The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Certificate conundrums for Atiku, Obi

    Certificate conundrums for Atiku, Obi

    Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, was admittedly reluctant to make an issue out of President Bola Tinubu’s certificate imbroglio. Perhaps he knew he was living in a glass house, and was loth to throw stone. But eventually he overcame his phobia, and last Wednesday heartily threw stones. He probably realised that if he didn’t throw anything in consonance with former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s solicitation five days earlier, the former vice president’s APC enemies would still associate him with the saga and hurl a few missiles in his direction anyway. But the first person to throw stones and make it a great and fearsome issue was Alhaji Atiku himself, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He travelled to the United States, filed a suit in a US court to compel the president’s alma mater to release his academic records, and was determined to file it before the Nigerian Supreme Court

    Alhaji Atiku was successful in his US expedition, even though the records released to him are of doubtful legal utility. Mr Obi was largely a bystander in all this until he plunged into the murky certificate waters and began to muckrake. While the expedition lasted, and notwithstanding the tenuousness of the president’s records that revealed little, both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi did not imagine that the table could easily turn against them. The problem, they now know, is that they both live in glass houses. Detractors have established, and are pressing the matter, that Alhaji Atiku had changed his name twice with repect to his certificates for apparently no substantial reasons, and both the chronology of his academic credentials as well as their integrity are now being called into question. His master’s degree, critics say, has no real predicative legs to stand upon, and with the exception of his college certificate, all his other certificates lack rhyme and reason.

    Read Also: Certificate saga: When Atiku’s ambition begets malice

    For the initially reticent Mr Obi, the situation is much worse. There are issues with the names on his certificates, which are all muddled up; and there are also issues with the chronology of those certificates, with one of them, the school certificate, procured after his philosophy degree. Critics were also dismayed and puzzled to discover that he tendered nothing beyond his school certificate to Nigeria’s electoral body, INEC, though he claimed to possess a university degree. What was he hiding? they queried. Both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi are now on the defensive, and will find it hard to extricate themselves.

    What is even much worse, indeed infinitely appalling, is that both presidential candidates had uninspiring school certificates which expose them to be below average students, unfit to cope with the intellectual rigours of high office in a complex and modernising world. Their school certificate results showed them just a little bit above dullards. No wonder their pontifications during the presidential campaigns were jejune and trivial. It is good they made the president’s certificates an issue, for there was no other way their own dismal and contradictory academic records would have been exposed.

  • Atiku’s humiliating endgame

    Atiku’s humiliating endgame

    By next month, former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, will be 77 years old. He has slowed down considerably; but if he chooses to contest the presidency a seventh time in the next election cycle, and can presumably find a party to field him, he will be 81 years old. His judgement may be poor, but because he is still mentally alert, despite his halting gait, he probably recognises that his tenacious pursuit of President Bola Tinubu’s mandate may be his last chance at taking the presidency, an ambition that has defined his politics since 1993. After United States courts compelled the Chicago State University (CSU) to release President Tinubu’s educational records to him, he immediately addressed a press conference, en route the Supreme Court where he is seeking either to be declared as winner of the 2023 presidential election or a rerun to be ordered.

    Neither the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), which ruled against him last month, nor the Supreme Court where he is headed will allow him the freedom he covets to spread or shape the political rhetoric he relishes. At the PEPC, his lawyers had a field day, while he was condemned to making snide remarks and expressing injured feelings on the sidelines. Otherwise, his voice was reduced to hoary whispers. At the Supreme Court, his freedoms will be even more restricted, and the latitude he seeks to enable him declaim upon the integrity of the last presidential poll will be circumscribed by lawyers who monopolise the esoteric legalese that inflate their egos and fetch them their daily bread. Alhaji Atiku knew before addressing the press that he was merely tilting at windmills. He had miscalculated the presidential election by allowing his party to be drawn and quartered by political disagreements and factions shortly before the poll, and he had exacerbated that division by relying almost wholly on the conspiratorial promises of a few diehard regionalists in the presidency who promised to gift him the office. Now, he is too shell-shocked to know exactly what to do with the records obtained from the US, records which he had managed by social media manipulation and regional sentiments to elevate to a pestilential campaign.

    He is right to give the matter his best and probably last shot, including infusing the obtained records with far-fetched deductions, improbable logic, and outright mendacities. The records are of little evidentiary relevance to the tenuous case he had built since he lost; but before the justices give short shrift to the arguments built on those tenuous records, Alhaji Atiku appears determined to shape the narrative, declare some sort of moral victory, appeal to inflamed emotions, and walk into the sunset as a self-declared hero, unbroken by the harshness of the judicial circumstances that ensnared him. He has a certificate, not a degree, in law and masters in international relations; he therefore can’t be so befuddled as not to recognise that his case cannot make an impression on the youngest of magistrates, not to talk of on justices of the Supreme Court needlessly and endlessly provoked by overwork, public insults and jibes. The former vice president knows that the curtains are probably being drawn on his political career. His political denouement, not to say years of dogged pursuit of conflicting and contradictory causes, is counterbalanced if not wholly undermined by his poor judgement. The February 25 presidential poll was his to lose, and he lost it spectacularly, deliberately, arrogantly and convincingly. That loss will not be redeemed or even attenuated by the flimsy case he has desultorily tried to build or by last Thursday’s grandiloquent address that sounded both like a mea culpa and an annus horribilis.

    Many analysts, including highly educated lawyers and writers, simply decided to discountenance the deposition of the Chicago State University Registrar, Caleb Westberg. Worse, they adamantly refused to read the clumsy case Alhaji Atiku’s lawyers built for him, particularly the grounds of his petitions, and the judgement of the PEPC that threw out his case. Slothful, prejudiced and angry, the commentators salve their troubled consciences with questionable and unfounded moralisations. In their fury, they downplay the fact that Alhaji Atiku’s US odyssey bears little relevance, if any at all, to the case he was distinctly unable to make at the PEPC. Indeed, unknown to the baying and judgemental public, the purpose of the foreign educational records excursions was just to provide another leg in the PDP and Labour Party’s efforts to incite public unrest and civil disorder against the presidential election outcome. Shortly before the results were declared last February, and continuously for weeks after the results were published, some notable figures had plotted a national revolt to undermine the election. When that failed, they suffused the results with dubious statistical inferences, suggesting, despite constitutional provisions, that because the total number of votes for the other parties was more than the winner’s votes, the legitimacy of the victory was ineluctably wobbly.

    Read Also: Atiku, PDP seek Supreme Court’s leave to tender CSU registrar’s deposition

    Alhaji Atiku’s world press conference, whatever that means, was nothing but a final but doomed effort to see whether harrassed ordinary Nigerians buffeted by economic crisis could be stirred by one last rhetorical dubiety into street revolt. It is not certain how he expected this last effort, which is even more fragile and implausible, and therefore less likely to be heeded, to succeed where previous efforts had failed. The address began with the outright falsehood wherein the former vice president ascribed to himself membership of a ‘generation that worked hard to return the soldiers to the barracks and defend the right of the people to elect and establish…a legitimate government’. It was a disingenuous claim. It was self-righteousness nearly everyone in his audience would snicker at. Under military rule, few paramilitary officers, serving or retired, ever felt emboldened to take issue with dictators. Alhaji Atiku’s ideology was and remains too tenuous and amorphous to impel him to revolt, let alone a principled one. Responding to a reporter’s question on his parting of ways with President Tinubu, which he dated to sometime in 2007, the former vice president said he did not owe President Tinubu any favour for lending him the Action Congress (AC) platform to contest that year’s presidential election. According to him, he also helped his supposed benefactor retain his governorship in 2003 by arresting ex-president Obasanjo’s electoral rapacity. What this ‘convinced democrat and dedicated citizen’ didn’t say was that the then Governor Tinubu won that poll.

    Still determined to whip up emotions, and dragging the ghost of an icon he believed would resonate with his audience, he reminded the public that the late legal luminary and palladium of civil rights, Gani Fawehinmi, began the excursion into ferreting out President Tinubu’s alleged educational discrepancies. That excursion, he said triumphantly in obeisance to Chief Fawehinmi’s ghost, had witnessed its culmination in the US courts’ order to release the records, where, paradoxically, mostly clerical errors were unearthed. From the released documents, it is now crystal clear that President Tinubu schooled in Chicago State University, graduated with honours, was and remains male, is about 70 years old, and the certificate he deposited with Nigeria’s electoral umpire, INEC, was issued by a third-party vendor. Alhaji Atiku knows as surely as day follows night that his lawyers will not make any impression on the Supreme Court justices. The case is virtually over, not because President Tinubu was tidy in record keeping, but because despite the president’s faults, and regardless of public perception of him as a politician and now president, he won the February 25 poll, and nothing significant or substantial had been adduced by either the PDP or LP to negate or undermine that fact. As Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola said last week while swearing in new Federal High Court judges, public opinion has no jurisprudential value.

    But just in case some doubts existed in the minds of his audience, Alhaji Atiku beckoned on one of his lawyers to speak to the Tinubu educational records in respect of the case before the Supreme Court. In other words, the former vice president and his lawyers were intent on ascribing value to their evidence and insidiously interpreting the suit. The lawyer, Kalu Kalu, sadly ended up exposing to the public that the former president’s case was indeed standing on no legs at all. Mr Kalu spoke the trivia of President Tinubu’s gender, one of his middle names, Adekunle, the third-party vendor which issued replacement certificate, and other issues that were not pleaded or advanced before the PEPC. In fact, both the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act are clear on how matters of electoral forgery should be litigated, which provisions the Atiku legal team has scrupulously discountenanced. The outcome in the Supreme Court will not be in doubt. What remains to be seen is by how much severity the court will punish the indolence of the petitioners.

    As if his sanctimoniety was not offensive enough, Alhaji Atiku also decided in the last paragraph of his address to mislead the public with his choreographed altruism. The quest (presumably his US odyssey), he said disbelievingly, was not for or about Atiku, it was for the enthronement of truth, morality and accountability in public office. He was lucky Chief Obasanjo was not in the audience as he imprecated his political opponents. The former president would have snorted most derisively as Alhaji Atiku attempted that disagreeable rhetorical flourish, a clear indication that someone disconnected from both reality and the person and politics of his principal wrote those soaring gibberish about the rights of man. And by Alhaji Atiku finally appealing to the oppositional instinct and predilection for violence of both the LP and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), it was established beyond doubt that the former president knew his legal adventure had ended, but was hopeful that he could foment rebellion against the administration in the mould of the attack of election deniers on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Alhaji Atiku claimed he lost his government-related businesses to the vengeful disposition of ex-president Muhammadu Buhari; does he now wish to also lose his freedom?

  • Abdullahi Adamu incorrigible, remorseless

    Abdullahi Adamu incorrigible, remorseless

    Two disturbing facts came out of the interview former All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, granted Daily Trust newspaper last week. Despite governing Nasarawa State for eight years, and was for about five years chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), and also senator for about 10 years, all qualities expected to have broadened his horizon and made him an urbane and cosmopolitan Nigerian politician, Mr Adamu not only became more narrow-minded, he also revelled in his insularity. The first thing he revealed, and of course the country remembers, is that he was nearly president of Nigeria had ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo backed his ambition for the 2007 election. It is evident that he was not averse to the former president’s support, even if it violated democratic principles. In fact he benefited from a similar support from ex-president Muhammadu Buhari to become APC chairman. Again, he saw nothing untoward in how democratic principles were abridged in his favour.

    The second thing he revealed is his fanatical and unrepentant North-first approach to politics, particularly in the contest for power. He was asked to throw light on the mystifying manner his preferred nominee for the February 25, 2023 presidential election, Ahmad Lawan, former senate president, was defeated. He regretted the defeat, he whined, because as a northerner, and a proud and unrepentant northerner for that matter, he preferred and supported a northern aspirant for the top office. He saw nothing wrong in a northerner succeeding another northerner, and indeed gave indication that that kind of warped succession should be done in perpetuity. He blamed the defeat of his preferred nominee on some misguided northern governors who were neither proud of their identity nor understood Nigeria’s power dynamics. According to him, southern governors, unlike northern politicians, were always proud of their region. “From my consultations, and from the advice I was getting, I am a northerner and I would go for a northerner; and no apologies for that. I have never hidden this.”

    Read Also: Kogi 2023: Ex-federal lawmaker, women leaders, supporters dump PDP for APC

    Mr Adamu said much worse about his uncompromising insularity and lack of respect for democratic values. Said he: “I am an established person from my root, right from birth. I come from a royal family and I am proud of it. I was born at a time when there was a northern Nigeria. I was brought into its values even though I worked mainly in the private sector. I saw myself first and foremost as a northerner in Nigeria and I have no apologies to anybody on this. But times are changing, if you want to take a count of people with the same feeling, attitude, commitment and loyalty to the North, you would have a problem. But go down South, especially the Southwest, and you would see that people are not ashamed of beating their chests and telling you who they are and where they come from and what they stand for. Go to the East, till today, we are losing lives in the East for what they believe in, not here.” Mr Adamu has never hidden his political prejudices, leaving many Nigerians to wonder how farther and deeper his kind of prejudices permeated the body politic, and whether he would be willing to undermine the law to advance his preferences as he attempted to do in undermining both intraparty elections and the 2023 elections.

    Read Also: I have no hand in Al-Makura, Abdullahi Adamu’s political misfortune, says Sule

    Some politicians indulge shifting alliances and convictions in politics, and can sometimes be persuaded to sacrifice personal gain for the cause of national unity and stability. It is disturbing that Mr Adamu does not subscribe to such niceties, let alone the principles that define national leadership. By his admission, his ethnic and regional biases remain inflexible, and he will not let them be attenuated by age or education. He has contempt for his regional compatriots who compromise in their effort to build a rallying point and forge consensuses around the country. But here was a man who nearly became president, who became NGF chairman, who sat as senator for a decade, and who incredibly led a national party into a national election, and claiming that he fought the 2023 polls with all he had. And he expected to be believed or liked or respected? However, the major problem is not that he occupied many lofty offices, for which his ideological rigidity and reactionary politics probably qualified him; the problem is that among his many ambitions, he sought to lead a multicultural nation and a national political party both to which his ideas have proved him eminently unqualified.

    There are many like him playing their dangerous and demagogic politics in regional closets. In fact, there are ongoing debates suggesting that former president Muhammadu Buhari was one such politician. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar is probably another one, perhaps a little cleverer. Whenever such men take office or rise to any kind of prominence, politics, not to say the entire system, is worse for it. President Bola Tinubu showed by the coalition he built to prosecute the last presidential poll that politicians like Mr Adamu have become anachronistic. They may, like Alhaji Atiku, deploy clever and populist methods to achieve their ambitions, but in sum, they may never again rise to national prominence in tandem with their lofty ambitions.

  • Deputy governors’ moments of angst

    Deputy governors’ moments of angst

    • By Idowu Akinlotan

    Whichever way they turn, deputy governors appear to be damned. Damned if they do anything; and damned if they don’t. No story brings this dilemma to the surface as dramatically as the plights of Ondo State deputy governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, and Edo State deputy governor, Philip Shaibu. Both are currently perched dangerously on the horns of a dilemma, considering how quickly their governors have turned against them, and with the voluble and unpredictable Mr Shaibu groveling more farcically than the fairly tactless Mr Aiyedatiwa. But whether tactless or unpredictable, both deputy governors face an uncertain future and the prospect of impeachment. In Edo the governor, Godwin Obaseki, accuses his deputy of crass ambition packaged to undermine the state’s zoning succession formula thus endangering the chances of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in next year’s off-season governorship election. In Ondo State, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu returned from a three-month medical leave with a vengeance to cut his allegedly malfeasant deputy to size over charges of gross misconduct.

    Whatever the Edo and Ondo deputy governors are going through is of course not countrywide. Most deputy governors have not fallen out with their bosses, having creatively interpreted the constitution to deny themselves of any willpower. Indeed, they are at their governors’ beck and call, with each deputy governor burying in varying degrees his pride and character. On the whole, they cut a pitiable sight in their subsumption of personal ego and character to their bosses’. However, someone like Mr Shaibu had thought he could force the hands of Mr Obaseki, especially considering how the governor himself ‘forced’ the hands of his former boss and mentor, Adams Oshiomhole, now a senator. Apart from the politics and dynamics regarding which Edo senatorial zone should present the PDP’s governorship candidate, Mr Shaibu believed he could in fact generate different political momentum his boss would find irresistible, if not even admirable. His naivety led him into audaciously kick-starting his preparations for Poll 2024 by energising the state’s grassroots before calculating the cost of Mr Obaseki’s opposition.

    The situation in Ondo is comparable. For the reticent and undifferentiating Mr Aiyedatiwa, it is not clear whether he would have dared to bite the bullet had his boss not gone away for an extended and cryptically uncertain period. There were whispers among the governor’s pickthanks that the deputy/acting governor was too ambitious. Mr Aiyedatiwa’s opponents even psychoanalysed him by reporting to the hospitalised governor that his deputy did not wish him to return from medical leave, and that his disloyalty was so provocative and flagrant that it led him to try asserting himself upon an unwilling staff and cabinet. Secret and antagonistic reports flooded the governor’s hospital room, concentrating his bile, inflaming his rage, and turning him into an explosive device upon his return. Weeks after his return, Mr Akeredolu exploded a depth bomb on Mr Aiyedatiwa’s head without even waiting to investigate his deputy’s alleged perfidy. It was obviously enough that the already controversial deputy, whose home front is frazzled by domestic dissent, was tactlessly and openly assertive.

    Read Also: Yoruba elders seek return of Akintoye, Igboho from exile

    Edo’s Mr Shaibu has unglamourously tried to walk back his short-lived revolt against Mr Obaseki. He had talked tough one day, and moderated the next day; went to court another day, and withdrew his suit on yet another inglorious and ignominious day. Perhaps he felt the Obaseki administration was in any case near the end of its tenure, and the governor had become a lame duck. It was a gross miscalculation. Mr Obaseki is not a democrat, nor a politician incommoded by the niceties of the rule of law. He fights to the bitter end, and his opponents must have the commonsense to also fight him to the end, if they are not to be humiliated. The governor would be eager to bite off his opponent’s ears in a boxing ring if he felt threatened, as he in fact did to the previous House of Assembly whom he compelled to fly at half-mast virtually throughout their tenure. For a man whose politics and war tactics lack finesse, he is not the kind of politician with whom a shoddily prepared and half-hearted combatant would like to grapple. But Mr Shaibu entered the ring with tattered gloves, shoes without laces, and weight that was suicidally featherweight. Predictably, the governor made short work of him. Even at the onset of Mr Shaibu’s rebellion, it was unthinkable that he stood a chance of winning. Mid-way into the combat, the outcome was no longer in doubt, especially when Mr Obaseki turned up the screw a little by exiling the governor to a nondescript office outside the Government House. Mr Shaibu realised too late that a deputy governor is only as important as the governor makes him. Now, he is attempting to worm his way into the confidences of a clearly and enthusiastically vengeful governor. A few days ago, the deputy governor grovelled in an unspeakable way that can only elicit the governor’s contempt. Mr Obaseki will simply sneer at him.

    Mr Aiyedatiwa does not stand any chance in Ondo.  If Mr Obaseki was reluctant to go the route of impeachment, and will probably not do so, for his deputy is already spent and disgraced, the generally litigious Mr Akeredolu suffers no trepidation in the courts. The Ondo House of Assembly has begun impeachment moves, and the deputy governor is already put on notice for gross misconduct, an infraction whose interpretation the courts have ceded almost entirely to the legislature. Mr Aiyedatiwa does not stand a cat in hell’s chance of surviving the onslaught. The question is whether Ondo will beat other states’ impeachment records. Indeed, the deputy governor’s only chance of surviving the sally from his enemies is to rally the party’s national leadership, assuming those ones are minded to weigh in.

    There are suggestions that some constitutional improvisations can be found to make deputy governors more relevant and less prone to rebellion. If lawmakers can’t resolve the local government autonomy conundrum, they cannot also resolve that of endangered deputy governors. Let every deputy governor get wise and find a way to survive, even if it means leaving behind in his home every impediment to his survivability, including his character and personality. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.

  • 2023: Not an idle moment for Nigeria

    2023: Not an idle moment for Nigeria

    Last week’s widespread protests and candlelight processions in some states organised in memory of musician Ilerioluwa Aloba, alias MohBad, probably left many people in their 40s, 50s and above reeling. Until his death at 27 and the controversy surrounding the circumstances of his passing, very few older generation Nigerians ever heard of him, let alone listened to his music. Indeed, quite paradoxically, he may have achieved fame at his death. The puzzled generation of elders should not try to know or appreciate his genre of music; it will worsen their bewilderment. Fortunately, his death had substantially nothing to do with the government or law enforcement agencies, except perhaps tangentially, and protests over the circumstances of his passing were designed more to cajole relevant ministries and agencies of government into investigating those who might have contributed in one sinister way or the other to his untimely exit.

    2023 began on a high; it appears ready to go in a blaze of crises. Indeed, examined more closely, it is uncertain this year can be compared with any other year since Gen. Sani Abacha expired in June 1998 and MKO Abiola also died in controversial circumstances a month later. Right from the break of dawn in January 2023, mysteries and convulsions have wracked the country and left the people winded. Even seers did not anticipate these seismic events, through their daily conjurations, sorceries and mathematical deductions, nor, by genuine prophecies, saw and warned about what were soon to befall Nigeria. And whether Nigerians like it or not, they will keep on experiencing similar and breathtaking events till the close of the year. No one knows what October holds in store, nor November, nor yet December. It is safe to surmise, however, that there will be additional convulsions in the weeks to come, perhaps more tumultuous than the previous nine months, but obviously no less impactful, dramatic, and apocalyptic. If not another musician dropping dead in reflection of the unfathomable tastes of the youths, then perhaps the birthing of some extraordinary electoral phenomena from politicians’ Ouija boards.

    Who could have guessed that as 2022 faded away in the harmattan haze of December that the Nigerian government would inflict an improperly conceived and poorly digested currency redesign as a Christmas and New Year’s gift between December 15, 2022 and January 29 (later extended to February 10) 2023. They did, and they defended it with gusto, impounding the people’s money and barring them, on pain of suffering and death, from having access to cash. And of all the economic policies ever conceived on planet earth, who could have guessed that such horrendous sufferings were designed to thwart a certain political succession process or produce a particular objective favourable to a powerful clique. They inflicted hasty currency change on the country, ignored widespread suffering, conducted the elections some 10 days later and in mid-March in a fouled atmosphere, but unprecedentedly still failed to get the outcome for which they produced an earthquake, despite being helped by all the forces humans could muster, spiritual, ethnic, and class.

    Read Also: Oluwo confers chieftaincy title on Sanusi’s granddaughter after marrying Iwo chief

    And then, contrary to projections, predictions and incitement, all of which held Nigerians in suspense, both the elections and the May 29 inaugurations held peacefully. The country is surprisingly on an even keel despite immeasurable privations, and despite one cataclysmic event following another, and on and on. Absolutely not one dull moment. Edo wanted to impeach its deputy governor, Philip Shaibu, for insubordination and disloyalty, but Governor Godwin Obaseki dithered. Perhaps he recognised it would amount to overkill, for after all, his deputy was guilty of nothing more than overweening ambition. But in a system where gross misconduct is left to the interpretative laxity of governors and the Houses of Assembly, impeachment becomes considerably easy. If Mr Obaseki dithered, Ondo State’s Governor Rotimi `dolu would not put his hands to the plough and look back. He has tried to distance himself from the impeachment process launched last week by the ingratiating legislature, and rested his alibi on the metaphysics of his debilitation and recovery from a grave illness, but no one is buying his excuses. His deputy, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, is a goner except heaven intervenes.

    And just as the country was still reeling from the Edo and Ondo conundrums, out came the Kano governorship dispute judgement with a bang. At least four senior Kano State government officials close to Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) had threatened fire and brimstone against the judges should the case be decided in favour of the petitioners, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate, Nasiru Gawuna, but only one was sacked. Nevertheless, by a unanimous decision, the three judges hearing the case delivered their judgement by zoom and dared the worst. The judges reasoned that Sections 63 and 64 of the Electoral Act 2022 dealing with the issues of the integrity of ballot papers and the validity of votes compelled them to give judgement in favour of the APC. The state, long considered to be one of the two closest to the idea of civic culture, and split almost evenly between the two feuding parties, has since been on tenterhooks sharpened by the irreconcilability and fanaticism of their leaders.

    States may be paranoid about opponents, real or imagined, and are immersed in impeachment frenzies, but they cannot hold the candle to the federal authorities. Before the courts began to shock petitioners and respondents in the states, they had first dealt a crushing but predictable blow to the presidential election petitioners, to wit, ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP). If any serious analyst thought the case could be decided otherwise, he must of course be hallucinating. The first, second and third runners-up in the February presidential poll all belonged to the PDP one year before the poll. But months before the poll, they split into three, while a fourth consisting of five governors also carved itself out of the lump, making four factions going into the election against a united APC. The courts had little trouble, despite the huge and inciting campaign against the judiciary and the persons of the justices, to come to an emphatic and unanimous decision. That decision will not change on appeal. But meanwhile, the PDP candidate has kept the public entranced with a tangential court case in the United States over the president’s university certificate.

    Even if no previously little-known musician drops dead, and is exhumed and autopsied, still, watch out for the courts. They will keep everyone on the edge of their seats till December. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo will continue to bait anyone that crosses his malignant path, whether Yoruba chiefs or an incensed former wife, and he will do his best to incite youths against the establishment, and speak darkly and conspiratorially to the coup instincts of the military. He has become more theatrical as the years go by, but he is unfazed by public perception of his private and public morals. Only now do analysts understand why Gen Abacha jailed him after an impromptu trial. And just in case boredom looms in the weeks ahead, trust Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa elections to spice things up in November. Then the losers will head for the courts, and the circus will start all over again and keep roiling. Maybe next year will be calmer. But for 2023, it has been one giddy, unequalled and furious year.

  • OBJ skewers ex-wife

    OBJ skewers ex-wife

    Shortly after ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s ex-wife, Taiwo Martins, published a curious and dramatic apology begging for ‘eternal and permanent forgiveness’ from the Yoruba on behalf of the entire Obasanjo clan for allegedly desecrating the crowns of Yoruba chiefs in Iseyin, Oyo State, over a week ago, the former president issued this memorable putdown. “The attention of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been drawn to a statement purportedly…issued by…Ms. Taiwo Martins as the author… For the records, Ms. Martins has two children, Jonwo and Bunmi, for Chief Obasanjo, but (we want) to say emphatically that she is not his wife nor a member of the Obasanjo family. Her posturing as Chief Obasanjo’s wife is false and that of an impostor…It must be noted that the state of health of Ms. Martins is known to all and sundry and whatever she says or does has nothing to do with Chief Obasanjo as an individual or the Obasanjo family as a whole.”

    Read Also: Yoruba elders seek return of Akintoye, Igboho from exile

    With that, the angered woman’s apology goes up in smoke, but not before issuing the most withering riposte anyone has given yet against a former president so enamoured of cuckoldry that he completely obliterates the boundary between vice and virtue. Worse, Nigerians now have a controversial and hesitant peep into the state of Ms Martins’ mental health. The feud with the Iseyin chiefs is harvesting many scalps: the reputation of the Oyo feckless chiefs, the sense of judgement of the amoral Chief Obasanjo, and the delicate image of a livid Ms Martins.

  • LP, NLC, Catholic bishops now official opposition

    LP, NLC, Catholic bishops now official opposition

    Despite having about 13 governors, 36 senators and 118 House of Representatives members in the National Assembly, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is playing second fiddle as the main opposition party after the 2023 general election. Increasingly, the Labour Party (LP), with one governor, eight senators and 35 House of Representatives members, assisted by others, is talking, acting and behaving as the official opposition. The trend will worsen in the months ahead if the PDP does not shake off its lethargy and incompetent politicking. However, the game is not yet over for the PDP. It has a far bigger and better structure than the LP, more active and experienced politicians and vote herders, and far more pugnacious governors and local government administrators. While it is indeed hard imagining the party dead anytime soon, at least not in the next four years, its morbidity has become unsettlingly obvious, particularly in the face of the aggressive and anarchic politics of the LP.

    Last April, when Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka crossed swords with LP presidential running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed over the latter’s unbridled vituperations against the judiciary, and again last Wednesday as he snorted at LP presidential candidate Peter Obi’s insistence that he won the February 25 election, many analysts accused the laureate and other commentators of been obsessed with the LP. There is, however, little to suggest any obsession. Mr Obi may speak and gesture more often and more wildly than the PDP presidential candidate in that election, Atiku Abubakar, and continues to weave many far-fetched conspiracies around his purported victory, but whatever fixations are noticeable around him have little to do with him as a person or his politics. He may appeal to a cross-section of Nigerians, some of them young and too angry to rationalise their pains and goals, but he remains essentially insular and his politics annoyingly predictable. For the perceptive, both Mr Obi and the LP have become objects of derision much more than they have become objects of fascination or obsession.

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    The reason is not far to seek. By some incredible conjunction of events and personalities, a different kind of opposition appears to be budding through a coalition of angry ethnic and sectarian diehards. It may not last, for the coalition energising that unusual opposition is incapable of enduring for long, but while it lasts it will shake the leadership rafters, upset the political applecart, and attempt to dismantle the cultural and bureaucratic ramparts upon which Nigeria rested. On its own, and regardless of the ferocity and population of the politically alienated in the country, the LP could not achieve the heights it has reached in the past one year. Mr Obi lacks the unifying and ideological depth required to vivify even his own indeterminate brand of politics. And for someone so parsimonious as to be offensive, he needed funds and a certain gregariousness to concretise and amplify his amorphous message. It is true he had been a two-term governor, an unprincipled party defector, and a one-time running mate to former vice president Atiku. But he needed much more than himself and his political peregrinations to win national recognition visible enough to upset the regnant power structure that has held the country in thrall for decades. By no special and gifted deeds of his making, and certainly not by dint of education or extraordinary grasp of the fundamentals of development, he achieved that renown through a coalition that thrust him awkwardly and apocalyptically upon Nigeria beginning from 2022. Yes, just one dizzying and incredible year.

    Mr Obi did not deliberately put that coalition together. Nor did any other arm of that coalition consciously worm its way into the group. The Book of Proverbs talks about time and chance happening to people and predisposing them to the vagaries of human existence. Something closely resembling that happenstance foisted the Obi-led coalition upon Nigeria. The All Progressives Congress (APC), which eventually won the February poll, had presented a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket to a country driven to insane rage by religious divisions. The Christians were, therefore, not going to have such insult, and were determined to put down the Muslim dervishes. They needed a champion, and they found one in the unconscionable Mr Obi who in any other circumstance could be taken for an atheist despite his fulsome show of religiosity. The Pentecostal bishops lined up behind Mr Obi, and backed him with thunderous and unremitting prophecies. The Catholic bishops also breathed undiluted anger against the APC same-faith ticket. Onward into battle they all marched with Mr Obi, unperturbed by his follies and foibles. Indeed they couldn’t care less if he were the very devil himself, or Lucifer’s lieutenant.

    But the dissembling Mr Obi and the presumptuous bishops were not sufficient to form the Axis powers against the APC. They easily found a second leg in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), which claimed the LP as its baby. Maternal instincts, the NLC claims, not the ethnic instincts alleged against the NLC president Joe Ajaero from Abia State, explained the filial bond with Mr Obi. The coalition, however, needed one more leg to form a tripod. They found one in the Igbo ethnic group of the Southeast pained by the audacity of the Southwest to want to take the presidency soon after ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo occupied the throne for eight years and his Ogun State kinsman Yemi Osinbajo assumed the vice presidency a little later for another eight years. The Southeast would have none of that provocation. Irate and full of righteous ethnic rage and pride, they saw Mr Obi as their infallible and immutable champion. If the former Anambra State governor had remained in the PDP, they might have won the 2023 poll, but they would not have the untrammelled joy of having one of their own in Aso Villa. Had Mr Obi stayed put in the PDP, he could not of course attract as many votes as he did in the LP, not to say across many states as he managed, but the contest would have been settled before the first ballot was cast. To the Southeast, therefore, Mr Obi became a folk hero, and his native region was determined to swim or sink with him, through crocodile infested waters and through a Niagara of lies and utter fabrications.

    With that troika of support, the Obi coalition became ironclad and was ready to steamroll the enemy. They would still have achieved the same results that have today warmed the cockles of their hearts, but nature gifted them an extra brigade by adding a section of disaffected southern youths riled by incompetent policing. The EndSARS generation, indulgent, entitled, hyperactive and immoderate also saw in Mr Obi a champion, not an ethnic or religious champion, but an authentic leader forever and delectably cooing about Asian Tigers and utopias. The youths were themselves not questioning or discriminating, and the facile logic of the LP candidate could not be subjected to any validity tests, so it was easy for Mr Obi to pull wool over their faces and bamboozle them with highfalutin economic jargons and dainty phrases. With this icing on the cake, but with no substantial grounding whatsoever or coherent logic of any kind, Mr Obi took the political arena by storm and has since then waved his sorcery under the noses of his supporters, helped no doubt by a few Southwest dissenters and political titans.

    But after repeatedly coming to grief on their prophetic Golgotha, the Pentecostal bishops have seen the light and have largely and shamefacedly retreated into their cocoons, sometimes giving the Tinubu administration grudging respect, support and admiration. A few hardy bishops are still in the trenches or in the mountains calling down fire, but on the whole the Pentecostals appeared convinced that the arms of God were not shortened that they could not save last February. Had the Almighty wanted a different outcome, it would not have taken him a second to throw the Tinubu candidacy out of kilter. If the Pentecostals are chastened by inaccurate prophecies and mortified by defeat, the same is not true of the Catholic bishops, one leg of the Obi-led formidable opposition. Staid, less given to prophecy, and Catholic like Mr Obi himself, these other bishops seem determined to perish with their champion who has gone down in defeat. Dissatisfied with the results they got from opposing the APC before and immediately after the elections, they have happily joined the LP candidate in opposing the administrations’ economic, social and political policies at every whim. All they need is to sense which way Mr Obi is turning or which direction the APC is going in order to adjust their compass.

    Sadly, the Catholic Church in Nigeria is now fully a political machine, no longer an instrument for peace, righteousness and salvation. At every turn, and together with the NLC and the Southeast, they have belittled the APC, refused to acknowledge the victory of President Tinubu, and have sneered at the courts and inveighed against their juridical competence. Mr Obi could not have asked for better comrades-in-arms. For the foreseeable future, the APC will have to come to grips with the new and unorthodox opposition. They will require far more exquisite skills and technology to battle an opposition that is inconversant with logic and contemptuous of ideas, for an opposition propelled by sentiments and self-righteous zeal is not easy to persuade and is far more difficult to defeat.

  • PEPC judgement and Nigeria’s future

    PEPC judgement and Nigeria’s future

    It is not surprising that Nigerians have seemed to limit themselves to ruminating over the judicial implications of the September 6 Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) judgement in the three suits filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM). Gradually, however, the focus may be starting to shift from pure legalism to the more overarching issue of Nigeria’s future. That shift may be slow and exasperating, and can sometimes create more complications, but it is nevertheless perceptible. First and foremost, the PEPC judgement has wider implications for jurisprudence, a fact that has been reiterated in the media and especially among lawyers, including dissenting and prejudiced lawyers.

    The length of the judgement, all of 798 pages, and the about 12 hours it took to read it, carved a juridical niche in Nigeria. In summary, the petitioners proved nothing, as their final written addresses ominously presaged. They could not prove double nominations of the APC ticket, nor cast provable doubt on the qualification of the winner of the election, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nor yet show electoral malpractices. They also demonstrated farcical understanding of the so-called special status of Abuja and also the jurisprudential value of the promise by INEC to use the result viewing portal, IReV. The petitioners also did not appreciate how to deploy the law of evidence to underscore their arguments. Though many commentators declined to read the judgement, perhaps on account of its length, or simply because they chose ab initio to believe a lie, the five justices encountered no difficulty whatsoever in coming to a unanimous decision to dismiss the petitions with significant and exemplary fines.

    However, apart from the juridical import of the PEPC judgement, and notwithstanding the skepticism of analysts and lawyers deliberately acting mala fide, the outcome of the cases is bound to have far-reaching impact on Nigeria in the years ahead. Had the judgement validated the LP’s tenuous claim of victory, for instance, it would have canonised ethnic politics and ingrained it into the body politic. Mr Obi’s presidential campaign was largely targeted at his ethnic group whether in his native Southeast or clusters of his ethnic compatriots wherever they might be found in the country. His tactic was also deliberate, mischievous, ruthless and remorseless. His tacticians probably suspected that since the APC opted for same-faith ticket, he had free reins to exploit the country’s religious sensibility to farm the Christian vote and couple it with ethnic vote to create a groundswell capable of sweeping him into the State House. His calculations were tactically sound but immoral and inherently destabilising. Given the country’s ethnic and religious pastiche, that tactics was unlikely to work. But if the PEPC had validated his election, credit would have been given to the exploitation of religious and ethnic factors. In the years ahead, candidates will now be reluctant farming ethnic and religious votes so flagrantly.

    Read Also: Why we agree with lead judgment, by four PEPC justices

    The PEPC judgement has also exposed and defined in bolder and shocking reliefs the character and politics of the candidates. The expositions are so revelatory that their impact goes beyond the gloominess of defeat and the exhilaration of victory. It is not known how President Bola Tinubu would take a devastating electoral loss, considering how immune he claims to be against electoral loss since he cut his political teeth. He hosts a permanent grin on his face, and may perhaps take losses with perfect equanimity; but until it happens, no one can predict the depth or magnitude of his reaction. But for Mr Obi and ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, their reactions to their losses have altered public perceptions of their politics, mettle and judgement in ways impossible to measure.

    By reacting so badly to their losses, the LP and PDP candidates may have demonstrated their opportunism, superficial appreciation of democracy, and lack of interest in upholding the constitution. Alhaji Atiku may be chafing under serial electoral losses, perhaps also suspecting that he could never contest again on account of his age; but for Mr Obi, this was his first major loss as a presidential candidate, making it incomprehensible that he would risk his political future so casually to claim an election he actually stood no chance of winning. Some analysts suggest that Mr Obi’s intransigence is designed to sustain his political relevance, nurture his supporters’ loyalty by gratifying their childish desires, and raise his stock in public estimation. On the contrary, having short-sightedly corralled ethnic votes and accentuated the country’s fierce religious divides, Mr Obi has capped his unsteady and superficial appreciation of democracy with a questionable display as a bad loser, and virtually shown just how poorly equipped he is for national leadership.

    The PEPC judgement has also shown in unquantifiable ways that the judiciary can indeed withstand attacks and rise above prejudices and the mundane. More, given the unanimity of the judgement, the suavity and fluidity of the reasoning upon which they bludgeoned the puny efforts of the losing candidates, and the emphatic manner and clear conscience with which they came to their decisions, it is unavoidable that Nigeria must revisit its leadership recruitment process. Too many Nigerian leaders have come up short in reckoning. Had either Alhaji Atiku or Mr Obi won, the country would never have discovered their ideational failings, lack of democratic conviction, and almost total absence of leadership character. Hopefully, the next election cycle will probably sieve out most of the current frontrunners, including the 2023 PDP and LP candidates, and undoubtedly throw up far more nonnatural factors that will shape the country’s future.

  • Tinubu unsurprisingly wins again

    Tinubu unsurprisingly wins again

    No one who read the final written addresses of the three main political parties contesting the Nigerian presidency in the courts expected President Bola Tinubu to lose. Ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar‘s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and ex-governor Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) had dragged the president before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) even before the last ballot was cast, insisting the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should not have declared him president. The reason, they argued was not so much because of insufficient ballots cast in favour of the declared winner but essentially because of ancillary matters like the APC nomination process or a forfeiture case long ago in the United States. And just in case they could get any takers, or the country could be bewitched, the litigants also threw in the farfetched issue of 25 percent Federal Capital Territory (FCT) votes as a prerequisite for victory in the presidential election.

    Five justices of the Court of Appeal sat over the consolidated cases and last week gutsily – some said angrily – and unanimously threw away the last legal and political pretensions of the opposition. They let it be known once and for all time that the judiciary would not be intimidated. The petitioners didn’t stand a chance, going by the provisions of the law, but they clutched at all kinds of straws, most of them wafer thin, leaving their fumbling counsels and fanatical supporters puzzled. Few legal experts who listened to or read the presentations of the opposition thought they had any chance of winning. Some supporters, many of them artisans and laymen on the streets, thought otherwise; but their thoughts stood precariously on pins and needles, on nothing but wishes. Sensing that their supporters were undifferentiating, both PDP and LP candidates in the February 25 presidential election appealed to their emotions, declaiming upon the special status of FCT residents, and exaggerating and obfuscating irrelevant court processes in the United States. In the end, all their arguments counted for nothing. Worse, the three parties left standing in the suit against the APC were made to share a fine approximating N84m.

    President Tinubu is a very fortunate man. The more the cases against him dragged on, the more strengthened his legal position became, and the more he smelled of roses. In an essentially three-horse race, he won about 37 percent of the votes, a fact some analysts have turned into an argument about legitimacy. But at the PEPC, he won unanimously. Even before the opposition got copies of the judgement, they had, however, signified their readiness to appeal. They will also lose at the Supreme Court, of course. It was not just that the PEPC did a thorough job, it was mainly because both the PDP and the LP, which had previously united under one umbrella but split into three for the fateful election, had nothing significant to rest their cases on or redeem their postulations. No legal expert who knew his onions thought the PDP or LP could win, or that, bowing to the blackmail and intimidation of the opposition, the PEPC could be browbeaten into ordering a rerun. If the president’s luck is sustained, not only will the opposition lose at the Supreme Court, the fines could be bigger than N84m.

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    In reality, however, Nigeria’s opposition leaders in the PDP and LP are not idiots. They knew they didn’t stand a chance in the election, having been unable to unite going into the poll, and especially when the conspiracy at the highest echelons of government which the PDP had hoped to take advantage of fizzled out badly. They are not stupid to think that by some liberal constitutional interpretations FCT residents could be turned into supermen and bionic women in whose tremulous hands veto power over the rest of the country would be invested. No, they are much smarter than their howling supporters, and in fact secretly held out no hope of a miracle. They embarked on legal adventurism for two principal reasons: to create a groundswell of anger and bitterness against the winner in order to incite the public into either a preemptive revolution or a coup d’etat; or to slow down and weaken the new administration into backing away from implementing courageous and redemptive policies or inquiring into the monumental misdeeds of past administrations. Neither of the two objectives will, however, be realised, regardless of how hard they try.

    Apart from being unanimous, the PEPC was emphatic in their judgement. They have left the opposition with no legs to stand on going to the Supreme Court. The PDP and LP know as a matter of fact that they have nothing left to stand on or any straw to clutch at, and even fear that they will be skewered or completely disemboweled for their irrational attempt at intimidating the justices, nay the judiciary as a whole, for ridiculing the justices and their families, and for rousing public anger against them. They feel the amperage of the portents that lie ahead. But they are also seized by a forlorn gloominess that the fire of revolution they had labored so tediously to procure might finally be lit by a fortuitous and careless matchstick.  In addition, they have a number of angry past leaders, disaffected politicians, baleful clerics, and opinion moulders to count on. But here again, their exertions are unlikely to be rewarded, for they misread history very badly and are woeful incompetents at reading the signs of the times.

    For about two years before the then aspirant Tinubu won the APC presidential primary, the ruling party, beginning from June 2020, had erected a barricade of such enormity and fierceness against him that few gave him any chance of surmounting. Five years before, the party had also ostracised him, attempted to build a new power elite in the Southwest to supplant his influence, and rallied many of his mentees and friends and associates against him. And when EndSARS came in late 2020, despite beginning as a protest against federal police atrocities, it was also weaponised against him. The house of politics he built seemed to be caving in on him. How he roused himself from his prostrate position to take the battle to his enemies remains a puzzle. What is, however, known is that one after the other he dismantled his enemies, put together a coalition of old friends and new associates, and finally devised political strategies that left his opponents and estranged mentees gasping for breath. After these, heaven simply and brusquely took over. There is no other explanation for the implacable divisions within the PDP, the half-heartedness of the presidency in following through their plots against him, and the failure of all the economic and financial chicaneries which punished the entire nation than it undid him.

    Since 2015 when he joined forces with others to secure victory for the APC, President Tinubu had not been defeated in any political combat. Last week’s judicial victory is, therefore, an icing on the cake. In the same manner many clerical and political leaders saw the hand of God in the successful evacuation of about 338,000 beaten and bruised allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk during World War II, many clerics and perceptive analysts now see the hand of God in the 2023 Nigerian elections. They do not conclude that President Tinubu’s victory in all his political battles in the past years is a testimony of his strategic brilliance or ideational infallibility; no, instead, like many great statesmen have appreciated throughout all history, they now sense the hand of forces in their affairs which they cannot rationally explain. Indeed, if the PEPC had last week ordered a rerun, and the PDP and LP had joined forces, they would again be surprised to go down in defeat against all rational permutations and projections. The unseen hand was so pervasive in the 2023 Nigerian elections that any opposition was certain to end up disoriented and spent.

    A few more predictions need to be ventured. The PDP and LP conspiracy to delegitimise the Tinubu presidency will continue until and a little after the Supreme Court deals them a mortal blow. But the conspiracy will eventually amount to nothing. The revolution and coups they have tried so disingenuously to incite will also amount to nothing. The Tinubu presidency has admittedly started on a disconcertingly awkward note despite propounding fine policies and assembling a fairly decent team; but in the months ahead, he will settle down to better administrative and even ideological and policy rhythms. The international environment will probably work in his favour and give great impetus to his programmes and policies, and the economy will function at far better capacity and fluidity than previously hoped. His opponents will not only be consistently wrong-footed, they will gradually fade in prominence and acclaim, including Alhaji Atiku, Mr Obi, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Bode George and other assemblage of expired and ambitious politicians and opinion leaders. These things will inevitably open the door to the recreation of better organised and more ideological political parties and a more scientific administration which the largest black nation on earth will be confident to talk about. All in all, despite President Tinubu’s knack for winning political battles, it appears that the extreme detestation of his many enemies may be designed to keep him from exalting himself above measure, almost like a thorn in the flesh to keep him fettered or hamstrung. 

  • Yar’Adua: Obasanjo still seems befuddled

    Yar’Adua: Obasanjo still seems befuddled

    In an interview with The Cable online last week, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo reiterated his conviction that he was blameless on the allegation of foisting an enfeebled successor on Nigeria in 2007. In 2021, he had spoken with The Nation even more sanctimoniously on the same vexed subject. No one is sure why the point seems lost on him that what he did in selecting and foisting the then Katsina State governor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, on both the party and country as he departed office was wholly improper. It has been about 16 years since that fateful decision. His reluctance to reflect on what he did, not to say his determination to sustain the twisted logic of imposition, strikes at the root of his flawed persona and the cracked prism from which he views Nigeria and the rest of the world. Luckily for him, it is not criminal to make a wrong choice or decision; but what he did more than 16 years ago in fiddling with the choice of a successor changed the trajectory of Nigeria and led the country down a thorny path from which it is yet to recover. He is unlikely to feel any remorse as he continues to believe and promote his infallibility.

    It is uncertain that anyone else could have done what Chief Obasanjo did in 2007, let alone double down on the issue, speak glibly about it, and continue to justify the anomaly. As he put it: “I set up a committee headed by Dr Olusegun Agagu, of blessed memory, to search for a successor. They considered many names and did an extensive assessment of all them. They made their recommendation. Umaru was top on the list. Their biggest argument in his favour was that he had integrity and would not steal. The issues concerning his health were raised and I gave his medical reports to an expert for an opinion. Umaru’s name was redacted so that the expert would not know who it was and why I was seeking his opinion. After assessing the reports, he said the patient appeared to have done a kidney transplant and if that was the case, there was nothing to worry about and he would be as healthy as any other person. That was it. All insinuations that I knew he was going to die and that was why I supported him to be president were false. This is the true story I have told you.”

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    Three things were infernally wrong with his perspective on succession. Firstly, he claimed to have sent ex-president Yar’Adua’s medical record to Professor Olu Akinkugbe, who advised that even with the subject’s kidney transplant, he could still withstand the rigours of the presidency. But it is doubtful whether the eminent professor knew he was being asked to give an opinion on someone being considered for the demanding office of president, especially as the former president claimed to have redacted the subject. The former president quoted Prof Akinkugbe as saying that anyone with a successful kidney transplant was like someone who never had a transplant. Well, its Chief Obasanjo’s word against the professor’s. It is unlikely that if the former president had not withheld information on the identity of the subject, Prof Akinkugbe would have given the late president a clean bill of health.

    Secondly, and more exasperatingly, anyone old enough to tell the difference in 2007 knew enough to condemn Chief Obasanjo for riding roughshod over the constitution by backing and foisting ex-president Yar’Adua on both party and country. It was of course okay to back anyone he chose, but if he was sensitive to the burden history placed on his shoulders to lay a solid foundation for the Fourth Republic, he would have been more circumspect. Instead, during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary, he openly bullied other contestants to drop their ambitions. In addition, during the main presidential election, he also bullied the rest of the country into submission, leading the eventual ‘winner’ to concede he was a product of a flawed election. Chief Obasanjo had contempt for his party, a party he eventually left prostrate and led to ruin, and he also sneered at the country and the electorate whom he presented a fait accompli.

    Thirdly, and perhaps most damagingly, Chief Obasanjo’s intransigent view of the political succession he awkwardly engineered in 2007 continues to illustrate his inability to appreciate the basic essentials of leadership. Not only is he poor at grasping and exuding leadership fundamentals, he also proves more wearily incapable of identifying that quality in any other person. It requires depth, knowledge and intuition to know who has capacity for leadership. But by not possessing that quality himself, it was inescapable he failed to identify a great leader and successor even if one was rudely thrust under his nose. His personal and leadership failings, his disrespect for party and national constitutions, and his poor judgement mixed in a fatal broth with narcissism caused him to propel the country into a cul de sac in 2007. It is not baffling that he still thinks himself infallible and the rest of the country fallible. What really baffles anyone is why he still continues to declaim self-righteously on national politics and political succession, and still gets a hearing.