INFORMATION minister Lai Mohammed has risen valiantly to the defense of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency on the mounting problem of insecurity. Less than two months ago, he even compared the security situation in 2015, before President Buhari assumed office, to the current situation and concludes that now is better than then. Responding last week to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s snide remarks about the president’s inability to respond to the security challenges bedeviling the country, Mr Mohammed gave reasons, for he always finds reasons for anything and everything.  “President Buhari has done so much, under very difficult economic and social conditions, to tackle insecurity in our country,” he sums up. “Not only has he done so much, he continues to do much more to keep Nigerians safe. To say he has nothing more to offer is untrue, fallacious and smacks of dirty politicking.”

No minister has been as industrious in the defence of the government as Mr Mohammed, perhaps because doing so falls within his remit as the official spokesman of the government. He of course sometimes confuses the responsibility of speaking for the government with the task of speaking for the president, and will doubtless continue to arrogate both roles to himself. The heart of the matter, however, is that he enjoys both jobs, regardless of whether they are accompanied by propaganda than by substance. Public perception of insecurity in Nigeria is unfavourable to the government, and for the first time in many years, there is palpable fear that the country might be witnessing a meltdown. Whether Mr Mohammed privately acknowledges and believes that this fear exists or not is uncertain. What is, however, clear is that the president does not seem to appreciate the enormity of the country’s security challenges, despite his public and administrative gestures in assembling his security chiefs for frequent powwow on the matter, and the fact that all his measures so far have been ineffective and even catalysing of the problem.

Last week, at a virtual summit on democracy organised by United States President Joe Biden, President Buhari promised that his administration would conduct free, fair and transparent elections in 2023. He had already said there would be no third term for him. Few disbelieve him, not because he is unequivocally a man of his words, but partly because governing a complex and modern society of more than 200 million people has so comprehensively addled his wits that the thought of reneging on his promise is inconceivable. He will quit in 2023, and will, as he has promised, transfer power to the winners. However, two problems attenuate his enthusiasm. First he knows, and everyone around him knows, that he has so far been unable to establish full control over his government. His promises are, therefore, really theoretical. Second, there are many around him and in his cabinet who nurse subterranean goals of streamlining and controlling the outcome of the next elections. They are known to be unscrupulous, unethical and intransigent. Indeed, they began to pull strings in the ruling party more than a year ago by seeking to impose a nomenklatura on the All Progressives Congress (APC). The intention is to control the party and determine who stands a chance of succeeding President Buhari.

How the president will overcome this undertow in his kitchen and general cabinets remains to be seen. His success will not entirely depend on how he reads the situation as it unfurls, but on how those around him who have his ear weigh the cost of swimming against the national tide and bow to or resist reality. But far more cumbersome and inimical to his goal of free and fair elections is the insecurity gnawing at the country’s sinews. His Information minister impolitically compares the pre-2015 and post-2015 security situation of the country. He makes this comparison as a matter of routine. No one, except Mr Mohammed and maybe a few presidential aides, doubts that the security crisis Nigeria faces today is more threatening than anything the country has ever witnessed, not even during the civil war. Today, Nigeria is pockmarked by dozens and dozens of civil, cult and militia wars, and an observer will have to be extremely sanguine to think that the country itself does not face an existential crisis it has no guarantee of overcoming.

It is, however, possible that the president uses the last Anambra governorship election as a template for the future, one in which weeks before the poll Armageddon loomed, but whose raging fire was quenched by the deployment of overwhelming force. Massive deployment of security agents in a general election is not only impossible and unfeasible, there are too many ungoverned spaces policed by hardened and demented killers to lend themselves to saturated deployment. The country does not have the resources and personnel. The sensible option is to pacify these ungoverned spaces before the polls, a feat achieved in the Northeast before the 2015 general election by ex-president Goodluck Jonathan through the deployment of mercenaries. President Buhari is too proud to contemplate the mercenary option. Unfortunately, however, his preferred option of deploying national resources to fight banditry and insurgency has not yielded the kind of results the country wants. There are some arguments as to whether the president’s body language was not in fact injurious to the fight to reclaim the country from the grip of nihilists; whatever the case, he must now try to put his money where his mouth is before the next polls.

The president’s advocacy for peace and free elections is indeed hamstrung by other forces he has been loth to consider for a long time, and may in fact never want to consider. Deploying military resources to fight banditry on the scale the menace has been allowed to fester into will yield mixed results. The better, but to the president, unpopular, option is to get to the roots of the crises tearing the national fabric apart. The problem is systemic, which military solution alone cannot assuage. Banditry in the Northwest, for instance, is effectively a civil conflict between the Fulani and Hausa, a social, economic and cultural crisis that had been brewing for decades without any imaginative attention or solution. Ahmad Gumi, the maverick northern Islamic cleric based in Kaduna, may be hysterical and prejudiced, but he has sensibly warned that there can be no military solution to the war going on in much of the Northwest because the problem is deep-rooted and fundamental to the existence and livelihoods of the contending groups fighting to protect their way of life. Rather than mediate the crisis and futuristically and diplomatically foster a balance between the contending forces, the government sat back lackadaisically until the problem ballooned into chaos.

Last month, the country exploded into raptures when the federal government belatedly got a court to declare bandits as terrorists. But by then, unlike the federal government, many Nigerians had reached a better understanding of the root causes of the crisis, and became convinced that while military action may be cathartic, it is by no means a sufficient answer to a crisis that has since morphed into a cancerous menace. With the help of the federal government, the state governments of the region will have to modernise their economic base in farming and livestock production. Declaring bandits as terrorists is no longer of much effect. Defeating the bandits without addressing the issues that provoked banditry is meaningless. Deploying Super Tucano jets against them will only procure temporary relief. For years the federal government had unwisely tried to address the problem by seizing other people’s water resources and lands. Those rash attempts have not only fizzled out, they have fouled relationship between ethnic groups and triggered suspicion about the Buhari presidency’s ethnic and religious agenda.

It is taking Nigeria decades to discover that it operates a political and economic structure that does not conduce to sustained economic growth, let alone political stability. It needs a totally different paradigm; but it is steeped and trapped in a past which successive governments since the outset of military intervention have proved incapable of addressing. That completely dysfunctional structure was of course not inherited from colonial rulers, but the country’s former overlords contributed significantly to the problems confronting the country today, having indiscriminately and forcefully married many nations together without enough safeguards. A little more political will and imagination would have seen the country emerge from its debilitating and convoluted past. But no national leader has emerged to chart the right cause. The Buhari administration blames states for subjugating and neutralising the local governments. It is right. The states have not only neutralised local governments, they have also defanged their Houses of Assembly and virtually disemboweled their courts. The Buhari administration, however, woefully fails to recognise that it has also needlessly retained control of a police establishment it cannot run or fund despite frequent tokenistic salary adjustments. The consequence is that Nigeria now has a skewed and wasteful structure that is neither stable enough to last nor good enough to propel the country into greatness.

Nigeria is fraying at the edges. It has been doing so for decades, with hiatuses of peace and growth. This cannot last. President Buhari promises a great election and a peaceful handover. His statements remain nothing but promises. The problems undermining the country will not respond to promises, good intentions, and the luck which has kept the country gingerly glued together for a few decades. The APC may have promised devolution in its manifesto, but it has ruled for more than six years and should know better. That it has stuck adamantly to weak political orthodoxies rather than inspire and implement fundamental changes to reposition Nigeria for the future is a testament to its inability to offer the country the transformative leadership that is sorely needed. Nigeria is fighting wars on many fronts, stretching its security forces to breaking limit, and poorly managing a tottering economy. The northern elite may have mismanaged the economies of their state and obsessed about the acquisition of power to the detriment of their people and country, as evident by their laxity in breeding Boko Haram and banditry, but the problem transcends regional fixations, cultural nuances, and religious machinations.

Until the foundations upon which the country rests is reengineered, every inch of progress and moment of peace will be just episodic. It is unlikely that this government has the capacity to inspire that transformation. Nor is it certain, given the pace at which centrifugal forces are spinning the country out of control, that it can deliver on its election promises, as reassuring as those promises are. It will be a relief if the administration can, and a greater relief if the next administration can muster the courage as well as forge the coalition needed to remake the country before it spins out of control.

 

Obasanjo, Buhari, 2023 and allegory of dead horses

SINCE they fell out years ago, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari have fought like the fabled Kilkenny cats of Scotland. It is too late to stop them fighting. They will fight on till 2023, and if Chief Obasanjo’s temper is anything to go by, they will fight on till the very end of their lives. President Buhari is 79; Chief Obasanjo is 84. But age has not weakened their individual resolve or helped the two to forget the old and enduring animosities between them. This December, President Buhari drew the first blood when he described Chief Obasanjo’s political behavior in 2003, particularly how he engineered the defeat of progressive Southwest governors, as diabolical. Speaking at ex-governor Bisi Akande’s book launch in Lagos on December 9, President Buhari remarked that, “It is common knowledge that Akande was the victim – along with other AD Governors – of a diabolical double-cross which ended his gubernatorial career. Only the steadfast Asiwaju Bola Tinubu escaped the electoral massacre masterminded by President Obasanjo.”

In assessing Chief Obasanjo’s political methods, had the president left his barb coated with the saccharine of ‘electoral massacre’, the former president would probably have restrained himself from responding in kind. But to describe the electoral shenanigan he masterminded in 2023 against some Southwest governors as diabolical, meaning evil or devilish, was to bait the Owu chief into the kind of ugly fight he would never shirk. So, speaking at a conference in Abuja on December 13, Chief Obasanjo shot his own poisoned dart at the president, sarcastically describing him as lacking in depth and ingenuity on insecurity. Said he: “President Buhari has done his best. That is what he can do. If we are expecting anything more than what he has done or what he is doing, that means we’re whipping a dead horse and there is no need. Then, where do we go from here? We cannot fold our hands. I believe that is part of what we’re doing here and what we will continue to be doing. How do we prepare for post-Buhari? Buhari has done his best. My prayer is that God will spare his life to see his term through. What should we do to make post-Buhari better than what we have now? That is our responsibility now, because it concerns all of us.”

Stung to the quick, the president’s aides fired back, insisting that despite daunting challenges, more had been accomplished in fighting insecurity under the Buhari administration than at any other time. Information minister Lai Mohammed spoke for the president and warned against incendiary comments, skewed narratives, and dirty politicking. It is customary of Mr Mohammed to attempt to exaggerate and embellish, seeking to accomplish with adjectives what facts and figures cannot do for his arguments. Chief Obasanjo alone is always more than a match for the troika of presidential spokesmen, whether it concerns the excitable Mr Mohammed, the wailing Femi Adesina, or the sometimes mournful Garba Shehu. The reason is that the ex-president is always indescribably more motivated and animated.

If he does not contrive to stay in the public consciousness, how else could the meddlesome Chief Obasanjo be relevant in the post-Buhari Nigeria he glibly talked about? He appears in fact poised to add his voice to the election of the next president despite his flawed judgement and cracked political compass. On December 13, during a chieftaincy conferment in Ile-Ife, he cautioned the Ooni, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, to eschew political endorsement, probably in reference to a video clip in which the oba referred to ex-Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu as a rallying force for the Southwest. Whether they like it or not Nigeria will have to contend with the voice of Chief Obasanjo over 2023. His voice may have reduced to a hoary whisper, and his account of history quaintly mistaken, seeing the role Ooni Adesoji Aderemi played in politics, and his judgement deeply flawed as always considering how he foisted a sick president on Nigeria in 2007, but he will always speak out. It will be left to Nigerians to hear him or ignore him.

Chief Obasanjo is primed for 2002, and he will deliver allegories of cats, pigeons, tortoises, dogs and horses. There will be no stopping him, for he always manages to find one or two popular sides upon which to anchor his views and positions. He will hope to influence who becomes the next president; it is an ego thing to him. It will be up to Nigerians to let him or bar him. Hopefully they will bar him.

This is not a review of Bisi Akande’s 559-page autobiography publicly presented last week in Lagos. The time for a comprehensive review may still come. But the book is so controversial and revelatory, holding nothing back, complete with names, dates and details, that it is impossible to ignore the snippets published so far by newspapers to critical and deafening applause. Chief Akande’s autobiography will probably achieve the status of the Nigerian book of the decade. It does not pretend to critical analysis or psychological portraiture of politicians and their actions; it simply recounts what they did and their motivations. It provides backgrounds to political actions and events, and empathetically reviews the reasons some Machiavellian politicians gained the ascendancy and honest others are left holding the short end of the stick. It tears reputations to pieces, exposes and damns many Teflon politicians and leaders, and squirms at the fecklessness and faithlessness of those who offered themselves for leadership in the past one decade or so.

There has been no book like this in the past few decades; and it is doubtful whether there will be another like it, a book by a virtuous and maverick politician who was in the thick of political events since 1999, and one who was unafraid to mention names and dismiss them as callous, inept or indolent. Newspaper snippets cannot do justice to the copiousness and immense sagacity of the book. It has to be read to have a comprehensive grasp of the gates of Dante’s Inferno which Chief Akande has opened. Those excoriated by the book will first catch their breath before responding, and they will either refute Chief Akande’s assertions with facts and figures or hurl invectives at him for his daring and presumptions. The book will be enjoyed for a long time, and the controversies it has stirred will linger for far longer. Among others, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was apparently thought to be a man of his words, is not spared; ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s self-righteousness is exploded as a bacchanalian and diabolical myth; Afenifere chieftain Ayo Adebanjo is dismissed as ineffective, sanctimonious and insatiable; and leading progressives are humiliated as feckless, grasping and treacherous. Autobiographies like this are often published posthumously; Chief Akande boldly prefers to sail close to the wind in his lifetime, contemptuous of the contemporary tactics of hiding behind the grave to throw barbs.

The book is just a few days old, and it is not certain yet what assertions will be successfully refuted or sustained. But Nigeria must thank God and the former Osun State governor, who was also the interim chairman of the APC at its founding, for summoning the willpower to write the book and the courage to publish it in his lifetime. The rest, the controversy and the fury, is left to the public to entertain themselves. Coming less than two years to the next general election, one involving a fracturing and fraying APC and an incorrigible and inept Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), there can be no better time and book to offer the country the right cautionary tale as to what political leaders get up to. Many books are read, and both the reader and those mentioned disapprovingly in the book, shrug it off. It is impossible to shrug this one off, no matter how hard anyone tries.

From the snippets so far, it appears Chief Akande is nuanced in his treatment of his subjects. He does not set out to judge anyone by extraneous and theoretical standards; instead he uses his subjects’ statements and actions to assess their political behavior. Thus he gives a massive and revelatory background to how President Buhari as an aspirant broke his word to Bola Tinubu, former Lagos State governor and champion of the APC merger and birth, and even quibbled over the promise to make the latter his running mate, and then excused his behaviour on the grounds of pressures from some northern governors and opinion moulders. Somehow, and unflatteringly, the book presents to the public the essential President Buhari as a man and politician. The president is not dumb or irrational as some think, perhaps on account of whatever ails him in his dotage, but he is vulnerable and superficial. For a leader, that is dangerous. And for a president of a multiethnic and multireligious society, it can be catastrophic. Though the book does not say it, Nigerians will probably glean from the book why it was easy for a cabal to capture the Buhari presidency and lead it by the nose.

President Buhari was the cynosure of all eyes at the book presentation last week. It is not clear whether he had read the book, though he discussed Chief Obasanjo’s kingmaker role in Nigeria with his idiosyncratic truculence. If the president read it before coming to Lagos and still chose not to say a word or two, nay many words, about the almost universal consensus by northern elite, monarchs and Chief Obasanjo to dissuade the APC from fielding him as their standard-bearer, then he is either as implacable as anyone can get or he is simply too contemptuous of his enemies to care a hoot what they felt or knew about him. Chief Akande describes in inspiring details the single-mindedness of Asiwaju Tinubu in enthroning Candidate Buhari, regardless of the general and national opposition to the former head of state’s candidature. It is curious that President Buhari does not feel the urge to say something about why so many key leaders were uninspired by his bid for the presidency. Surely it could not simply be because they embraced corruption. The leaders were simply too horrified to have him mount the throne a second time, after his first baleful sortie in 1983-1985. Events of the past few years, including insecurity to which there is clearly no answer, and the economic chaos afflicting the country to which there is also only shambolic response, may have justified their apprehensions.

There will be many top politicians, ethnic champions and opinion leaders who will be responding to Chief Akande’s book in the coming weeks, once they catch their breath and can moderate their resentment. But they will have a hard time convincing the public that they have been mischaracterised in the book. For instance, Chief Akande suggests that Afenifere leaders were grasping and importuning; the nonagenarian Chief Adebanjo will respond on their behalf and try to put the lie to any suspicion that someone else other than himself built the house he is living in in Lekki, a Lagos suburb and new development area. He will, however, have no response to his being characterised as a middling, eternally flawed politician who could never hope to win an election even in his heyday.

Since the book is not exactly analytical, it is unable to interrogate the manoeuvres around the repudiation of Asiwaju Tinubu as Candidate Buhari’s running mate. Given the intensity of the pressures brought to bear upon the APC standard-bearer, not to say the flattering character portrait of the former Lagos governor as a large-hearted, tactical, generous and hard working politician, Candidate Buhari probably succumbed to pressures that had nothing or little to do with the Muslim-Muslim bogeyman ticket sold by some politicians to the gullible. Those who finally convinced Candidate Buhari to eat his words painted for him a picture of a running mate who would dominate and drive the presidency with strategic and modernising thinking. Should he run with Candidate Buhari and win, no cabal could seize control of the presidency; but if they did, they would make life miserable for the former Lagos governor. The definitive manner Candidate Buhari repudiated the gentleman’s agreement he had with Asiwaju Tinubu had little to do with the religious colour of the ticket; it was bigger than that, more futuristic, and as the former Lagos governor himself said, had something to do with an agenda he could not at the time put his finger on. Four years into the Buhari presidency, there is now no illusion what that agenda was. Asiwaju Tinubu is fortunate to have been muscled out, and largely left alone. The alternative would have been too grim to contemplate.

Chief Akande’s book will sell by the thousands. He has done posterity a good turn by documenting his experience and observations in politics. Many will hate him in his twilight years, but many more will be eternally grateful that he did not take his observations to the grave. In the grave, and without the book, he would have found it hard to rest without lifting the burdens off his chest. That he did so, regardless of the controversy and attacks the book will elicit, is a credit to his person, unique and incomparable character, and experience. Let him now sit back and wait for the barbs. They will more or less bounce off him like feathers. He does not need to say anything more; it is up to the offended to write their own books or doctor history with their characteristic reluctance to honour the truth.

 

CJN spits fire on harassment

CHIEF Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ibrahim Muhammad, is finally fed up with the intimidation and harassment of Nigeria’s judicial officers. It took the invasion of the Abuja residence of Supreme Court Justice Mary Peter-Odili on October 29 to infuriate the CJN. Speaking during the commencement of the 2021/2022 legal year of the Supreme Court and conferment of the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) on 72 lawyers in Abuja last week, the CJN said virtually everything right about the necessity of protecting the dignity of judicial officers, and was even more convincing on the determination of Nigeria’s judicial authorities to safeguard the lives of judges. The October 2021 invasion was not the first; but perhaps the justices hope it will be the last. If they do not rise determinedly against this contortion, they are afraid it could become the norm, with the attendant vitiation of the powers of the judiciary and the prestige of judges.

In October 2016, the Department of State Service (DSS) invaded the homes of some apex court justices, meeting muted reaction from stupefied judicial authorities and censorious Nigerians eternally distrustful of judges and any other public official accused of corruption. The tame response in 2016 encouraged the contrived invasion of last October. The CJN is right to be worried. But years of conspiring with the political elite and conniving at their subversion of judges and judgements, not to say years of colluding with the executive branch to influence appointments and promotion of undeserving judges, had robbed the judiciary of its dignity and integrity. These virtues will not be regained easily simply because the CJN is incensed. It is not even clear whether in the distorted atmosphere of Nigeria’s ethnic and religious morass, these virtues can be regained at all. The CJN can, however, try. If he does not meet with good success, he can at least meet with qualified success.

 

Covid-19 Omicron and unending jabs

IN addition to the many measures taken by the United Kingdom and Canada to halt the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in their countries, many of them unscientific and adopted in panic, other measures are in the pipeline. The other measures include a return to some form of restrictions such as wearing of face masks, intensification of vaccination, and limitations of large gatherings. But one other measure that beggars belief is the need for booster jabs, which is one more jab after the regular two jabs. Before the advent of Omicron, the global response to Covid-19 was already toying with booster jabs in the assumption that the full two-jab vaccination was wearing off and becoming less effective. Omicron has simply made booster shot urgent. But booster jab has also spawned accusations of big pharma conspiracy to profit from the misery of the people. The world may have moved from the religious conspiracy surrounding the jabs, but it is unlikely to move away from the conspiracy to derive commercial profit from unending jabs.

The global response to the virus was flawed and hysterical ab initio. There was at first no consensus as to whether the virus was real; then with hundreds of thousands of deaths, that fact was put beyond dispute. Then no one was sure of its origin, whether it came from a Chinese ‘wet’ market or from a malevolent lab. But before its origin was established, the world moved on very quickly to how to deal with it. Panic lockdowns that spun the economies of many countries out of control were instituted. These were followed by a plethora of restrictions that took their toll on the health of millions of people, many of whom never recover. Finally, vaccinations were developed thereby triggering misgivings and scepticism as to why and how quickly the jabs were developed. There must be a conspiracy by governments and big pharmaceutical companies to monitor, harm and control whole populations, some sceptics argued. Two jabs would do the trick, the vaccine developers promised, with one of the big pharmas insisting that their one jab would do just fine. Now, after forced vaccinations, governments and pharmaceutical companies have begun equivocating about booster jabs to seal the hope of future mutations.

Gradually, the world is waking up to the reality that nothing is as they assume. Social media waded into the fray by blacklisting those who questioned the Covid-19 orthodoxies as preached by big pharma and governments, and with the deaths of some popular vaccine skeptics preachers, no one appears eager to question the current orthodoxies and treatment regimen. Sceptics are being squeezed out of the argument. More and more, they have become insignificant, their voices crowded out by alarming stories of deaths and impending catastrophe. Today, the story is that after two jabs, one booster shot would do just fine, producing effective deterrence to the virus and eliciting the mythical herd immunity the original two jabs were earlier supposed to engender. Sadly, neither two jabs nor one booster jab is expected to produce the desired outcome. Though with each variant the virus appears to be weakening, as Canada and the UK have shown, every variant is alarming enough to elicit a slew of additional and panicky measures. As sure as day follows night, one extra variant apart from Omicron will lead to medical advice promoting another booster shot after the original booster jab, of course following the original two-jab menu.

It is clear that there will be no end to the jabs and the boosters, until perhaps the world grows tired of their governments and begins to throw them out through bad-tempered elections. Big pharma and their governments have indemnified themselves against any damage, whether deaths or blood clots or any other side effects. That indemnification should be litigated, just as the treatment protocols for Covid-19 has been and is being questioned. The world was unhappily herded into virtually the same treatment protocol, when there were alternatives. The powers that be simply refused to consider any other treatment as hundreds of thousands died daily. Now, they wish to continue to pump their population with booster shots despite black Africa showing glaringly that the virus is obviously not as potent as it seems at first view nor as invincible as big pharma had painted it. But few in authority are listening, and social media giants are shutting down dissent on the subject. It won’t be long, however, before the scales fall off from the eyes of the global community ravaged by a mutating and weakening virus.

It is curious that in their squabble over direct or other types of primaries, governors and National Assembly members have bickered only from the point of view of the advantages or disadvantages the preferred mode of primary confers. President Muhammadu Buhari has till December 19 to assent the new Electoral Act passed by the legislature and forwarded to him last month. He is said to be still widely consulting in order to determine his course of action. Even the other significant aspect of the Act, to wit, electronic relay of voting results has not been as contentious. The mode of primary has been contentious since governors outwitted legislators during the last congresses, almost rendering them of no significance whatsoever. Scorned and stripped of power, they angrily produced a bill and came out with a hammer blow to the governors, knocking them off their proud perch, and reminding them that it takes two to tango. The governors were thus knocked insensate and left seeking means to regain their composure.

The president may be consulting widely, as his aides say warily, but in reality he is only trying to see whether he can safely defy the governors and put his signature to the amendment. Indeed, he may be juggling whose fury he can safely defy in the last months of his presidency, whether the governors who would soon become lame duck like him, or lawmakers who had lent their honour and integrity to sustain him through many shortsighted and indecent bills and expenditures. He will of course prefer to keep both combatants jumping contentedly before his throne, and running after the ball at his whistle; but because the fighters have dug their heels in, he may increasingly find it difficult to have his cake and eat it. Sooner or later, indeed in the days ahead, the president will have to decide, and one side will be offended.

There is animated talk about the legislature overriding the president’s veto and passing the amendment into law. Should the legislature opt for this peremptory action, they will not have offended the provisions of the constitution. But given their nature, and how long and steadily they had subordinated themselves to the presidency, it is unfathomable that they would feel somewhat reckless and adventurous. They are angry with what the governors did during the last congresses, and have sought for opportunity, no matter how small, to put those proud and imperious state executives in their place, but to override the president’s veto is a different ball game. It would be uncharacteristic, nay, it would be revolutionary. But this class of lawmakers hates revolutions. In fact they loathe treason. And to them revolution is indistinguishable from treason.

But it is possible theoretically that the president might withhold assent. It will not be because he thinks clearly about the futuristic implication of the amendment, but because of whether he likes or dislikes those who stand to gain from the amendment in the short or long run. The presidency’s calculations are characteristically bizarre and inscrutable. It’s no use trying to make sense of them. Should he withhold assent, the legislators are unlikely to angrily confront him and override his veto. They do not have that precedent. Instead they will dutifully visit him in his office, explain their discomforts with his action, excoriate the governors all over again, taking care to drape them in the devil’s cape, and remind him that the beauty and demands of democracy impel everyone to side with direct primary. The lawmakers must, however, hope that the governors, who have also tried to outdo the legislature in groveling before the president, do not visit Aso Villa hard on their heels. Should that happen, and given the dilatoriness of the presidency, the final decision will be a toss-up.

If the president feels sufficiently unnerved by the governors, and is also chary of inciting the lawmakers into unaccustomed disrespect of his office, he will try one of his trademark disingenuous compromises. The president is characteristically monarchical, but in recent months, he has ameliorated his peacock intransigence. He will, therefore, call for a truce, get the governors and the lawmakers to find common ground, find excuses to return the amendment to the legislature for some extra tweaking, and then, with a shout of eureka, get a version worthy of his assent but which neither pleases the hare nor placates the hounds. The controversy and lobbying are intense, but as far as the president is concerned, it is a storm in a tea cup. He really does not need both sides; they both need him. He retains sufficient predatory power to frighten them into reluctant acquiescence. If he growls at them, especially deploying the subtle threat of anti-corruption war, they will recoil into their shells or quake in their boots.

But as humiliating as it may seem, should the president defy the governors and go along with the legislators, he will very likely get his way with little or no repercussion. He is not seeking third term, and can in fact not seek it, and he has no signature and futuristic bill waiting for their support through constitutional amendment. If he lends them a listening ear, it is simply to massage their brittle ego and keep them happy. If he chooses not to lend them a listening ear, there is little they can do to punish him. He is too lofty in his perch for them to inflict their usual insouciance. They are sometimes frustrated by his detachment and perhaps acute lack of depth, but since they themselves lack vision, almost to a man, they will feel less inclined to importune him on the esoteric issues of a great country in a great continent in a competitive world. The lawmakers may even quibble with the president over the fine details of the amendment, but the governors will simply try to paint a horrifying picture of the lawmakers and the unconvincing consequences of direct primary.

Neither the presidency, nor the governors, nor yet the legislature is likely to look at the amendment within the grander context of who should determine what mode of primary to use in nominating candidates for party and state and national offices. Neither of the three is capable of the selflessness and grandeur the idea requires. Once they identify a problem today, especially a problem that rubs them up the wrong way, they angrily excise it. Having spent decades bureaucratising political parties in Nigeria, starting with the meddlesome two-party structure legislated during the Ibrahim Babangida military dictatorship, Nigerian governments have tended to see the parties as an extension of public service. Otherwise, why on earth would an APC-controlled National Assembly impose a primary mode on all parties in the country? What business do they have doing that? The issue of course is not what mode of primary is the best. That is nonsense: they all have their advantages and disadvantages. The main issue is what mode of primary a political party, or indeed a state chapter, wants. Once that is decided, then that is it. If a party does not show fidelity to its own rules, then that lack of discipline can be litigated. But to legislate and impose one mode of primary on everyone, regardless of its advantages, is irrational and meddlesome. Imposing a mode of primary, as the National Assembly has discourteously done to put proud governors’ noses out of joint, is a disrespectful way to fight one’s enemies.

 

Finally, White Paper on EndSARS

Reassuringly, two facts came out of the judicial panel report to probe, among other things, the protest and shootings at the Lekki Tollgate during last year’s EndSARS protests. One, the leaked report of the panel’s investigations and conclusions was, minus a few typographical errors, the same as the one officially submitted to the Lagos State government. When this column commented on the leaked report some two weeks ago, it was obvious the reports were the same, but it was still safe to cast doubt on its authenticity in order to give the panel the benefit of the doubt. Two, given the massive propaganda that accompanied the leaked report and the insidious purpose to which it was aimed, there were doubts that Lagos could find the courage to treat the official report with the boldness and dispassion it merited. Thankfully, Lagos was unsparing.

On the Lekki Tollgate angle of the report, the White Paper treated the panel’s findings on their merit. Lagos did not need to go outside the report to substantiate its White Paper. It is pointless going over the contradictions, speculations and assumptions in the judicial panel report. These were treated in this place two weeks ago, and much more disturbing details regarding the insufficiency of the report are already before the public. What is clear is that the report itself is its own worst enemy. No one needs to go outside it to hang it. A few activists and lawyers, some of whom had not even read the full report before taking issue with it, insist on believing their own version of the truth. But more and more, after reading and digesting the report, many critics and commentators have beaten a tactical retreat, remorsefully convinced that there is nothing in the report to redeem it.

The White Paper examined all the panel’s recommendations, accepted 11 fully, accepted six with modifications, rejected one, and regarded some 14 other recommendations as falling outside its purview. Lagos did not obfuscate in determining the reliability of the report. As far as it was concerned the panel’s fact-finding methods were riddled with contradictions and speculations, and its conclusions largely tangential to its findings. Did those who leaked the report realise the report’s failings and wished to remedy it by propaganda and threats? It is not clear. What is, however, indisputable is that there is nothing anyone can say or prove from the panel’s report that will convince the pro-massacre crowd that crimes against humanity did not occur last year at the Lekki Tollgate. Most of them have not read the report, but they are unshakeable in their faith as to what transpired at the scene. Even the few who have read the report distrust government so passionately that they regard the failings of the panel’s report and the contradictions contained in it as both a minor inconvenience and a product of the state and federal government’s shenanigans. Head or tail, the government could not win, the weakness of the findings notwithstanding.

It was, therefore, surprising that Lagos offered an olive branch to a few activists who swore opposition to the White Paper before it was issued. They had made up their minds so conclusively that even if they were to be confronted with Pythagoras theorem that states that “In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse side is equal to the sum of squares of the other two sides“, they would not be convinced. Indeed, they would regard it as state trickery and treason to the human cause. It is time Lagos moved beyond some of these opinion moulders, many of whom live by social media influencing, and whose self-importance is anchored on conjured stories designed to massage their own egos regardless of the pain to the general community. In the Lekki Tollgate affair, there is nothing to indicate that these activists, who have stuck stubbornly to lies and conjurations, are more important than the majority who are convinced from the panel’s report that nine people did not die at the Tollgate, and that in any case, their death, even if proven, is not more important or hideous than the other 90 who died elsewhere during the protests.

The agitations over the panel report and the White Paper will taper off into nothingness as the months go by. A group of parents – it is not clear how many they are – are reported to have sought legal representation to continue the fight against the federal and state governments over the tollgate shootings. Did they present themselves before the panel during its one-year sitting, and were they able to prove anything, as evidenced by the panel’s report itself? Somehow, they believe they can upturn the panel report and convince everyone that their children and relations were shot dead at the Lekki Tollgate last year. They must hope that they can withstand fierce cross-examination in the courts. However, they must be encouraged to litigate the matter, present all the evidence they can get, and do their best to support their case. The public can’t wait; for then propaganda would be differentiated from reality, and fact from fiction.

As many activists have shown in the Lekki Tollgate matter, social media is a devastating instrument to propagate lies, falsify facts, incite insurrection, and colour reality. It was deployed to dramatic and paralysing effect last year, to the point of convincing the unwary. Till today, many leading opinion moulders in the country still believe there was a massacre at the Lekki Tollgate, regardless of absolute lack of evidence, and many young social media influencers have secured foreign trips, visas, asylums and recognition on the ashes of misrepresenting and calumniating Nigeria. There is no dissuading them. There will always be ‘deplorables’ who use the social media for dangerous causes, and there will always be anti-establishment ‘gullibles’ who believe everything they read on social media. Instead of according hysterical activists respect and deferring to their assertiveness, it is the responsibility of offended parties, in this case, the government, to match the activists post for post, and noise for noise. They cannot incite with untruths and get away with murder; they must always be held accountable.

The judicial panel report was deeply controversial because of its suppositions and indefensible conclusions. The White Paper is not. But the EndSARS aftermath will not be easily dispelled. Lagos will implement 11 recommendations; it remains to be seen whether the federal government, whose agencies triggered the crisis in the first instance, will take care of its own side of the equation. The country is badly structured, and the security agencies have become antiquated, inefficient, and even incompetent and brutal. There is nothing to suggest that the federal government is truly remorseful over what has happened nor has it learnt anything from the crisis. Everything suggests that they saw EndSARS as an affront, and whatever they condescend to do eventually might end up being cosmetic. The system is too stupefying to allow them the flexibility and humility to tinker with the country’s structure. With many youths disaffected at a time of poor governance and declining economy, alienation might very well increase until there is another fire. That next fire may not be easily put out.

THE programmed leakage of an unsigned and insufficiently edited version of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led EndSARS panel report should worry every patriot. The leakage occurred, presumably through a panel member, on the very same day the panel submitted its report last Monday. Some reports claimed the leakage was prompted by trust issues. This is balderdash. It had nothing to do with mistrust of the state government. The leakage was specifically and deliberately designed to foul the well of public trust, sway unsuspecting Nigerians into a preconceived and hardened position, and panic the government and the four-member White Paper review panel into abandoning or softening the critical examination of the true panel’s report promised by the government, especially in light of the many sweeping generalisations and errors that riddle the report.

It is of course not certain that the leaked report bears close resemblance to the original one submitted to the Lagos government, as indeed a member of the panel reluctantly conceded. It is, therefore, a perilous task commenting on what is clearly not the true copy, as many media organisations, public commentators, and international bodies have done. This piece will try to anticipate that trap. But in receiving the real report, the Lagos State government, cognisant of the keen and massive public interest in the subject, has given itself a breakneck two-week deadline to examine the report and produce a White Paper. The panel’s sittings lasted for more than a year; the state could afford to take more than two weeks to produce a paper it can defend for thoroughness and objectivity.

Many newspaper columnists and television anchors, judging from their write-ups and interviews, including their curious preconceived positions, have taken sides and given the unwholesome impression that any other ‘truth’ would be unacceptable or amount to brutal doctoring. It is not clear what percentage of youths thinks this way, but quite a large number of youths are adamant about what transpired at Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020. They brush aside, as indeed the leaked report panel also managed to do, logical worries about what constitutes a massacre, and insist there was a massacre. The leaked report gives them what they want, but in very curious ways, describing the still unsubstantiated death toll at the Lekki Tollgate as violence which in “the manner of assault and killing could in context be described as a massacre.” Sophistry can sometime be elegant.

It is unlikely that the leaked report is the same report submitted to the state government. The substantiations were slim, skinny and far-fetched, the language worrisome, judgemental and activist, and the style and presentation riddled with errors and offensive presumptions. In the leaked report, the Lekki Tollgate protesters were sitting on the ‘floor’ rather than the ground, and colourful, emotive, and superfluous adjectives were deployed calculatingly to whip up emotions, stoke anger and lead everyone to a predetermined and hysteric end. The panel was supposed to find and expose unvarnished facts of what transpired on that bilious, controversial night; instead it discountenanced hours and tons of evidence which many viewers, including this writer, watched on television during hearings, and came willy-nilly to very dire, apocalyptic and unsubstantiated conclusions, not to say unmerited awards. Surely the leaked report can’t be the original. It is too damaged to be, and it does a huge disservice to every member of the putative panel that produced it.

The leaked report was also calculated to whip up international disapproval of Nigeria’s behaviour even before the true report and the White Paper were officially released. The question many commentators railing against the army and the government, and particularly against the excitable Information minister Lai Mohammed, are not asking themselves is why the leaked report should be believed and treated as the authentic report when hours after the leakage doubts about its authenticity were raised. It has become distressingly common for Nigerians, particularly disaffected youths exasperated by the planlessness and profligacy at the pinnacle of state and federal administrations, to repose confidence in foreign opinions and commentaries about Nigeria. That weakness will not abate anytime soon. A disproportionate number of Nigerians have invested Europe and the United States with the status of the policemen of the world, imbued with superior ethics and unassailable political and financial systems. Despite their torrid records of open and horrifying racism, not to say histories of genocide that have not been requited, unquestioning and mesmerised Nigerians, mostly youths, swear by what the ‘world policemen’ say and judge. It will take decades to exorcise these infatuations from Nigerians, perhaps not even in this generation.

Already, though the world policemen know the rules of inquiries and due process, and though they were aware that the panel’s report was leaked with all the associated risks of forgery and inaccuracies, they have been sounding off and giving besotted Nigerians meat to consume. They have warned that there must be no attempt by the Nigerian government to muzzle the report or fail to fully implement the recommendations. Nigerian media emblazoned those foreign comments on their front pages and broadcasts. Lawyers and broadcast journalists have also warned that no other truth would be admissible other than the ones they have gleaned from the leaked report. Due process is rubbished simply because of preconceived positions. Even Mr Mohammed, the Information minister, has been shocked into peculiar reticence, and the presidency in its characteristic buck-passing has said it would defer to the states before taking action. They said the same thing over the 2015 Zaria massacre – 347 were recorded killed – but ended up declining to obey court orders.

Lagos has a responsibility to carefully examine the panel’s report, the original, that is. They must be bold and courageous. They should not allow themselves to be stampeded. That leaked report is a horrendous example of how not to conduct a judicial investigation. But if it bears significant resemblance to the true report, as a member of the panel has said, then Nigeria is in trouble. It would indicate that truth has been redefined, and the country is seething with plots to cause crises and disaffection, of course not in the vein of the president’s wild goose chase about youths trying to unseat him. It would mean that those behind the Lekki Tollgate protests have other sinister objectives other than ending SARS and getting the police reformed and the government made accountable. It would also mean that the Lekki protesters have extenuated the sheer incompetence of their protests, which received initial and thunderous support, and have perfected the art of procuring power without responsibility. They did not own up to their poor judgement; and now through the leaked report, they hope to procure victory and canonisation.

More importantly too, Lagos has the additional responsibility of exposing the leaker of the unsigned and unedited report. The leaker should be investigated to find out what motives were behind the spontaneous and extraordinary step of attempting a second time to stoke crisis in the state. It was bad enough last year that after some groups put Lagos to the torch, federal and state governments let the matter rest. This is appallingly wrong. Hundreds of buses were burnt, courts were set on fire, and scores of businesses and at least a palace were either burnt or ransacked. Not to talk of individuals and policemen who lost their lives, with much of those losses glossed over in the activist report leaked to the press simply because the leaker does not trust the government. Assuming the state badly redacted the report and came out with a jaundiced White Paper, could the ‘right’ report not be leaked thereafter to justifiable applause? It was wrong not to expose the criminals who put Lagos to fire last year; it would be wronger now not to expose the leaker of a disputed document that reads more like a justification of EndSARS youths and a condemnation of the government and security institutions.

Lagosians and Nigerians are stakeholders in their nation, as defective and presumptuous as Nigeria’s founding document might be. They have equal responsibility to rebuild and run a country that is just and fair. But the campaigns to deliver those goals must themselves be anchored on truth, fairness and justice. There is no indication that last week’s prejudicially and preemptively leaked report adhered to due process and objectivity. The Zaria massacre of 2015 was rightly and properly established as a massacre, and neither the military nor the Kaduna State government disputed the facts. What they railed against was the motive for the killings, and whether the military acted justly. Lagos State has a responsibility to ensure that the Lagos judicial panel did the right thing, worked within its terms of reference, and established the truth rather than conjure indefensible and unsubstantiated facts which some vested interests now want to ram down the throats of Nigerians, after taking care to rouse global sentiments and animosities. The US has appeared to take the front seat in commenting on the report. It should not get its fingers burnt. It should read the report first and study the White Paper.

Decades ago, Asian countries weaned themselves off the breast milk of Western powers, and have since run their economies and devised, adapted or designed independent and self-sustaining political systems. Their youths, as the politically conscious Chinese exemplify, have learnt to denounce and rebuff foreign interferences in their countries’ domestic affairs. Nigerian youths, not to say their political elders whose political consciousness is below average, use the West as their political benchmark, social yardstick, and embarrassingly, their policemen to whip their degenerate leaders into shape. It is shameful the route some vested interests are taking to achieve their aims of mediating a fair, egalitarian and just society. But it is impossible to build truth and progress on falsehood. The leaked report is damaged in many parts. It is true that Nigerian leaders have been remiss since 1960, if not before, in running a just society, and have enthroned and cuddled oppressive policies and rogue institutions, including subverting the justice system. Before the campaign was botched, EndSARS protests drew attention to the rot and cruelty that have made Nigeria nearly unworkable, particularly its law enforcement. But despite these anomalies, it is time to stop pampering those who seek to undermine the country, open it up to foreign interlopers responsible in the first instance for the obnoxious foundations Nigeria is still grappling with today.

Hopefully, the real report, when it is finally released, will prove to be substantially different in language, in respect for facts and evidence, temper of arguments and conclusions, and coherence and consistency. The leaked report is full of contradictions, not one, not two; many in fact. It had no pretext to be called a report, let alone a judicial panel report. It is a disservice to members of the panel. The true report should be markedly different, despite the unsolicited statement by one of the panelists that other than typographical errors, the leaked report bore close resemblance to what the panel produced. It is impossible. In any case, should the leaked report bear close resemblance to the true report, the state government must have the courage to repair the immense damage both have caused to the integrity of our political and judicial systems.

Lagos will be under intense pressure; it must not buckle and produce a diluted and compromised White Paper. The presidency has passed the buck to the state, insisting that Abuja would act only when the state had done its part. Commentators, some of whom have jumped the gun by heading to the International Criminal Court (ICC) with tens of thousands of signatures of those who have not read the report, are threatening fire and brimstone, alleging without proof that a cover-up was afoot. A few of those threats have disappointingly come from members of the panel, a reflection of how divided Nigeria has become, and how discouragingly problematic and obfuscatory discourse has become in these parts. Commentators and activists have become extremists who insist on their point of view or nothing else, extremists who stigmatise opponents as either lapdogs of the government or deniers of the truth. Sadly, many journalists find themselves in this increasingly irrational group that is no longer open to reason or discussions or logic. Lagos should boldly strike out and avoid being sandwiched between a dithering federal government and raucous and prejudiced activists. Get the truth out, and stand by it, even if it disappoints those who have made up their minds to believe nothing else but their preconceived positions and opinions. This will be hard, but it is not impossible, for even going by the leaked report, within its jumbled hysteria and deliberate non sequiturs are the unassailable facts of what transpired on that controversial October night at Lekki.

 

Negotiating Kanu’s ‘unconditional’ release

LAST Friday’s visit to Aso Villa by a group of eminent Igbo leaders led by First Republic Aviation minister, Mbazulike Amaechi, to ask for the unconditional release of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, triggered a number of dilemmas for the Igbo and Mr Kanu himself. The oxygen that fuels the IPOB leader’s politics and campaign, not to say give him his raison d’être, are his histrionics. There is yet no indication that the eminent leaders sought his counsel before visiting President Muhammadu Buhari or campaigning for his release. But Chief Amaechi confidently importuned the president to release Mr Kanu to him personally, guaranteeing that he could control the IPOB leader and get him not to ‘say the things he’d been saying’.

Chief Amaechi is 92, and appears confident that he can rein in the much younger and obstreperous Mr Kanu. It is possible he can, but it is not clear how he hopes to pull that trick off. The IPOB leader is hysterical, unmanageable and egocentric. To shut him up and shut his windpipe down will doubtless take some doing. But to, in addition, restrict him to the anonymity he had joyfully abandoned years ago will be the equivalent of stopping the earth from rotating on its axis. However, shutting Mr Kanu up and subjecting him to the control of Chief Amaechi are as dire as any conditions the government could have set.

Mr Kanu’s lawyers are till defiant. They are externalising his ordeal, and are also rightly litigating his extraordinary rendition from Kenya. It is not yet obvious that they have assented to the effort being made by the eminent Igbo leaders. Or perhaps they are aware but are only hedging their bets in case the president balks. On his own, the president has draped the Igbo leaders’ request with some gravitas. “The demand you made is heavy; I will consider it,” said the truculent president uncharacteristically. The IPOB campaign stayed on the fringes until the president, by his impatience and gung-ho approach, brought it centre stage.

Hopefully, the Southwest will abstain from copying that stylebook to campaign for the release of Sunday Igboho who is engaged in a similar self-determination advocacy but is now trapped in Benin Republic, unable to reach Germany where he tried to flee to, or return to Nigeria where state agents are determined to haul him. Both Messrs Igboho and Kanu were spectacularly incompetent in prosecuting great causes; but should their campaigns peter out into the fatuity threatening their goals, it would give fillip to the president’s strong-arm and Machiavellian methods, and set worthy self-determination and restructuring causes back by many years.

GOVERNOR-elect Charles Chukwuma Soludo has been upbeat about his victory in the November 6 Anambra governorship election. His reaction is totally rational. Having trounced his main challengers so comprehensively in both the main and supplementary polls by taking 19 out of the state’s 21 local governments, he has begun to promise additional benefits to voters and Anambrarians who reposed confidence in him. His pre-election promises were stunning enough. Now, he has given timelines by which he wants to be judged over his additional promises. He deserves the victory, and his euphoric reaction has been in fact tame. Anambrarians remember him as that brilliant, first-class economist who made the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) very sexy. They also recall his confident experimentations in the apex bank, though some of his novelties came to grief; and they hope that he will bring the same sexiness and developmental daring to the state. He probably will. He is full of radical social ideas and developmental models, not to say the passion, to remake Anambra and turn it into a national model. They hope he will empty himself in their favour.

There is always a certain cockiness about first-class brains that makes them so self-confident, if not actually arrogant. Prof Soludo’s first runner-up, Valentine Ozigbo, another first-class brain, would have been as showy and self-assured, instead of mortified, had he won the poll for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Cultured, intelligent and cosmopolitan, he found the good nature to congratulate the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, believing sensibly that such display of noblesse oblige does not diminish him in any way. Few Nigerians were surprised by Andy Uba’s obstinate refusal to acknowledge the comprehensive way he was trounced and reduced to second runner-up, though he was the standard-bearer of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which had set great store by defections to win elections. The disappointed candidate gave hints of litigating the APGA victory, perhaps based on his understanding that the courts could always be suborned for illicit goals. Or perhaps he spoke of litigation to save face for not coming a competitive second to Prof Soludo. Whatever his rationalisation, he will probably abandon the suit midway. All his public life, he had made money easily; he will be loth to spend it with countervailing recklessness, especially now that his political and financial stocks have been diminished by bad press and humiliating and costly electoral defeat.

Prof Soludo is giddy with excitement over his electoral victory, a relief he feels after three attempts to win the governorship starting from 2010, and he is confident that he has the technocratic acumen, especially being himself a policy wonk, to implement his ideas about Anambra. He was constrained by CBN bureaucracy from displaying his enormous gifts by anxious and jealous rivals and subordinates who snapped at his heels when he was the country’s monetary policy czar. And as he found out in those excitable days, he could also not take for granted the support of the presidency, regardless of his expansive interpretation of the CBN’s autonomy. Now, with Anambra, he has the canvass upon which to paint Singapore or Dubai, if not both. And he will try to do this miracle with the panache and enthusiasm only he can muster; backed, of course, by his peculiar academic ostentation, stentorian voice, erudition, and oratory. Few Nigerians or even Anambrarians doubt his competence and ability to do wonders; but they will be curious to find out whether he also has the matching political skills to keep the state on an even keel, manage the opposition, and work around the constitutional limitations that may constitute an undertow to his governorship.

The eminent professor does not come across as a progressive, and has managed to be so flexible as not to speak or act offensively like one. He is indeed a pragmatist, a technocrat, and a brilliant economist. By jumping from APGA to PDP, and eventually back to APGA, he resisted being compartmentalised as an ideologue. Had he remained principled, he would not have won the seat today. But had he not been persistent and ideologically flexible, he would not have made mincemeat of the APC. The national ruling party, Nigeria’s supposedly progressive party, reposed enormous confidence in the defections they had conjured before the November poll, and the electoral temper and atmosphere they had specialized in creating. They created it in the last governorship (re-election) poll in Kogi State in November 2019, with the police, the courts and the security agencies becoming criminal accomplices. But Anambra had been too wracked by violence and itinerant gunmen in the past months to allow for the same kind of madness that suffused Kogi State’s governorship elections. The success of the Anambra poll, despite many hitches, was certainly not because of the simplistic manner the federal government overwhelmed the state with security agencies. Kogi was similarly overwhelmed, but the country had not yet witnessed the demystification brought upon law enforcement agencies by the EndSARS phenomenon, nor the rampant killings that bled them in many parts of the Southeast. Anambra had candidates that enlivened their imaginations, and those of them that decided to vote wanted to prove a point.

INEC was better in organizing the Anambra election than it was accustomed to, but it was not responsible for the overall success of the poll. The state has had the good fortune of producing not just eminent Nigerians from all walks of life, men with global appeal, but also politicians with cross-cultural appeal, individuals whose ideas and politics resonate well with both the Igbo and Nigerians. They produced the great Nnamdi Azikwe, and the Ikemba himself, Odumegwu Ojukwu; and even when Anambrarians had their backs against the wall as a result of the polluting influence of politicians like the Uba brothers, they still managed to give themselves Chris Ngige and Peter Obi. Already, inspired by the successes they have seemed to make of the November 6 governorship election, and their reputable political and academic history, they have begun to tout Prof Soludo as a possible revelation for a future presidential race. Imolites consider themselves the archetypal Igbo, but Anambrarians, uninterested in disputing that ranking, see themselves as more cosmopolitan and globalised. They think they can make something of Prof Soludo far greater than he or anyone can imagine even before he places one policy on the other. They are free to cavort among their dreams.

However, they must be careful in their approximations and extrapolations. For now, no one has an accurate figure of Anambra population, whether it is close to the stratospheric 11 million bandied by the state government, or the about six million estimated by some statisticians. In the first decade of 2000, the state’s population was thought to be a little over four million. Now it is probably more than six million. INEC claims to have registered about 2.2m voters, 249,388 of whom voted on November 6 and 9. In other words, the turnout was just a little over 11 percent. Prof Soludo of course secured a hefty half of those who turned out to vote, but calculated against the general estimated population of about six million, the percentage of those accredited to vote was a little over four percent, while those who endorsed the winner constituted less than two percent. These are dismal figures upon which to begin extrapolating for 2027, especially because the professor has not yet demonstrated the political skills needed to convince the state or country to trust him. Until he proves by his governorship that he can balance the hawkish and insular demands of the Igbo with the interests and suspicions of the country, it will be too early to begin extrapolating anything. The professor himself had better not be distracted by such premature projections.

It is bad enough that only a little over 11 percent voted out of the more than two million voters registered. Whether that low turnout had anything to do with IPOB’s sit-at-home order, mercifully rescinded days before the poll in order not to create a political and electoral conundrum, or with the massive insecurity inspired by other freelance armed men euphemistically labeled as unknown gunmen, is hard to say. But the turnout, though it met predictions, was not substantially different from other national elections, none of which in the past decades had reached a princely 40 percent despite massive rigging. The Anambra election escaped the blight of rigging. INEC’s accreditation processes have been seen as largely responsible for this landmark. However, had the turnout been substantially larger, the electoral body would have made heavy weather of managing the huge turnout with their tedious accreditation processes. In a general election, neither INEC nor the law enforcement agencies would be able to afford the luxury of the thousands of personnel deployed to police the Anambra poll.

Read Also: Anambra polls: Workers optimistic Soludo’s reign will boost productivity

Anambrarians should take delight in the comprehensive manner they have repudiated Mr Uba. Perhaps the rest of the Southeast will take a cue from them concerning the possibility of voting in candidates of their choice. Mr Uba is widely disdained for his shiftiness, a vice he seems unrepentantly to have dedicated all his life and talents to displaying crudely. He of course comes across with a geniality that is beguiling and transfixing, but a closer look reveals that he also mocks his own words. He has been unable to answer all questions about his certificates, and has neither publicly nor privately promoted any virtue or principles worthy of a political leader. As a senator, he had not been able to put his name to any earthshaking bill of consequence. Why his party felt obligated to make him their standard-bearer is difficult to fathom. But the APC did, thus robbing themselves of any chance of making a credible statement in the poll, or of having a sound candidate and realistic electoral chance, or failing that, even having a leg to stand on should they opt for the wasteful exercise of litigating their defeat. The national ruling party will have to go back to the drawing board to find and sponsor popular candidates who have the broad-based support needed to win elections, or they may choose to reinforce their appalling politics of manipulation by seeking to use federal might to support bad choices.

Prof Soludo has everything he needs to succeed as governor. One of his predecessor, Chris Ngige, was charismatic, even though sometimes mendacious and presumptuous as his interventions in labour issues show; and Peter Obi, despite his feline voice, applied remarkable frugality in successfully managing the state’s finances. Mr Andy Uba’s interregnum was of course an unmitigated disaster. Now, the governor-elect will have to combine all the attributes of his predecessors while at the same maintaining and fine-tuning his own potentials. He is not expected to face too much distraction, for Anambrarians are used to living under the political ambience of the best; but he will face his stiffest test from the Southeast region which is so far under the suffocating grip of inept governors and mercantilist politicians. He will be a breath of fresh air in their midst as well as in the midst of southern governors, and he will probably, despite himself, gesture towards the progressives. He will, therefore, need a lot of tact in navigating the treacherous rapids to which his colleagues had turned politics and governance in a region troubled by gunmen and separatists.

Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal was similarly projected to be a shining light in a conservative and even reactionary region when he won the governorship in 2015. Though he was not a natural progressive, and perhaps couldn’t be on account of his background and antecedents, he was expected to bring a radical transformation to his state that would cement his reputation and recommend him for the higher office he is known to keenly covet. Despite his good heart, Mr Tambuwal has been unable to strike that nuanced balance as the governor of a conservative, almost theocratic state in a largely secular society. Prof Soludo should be aware that he will be put through the same, if not fiercer, furnace. His Southeast colleagues, already hobbled by dispiriting societal and political contradictions, will secretly resent his outspokenness and brilliance; however, they will keep up appearances with him. He must not alarm them or be impatient with them. But at the same he must not allow his talents to wither under their jealous and withering gaze and gossip.

In the larger South, he will find his Southwest counterparts less flummoxed by his accomplishments, and will be eager to welcome him into their fold and relate with him without any airs. The South-South is a little more obstreperous, as Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike constantly demonstrates to the consternation of his fellow governors, ministers, and traditional and ecclesiastical leaders. Managing such obstreperousness will require composure and balance to mitigate. The professor is still many months away from inauguration, not to talk of the many years of rigorous tests he will have to undergo to recommend him nationally to insatiable kingmakers, as his mesmerized supporters have gently hinted. Should he surmount these obstacles, gift his state exemplary leadership while turning Anambra into the utopia of his dreams, balance his relationship with his colleagues, and earn the trust of powerful national interests, he can beat his chest, break into a smile, and declare that he is on to something.

But let him do the impossible first with Anambra, a task that may not be as easy as he imagines. Then let him find a way to manage the constitutional contradictions and impediments that have made regions and political leaders incapable of achieving distinction and self-reliance. But it is at least a relief that Mr Uba was comprehensively beaten. His party undoubtedly set him up for the trouncing of November 6, which no amount of litigation can remedy. Kogi State, to their shame, could not find a way round the confounded Yahaya Bello, their theatrical governor. Anambra did. It probably took a combination of the spirit of APGA, the endowment of Prof Soludo himself, and the cohesiveness of its sick and tired people to rid themselves of the chicanery that would have reduced them to the nation’s laughing stock. The world is still laughing at Kogi; the same world may be forced to appreciate what Anambrarians accomplished on November 6.

Despite the establishment of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in 1979, Nigeria has not shown significant qualitative impact on policy formulation, national integration, leadership recruitment and overall social, economic and political development. In its more than 40-year presence, the policy institute produced some three secret service directors general, including the controversial and still influential Lawal Daura, one head of state, Ibrahim Babangida, whose ruinous and unending experimentation took the country on a roller coaster, at least one police IGP, one Army chief of staff, and a few unremarkable governors. This paltriness from Nigeria’s top policy institute reflects Nigeria’s unusual ethos, a general lack of rigour, discipline and sacrifice that should have promoted qualitative difference in Nigerian leadership. Even when Nuhu Ribadu was compelled to attend the institute, it was to ease him out of his post as chairman of the EFCC, a disciplinary move that reflected the total lack of seriousness and imagination in the Nigerian leadership cadre and body politic.

There is no other institution dedicated to producing Nigeria’s next generation of leaders, or the next generation of thinkers. Before 1979, the task was by default left in the hands of individual political leaders, to wit, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikwe, and a few others whose degree of success in building capable successors was neither systematic nor remarkable. Together they conceived the future, built the next generation of leaders whose worldviews were nevertheless compartmentalized, and imbued them with the capacity to think, reflect, govern, research and dream lofty dreams and ideals. Between them, they produced a constitution that was more realistic than any the country has cobbled since 1978, conceived development plans that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those of the Asian Tigers in the 1950s and 1970s, and before their zeal petered out into fatuity in the 1980s in the hands of unfit successors, kept the Second Republic at least on an even keel. The country has since gone downhill, producing mediocrities, monstrous politicians without common sense or capacity or values, and presidents who have no pretext to be called leaders of wards or local governments, let alone a complex, heterogeneous country of more than 200m people.

In 2023, the next transition will be upon the country, but the issues of competence, values and national development have remained unresolved. Worse, with each passing year, and as NIPSS becomes less faithful to its founding ideals, the country will persist in producing incompetent politicians, technocrats, and businessmen. The rot is most visible in politics. Political discourse here, unlike in most serious countries, has taken the character of ethnicity, religion, and private, nepotistic relationships. Colonial Britain of course left a skewed and shameful legacy, which unprincipled Nigerian leaders have built on and venerated. However, many other countries, including China, United States, and a few other Asian countries inherited the same putrid legacies. These latter countries have risen above their colonial legacies, while Nigeria has sunk under its legacy. It is now in danger of carrying over that horrible legacy into 2023. It is indeed puzzling that ex-head of state Olusegun Obasanjo who conceived NIPSS in 1979 betrayed the institute’s principles and objectives when he had the opportunity in 1999 to redress the conceited wrongs he perpetrated during the 1979 transition, and the horrifying abuses and destruction perpetuated by his successors.

Nigeria has less than two years to the next transition. Can it produce enough men of character to midwife that transition? As far as the public is concerned, given the nature and temper of public discourse, the situation is indeed dire. There is at the moment no indication, given its trajectory and legacy in the last six years, that the Muhammadu Buhari government appreciates the issues that should guide and influence the coming transition, nor does it seem to have the discipline. Unfortunately too, there are only a few political leaders across the parties who understand what should be done, or who have produced men and women capable of envisioning the future and creating and nurturing an ambitious country that is regionally, continentally and globally competitive. It is not clear whether this last group of few men leaders can swing the transition in such a manner as to redirect the country away from the bizarre trajectory the current and past presidents have taken it. Nigeria is a weak and fading voice in ECOWAS, an inexistent voice and poor example in the Africa Union, and almost wholly irrelevant globally. Its internal wars and elevation of ethnic and religious projects and agenda have conspired to sap it of all its vitality and render it barren. If the politics of 2023 cannot produce a change, disaster will overtake the country not too long from now.

Conceiving a great and ambitious nation is not a matter of chance as the Nigerian governments since the Second Republic have indicated. Cue China, Malaysia, Singapore, France, United States, Russia even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rwanda, and a host of other serious nations which have settled their national questions and resolved their developmental logjams. Two examples should suffice to reveal that national greatness is not a product of ethnicity, nepotism, religion or chance. In 1945, after World War II, France under the visionary Charles de’Gaulle established the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), whose products are called Enarques. According to a French anthropologist, Irène Bellier, “The ideology was you’d raise a group of people capable of acting in the public interest… (people seized with the) spirit of reconstructing France and renovating the state.” It is not surprising that ENA produced four presidents, eight prime ministers, and a host of top business executives. Despite ENA’s influence, President Emmanuel Macron, himself an Enarque, announced last April his decision to scrap the elite training institution, promising to reform and replace it to meet the ideals of its founding fathers.

To qualify for placement in ENA, a candidate had to be in his 20s, with a degree from one of France’s elite ‘grandes ecoles’, and must probably study for years in order to pass the written and oral entrance examinations in economy, law and international relations, particularly the so-called dreaded ‘grand oral’. Candidates must be deeply disquisitional and expansively knowledgeable. Hundreds applied every year, and only about 80 were taken. So, when Nigerians draw naïve equivalencies by pointing out the youthfulness of Mr Macron when he took office at 39, the youngest in French history, they forget or ignore his antecedents. Nigeria’s political crisis transcends age. It is a question of the aspirant’s capacity and character. World leaders who have made a difference, and have pushed their country to enviable heights, are not a product of chance and lazy ethnic and religious politics. If 2023 is not to chart the way to disaster, Nigerians must eschew the wrong values and principles in finding their leaders. Sometimes they seek pious men to lead them, forgetting the lesson of South Korea which traded off piety for leadership capacity, or Singapore and Malaysia which traded off some Western democratic principles for stability and development.

China has a different method of leadership recruitment. Right from Mao Zedong to the modernizing Deng Xiaoping, leaders had always paid special attention to producing and nurturing the next generation of leaders. Between Deng and current president Xi Jinping, the method became better streamlined, limiting the president to fixed terms. Unfortunately, President Xi has removed term limits, but has kept the rigour and standard of leadership recruitment sacrosanct. Recognising the power of Chinese exceptionalism, its presidents, operating under collegiate leadership, have had little choice but to produce the best and possibly the most competent leader who would satisfy nearly all the criteria they seek in the next generation of leaders. The emergence of President Xi himself illustrates this point. His predecessor, President Hu Jintao, had preferred Li Keqiang, who is now prime minister. But the collegiate felt that the then Mr Xi would be a better choice for his, in the words of former Singaporean leader, Lee Kuan Yew, “thoughtfulness and enormous emotional stability…a person who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings affect his judgment”. Other world leaders were also quoted to have judged him as pragmatic, “the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line” and a leader who “has sufficient reformist, party and military background to be very much his own man”.

His emergence was not accidental, despite his chequered background as a son of a top Chinese politician purged during the Cultural Revolution. Tried and tested in Fujian Province, and then the neighbouring Zhejiang Province, Mr Xi was found to be both exceptional as a party and economic manager. By 2008, he was designated as successor to President Hu. Contrast this with Chief Obasanjo who nurtured no successor but brusquely designated former Katsina State governor Umaru Yar’Adua, as the next president. He then proceeded to rig the election in his favour. Goodluck Jonathan also did little to nurture new leadership elite, considering that he became president unprepared. Then consider President Buhari whose only qualification before 2015 was his rigidity, and to some extent piety. But no one asked to what purposes both the rigidity and piety had been applied. Worse, in six years, other than the brief and numbing attempt to raise new political elite to supplant the dominant elite in the Southwest, no conscious effort has been made to raise next generation leaders unencumbered by religion, ethnicity and other base, nepotistic considerations.

The failure of the state to entrench sound leadership recruitment ethic has led to sterility in Nigerian politics, where all manner of adventurers, perhaps with some money, have hijacked leadership and offered superfluities. State governments are not spared the same barrenness. With the exception of ex-Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu, no governor has avidly and copiously mentored a new generation of leaders, and none even now is mentoring a sizable number. Yet they all have the advantage of the history of the First Republic leaders to copy from. Chief Awolowo raised scores of next generation leaders before his passing in 1987, and they shone both at the state and national levels for decades. Sir Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, also raised scores of northern leaders who proved their mettle at the regional and national levels for decades. Why is there no longer deliberateness in nurturing the next generation of leaders? The consequence of this failure is felt more acutely in the Southeast, which has produced many fraudsters and empty politicians as governors and lawmakers, leading sadly to the almost total collapse of authority and role models. It was, therefore, a question of time before men like Nnamdi Kanu made a bid for power.

If the Southeast has become a wasteland, the North is even worse. Decades of atrocious leadership provided by undisciplined and untutored politicians disconnected from the principles and philosophy of Gamji have led to shocking inequality, religious excesses, and social oppression in the region. The crises simply and naturally transformed into insurgency and banditry, further exacerbating want and hunger in a region already suffering from acute deprivation and poor leadership. Any positive and beneficial carryover from the Gamji era has virtually been wiped out. The obsessive quest for national political power, which underscored the politics of Sir Ahmadu Bello, has led not to the wellbeing of northerners as the First Republic leader designed, but to irresponsible private aggrandisement and conspicuous consumption. The core North is now perched on the horns of dilemma, unsure just how to calibrate their Middle East-type caliphal interest in religion and the mordernising, if not secularising, demands of the moment.

The Southwest has been fairly fortunate but not totally immune from the depredations overwhelming the country. Asiwaju Tinubu has had mixed success finding and nurturing the next generation of leaders, but he comes closest than any living politician to the First Republic standard of mentoring future leaders. Some of his protégés and associates, particularly those of them from Lagos, demonstrate skills above the national average, and have therefore received national recognition. But they have not necessarily reflected in their actions and statements the loyalty that enables them display the character needed for next generation leadership. The protégés and mentees may have functioned above the national average, but they appear more competent than they seem because of the zone’s enlightened and activist public who has helped to forestall the predatory and feudal inclination that hobble politics and governance in the Southeast and core North respectively. On the whole, however, even the Southwest governors and lawmakers have found it hard to shake off the contaminating and decaying influence of national politics. However, the Southwest has also managed to sustain the structural integrity of its politics, away from the crass mercantilism and republicanism of the Southeast and the unresponsive theocracy and arch conservatism of the core North. This silver lining has ensured some measurable economic progress in the region, and helped to stall the chaos and restiveness pulverizing the rest of the country. Under Chief Obasanjo, the Southwest was headed in an abominable direction. Asiwaju Tinubu nurtured young technocrats and supported those he could not directly mentor in order to reclaim the region from conservatism and make it resistant to the anarchy overtaking Nigeria.

Since it is impossible to develop the leadership base needed to sustain and advance the next crop of leaders for 2023 and beyond, and since most parts of Nigeria are bedeviled by poor leadership, and will continue to be afflicted in the foreseeable future, both the electorate and the presidency must join hands to salvage the situation. They cannot afford to approach 2023 cavalierly. If disaster is to be avoided, they should disavow the ethnic and religious calculations that have diminished the Buhari presidency and portrayed the Nigerian elite as irresponsible and criminally negligent. The presidency will intensify counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast, and fight banditry in the Northwest as desultorily as it has managed to do so far, but unrest will not be completely stamped out before the general election. The presidency will also be interested in who becomes the next president, but it is not clear-cut what peripheral and extraneous criteria will influence the weighty direction in which they will go – whether they will succumb to religious machinations, given their natural inclinations, or collapse under the primordial obsessions of ethnic exceptionalism. Serious countries pay attention to the next generation of leaders; Nigeria has paid attention to criminally foolish and unimportant private interests. Here, the prejudiced presidency is as guilty as the ignorant and emotional public.

There is a tendency to look towards technocrats to get the job done. This is unavoidable. But it is also indispensable to focus on the character, temperament, open-mindedness and secularism of the next leader. He does not have to be a saint, and he does not have to prove religiosity. But he must love people, be empathetic, accommodating, and visionary, and of a tested past. A few aspirants may be banking on their party hauling them into office through party network and structures, a mistake the presidency must dissociate from. It proved counterproductive in the past. The aspirant himself must have his network of friends and associates all over the country, and he must have the innate quality of consensus builder and compromiser.

On the day northern chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) addressed the press over their choice for the party’s chairmanship, they gave the impression of finally securing tentative peace in a party embroiled in internecine warfare among the party’s leaders. Ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar was stony-faced, and Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal exuded quiet animation. They must both hope that the peace and consensus they brokered for days last week through debates and compromises will survive the thrashing and chastening of suspended chairman Uche Secondus. The suspended chairman’s newfound legal activism reveals a personal conviction and determination in him never thought possible with his staid and sleepy style of leadership. If the peace holds, former senate president Iyorchia Ayu will chair the PDP after the national convention, and the presidential ticket will remain open to all regions. But nothing, not even the tentative date of the convention slated for late October, is cast in stone in a party frothing with intrigues and revenge.

Adamawa State governor and chairman of the convention planning committee, Umar Fintiri, read the communiqué on the consensus, while party chieftains Mr Atiku and Mr Tambuwal looked on. For the former vice president, who will be 75 years old at the next presidential poll, this is his last chance to meet the destiny he feels is inexorably his. He had endured inordinate physical and financial punishment at the last poll, and had undertaken a costly and futile legal push to reclaim a mandate he believed was stolen from him by the victorious All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Muhammadu Buhari. For a man so stoical in his beliefs, if not his politics, reverses merely encourage him to redouble his efforts. He will hope to outspend and outmanoeuvre his opponents in the party, gingerly tiptoe around the delicate egos of pugnacious party leaders like Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, and placate his co-contestants, chiefly former senate president Bukola Saraki, ex-governor Sule Lamido, and a few Young Turks exasperated by the staying power of the old guard.

Like the APC, the PDP is obsessed with fiddling with party dynamics to secure the party ticket and win the presidential poll. Dr Ayu is a brilliant, methodical and principled politician and leader. But at 69, and not having managed to position himself in visible public posts since the debacle of the short-lived Third Republic, he literally had to be exhumed by scheming party leaders from the recesses in which he was mummifying, to satisfy peculiar calculations and interests. Analysts do him a lot of injustice to suggest that party leaders settled for him because he would quietly give up the chairmanship should a northern candidate emerge as the PDP presidential standard-bearer. Dr Ayu is more principled than that, perhaps more than he believes of himself. He is from the North Central, and party leaders from the North who are eager to preserve the legitimacy of their aspiration would not feel threatened or bothered by a chairman from the Middle Belt. Hence the glacial look on the face of Mr Atiku during Mr Fintiri’s address, the puzzling smirk on the face of Mr Tambuwal, and the distant, ashen stare of Dr Saraki. What is more, Dr Ayu is fiercely competitive, sharp-witted and farsighted. He will do anything to strengthen the spine of a party that has lost its mind and its will to compete.

But much more than the cold-blooded calculations of PDP leaders that led to the emergence of Dr Ayu, the party is preoccupied with uniting and forging ahead determinedly to the next polls. Whether the nature of the peace it is cobbling will be sufficient to snatch power from the tremulous hands of the ruling party is a different thing altogether. Having been humiliated by party leaders and badly misused and insulted in the closing months of his reign, Mr Secondus is determined to rob the party of peace or sanity. At his ouster last month, he had barely three months left in his mandate. He could not understand the desperation to unhorse him. He spurned every effort to conciliate him, and has gone to court, first to reclaim his chairmanship position, and then to prevent the party from organizing a convention. Nigerian courts are notoriously slow, and sometimes incompetent and malleable. Should he get the justice he thinks he deserves, and at a time when it has meaning and relevance to his cause, the PDP will be undone. Mr Secondus wants to be party chairman at the next convention, and a contestant if possible. If he gets anything at all, he is unlikely to get both. If the PDP house of cards is not to collapse before the threatening waves instigated by the vengeful suspended chairman, party leaders will have to redouble their efforts to placate him. That would cost a pretty penny. Unfortunately, no one in the party wants to bell the cat, let alone altruistically spend huge sums for a venture of no direct benefit to them or any consequence to their presidential ambitions. They will prefer to keep their financial powder dry for now.

In their zeal to resolve intraparty squabbles, PDP leaders have taken their eyes off the more important and weightier matter of the mood of the nation. They intrigue for a northern candidate for the next presidential poll just as the APC has waffled over the same subject. But while the ruling party has seemed for now to bow to reality, the PDP, by a strange alchemy, ignores the undergirding principle of rotation, insisting nebulously and against every known fact in Nigerian history that a northern candidate could win based essentially on northern voters. Not only is that lie not borne out by facts, there is no way to acquire the unity necessary to deliver those votes intact regardless of, or across, party lines. So, for all practical purposes, the PDP has made up its mind to field a northern candidate. In doing this, they are helpless. Two reasons account for this.

First, the mood of the country, complicated by President Buhari’s alienating policies and politics, has led to a profound shift in national loyalties. This shift takes cognisance of the unwritten agreement in both parties to rotate the presidency between the North and the South in order to preserve and nurture national unity and give everybody a sense of belonging. Had the current administration not bifurcated politics so severely that primordial feelings have become dominant, perhaps the country would be edging near a civic culture blind to ethnic and religious identities. But more than six years of political sclerosis, not to say the subversion of the judiciary and projection of the justice system to serve regional and religious interests, have engendered a feeling of alienation and marginalization which only rotation can temporarily salve. The PDP seems appallingly indifferent to these realities.

Second, for unclear reasons, the PDP has simply not produced southern presidential aspirants of enough heft and significance in the past few years, no, not the voluble Mr Wike, nor the impressionable Seyi Makinde, the Oyo State governor. Mr Wike has raucously heaved himself onto the national stage, but even he must be mortified by how badly he falls short of the demand for presidential gravitas. Without the backing of presidential office, a paperweight PDP candidate from the South stands no chance of making a significant impression on voters. And with their ranks depleted by defections, not to talk of their lacking propagandists like Information Minister Lai Mohammed, the PDP ship seems to be listing, fazed and rattled by every teeny shot across the bow. The party now seems fated to produce a northern candidate, and their shot at the presidency appears more threatened than ever. Southern maverick politician and ex-military governor of Ondo State, Bode George, argues that the PDP could lose the next presidential poll by zoning the chairmanship to the North. He is right about the loss, but wrong about why. The fact is that their incompetent politics has fated them to possible defeat.

This incompetence manifests in their lack of sound and radical leadership since their defeat in 2015. They needed to come to terms with their humiliating defeat; instead, they approached the return match in 2019 with a feeling of entitlement, believing that the cultic following of the underperforming President Buhari would make him beatable. They also needed to purge their ranks and remake their platform, away from the extreme right to which President Buhari was taking the APC. They did neither; instead, they doubled down on their truant ways, and produced the rugged but uncharismatic duo of Mr Atiku and ex-governor Peter Obi of Anambra State. The PDP ticket in 2023 may be even less inspiring. Can they remedy the problem in the less than two years left before the next polls? It will be difficult, for they are not even aware of the danger staring at them. The party is not in winning mode, and no one in the party, leaders and followers alike, possesses the character, virtue and savvy to remake a geriatric party whose brains and limbs are atrophying at a rate faster than the country can measure. The APC has tried to roll back Nigerian democracy, and has governed cruelly, ignorantly and incompetently, leaving a mesmerising gap for a smart and ambitious party to exploit. It is tragic that the PDP has not been that party. Yes, it will probably achieve peace in its core and flanks; but it is increasingly looking like a sterile peace designed to achieve nothing in the foreseeable future.

 

Lai, Malami on banditry and terrorism

IN late September, the Senate passed a resolution asking President Muhammadu Buhari to declare bandits as terrorists to allow unfettered use of maximum force to destroy them. It is bewildering that it should require a legislative resolution to prompt the government to do its job. The government has characteristically ignored the resolution, despite the massive destruction to lives and property orchestrated by bandits. It has also ignored insinuations that its terrorism policy is anchored on ethnicity. Sequel to the Senate resolution, Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai reminded Nigerians that in 2017, when banditry was at its infancy and had not become the nightmare it is today, he had written a letter to the Buhari administration to declare bandits as terrorists in order to allow for maximum force to be deployed for their elimination. Both the Senate and Mallam el-Rufai want bandits to be bombed to smithereens.

There should be no debate on whether to declare bandits as terrorists or view them as criminals. In any case, quite apart from how the administration views bandits, what is even more important is to ensure they do not menace the country and push it to the precipice of chaos and fragmentation. Instead of appreciating the consequences of dithering over banditry, the administration has become bogged down in the semantics of terrorism. Banditry has become polemical, enabling Information minister Lai Mohammed to deploy sophistry to combat it on television channels and pages of newspapers. Early in October, on a Nigerian Television Authority discussion programme, Mr Mohammed poured scorn on any attempt to differentiate between bandits and terrorists. He had said: “I think we have been dancing around nomenclature; a criminal is a criminal whether it is a bandit or terrorist and the same measure is being meted out to them. That is why we find it ridiculous, the accusation that the federal government is softer on bandits than the separatists and other criminals. This is a fallacy, a fake news and misinformation rolled into one; and this is the kind of divisive rhetoric being promoted by some naysayers. It is senseless for the military to treat bandits, who are killing soldiers and policemen, with kid-gloves. The method of the military in fighting criminality on the land and air would not allow for any distinction between bandits and other criminals.” Well said.

But barely two weeks later, Mr Mohammed has shifted ground, embraced sophistry, denounced his own nomenclatural distinctions, and began to assail public sensibility with the delicate differences he tried to dredge up in early October. Hear him: “The difference between IPOB, Boko Haram on one side and bandits is that, while IPOB and Boko Haram are driven by ideology; a belief that they don’t want to be part Nigeria, bandits have no flag. Bandits are simple criminals. There’s no difference between bandits and other criminals other than their ferocity. Bandits have never said they don’t believe in Nigeria, they are just pure criminals.” Aha, so it’s the flag. A criminal can escape terroristic label if he waves the flag, sings the national anthem, and recites the pledge. No wonder EndSars protesters last year mistook the flag for a flak jacket. It is stupefying that Mr Mohammed is not struck by his dishonest arguments and ambiguities.

Last Friday, the quivering and wavering Justice Minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, did his damnedest to link Messrs Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu with terrorism. His arguments were specious in the extreme, and tenuous to boot, such as publishing the two gentlemen’s banking transactions even before their self-determination campaigns began, while his jaded ploy of trying them in the media has also begun in earnest. He remains unfazed by the contradiction implied in both his lethargic response to the list of financiers of terrorism supplied to the Nigerian government by the United Arab Emirate authorities and his rash conclusions about the terroristic links of self-determination groups. He got the administration to declare IPOB a terrorist organization even before they killed anyone, and there is no record that Mr Igboho either killed anyone or sanctioned murder. And for an administration which pussyfooted for years before treating Boko Haram militants as terrorists, and is yet to acknowledge the terrorism of bandits, there can be no better argument about the dishonest, ethnic and religious bases of its policies.

Messrs Mohammed and Malami, not to say the administration itself, embarrass the country with their inconsistencies, definitions, and rationalizations. They clearly do not see the country as one, despite their vaunted and pretentious claims, and have no idea what damage they are doing to the unity and stability of Nigeria. Is it just primordial sentiment or simply incompetence? It is hard to tell. But Mr Malami’s last Friday press conference on Messrs Igboho and Kanu may have finally convinced all rational Nigerians as well as the global community that there is little left for anyone to hope for change in Nigeria. The chaos being promoted by jaundiced officials beggars belief and possibly defies redemption. That they cannot connect their ham-fisted approach to banditry and their initial reluctance to properly categorise insurgency to the disaster unfolding upon the country is itself monumentally tragic. How can they be so blind?

Anambra State is the latest epicenter of the muffled revolt and civil disobedience breaking out all over the Southeast. The shift of the eye of the storm from Imo State may have been triggered by next month’s Anambra governorship poll, which the gunmen hope to sabotage. On some apocalyptic tomorrow, the Southeast tectonic plate of revolt may yet shift to another state. But regardless of wherever the revolt manifests next, the federal government had been forewarned years ago that it was mismanaging the crisis in the zone when it took on the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). If the response to the revolt by the zone’s five governors is desultory and unintelligent, to the point that they seem to have lost legitimacy, that of the federal government has been even more chaotic and incompetent. Abuja’s only tactics is either to disparage the zone as a whole, a contemptuous approach the Muhammadu Buhari administration has belatedly withdrawn in favour of conciliation, or to deploy more force. None has worked, and the region is yet to be pacified.

While the revolt is still raging, and gunmen are running rampant in Anambra, the federal government finds itself needing to superintend a governorship election. Its options are severely limited. It has been unable to conciliate the zone, and cannot conceivably do so in the few weeks before the poll. It cannot release IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu without losing face, assuming that the gunmen shooting up the Southeast are IPOB militants. Mr Kanu himself has never been a man of moderation; his release may simply give his revolutionary fervor added fillip. Abuja also tried to flatter the Southeast’s political elite when the president visited Imo State early last month and met minds with them. It has become obvious that the region’s political leaders have little or no influence on the region or its angry youths. As the Nigeria Police leadership in Abuja has given indication, the only option left for the federal government is to overwhelm the state with soldiers and policemen in order to make it difficult for the gunmen to breath or even have leg room on the day of balloting. The election will, therefore, hold; but as expected, turnout will be abysmally low, for the voters know which side their bread is poisoned. It is not clear which political party will gain from the expected low turnout, especially given the gale of defections that has obfuscated party loyalties. But whoever wins will have to contend with the problem of legitimacy, a small matter for disdainful Abuja, and a nightmare for voters who will have to stare down incensed gunmen.

The revolt in the Southeast was not inevitable. President Buhari bears a huge part of the blame. After his victory in 2015, he should have moved steadily and firmly to reunite the country, including his most implacable foes, behind his administration. His age-old prejudices, reinforced by his insular kitchen cabinet and probably embossed on his worldview by the first and counter coups of 1966, prevented him from the conciliation and inclusiveness the country desperately needed after the nerveless Goodluck Jonathan years. Year after year, he equated the distemper among the Igbo as either a prelude to or a pretext for secession. And he kept reminding them of the price he and others paid during the civil war to keep the country united, a unity he now superciliously describes as non-negotiable. Alienated, marginalized, underrepresented, and comprehensively vilified, the region began to gravitate towards IPOB, the more militant expression of their disaffections. Mr Kanu, who was unwisely abducted back to Nigeria, has in a few years become the lightning rod for their anger, the embodiment of their pains and exemplification of their impotence. But he is a flawed champion of the Igbo: unpolished, grandiloquent, imperious, impetuous, and of poor judgement. He has led IPOB and somehow inspired the Southeast youths more charismatically than the staid and detached elders of the region, but he has promoted collateral ruination.

The IPOB and its cousin Eastern Security Network (ESN) have learnt to dissociate themselves from the shooting rampage going on in the region, but few believe them. Everyone seems to be comfortable describing the gunmen as unknown gunmen, though they sometimes carry out their violence openly and in daytime, a testament to the impotence of the security agencies. Beyond holding the Anambra governorship poll next month, the region and the federal government must seek ways to placate the rebellious youths and mollify the seething Igbo as a whole. The federal government’s strong-arm methods have weakened the region’s political elite and strengthened the agitators; it is time they scientifically found the best way to stanch the flow of blood, rather than contribute to it, and defuse the anger and resentment shown by the Igbo. Force may win the battle; it will not win the war or secure the peace. The tactless Governor of Ebonyi State David Umahi has warned of the possibility of raising a counter-secession force to battle the gunmen who are presumably IPOB. His poor judgement demonstrates, together with the ways and manners of the disagreeable Willy Obiano of Anambra State, why the region’s youths have little respect for their political leaders.

The Buhari administration has not been less inept in handling the Igbo crisis. Apart from its deliberate refusal to eschew its long-lasting prejudices against the region, the administration has shown no indication of what needs to be done or inclination to do anything. The longer it fails to grapple intelligently with the problem, the more the problem festers until it becomes the death of everyone, including the country as a whole. It cannot negotiate with Mr Kanu, for the young man is neither respected as a leader in the region, despite his claims and the fear of him and his fierce rhetoric, nor has he shown the foresight, restraint and judgement needed to legitmise the cause he represents or stake his claim as a leader. The administration will also be wasting time placating and smooth-talking the region’s political leaders. They are too feeble, incompetent and distant to make a difference. And since the administration cannot raise a new crop of leaders, as it tried disingenuously to do in the Southwest when it wished to shake off the leadership that helped midwife the APC victory in 2015, it must find sensible and innocuous ways to include the region’s reigning elite as well as resolve the grievances of the youths, be they unknown gunmen, IPOB or ESN.

To do these, President Buhari could reshuffle his cabinet and his security team, appoint Igbo ministers in more visible portfolios, appoint a south-easterner as one of the service chiefs and another as head of a paramilitary agency, and also include one or two Igbo men as members of his kitchen cabinet. Surely he can still trust a few of them. Does it mean rebellion is the key to inclusion? No. Inclusiveness should be intrinsic to the presidency. No future president can afford to alienate a major ethnic group without consequence. Should the president become better attuned to Nigeria’s political dynamics, he will save his presidency, pacify the Southeast, pull the rug from under the feet of Mr Kanu and others like him, and recalibrate and balance the polity. The Southeast itself skewed the federation when it held the levers of power in the First Republic. That led to crisis and war. No sensible president would emulate that supremacist ideology. President Buhari may abjure inclusiveness, but he really does not need to be reminded that no region, regardless of the sophistry of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) spokesman, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, can win or has won the presidency alone. No region can also rule alone, as the president has tried unwisely and unsuccessfully to do without taking cognizance of history. President Buhari has about 18 or 19 months to go. It is up to him to go out in a blaze of glory or pine, like ex-president Obasanjo in 2006, for extra time to repair the enormous damage to the polity.

 

Nnamani, Obasanjo’s third term, Osinbajo and Buhari

 

 

Nigerian elites are full of intrigues. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, who said there was nothing he asked God that was not given him, plotted third term in 2006 and told barefaced lies that he didn’t, thereby dragging God into the fray. Ken Nnamani, ex-senate president in his new book “Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term and Other Issues of the 5th Senate” gave an account of and attested to the insane and money-driven lobbying that went into driving that contemptible objective. It is hard to controvert the senator’s account, particularly how crestfallen Chief Obasanjo’s chief of staff, Abdullahi Mohammed, a retired major-general, was when the plot finally miscarried. But last year, ex-governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, was adamant that the real hero of the third term debacle was the man Chief Obasanjo anchored the plot on, Ibrahim Mantu, who was at the time chairman of the senate constitution review committee. Sen Nnamani, said Mr Kalu, was double-faced, malleable, and could not be trusted as he was running with the hare and hunting with the hound.

In November 2016, former vice president Atiku Abubakar also claimed credit for torpedoing Chief Obasanjo’s third term agenda, insisting that the former president sent the then attorney general Bayo Ojo and special adviser Jerry Gana to elicit his support. When he declined to support the agenda, he became the former president’s mortal enemy. “My offence was simply that I disagreed with him on the amendment of the Constitution to remove tenure or term limits or what was popularly called third term agenda,” sneered Alhaji Atiku. “In fact, Obasanjo sent the then Attorney General of the Federation, and Jerry Gana to my office to bring me the draft of the amendments to the constitution. After going through, I found out that tenure limits had been removed. In other words, he could be president for life. I now asked them, ‘if I send you to the President can you deliver this message’? And they said ‘yes’. I said ‘go and tell him I will not support it and I will fight it.” Many more people have claimed credit for an objective the supposed sole beneficiary, in his characteristic facetiousness, said never existed.

It is unlikely that President Muhammadu Buhari nurses any third term agenda. Presiding over the affairs of complex Nigeria has become for him an ordeal so befuddling that he probably wishes, despite the perks and perquisites of office, would end sooner than later. But there will be stories about his presidency as soon as the crown settles around the ears of his successor, stories of opportunities missed, of deliberate and orchestrated religious and ethnic undertones and overtones, of reliance on cabals, and of the bitter in-fighting within his kitchen cabinet and among aides. Of course, there will also be stories about the reasons for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’ volte-face which manifested in London last week when he described President Buhari in superlatives as ‘Nigeria’s most popular, only credible leader ever’. Phew. Prof Osinbajo is thought to be given to restraint of the deepest, most intellectual hue, a man who knows how to nuance his statements, and who can sniff humbug from 10 kilometres away. Surely he has not lost his canny ability to measure words, despite the rumours of his presidential aspiration.

Well, his learned friend and fellow ecclesiast, Tunde Bakare, pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church in Lagos, has kept up his diatribe against the 1999 Constitution and the president. In his State of the Nation address relayed from his church last week, days before he visited the president and walked back some of his fiery denunciations, the pastor suggested that the president would be a failure if he failed to ‘tear down’ the constitution and anchor the renegotiation of Nigeria’s unity, which according to him was negotiated twice before and after independence. But what did Prof Osinbajo say to draw the ire of so many Nigerians? Hear him: “The president is possibly the most popular Nigerian politician that we ever had in generations. He is possibly the only person, who can go into a place or somewhere without bossing people to gather and they will come and listen to him speak. We need that level of credibility to be able to solve problems in our country. And I think because of his level of credibility, despite everything, he is still the only one that can call everyone, and even people, who do not necessarily agree with him know that he is a man of his words…Anybody, who looks at how Nigeria operates will recognise that we are better off in this system, and that is the truth. Yoruba are not better off on their own. Igbo are not better off on their own. The North is not better off on its own. We are better off as one nation…”

Surely his hyperbole could not have been caused by the London air, nor his rumoured presidential bid, nor yet any kind of pressures on him. His words were those of a convinced, eager and satisfied subordinate. He had been ostracized after he famously booted out from office the fumbling legislative putschist, Lawal Daura, a former director general of the Department of State Service (DSS), whose men laid siege to the National Assembly during one of President Buhari’s medical trips to London in August 2018. The eminent professor is gradually worming his way back into the confidence of the president and his team, and may in fact have been cast as a potential dark horse for the 2023 race. But to rhapsodise the president in such giddy phrases, nearly all of them either questionable or wholly untrue, requires an excess of exuberance alien to the mental constitution of the law professor.

Were President Buhari to be the most popular and credible Nigerian leader ever, the effect would have been felt in all areas of national life. In any case, to what services have those presidential virtues Prof Osinbajo giddily extolled been brought? In vain his London audience waited for the other shoe to drop, as the professor sang his panegyrics. The best they got, however, was a reluctant ‘despite everything’ (in the fourth sentence of the quotation above) harried and neutralized by another fulsome expression of deification. In 1958, France’s Charles de Gaulle made his acceptance of leadership conditional upon the rewrite and canonization of the Fifth Republic Constitution. The Nigerian president may lack such depths, foresight and patriotism, preferring instead to flirt around the thin frontiers of demagoguery, yet he has been assailed by a myriad of existential crises enough to convince even the most hardened reactionary that the country is either in death throes or experiencing birth pangs.

All said, in the closing months of President Buhari’s second term, there will probably be no significant changes to the constitution despite the worst misgivings and encouragement of patriots. More, there will be no change in his style or ideas about nationhood. He is as fixed as the northern star, literally and figuratively. The vice president’s rhapsodies will in fact reinforce the president’s conviction about his invincibility and infallibility, not to say his conservatism and reaction, the twin ideological drivers that have pushed the country to the brink.

 

JUSTICE minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami told the media last Wednesday that the Muhammadu Buhari administration was minded to declare a state of emergency in Anambra State in order to protect the electoral process and constitutional order in the state. The declaration, he thinks, will curb the deteriorating security situation in the state. He shot no innuendos at Governor Willy Obiano’s lethargic response to rampaging unknown gunmen, nor did he provide any excuse for the federal government’s feeble and futile law enforcement tactics in the state and the entire Southeast zone. Mr Malami has never postured as a lover of democracy and constitutional order, or even of electoral process. But proceeding from the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, and the customary jolt of adrenalin he sometimes gets in the midst of crises and controversies, Mr Malami is rising dashingly to the side of constitutional order.

It may take a little while to know what the FEC debated – if they are still capable of it – on next month’s Anambra governorship poll. If the cabinet contextualized the election against the background of the general unrest in the Southeast, particularly the perturbing issue of unknown gunmen attacks on individuals and public facilities, Mr Malami did not reveal this in his interactions with the media. The administration mercifully understands that the election must hold if the tragic impression of their incompetence and submission to scare tactics by non-state actors is not to be widely acknowledged. They have an image to protect, as sullied as that image might be; and the only way to underscore their vaunted competence and capability as a government is to ensure that no scare tactics dissuades them from performing their functions. They know that the Southeast is in a state of ferment; postponing the Anambra poll would imply that they had yielded to the objectives of the unknown gunmen, whom they believe to be the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).

Belatedly, Mr Obiano, like all the timid, foot-dragging and equivocating governors of the Southeast, is suddenly awake to the prospect of being condemned to sharing power with the hateful federal government or worse, in the event of a declaration of emergency. He dashed to Abuja to confer with the president, and came out, wild-eyed, to assure an incredulous public that the president had no intention of declaring a state of emergency. It is not certain what the president told him, or what marching order he received, since most governors still visualize themselves as military governors. Nevertheless, Mr Obiano dispensed with any constitutional argument to rebut Mr Malami’s shocking disclosure. Instead, he merely reported his own understanding of what the president said on the vexed subject. If he pointed out the constitutional anomaly of declaring a state of emergency in the state to the president, or quietly drew the attention of the president to the fact that Abuja is in fact responsible for the security crises of the states, he did not see fit to tell the media.

Nigerians are unlikely to hear any sensible and persuasive argument on the emergency issue from either the detached and anonymous Mr Obiano, or the superficial and meddlesome Mr Malami, or the taciturn and sometimes disinterested President Buhari. Overall, it is clear that both Anambra and the Southeast are worried about any state of emergency anywhere in their region, while it is unlikely that Mr Malami, as repugnant as his interpretation of the constitution has become, spoke for himself. The AGF mirrored someone or a group: if not the cabinet, then the president; and if neither, then perhaps a faceless group long believed by disquieted Nigerians to be directing the affairs of the country from behind the scenes, regardless of the decimation of the ranks of the so-called cabal. Public response to the threat to declare a state of emergency in Anambra must, therefore, take cognisance of the estimation of the power and influence of the real brains behind the supposed measure.

To weigh the AGF’s statement on the declaration of a state of emergency, it is important to scrutinise his argument. Hear him: “When our national security is attacked and the sanctity of our constitutionally guaranteed democracy is threatened, no possibility is ruled out…The government will certainly do the needful in terms of ensuring that elections are held in Anambra, in terms of ensuring that necessary security is provided… So, what I’m saying in essence, no possibility is ruled out by government in terms of ensuring the sanctity of our democratic order, inclusive of the possibility of declaration of a state of emergency, where it is established, in essence, that there is a failure on the part of the state government to ensure the sanctity of security of life, property, and democratic order.”

The only redeeming part of his statement is the disclosure that the Anambra poll would hold as scheduled. The administration’s resolve in ensuring the electoral process is not truncated is laudable. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan set that tone in 2014-2015 when he ensured that Borno State was not excluded from the general election. Beyond the Buhari administration’s resolve on the Anambra poll, there is nothing else of value in Mr Malami’s brutal attempt to justify a state of emergency. He speaks glowingly of democracy being constitutionally guaranteed, even deploying the word ‘sanctity’ to lend it gravitas, when in fact every of his six years in office as the Justice minister has been dedicated to objurgating the rule of law, subordinating and scorning the concept of democracy, and belittling the constitution almost in its entirety. He also suggests that for the administration, it is imperative to sustain the democratic order. He should remind himself of the last Kogi governorship election which was held under abominable circumstances, the administration’s selective obedience to court orders regarding the detention of persons, the mass murder of Shiites in Zaria and the spurning of court judgements in respect of their leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, not to say the wholesale manipulation of court processes and decisions. What democratic order is he talking about?

Given his antecedents, critics have suggested that Mr Malami is actually up to some mischief in the Anambra poll, perhaps intent on infiltrating the electoral process to create a desired outcome for the APC. This allegation has not been substantiated. Anambra is ruled by an All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governor who probably hopes to be succeeded by a party member. Neither the Buhari cabinet nor Mr Malami, APGA leaders point out, has ever hinted of a state of emergency in states deeply troubled by banditry or insurgency, especially where thousands of people have been murdered. The Anambra crisis, not to say the other sporadic killings in the Southeast, seems contrived, considering the low death toll. It beggars belief that killings done in broad daylight, probably politically motivated, could escape the prying eyes and withering scrutiny of law enforcement agencies, including the police and Department of State Service (DSS). Downplaying the impotence or indifference of security agencies in favour of extraordinary constitutional measures to tackle the killings has persuaded many Anambrarians that the federal government does not mean well for the state. Anambrarians are sickened of the gunmen and exasperated with overzealous and undiscriminating security agents.

It was inappropriate of Mr Malami to suggest a state of emergency. He ought to anticipate that the public would read meaning into the suggestion. He has run the Justice ministry with extreme partisan fervor, and has, as the country’s chief law officer, managed the country’s laws superficially and indiscriminately. When the interest of the president or ruling party is involved, he has been deliberately less objective, and is always prepared to connive at mischievous interpretations of the law. He cannot pretend not to know that most Nigerians hold his legal proficiency and vaunted altruism in contempt. They suspect that the thought of emergency occurred to the administration because Anambra is not an APC state. All this should have prompted Mr Malami to advise the administration to do everything in Anambra but talk of state of emergency.

Whatever President Buhari really thinks of emergency may not be immediately known. But both the president and Mr Malami must now disavow the measure and get the security agencies to provide watertight security for the poll. They owe the state and the country that duty, irrespective of their previous years of lethargy and disrespect for the rule of law and constitution. Like the administration he serves, Mr Malami will not now change, partly because he is incapable of change, and also because he is loth to change. It was expedient of him to hint at state of emergency, notwithstanding its pitfalls. He will embrace many such retrogressive and even reactionary measures and interpretations of the law before his service ends. There is hardly anything he has said or done regarding the laws of the country and the constitution that is unimpeachable. It will cost him nothing to persist in his profligate approach to interpreting the law. If it suits him, he will do it; if it does not suit him, he will ask whether it suits his patrons, and then proceed to do it.

 

1999 Constitution on state of emergency

Section 305 (1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the President may by instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in the Federation or any part thereof.

(2) The President shall immediately after the publication, transmit copies of the Official -Gazette of the Government of the Federation containing the proclamation including the details of the emergency to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, each of whom shall forthwith convene or arrange for a meeting of the House of which he is President or Speaker, as the case may be, to consider the situation and decide whether or not to pass a resolution approving the Proclamation.

(3) The President shall have power to issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency only when –

(a) the Federation is at war;

(b) the Federation is in imminent danger of invasion or involvement in a state of war;

(c) there is actual breakdown of public order and public safety in the Federation or any part thereof to such extent as to require extraordinary measures to restore peace and security;

(d) there is a clear and present danger of an actual breakdown of public order and public safety in the Federation or any part thereof requiring extraordinary measures to avert such danger;

(e) there is an occurrence or imminent danger, or the occurrence of any disaster or natural calamity, affecting the community or a section of the community in the Federation;

(f) there is any other public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the Federation; or

(g) the President receives a request to do so in accordance with the provisions of subsection (4) of this section.

(4) The Governor of a State may, with the sanction of a resolution supported by two-thirds majority of the House of Assembly, request the President to issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in the State when there is in existence within the State any of the situations specified in subsection (3) (c), (d) and (e) of this section and such situation does not extend beyond the boundaries of the State.

(5) The President shall not issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in any case to which the provisions of subsection (4) of this section apply unless the Governor of the State fails within a reasonable time to make a request to the President to issue such Proclamation.

(6) A Proclamation issued by the President under this section shall cease to have effect –

(a) if it is revoked by the President by instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation;

(b) if it affects the Federation or any part thereof and within two days when the National Assembly is in session, or within ten days when the National Assembly is not in session, after its publication, there is no resolution supported by two-thirds majority of all the members of each House of the National Assembly approving the Proclamation;

(c) after a period of six months has elapsed since it has been in force:

Provided that the National Assembly may, before the expiration of the period of six months aforesaid, extend the period for the Proclamation of the state of emergency to remain in force from time to time for a further period of six months by resolution passed in like manner; or

(d) at any time after the approval referred to in paragraph (b) or the extension referred to in paragraph (c) of this subsection, when each House of the National Assembly revokes the Proclamation by a simple majority of all the members of each House.

Comment

The intendment of the drafters of the 1999 constitution was that power to declare a state of emergency in the federation of any part thereof would lie exclusively but not arbitrarily in the office of the president of the federation. This power can only be activated when any of the seven conditions outlined in S. 305 (3) are met. No declaration of a state of emergency would be valid if none of these seven conditions are present. In the case of Anambra, the federation cannot reasonably be said to be at war, neither can any community or section thereof be said to be at war. Such a proviso would more readily appear to present itself for the president’s utilisation with the lawless kidnaps and brazen murders in the North. Neither can there be said to be such danger of a clear and imminent nature as to warrant the declaration of a state of emergency, especially in light of what appears to be a series of coordinated assassinations.

There appears to be a clash of interests between the governor who has argued strongly in favour of the security and stability Anambra state enjoys and the comments by the Attorney General that the federal government was considering a state of emergency. There is, therefore, no way S. 305 (4) and its attendant provisions can be activated. The governor’s position, after meeting with the president, even suggests that the Attorney General is on a frolic of his own. No one expects the Buhari administration, even if it were to bullishly insist on a state of emergency, to commit the absurd illegality of replacing the state governor and legislature with an administrator. There is, therefore, wisdom in carrying the state government along in matters like these.

Arguably, the drafters of the 1999 Constitution did not intend for a liberal reading of S. 305 (3), hence the strict requirements that must be met in S. 305 (1) (2) before the declaration can carry the force of law. Without the legislature’s ratification, any declaration of a state of emergency is merely inchoate and not substantive. Applying S. 305 (3) would indicate a schizophrenic and biased perception of the Anambra killings, and an accompanying ulterior motive, for neither is the danger alarming nor has a reasonable amount of time elapsed to warrant federal force subverting the state’s power. Perhaps, recognising this reality, the presidency has for now refrained from openly associating with Attorney General Malami’s speculative comments.