union laws, being ingeniously less political than his NLC counterpart, Mr Ajaero has flagrantly identified with the LP, made the party’s objectives coterminous with the NLC’s to the point of trying to swing a state governorship election using strike tools. The unions’ excesses in the past one year produced the numbing shutdown witnessed last Monday, and convinced every judicious person that should another shutdown be contemplated, there would be consequences. Obviously, before another strike, the Tinubu administration will have tidied up its laws and put its house in order, though that house now leaks dangerously.

    There are probably many Nigerians who were unhappy that the shutdown ended after a day or two before the ‘hated’ administration’s hold on power was fully corroded. Both the PDP and LP, not to say many other powerful individuals and interests all over the country, had worked assiduously to corrode the legitimacy of the government, particularly the electoral victory of President Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Till today, given their rhetoric, there are still many in the opposition parties who foolishly harbour the secret wish for the administration’s downfall in favour of either a military regime or interim government. But regardless of their secret longings, any future shutdown will either be forestalled or degraded. As the box below shows, the methods deployed by the NLC/TUC in the last strike were patently unlawful. And until that Act is amended to give the unions the laxity and latitude to cripple the country, the Tinubu administration must find the resolve to apply the Cybercrimes Act, 2015.

    Both the Senate and the House of Representatives made oblique references to the lawlessness of the unions in their actions last week. The lawmakers are not expected to go beyond reminding the country and the unions about the excesses the NLC and TUC indulged in on Monday and Tuesday. They will have no need to amend or expand the relevant laws, including Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution which provisions do not vitiate the Trade Union and Trade Dispute Acts, not to talk of the more salient Cybercrimes Act. What indeed remains is for the administration to give teeth to the laws. Section 43 of the Trade Unions Act for instance spells out the manner in which a strike should be held, as enunciated in subsections 1 and 2. The laws are unambiguous; if the unions will not pay heed to them, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure compliance. If there is a next time, enforcement should be seamless and timely.

    It is not clear why the Justice minister placed more emphasis on the issue of the unions failing to give advance notice for strikes and existing injunctions rather than on the Cybercrimes Act. Unions have the right to protest, but there are constraints to how the unions give force to their grievances. Both sides should uphold the law, the unions by their conduct, and the government by enforcement once the law is flouted. Nigerians are burdened by the slow response of the government’s economic measures, but they will not and must not be punished by the unions’ malfeasant disregard for the law.

  • Obi, Obidients and delusions of grandeur

    Obi, Obidients and delusions of grandeur

    In May, Labour Party’s National Working Committee (NWC) headed by its chairman Julius Abure dedicated a directorate to cater to the interests of the Obidient Movement within the party. They called the new department the Directorate of Obidient Affairs. It was clear Mr Abure was simply trying to suck it up to Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate in the last poll, and also gain the upper hand in his jousting with the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) adamant about dethroning him. The ingratiation effort failed. When the controversy about the status of the Obidients ensued, it became even clearer that the chafing Mr Obi and his supporters, indecorously referred to and punned as servile obedient foot soldiers, had always seen themselves as both distinct from and superior to the LP. What is not clear, though, is what the vacillating NLC president, Joe Ajaero, thinks of the absolute contempt the Obi crowd have for the party and the disdain they showed for the pretentious directorate.

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    In an unflattering repudiation of the directorate, Tanko Yunusa, media aide to Mr Obi, had posted on Twitter: “It (The Obidient Movement) is not domiciled within any particular party or headquartered in any particular part of the country. Let this serve as a clarification that the Obidient Movement operates independently of any political party, and its membership is not limited to any particular affiliation.” In summary, Mr Obi is refusing to burn his bridges and has not foreclosed his departure from the quarrelsome party, while also signaling to potential suitors like the peripatetic former vice president Atiku Abubakar that he and his Obidient crowd are open to ‘mergers and acquisitions’. In one ungainly tweet, Mr Obi confirms what this column has always believed, that he is rootless, would not deign to form or nurture a party, and cannot even run a party, let alone summon the skill and temperament to unify a fractious group and build it into a cohesive force.

    Worse, by lionising the Obidient Movement, Mr Obi has exposed what he really thinks of his captive movement. They are in thrall to him, and he holds them hostage, a symbiosis that sadly and tragically, reinforces the movement’s controversial lack of ideology and structure as well as foretells both the apocalyptical threat they constitute to the body politic and the poison they disseminate to the muscles and sinews of the society. To consider such an amorphous group as transcending political parties and religions, despite their inglorious beginnings and politics, is nothing but delusions of grandeur.

  • Sections 3, 4 & 5 of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015.

    Sections 3, 4 & 5 of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015.

    3. (1) The President may on the recommendation of the National Security Adviser, by Order published in the Federal Gazette, designate certain computer systems, and/or networks, whether physical or virtual, and/or the computer programs, computer data and/or traffic data vital to this country that the incapacity or destruction of or interference with such system and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national or economic security, national public health and safety, or any combination of those matters as constituting Critical National Information Infrastructure.  

    (2) The Presidential Order made under subsection (1) of this section may prescribe minimum standards, guidelines, rules or procedure in respect of –

    (a) the protection or preservation of critical information infrastructure;  

    (b) the general management of critical information infrastructure;  

    (c) access to, transfer and control of data in any critical information infrastructure;  Designation of certain computer systems or networks as critical national information infrastructure.  

     (d) infrastructural or procedural rules and requirements for securing the integrity and authenticity of data or information contained in any designated critical national information infrastructure; 

     (e) the storage or archiving of data or information designated as critical national information infrastructure; 

    (f) recovery plans in the event of disaster, breach or loss of the critical national information infrastructure or any part of it; and 

     (g) any other matter required for the adequate protection, management and control of data and other resources in any critical national information infrastructure.

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    4. The Presidential Order made under section 3 of this Act may require the Office of the National Security Adviser to audit and inspect any Critical National Information Infrastructure at any time to ensure compliance with the provisions of this Act.

    5. (1) Any person who with intent, commits any offence punishable under this Act against any critical national information infrastructure, designated pursuant to section 3 of this Act, shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years without an option of fine. 

        (2) Where the offence committed under subsection (1) of this section results in grievous bodily harm to any person, the offender shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not more than 15 years without option of fine. 

        (3) Where the offence committed under subsection (1) of this section results in the death of person(s), the offender shall be liable on conviction to life imprisonment.

    *See also, Chapter 4 of the National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy (2021).

  • Tinubu should cut ministers some slack

    Tinubu should cut ministers some slack

    When the Bola Tinubu administration clocked one year, the country was agog with news of the looming sack of nonperforming ministers. It is not clear where that expectation came from. The ministers had just spent about nine months, not even a year. Except where a minister is so blatantly incompetent or lethargic or incapable of interpreting the administration’s programmes and policies, it may amount to an overkill to begin thinking of sacking any of them. Some redeployment can be done, and a few rejigging here and there. But to dismiss a minister when he or she had hardly started, even if they had spent over a year, may be excessive.

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    Some ministers take longer time to settle down, and some are far too introspective for their own good in a country giddy with excitement about hiring and firing officials. Some other ministers may also not be self-promoting, but are nevertheless self-assured and given to quiet and solid achievement. It will be a mistake to approximate the performance and flamboyance of, say, Nyesom Wike or David Umahi as the rigid minimum for the cabinet. No, the president should please cut his ministers some slack. He must not forget that many of his appointees are political IOUs. And with the far-reaching reform he is undertaking, much of it alienating powerful interests, if not regions, he needs to be careful and deliberate.

  • ECOWAS split seems petrified

    ECOWAS split seems petrified

     The foreign ministers of the military-led Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger Republic may have taken the final, fateful steps in establishing a regional alliance distinct from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The draft text for the ‘institutionalisation and operationalisation’ of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), said Niger Republic’s foreign minister Bakary Yaou Sangare triumphantly on May 17, had been finalised. The new organisation ignores ECOWAS, and has gone ahead to replace French hegemony with Russian hegemony. Between 2020 and 2022, the three countries had experienced coups d’état and immediately attracted a panoply of sanctions that strangulated their economies and instigated street protests. The romance between their starry-eyed publics and the militaries may have now soured, especially with the soldiers entrenching their rulership and hardening their positions, but this did not diminish the efforts to create a new regional body.

    It is all but certain that the AES will see the light of day, especially seeing that the foreign ministers were curiously enthusiastic about the proposed regional body. But why they assumed that ECOWAS was being influenced by France is hard to explain. Yes, ECOWAS aggregates French-speaking and English-speaking West African countries, but to conclude that France had an upper hand in the entire region is mystifying. There is no doubt that France had brutally exploited its former colonies, but ECOWAS consists of many independent-minded countries, including Francophone countries, and the three Sahelian countries could still have found relevance and achieved their goals within the larger regional body. Clearly, the three AES countries are all about power games. They resent being lectured on the evils of military rule and the utopia of democratic rule. To them, Russia is less meddlesome and exploitative. It, however, remains to be seen whether Russia would remain altruistic in the face of the AES countries’ rich mineral deposits.

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    Months ago, in the face of domestic agitations for a return to democratic rule in the AES countries, their military juntas banned street protests and even went ahead to place a moratorium on media reports. Now, Burkina Faso’s military rulers have gone a step further into infamy by postponing democratic rule for another five years from 2024. They claimed to have concluded a national dialogue which produced a consensus, according to the organising committee’s chairman, Col Moussa Diallo, to extend military rule by five years. Most political parties, which had foolishly welcomed the Captain Ibrahim Traore coup, boycotted the dialogue. How Capt. Traore hopes to hold on to power for five more years in a coup-prone country is not known. He had in September 2022 ousted Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba barely eight months after the latter staged a coup against the democratically elected President Roch Marc Kaboré. Clearly, the coups were not about their flagging counterinsurgency war or of the evils of French domination and exploitation. It was all about power.

    This column had repeatedly suggested that ECOWAS efforts to mollify the AES were an exercise in futility. Even before the larger regional body reacted petulantly to the July 2023 coup in Niger Republic, which formed the casus belli of the AES break with ECOWAS, those three Sahelian states had yearned to strike a different and independent path for themselves, free of peer review and completely rid of pressures to return to democratic rule. To prevent ECOWAS from fracturing, and hearkening to the ossified thinking of former Nigerian heads of state like Yakubu Gowon and Olusegun Obasanjo, ECOWAS unwisely and awkwardly bent over backwards to accommodate and reintegrate the AES countries, including softening or even lifting sanctions. It was a futile exercise.

    The AES will be formally inaugurated soon. ECOWAS had better get used to that awful and depressing idea of a regional split. It is a reality. They may want to blame themselves for pushing the three military-led countries out of the regional body; they should resist the temptation. With the insurgencies in those Sahelian states threatening to get out of hand and economies being increasingly suffocated, something was bound to give. The sanctions and ECOWAS threat of military action simply pushed the errant and recalcitrant states over the cliff of no return. That was where they were headed all along. They have now berthed in their clumsy utopia authored by the distressed and amoral Russia. ECOWAS should be encouraged to sit down and rethink the regional body instead of fighting the tide, imbue what is left with far more noble objectives than its founding fathers gave it, and produce annual festivals, programmes, and scientific and military collaborations and exchanges other global economic and political unions would envy. If the rest of ECOWAS can’t outthink and outdo the AES, then they deserve to fracture even more.

  • Nigeria needs new military doctrine

    Nigeria needs new military doctrine

    It is going to take a herculean effort for the Nigerian military to transform into the people’s army. The Nigerian government, since military rule began, has had no idea what people’s army means, and the army itself has demonstrated no appetite for change. Hundreds of events and incidents illustrate this deficit. But three recent incidents should exemplify the depressing disconnection between Nigerians and their military, a disconnection that has accentuated the crisis of underdevelopment and stymied the effectiveness of the military in its numerous counterinsurgency wars in the Northeast, costly efforts to pacify the Northwest, and other internal peacekeeping duties.

    The first incident relates to the shutting down of Banex Plaza in Abuja for one week over a dispute between a phone seller and a soldier. A trader allegedly sold a defective phone to a soldier, and refused to make good. Soon, the disagreement escalated into a fight and a free-for-all, leading incredibly to the deployment of five teams of soldiers to barricade the shopping plaza for a week. The details of the disagreement, and who provoked whom, have neither been investigated nor reported, nor is it clear who was to blame, nor whether the phone was actually defective or not. Until the disputants are interviewed, the whole truth may not be known. But how on earth such a dispute escalated so quickly until it became an official matter said to be capable of threatening national security is hard to fathom. The reasons may, however, are not be as far-fetched as imagined.

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    Disputes between buyers and sellers are commonplace. Sometimes they get out of hand, but often they don’t, especially if relevant regulatory or law enforcement institutions function properly. Admittedly Nigeria is a developing country and both regulatory and law enforcement institutions are inadequate or too weak to mediate conflicts. Army spokesman Onyema Nwachukwu, a major-general, spoke of the sacrosanctness of military uniforms, the aggression of the ‘hoodlums’ who attacked ‘unarmed soldiers’, the presence of unidentified miscreants who ‘use the Banex neighbourhood’ to threaten security, and the capacity of such incidents to ‘orchestrate threats to national security’. Alarmingly, commenting on the incident days later, former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Lucky Irabor regarded the statement by the spokesman as mild. For him, shutting down the plaza and occupying it were the right things to do.

    In Gen. Irabor’s view, no person in uniform should be attacked because he represents the state. He said: “This applies to any uniformed person for as long as he is an agent of the state. An attack on him is an attack on the state, so any Nigerian of goodwill must condemn such an act. For me, I join to support the closure of Banex Plaza for as long as it takes to have anyone responsible for that dastardly act brought to justice. This is because if we fail to do so, we will be calling for anarchy. The only men who are sacrificing their lives to ensure our collective good are members of the armed forces, the police, and other security agencies.” With such a mindset, it makes it harder for disputes not to be blown out of proportion. That sense of institutional exceptionalism has seemed to corrode thea propriety of responses to provocations and the moderation that should flow from the commonality of human beings and experience. Soldiers sacrifice their lives; but so do doctors, nurses, and others. Ukraine could today not make the distinction that Gen. Irabor has made. When a country’s existence is threatened, everyone becomes a soldier. Indeed, it is in such sacrifices, which the former CDS made reference to, that the best of soldiery and highest regard for the sanctity of life are located. Drawing the kind of distinction the general has done is unhelpful and inciting. If at the level of commanding a country’s entire armed forces a military general could promote a controversial appreciation of military doctrine, then it is time to ask for more fundamental changes and reforms. Perhaps, it is time they went back to military histories and get inspired afresh.

    The second incident, sadly, flows from the Okuama, Delta State, incident in which 17 military personnel lost their lives in an ambush by militants on March 14 over a land dispute between Bomadi and Okuama communities. The reprisal was swift and fierce, indeed as the military warned. Okuama is a small community of a few hundred people, but it was soon levelled, a fact that came to light after the military ended their occupation. A third incident is the May 30 killing of five soldiers by militants in Aba, Abia State. The identities of the attackers are disputed, but military officers suspect the Indigenous People of Biafra/Eastern Security Network who organised that day’s lockdown to commemorate the sacrifice of their civil war heroes. Responding to the killings, the military in a statement spoke about the ‘imperative’ to ‘retaliate’ and why it would be ‘fierce in its response’. The military also spoke about the people being the lifeline of terrorists, but also acknowledged that the military could not hope to win the war against terrorism without the people. What would they, therefore, do about the seemingly conflicted role of the people? Whether the military likes it or not, the sacking of Odi community in Bayelsa State in 1999, after the killing of 12 policemen and some soldiers, did not prevent the Zaki Biam, Benue State, killing of 19 soldiers and the reprisal killings of hundreds of Tivs. And both the killings and the sacking of the two communities did not prevent the Okuama and Aba killings, not to say the humiliation of soldiers at an Abuja shopping mall. This is why the military must now begin to consider a different approach to responding to provocations.

    As long as the police are structured and funded poorly to rise up to the threat posed by criminals, and as long as soldiers are inappropriately deployed to carry out police duties, the interactions between soldiers and the public would inevitably weaken, if not corrupt, the military. And for as long as Nigeria’s military personnel have a poor understanding of an equally poorly designed military doctrine, they would see themselves and their uniforms provocatively above censure or attack. If their brightest and best embrace a controversial understanding of military doctrine, it is impossible for them not to embark on angry reprisals against audacious criminals who attack soldiers, and in the process killing the innocent in retaliation, or even wiping out entire communities. The Banex Plaza provocation should have been left to the police, and the Okuama incident left to the Department of State Service (DSS) and the police; but anger and the need to retaliate the effrontery of civilians got the better of the military. Letting the police handle the Banex affair does not take anything, not even a jot, from the military. But it seems their military doctrine does not admit to such a lasting and effective approach to civilian provocations.

    Unfortunately for the military, the enormous firepower at their disposal is wholly unsuited to the kind of interactions and domestic assignments they are saddled with. This mismatch is worsened by the fact that the people actually yearn to love their military; for the ordinary soldier is first a civilian, a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, and a relation whose death or incapacitation would be a tragedy. Prince Harry’s visit last month and the televised events that exposed Nigerian soldiers permanently maimed while on duty brought it agonisingly home to Nigerians the huge and incredible sacrifices Nigerian soldiers make to keep the country safe and united. It is a disservice to their collective sacrifice that their comrades-in-arms descend to the ignominious role of approving self-help and tyrannising civilians on the grounds of the uniforms they wear. Being wounded in action is one thing; sometimes some of them return home in body bags, their eyes permanently closed in sleep while their relations continue to mourn. Surviving soldiers should stop desecrating the memory of their fallen comrades, and senior officers charged with formulating and teaching tradition and doctrine in the military should stop depriving the civil populace from relating with, and loving and honouring soldiers forever poised to give their all, including their limbs and lives, for the country.

    The best place to begin this new approach is for the military to eschew violent, supremacist language from their statements during provocations. They have no control over provocations; but they can determine how they respond to attacks, either in ways that honour their uniforms and training or in ways that dishonor their arms. The choice is theirs to make. However, it is time to stop seeing themselves as soldiers superior to the polity. After all, they are not soldiers of fortune. For when they respond fiercely and indiscriminately to provocations like militants and insurgents, talking about retaliation and vengeance instead of calmly and forcefully saying they would bring the attackers to justice, how can they prove they are different from those animals who unfeelingly leave destruction in their wake?  

  • One year of Tinubu

    One year of Tinubu

    In three days, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be one year in office. He will likely be scored low by public commentators, many of them young and impressionable, and Nigerians at the receiving end of the economic turmoil his economic policies have triggered. He has wisely not really commenced his agenda of social and political re-engineering of Nigeria. Tackling the massive rot and stagnation on the economic front has been disruptive enough; adding any other programme to it on a substantial scale would create seismic waves that even he, as stoical and politically adept as he is recognised to be, would be unable to manage. So, largely, he will be scored on how successful he has been in dealing with an economy that, even at the best of times, has been difficult to rein. In the past one week, his ministers have made heavy weather trying to burnish the administration’s scorecard. They have not been very successful, especially with inflation resistant to control, exchange rate unamenable to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s best efforts, insecurity yielding a yard and taking back a foot, and the administration itself quite unable to get its act together as manifested by disquieting reversals in varsity council appointments, tax policies, and expatriate employment levy, among others. Indeed, fewer Nigerians are optimistic that his economic reset agenda will yield fruit in the near future.

    But the reason a presidential term is four years is to give room for rebuilding foundations, setting building blocks properly, and constructing durable economic and political edifices. The period also allows for missteps, some inconsistencies, even if fundamental, and the rethinking and rejigging of sundry but impactful policies in all areas of national life. The harshness and rapidity with which the Tinubu administration has been judged in the past few months, despite the four-year term provision, may not be unconnected with the manner of his emergence and the controversies that smothered the last elections. The country is largely divided along ethnic and religious lines, and divisive champions, given fillip by a giddy and obstreperous social media, have had a field day. Those passing judgement will not wait for his term to end before sentencing him; they will continue to harry his administration and hope he will be flustered and susceptible to mistakes. Those who don’t like him will continue to loath him whatever he does. And those who love him will have their faith tested severely on account of the trenchancy and widespreadness of his critics.

    On Wednesday, the Tinubu administration will be one year in office. But consumed by either hatred for his person or loathing for his economic and financial policies, some Nigerians may have failed to appreciate the biggest value of the administration in the past 12 months. Far beyond his economic policies, some of which may be misplaced or even conflicting, and far beyond his tentative social and political reengineering of the republic, is the great service to national unity and cohesion which his election and inauguration have occasioned. That Nigeria is still standing today and not embroiled in anarchy or, worse, war, is an acknowledgment of the calming effect the election of an ‘outsider’ has brought upon the country. At first consideration, he was the most suitable for the presidency among the three leading aspirants who vied for the presidency in 2023. Electing former vice president Atiku Abubakar would have elongated and perpetrated Fulani rule over Nigeria after eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari. It would also have entrenched the hegemony of the uniformed services. Electing the flighty and clearly unprepared and opportunistic Peter Obi would have jeopardised the stability of the country for many reasons, chief among which was his capacity for politicising religion and his predisposition to becoming a hostage to powerful interests and his militant supporters.

    By 2022, many Nigerians, including some who are close to the president today, had concluded that after former president Goodluck Jonathan’s inimical administration, the North would not relinquish power. That self-defeatist sentiment was predominant in the PDP and nearly the entire South, including the Southwest; and given the insularity of the Buhari administration, it was widely believed that he would certainly not hand over to a southerner. Worse, it was also affirmed in many quarters that the military would rather let a paramilitary officer take office than a ‘bloody’ civilian. Then, there were the two clinchers suggesting that Asiwaju Tinubu was the most hated politician of the time, a man described as so inflexible as to be unamenable to control and discipline, and that the electoral and arithmetical dynamics of Nigerian elections did not conduce to the victory of someone not sponsored by the ‘owners of Nigeria’, or the massive votes of the North, or the support of the two main religions. President Tinubu’s victory shattered myths and preconceptions, and like MKO Abiola’s election in 1993, opened the gates for a robust civilian or a southern secularist to win the presidential election on his own merit and by dint of his own permutations. The election and one year in office reinforce self-belief in political aspirants that victory is possible if they play their cards adroitly.

    The 2023 presidential election may to a large extent have destroyed the hegemonic proclivity of the North which had before the poll promoted and embraced northern and military exceptionalism. President Tinubu’s inauguration, despite calls for a preemptive coup d’état or celestial intervention to murder him, may gradually begin to nurture in the North a feeling of living and letting others live, and a feeling that the idea that one group owns Nigeria is atrophying. In four years, and possibly eight, the idea of inclusive politics may begin to take root in the psyche of Nigerians, infusing confidence in anyone bright and bold enough to aspire to the highest office. In the years ahead too, neither the Yoruba nor the Fulani, nor yet the Igbo, among other ethnic groups, would propagate the conviction that one group owns the rest. It may take a little more time to deracinate the poisonous and retrogressive roots of Islamic fundamentalism and evangelical fervour in Nigerian politics, and a few more years before the last gasps of military obtrusion as exampled by the Okuama misadventure and Abuja Banex Plaza profligacy are heard. But, clearly, the Tinubu election and presidency, not to say his bold and independent though sometimes conflicting and ineffectual policies, have reinvigorated the tentative belief in the concept of Nigeria.

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    President Tinubu may not have got or done everything right in his first year, but he has been an unheralded instrument for the rethinking, regeneration and renewal of Nigeria. There is thus a celestial tinge to his presidency. His main ministerial cabinet may have been a mixed multitude of the brilliant and the comical, and his kitchen cabinet a little worrisomely uninspiring and devoid of a steely and coherent core, but it will be a mistake to use these partial failings to define or obfuscate the real value of his election and administration, not to say his one year in office. Some analysts, using the precedent of his stewardship as governor in Lagos, have described him as a slow starter. There is nothing to be ashamed of regarding his speed. What matters is that in his second year and third, he needs to pick up speed in terms of the outstanding existential issues assailing Nigeria, and to consolidate in those things in which he has shown great promise. He will be pressured to deliver a restructured country, a peaceful country cranked into life by a political engine that is well oiled and serviced. He has not shown a lack of courage in his first year in office; but it is now time to demonstrate that intuitive and almost metaphysical grasp of the possible that galvanised him into office last year. Kano and Rivers in their kingship battles and godfather complex respectively have shown a disturbing predilection for dictatorship, if not messianic complex. However, especially in light of the agitation for state police, President Tinubu has a duty to rein in bungling and combative governors before they begin to govern their states as if they are independent republics devoid of the rule of law and are accountable to no one. The next elections may have crossed his mind, and many around him, particularly the obsequious, may begin dropping hints; he will do well to resist their blandishments and instead focus on the urgent task of rebuilding the country’s economy, politics and self-esteem battered by poor leadership and tyranny.

  • The Age of Reversion: Kano emirate, Atiku

    The Age of Reversion: Kano emirate, Atiku

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar is full of recantations. It took him barely one week before he recanted his decision to support Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the last election should his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), or a putative coalition of angry political parties, decide to zone the presidency to the Southeast and pick the former Anambra State governor as candidate. He would have no problem supporting the coalition’s candidate, he had said gamely, insisting, “This is to anybody that thinks there is going to be a misunderstanding between me and Obi; let me assure you that not even a small issue is going to happen between us.” Well, the coalition has not yet been cobbled, and neither aspirant had yet been called to altruism, but Alhaji Atiku is already recanting, and doing it pluckily and with considerable indifference.

    But of course, Hausa language is highly nuanced, and literal translations can be a quicksand for first speakers of the language, let alone second speakers. Alhaji Atiku gave both interviews where he spoke about his aspiration or non-aspiration in Hausa. In the first interview, on BBC Hausa Service, he suggested that he was still interested in the presidency but would back Mr Obi if the coalition he and others were envisaging declined to give him the nod. Was anything lost during the translations? It seems unlikely. The translations, assuming media establishments engaged the task simultaneously and independently, were probably excellently done. What seemed lost, but was actually hidden between the lines, was his determination to contest the presidency a seventh time, not to talk of his cynicism about a putative Obi candidacy. He knew without a shred of doubt that Mr Obi’s candidacy, as far as the North was concerned and despite the former Anambra governor’s new-found syncretism, would be anathema. For someone who had shamelessly exploited religion and deployed the church as a political tool and also pledged to serve as its battering ram against other faiths, standing for election and hoping to secure the northern vote was idealism taking to its farcical limit.

    Alarmed that his real political intentions were entangled in the BBC Hausa Service translations, particularly their emphasis on a possible support for Mr Obi, Alhaji Atiku took to the VOA Hausa Service to bury the idiomatic nonsense read into the other interview. For as long as his health held up, he swore, he would continue to contest the presidency. Now, dear reader, cut to the chase, and don’t take refuge in any idiom or nuance: what the former vice president is saying is that as long as he is on his feet, good health be damned, he would vie for the golden stool. What is not clear is at what point he experienced the epiphany of seeing number seven as a magical number, and tying it to former United States president Abraham Lincoln whom he said contested for the American presidency a seventh time before winning. Alhaji Atiku is allegedly famous for reposing trust in the arcane services of marabouts; now he is speaking mystically about the metaphysics of numbers, insisting that he would keep contesting until he wins. At 81 years old? Nothing and no subject is inviolate when the former vice president engages his recantations; but on his ambition to run for the presidency a seventh time, and notwithstanding the misinterpretations of his earlier BBC Hausa Service interview, he can be trusted to want to run for office except God preempts him or someone else more astute and less controversial steals his thunder.

    Still on the subject of reversions, Kano State has demonstrated once again that it is no laggard. Perish philosophy, perish common sense. During the last governorship elections campaign, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement politicking on the hijacked platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), took his personal fight against former Kano State governor and now chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, to a new and unsavoury height. He answered every barb shot at him by the APC chairman with unfathomable biliousness and a determination to erase anything connected with his sparring partner. One of the victims of the fight is the Emirate Council of Kano, previously divided into five emirates about four years ago, but three days ago again unified by a piece of legislation from the State House of Assembly repealing the former law. After accenting the legislation unifying the balkanised emirate, Governor Abba Yusuf angrily deposed the four emirs of Gaya, Rano, Bichi, Karaye, and then added the deposition of Emir Ado Bayero as icing on the cake. Many analysts suggested such mass depositions would be fraught with a lot of uncertainties, but neither Mallam Kwankwaso nor the governor could be bothered. They had made the repeal of the Gov Ganduje Emirate Council law a campaign promise, they asserted grimly, and they would stop at nothing to fulfill that promise.

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    It is the courts that will, however, determine whether the five emirs were duly appointed by law, and whether that law was legitimate or otherwise. The reinstatement of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II as Emir of Kano a second time, thus becoming the 14th and 16th emir, can also only be viewed from the perspective of the law. But the Kwankwasiyya group has claimed the repeal of the law and depositions accord with the law. They have mocked the court order staying action on the deposition, suggesting that it was procured outside Nigeria and out of time, despite the regnancy of e-proceedings. They are in short presenting Kano with a fait accompli. But the courts will eventually determine whether Emir Bayero was queried or given fair hearing. Indeed, unlike the deposition of Emir Sanusi, there was no allegation of wrongdoing against the deposed emir, let alone a query or an inquiry. And, worse, there was no involvement of the kingmakers other than a nebulous ‘consultation’ with them. If the Kwankwasiyya group was so adamant about reversing the balkanised Kano emirate, could they not adhere to the rule of law? And why the haste?

    The mass deposition controversy is now in the courts. It is hard to see how the Kano State government would justify the abridgement of due process. They could get away with demolishing the multi-million naira Golden Jubilee monument erected at a roundabout in Kano last year into which they had insinuated a Christian symbol only visible by a drone, but they will need far more ingenuity, if not legal sleight of hand, to justify the deposition of five emirs in one fell swoop anchored on a curious interpretation of the Kano Emirate Council law. No anger justifies a government acting as rashly as Kano State government has done, or as Rivers, which sees itself as an independent entity unconstrained by the law or constitution, is doing. If the courts in Kano have any regard for the constitution, the country might yet be spared from a replay of the unbridled nihilism overtaking Rivers State.

  • Abridging Jimoh Ibrahim’s rights

    Abridging Jimoh Ibrahim’s rights

    Last Wednesday, some elements in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Igbotako Ward II, Okitipupa local government area of Ondo State, suspended Jimoh Ibrahim (Senate – Ondo South) from the party for alleged anti-party activities. The summary of the allegations against him was his refusal to heed the national leadership of the party which asked aggrieved aspirants in the last governorship primary to bury the hatchet. Sen. Ibrahim insists on litigating what he considered brazen governorship primary robbery. How that amounted to anti-party activity is hard to explain. Fortunately, it was only a faction of the ward executives that orchestrated that reckless use of power at the lowest rung of the party. Another faction immediately announced that the suspension was of no effect.

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    Beyond the suspension, it is disturbing that the clearly anti-democratic tool of decapitating party leaders at the ward level is now becoming popular in Nigerian politics. The measure was used to dethrone former APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole in 2020, and unhorse another former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Iyorchia Ayu in March 2023, not to talk of a number of insignificant party leaders schemed out of reckoning by dictatorial party leaders. Until that despicable ploy is extirpated, it will continue to be deployed to settle scores as long as there are groveling party executives willing to be bought and sold. The measure was originally designed to sanitise party membership and stymie unhealthy interferences; now it is available as an omnibus tool in the hands of a ruling party that should be pacesetting. It is disheartening that the increasingly amoral APC in Abuja was eager to bury the governorship primary corpse rather than do autopsy, while some shadowy figures in the state APC have gone a step further to forcefully rein in Mr Ibrahim rather than mollify his anger. 

  • Ododo, Fubara and crippled law enforcement

    Ododo, Fubara and crippled law enforcement

     The political tragedies playing out in Rivers and Kogi States are a clear indication of how troubled Nigerian democracy is. Though those tragedies can be equated more specifically with leadership failing, the results are no less ramifying, involving not only failure of the executive but of, and more importantly, the legislature and the executive. Indeed, it is becoming clearer that once law enforcement is trammeled by contradictions, the executive, legislature and the judiciary are susceptible to malfunctioning. That malfunctioning has in turn led national legislators and a few former presidents to propose the complete jettisoning of Western liberal democracy without first resolving what had led to the trouble or malfunction.

    Rivers and Kogi exemplify the conundrum. Last October, perhaps to forestall the impeachment of Governor Siminalayi Fubara who had fallen out with his benefactor, ex-governor Nyesom Wike, the Rivers State House of Assembly was torched, thus stalling legislative functions of Mr Wike’s 27 loyalists. Soon after, in December, the complex was brought down by the state government on the pretext that the structure had become unstable and needed to be rebuilt. In the interim, six suspects, including alleged loyalists of Governor Fubara led by one-time factional speaker of the assembly Edison Ehie, were fingered over the arson. In January 2024, the police approached a Federal High Court in Abuja to issue a warrant for the arrest of Mr Ehie and five others over terrorism charges. But shortly after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu waded into the Rivers imbroglio and helped fashion a political solution, Mr Ehie resigned his position and became Mr Fubara’s chief of staff. After a ding-dong legal combat between Rivers High Court and Abuja Federal High Court spanning many months between January and April, the warrant issued for Mr Ehie’s arrest was eventually vacated.

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    It was not just the chronological progression of the legal and political combat between Mr Fubara and Mr Wike that rankled lovers of democracy, it was the passivity of law enforcement agents. The House of Assembly was torched in October and demolished in December. In-between, the police who saturated the Rivers Government House, and had for months approached the investigation of arson at the assembly ham-fistedly, turned a blind eye to the presence of Mr Ehie in Port Harcourt until the same Abuja FHC vacated the warrant of arrest against him. Even if the warrant is vacated, what stops the diligent investigation of the crime of arson and the prosecution of the five alleged accomplices? In addition, since Mr Ehie still does not have immunity, what stops the police from plugging the legal loopholes that saw him initially escape censure and prosecution? There is of course the increasingly disturbing allegiance most state High Courts pay to state governments, but this obstacle is not insurmountable to a determined law enforcement agency and the federal government. Yes, the judiciary has in the past few decades become incapable of coaxing judges to the straight and narrow path, and the executive has also become unconscionably exploitative and manipulative. But if the law enforcement agencies also give up, play deaf and dumb when it suits them, and feel more comfortable conspiratorially allying with their paymasters, it is not only democracy that is threatened, the entire country is in danger of unraveling.

    If the ugly details of the executive, law enforcement and judicial sloppiness in Rivers are sobering, the story in Kogi, as Governor Usman Ododo helps his predecessor Yahaya Bello thwart the law, is also mindboggling. Just like Rivers, the Kogi government is complicit, with no fear of future consequences after the governors might have lost immunity. Obviously, the governors conclude that no one is keeping records, or that it is more expedient to get what they want now by hook or crook and leave a hypothetical tomorrow to take care of itself. Then, the courts, both by intellectual vacuity and general administrative ineptitude at the highest levels, became complicit either in issuing countervailing rulings in quick succession or even delivering bewildering judgements full of empty jurisprudential contrivances and leprous logic. And to complete the political mimicry undermining the rule of law and democracy in Nigeria, both the police and the Department of State Service (DSS) have tiptoed around the fleeing Mr Bello and the conniving Mr Ododo. It is a reflection of the depth of decay democracy has sunk that in both Rivers and Kogi the police would declare leading politicians wanted and the suspects would be shielded by governors, while law enforcement agents in close proximity to the fugitives would pretend as if all was well. It is indeed a very tragic indication that the men and women in high places saddled with the responsibility of ensuring good governance have no clue or interest in carrying out their tasks, and no idea what duty to country means.

    After contemplating these anomalies, which have replayed themselves in Kogi and Rivers, former president Olusegun Obasanjo reiterated last week that Western liberal democracy had failed this part of the world, and there was need to find an indigenous fit. But as suggested in this place when he first mooted the heresy months ago, the problem might be both structural and idiosyncratic to Nigeria’s political elite. Whatever system is designed, as the former president himself showed by his unconstitutional approach to the opposition and militants, will more likely than not be exploited, manipulated and despised by political and business leaders who always regard themselves above the law. Chief Obasanjo may have experienced an epiphany in his twilight years, but because the system did not exact a price from him after he lost immunity, there is no precedent for governors, strongmen and other political actors like Mr Ehie to take as a dissuasive lesson.