The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • PDP’s tentative steps towards coalition

    PDP’s tentative steps towards coalition

    After waiting and scheming for months for the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration to collapse under the weight of electoral and religious contradictions, the legends of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have finally decided to forge ahead with measures they should have adopted moments after they lost the 2023 presidential election. The honour of being noble losers, which the world would have accorded them last year had they reconciled themselves to their losses and put the country far ahead of their ambitions, is painfully and permanently withheld. Losing that election was galling enough. But being asked to congratulate the winner, the most sensible thing to do in the circumstance, was to them anathema. They first hid behind the curtain of their constitutional rights to litigate the All Progressives Congress (APC) victory. They had argued that it would not make sense to offer congratulations before they took their chances in the courts. In the end, the litigation process went far beyond the law; it became a bitter and acrimonious exercise to strip the victor of all legitimacy before, during and after the proceedings.

    Secondly, the PDP legends, some of them nesting in other political parties, actively schemed for the abortion of the poll victory even before the electoral umpire was through with collating the results. To aid their rebellion, they had diverse champions promoting abortion, some of them former presidents emotionally invested in a different outcome other than President Tinubu, and business leaders financially invested in any outcome other than APC. Shocked to the marrow by the final results, they were unable to help themselves from perpetuating the plot to scuttle the poll by any means. Might street protests do the trick? They tried to assemble opinion leaders, activists, civil society gangs, and sundry handymen and malcontents eternally bequeathed with grudges of indeterminate origin. Somehow, no critical mass was formed. Might preemptive coup d’etat then be the needed panacea? The military were at first amused, then uncannily indifferent when the calls came for them to intervene: they sensed that the world had since changed, perhaps very fundamentally, to countenance that retrogressive measure. Besides, they were unsure that the country had not become badly fractured to make any coup both undesirable and counterproductive. It might very well spell the country’s doom.

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    Finally, sensing that a vocal, but largely insensitive and ignorant, public opinion dictated by Internet denizens was apathetical to the inauguration of the Tinubu presidency, the PDP legends and their champions and their bedazzled charlatans prayed for Armageddon to descend and consume the administration and hypothetically instigate a national rebirth. Month after month, they hoped for that celestial fire; but month after month, no fire fell. A few days to the administration’s one year in office, the PDP has finally reconciled itself to defeat. Having split themselves into four entities shortly before the polls, an act that was a byproduct of their political naivety and tactical incompetence, the legends and their tired champions are now grudgingly contemplating the way out of three torrid election losses and nearly nine years out of office. They had each vaingloriously regarded themselves as independently capable of taking on the APC behemoth in the last poll; now they are no longer sure of their talisman or indeed of anything. If whipping up the populace into frenzy failed to furnish them the insurrection they needed, and the courts, which they had maligned endlessly, stood pat on the law and would not gratify their lusts, there was little anyone could do to get them their hearts’ desire. They now hope that the next election would not miscarry. But it probably will miscarry for a number of reasons.

    The most pertinent reason for a future PDP poll failure is their inability, nay abject unwillingness, to rethink the PDP. When that party, which was then a darling of the military, ferried ex-head of state Olusegun Obasanjo into office, it only mimicked ideology. Its real ideological mooring was tenuous and incoherent. Worse, they were unlucky to put in office a retired army general whose political and social worldview was festooned with hubris and all manner of distortions. The new president thus imbued the PDP with his private failings and weaknesses, and ensured that the baton he passed on to the next generation of national leaders was brittle and greasy. Moreover, after his eight years in office, he suddenly realised he had done little to mentor the next generation. Shorn of a unifying and inspiring ideology, and inexperienced in preparing promising leaders, the PDP quickly began to fray at the edges, and after the 2015 election, simply disintegrated. One of the PDP legends who has taken the front seat in the party today, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, is unfortunately as eclectic as they come and not too dissimilar to Chief Obasanjo in his messianic appreciation of power and superficial consideration of ideology. He has the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, a former Anambra governor and PDP legend, as his right-hand man. Alas, Mr Obi is also destitute of ideology, largely unprincipled, and an opportunistic manipulator of religion and ethnicity. How both gentlemen hope to reform and unite the PDP and then reposition it for state capture in the next three years is hard to fathom.

    But there is another pertinent factor: Alhaji Atiku himself. In an interview with BBC Hausa Service last week, the former vice president laboured unconvincingly to showcase his altruism. He affirmed his disposition towards forming a political coalition against the ruling APC, belatedly accepting that had the PDP not splinter into four parts before the last poll, he would probably have won the presidency. Mr Obi had also visited Alhaji Atiku and other northern political titans like former senate president Bukola Saraki and former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido in furtherance of coalition talks. So, everything points to the possibility of a coalition of opposition parties squaring up with the APC in 2027. But there is a snag. The former vice president is obsessed with winning the presidency for himself. In the BBC interview, he, however, indicated that if the party zoned the presidency elsewhere, he would still energise the coalition to at least snatch the presidency from the APC. He predicates that ‘altruistic’ goal on the need to salvage Nigeria from the hands of an inept ruling party, thus making his new objective that of saving the country rather than actualising his personal goal of ruling it. Is he believable? Hardly, for the devil is in the detail. He indeed lied when he suggested in the interview that the PDP ordered an open primary contest for all aspirants in the last presidential election. No, he and his supporters forced the party into opening up the space, the consequences of which eventually led to their dismal 2023 performance.

    In the interview, Alhaji Atiku created the impression that he would do everything to ensure that zoning was foreclosed. But if he fails, he would conversely do little to back the party’s candidate. After all, he is not averse to making his antipathy towards President Tinubu his other main and satisfying ambition. If he can’t become candidate again, let alone stand the chance of winning the presidency, he might be willing to commit significant amount of resources to unseating the object of his undiluted malice. Nevertheless, the BBC interviews and the Obi visits, including the reunions, are nothing but the first few tentative steps towards forming a formidable coalition to unseat the APC. It is still early days, however, and the variables that will form the kernel of the next polls are still crystallising. If in the end a durable coalition is formed – and this will be difficult to cobble – there is little now to suggest that a stable coalition can win a difficult and fateful presidential election in 2027. 

  • Quiet revolution in the North, but vacillations on banditry

    Quiet revolution in the North, but vacillations on banditry

    Whether the country pays attention or not, a quiet revolution in leadership is slowly but surely afoot in the North. Far more than the South, a few but noticeable crop of intelligent and bold leaders have taken political office and are hungry for change, development and legacy largely unencumbered by religious and ethnic bigotry, or any kind of prejudices that conflict with their cosmopolitan make-up and worldview. That quiet revolution is happening in Niger State with Mohammed Bago, is evident in Borno State with Babagana Zulum, and is also taking root in both Katsina with Dikko Radda and Kaduna State with Uba Sani. In a few more months, it will be clear whether the revolution should be lauded.

    Today, however, it is time to remark Governor Radda’s surefooted and impressive ratiocination on the seemingly unending scourge of banditry in his state. Two weekends ago, he firmly dismissed the possibility of negotiating with bandits, saying that banditry had become a business venture for some people in and out of government, and among some members of the country’s security apparatus.

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    It would be impractical and meaningless to negotiate, he argued. He gave reasons. “It is a business venture for the criminals and a business venture for some people who are in government and some people who are in the security outfits and some people who are responsible for the day-to-day activities of their people. These are some of the reasons why we are unable to bring an end to the issue of banditry. When you understand the terrain of the forest, and the different camps that we have within those forests, like in Katsina, we have more than 100 different camps that are being led by somebody. So, they have many leaders, many camps and if you’re negotiating with camps A and B and don’t negotiate with camps C and D, it will not bring any lasting peace. Even if you negotiate with the leaders, the other leaders may not necessarily comply with the directives of the leader. So that is what makes the negotiation very difficult. That is why I said I would never go into negotiations with any criminal at the point of weakness.”

    His predecessor, the equally principled Aminu Masari started out like him but soon succumbed to advice to negotiate with some of the bandits. He did, and later regretted it, for as he found out, the bandits thought their lifestyle too lucrative to give up for amnesty or stipend. Mallam Masari discovered a little late that negotiating with bandits was meaningless. Former Zamfara State governor Bello Matawalle also made the same unsettling discovery of the futility of negotiating with bandits. On many occasions, after negotiations, he was left holding the short end of the stick. The Northeast states are also beginning to discover how counterproductive the federal government’s deradicalisation and reintegration programmes for ‘repentant’ Boko Haram insurgents have become. Some of the deradicalised militants have, according to some reports, returned to their vomit of violence, thus justifying the anger and resentments of many Boko Haram victims still pining away at Internally Displaced Persons’ camps. From all indications, it is a question of time before the deradicalisation programme is halted, after tons of money had been unwisely spent to pacify an intransigent group of fighters.

    Thankfully, the federal government has been less forthcoming in negotiating with bandits of the Northwest. Individual states had fitfully negotiated with a few bandit leaders and posed for photographs with them, and a few clerics, particularly the cocksure Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi, had made a strong case for negotiations. Uncharacteristically, however, the Muhammadu Buhari administration and its successors have been very loth to dialogue with the bandits. In light of happenings in the Northeast, it is now far less likely that both the federal government of states will negotiate with bandits. As a matter of fact, Kebbi State governor Nasir Idris has promised to sign the death warrant of anyone convicted as an informant to bandits. If informants could be shot, neither amnesty nor reprieve would be appropriate for bandits.

    Northern governors met in Kaduna about two weeks ago to discuss the rising incidence of the North’s out-of-school children, which is said to be the highest in the world, and the festering question of insecurity. They took decisions. They will do well to start by being unequivocal about their views on banditry as well as determine exactly how to combat the menace without hesitation. They should stop their vacillations and repudiate the option of negotiation until the menace is defeated. The cost of banditry to their region is too high, and it may take generations to recover.

  • Fubara and the coup in Rivers

    Fubara and the coup in Rivers

    In what seems like a coup de main last Wednesday, Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara got his three loyal state legislators to elect a speaker, Victor Oko-Jumbo, conduct plenary in Government House where the governor had brusquely relocated the legislature, affirm the ‘illegality’ of the 25 or 27 pro-Nyesom Wike lawmakers through a Justice C.N. Wali ruling, and get the All Progressives Congress (APC) scurrying to rein in the feral cats set among their flailing pigeons. The crisis began few months after the inauguration of Mr Fubara who appeared disinclined to toe the line of his predecessor, Mr Wike. Reminiscent of the burning of the German Reichstag in 1933 before World War II, the parliament building in Port Harcourt was soon put to the torch and reasons conjured to castrate the 27 pro-Wike lawmakers. The ensuing stalemate has splintered the state and helped to bring out the true character and mettle of the state’s leading politicians and elders. The picture that has emerged has, however, been ugly and most dispiriting.

    Rivers State and the rest of the country have been curiously fixated on the superficiality of who is right or wrong in the drama, with political partisanship and to some extent pecuniary interests mostly determining the sentiments of observers and analysts. The state is consequently entwined in a legal maze inspired by a judiciary that is clearly in need of salvation from both ineptitude and partisanship. Nigeria is not alone in this morass. The muck exists everywhere, but Nigeria’s political experience in the past few years, especially typified by conflicting judgements in Rivers and Kogi, has been most baffling. Rivers is not the first state to go down that chute; other states have, and for different reasons. Whoever emerges winner at the end of the maelstrom is unlikely to inspire the country or leave a great precedent, for both leaders and followers in the state are trapped in the shallow and pedantic politicking and reasoning that have blighted Nigeria for decades. It remains to be seen how a just and fair consideration of Section 109 (1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution will help the combatants in Rivers State cut the Gordian knot. Indeed the suits in respect of the legitimacy of the defecting lawmakers are still in court, but Mr Fubara has unconstitutionally cut to the chase and together with his loyal three passed a befuddling judgement on the recalcitrant 27. Riding on the wave of public sentiment, the governor is not ruffled by the anomaly of subordinating the parliament to his whim.

    Anytime he steps out for a public function, the governor feels bound, among other official assignments, to mention his misunderstanding with his predecessor who is also the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister. The conflict between the two men has deepened and probably calcified, defying presidential intervention, and now sucking in all kinds of parasites and opportunistic friends and vengeful enemies. Mr Wike, in turn, feels obligated to respond, often hysterically, to his successor’s provocations, barely resisting for more than a week or two the temptation to say nothing. Left unchecked, the brickbat between the men may leave the state hurtling towards a tragic and fiery denouement.  While the FCT minister has been sturdy in his responses, Mr Fubara has sometimes been compellingly poetic and colourful in his declination to govern the state on ‘bended knees’, or allowing anyone, meaning Mr Wike, to take the place of God.

    There is nothing dignified about the leadership tussle in Rivers. Though many Riverians and public commentators have filed emotively behind the two men, and are in most cases being more Catholic than the Pope, it is uncertain that they really appreciate the substance and many dimensions of the quarrel or what the conflict portends in the state. The tussle is heavily nuanced, and it is even doubtful whether the two leading combatants quite appreciate what they are fighting over. To the Rivers State public, the conflict is either about Mr Wike attempting to muscle the governor into submitting to a godfather, or about Mr Fubara too hastily breaking ranks with his mentor and the school of thought bequeathed the state. Some other Riverians suggest that the fight may actually be political, involving the governor betraying his mentor, reconciling with political enemies, and subverting the state’s ruling party structure. Perhaps the fight consists of all these elements. How the war is fought and won may, therefore, probably influence the direction of Rivers politics in 2027, including determining which party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) or Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), gets the upper hand in the months and years to come.

    Neither Mr Wike nor Mr Fubara has framed the conflict in the imposing and dispassionate sense capable of reflecting on the state’s politics and politicians. Perhaps it is not in the place of any external commentator to determine for the two politicians what to fight over and how, but the warriors will expectedly acknowledge and defend the factors that shape and influence their politics. They have framed the fight as prejudiciously as they can, in line with their limited perception of issues and simplistic worldview, and they will probably fight the war to the bitter end from those narrow perspectives. But of the two, and despite his hysteria and failings, not to say his hectoring of his predecessor, Mr Wike comes closer to crystallising and embodying the conflict in the elevated and abstract sense by which it should be understood. At various fora, he talks about honour, dignity and the onerous responsibility of leaders and statesmen, implying that the governor lacked them or has broken them; but it is also evident that he himself has an incomplete understanding of the concepts he glibly but rightly enunciates.

    As for Mr Fubara, he has been largely ephemeral, preferring to focus on the simple but resonating ideas of being his own man, obviously without the help of a godfather, and letting it be known that he submits to God rather than man. The governor has laboured to honour the agreement he reached in the presence of the president. He has, therefore, dithered and hemmed and hawed over an agreement he now derides as unconstitutional. His men allegedly put the parliament to the torch, while he completed the erasure by demolishing a large part of it. And still breathing terror against 27 obdurate lawmakers siding with Mr Wike, as against the three in his camp whom he bewilderingly chose to recognise and honour, he stormed the legislative quarters to warn of impending demolition, claiming that as governor he owned the property as much as he reserved the right to recognise or not recognise any lawmaker. Earlier, he had impatiently declared that lawmakers existed at his pleasure. Their existence owed their lives to his caprice, he summed up.

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    If only Mr Fubara would shut up. He believes he enjoys mass following and the backing of the who-is-who in the state, and that this support sanctifies his actions and ennobles his increasingly authoritarian streak. But whatever he has said in the past few weeks, after the restraint of the past few months which he now speaks about deprecatingly, has been embarrassing and lacking in democratic foundations. He is admittedly engaged in a serious battle with the equally intransigent Mr Wike, but putting on the apparel of a dictator and preparing to burn down his state do little to burnish his fragile image or weaken the FCT minister who has had the fortune of fighting from distant peaks. It is not clear why Mr Fubara thinks the country would stand idly by and watch him demolish and undermine the constitution or democracy. Does he not sense the suspicion and repugnance of his colleague governors? Has he not learnt any lesson from some former governors who deprecated the art of governance and are today mummifying in silence and isolation?

    Mr Fubara bears the larger responsibility for whatever becomes of the state. He is after all the governor, but he has become frantic and desperate, and, like the biblical Samson, appears willing to bring the whole edifice down on everybody. The people who egg him on to open and uncircumscribed revolt against the parliament in the guise of fighting Mr Wike will give him cold shoulder when he overreaches himself and the country fights back. Even if he wins, the victory will be pyrrhic. Nor does Mr Wike, who has been both unyielding and immoderate, stand a chance of erasing the governor and his supporters many of whom have obfuscated the law and rested their arguments and support on the wrong premises. The latter has a fairly better appreciation of the values being fought for; but even he has been unable to comprehend the appalling leadership failing of his successor which finds its leitmotif and resonance in his own calamitous lack of understanding of the concept of leadership. The problem is not that Mr Fubara has genuine reasons to resist the FCT minister. He does and indeed, should. The problem is that the governor has been so uninspiring in his appreciation of issues, so tactless in his approach, and so ordinary in every ramification. But this does not absolve Mr Wike of responsibility. In fact he bears the larger part of the blame for all that is happening in Rivers State.

    What is playing out in Rivers is, therefore, not just two men fighting over party structure, 2027 elections, APC versus PDP, godfather versus godson, or which side of the divide cheerleaders are arrayed , or who in the state still qualifies to be described as an elder or statesman, or who will and should win in the end. What is playing out before the whole country is the depressing lack of leadership and statesmanship, a deficiency that has enabled a small and manageable misunderstanding to be multiplied exponentially into a catastrophe. How anyone can pretend to leadership without being inspired by great leaders of the past is hard to explain. That is what ails Rivers. Nay, that is what ails many Nigerian states where religious bigots and ethnic chauvinists hold sway and are eager to burn their communities; incompetent leaders who have learnt nothing from history and are doomed to repeat it. Messrs Fubara and Wike will not sheathe their swords, for neither of them can be persuaded by reason or common sense. But if any true elder is left in the state, let him rein in the calamity unfolding in Port Harcourt between the imperial politics of Mr Wike and the budding dictatorship of Mr Fubara.

  • Minimum wage dispute approaching end game

    Minimum wage dispute approaching end game

    Hammering out a new minimum wage deal will not be easy despite the enthusiasm and willingness of the federal government to pay workers a living wage. The 37-man tripartite committee set up since January to secure the deal has made very heavy weather of the negotiations. They now have barely a month to determine by how much they hope to supersede the current minimum wage of N30,000, which has lasted much longer than anticipated. Organised labour is asking for N615,000 monthly pay for workers; but they know full well that they cannot get it, not even if they embark on one-year industrial unrest. The federal government has not given a specific response, but governors, who are members of the wage committee and important stakeholders, have suggested that they would only agree to a wage increase they can pay sustainably. Already, they struggle to pay the appallingly unrealistic current minimum wage, while many states still owe their workers.

    If negotiations were not stalled, or did not suffer hiccups, a deal should have been reached in less than four months. Though the government has promised to backdate the deal to April, and administration spokesmen are curiously optimistic about reaching a deal acceptable to all, organised labour and observers have decided to keep their fingers crossed. The unions have a concrete case by indexing their demands to inflation rate, and the federal government, despite organised labour’s skepticism about state governors’ priorities, is a little more wary about its capacity to meet union expectations. Nothing at the moment suggests the governments can go as high as a quarter of the N615,000 demanded by the unions, but perhaps the federal and state governments have a joker they are keeping close to their chests. May 2024 will, therefore, be tough, and June harrowing. Hopefully industrial unrest can be averted. But if not, whatever deal is secured by ‘arm-twisting’ will be, in the words of the governors, difficult to implement.

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    The unions insist that if employers, particularly governors, reorder their priorities, states should be able to pay the living wage eventually agreed. But what of private sector employers, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat and have had to cut staff and rationalise costs? It is unclear the unions will have a ready answer to this dilemma, especially in view of their proposal that any organisation which employs five workers and above should pay the new minimum wage. Tough time lies ahead, both for the government which has struggled to rein in expectations and the unions which have exuberantly raised expectations. Costs are rising, inflation is raging with unabating severity, and the general economy, not minding the reeling global economy, is in dire distress. Before June, the situation will be much clearer, whether a deal is reached and can be reached or not.

    One of the reasons for the troubled relationship between the government and the unions, regardless of the NLC’s politicisation of union grievances in the past few months, is the abnormal structure of the Nigerian polity and economy. Until the country’s structural imbalance triggered by the 1966 coup d’etat is corrected, the recurring wage disputes and other battles between the government and organised labour will not abate. Quite apart from the dangers of NLC immersing itself in politics and diluting as well as distorting its raison d’être, the problem with the stalled wage negotiation is actually not the salaries demanded or the ability of states to pay. The problem is that more than five decades of running the country along stifling unitary lines unattenuated by democratic governance have imposed gross inefficiency and waste upon the system and produced a slew of unimaginative governing elite. The problem is worsened by a sense of entitlement which a section of the ruling elite has adopted as its philosophy.

    Until the country is politically recalibrated and economy restructured in line with federalism to put an end to the command and unitary Nigerian structure, the federal, state and local governments will always assemble in Abuja every month to share revenue. Revenue allocation is an abominable system that encourages inefficiency, indolence, sense of entitlement, and warped politicking. Since the various tiers of government will always have a pool of money to share, there will be no incentive to elect a competent president, governor or local government chairman. Worse, the worst kind of lawmakers will populate the parliament, and servile and groveling judges will be appointed to subvert and pervert the justice system. The current Nigerian structure is not working, is unworkable, and no matter how much tinkering it is subjected to, will still not work. If the current administration can muster the courage to do something about the structure and build a consensus across the regions, it may be possible to redress decades of inefficiency and wrongs that have skewed the economy and impoverished the country. In his contributions to the debate on minimum wage, former Edo State governor and one-time labour leader, Adams Oshiomhole, suggested that the unions must look beyond the single objective of getting wage adjustment to advocating policies and programmes that would promote sustainable wealth creation and conduce to industrial harmony and peace. The Edo North senatorial district representative can’t be righter.

    The current set of labour leaders falls far short of the example set by the Sen. Oshiomhole set, but they have and are pursuing a justifiable cause. They may lack depth and substance, and have little understanding of the nexus between peace and development, seeing how they are fixated on their singular goal of either winning political office or simplistically pursuing wage adjustment with little understanding of its dynamics, yet they have the public on their side. If a deal is not reached this month, and inflationary pressures continue to hammer Nigerians, the public will likely rally behind labour. However, the silver lining is that Nigeria has a president who understands the issues and possesses the boldness to implement reforms and redirect the system. If he gets the national cooperation he needs, and can buy time with a fairly amenable wage deal, he will probably leave the country far better than he met it despite years and tons of vilification.      

  • Prof Akintoye’s emancipation letter

    Prof Akintoye’s emancipation letter

    In an open letter dated April 17 addressed to President Bola Tinubu, the duo of Banji Akintoye, a History professor, and Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho, insisted it was time the Yoruba of the Southwest became self-governing. They claimed to be acting on behalf of the Yoruba Self-determination Movement (YSDM). Their letter came about five days after Modupe Onitiri-Abiola, the self-described widow of the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, MKO Abiola, declared the founding of the Democratic Republic of Yoruba in Ibadan, Oyo State, after dozens of Yoruba Nation agitators stormed the State House of Assembly to actualise a mandate they claimed to have received from the United Nations. For nearly a decade, a number of self-determination groups had weltered in the Southwest anticipating that republic. But if Mrs Onitiri-Abiola’s declaration was messianic and amateurish, Prof Akintoye’s open letter was both mistimed and misdirected.

    The eminent historian, taking Mr Igboho in tow, anchored the letter on the disruptive tendencies of Fulani herdsmen in the region, and their January threat to ‘respond’ to the incarceration of the Miyetti Allah leader, Bello Bodejo, who was arrested for allegedly establishing and arming a Fulani militia in Nasarawa State. The YSDM letter also insinuated that the Fulani, having failed to install their kin, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, in office, have promised to make Nigeria ungovernable for President Tinubu. The three signatories to the letter, which included Ola Ademola acting as the Vice-Chairman of YSDM, did not indicate why they thought Fulani-baiting should suffice as a reason for secession, but they seemed to treat the agitation cavalierly by zeroing in on the Fulani and even going as far as transforming them into a sort of ethnic fulcrum upon which national stability rests. They seemed exasperated that no one could stop the destructive zeal of the Fulani, a zeal they asserted even the ameliorative act of restructuring the country could not contain.

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    Prof Akintoye and his co-signatories are right about the menace constituted by herdsmen to Southwest farmers and the exceptionalism which the Fulani have consistently claimed and displayed as a birthright. As argued in their letter, the agitators had placed the same demands and observations before President Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, to no avail. They are tired of going round in circles, they groaned, and are adamant about negotiating their exit from Nigeria. The letter may not be quite convincing, given the paucity of reasons they adduced for Yoruba self-determination, but the arguments of the three gentlemen touch on very sensitive contemporaneous experiences of the Yoruba, particularly the aspect of rampaging herdsmen and pillaged farmlands. The timing, too, appears hideous – barely one year into the presidency of a Yoruba politician who embodies the federalist and secularist principles lionised by the Southwest, and less than a week after the amateurish insurrection perpetrated by Mrs Onitiri-Abiola and her blundering and farcical agitators entertained the polity.

    Prof Akintoye and his co-signatories asked for the constitution of negotiation teams between the federal government and YSDM not later than June to look into the grievances raised in the letter as well as ultimately give effect to the call for Yoruba independence. The storm troopers of April 12 and the April 17 letter writers will, however, not be heeded, for the Yoruba in general and the Tinubu administration have no illusions about the presumptuousness of the agitators. For years, a feeling of angst and a wistful expectation of what an independent Yoruba could accomplish had wafted across the Southwest, but they had never conducted a plebiscite to give concreteness and legitimacy to their disparate and formless aspirations. It is true that some groups had briefly toyed with open rebellion in the region, but that feeling had ebbed and flowed with the mood and spirit of the times. On the whole, and this is where Prof Akintoye and his co-signatories erred very badly, the dominant Southwest leadership elite have never really advocated separation, not during the coup madness of the First Republic, nor even after the disgraceful and counterproductive annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, and interestingly not during the recent rampage of herdsmen. The Yoruba are adamant about fighting for what they believe, including things as esoteric as principles and ideologies, not to talk of their detestation of cheating and unfairness, but they have really never unanimously talked about secession or even self-determination.

    Prof Akintoye’s letter will not gain traction, any more than Mr Igboho’s activism and Mrs Onitiri-Abiola’s humiliating insurrection will cause significant ripples in the region or in Abuja. The agitators presumed to know what the region wanted, but refused to sensitise it sufficiently enough to get a critical mass of followers. Mr Igboho tried to do some sensitisation of his own, but his efforts were desultory, megalomaniacal, theatrical, and ultimately futile. It was clear he lacked the experience, intellect, and temperament to inspire the Yoruba. He, however, seemed to recognise his shortcomings and sought to mitigate them by associating with the eminent professor, but he came to grief much quicker than he had the chance to remedy his failings. Mrs Onitiri-Abiola, however, dispensed with all niceties and pretensions and went slam-bang into full-scale rebellion. It was unsurprising that she came an appalling cropper as melodramatically as her inflated delusions blew up. Prof Akintoye should know better, particularly because of his age and learning, but he also fared badly in those tasks from the beginning. Held hostage by his lack of restraint, impatience and poor team play, his campaign to rouse the Yoruba into rebellion was inevitably doomed.

    Decades of being rooted in political opposition could not prompt the Yoruba into secession. Now that one of their sons is in office, they will even be less inclined to countenance any kind of insurrection. It is shocking the Yoruba Nation agitators failed to appreciate these linkages. The late Chief Abiola showed how the Yoruba could transit from opposition to the presidency, and made it look simple. Another of their sons, President Tinubu, simply dusted the late chief’s rule book, single-mindedly applied it, and was able to dismantle the barricade that stood between the region and the presidency. He is today sitting pretty in office, probably contemplating how to remake Nigeria along the lines of his ideological and political leanings. That task, had it fallen into the hands of the gifted Obafemi Awolowo, former Western Region premier, would still have been onerous. In the hands of both Chief Abiola and President Tinubu, the task would be no less easy. But years of tutelage under leading national political heavyweights and decades of forming and servicing friendships and associations all over the country may have helped them acquire skills and virtues capable of promoting real and quantifiable change. Success is of course not guaranteed, but failure is remoter than when such skills were either absent or widely denigrated.

    If remaking the wobbly Nigerian structure seems impossible, it should lead Prof Akintoye and those who think like him to review and rejig their activism and agitation templates. The wheel cannot be reinvented, it is said. But the agitators, now fortunately led by a historian, should search out examples and experiences around the world that best fit the Nigerian model. Nigeria is not the former Soviet Union which broke apart into 15 states in 1991 under the dead weight of economic stultification and ideological retardation, thus freeing many subordinate states and satellites. Nigeria is also not Czechoslovakia whose founding in 1918 towards the end of World War I was rooted in the politics of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ineptitude of its leaders that prompted the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and the final breakup in 1992. Instead, the Yoruba Nation agitators might wish to look at the history and politics of Canada, Switzerland and Belgium in order to derive inspiration for their self-determination agitation.

    Prof Akintoye may also wish to cite the inspiring example of the Republic of Estonia (Pop., 1.5m), the first Soviet satellite state to declare independence in 1988 even before the USSR disintegrated. As this writer noted two Sundays ago, Nigeria and President Tinubu must not be complacent by regurgitating the vexing mantra of ‘Nigerian unity is non-negotiable’. Nigeria is and should be negotiable, and sooner rather than later it must be renegotiated if only to steal the thunder of agitators. Until 1966, Nigeria was a fairly balanced republic anchored on regionalism. That federation was the product of a negotiated constitution. Unschooled in the art of politics and ignorant about the conceptual underpinnings of nations, the military scrapped federalism as a veritable anchor of nationhood in 1966. The agitations of people like Prof Akintoye and Mrs Onitiri-Abiola, and of groups like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Boko Haram and bandits are sending coded messages to the country: reform/restructure or die. It is up to the current political elite to decipher those coded and laden messages if the country is not to sunder.   

  • ECOWAS logjam worsens

    ECOWAS logjam worsens

    The disillusioning news from Mali indicating a ban on politics and a further ban on the media reporting political parties was followed hard by Burkina Faso suspending the reportorial activities of some French and American news media. Both countries, like Niger Republic, are governed by military juntas, and all three had in January announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), thus forcing the regional body to climb down over its threat to sanction or even invade them in order to reinstate democracy.

    The Malian ban was inspired by a desire to curb the rising calls for a return to party politics and elections. Burkina Faso also faces the same agitation. But both military juntas had received rapturous welcome from undiscerning public too naïve to understand the nature of military governments, particularly their autocratic predilections and abuse of human rights. Now they know. ECOWAS knew better, but desperately made unilateral concessions to the three countries in order to save the unity of the regional body. This column had denounced the rapprochement, insisting that the military juntas would not change, nor meet the regional body half way.

    Read Also: Nigeria urges AU, ECOWAS to mitigate regional conflicts

    It is a tragedy that despite years of brutal and inept military rule in Nigeria, some misguided Nigerians tried to instigate a coup d’etat to abort the February 2023 elections. Had a coup been carried out, it would have doomed the Fourth Republic and probably doomed Nigeria itself. But some people never learn from history. In retrospect, ECOWAS should have waited a little longer before making hasty, unrequited concessions to the renegade three. From all indications, the three countries will soon unravel naturally at perhaps a greater cost to the coup-loving people of those beleaguered countries.  

  • Yahaya Bello cuts tragic, pathetic figure

    Yahaya Bello cuts tragic, pathetic figure

    Like everything else about the former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, life is nothing more than drama, childish drama. Unreflective and artificial, Mr Bello has managed out of office to enact a long-running saga in which he and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) star. The anti-graft agency is the hunter, and he the hunted. Had he given himself up immediately the EFCC summoned him, he would have retained whatever little dignity nature grudgingly gave him at birth, and after a few appearances in court, he would be out on bail, free to pontificate on a narrow range of simple subjects his grandiosity would permit. But Mr Bello has a knack for complicating the simplest of matters. Undeservingly gifted the governorship of Kogi State after an election he largely did not participate in, and inheriting a mantle he did his worst to fight and undermine, which fell off the pompous shoulders of the late Abubakar Audu, he proceeded to govern the state for eight years a heartless dictator. As an aside, it is fitting that those who conspired to impose him on Kogi, south-westerners and northerners alike, though they feigned to be democrats, are meeting even crueler fates.

    The EFCC had been on to Mr Bello while he was still governor. His alleged financial malfeasance had become so brazen as to come, in unsightly details, under the anti-graft agency radar. He is alleged to have embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of billions of naira, perhaps over N80bn, in addition to buying up everything, including houses within and outside Nigeria, that caught his fancy. And though the agency has not yet made it public, he is also alleged to have financially induced and corrupted a large number of public and private officials, including judges, actors and actresses, presidency officials in the last dispensation, and a host of other eager dupes, great and small, willing to be bought and happy to sell their dignity. To service this wide-ranging act of public hideousness, Mr Bello allegedly locked his snout on the state’s treasury and callously sucked the sinews out of the poor state, leaving mendicant workers pushed tragically to the edge of suicide and insanity. He brutalised everyone that crossed his path, discriminated against parts of the state which questioned his buffoonery, and certain that he had bought all the support he would ever need in and out of office, frittered away his little goodwill and lent his profligate youth to the services of the basest form of governance. But he miscalculated.

    His hunters cornered him in Abuja on April 17, but his poodles helped him lift the siege and have kept him incommunicado at the State House in Lokoja. They can’t keep him for long, and they can’t ferry him out of Nigeria. Some commentators suggest that the EFCC chairman, Olanipekun Olukoyede, had become too voluble on this and a few other cases. They would like him to speak less, and to assume the character of someone of dignified restraint. Perhaps that would serve him better. But so far, notwithstanding his superfluous threat to resign if he could not bring Mr Bello to trial, and despite exuding needless emotion when he addressed the media last week on the matter, Mr Olukoyede has not done anything unlawful in his pursuit of the former Kogi governor. Mr Bello is on the run and will do anything and take any measure to continue to shield himself from prosecution. In short, he dares the state, represented by the EFCC, and affronts every civilised value, which he clearly treats with his accustomed contempt. But next to being on death row, being declared a fugitive is both deeply demeaning and truly harrowing. Mr Bello can only become more frantic as his legal options shrink or recede.

    Kogi indigenes are exultant that even before his trial Mr Bello is getting his just desserts. They had been at the receiving end of his cruelty for eight years, the first four-year term the outcome of a bastardised electoral process, and the second term stolen through brutal electoral thievery. Workers were not paid full salaries, pensions came in fits and starts, and gratuities became a luxury. Dissent was viciously put down, and everyone who opposed him, including some harried judges, spoke and probably thought in whispers. Under Mr Bello, the state routinely mocked the constitution while Abuja only managed to look askance as their best form of disapproval. He flattered party bigwigs and grovelled before the past federal administration, and turned his full wrath at the state judiciary and civil service. The same man that enacted those horrendous and oppressive actions against a state he was unworthy to govern has suddenly turned yellow and is fleeing the law.

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    Kogites have no sympathy for Mr Bello. They encourage the EFCC to be relentless in pursuing him to the farthest corners of the state, dragging him, if possible, humiliated before the courts. They encourage the anti-graft agency to ignore the feeble and comical protests of civil society groups whose origins are shrouded in mystery and who lack any regard for truth and common decency. In any case, the EFCC needs little encouragement; having been made a fool of once, docking the former governor has become their obsession. Mr Bello is of course trying to fight back using Kogi courts, the same courts he denigrated and subjugated. But his efforts will end disastrously, hopefully before he infects the entire system with his unseemly ways. If the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the National Judicial Council will not rein in their errant judges messing up the judiciary on a straightforward case, perhaps the Bola Tinubu administration will give Governor Usman Ododo’s unconstitutional postulations short shrift and get him to give up the fugitive. The situation will not resolve itself, and doing nothing is not an option.

  • APC, Aiyedatiwa and Ondo primary

    APC, Aiyedatiwa and Ondo primary

    The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State conducted its governorship primary two Saturdays ago and made a mess of it. It was ironically the much maligned and supposedly divided and demoralised opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that conducted a more democratic, far fairer, and more inspiring primary. It is, however, too early to speculate whether the APC by its levity and incompetence will win the November governorship election, or whether the PDP can translate its orderliness and fair play into electoral victory seven months down the line. The PDP, using indirect primary method, elected by a compelling margin Agboola Ajayi, a former deputy governor to the late Rotimi Akeredolu, as its standard-bearer. On the other side of the aisle, incumbent APC governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa seized the governorship ticket by all means possible and will be hoisting his party’s flag in November. If he wins, it will simply be due to the same political dynamics that undeservedly gave him the ticket: incumbency, patronage, ruthlessness, and a shambolic APC organisation unperturbed by principles and morality.

    Mr Aiyedatiwa took the ticket by an unbridgeable margin that saw him outscoring his closest competitors combined. He was scored 48,569 votes. He will hope that in November those votes, assuming they all turn out and are added to those of his competitors to give a total of some 89,613 votes, would gift him an unassailable lead right from the outset. It usually doesn’t work out that way, but it helps to recall that in the 2020 governorship poll, Mr Akeredolu won with a vote tally of 292,830 out of 572,745 valid votes cast. The remaining votes were cast in favour of Eyitayo Jegede (195,791, PDP) and Agboola Ajayi (97,039, Zenith Labour Party), both of whom are now in the PDP. In November, the PDP will hope that discontent in the ruling party will be strong and relentless enough to swing the pendulum in favour of the opposition. But the APC expects that the incumbency factor and the control of the federal administration might convince the voters to hold the fort. The expectation of an electoral fait accompli in November might have led the APC in the state into organising probably one of the worst primary elections the state has ever known.

    Everything indicated right from the beginning that the APC would make a hash of its primary. Firstly, there was the Mr Aiyedatiwa factor himself. Destitute of principles and sound judgement, and given completely to opening his mouth and putting his foot into it repeatedly, he was decidedly unkeen on ensuring fair play. A number of factors explain his predilection for realpolitik. One is that he knew he was seen as an outsider, and two is that he was, in addition, unable to trust even his own judgement in picking fights, most of them needless. But he desperately wanted to win every fight, whether he chose the fight or the fight chose him. So far, as his first name suggests, he has been lucky in winning even the unlikeliest of battles. Not too long after he was picked as deputy governor, his benefactor fell ill, and despite his churlishness and atrocious disregard for human feelings, his calculations that Mr Akeredolu would die before the APC would need to pick a standard-bearer were accurate. Ensconced in the State House thereafter, nothing he has said or done has prevented jobholders and vote herders from swarming around him. In such circumstances, fair or unfair, a primary election victory was a foregone conclusion.

    Secondly, since the forced exit of Adams Oshiomhole as national chairman, the APC has been poorly and controversially led. Discipline has been maintained with extreme difficulty. In fact, in most cases, there has been no regard for discipline at all. The current chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, is a little lethargic and hobbled by enemies back in Kano, his home state, who are snapping at his heels. They will not give him rest. He may be somewhat an intellectual and a little didactic, but he seems curiously unable to bring those talents to bear on a huge, combative and ideological party which had just managed to retain the federal administration against the run of play. The party has smothered internal rage fairly successfully, but it is, however, unable to placate the ethnic and ideological divisions simmering below the surface. Worse, not been quite as disciplined and ethical as the party demands and probably deserves, Dr Ganduje has been unable to give what he does not have, and was perhaps chary of imposing any kind of order and finesse upon Ondo APC whose leader, Mr Aiyedatiwa, may be the most unaware of APC governors in the Southwest, if not the country.

    Read Also: It’s right time for new constitution, says Barau

    Thirdly, by the strangest and most bizarre of party administration actions, the national APC appointed Kogi State governor Usman Ododo as head of the primary election committee. But Mr Ododo is a rookie governor shackled by legal disputes and weighed down by the troubles of his predecessor, the importuning Yahaya Bello. The restless governor has not shown that he knows much of anything, and has so far not settled down long enough for anyone, let alone himself, to develop the administrative or ideological confidence that is an imperative for sound judgement and governance. To worsen a bad choice, Mr Ododo arrived in Akure, Ondo State, on the Saturday morning of the primary election. What could he do in hours before the poll? But unfazed by the complexity of managing a direct primary election, and unused to party members having and exercising real choices, he probably assumed that since party primary was a family and internal affair, it really didn’t matter whether it was done as spectacularly inept as the one Mr Bello deployed in foisting him on Kogi APC. Could Dr Ganduje pretend not to know these limitations?

    Unfortunately, days after the abysmal APC primary, and months after the party nearly botched the Edo State APC governorship primary, Dr Ganduje has met with party stakeholders to stitch a new cloth on an old garment. He appealed for unity and asked them to rally behind Mr Aiyedatiwa so that APC would retain Ondo. It helps the Bola Tinubu administration for the APC to retain control of Ondo, because it takes a whole lot of scheming, funding and organising to win new states. But if the party knew this, should they not have tried to organise a great primary which the governor would have probably won anyway? Now they want peace anchored on both unfairness and grave injury to the soul and fabric of the party. They have given the party a bad and appalling name, ignoring the fact that if the cheated party members rebuff their pleadings, it could spell disaster in November. They cannot pretend not to know the consequences of their action; they simply don’t care about the consequences of allotting votes as their whims dictated.

    The vacillating Dr Ganduje may be the party’s national chairman, and the contumelious Mr Aiyedatiwa the state’s party leader, but President Tinubu is the APC national leader. The president must, therefore, consider that these infractions and machinations were done in his name, for which he bears ultimate responsibility. He must ask himself what kind of party he wants to lead and bequeath to future generations: one led by Dr Ganduje and which produces governors who have nothing substantial to teach or give, or one which he as president inspires into embracing the tenets of democracy and greatness, a disciplined party that demonstrates utmost fidelity to the law and constitution. There is no room to straddle. The last Ondo APC primary was irredeemably fraudulent. It should be redone.    

  • Trifling with agitation: Yoruba Nation Army

    Trifling with agitation: Yoruba Nation Army

    Two Saturdays ago in Ibadan, a group of starry-eyed agitators allegedly inspired and indoctrinated by Modupe Onitiri-Abiola, one of the widows of the late MKO Abiola, carried out an utterly inept attempt to proclaim and assert the independence of the Yoruba from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They chose the Oyo State secretariat and the House of Assembly as the symbolic epicenter of attack to underscore their revolt against the system, particularly the country’s stifling political structure. They presumed to represent the Yoruba and the entire Southwest, even when the more astute Professor Banji Akintoye and the populist Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho, acknowledged they were making heavy weather of their agitations for Yoruba self-determination. The militants who carried out the half-hearted attack on the Oyo State secretariat gave a bad name to agitation, if not the Southwest as a whole. They were poorly informed about the principles of self-determination, were easily hoodwinked, were poorly armed because they thought their objective was a fait accompli, and under cursory interrogation displayed immense stupidity and lack of coordination.

    Mrs Onitiri-Abiola has not been apprehended. But she will be, sooner rather than later. Hopefully, interrogators will get a glimpse into the workings of her turbulent mind, whether her anger was politically motivated and even bore vestigial connections to the 1993 presidential election debacle involving her late husband, or whether it was ideologically grounded. By now she is probably disillusioned, in contrast to a few of her militants who swore to their intransigence. Whatever investigators find out, nothing will, however, detract from the horrifying incompetence she and her militants demonstrated on April 13. There is nothing theoretically wrong with agitation over any cause, particularly self-determination involving separation or dissolution of an entity, but there are legitimate ways to do it that preclude faked referendum. Prof Akintoye, who also leads a self-determination group, and others are passionate about the Yoruba nation cause, a subject that obsesses and absorbs the Southwest, but they are painfully aware of the difficulty of birthing it beyond its ideational fascination. The angry Mrs Onitiri-Abiola brooked no such scruples or hesitations.

    The Yoruba may be a fractious and republican people, but they are nevertheless calculating and in some respects farsighted. As attractive as self-determination is, they were reluctant to embrace Prof Akintoye’s perspective on the subject, a reluctance helped in no small measure by the dithering of the group headed by the mercurial professor, not to say the group’s shambolic bookkeeping. Beyond the initial flurry, Prof Akintoye soon discovered that the Yoruba began squirming over his methods, particularly his characteristic impatience, and started to put distance between their aspiration and the manner the professor sought to embody the cause. Yes, the Yoruba spoke daggers, but they were extremely hesitant to use daggers. And when Mr Igboho decided to give jagged teeth to the self-determination idea following the tantalising popularity of his anti-herdsmen campaign, Yoruba leaders summoned a conference on the subject, put their feet down, and stamped the idea out before it acquired wings. It was a risky gamble, especially under the Muhammadu Buhari administration when herdsmen were running rampage all over the country. But Yoruba leaders had learnt lessons from the revolts that were laying the Northeast, Northwest and Southeast regions waste.

    Had Mrs Onitiri-Abiola infused a little sense and restraint into her crusade, assuming she remained rational and less embittered over the years, she would have understood why the Southwest wanted a different method of prosecuting self-determination rather than arming a few disoriented and wild-eyed individuals to play roles far bigger than their intellects and socialisation could handle. Under President Bola Tinubu, national institutions are given room to work in line with the constitution, and they are in a vengeful mood, as the former Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello is finding out. However, Oyo State government’s hasty and indefensible demolition of the building associated with Mrs Onitiri-Abiola’s revolt and the Yoruba nation agitators will probably make the Amazon less inclined to give herself up. Indeed, her imagination about how she would be treated, should she be arrested, would be running riot already. The agitators have not the faintest clue what a rebellion looks like. They are, however, not alone in their naivety. By demolishing the agitators’ building in Ibadan, a needless resort to self-help despite a controversial procurement of a court order, the government manifests a crying lack of prosecutorial savvy. The state needs the building as well as all the items seized from it as exhibits in the prosecution of the agitators. The state needs to painstakingly build their case, down to the minutest details of which rooms arms and ammunition were stored, which room was allegedly used by Mrs Onitiri-Abiola to read her so-called treason speech, and proofs led as to what the other rooms were used for. That building ought to be preserved until the trial is over, especially because the suspects did not blow it up to cover their tracks and destroy evidence. Alas, the state obliterated much evidence on behalf of the agitators.

    There are indications that the Yoruba Nation agitators planned their action to engulf the whole Southwest. Hopefully the authorities, having again been caught flatfooted despite the magnitude of the plot, will get to the bottom of the revolt. Notwithstanding the tardiness of the intelligence community, the agitators and other self-determination groups will hopefully soon get the message that the Southwest will not allow a replication of the maladies demolishing the peace and stability of other regions. Yoruba leaders are clear about what ails their region economically and politically, and they have a fair idea of how to actualise regional stability and development. They are unlikely to allow themselves and their region goosestep into an inferno, or reenact the Yoruba-on-Yoruba violence that convulsed and fractured the region in the 1960s.

    Read Also: We demolished Yoruba Nation agitators building on court orders, says Oyo Govt

    Yoruba leaders know just how difficult building a consensus in the region has become in the intervening years. They are, indeed, not unmindful of the shifting mores upending values and distorting perspectives in the region. They are keenly aware of the immense fascination self-determination holds for indigenes in the face of an underperforming country and inept national leaders. While they denounced the upheaval reportedly led by Mrs Onitiri-Abiola in Ibadan on April 13, they also managed to communicate to President Bola Tinubu, whom they visited last week, the urgency of rearranging the country in order to produce a political system and federal structure that completely renegotiate the 1914 amalgamation as well as dismantle the unitary command structure so inimical to the aspirations of nationalities. They may not have communicated to the president how that could be done, they will, however, leave him to grapple with the mechanics of that difficult assignment. They will hope his activist background, particularly in the NADECO trenches, can help him work the magic of conjuring what his disinterested predecessors failed to midwife – a new Nigeria. In short he will be called upon to mollify the suspicions of a North obsessed with unity as well as satisfy the longings of a South panting for decentralisation.

    By now the president must have realised that the country is running out of time to design a new constitution that enables the various nationalities full expressions and aspirations, which neither rampaging herdsmen nor rapacious federal government can abridge. To do this, he must build a national consensus to achieve that great goal. But he must first lead the effort to define that goal and intuitively identify the timeframe during his tenure when that restructuring could be birthed. It won’t be easy, and it may not even be soon. But Mrs Onitiri-Abiola’s rabble makes the task very urgent and inescapable, especially because the revolts in the North and Southeast, which have lasted for more than a decade, are indeed clumsy ventilations of real regional aspirations and self-determination goals. As the amateurish putsch in Ibadan also illustrated, and as all the ongoing rebellions in other regions are demonstrating, there are too many ignorant romantics fantasising about some utopian regions where all their chimerical dreams are capable of transmuting into reality.

    Under interrogation, a few of the Yoruba Nation agitators disclosed that they believed what they were told about the United Nations approving the proclamation of a Yoruba nation. It was not in their place to ask for clarifications or to disprove the fantasies of their manipulators. Many such ignoramuses believed the hooey propagated by Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, thus destabilising the Southeast for years, and also took hook, line, and sinker the sectarian blather garbled by Boko Haram’s Mohammed Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau, which has cost the country dearly. If a workable federal arrangement is not found fairly quickly, many simpletons and cannon fodder will be available for destructive sectional or sectarian agenda. They will not care the cost to lives, nor bat an eyelid over the destruction of their regions. If someone of Mrs Onitiri-Abiola’s standing could embrace with all vehemence a farcical plot to attack a few key buildings in Ibadan in order to instigate a regionwide rebellion, millions less intellectually endowed will believe worse and lend their innate idiocies to the actualisation of far more spurious, dangerous and consequential plots. The country should not let them. Southwest leaders will of course smother the Yoruba Nation agitators, as they have demonstrated last week, but they will not be able to hold off for too long a group of dispossessed agitators eager to self-immolate.

  • Outfoxing Atiku in PDP’s cold war

    Outfoxing Atiku in PDP’s cold war

    Shortly after last Thursday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a few supporters of former vice president Atiku Abubakar whined that he seemed to have been left with the short end of the stick in his battle of wits with Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike. The battle between the two PDP leaders has been going on since 2022, and has now morphed into a cold war. They squared off over the presidential ticket of the party and ended up pitching the North against the South when the party’s informal zoning system was jettisoned. They are still at daggers drawn, with no sign of a thaw in the bitter recriminations that followed the last presidential election. Responding to his supporters’ apprehensions that he seemed to have lost to Mr Wike, the former vice president took refuge in homilies by eulogising the sovereignty of God who, he says, gives power to whomsoever he wishes. It is awkward that most of his homilies have not resonated outside the PDP, nor in any of the past six presidential elections, nor since he lost the presidential election last February.

    Alhaji Atiku’s supporters are sensitive. The setback suffered by their principal is too obvious to couch in euphemisms. Before last Thursday, the former vice president and his group had calculated on easing out the party’s acting national chairman, Umar Ilya Damagum, who is believed to be favoured by most PDP governors and particularly Mr Wike. To have him remain in office through the party’s congresses and possibly national convention was anathema. Mr Wike was not at first favourably disposed towards Ambassador Damagum, but as someone who thinks on his feet, he quickly realised the advantages of sustaining the status quo, and he leapt on the bandwagon. Having recently left the governorship of Rivers State, the FCT minister knew how difficult it was to subvert the wishes and interests of the governors. Staying and flowing with them was a far safer bet than any display of foolish radicalism. What is even far better for him is that on the whole, the PDP governors were deeply suspicious of Alhaji Atiku and resented his overbearingness, not to say his unreasonable loyalty to only his mostly northern crowd within the party’s middle and top echelons.

    Read Also: Atiku urged to stop fooling Nigerians

    If the PDP NEC wanted to remove Ambassador Damagum, they could find the contrivances to do so. But in the event, they found contrivances to elongate his chairmanship till August, with hints of even extending that elongation to September. The issue of replacing him, reports suggested, did not really arise at all. In addition, as proof that the interests of Alhaji Atiku were becoming more constricted in the party, the NEC, and particularly the influential governors in the party, gave hints that Ambassador Damagun might very well remain the chairman for much longer than is anticipated while his substantive position as Deputy National Vice Chairman (North) could be ceded to the North-Central, the region to which the chairmanship had been zoned. Somehow, the movers and shakers in the party secured the resignation of Iyorchia Ayu, the former occupant of the seat. Therefore, except something big happens, between April and August/September, the noose around Alhaji Atiku’s neck will tighten. He will become increasingly isolated, but the war may not be over yet.

    Once peace is restored in the PDP and they can manage to reform some of their processes and sanitise their rules and regulations, Alhaji Atiku will become less and less relevant. But he will still not be stone dead in the party. PDP governors may have given hint that they would resist anyone taking the party into an unapproved merger, a barb directed at the former vice president, but once they can cobble some form of unity amongst themselves, they will discover that the informal coalition they formed against Alhaji Atiku is laced with booby traps. Some of them cast furtive glances at the All Progressives Congress (APC), and others play the voyeur by admiring the steady and determined steps of the same APC federal administration. And since everything about the PDP war is aimed at readying the party for 2027, it is a question of time before the survivors turn on one another. If the former vice president is still waiting in the wings – and it is hard to imagine how he can survive till then – he will cash in on that dilemma. By every consideration, and regardless of who wins the war within the PDP, the party’s future is fraught with a lot of apprehensions.

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    The PDP may be loth to reconcile itself to losing presidential elections, but many in its ranks have become accustomed to flirting with political suitors outside the party. PDP warriors, including Alhaji Atiku himself, former senate presidents Olusola Saraki and David Mark, and many others, are either enervated by age or their vision is occluded by lack of principles. However, 2027 is eons away and the cold war within the opposition party can only worsen. They have enough time to hope for the best for their party and the worst for the APC. The storm may be overcast in their party, but they will still be able to tell whether the ruling party will become so complacent as to give the opportunity for the opposition to rally its forces. After all, that was how the APC itself got the opportunity to take the presidency in 2015. With the Labour Party (LP) in disarray and its former standard-bearer now convinced that going it alone is illusory, and with some states in the North suffering buyer’s remorse, the PDP, despite its internal rancour, will wonder whether victory can’t be snatched from the jaws of defeat with a simple coalition that precludes the aurochs, Alhaji Atiku.