ABEOKUTA, capital of Ogun State, must have metaphysical significance for the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The city has become a cathartic that enables him ventilate his preemptions and premonitions, where he takes the wind out of the sail of his opponents and exposes their chicaneries. On June 2, 2022, less than a week to the party’s presidential primary in Abuja, he spoke with uncommon candour about efforts within and outside his party to abort or forestall his presidential bid. The outburst was termed provocative, disrespectful to the president, laced with ethnic sentiments, and a showcase for his politics of entitlement. After the furore died down, a careful analysis of his speech, which was rendered in Yoruba with all its delicate nuances, showed something totally different. “If not for me that led the battlefront, Buhari wouldn’t have won,” he began cautiously. “He contested first, second and third time, but lost. He even said on television that he won’t contest again. But I went to his home in Katsina. I told him ‘you would contest and win, but you won’t joke with the matter of the Yoruba’. Since he has been elected, I have not been appointed minister. I didn’t get a contract. This time, it’s Yoruba turn and in Yorubaland, it’s my turn.”

The controversy and bad-tempered conclusions his outburst attracted were yet to completely die down when last week Asiwaju Tinubu again indulged his customary candour. Last year’s controversial statement, which introduced a few pithy sayings into Nigeria’s political lexicon, was made during the aspirant’s tour of the states to persuade party men, delegates and traditional authorities to give him their support. This year’s preemption is coming about four weeks to the presidential election, and it speaks piercingly to his loathing of conspirators eternally embroiled in schemes to scuttle his ambition and even subvert the elections. The conspirators include shadowy figures manipulating fuel supply to create scarcity, and the naira redesign policy which has starved the public of new notes days to the expiration of the old banknotes. As usual, the APC candidate’s outburst is interpreted as targeting President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration, forcing the candidate’s spokesmen to issue a vigorous rejoinder regarding the intent and purpose of the Abeokuta campaign speech that was also rendered in Yoruba. This time, APC spokesmen have not attempted to hide behind the nuances of Yoruba language.

Here is the controversial excerpt from Asiwaju Tinubu’s address at the rally. “They keep (hoard) fuel, they keep money (hoard new notes), they are the ones who know why they are doing that,” he said contemptuously on January 25 in Abeokuta. “If you like, change the ink of the naira. We are going to win and the PDP will fall down. The city boy is here. I am the son of the soil. We will take the government from them, the bad people. They don’t want the election to take place. They want to stop the elections. Will you allow them?” It requires a liberal interpretation of the statement to suggest that this was a jab at the president, at least on the scale of last June’s statement which mentioned the president but gave no indication the then aspirant knew where the president stood. The president may stand solid behind the CBN’s Godwin Emefiele in defending naira redesign, and may also keep his fingers crossed over the unending fuel queues, but there was nothing in the APC candidate’s statement that suggested the president was involved in inspiring naira or fuel hoarding. In any case, the former Lagos governor’s perspective has been corroborated by Itse Sagay, a professor of law, and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), who both suggest that the current crises drenching the country are the product of a multiplicity of conspiracies designed to foist undemocratic options upon the country.

Days before the APC presidential primary last June, Asiwaju Tinubu was brave enough to denounce the machinations within the APC designed to preclude him unlawfully and undemocratically from contesting. It was obvious that the president was at best apathetical to the aspiration of the former Lagos governor, though it was not always so clear at the beginning. But weeks before the fateful primary, when the party and its leaders engaged in feverish jostling to narrow the choices of the party, the public began to fear that all the manoeuvres were designed to discourage and exclude Asiwaju Tinubu from the race. To test the waters and prove his theory, he met the president to intimate him of his intention to contest the presidency. The president pretended to some animation, but his lukewarmness was barely concealed. And when party leaders began to speak about Senate President Ahmed Lawan as consensus candidate, the former Lagos governor went for broke, spoke about his contributions to the making of the APC, how he virtually foisted President Muhammadu Buhari on the party as candidate, and how he made implacable enemies among the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and angered ex-president Goodluck Jonathan just so that the APC cold win the presidency. If anything, he groaned, going by his contributions, it was his turn to reap some benefits. His logic was turned on its head, of course, but the statement perhaps pricked the conscience of some party leaders who rallied behind him, some for private reasons, and others for altruistic reasons. Asiwaju Tinubu went on to win the primary by a healthy margin of 1,271 out of a delegate list of 2,203. Had he kept his peace and forbore to anger party leaders, he would be watching from the sidelines, with the additional anguish of being compelled to support aspirants who are not his betters.

Now, barely four weeks to the presidential election, a similar but even more corrosive scenario is at play. Many APC leaders, it seems, are yet to reconcile themselves to the candidacy of the former Lagos governor. Some party officials still doubt the total commitment of party chairman Abdullahi Adamu, but at least the former Nasarawa governor recognises that as chairman, whether it pleases him or not, and despite being sometimes harshly described as a northern irredentist, he has an obligation to deliver victory to the APC in February. Some northern APC governors are also said to be lukewarm to the ambition of Asiwaju Tinubu for other reasons. Worse, and the suspicion is unfortunately gaining currency, some party members and officials are said to doubt the commitment of the president to the cause of APC victory next month. They cite his noncommittal approach to the election, his admonition to the electorate to vote their conscience without correspondingly and vigorously attempting to help voters appreciate how their conscience should lead them ineluctably to vote APC, and what they really stand to gain from a Tinubu presidency vis-à-vis the egregious options represented by the PDP and Labour Party (LP) candidates.

It was probably against this background that Asiwaju Tinubu, again in Abeokuta, expressed the premonition of a conspiracy to undo his ambition and even scuttle the entire elections. Except a few rabid haters of the APC candidate, there is no doubt that the APC administration has promoted ideas and policies completely at variance with their publicly stated ambition to win the presidency. Last June, APC leaders sponsored a welter of policies and persons to preclude the former Lagos governor from the presidential race, including dethroning much earlier former party chairman Adams Oshiomhole, illegally prolonging the mandate of the Mai Mala Buni interim party leadership, and finally claiming that the president had conspiratorially backed Sen Lawan as consensus candidate. They even toyed with the idea of getting the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to arrest and detain the former Lagos governor in order to give him the jitters. If they went that length last year, few believe they cannot deliberately mess up the ostensibly good naira redesign policy as well as remain indifferent to the sufferings of the people on fuel queues just to put their candidate’s nose out of joint.

The consequence is that Nigerian voters are blaming the APC for their sufferings and woes. In fact, given his skillfulness in political campaigns and strategies, had Asiwaju Tinubu being the opposition candidate, he would have successfully tarred the ruling party with the brush of incompetence, and made them pay a high political price. But he is the ruling party’s candidate, and he can ill afford to distance himself from the party and its many ineffective policies. In Abeokuta, he cleverly blamed the PDP for conspiring with bankers to hoard new notes, and fingered other faceless conspirators for fuel scarcity. His premonitions are incontrovertible, even if the objects of his scorn are a little far-fetched. If he thought President Buhari was actively plotting against his candidacy, his supporters argued, he would have found a way to say it unambiguously. The president has been unable to completely conceal his lack of enthusiasm for Asiwaju Tinubu’s candidacy, and from all indications would not pine in regret should the APC lose in February. This has alarmed most northern APC governors, but at least the president has still gone on to campaign for his party, though a little perfunctorily. It remains to be seen whether his involvement will constitute a positive or negative factor in the APC race to keep the presidency. Asiwaju Tinubu’s preemptions should on the other hand help to expose the shenanigans of APC insiders and PDP outsiders as the country is needlessly subjected to cruel and conspiratorial policies deliberately, provocatively and inexpertly executed weeks to the elections.

CBN’s needless controversies

GODWIN Emefiele is probably the most controversial Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor ever. It is a credit to how powerfully connected he is that he has not been forced to go. It is not just his style and person that are controversial, even his policies, many of them half-baked, and others badly and mischievously executed, are much more controversial. Probably because of his powerful connections, not to say President Muhammadu Buhari’s perplexing style of leadership, Mr Emefiele has repeatedly affronted the law, including CBN rules on Ways and Means lending to an increasingly desperate and profligate federal government. The governor has in a manner of speaking got away with murder. In 2015, at the assumption of office of the Buhari administration, the federal government had less than N800bn as Ways and Means balance with the CBN. The balance, which should not be more than five percent of previous year’s actual collected revenue, is now in excess of N20trn, with the Finance ministry pushing to convert the loans into traceable securities.

Not only has National Assembly oversight responsibility towards the CBN faded almost completely, with the CBN governor now a law to himself, the federal government has, because of its besottedness to an ingratiating Mr Emefiele, also abandoned its disciplinary responsibility to both the CBN and its governor. And with many cabals roaming and cavorting along the apex bank corridors, the governor has felt invincible and become increasingly reckless. He openly plays politics, up to the point of even contesting the presidency of the country, only abandoning the race after coming to grief rather early in the race. He inspired, almost instinctively, the major and ramifying policy of redesigning the naira and phasing out old banknotes, and was condescending enough to give only a month-and-a-half notice. Other countries give lengthy notices. But because they hoped to catch thieves and thwart political ambitions, tasks that are music to the ears of the administration, Mr Emefiele has been indulged.

The consequence of the simplistic approach to central banking in Nigeria and the equally puerile approach to governance is that the country is today in an uproar. The media are inundated with harrowing stories of public anguish over the new notes, but the CBN and the administration have stood pat, unmoved by public pains, and unimpressed by their floundering public and financial policies. If they will extend their punishing deadline, they will probably do it on the last day; but they will groan at the prospect of letting the ‘thieves and political scallywags’ they have identified slip from their nets. Left to them, they will stick to the deadline. Yet, they were the ones who made the deadline unrealistic by being unable to dispense new notes from their December 15 commencement date, in fact only dispensing new notes in earnest a week or so before the final deadline. This is a criminally negligent way of implementing public policy. But what do they care, as long as the ‘criminals’ they hope to drag into their nets are caught.

The Department of State Service (DSS) allegations against Mr Emefiele, suggesting he had funded terrorism, have been vitiated by powerful interests, and even the secret service is stupefied enough to keep the case in abeyance. The drama surrounding the CBN governor’s last overseas trip has petered out into melodrama, while the attempt to arrest him for questioning has also been staved off by the administration’s meddling with secret service investigations. For the remaining months of the administration, Mr Emefiele can rest assured he will come to no harm. He lives in a gilded cage constructed by those he had done some great service and empowered. They will have his back. But whether the protection and preferential treatment will last for all time will depend on the next administration, legislature, and the judiciary. In Nigeria, things are not always what they seem.

In policy enunciations, both Mr Emefiele and the Buhari administration have been extremely fecund in the past few weeks for reasons overt and covert. Speculations are rife as to the covert reasons, reasons that are not inspiring in so far as public policies are concerned or ennobling of the architects of the policies. They do not feel obliged to offer any explanations as to their late surge of ideas and policies, nor do they seem really bothered by the pains these policies are inflicting on the people. It is enough, in a simplistic but mortifying way, that their one-sided analysis of the benefits of the new notes policy satisfies their insular cravings. But if the policy miscarries at the last moment, perhaps the administration and the CBN governor will have a rethink. Being accustomed to brinkmanship, they will persevere for as long as possible in their dictatorial approach to policy-making.

Forced Covid-19 vaccinations?

NUDGED to say or do something about the recrudescence of Covid-19 in China, Nigerian health authorities insisted that they would not do more than increase their surveillance of the disease and possibly subject arriving travellers to rapid diagnostic test. Positive cases, they warned, would be quarantined. They would not immediately compel the reintroduction of protocols birthed by the disease, but they advised Nigerians to on their own think of masking up again in crowded places and washing their hands. Barely one week later, perhaps alarmed by stories coming out of China and other parts of the world consequent upon the trigger effects of winter, the Ministry of Health was quoted as saying they had mandated Port Health authorities to demand vaccination certificates from travellers, while inability to present one would attract compulsory vaccination.

At the peak of the disease, Nigeria insisted on tests from country of departure and tests on arrival, never a compulsory vaccination. What has changed? Assuming they were quoted correctly, they should abandon the nonsense and, if they like, return to previous protocols. Forced vaccination should not be contemplated. 

Nigeria has had more than 50 years to bring closure to the Nigerian Civil War. But eight heads of state/presidents later, not only has a closure remained far-fetched, the crisis of nationhood faced by the country has become exacerbated, if not intractable. Nine constitutions have been deployed to the search for nation-building, stability and order – seven between 1914 and 1963, and essentially two since then (1979 and 1999) – to no avail. The first seven were undone by the January 1966 coup, whose anniversary, like the end of the war in January 1970, is marked today. And the last two constitutions have been inspired and shredded by borrowing from other climes as well as ignorance resulting from wrong diagnosis of the Nigerian condition and even wronger prognostications.

Had a closure been brought to the Biafra War, both the remote and immediate causes of the war would have been dealt with in a way that would enable the country build on solid foundation. The 1966 seemingly one-sided Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu-led coup and the inexpertly drafted January 4-5, 1967 Aburi Accord constituted the immediate causes of the war. Both raised fundamental issues about the politics and administration of the country, but no leadership since the war has grasped their significance, not to talk of holistically addressing them. The consequence was the July 1967-January 1970 war that followed. Sadly, and more deeply reflecting the failure of leadership since 1060 till today, no Nigerian leader has managed to avoid the bitterness and vengefulness, not to say the triumphalism, that have made a lasting solution difficult to attain.

If the immediate causes of the war were difficult to grapple with or understand, the remote causes have proved even more inaccessible to the unperceptive and emotive leadership the country has been saddled with for decades after the war. Some of the remote causes could be gleaned from the seven constitutions enacted since 1914, but many more of the causes were and still remain firmly located in the decisions of the 1884 Berlin Conference and policies and practices of colonial rule, two grave historical events improperly and imperially engrafted into the fabric of the new nation in 1914 and through the incrementally tinkered pre-independence constitutions. From Lugard Constitution to Clifford Constitution, and from Richards to Macpherson and to Lyttleton, and then from the Independence Constitution to the Republican Constitution, there was only a token admission of the disparateness of the Nigerian people, their different stages of civilisation, and their almost parallel worldview.

Yet the little concessions to some of the finer principles of federalism that could make a disparate people coexist, such as were innovatively enacted with the Lyttleton Constitution and reinforced thereafter, were summarily and ignorantly wiped out by the 1966 coup and counter-coup, both of which enthroned and entrenched unitarism. Worse, both the contentious Aburi Accord and its dismal aftermaths simply compounded the problem by catastrophically ignoring and abandoning the federalist principles that loosely but somewhat effectively knitted Nigerian people and cultures together. Until the Aburi summit, civil war, while a likely possibility, was not inevitable. But once the then head of state Yakubu Gowon was convinced that Aburi was a bad deal for the principles and objectives he and his team advocated, and Emeka Ojukwu took an exultant and inflexible stand based on the Accord, war loomed next door. And when finally Col. Gowon jettisoned every pretext to federalism and peremptorily created 12 states out of the four regions in May 1967, war became inevitable.

Nigeria is now precisely at a point where its people and leaders hope that civil rule and elections can midwife competent leaders and help guarantee national stability and development. In fact, last week, President Muhammadu Buhari suggested that multi-party democracy, which he rightly claimed trumped military rule, was the chief requirement for progress and order. Since 1999, many Nigerian leaders and politicians have embraced and promoted the idea that once elections are free and fair, good government and competent leaders are more likely. It is not certain where this phantasm comes from, given its obvious lack of rigorousness and applicability. The country may not be at war in the general sense of the civil war years, but it has continued to fight many small wars and skirmishes, faced unrests of all kinds, triggered banditry, and inspired violent self-determination groups. These are reactions to the imbalances in the system, and a reflection of the dissonance and disequilibria introduced into the polity at foundation, as a matter of fact from the Berlin Conference. Until the country produces leaders competent and visionary enough to coax the people into contending with and resolving the country’s structural imbalances, no amount of good government can guarantee the kind of stability and development conjured in the minds of many Nigerians. The alternative is to wait until the crisis comes to a head and situations (read revolution) seize the initiative and compel a rethinking and rejigging of the superstructure. No one can say conclusively which is better or what the outcome would be.

The perception is that with the failure of both ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and President Buhari, who had enough goodwill at their inaugurations to remake the country’s foundations and to seize the moment and get the constitution rewritten in consonance with the principles of federalism, politicians will continue to run the country in fits and starts, with the dangerous eclecticism that has led to state failures elsewhere. Even if the next elections do not miscarry, the election of a new and competent president will still not obviate the need for a structural realignment. The Aburi Accord, which by the way made mincemeat of the so-called accomplishments and endowments of youths, shows quite clearly why it is urgent to reexamine the country’s foundations. More relevantly, the immediate causes of the civil war, themselves a reflection, manifestation and calcification of the remote causes, indicate why a closure simply must be brought to the 1967-1970 war and the colonial attenuation of local cultures and civilisations if stability and lasting progress are to be guaranteed.

Without a shred of doubt, and regardless of the frequent assertion that the problem of Nigeria is not the constitution but the people, both the 1999 Constitution and its progenitor, the 1979 Constitution, are misshapen and largely inoperable. Constitutional expert Professor Ben Nwabueze last week acknowledged that their presumptions during the drafting of the 1979 Constitution were faulty and flowed from a misreading of the politics and structural discrepancies that undermined the Republican Constitution of 1963. He is right, and the country must be grateful to him for acknowledging their error during the drafting of the 1979 document. A history of the post-war constitutions of Germany and Japan shows why sound and visionary leadership are integral and indeed indispensable to the drafting of a great and enduring constitution. Chief Obasanjo was no such leader in 1978, nor was Sani Abacha, another military head of state, nor obviously President Buhari who has offered no original or even borrowed thought on democracy and the constitution.

At the end of the war in 1970, the victorious General Gowon government naively declared that there was no victor, and no vanquished. Of course there was a victor, and the vanquished knew itself. Instead of sentimental pronouncements, it was expected that a year or two after the war he would undertake the extensive revision of the country’s constitution, assembling great minds and political leaders to rethink the country’s founding document, and taking cognisance of those contentious issues that imperiled the country. He and his team ought to have demonstrated that they learnt something from the mishap of the Aburi Accord, the coup and counter-coup, and the civil war itself. More appropriately, they ought to have rethought the 1914 Amalgamation and found an ironclad way to get the various nationalities coexisting seamlessly with one another. Sadly, the regnant opinion among his team and even the country after the war was that more centralisation was the anodyne for the sanguinary events of the pre-war years.

As everyone now knows, the reigning opinion is that centralisation is the bane of the country. After and if the constitution is redrawn, untrammeled federalism will be the needed antidote to misrule and increasingly violent self-determination campaigns. As the country hurries into the next polls – and there is really no alternative for now – there will be little time spared for finding a closure to the civil war or the colonial fabric imperiously sewn by the British and forced on Nigeria. Until a closure comes, peace and development may continue to prove elusive.  

Prof Akintoye on a whirligig

Reports indicate that Prof. Banji Akintoye, leader of Ilana Omo Odua Worldwide, a Yoruba self-determination advocacy group, has withdrawn his resignation as leader and chairman. He never fully disengaged from the group after he first resigned a few weeks ago, officials have now reiterated. His successor, Prof Wale Adeniran, has also resigned as the former new leader, and is now also being prevailed upon to continue his advocacy within the group. A crisis of confidence had unnerved the group and led to resignations and appointments, thus creating a whirligig for Ilana upon which the emotions of the leaders were spun, and with many of the group’s functionaries remaining tightlipped about just what they were fighting over. Some reports, however, indicate that the crisis involved the usual Nigerian ogre of transparency and accountability, as discussed in this place two weeks ago.

Ilana may not always prosecute the objectives of the group expertly and exquisitely, but there is no doubt that their objectives are laudable, and would be even more so had they managed to summon to the fore the political virtues and administrative principles they claimed their perennially laggard country lacked. But if they see their advocacy only as the first tentative steps in the ultimate goal of delivering a just, democratic and modern Yoruba nation, their internecine combat would be worth the sacrifice. However, can they resist the sneaky thought of wishing that the ongoing effort by the Southwest to clinch the leadership of Nigeria would end in fiasco? If it does not, as many indeed expect, Ilana would founder even quicker than they dared hope.   

Buhari and mixed signals

When he met with Catholic bishops in Abuja last Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari swore beneath his breath he would leave a stronger, repositioned economy and a stable polity significantly improved by the successful fight against insurgency and banditry. It is not obvious how he hoped to reposition the economy in the about four months left for his administration, three of which he will become lame duck. Nor did he explicate his epiphany about Boko Haram which he described as a ploy to destroy Nigeria after first indulging and then placating the sect. The bishops needed to be told something, it was clear. But that something should have been plausible rather than romantic. His administration has undoubtedly affected the country’s infrastructural outlook; but if in seven years or more he had not articulated nor implemented policies designed to reposition the economy, it is doubtful he could begin in the closing weeks of his administration to inspire a structural reengineering of an economy he had burdened with debts and run along suffocating unitarist lines.

A day before he met the bishops, President Buhari had boasted at a banquet held in his honour in Damaturu, Yobe State, that he could not be blackmailed with stories of unexplained wealth stashed here or abroad, whether investment, supposedly in tax havens, or property owned through proxies. To him, having a clean nose is an invaluable contribution to the anti-corruption war, perhaps far more than a structured, systemic and enduring approach to preventing and curbing graft. He did not of course make such direct correlations, but it was implied, given the enthusiasm with which he set store by his personal probity. He is, however, mistaken. Personal probity will receive nothing more than a footnote in the pages of history.

What finally addled everyone’s wits was his expression of concern at the plenitude of coups or coup attempts in Africa. He parroted the regnant idea of the sanctity and beauty of multi-party democracy, a system he lauded as being far more preferable to military rule. Apart from his inability to understand democracy, which he confuses with elections, or equates with multi-party system, he at least gave a little semblance in his last year or so in office of respecting some of the pillars of democracy. It would, however, have been far better had he really in his two terms made significant contributions to redefining and entrenching democracy, despite his limited understanding of the concept. Democracy was not strengthened under him; that job, like the economy he romanticised about repositioning and the corruption he feigned to fight, must now be left to his successor.

Nigeria’s puzzling response to China’s COVID-19

In their response to the upsurge in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the world, particularly China, United States and United Kingdom, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) initially suggested it was more interested in maintaining its surveillance position than in erecting barricades. In a statement the organisation issued more than one week ago, it said: “…We continue to monitor global COVID-19 epidemiology including genomics data as part of the ongoing pandemic response…The NCDC-led COVID-19 Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) is monitoring COVID-19 trends in China, the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), South Africa, India, and other countries with a high volume of traffic to and from Nigeria.”

But given the spike in daily cases in China, especially consequent upon discontinuing its zero-Covid policy after massive street protests, many countries have targeted their responses at China with regulations that subject those with Chinese passports or travelling history through China to some forms of scrutiny. It made sense. But instead of going beyond monitoring and proceeding to compel travel ers from China to tests, Nigeria has typically widened the nest to include every traveler. According to the Director, Port Health Services, Dr Geoffrey Okatubo, every traveler will be screened for Covid-19 using Rapid Diagnostic Test kits. Positive cases, he said, would be quarantined, and negative cases monitored. It was not up to a month ago that Nigeria lifted all restrictions, including its cumbersome and ineffective online requirements and extortionist payments.

Now, instead of a surgical approach to isolating travelers from a few countries, particularly China, everyone will again be subjected to screening. The spike in Covid-19 cases in China began last December after massive street demonstrations to protest the deaths of some quarantined people in a housing fire. Since last month, the daily cases and deaths have thus soared. Worse, the virus has once again begun to spread to other countries as Chinese travelers get on the move. The cases, fuelled by a new variant said to spread faster than previous variants, are in their thousands, and deaths in their hundreds. The NCDC has said that the culpable Chinese variant has not yet manifested on Nigeria’s genomic map. Apart from the epidemiological crisis it is capable of triggering in Nigeria, despite black Africa’s inexplicable resistance to the disease, there is also the economic crisis the country must contend with should the new variant berth in Nigeria.

The holistic approach adopted by Nigeria may very well mitigate the recrudescent virus, but it will help more significantly if official policy takes cognisance of Chinese passport holders and any other person with a travelling history through China and its other associated territories. Many Nigerians were at first bewildered as officials downplayed the significance of targeting and isolating countries where Covid-19 had spiked. They now seem to have softened a little; but care must be taken to ensure that a higher than normal burden is not placed on Nigerians, as this country needlessly did through 2021 and 2022, than countries like China battling new upsurges.

Contrary to what many supporters of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo think, those who chide him for his unusual and intemperate letter endorsing the presidential candidacy of Labour Party’s Peter Obi are not doing so because they regret his refusal to support their own candidates. He has the right and pleasure to support anyone he wishes, regardless of the bad choices he has made over decades. What the complainants quarrel with is the tone of the endorsement letter, its instigation rather than logical persuasion of the youths, and the former president’s unbelievable deployment of mediocre philosophy of leadership. He is free to support anyone he likes, whether his critics like it or not, but it was expected that he would do it with the dignified poise of a leader, the decorum associated with great leadership, and with balanced, even-tempered and unassailable logic. He had all of 85 years to develop and hone that poise and maturity, and over 11 years as head of state and president to acquire the experience needed to set the right example for the nation. Now, all those years seem a horrible waste.

Somehow, as is customary of him, his letter of endorsement was full of hysteria: hysteria against his imaginary foes, hysteria against his successors in office, and hysteria against his compatriots and God whom he sometimes gives the impression is permanently at his beck and call. Mr Obi, a sophist like no other, probably deserves Chief Obasanjo’s support. The two sophists are thus obsessed with specious reasoning, and roundly complement each other. For whatever the endorsement is worth, no one should begrudge the controversial former president from backing Mr Obi’s candidacy. It was perhaps too far-fetched for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to expect Chief Obasanjo’s endorsement. Too much had soured in their relationship to realistically expect even a grin from the ex-president. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) would have been unable to fathom any endorsement from Abeokuta. That left the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, and LP’s Mr Obi to vie for the bilious old man’s attention. It would have been incongruous for the APC, as the party knows very well, to receive the nod from their old and unforgiving antagonist and sparring partner.

All the leading candidates for the 2023 presidential election had visited Chief Obasanjo in Abeokuta, more as a courtesy than necessity; but it would be hard to gauge what value they would have attached to his endorsement had he deemed them worthy of the gesture. Even Mr Obi who finally got the nod has remained nonplussed. He is uncertain what to do with the endorsement, especially seeing that the repeated hurrahs he had got from the politicised churches of Nigeria had not given his candidacy the needed boost. The streetwise LP candidate knows by instinct that Chief Obasanjo is long past his expiry date. In fact, much more, he knows that all that is left of the phlegmatic old warhorse from Abeokuta is his nuisance value. But better not to draw the ire of the sleeping bear: if he cannot be for you, at least make him indifferent to you. That was why Alhaji Atiku and Asiwaju Tinubu visited him. Both men were too smart not to know where Chief Obasanjo leaned; but they thought they could lessen the pungency of his vitriol. Alas, the former president remains as incandescent and malignant as ever.

When Chief Obasanjo first gave the solid hint mid-December that he might endorse Mr Obi, this column challenged him to defend his suppositions about the LP candidate. It is unlikely the former president read the challenge, for he is too cocksure of everything to care what anyone writes, and too narcissistic to bother about any interest but his. However, he has finally explained his choice, though the explanations do not do credit to his long years in office, nor to his vaunted statesmanlike ability to see the woods for the trees, to see from the mountaintop, and to light a lamp to the national feet. He rests his support for Mr Obi on two main but leprous legs, one of which is discernible from his attempt to prequalify the candidates. Hear him: “From interaction and experience, and as mentees as most of them claim, I will, without prejudice, fear or ill-will, make bold to say that there are four major factors to watch out for in a leader you will consider to hoist on yourself and on the rest of Nigerians in the coming election and they are what I call TVCP: Track record of ability and performance; Vision that is authentic, honest and realistic; Character and attributes of a lady and a gentleman who are children of God and obedient to God; and Physical and mental capability with soundness of mind as it is a very taxing and tasking assignment at the best of times and more so it is at the most difficult time that we are.”

This prequalification of presidential candidates is clearly pedestrian, and it is hard to imagine that it comes from a former president. How he equated those who visited him – for after all, they also visited other past rulers – as his mentees remains baffling. How could a man whose politics is in constant flux have mentored anyone when he had no identifiable ideology, no private or public principles, and is capable of the most corrosive mendacity any liar anywhere could subscribe to? The simple answer is that it is customary of Chief Obasanjo to exaggerate his recollections and be infatuated with his own tall stories. Having read very little of any serious stuff since he left office, and thus failed to improve himself, it is unsurprising that he embraces flighty ideas and panaceas. Just reading books on Julius and Augustus Caesar, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Deng Xiaoping, and Charles de Gaulle, among many other great leaders in Asia, Africa and Europe would have helped sharpened his perspective on leadership. But even using the crude four-way test contained in his letter of endorsement, it is hard to explain why he cannot see that his choice failed all but one of the tests. He then went on whimsically to denounce the emi lokan (my turn) slogan popularised by Asiwaju Tinubu, insisting that leadership does not admit to such principle, but turned round to embrace awon lokan (their turn) to underscore Mr Obi’s bid as an Igbo man. As customary, the contradictions are lost on him.

 But there is an even more pernicious and infinitely more pedestrian, instigative and divisive second leg for Chief Obasanjo to stand his endorsement of Mr Obi: the LP candidate’s youth, a factor embedded in the former president’s four-way test. Why he smothered the third of the four-way test – that of obedience to God – whatever that means, is equally hard to fathom. In any case, he has zeroed in on the youth factor. So, hear him at his sentimental worst: “My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be. And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn). The power to change is in your hands. Your future, my future, the future of grandchildren and great grandchildren is in your hands. Politics and elections are numbers game. You have the numbers, get up, stand up and make your numbers count.”

To hear a former president instigate this sentimental and comical revolution is truly troubling. He and many others in his generation were heads of state in their youth. What did they do when they were given the opportunity to lead the country? What did they bring into leadership? What constitu tional structure for leadership recruitment did he, in eight years, institute to help produce the right leaders? Both as a youth and elder, he led Nigeria without character, morality and principles. Now, in his infatuations, he is advocating a beguiling and suffocating return to emptiness. Mr Obi whom he touts as competent, but whose errant ears must be continually pulled, supposedly by Chief Obasanjo and his ilk, had the opportunity to lead Anambra for eight years; has the state become a destination for youths and elders, or has it showcased visionary leadership? And how is it possible, even in the closing years of Chief Obasanjo’s life, when he should be wiser and less given to histrionics, that he cannot appreciate that leadership is not about age but about character, discipline, intuition, intellect, and vision etc.? Neither he nor Mr Obi possesses any of the attributes he speaks dreamily about; it was, therefore, a trifle too easy for him to pontificate grandly as the grand mentor of political heavyweights, including, untruthfully, Mr Obi himself.

INEC statistics suggest that Nigerian youths dominate the voting population; it is understandable why Chief Obasanjo has tried to instigate them against the rest of the country without caring what qualities or character the aspirant or candidate possesses, or what the consequences of division might be. Using the age segmentation tool is, however, a mask for the former president’s other insidious objectives, as indicated in this place on December 18. Some analysts have snidely speculated he is not quite the Yoruba man he has all along pretended to be, but given his unbridled narcissism and messianic fervour, the ethnicity or religion a candidate belongs to hardly matters to him. He is neither a federalist nor a democrat, and if he tolerated the rule of law, which as president he treated as an inconvenience, it is because he had encountered a greater force he could not resist. He works hard, but he is incapable of any kind of altruism, and his leadership style has been as self-indulgent and ad hoc as his perspectives have been desultory. How such a man can now pretend to nobility in the selection of the next president, when he more than thrice bastardised that process in the past, is beyond comprehension. After ruling Nigeria for more than a decade, and having done nothing to reform or restructure the system to create a more durable constitution and viable democracy, it is shocking that he still sees nothing wrong in instigating and promoting division.

It is fortuitous that Chief Obasanjo has openly endorsed Mr Obi with the same questionable judgement he openly schemed for third term in 2006. His nose will be put out of joint in the coming weeks, as it was in 2006. Had he offered plausible reasons for endorsing the LP candidate, the country would have had to grudgingly respect his choice, despite his customary self-centredness. The APC is fortunate he did not endorse their candidate, for they would have had to lie in bed with a demanding stranger and cocquet. They gave him the courtesy of a visit, as they gave other past Nigerian rulers. Surely it could not be because he had done stupendously well as president, as he erroneously seemed to believe; yet he tries to constitute himself into a sort of national lodestar from which future leaders must take their reference. Courtesy is nothing more than courtesy, no matter what anyone reads into it. In the years ahead, such courtesies would not be given anyone but the electorate who, hopefully, can acquire the education and judgement needed to discern and vote for leaders with character.

Ajaokuta Steel’s unfinished business

In late December, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Kogi State to commission projects. In his remarks, he mentioned the Ajaokuta Steel concession which had been mired in controversy and litigation. The matter had been resolved, he exulted, and the project could now get a new lease of life in the hands of a new concessionaire. Here is what he said on the occasion: “I am glad to report that as we begin to round off in office, we can genuinely say that our administration has rescued Ajaokuta from all legal disabilities and it is now ready for concessioning to a private investor with the right profiles to put it to work for Nigeria in general and Kogi State in particular. The process has cost this Federal Government over $400m so far, but I consider it money well spent as we move closer to achieving our objective of transforming Kogi State into Nigeria’s iron and steel powerhouse.”

But was it money well spent? On September 11, 2022, Palladium commented on the controversy and observed as follows after Nigerian negotiators recommended a payout to the failed concessionaire, Global Steel Holdings (GSH): “…The recent developments have raised many questions. It would not be out of place to constitute a judicial panel to unearth the shenanigans that accompanied the contract and negotiations. One, the panel needs to get to the root of how a concession was in 2004 granted a company that had no expertise in the job it bade for. Two, knowing the concession would fail, who instigated the termination of the concession just 55 days to its lawful and beneficial termination? Did they not peruse the contract papers competently? Three, the company engaged in asset stripping and tax evasion, among other crimes; why were its promoters not prosecuted? After all, what was involved was not a private asset, but a public, national asset which does not admit of forgiveness for criminal acts. Four, in 2016, the Buhari administration okayed the negotiated agreement carried out under the Jonathan administration. Why was it not implemented? The National Assembly as well as Mines and Steel minister announced that a deal had been reached at no financial costs to Nigeria. Why did GSH threaten to return to arbitration years after?

“The $496m deal may apparently have been done transparently, but all the issues that preceded it were anything but transparent. Many of the Nigerian officials connected with the affair were either incompetent or complicit, or both. The government has indicated it would pay the agreed sum in days, almost as if the country is being stampeded. For a country that has haggled over $23m Abacha loot repatriation and ASUU strike, here are two insufferable cases of hundreds of millions of dollars being proposed to be paid to either legal consultants or a controversial and incompetent company…The least the government owes Nigerians, after so much bungling and allegations of underhand dealings, is to subject the two payments to ‘integrity’ tests. The dealings are unlikely to pass muster.”

President Buhari’s Kogi remarks, however, indicate that over $400m has been paid to the complainants without any answers given to the controversial questions that enveloped the appalling deal. The government can stubbornly stick to its guns, but it would have done well to at least deign to answer some of the questions well-meaning Nigerians raised about the putrid deal.

2003: ASUU’s annus mirabilis?

For the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), 2022, no thanks to the combative Labour minister Chris Ngige and the quiescent Education minister Adamu Adamu, was unquestionably an annus horribilis. Dr Ngige and the intransigent Buhari administration, it appears, are not through pauperising the union. Claiming that ASUU had also infracted certain union auditing rules, the government has put a lid on the remittance of check-off dues to the union. The war obviously continues by other means.

But ASUU should be of good cheer, for a new government will be in place some four months to come. Hopefully, it would be one that is proactive and innovative on education, one that would not double-cross Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila to renege on gentlemen’s agreement. Might this year yet turn out to be an annus mirabilis for the embattled union?

He will probably deny he has unequivocally endorsed Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi, but after months of dithering, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo all but let the cat out of the bag last week in Enugu. There had been rumours that Mr Obi was his preferred candidate, but every time he was confronted about his choice, he either quibbled or tried to deflect it. Nearly all the serious contenders for the stool had visited him in Abeokuta, seeking, for whatever it was worth, his endorsement. He left them guessing. When the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, visited him in company with a host of highly acknowledged Yoruba leaders, they also left his presence thinking that they had won the elections. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who spoke with the press after the visit, stopped just short of saying Chief Obasanjo had endorsed Asiwaju Tinubu. But the Speaker exuded so much infectious confidence that no one thought the ex-president would ever gesture in another direction.

Nigerians underestimate Chief Obasanjo. He is capable of incredible somersaults, including making the hound and the hare think he is hunting and running with them. But the elections are just a few weeks away, and the former president is as anxious about framing the issues that should influence the presidential poll as he is about determining who wins. His remarks after he signed the condolence register opened by Ohanaeze Ndigbo in Enugu in honour of the eminent First Republic Minister of Aviation, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, who died on November 1, were however such that it would be difficult for the former president to walk back his decision to throw in his lot with Mr Obi. The LP candidate was also there, obviously not a coincidence. So, too, was the dour factional leader of Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo, whose open and long-standing endorsement of the LP candidate had received much flak in the Southwest.

Chief Obasanjo had remarked on the occasion: “So, if I put my hand on someone, it means that comparing with the other, I see that there is a merit that will be of benefit to Nigeria…And I believe that Chief Adebanjo stands for the same thing…What I believe, and what I think Pa Ayo Adebanjo believes, is not ethnic, it’s not sectional, it is not religious, it is Nigeria. I believe in equity, I believe in justice, I believe in one Nigeria.” According to newspaper reports, he went on to explain that Nigeria was at a critical moment and she needed someone with the character and capacity to turn things around. Character and capacity to turn things around? And yet he endorses Mr Obi? Well, only Chief Obasanjo is capable of reconciling the irreconcilable. As far as endorsements go, the former president is also in controversial company with other power brokers in Nigeria, particularly former heads of state. The others may not have made unequivocal statements about their choices, but the media suspect that a few key northern leaders are split between supporting Mr Obi and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar.

It is reassuring that no retired general is in the race for the 2023 presidency, else the retired generals might be forced to coalesce into one jaundiced and nightmarish pigeonhole, as they did in 1999. It is also reassuring that finally, Nigeria’s power brokers, who had for decades influenced who became president, are about to lose their deposits. After cajoling and railroading the electorate into embracing selfish choices for decades, the country had still not fared any better. In fact, Nigeria had fared much worse. Now, the country is truly at a critical juncture, with fissures manifesting openly and precariously. Whatever choice it makes this time will determine whether it survives as a nation or finally become a failed state. The electorate may not have the dispassion and education to make the right and informed choice, especially seeing that many intellectuals and educated citizens themselves yield incredibly to sentiments and prejudices, but every cloud has a silver lining and voters may this time make the right choice.

Chief Obasanjo and other past Nigerian leaders are unlikely to be counted among those who do right on leadership selection even by mistake. They never seem to want a president who would surpass them, someone with a mind of his own, someone competent and knowledgeable about how modern economies and states should be governed and would not need their help or sanctimonious talk and input, someone who would disgrace their past puny efforts. Sinking into that sort of irrelevance is too high a price for them to pay, and so they have often been irrational in supporting candidates lacking in self-esteem, and incomprehensible in analysing the qualities a leader must possess. Chief Obasanjo demonstrated this shortcoming once again in Enugu last week when he openly pondered the character of the leader Nigeria needs at this time. He, however, did not elaborate.

There was nothing in Chief Obasanjo’s Enugu remarks to show he appreciated the character of the leader he glibly spoke about, seeing especially that he is himself a former leader, military general in wartime, military head of state in peacetime, twice elected president also in peacetime. He was expected to have a metaphysical grasp of leadership character. But there was nothing he said last week that showed he understood the essential Mr Obi beyond the candidate’s superficialities, that he knew the substance of the man and politician, nor did he give the public any indication that whatever character the LP candidate possessed was either suitable for these times or capable of ‘turning things around’. He should have stuck to Chief Adebanjo’s rather simple ratiocination of what qualifies Mr Obi for president – his ethnicity, to which is leashed the dubious virtue of ethnic (geopolitical) fairness or equity. But in Enugu last Monday, Chief Obasanjo tried to disavow the ethnic component influencing his choice, insisting with tons of contradictions that his preference was shaped by character and capacity. Nothing he said on that occasion, however, corroborated character or capacity, nothing except that he identified with Chief Adebanjo in suggesting that since they as Yoruba men both support Mr Obi, an Igbo, then the support could not be ethnic. This is syllogistic recklessness.

Chief Obasanjo is of course at liberty to endorse anyone who catches his fancy, but as a former leader, he owes the country a better explanation for his endorsement than he has given. This is not to say that his more than one decade in office as a leader entitles him to that better understanding of the fundamentals of leadership and the intricate and esoteric essence of character. No, not at all. The relationship between leadership and character, as the increasingly incompetent flow of leadership all over the world demonstrates, is not always directly proportional. Chief Obasanjo, by his sheer longevity in office, has admittedly been the most astute and hard working leader Nigeria has produced to date. But even he falls far below the great standard. He knows little about leadership beyond presiding over the affairs of a country and having the smartness to survive in office, both as military head of state and elected president. In both, there were precious few occasions in which he showed the discipline and intellect required to envision the future for his country or altruistically back the right candidate for office.

Having backed the wrong person as his successor in 2007, and refusing to allow democratic process to prevail in determining his successor, it was clear he knew little about the character he now prescribes and assigns to his choice for 2023. Writing in The Edge of the Sword, former French leader, Charles de Gaulle speaks of a man of character as someone who “finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realise his potentialities.” In which year out of the eight he spent as Anambra State governor did Mr Obi demonstrate character? At a book launch, the hyperbolic Chief Adebanjo also spoke of Mr Obi glowingly as “a person that would cool me down for a better tomorrow,” adding, “your future is in your hands and your positive action will make Peter Obi the next President.” Not for once did any of the two endorsers mention Mr Obi as fulfilling the great test of character a leader must pass before he is recommended for higher responsibilities. Indeed, in that same book launch, the chairman of the occasion also spoke of “Peter Obi (as) the Moses of our time. He is blessed and anointed to change the whole vices and I assure you that he and Datti will take us to the Promised Land.” Donning Mr Obi with the messianic garb of deliverer has in fact become customary with the church, where he has been promoted to the level of transcendental leadership. How gullible can people be?

Mr Obi, as a matter of fact, cultivates and deceptively politicises the church to augment his electoral chances. Whether this is advisable or not remains to be seen. But he was at the last Shiloh, the Winners Chapel annual retreat and spiritual conference in Ota, Ogun State, where his presence politicked for him far more than any ecclesiastical statement. There, as has become the custom in all the churches he has visited, he received deafening acclamation after David Oyedepo’s second-in-command, David Abioye, introduced him. Bishop Abioye is perhaps Mr Obi’s most frenetic supporter, and has sought openly and unapologetically to sway the church to support the candidate of his choice. It is, however, significant that the more subtle Bishop Oyedepo summed up that what Nigeria needs in 2023 is a deliverer, not a leader. It is not clear whether he spoke knowingly of the qualities the next president must possess or he chanced upon that logic and argument, but he at least prefers a deliverer, whatever that means. Whether he knows that Mr Obi is not a leader, and has so far not shown the gifts a leader must possess, is also unclear. Even then, drawing a dichotomy between a deliverer and leader is indeed problematic, for a leader must have, among other gifts, the capacity to deliver the people from their woes, and vice versa.

Nigeria has been independent for some 62 years. Either by military coups or elections, it has nevertheless been unable to put the right leader with character and competence in office. Those who shot their way into office ineluctably became leaders without the requisite qualifications. Chief Obasanjo was one of them. Having assumed positions they did not merit, and having learnt little after they vacated office, they have struggled to identify leaders imbued with character and capacity, and had often backed the wrong horses. They are repeating the same mistake. Do not believe them when they isolate age, among other things, as a prerequisite for leadership; after all, most of them assumed leadership in their youth and made a hash of ruling Nigeria. Even the iconic Murtala Mohammed inspired policies that virtually upended Nigeria and catapulted it into the fast lane to nowhere. Chief Obasanjo, despite his two terms as elected president and about three years as military head of state, has still proved unable appreciate character and capacity, let alone see them in the men he has spent his infatuations promoting.

Nigeria is not just 62 years old; it has also teetered badly between military dictatorship and civilian rule. Some 24 years into democratic rule in the Fourth Republic, national leaders have been unable to appreciate the urgent need to reform or even recreate the country’s democracy, either by substantial constitutional amendments or by total recreation of its constitution to produce a unique democracy anchored on leadership recruitment processes more inspiring and enduring than just elections. Given the endorsements by Chief Obasanjo, former leaders, religious groups, not to say the appalling incorporation of misbegotten factors in leadership selection, the country will be fortunate to avoid a mediocre choice in 2023. If with all their years in and out of office, Chief Obasanjo and others, including church leaders, can still not identify the salient factors to guide their preferences or appreciate what leadership character entails, how on earth would the ordinary voter, some of them poorly educated, be trusted to back the right candidates?

The media, as the spat between ThisDay publisher Nduka Obaigbena and APC presidential candidate’s media handlers show, is sadly not immune to the mediocrity inundating the rest of the society. Media outfits can of course support and advocate for their candidates as they please. But to do it irresponsibly and arrogantly while hiding disingenuously behind the constitution reflects a corrosive whittling of media ethics at its worst. The APC candidate’s handlers may have had the upper hand in the eyes of the public, but they should brace for far more insidious, subterranean and perverse responses from their opponents in the guise of fair reporting. The denudation of public morality and professional ethic has trickled down from incompetent national leadership and snowballed into an avalanche. The corrosion will continue, for there is nothing in the horizon to arrest the drift, not from past leaders so-called, not from the larger society that can hardly tell its right from its left, and obviously not from the media which the association of newspaper owners and broadcast stations have carelessly left over the years to be hijacked by unscrupulous elements.

In aligning themselves behind one candidate or the other, most of Nigeria’s past leaders showed a dismal capacity to even contemplate the future. The country is unraveling before their eyes; and they are fiddling with shortsighted glee. In 1993, Gen. Babangida was too self-centred to appreciate the dangers he was exposing the country to by annulling the presidential election of that year. He still defends his folly. In 1999, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar failed to appreciate the benefit of delinking the democratic experiment of that year from any military hangover. He still smugly defends his direct and simplistic approach to returning the country to civil rule. In 2007, Chief Obasanjo cajoled his party into embracing his choice for the presidential election of that year. His party was cowed, and the former president still justifies the ensuing debacle, insisting offhandedly that his support for an aspirant did not necessarily translate into doing the job for him. Now, in the name of fairness and democracy, President Muhammadu Buhari has been standoffish about the next president, a clear indication that he is unable to summon the depth and vision to put the country in safe, courageous and competent hand.

Yet, millenniums ago, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was agitated about what would come after his reign and was anxious to do the right thing to ensure his empire lasted. Julius Caesar went out of his way to identify his sickly nephew (Octavius) Augustus in order to sustain the Roman Empire’s greatness. And the Ottoman emperor Suleyman the Magnificent identified the most competent among his children as successor, with a little help from his wife of course, just like King David and Solomon. And then there is China today with its unique leadership recruitment process that enables competent administrators to assume office at various levels. Unlike Nigerian leaders, these all had the altruism and depth, of almost ethereal proportion, in appreciating leaders with character and capacity. The fear today is that Nigeria is in a frenzy of emotionalism regarding their choice of the next president. Intellectuals, political partisans, media essayists, presidency officials, and religious leaders appear to lack the ability to appreciate competent and visionary leaders. Should they get it wrong this time, especially at a time when the choice is even far easier to make than in the past, the country may be unable to survive the folly.

FORMER Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara had for months acrimoniously led a northern Christian coalition to oppose the All Progressives Congress same-faith presidential ticket. That coalition has now fractured irretrievably as Mr Lawal and a few others, to the consternation of Mr Dogara, peremptorily chose to endorse Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi. In a statement he issued two Thursdays ago but dated November 23, Mr Lawal failed to explain why he broke ranks with the former Speaker. Two reasons have, however, been proffered for the hasty endorsement: either the coalition was taking too long to announce its stand due to an unbridgeable disagreement within the group or the initial lack of clarity on the subject by the Christian umbrella body, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), was proving too equivocal and constraining. Whatever the reasons are, Mr Lawal has finally and perhaps irrevocably jumped the gun and gone to town with the fractured view of his group.

Last Friday, Mr Dogara also headed North to seek for a quarry to endorse. He inexplicably found and embraced former vice president Atiku Abubakar, yes the same PDP presidential candidate who flipped-flopped over the murder of Deborah Samuel last May for what her killers alleged was blasphemy. In the view of the former Speaker, APC would soon implode, and LP could not possibly win the polls, and even if it did, it could not govern. After denouncing the APC for opposing inclusiveness and demonstrating a lack of sensitivity and fairness, he nevertheless offered no explanation for the contradiction of supporting another northern Muslim after about eight years of the northern Muslim Muhammadu Buhari. It is strange that any Christian from the North could fail to see that what is propelling Messrs Lawal and Dogara has nothing to do with Christian principles and values.

The former SGF predicated his group’s endorsement on the following: “As one of the foremost critics of APC’s single-faith presidential ticket and also in deference to those who have patiently waited for our guidance as to where to pitch our tent, after a painstaking review and analysis of the alternative presidential tickets, we now wish to recommend the Obi/Datti presidential ticket. Obviously, a Christian/Muslim presidency like the Obi/Datti one will be most appropriate at this stage of our political journey, more so, since we are now transiting from a Muslim/Christian presidency. It will also achieve the regional shift of the presidency from the current NW/SW to a SE/NW presidency as popularly being canvassed…”

Mr Lawal’s presumptuously political arguments are not infallible. They are in fact deeply flawed, regardless of his conclusions. He is chairman of the coalition, yet he lacked the discipline and sagacity to wait for a consensus before announcing the endorsement. He thus opened himself to searing allegation of inducement in his endorsement of Mr Obi. An online newspaper quoted a source within his group as denying the allegation; but rumours of improper dealing have refused to go away. Mr Lawal, who is a pastor, may very well be motivated by purely ecclesiastical reasons. But by hastily throwing his lot with Mr Obi, leaving his co-traveller, Mr Dogara, in a bind, he confirms irrevocably and demeaningly that he and others like him are motivated by personal not Christian principles. The former Speaker initially disowned the endorsement and claimed that the coalition he co-chaired was still preparing its position to be announced at an interfaith event a little later. It would have been a tall order for him to subsequently align himself with Mr Lawal’s hasty endorsement which mixed religious motives with improperly digested regional and geopolitical objectives. The former SGF is entitled to vent his distaste for APC’s style and politics, but given the noble goals he pretends to prosecute, not to say the body of Christ he claims to represent, it is indefensible that his style and choice do not also evince the wisdom frequently associated with his faith.

It is not known whether Mr Lawal took Mr Dogara into confidence before releasing his one-sided statement, but hours after the SGF’s statement was made public, the former Speaker issued a damning rebuttal suggesting that the coalition was yet to speak. Mr Dogara was less combative, but he did not mince words in disowning Mr Lawal’s unilateral action. Should Mr Dogara and the remnant with him eventually align themselves with Mr Lawal at any later date, his effort would be superfluous. But should they take a different position, as they have done, the dissension would bring to an end an exercise replete with anger than Christian commonsense. In the circumstance, the self-interest and political survival that brought them together proved potent enough to split their ranks and make nonsense of their homiletical verbiage on behalf of Christianity.

No one knows what role the initial pussyfooting by CAN has played in compounding the confusion. The umbrella Christian body had at first tempestuously condemned the APC’s same-faith presidential ticket, while many of its leading lights had also endorsed Mr Obi before they had the chance to reflect on the quality and competence of the other candidates, or even before they had the chance to consider the terrible consequences of trying to cajole the faithful to vote one way or the other. Unable to give the necessary guidance their members needed in those heady days after the parties unveiled their presidential tickets, many groups within CAN ran riot with their opinions and positions. But finally, after many uncertain and temperamental months, CAN has done the right thing by listening to the candidates and announcing to Nigerian Christians to vote their conscience. This position may doubtless take the wind out of the sail of the Lawal-Dogara coalition, despite the refusal of a few CAN chapters to embrace neutrality. Whatever the Lawal-Dogara coalition says now, assuming they can even force unity upon themselves, will only have minimal significance in the Christian North. That significance would be insufficient to tilt the pendulum one way or the other.

Whenever Christian leaders abandon the tenets of their faith to swim in the murky waters of politics, they have often fared very badly. Lending their pulpits to politics and politicians not only disrespects their Lord and compromises and pollutes their faith, it also predisposes them into violating in the same breath the love and unity their faith enjoins them to show one another. Their assignment is to witness to and illuminate the world, and to season and preserve it by building men and women of unimpeachable character to be deployed, like Daniel and Joseph, as ambassadors of their faith to the secular world. Their early fathers cut and paved the path for them to follow; but they have redefined their assignment to mean building and promoting presidents and vice presidents, senators and lawmakers, quite without a corresponding and scrupulous attention to the elected men’s ethical standing. The pollution continues apace. Perhaps the spectacular falling out of Messrs Lawal and Dogara will illustrate to them how dangerously they had all along flirted with fire. CAN may now be having second thoughts about 2023, but it is not clear whether by initially dismantling the ramparts of their faith and misleading their members they had not become like everyone else, ordinary and worldly.

Adeleke as Osun’s storm petrel

THE only sensible thing Ademola Adeleke has done in one week since he was sworn in as governor of Osun is reverting the name of the state to Osun State. The State of Osun, the needless contrivance dreamt up by former governor Rauf Aregbesola, was neither popular as the ex-governor imagined, nor necessary. However, Mr Adeleke will still have to deal with the legislative process that modified the name of the state under Mr Aregbesola. He will not shirk that duty. Hardly anyone will stand in his way, not even the harassed and depleted ranks of the ex-governor’s supporters, assuming they were in a position to stop the inevitable. By now, they probably reason illogically of course, that the wound inflicted by an enemy is more tolerable than the wound by a friend. But wound is wound, especially if it is fatal; it offers no consolation whatsoever. Apart from restoring the state’s constitutionally recognised name, Mr Adeleke has stirred up another storm and needlessly attracted to himself the name of a storm petrel.

Other than dancing the lazy days away, for which he has become nationally famous, and which requires little effort and does not tax the mind, every step he has taken so far has been hasty, controversial and amateurish. In his view, everything done after he was declared winner of the July 16 governorship election was either suspicious or illegal. So, he sacked 12,000 workers he claimed his predecessor recently recruited, but offered no substantiation how he arrived at the number. He also suspended three monarchs enthroned by his predecessor, and without recourse to the law, suspended the State electoral commission (OSIEC). The problem with all this ‘military style’ actions is not whether he is right or wrong, but whether he has found enough time to carefully study the problems before pronouncing on them. How he thought being combative would impress anyone is hard to explain. In the circumstance, he even clumsily contradicted himself by setting up, via Executive Order 6, a review panel to look into all the fiery executive orders (3, 4 and 5) he issued on his first day in office after his inauguration last Sunday.

Soon, Mr Adeleke will find out that governing a state, especially one in which nearly all its governorship polls had been keenly contested and the margin of victory slim, is far more arduous than his dancing pirouettes. The state as well as other observers will concede to him the opportunity of making mistakes and correcting himself. Perhaps he will soon settle down, not to govern brilliantly as the contemptuous Southwest would never vouchsafe him, but at least to make fewer mistakes than he seems fated. He is still putting together a cabinet, and it is hoped he will assemble a far more interesting crowd than his imaginations can handle, men and women of steel and character who would take care of the home front while he partied. As this column mused when he was declared winner of the poll in July, those who sponsored and plotted his victory must now ineluctably find him a regent. When he was in the Senate, he was largely anonymous, contributing nothing and gaining even much less. Promoted to State House, it is clear Mr Adeleke’s backers have aimed at goals far beyond his ken.

Had Mr Adeleke exhibited the exertions a state governor should prove capable of, he would have reflected on the ramifying implications of his electoral victory. That would have saved him from the precipitate actions he took a day after assuming office, including his needlessly combative determination to erase his predecessors’ legacies. There is still no proof that he has the capacity for deep reflections. His victory split the state right down the middle, with his 403,371 (50.145) votes to his opponent Gboyega Oyetola’s 375,027 (46.62%) votes. And for an election that witnessed a turnout of about 42.16 percent, in a state with two All Progressives Congress (APC) senators to his Peoples Democratic Party’s one senator, and six APC House of Representatives members to his party’s three, not to mention the dominant APC majority in the House of Assembly, it was expected that he would be far less exuberant and more calculating than he has been. With a state nearly half of which is for his opponent as it is for him, he was also required to be more circumspect in deploying huge and mollifying statecraft techniques, and providing even-tempered leadership. But perhaps what Osun will be contending with in the months ahead may be a question of the governor’s capacity rather than a malicious desire to revenge past hurts.

It would be unduly optimistic to expect anything grand from Mr Adeleke. His first few actions show a man and politician out of his depth as far as governance is concerned. It is hypothetically possible to get him a great regent or an assemblage of great minds, but without politics and governance inhering in the elected governor, it is hard to see how he can bridge the chasm that already dangerously exposes itself in Osun. The APC is confident they can get Mr Adeleke’s victory overturned. If they do, their task in restoring normality would be no less difficult, for a few months of the PDP would likely muddy the waters and even make the dancing senator’s abysmal reign wistful to the implacable and inconsolable few who continue to nurse one grievance or the other against Mr Oyetola.

Between Aisha Buhari and Soludo

AISHA Buhari, wife of the president, and Charles Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, are both recent victims of cyberstalking. But both initially reacted differently to the provocations. Aminu Mohammed Adamu, a student of the Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State, had ridiculed the first lady for being overweight, a problem he controversially attributed to her feeding fat on the country’s resources and at the expense of the poor. Predictably incensed, she reported the matter to the law enforcement agencies. Mr Adamu’s arrest in turn became controversial because of speculations about how he was treated in detention before he was charged in court. But had the 400-level university student limited himself to ridiculing the first lady, as indecent and irreverent as that might be, it is unlikely the matter would have escalated. The problem is that he laced the ridicule with inflammatory and inciting innuendoes of corruption.

Days later, it emerged that Mr Adamu had a habit of posting inciting and insensitive statements on social media, and because he was never held to account, he had thought he could get away with murder. For instance, three days after Deborah Samuel, a second year Economics student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, was lynched by fellow students on May 13, Mr Adamu tweeted in Hausa that he and others like him were prepared to deal with those who publicly mourned and sympathised with the murdered student. Why the country’s students’ union and other commentators fail to see the significance of holding social media bullies to account is difficult to explain. Mrs Buhari of course had the choice not to press charges, and she has exercised that choice. It should be respected. But the question now is who will have the courage to curb the lawlessness spiraling on social media?

Professor Soludo also caved in before Peter Obi’s supporters after they threatened to force his resignation and make Anambra ungovernable should he fail to apologise for attacking the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate. The cyber bullying was ferocious and almost universal in the Southeast, and the eminent professor simply wilted. Taking advantage of a public function in which both he and Mr Obi met, he grinned widely and professed his brotherliness and friendship with the LP candidate. His traducers then relented. Of course, Prof Soludo knew that what he wrote about Mr Obi’s game plan was unimpeachable. But he was clearly unnerved by the avalanche of social media threats thrown at him by Mr Obi’s maddened supporters. He has lived to fight another day; but it is unclear even to him whether he had acted smartly by rapidly wilting before the rabble.

It was Mrs Buhari’s honour to bring the insolent Mr Adamu to account. She finally chose not to. And Prof Soludo may have accidentally discovered that silence is the best answer to social media lynch mobs. But by retreating in the face of battle with abominable trolls, both victims may have abandoned the field to barbarians determined to drag everybody down with them into the sewers.