By Idowu Akinlotan

Most Nigerians are pessimistic that President Buhari can reclaim his presidency and realign it for greatness. Captured on the very day he was sworn in, that presidency has groped its way for almost six convoluted years. With about two years left in his tenure, and with no flicker of hope that he has a full grasp of what needs to be done, it is feared that the rest of his tenure will be largely ineffectual and even less intense than his first term. His predecessors had failed to lay the foundation for a great Nigeria; the president has not also suggested in word or deed that he knows how to lay a foundation or appreciates the role it plays. A foundation starts with conceptualizing a great country, for no one can produce equipment without first conceiving it, and no country can become what its leaders and philosophers have not first imagined it to be, now and in the distant future.

Many months ago, this column characterized the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency as eclectic but in some ways pragmatic, and the Goodluck Jonathan administration as undisciplined and unfortunately overwhelmed by the weight and sublime demands of high office. Neither former president produced the inspiring and durable foundation Nigeria sorely needed after decades of debilitating and wasteful military rule, and intervening years of chaotic and equally profligate civil rule. The Buhari administration came in fully unprepared, needing the best of men Nigeria could offer, and the best of paradigms the country’s brilliant, farsighted minds could formulate. Sadly, with him, neither the best minds nor the best ideas stood any chance of getting a look in. This was why he did not think any foundation was needed or indispensable, and the administration has not thought that its controversial and chaotic policies reflect the inexistent foundation. And this was also why many political, ethnic and judicial journeymen simply stepped into the vacuum and wrote their own parochial interests as national interest.

There is consequently no policy of the administration that has reflected the nuances of a hypothetical greatness, and nothing the administration has said or done that is consistent with the rubrics of that greatness. The administration has thus been unable to define Nigeria in any terms other than from a narrow point of view. In fact, no serious attempt has been made to produce a definition, let alone laying a foundation and building on it. If a country is unable to secure its citizens from marauders and kidnappers, surely it can at least try to design policies to manage the crime. If service chiefs punched far below their weight, it would be shocking for a president whose country is being ravaged by criminals to counsel patience, or after ousting the security chiefs, to reward them. But it happened. In a changing world economy where alternative energy sources are replacing fossil fuels, it must perplex citizens that their government is setting aside $1.5bn to repair a moribund refinery.

There is more. Are there no other macroeconomic and financing models other than borrowing to finance infrastructural development, to the point that the Buhari administration has become obsessed with borrowing from every conceivable corner of the world, particularly China? There is no education vision, not to talk of providing the required funds to prompt and realign Nigeria’s learning culture along globally competitive lines. There is no foreign policy worth mentioning. The capacity to even effect a transition between one Inspector General of Police to another has proved elusive, a constant reminder that parochial interests have long, under this administration, been on the ascendancy. Then of course, there is the needling matter of competing cabals who have seized the levers of power and wielded influence in unimaginable and often harmful ways under the nose of a trusting president.

It is not hard to be pessimistic about the possibility of a change in the next two years. And indeed, it is even easier to paint what is wrong than suggest what remedies are available, knowing full well that such remedies, if suggested, would be given no consideration at all save contempt. President Buhari is said to be anxious to leave a great legacy, and even more anxious to determine who is safe and worthy to succeed him. Alas, here also, he needs help to know what he needs instead of what he wants. He needs a powerful and visionary successor, but he seems from reports to desire someone safe, a person who would protect his inexistent legacy. But here is the problem. He has been made to think that steering the ruling party in a particular direction, probably away from the influence of Bola Tinubu, would free the party to win the next elections and produce the protector of his legacy. Did the cabal and other ambitious politicians within the APC actually frame the party’s problem accurately for him? It is doubtful.

The party’s problem was not registration or revalidation of members. One of the problems was the bitter and figuratively bloody war of control between one camp of serving and former governors and another camp of the same group. The other problem was the politics of seizing control of the party to ensure the best chance for ambitious presidential aspirants. Another problem was the rank indiscipline within the party that saw outgoing governors subverting their party because their desires were thwarted, but were eventually rewarded and promoted by the party. Unable to transcend his own primordial instincts, and incapable of appreciating the dynamics that produced and continues to sustain his party, the president has caved in to the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of his party’s goals. In the past few months, therefore, everything the party has done has been focused on undoing the influence of Asiwaju Tinubu, just as the presidential race within the party will also likely be focused primarily at destroying his ambition. The president has bought into these plans, regardless of the denial by presidential spokesmen that no cold war exists between the president and the party’s national leader. Both men of course know better.

Having framed the party’s problem as the former Lagos governor, and having enthused that it had registered a whopping 30 million members, believing that membership translates willy-nilly into electoral votes, the APC will likely leave unattended the real problems skewering the party. It has been the unenviable legacy of the APC that on their watch, the country has become one of the most insecure in Africa, perhaps on the same scale as Somalia, principally on account of the rampage of herdsmen and bandits. The country is groaning under debts for projects the Buhari administration is claiming the glory and passing the bills and nuisance to future generations. Under the APC, ethnic nationalism has grown by leaps and bounds mainly because of the policy of ethnic exceptionalism embarked upon by the Buhari administration, and worsened as the years go by. On the APC watch, religious exceptionalism has also become a state policy, with many states like Kwara wallowing in that sewer.

The APC relies on the confusion in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to sustain and prolong its mediocrity without consequence. It is not clear whether the PDP will regain its sanity as the next polls draw near. But if it does, the chaos in the ruling party will prove costly. But if it does not, and the ruling party gets away with robbery and murder, so to speak, it does not mean that the legacy of President Buhari would be protected, let alone advanced. It does not also mean that the country would be in better hands, and it does not mean Nigeria would suddenly cease to be a byword among nations. Yes, the president needs help; but not only would he not admit it, it is also not clear that he can admit it, given the web woven around him by vested and unyielding interests.

• Concluded

Gowon speaks politics

 

IT may not be the first time in recent years that former military head of state Yakubu Gowon would speak on politics. But perhaps given the weight of the political topic he addressed last Sunday as the Barewa College Old Boys Association marked the 100th anniversary of their school, it appeared like it was the first time ever, not even in recent years. The summary of his proposition is that for peace to reign, Nigeria should adopt zoning and rotational presidency among the country’s six geopolitical zones. He also advocated for two vice presidents. The ideas are of course not original to him; but it is still significant that he is finally lending his voice to a campaign that does not mirror the non-secular causes of his preference.

According to Gen. Gowon, “Presidency should be zoned and rotated among the six geo-political zones of the country. This is key to peace, tranquility and development of our country. Also, among the 19 northern states, the Nigerian presidential position should be rotated.” The former head of state is a new entrant to the murky and inscrutable waters of politics, and so he should be forgiven for not appreciating that the Nigerian dilemma has gone beyond just rotation and zoning. It has taken the one-sided government of President Muhammadu Buhari to recognize that zoning or rotation alone would not address the complex existential problems the country is grappling with. The country needs to redefine itself, its structure, and its ambitions in order to determine how to proceed. Gen Gowon should have addressed these other issues, not to say that his home state of Plateau would have welcomed his views on the more than four dozen villages sacked, occupied and renamed by Fulani militia.

Reckless APC, PDP push the envelope

In two unrelated events, both the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have shown themselves to be unsure of their grasp of democracy beyond the kindergarten process of balloting. While inaugurating the APC’s 61-member Contact and Strategy Committee in Abuja last Tuesday, Mai Mala Buni, the ruling party’s caretaker committee chairman and Yobe State governor, euphorically declared that the party was working towards ruling Nigeria for 32 years. It is of course presumed that President Muhammadu Buhari would govern for eight of the 32 years referred to by Mr Buni. He did not say why he chose the arbitrary figure of 32 years. Why not the 60 years the PDP once loftily dreamed about but lasted a measly 16 years?

For the PDP, it was not as a political party that it came under the radar of reckless politicking. The party’s Edo State chapter dragged the party unusually — and some PDP grandees would say, APC-like — into the recklessness arena when, the same last Tuesday, Godwin Obaseki’s PDP government controversially sanctioned the demolition of three houses belonging to APC chieftains, to wit, former deputy governor Pius Odubu, and party chieftains Mike Etemuagbon and Julius Ihonvbere. The state anchored its decision on, among other reasons, the revocation of the Certificates of Occupancy of the houses. The victims accused the government of not following due process and not giving notice. They suggest that the governor, who has justified why he is probing former APC national chairman Adams Oshiomhole, is playing toxic and vengeful politics.

The two leading parties may be familiar with the letter of the constitution, but it is hard to say they are also familiar with the spirit of the constitution. Former PDP national chairman Vincent Ogbulafor in 2014 talked of the PDP ruling for 60 years, and former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida authenticated this statement in 2017 when he nostalgically said that the party was designed to rule for more than six decades, while former first lady Patience Jonathan, who shortly before the 2015 polls proclaimed the same ambition, lent her diatribe. The APC does not seem to mind that the PDP ambition miscarried very badly, nor appeared worried about the arbitrariness of the longevity desired. Without any indication of how it wants to refine its ideology, assuming it has one upon which it is safely moored, and reluctant to adhere to the great and indispensable need for justice and fairness, the APC is planning to rule for 32 long and arbitrary years.

In the words of Mallam Buni, “The constitution of the Strategy and Contact committee, therefore, is to consolidate the achievements we are making in building a strong party with a solid structure that would accomplish APC to stand the test of time. Our vision is to provide a wheel that will drive the party to go beyond 6th, 7th and even 8th terms of office to effectively implement the party manifesto, improve the lives of Nigerians and, to remain Nigeria’s leading political party.” The APC is an even greater puzzle than the PDP. Between 1999 and 2015, it was not too difficult to guess where the PDP stood on a number of demeaning issues and principles. They were a rambunctious lot, exquisite abridger of due process, arrogant politicians, and exponents of strong-arm tactics in winning polls. But the APC, which presumes to be different, has been even more indiscriminate and illiberal.

Not only is the APC buying time with more and more needless committees to perfect its strategy to deliver on the election of party executives and nomination of candidates of their choice, they have opened their doors and invited the influence of individuals who have no moral or political principles, some of whom worked against the victory of the APC in 2019 and even funded the opposition. It is hard not to assume that the caretaker committee is working towards a predetermined end. But quite apart from that distressing objective is the embarrassing allusion to some whimsical longevity in office, an ambition that discounts the weariness of the electorate, the acceptability of the candidates, and the relevance of the party platform. Those who argue that the APC is merely the opposite side of the same bad coin with the PDP are not far from the truth.

Edo’s Mr Obaseki, like Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, has a reputation for being a vindictive politician of the first order. It is one of his innate attributes. He will indulge his viciousness at the drop of a hat. Despite at least one of the demolished houses being subject of litigation, and believing like many other governors that the state courts would always deliver judgement in favour of the government, Mr Obaseki simply went ahead to demolish the three houses. In his cynical opinion, let the aggrieved go to court. Fortunately, Mr Obaseki has never pretended to be a democrat. He will harry his opponents to the end, and if matters come to a head, he will use state power to bury them. He is faintly aware that not too long from now he will vacate office, but in tandem with his private philosophy and as is customary with his public style of leadership, he will leave the matter of crossing a river till he gets there, bridge or no bridge.

Whatever happens in 2023, and given the disillusionment coursing through the electorate, neither the APC nor the PDP will change substantially. If hypothetically the PDP wins, it will not take them many years to begin to dream an empire expected to last as long as the Roman Empire, even if in the process they manage to get the fate of the Third Reich. They have their equally vicious step brother, the APC, to draw inspiration from.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Few had ever seen President Muhammadu Buhari so dramatic and emphatic. But on the day he decorated the new service chiefs with their new ranks, and speaking sternly, and perhaps feigning righteous anger, he gave them only a few weeks to secure the country to such a level that farmers could return to their farms. It was an impressive show. Why it took him more than five years to come to the conclusion which many Nigerians had reached years back is hard to tell. The point, however, is that whether slow or not, he had finally felt the same exasperation that has long befuddled the country. Unlike how he indulged the former service chiefs, it is ironic that he gave the new service chiefs only a ‘few weeks’ to restore order, though the country had all but descended into the vortex of violence and lawlessness on account of the lethargy and lack of imagination of the former security chiefs and a complicit presidency.

The president may not want to hear it, but the fact is that the country is at war. Killings, abductions, religious conflicts, shut educational institutions, cessation of farming, vicious herdsmen attacks, highway robberies, uncontrollable security agencies, mindless stealing added to inflated and needless contracts, cult and gang wars, and villages and communities seized and renamed by Fulani militia. On President Buhari’s watch, the country has become an active volcano and catastrophe. In contending with this total breakdown of law and order, the president has, until the decoration of the new service chiefs, been largely silent, preferring his spokesmen to issue bland and sterile, and sometimes conflictive, statements. Complementing the presidency’s statements are the fitful and provocative interventions by special interests inside the government, some of them prompted by competing cabals with an eye on politics and 2023.

Some two years ago, this column argued that the president’s success or failure would depend on his advisers and close aides, the so-called kitchen cabinet. The president had made heavy weather of governance, the piece suggested, because he had nepotistically and parochially assembled vindictive and superficial aides who had no regard for the rule of law or the constitution, and who had no depth or breadth of knowledge to avail the president the ideas and temperament needed to govern a 21st century country. Some of his aides were angered by that piece, and it received short shrift. It is time to restate that thesis again. Somehow, the president is still oblivious of the uninspiring quality of his kitchen cabinet, some of whom are neck-deep in political manoeuvres that may cost the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), its unity, and condemn and vitiate the legacy of the president himself.

There is little hope that the president can draw a connection between the parlous state of the country and the many weak and sterile policies and ideas issuing from his presidency. Should he draw that conclusion, he will be forced to rejig his kitchen cabinet, reset and retune his policies, run an inclusive government, and enthrone justice. But his conflicted kitchen cabinet made up of squabbling cabals have such a strong hold on the Buhari presidency that it is hard to see him freeing himself, let alone repudiating the narrow interests that undergird their actions and feigned patriotism. The president faces a dilemma. He will need to get fresh and wise aides in order to succeed; but without his current aides, he will feel naked and unsure of everything. Given his background, his peculiar brand of religious sympathies, his cultural hang-ups that see him looking wistfully north towards Niger Republic, and his political ideology whose leitmotif is feudalism, he will probably opt to be safe with what he is familiar with than risk his presidency for what, in his view, may turn out to be a chimera.

But should he opt to be venturous, here are the things he needs to do, for he really needs help to succeed. He has probably been told that the banditry laying the Northwest waste has socio-economic underpinnings. It is true, but it is much more. He must avert his mind to the injustice his government has inspired through its pestilential hijack of the judiciary, an action that has made virtually the whole country to mistrust the courts and encourage them to take the law into their bloodied hands. The judiciary needed reform to retune it for service delivery, and equipment and funds to make justice delivery timely. Instead, the president and his legal aides began wholesale demolition of the bulwark of the rule of law, total denunciation or trivialization of the principles of natural justice, and enthronement, at all judicial levels, of incompetent and sympathetic judges who deliver bizarre and politicized judgments devoid of sense and law.

Great and ambitious leaders reform and restructure their society’s basic norm to inspire regional and continental envy and imitation. Instead, President Buhari’s heavily politicized law officers, apart from their questionable understanding and interpretation of the law, propound monstrous legal principles, including subordinating the rule of law to diverse and trifling security exigencies, pack the judicial bench with loyalists and mediocrities, and institute an unprecedented level of ethnic favouritism and patronage, as recently witnessed in the controversies surrounding appointment of judges to the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal. Consequently, on the streets and elsewhere, disputants prefer to settle their grievances with guns and machetes, and even the security forces themselves have promoted and practiced jungle justice. It is safe to say that the president now has a judiciary after his heart. He will neither reform it nor brook changes or challenges to its structure, preferences, menaces, and decisions. He does not think he needs help to change anything in this critical third arm of government. But he really does.

Against the run of play, and like a bolt from the blue, the Buhari administration has decided to spend an obscenely huge $1.5bn to repair the 200,000 barrel per day capacity Port Harcourt refinery. For almost two decades, the refinery had been either dead or operating in fits and starts. It became a veritable sinkhole consuming billions of dollars and offering vexatiously little in return. Who or which group advised the president to look in that profligate direction when a much bigger and more modern private refinery will soon come on stream is difficult to guess. But at a princely $1.5bn or over N700bn repair cost, the Port Harcourt refinery, like Nigerian roads, will become one of the world’s most insanely expensive to maintain. It all boils down to who is advising the president, what his kitchen cabinet looks like, who does he listen to, and what does he himself know about modern refineries and the growing competition from electric cars and alternative energy sources?

• To be concluded next week

By Idowu Akinlotan

Hours after the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, alleged in an interview with the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) that the government was unable to trace and account for the $1bn taken from the excess crude account in 2018 to buy weapons during the tenure of the former service chiefs, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, has denied that any money was missing. Predictably, the allegation has stirred an intense controversy, with the NSA, through the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), insisting that he was quoted out of context. Even though the NSA has partially walked back his allegations, few are convinced that he didn’t know what he was talking about. So, the question remains: where is the money, and where are the weapons?

The NSA, a retired major-general, fought a war of attrition against the ex-service chiefs over chain of command and who controls whom. That war ended in a stalemate, only seemingly concluded when the former service chiefs were replaced and nominated as ambassadors. But the damage had been done, and poisoned relationships entrenched. Of course, the NSA was not suggesting that every kobo of that money was untraceable, for he knows that the A-29 Super Tucano fighter aircraft were among the purchases made by the administration. However, since his office was sidelined in many military purchases under the former service chiefs, he felt an obligation to raise queries.

It is not obvious why the NSA said he was quoted out of context. In the interview with the BBC, he was in fact very explicit, with absolutely no ambiguities of any kind. In his words: “The President has done his best by approving huge sums of money for the purchase of weapons, but the weapons were not bought, they are not here. Now, he has appointed new service chiefs, hopefully, they will devise some ways. I’m not saying the former service chiefs diverted the money, but the money is missing. We don’t know how, and nobody knows for now. I believe Mr President will investigate where the money went. I can assure you the President takes issues of this nature seriously. The fact is that preliminary investigation showed the funds are missing and the equipment is nowhere to be found. When the new service chiefs assumed office, they also said they didn’t see anything on the ground.”

Gen Monguno was reluctant to blame anyone or name names, but he was clear about what preliminary investigations revealed: that the money was missing, and military equipment missing. He did his best to hide the missing equipment he had in mind. But perhaps investigations will reveal the truth. However, that is precisely the problem. No matter how much the NSA resents the former service chiefs, and regardless of the cooperation he receives from the current service chiefs, there will be no investigations, a conclusion inferred from the clumsy manner he recanted his initial revelation on the BBC. Two reasons explain why the country is unlikely to hear more from the presidency on the matter. The first is explained by Mr Shehu’s spontaneous and unequivocal denunciation of anything suggestive of missing funds. And the second is the natural aversion the Buhari administration has for corruption allegation against the government.

If Gen Monguno was forthright in the interview, and offended by the way the former service chiefs went about arms procurement over the years, Mr Shehu was even more candid and impatient with any corruption allegation leveled against the Buhari administration. According to Mr Shehu: “About the $1bn taken from the Excess Crude Account with the consent of state governors used for military procurements, I want to assure you that nothing of that money is missing. The reference to it in the interview of the BBC Hausa Service by the National Security Adviser has been misconstrued and mistranslated. NSA made two critical points – one is that we don’t have enough weapons, which is a statement of fact; and two, procurements made have not been fully delivered. At no point did the NSA say that money has been misappropriated nor arms missing. They have not been delivered, that is correct; these are things you don’t get off the shelves.”

In the first instance, there was neither misconstrual nor mistranslation. Those who reported the story were not ignorant; nor did the recantation from the office of the NSA suggest anything other than contextual snafu. Gen Monguno was not only clear about what he had to say, he even repeated himself, perhaps unconsciously, for emphasis. He is clear that the money cannot be accounted for, at least wholly. Second, Mr Shehu was careful to emphasise that the governors, through the National Economic Council (NEC), in December 2017 sanctioned the illegal withdrawal of $1bn from the excess crude account. He said this in reference to the fact that when the withdrawal was made in 2018, it elicited bad-tempered controversy. It is true that the normally timid Nigerian governors consented to the withdrawal, but that consent did not obviate the need for legislative appropriation. The Buhari administration unconstitutionally and contemptuously avoided the National Assembly and simply took the money, believing that the NEC approval was final.

Much worse, by spontaneously concluding on behalf of the administration that the arms procurement fund was not missing, how could the government be trusted to objectively and dispassionately look into the matter in case money is actually missing? The Buhari administration is quick to accuse, prosecute and persecute others for corruption, particularly members of the opposition, but it is easily irritated and even resentful when anyone alleges corruption against members of the administration. However, no Nigerian today is convinced that corruption is not rife under this government. Gen Monguno won his battle against the former service chiefs — whether he fought them directly or not, or whether their replacement was due to pressure from him or not — but it is unlikely he can go any further in trashing them. The presidency did not wait days to respond to his allegations; they will resist any attempt, even indirectly, to tar with the brush of corruption an administration whose head they consider saintly, not to talk of scandalising military officers who seemed to have an implacable hold on the government even after their ambassadorial postings.

The National Assembly has vowed to investigate the allegation of the missing arms funds. They will be tilting at windmills. They had better conserve the little money they still have, having recently complained that they were short of funds. They have the lawful duty to investigate any alleged missing funds, and should in fact carry out such investigations as would shed light on what transpired in a Defence department so opaque and often wary of transparency that it is a miracle they can still find their way home daily. Legislative committees will, therefore, not preclude hearings, despite signals from the presidency, and they will embark on frenzied actions to unearth what they paint elegantly as the truth. But in the end, they will take dictations from the presidency, smother their zeal for legislative activism, indifferently look the public squarely in the face, and put an end to the charade. As former Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, said recently, the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of President Muhammadu Buahri, apart from being divisive and bellicose, is all “confusion and crisis”.

The presidency should at least have pretended to distance itself from the missing funds brouhaha, while at the same time curbing Mr Shehu’s spontaneity. It is possible no money is missing, despite the national skepticism that grieves such matters; but it is also possible that money could be missing, misapplied or difficult to trace in the warrens to which it has been squirreled by malfeasant public officials. How the presidency hopes to convince the public that its hasty decision and bias would enable it to do justice, assuming it can be pressured to set up an inquiry, is hard to see. In the face of Gen Monguno’s recantation, Mr Shehu’s needless and hasty intervention, and the self-righteous and abysmal culture of the government in pursuing selective justice, Nigerians must accept that this arms fund controversy is nothing but a storm in a tea cup. It may gall them, but they have endured much worse in the six dizzying years the Buhari administration has preached change to the people without winning a single convert, except of course you count political mercenaries.

 

IG Adamu and tenure extension

IN his counter-affidavit and notice of objection filed against a suit by a lawyer, Maxwell Opara, before the Federal High Court in Abuja, Inspector General Mohammed Adamu argued that Section 7(6) of the Nigeria Police Act, 2020 indicates that his tenure would end in 2023 or 2024. Mr Opara and most Nigerians dismayed by police misdeeds think otherwise. The courts are expected to determine who is right. But it is curious that when the service chiefs were being replaced, and Mr Adamu was spared, the Buhari administration, through a statement by Police Affairs minister, Mohammad Dingyadi, suggested that the government needed some three months to implement a “robust and efficient process of appointing a new IG”. It is either Mr Dingyadi and the presidency were ignorant of the Police Act, 2020 or Mr Adamu is stretching the law beyond its elastic limit.

 

Controversial Abuja-Kano Expressway reconstruction

IN early March, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved N797bn for the reconstruction of the 375km Abuja-Zaria-Kaduna-Kano Expressway. Critics suggest that at that price the road would be the most expensive in the world. It is strange that the cost of the road, even if it is not the most expensive, has not confounded the federal government. The 2021 budget is about N13.6trn. In other words, the Abuja-Kano Expressway will cost just about N200bn shy of N1trn, which, as a share of the entire budget for the year, is a princely 5.87 percent.

No one can tell when the road will be completed, regardless of initial timelines, as the unending and repeatedly revised Lagos-Ibadan Expressway construction has shown. It is one of the mysteries of Nigeria that road construction is obscenely expensive and slow. Nigerians only know their beginnings; they neither know the final costs nor the completion time. The Abuja-Kano Expressway will not be any different. For a budget with a deficit of about N5.20trn (3.64 percent of GDP), just how much can the government spare for this project in this budget year? And for a country notorious for project cost revisions, would this road not eventually exceed N1trn?

 

Fed Govt, Delta and N2.2bn Ibori loot

In his address during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Nigeria and the United Kingdom on the N2.2bn stolen and banked abroad by former Delta State governor, James Ibori, and associates, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, spoke of deploying the recovered funds “in consonance with existing framework engaged in the management of previous recoveries”. Pursuant to this, and as agreed by both Mr Malami and the representative of the UK government, the money would be spent on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kano Expressway, and the Second Niger Bridge. All three projects are extraneous to Delta State, thereby raising a firestorm of controversy over the propriety of applying Delta’s stolen funds to non-Delta projects.

Itse Sagay, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), argued that while a provision in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) enabled such recovered loots to be ceded to the federal government, it is nevertheless unjust and devoid of common sense to spend the money on projects alien to the state from which the money was looted in the first instance. It is difficult to fault his argument. There is absolutely no basis for transferring the money elsewhere, especially when there are also federal projects in Delta needing funds. During the MoU signing, Mr Malami spoke of existing framework in order to justify what is patently unjust. But Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, faulted the argument of the AGF, insisting that in fact existing framework relating to previous recoveries in the cases of Joshua Dariye, former Plateau State governor, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, former Bayelsa State governor, saw the federal government remitting the recovered funds to the states involved.

It is distressing that N2.2bn, a small amount in terms of the humongous funds needed to complete the three projects listed by the AGF, should dull the sense of justice of the Buhari administration and rob it of common sense. Even if there is an unfair precedent for spending recovered loots, the AGF’s decision is still indefensible, and if he possessed any sense of justice, it should have led him to revisit the past and make amends. However, both the past and the principle of justice do not support the greed of the federal government. Indeed, going by recent events in the country, especially in politics, it is clear that the Justice ministry and the attorney general’s office often adamantly scorn justice. But it is possible that Mr Malami legalistically relied on the MoU signed with the UK government to arrive at his decision. This would, however, be disingenuous. There is no way the UK government would prioritise the three projects quoted in the MoU if the AGF had not mentioned them.

Much worse, apart from the Nigerian government’s disdain for what is fair and just, is the humiliating feeling that Nigeria’s stolen money would be returned with such condescension. The import of this is that the government is weak and unable to appreciate the insult involved in being dictated to on how to prioritise and streamline its national expenditure. That Nigerian public officials transfer stolen money abroad is bad enough as an indicator of the irresponsibility of men like Messrs Ibori and Dariye; but for Nigeria to be treated as an irresponsible and profligate little child is far worse. It is true that recovered loots were sometimes looted all over again, but it is far better for national pride and national sanity to forfeit the money than to be dictated to in condescending terms. No such dictations would be countenanced by any self-respecting country. But Nigeria, of course, is not self-respecting. It constantly grovels, particularly before powerful countries.

What is even more damning and intolerable is for the AGF to fail to recognize the unfairness and injustice of deploying money stolen from Delta State to projects outside the state. It simply does not make sense. That the money is forfeited to the federal government through the EFCC Act does not mean that an administration with a sense of justice should not know where to allocate the funds. The injustice Mr Malami has engineered and excused, apart from being indefensible, is also shameful. How could he not know how to apply the N2.2bn? And what private thoughts went through the mind of the UK government representative in their estimation of Nigerians as the MoU was signed?

By Idowu Akinlotan

 

More than the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Congress (APC) will in the coming months contend with a welter of presidential aspirants which its puny administrative talent cannot cope with. The race will be more streamlined in the PDP, for obvious reasons; but in the APC, the race will be frenzied, tumultuous, rowdy, bitter and full of intrigues. The foundation for an acrimonious race was laid right from the founding of the party in February 2013. But it was smothered by the simple fact of their newness and, at the time, dreamy objectives. Once in office, however, all their innate and inert demons rushed out of the closet and soon began to gnaw at the fabric of the party. Those demons have not let up, with their talons still embedded both in the body and mind of the party. There will be no fresh demons in 2023 to assail the party; but having been indulged for more than six years in all manner of demented ways, and having sucked the blood of its founders and earnest supporters in an orgy of bacchanalian revelry, the old and tested demons will shake the rafters of the party and probably displace its foundations.

Until next year, it will not be possible to know just how many aspirants will brave the odds to announce their interest. However, even now, a few pretenders to the throne are rearing their heads and are eager to bite the bullet. One of them, Kogi State’s governor Yahaya Bello, fancies his chances of being Nigeria’s next president, more because of his youthfulness than any possession of capacity or character. Except perhaps himself and his immediate family, it is unlikely anyone can explain his fixation with the presidency, not to say his rationalization for coveting the office. He has promoted himself as the adopted political son of President Muhammadu Buhari, and has on that account governed the state more from Abuja, which is next door to his state, than from Lokoja, the blighted and forlorn state capital that has witnessed little touch from his administration. The president, not to say many powerful public and security officials, also see him as a curious and persistent young man. They are amused by his hollow tenacity, a curious form of tenacity that is not anchored on any noble or inspiring idea or objective.

Perhaps Mr Bello sees his connections with the high and mighty in Abuja whom he had wooed and lathered with false expectations of his capacity as sufficient to qualify him for the presidency. Or perhaps he sets great store by his youthful age to aspire, on account of only that, to the presidency. Certainly he cannot be aspiring for anything in 2023 because of his records. His records are dismal and, judged after eight years, should be sufficient to consign him to the most brutal and unforgiving gulag. If it is his connections with the president whom he tried to see in company with the rabble-rousing Femi Fani-Kayode, it may never be known why he thinks the president would be an important factor going into the next election. The president is already a hors de combat. He is unable to influence anything substantial even now. Going into 2023, the coterie of influencers and cabals around the president will dictate the pace, and even then, inexpertly. Many things may be unknown in the coming presidential poll, but one thing is certain: the president will be an insignificant factor, even if impactful decisions are taken and done in his name.

Mr Bello is infatuated with his age. Had he been educated in the best traditions of the world’s average statesmen, he would have known that age is just a number. There have been men who took power in their twenties and done great things, including hewing out an empire out of disparate and fractious peoples and races; and there have been men who took office quite advanced in age, and have done incredible things, including giving the world unexampled leadership. But even if Mr Bello cannot be dissuaded from his obsession with age, surely he must confront the question of what impact youthfulness has had on his years in office, especially given the brigandage he authored and inspired to secure a second term.

At bottom, Mr Bello knows he has done nothing significant to merit a presidential run. It is pure gimmickry. Sponsored and misguided youths in parts of the country may whoop for him and paste his campaign posters all over, but he knows that it is merely to stay relevant post-2023. Without his self-appointed mentor, the president, and with nothing he has done or propounded to merit anyone remembering him, it is hard to see how the relevance he craves can be sustained after the next polls. Kogites abhor his politics and scorn his vaunted self-importance and records. He will have no base to point to in running for higher office; and mercifully, will have nothing original or deep or philosophical, or even ideological he has said to recommend him. How something can come out of nothing, even for a man of excessive volubility and unequalled self-promotion, is hard to fathom.

Mr Bello may be the archetype of many of the misguided aspirants who will assail Nigerians for votes in 2023, but he is obviously not the only one. Doyin Okupe, a medical practitioner and former presidential aide is considering a run for the highest office. Described as an attack dog many years ago during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, and eager to join a fray, any fray at all, it is not clear what he thinks he might bring to the presidency should he have the chance. It is true many aspirants think they could not conceivably perform worse than the present occupant of the office, but they would be hard put to convince Nigeria’s increasingly skeptical electorate that men whose poor image they had viewed and endured with great embarrassment and dismay should seek to replace someone who had planted a sword among the people.

Alas, every time newsmen speculate about Dr Jonathan running for high office again, they have been met with his excessive prevarication. There were indications months ago that some APC big wigs were soliciting the defection of the former president to the APC as a prelude to offering him the ticket to run, win and serve for only one term. The APC leaders and Dr Jonathan have of course denied the speculations. But they have not issued their denials in irrefutable and irrevocable tones and terms. Whatever the case, there still remains a teeny-weeny chance that Dr Jonathan might do the unthinkable. Should he attempt it, he would of course have to convince the country that he had so much character, resolve and wisdom left in his agitated heart than he gave when he presided over the affairs of Nigeria for about five years. That would be impossible. In his response to speculations that he might run for the presidency in 1999 shortly after he was released from jail, former president Olusegun Obasanjo rhetorically asked how many presidents Nigerians wanted to make out of him. Eventually, he ran, won, and after completing two terms, wanted to keep running. Such is the obsession with power occasioned by Nigeria’s imperial presidency that no one should rule out even Dr Jonathan quivering before the temptation. But it will end in fiasco.

Towards the end of 2021, the list of those who want a shot at the presidency will lengthen and become clearer. But only a few of the aspirants will prefer to be judged by their leadership character, ability to assemble a great team of achievers, vision, and understanding of how a modern, inclusive government should be run – in short the perfect antithesis to the current and increasingly illiberal presidency.

 

Dongban-Mensem’s riposte

 

IN her response to the controversy surrounding the nomination of justices to the Court of Appeal (CoP) the president of the court, Monica Dongban-Mensem, did not explain why she had to defend herself and the integrity of the appellate court she heads. But she gave a defence anyway, and it was an intriguing one. As far as Nigerians know, no one has questioned her integrity or that of her court; all everyone knows is that the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and its political patrons hijacked the process and bastardised the shortlist of nominees forwarded to the National Judicial Council (NJC), the second such provocative and anomalous nominations in many months. Neither Justice Dongban-Mensen nor her court was in focus at all; so why is she crying more than the bereaved?

 

 

Gen Magashi and foolhardiness in Sokoto

BARELY two weeks after Defence minister, Bashir Magashi, a retired major-general, rebuked Nigerians for turning yellow when they encountered bandits, a group of community toughs and vigilantes in Illela, Amarawa, Sokoto State, literally took his strange counsel to heart by facing up to the bandits who invaded their community to abduct a popular businessman, Rabi’u Amarawa. Warned by the bandits that they could come to grief if they persisted in their foolhardiness, the heady vigilantes took the battle to the bandits as they made away with their quarry. Twelve vigilantes lost their lives in the attack, with no word on how many bandits died. But commenting on the attack through their spokesman, Sanusi Abubakar, the Sokoto police argued that the vigilantes erred by not alerting the police before launching a counteroffensive against the bandits.

In February, while commenting on another set of abductions in Niger State, in which some 27 students were taken away by bandits from a government secondary school in Kagara, Gen Magashi accused Nigerians of being cowardly whenever they encountered bandits, some of whom, he sneered, were armed with just a few bullets. Said he: “It is the responsibility of everybody to be alert and ensure safety when necessary. We shouldn’t be cowards. Sometimes bandits come with about three rounds of ammunition, and when they fire shots everybody will run. In our younger days, we stand to fight any form of aggression. Why should people run away from minor, minor aggressions? We should stand and face them. If these people know that the people have the competence and capability to defend themselves, they will run away.”

It is not certain that the Sokoto vigilantes took the counsel of the Defence minister, or whether they were just being their courageous or foolhardy self. But whatever motivated them to embark on that fateful counterattack, it led to the huge losses they suffered. They are unlikely to reenact such bravado in future. The Sokoto police were probably right that they were not alerted to lead the rescue mission, and they should have, assuming they would have responded. But it could also be an indication of the loss of confidence in the police in many communities and states in the North ravaged by banditry and terrorism. In nearly all the attacks, the presence of the police had been discounted in rescue efforts. Gen Magashi was roundly condemned when he made his strange and unmilitary suggestion to civilians to face heavily armed bandits with nothing but their courage. He may have finally recognised the terrible and bloody consequences that often follow unwise and presumptuous statements public officials casually make.

The inappropriateness of the Defence minister’s reaction to a complex and grievous problem reminds Nigerians of one equally flippant response of his predecessor in office, Mansur Dan-Ali, a retired colonel. Asked to react to the January 2018 killings in Logo and Guma councils in Benue State in which some 73 people were killed by herdsmen, Colonel Dan-Ali blamed the victims. According to him, “You see, whenever a crisis happens at any time, there are remote and immediate causes. Look at this issue (of killings in Benue and Taraba), what is the remote cause of this farmers’ crisis? Since the nation’s independence, we know there used to be routes cattle rearers took because they are all over the nation. You go to Bayelsa, Ogun, you will see them. If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen? These people are Nigerians. It is just like going to block the shoreline; does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes of the crisis. But the immediate cause is the grazing law. These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together with each other. Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclaves.”

Similarly, as if cued, the then Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, also suggested that there was nothing unusual about the killings. After 73 were murdered? Well, as he put it at the time, “Obviously, it is communal crisis; herdsmen are part of the community. They are Nigerians and are a part of the community, are they not?” How these public officers must feel now, after the federal government has finally come round to accepting that open grazing is outdated, is hard to say. The federal government has just shrugged its shoulders and moved on, but it bears the largest part of the blame for its slowness and lack of foresight in recognizing the limitations and hazards of open grazing. That it took them more than five years to come to this realization, and after thousands have died and pushed the country to the brink of chaos, says a lot about their competence.

Food blockade,  foolish negotiations

 

Whether the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuffs and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria realized it or not, their decision on February 26 to block the movement of livestock and foodstuffs to the South not only made their union an essentially northern, indeed, core North, affair, it also amounted to a declaration of war. The authorities showed a vague sense of recognising the political and security import of the blockade when the Department of State service interrogated the leaders of the union, and soldiers forcefully but only partially lifted the blockade in the boundary town of Jebba, Kwara State. The cattle and foodstuff dealers were protesting the huge losses they suffered during the EndSars protest and the Shasha, Ibadan, clashes, among other grievances. They did not indicate whether they were the only ones who suffered losses.

It was a misguided blockade. It will encourage those who have taken the old order for granted, and depended on supplies from the North, to actively pursue the issue of food security for their people. The union acknowledged last Monday that the federal government did not invite them for discussions, except Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello – yes, the same ingratiating, do-nothing governor – who took it upon himself to dialogue with them. It is a confirmation of what everyone already knows about the administration’s poor perception and lack of capacity that they did not even sense the urgency of the issue or its dire security implication. To negotiate such matters was foolish. It dignified the misdirected action and indulged the union upon a matter that the government should have acted sternly. A supplier can withhold his supplies, but he has no right to block others from supplying, a point this column made about the EndSars protesters when they blocked the Lekki Tollgate last October.

 

By Idowu Akinlotan

 

IN the 1979 presidential poll, Nigerians examined their political parties largely along ethnic lines and elected into office Shehu Shagari, a man neither equipped for nor interested in the country’s highest office. His predecessor in office, military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo, abetted the election. In four unprecedented and dizzying years, Mr Shagari enacted a horrendous administrative fiasco that saw the return into office of the military led by another group of untested, superficial and ambitious officers. Skip the eventful but annulled presidential election of 1993. In 1999, some 15 years after Mr Shagari was overthrown in a coup d’etat, Chief Obasanjo was elected into office. He was pragmatic, but he had no vision or programme, and was often distracted and lacking in the reflection, depth and hindsight that engender leadership success. Both he and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), raucously led the country through two four-year seasons of moderate achievements and chaos that culminated in the bastardised election of the ailing and unprepared Umaru Yar’Adua. Why the country has failed to learn the right lessons during this period is probably a testimony to their warped understanding of leadership, nationhood, religion and ethnicity.

It was, therefore, not surprising that rather than experience improvement, the country insanely embarked on a steady decline that has now lasted for more than four obscene and depressing decades. After inheriting a crippled presidency, the then vice president Goodluck Jonathan confirmed by his controversial records that Chief Obasanjo did the country great harm to foist him on the party and the presidential ticket. Had his major opponent in the 2011 presidential election not been the woolly and inflexible Muhammadu Buhari, Dr Jonathan did nothing inspiring to deserve re-election. But four years later, in 2015, the failures of the PDP and its sitting president ominously recast former military head of state Buhari as the deus ex machina. He would tame the evils that afflicted the country, and give the strong leadership Dr Jonathan cavalierly failed to provide. But the North, in rallying behind him, saw him largely from ethnic and religious prism. He was, alas, not an exception to the national inability to judge a leader by competence and capacity, let alone by democratic credentials and leadership character. The country thus foisted on themselves a president who came into office in 2015 with the ponderous baggage of ethnic, religious and appointment biases, and probably a far worse lack of capacity never seen since 1979.

It is not certain that in the next polls, if they do come, Nigerians would show they have learnt their lessons. But if current signals are a foretaste of what is to come, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is steadily been transmogrified to look more like one of its legacy parties, the president’s own erstwhile Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), and the opposition PDP are making the same horrifying mistakes on the 2023 presidential poll as the country made in about eight presidential elections since 1979. In 2019, despite clearly being unable to rise to the stature of a statesman or leader, and despite taking the country on a roller coaster as his hijacked presidency twisted and turned through the fingers of impertinent and aggressive cabals, President Buhari was voted back into office. His main opponent in that election, Abubakar Atiku, turned out to be a determining factor, given what his enemies averred was his lack of electoral appeal. There was voter apathy in the South; but in the North, fuelled by ethnic and religious considerations, and regardless of the chaos in the presidency and the decline of the country in general, the president was reelected with a higher plurality than in 2015. Not only was the ruination of the country complete and its people divided almost irretrievably, no one is now sure what level of punishment the country must experience to abandon their old and unworkable political and electoral paradigms.

The Buhari administration is not being falsely and needlessly maligned, as some of his aides and defenders grumble, nor is the conclusion about the country’s precipitous decline under his presidency exaggerated. The health of the nation, the offensive and naïve return to the loan peonage inherited by his predecessor, Chief Obasanjo, and significantly vacated in 2005 to widespread relief, the unbearable level of insecurity, and the hatred, bitterness and acrimony between the country’s ethnic groups bear sad testimony to the injurious impact his administration has had so far. Worse may still come as more abductions of schoolchildren, families and travelers are perpetrated by herdsmen, bandits and other copycat criminal elements. The current administration has in fact done incalculable harm to the national fabric by its slow and incompetent response to the nation’s existential crisis, sometimes because of lack of capacity, and at other times because of bewildering complicity. It is, for instance, bent on imposing herdsmen colonies in as many states as it can get away with, beginning with grazing colonies that are brusquely located in uncooperative host communities, and now all forms of ranching subterfuges, including the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), designed more to propitiate Fulani herders than recognize and satisfy the demands of nationhood and delicate ethnic peculiarities.

Incalculable harm? There is more. All sorts of arguments have been tendered to justify the Nigeria to Niger Republic rail line for which nearly two billion dollars loan has been secured at a time of stressed economy, and when other priority projects linking the rest of Nigeria together have been kept in abeyance. Leading figures of the Buhari administration, including the president himself, were critical of the previous administration, which it labeled incompetent and ineffective in combating insecurity and insurgency. But in more than six years, and with humongous funds allocated and spent, sometimes without appropriation, insurgency has barely abated, and widespread nationwide insecurity has multiplied by leaps and bounds, to the ugly point that the nation could be properly described to be at war. And this unhappy situation has been compounded by inscrutable actions taken by the country’s security forces whose patriotism, not to say professionalism, is now being questioned because of their regional and ethnic biases.

Senate president Ahmed Lawan is optimistic that insecurity would be knocked into a cocked hat in about two months. Apart from presiding over a legislative assembly that seeks to ingratiate itself with the presidency at every opportunity, it is not clear what the basis of his optimism is. Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, the largely self-appointed and controversial Izala sect cleric whose fiery verbal whip had been felt by the federal government for many years, told a startled and incredulous public a few days ago that the federal government knew where killer herdsmen had their camps. The government shamefacedly admitted that as a matter of fact it knew the location of the armed groups, but restraint prevented the government from ordering massive bombardment of the camps in order to avoid collateral damage. In other words, the only access to the camps, which Sheikh Gumi reached by road during one of his peace shuttles, and which bandits constantly travel to after enacting their barbarism on wayfarers, was by air. It then took more than a year of controversy for the government to decide there would be no amnesty for bandits and killer herdsmen. This considerable amount of dithering is a reflection of the weak moorings of an administration that is destitute of ideology, an administration that foreswore its party’s ideology and principles. And just when some northern governors bathed in controversy over the propriety of negotiating with bandits, the heavily pampered criminals unleashed more mayhem by kidnapping over 300 schoolgirls from Jangebe in Talata Mafara, the hometown of Buba Bello Jangebe, the unfortunate convict whose wrist was amputated in 2000 during the heady days of Governor Ahmed Sani’s chaotic and indulgent theocracy in Zamfara State.

President Buhari is strangely unaware of the damage being done around him. His administration is widely believed to have been hijacked. But even the Police Force, apart from the horrors they perpetrated for years which precipitated the nearly revolutionary EndSars movement, is now thought to have also been hijacked. The Force is accused of taking sides when ethnic clashes occur. Ifon, Ondo State, elders recently complained openly that a herdsman’s petition that his cow was killed somewhere near their community led to their summons to Abuja. Similar accusations have been leveled against the security forces in their contrasting responses to insurgents whom they were rehabilitating, bandits whom they caressed, armed and killer herdsmen whom they shielded, and unarmed agitators in the South who are being pummeled. The administration cannot pretend to be unaware of its prejudiced policies of RUGA, of the sneaky attempt to appropriate states’ water resources, and of even attempt to impound states’ forest reserves. How they all hope to forge a nation out of ethnic bias and widespread injustice is difficult to understand. Once the administration had been hijacked by all sorts of characters, no boundaries remained inviolate, not in the judiciary where injustice and unfairness have become rife, not in the ruling party now bifurcated by hate and ambition, and not in the security agencies which conceived and skewed the location of tertiary military institutions in one region, apart from perpetrating its own unique forms of discrimination and shielding accused soldiers from trial.

No one doubts that in the past few years Nigeria began its steep decline to chaos. The only disagreement is in calculating how fast that decline is, and what time the teetering country would reach the bottom. This is worsened by the clumsiness and sometimes indifference of the administration, not to say the curious inattentiveness of the president. Is there any possibility that the decline could be arrested before it gets worse? There is no sign of that happening. The president is hobbled by all manner of indeterminate constraints, his cabinet is working at sixes and sevens, with occasional bursts of energy and inspiration, his aides are intemperate, and his party hardly contributes anything ideological or inspiring. It is hard to see a change coming from any direction. The country will probably muddle on until the inevitable happens, with no one certain what that inevitable is.

It is in times like these that the main opposition party should come to the rescue. But the PDP is itself battling its own demons. After its humiliating defeat in 2015, it needed to purge its ranks and reposition itself ideologically and operationally. Instead, it abandoned common sense and brashly and naively rushed into the 2019 elections with no change whatsoever. It was thought that a second drubbing, perhaps not as clear cut as the first, was enough to force the opposition to do what it ought to have done in 2015. Not the PDP. Glutton for punishment, and as foolish and casual as ever, it has allowed itself to slip deeper and more firmly into the hands of expired leaders that twice inspired it into catastrophe. Worse, it now seems as if they have surrendered to either the staid and unimaginative Abubakar Atiku forces or the rambunctious and temperamental scaremongers of the Nyesom Wike group. If they make any substantial impact in 2023, they will be undeserving of it, as the APC itself is undeserving of victory or respect. The APC is badly wounded, and its intraparty shenanigans deeply off-putting. They deserve nothing, not even a modicum of respect. But the PDP is in no position to offer any serious challenge, and its leaders have no sense for anything, including sense itself.

But by far the most direct and palpable indication of Nigeria’s decline is both parties’ inability to learn from history. They still embrace the old method of leadership recruitment that elevates religion and ethnicity above character and competence. They jostle for religious dominance and prefer the president to come from their faith. This inanity led past military rulers to locate a worship centre in Aso Villa to the exclusion of other faiths, until Chief Obasanjo balanced the equation. But both equations are needless, foolish and a cover for incompetence, deceit, fake piety, and evil intentions. Nigeria’s loud gestures to religion have profited them nothing; but the people are still immersed in that culture. Even more dispiriting, the two main parties and a majority of Nigerians still permute the 2023 presidential poll along ethnic lines, as the Buhari administration has done for all of its more than six years in office. Thus the PDP casts furtive glances at Mr Atiku, and the APC, at a point, insensitively regarded the inconsistent and unprincipled Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna and the dethroned Emir of Kano, the implausible and impetuous Muhammadu Sanusi II, as potential candidates.

Sadly, even the leading socio-cultural and political groups in Nigeria, such as Afenifere (Southwest) and Ohanaeze Ndigbo (Southeast), have a twisted and boyish conception of leadership, not to talk of their abject failure to match the country’s crisis with the appropriate solution. With all the incompetence manifesting in government, the groups were expected to re-examine their leadership paradigms in order to extricate the country from the political malaise of the past. Instead, they have doubled down. Ohanaeze and the Igbo as a whole want the next president to come from the Southeast, citing marginalisation, but remain fairly reticent about the issues of character and capacity of the presumed candidate. The idealistic Afenifere and the hugely romantic Yoruba want a saint, but never pause to ponder why the country prefers a Yoruba candidate who the Yoruba are not enthusiastic about, thus shedding light on why the country rejected the enormously gifted administrator, Obafemi Awolowo, but embraced Moshood Abiola. Quite clearly, the country appears ready to repeat the mistakes of the past, choosing the scaffolding for the building. But despite the best efforts of the Igbo, the country which often manages to embrace fifth-rate northerners for the highest office in the land, will not embrace their candidate until he builds himself as the most acceptable to voters and proves himself as a nationalist. And notwithstanding the emotional campaign, noisy vituperations and self-centred intrigues of the Yoruba alluded to by Pastor Tunde Bakare a few months ago, the rest of the country will always prefer someone antithetical to their politics, if not even worldview.

Nigeria’s national crisis is so overwhelming and its survival so tenuous that the crying need of the moment is to elect a competent administrator and visionary as president, not a pious, know-nothing, do-nothing and ethnic-baiting politician. The parties cannot be trusted to set aside internal bickering in the manner that saw the emergence of Abraham Lincoln as the Republican Party candidate for the 1860 United States presidential election. Nor can scheming, whining party apparatchiks be relied upon to nominate a strong-willed and consummate politician as their candidate. Both the APC and PDP need to be rejigged, purged and renewed before they can do right by country. If Nigeria survives its present crisis, and 2023, against all expectations, does come, it will be because the people, their parties and their politicians have seen the futility of producing leaders using the wrong paradigms and yardsticks. There is no proof they can, given their present state of mind, the ignorance of the majority, and the pit in which ethnicity, religion and intra-ethnic suspicions and rivalry have held the people.

By Idowu Akinlotan

 

 

IN recent times, the process of appointment of judicial officers in Nigeria has become unnecessarily untidy and controversial for lack of transparency and integrity. There seems to be a total absence of rules and guidelines on selection and appointment of such officers. Nothing exemplifies this better than the current process of appointment of Justices to the Court of Appeal, a process that is said to have been politicised, ethnicised and unfortunately discredited. It has ignited condemnation and dismay from a cross-section of the Nigerian legal community, including distinguished legal practitioners and jurists, for lack of transparency and due process. After the FCT High Court’s deplorable and scandalous selection of judges last year, which led to litigations, it was thought that an introspective Nigerian Judiciary would, in future exercises, ensure that such a disastrous outing was not repeated. Regrettably, the ongoing exercise is not anything different, if not worse. Reports suggest that the process has been hijacked by politicians, particularly a few powerful interest groups. A leaked list of shortlisted candidates has been circulating for days, inviting such candidates for interview at the National Judicial Council (NJC). The list has generated both controversy and public outrage.

In recent years, the Nigerian judiciary has come under attack and criticisms. Concern has been expressed about the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency or otherwise of Nigeria’s judicial system. Indeed, the general perception of the public is that the judiciary is corrupt, a sentiment stridently given wing by President Muhammadu Buhari himself in his first year in office. Nigerians were certain he would either institute or encourage reforms that would sanitise the judiciary, particularly the appointment of judges at all levels. No reform has been attempted. Indeed, the problem has worsened. And, gradually but steadily, the confidence of the public in the judicial system is being eroded. Many judges are perceived as incompetent and lacking in integrity. This perception puts the administration of justice in grave danger and calls for urgent rescue efforts. One of the nagging problems militating against the establishment of a credible justice delivery system in the country is clearly the process of appointment of judges. The Nigerian judiciary operates an obsolete and mystifying process that compromises excellence and downplays the critical role of integrity. Mediocrity is thus enthroned. Hard work, integrity and diligence are sacrificed on the altar of expediency, religion, ethnicity and state of origin. A judiciary founded upon such parochial and galling considerations cannot raise its head in the judiciary of the civilized world.

In her desire to eschew the old paradigm, the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, reportedly set about the task of getting the best hands for the court with a view to repositioning it for effective and efficient justice delivery. A vigorous exercise of screening was consequently embarked upon. The screening exercise at the Court of Appeal, sources say, involved two different committees of eminent jurists supervised by the President of the Court. The outcome of the exercise was the shortlist presented to the Federal Judicial Service Commission, (FJSC), by Justice Dongban-Mensem, in consonance with the established practices and procedure. However, sources said the shortlist was whimsically discarded and capriciously replaced with another list, now in circulation, in total disregard and abhorrence to merit and excellence, under the guise of federal character. The good work done by the eminent jurists of the Court of Appeal, including the Presiding Justices of the Court,was utterly rubbished and discarded with impunity by powerful interests at the FJSC.

It became clear that the FJSC had its own peculiar notion of federal character, which permitted it to brazenly load up its list with candidates from a particular section of the country and religion. From the leaked official document containing the FJSC’s shortlist, in circulation in the past one week, thirteen out of the twenty candidates shortlisted came from the northern part of the country, with three Khadis prominently featuring, while seven came from the South. Most intriguing and unfathomable is that, of the thirteen candidates from the North, none is a Christian. Is the FJSC telling Nigerians that there are no Christian judges in the whole of the North considered fit and proper for elevation to the Court of Appeal? It must worry every patriot that a process of appointment of Justices to a crucial court like the Court of Appeal can degenerate to primordial and debased level in 21st Century Nigeria. It is left to the NJC in its supervisory role of all judicial appointments, if it is as scandalized as the rest of the country, to properly interrogate this element and rectify the plunge to the abyss.

The enormity of the desecration of the process that took place at the FJSC has even attracted the attention of the public, civil rights’ organizations and ethnic nationalities who now call and clamour for the cancellation of the FJSC’s list by the National Judicial Council (NJC), as it is considered a complete deviation from the rules and guidelines prescribed by the Council. The observation of the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF) in faulting the list is poignant. Describing the list as appalling, the Forum noted, “It is quite surprising that, of the 20 candidates on the preferred list, all the candidates picked from the North exclude Christians but include three Khadis for a court that needs experts in various areas of law, including customary law.” The Forum, while threatening a law suit, asserted that “we cannot accept that a multi-ethnic and religious country is being treated in this way. It is therefore demanded that the National Judicial Council (NJC) should trash the FJSC list immediately for the original list prepared by the President of the Court of Appeal.” In its own petition to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), the Global Integrity Crusade Network (GICN) called for the cancellation of the entire process that produced the controversial list. It remarked: “Our Global Integrity Crusade Network (GICN) is aggrieved to note that the Federal Judicial Service Commission under your leadership has decided to recklessly desecrate the judiciary, which should be the last hope of the common man.”

The importance of transparency in the process of appointment of judicial officers is indispensable. It is a principle that should permeate every stage of the selection and appointment process of judicial officers. This is crucial in order to ensure public confidence and, by extension, the legitimacy of the process. A lack of transparency at any stage leaves the process vulnerable to perceptions of manipulations, improper reasons for the selection of unqualified candidates and similar shortcomings. It is, therefore, a serious challenge to the CJN and the NJC in the ongoing exercise to ensure that henceforth, appointments to the higher bench in the country are based on objective and verifiable factors.They can achieve this by making the judicial appointment process more transparent and merit-based. The process must not only be transparent but manifestly seen to be so. And, of course, the yardsticks of measurement of appointment should include excellence, competence, integrity, special skill, comportment and notable contributions to the advancement of law. The competence and integrity of a judge are basic elements that form the bedrock for the enthronement of justice.

The legal profession, consisting of the bar and bench, provides the exclusive pool from where judges are drawn. But, regardless of where a judge is appointed from, the bar or bench, more attention should be paid to professional competence and personal attributes. High professional and moral qualifications should be viewed as inextricably intertwined, because without doubt diligence, conscientiousness, fairness, responsibility, critical thinking, tolerance and honesty have direct effects on the actions and decisions of a judge. At every point in time, a process of appointment of judicial officers should produce the best the legal profession can offer. The current exercise should not be an exception.

 

On Buhari addressing the nation

 

Given the heightening rate of insecurity everywhere in Nigeria, compounded by the seeming absence of government, there has been rising clamour to get President Muhammadu Buhari to address the nation, acknowledge the problems and pledge to do something about them. Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu calls for that address. The calls are well intentioned, and it is in fact the right and proper thing for Nigerians to expect their president to address the nation on his plans to curb the maladies afflicting the country. But there is unlikely to be any address. It is not in the president’s nature to be cajoled — for that is how he will look at the calls — into taking steps and formulating policies his laid-back approach abhors.

But if against conventional thinking the president chooses to address the nation, the campaigners must be advised that he will very likely disappoint the country, probably worsen the crisis by his typically one-sided narrative, and offer perspectives that humiliate and irritate nearly everybody, including the alarmed captive audience he thinks he is protecting and promoting. Instead of pining for an address, let the country take solace in the president’s reticence. Having surrounded himself with advisers and security chiefs from a narrow section of the country, whatever he has to say will mirror their parochialism, further exacerbate national problems, and discourage the judicious. No, the president should remain silent. The country already knows what he thinks. He should not multiply their grief by confirming their worst fears.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Since Adams Oshiomhole, former National chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was dethroned in a spectacular, illegal but unchallenged intraparty coup last year, his forces, supporters and powerful backers had every month continued to yield as many inches, yards and miles as the new power brokers demanded of them. There was indeed no end to the yielding. They yielded in the landing grounds, if you forgive the military pun, and yielded in the heights. There was no ground too hallowed for them to practise their new philosophy of abject surrender. Sometimes they couched surrender as discretion, for as the English say, discretion is the better part of valour; but often they simply surrendered to the new lords of the party simply because the president backed the coup and spoke indiscreetly in its favour.

Pressing their advantage, the new lords, nearly all of whom are serving or former governors, made the registration and revalidation of old or new members – pick your option – the fulcrum of their progress and advancement. They had first embarked on reconciling feuding party members. Soon after they began that arduous and thankless job, they discovered that there was no harder task in the world than reconciling friends and enemies who were either strange bedfellows from the beginning or became ambitious and cantankerous party members and leaders once they won elections and the crowns settled over their ears. Sadly, with Mr Oshiomhole out of the way, President Muhammadu Buhari no longer had the benefit of the countervailing arguments that induced moderation, bargain and compromise in the party. It was thereafter one-way sailing, even if the party henceforth sailed continuously and indifferently near the wind all the time. The new party lords had empowered a committee headed by the noncommittal Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni, and canonized him and his panel with the garish label of Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention and Planning Committee. Once they found their feet and grew teeth and knew how to bark and bite, the committee and their scheming backers threw caution to the wind, unfurled their combat flags, and made the extermination of their enemies in the party the centerpiece of their philosophy.

Last week, however, the previously yielding and reticent Mr Oshiomhole camp began to growl. It was as if they knew they were marked for extermination. But they had been marked since last year when the president, against all odds and reason, was persuaded to back the intraparty coup. Curiously, Mr Oshiomhole was not the first to growl. That distinction was reserved for the first national chairman of the party, Bisi Akande, a former governor of Osun State and principled state and party administrator. Voicing his opinion on the unspoken and unwritten plot to completely decapitate and disembowel the APC as led since 2015, Chief Akande said: “No population census is repeated within less than a decade and voters are not re-registered at every election. Within this context, I see the present APC membership registration within less than a decade after the original register as an indefensible aberration leading to certain ugly perceptions that the APC leadership might be wasteful and unappreciative of the proper use of money in a kind of scanty economy in which Nigeria now finds itself. These seeming ugly perceptions put into abeyance the applause of the two national election successes that the original APC register enjoyed since its completion on 15th February 2014 and the over N1bn of 2014 value that the original register cost when the APC had no money of its own.”

Chief Akande’s logic is infallible, but it did not cut ice with the new party lords. Few within and outside the party can pretend not to know where Chief Akande’s sympathies lie, nor where he was heading, nor whom he backed. But just in case there were lingering doubts about Chief Akande’s position, former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, spoke next about the same issue of registration and revalidation. According to him: “Since we have a foundation, and that foundation is one on which the structure of the party up till the present was built at the time of the registration of this party, I will not fault Baba Akande’s position; I cannot but endorse it.”

Completing the triumvirate, Mr Oshiomhole was even more unsparing and poignant. In his words: “APC is governed by a constitution and not by man; the constitution only provides for registration and I registered as a member of the APC in 2014 under the Interim national chairman, Chief Bisi Akande. There is nothing in the APC constitution that says a member shall revalidate or renew his membership. Once you registered when you joined the party and you have not decamped, you are a member. So, revalidation is strange to our constitution…If you ask me, as a foundation member, who has never decamped, to revalidate my membership, it is double registration because there is nothing like revalidation in our constitution.

He then adds: “By asking me to revalidate my membership, it means I was not a member though I have never left the party. So I think the correct language should be either reviewing or updating because it makes sense to review voters register due to the new members that have joined or those that have exited… So what this means is that I have come here to do another registration, but I insist that my registration never expired within the provision of the APC constitution…” None of the triumvirate wanted to censure their trifling party. They had borne the pain of being deliberately ostracized by their party, and had watched in dismay as the president himself joyously took sides in the dissension. They had endured the agony of being accused of hijacking the party they helped turned into a winning machine and tried their best to imbue with a sense of purpose and dynamism that would turn it into one of the best organized in Africa. But they had also watched as the party began to fritter away its gains and go the way of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), hijacked by their governors, misdirected in philosophy, and turned into a political and moral libertine, if not an outright prostitute. But the triumvirate and all they represent also made their own tactical mistakes when they noisily climbed their high grounds and discomfited and even brusquely ignored their opponents.

Unfortunately for the Oshiomhole crowd, and regardless of the superiority of their arguments, particularly in the run-up to the 2019 polls, they overstated their strength and number, and reposed too much hope and confidence in President Buhari despite his glaring political inconsistencies, suspect capacity to think issues through and direct the party, and inability to formulate and stand by inspiring principles and values. Months after the Oshiomhole group was turned out of the party, they were still cooing to the president and genuflecting before him. They would not fight because the president had spoken, they said incongruously. Party unity was uppermost in their minds, they also boomed, despite the strident display of power and arrogance by their opponents and new lords of the party. In all, the dethroned Oshiomhole group refused to question the impression that the coup within the party was a fait accompli, and the president both infallible and unchallengeable. Where they got both heresies from, not to say why they promote them, is hard to guess.

But at long last, the vanquished have found their united voice and raison d’etre. By controverting the convention planning committee on the ongoing registration and revalidation exercises, they may be serving notice that they are not ignorant of the entire purpose of the controversial exercise. The exercise, they have said in many cryptic words, is designed not to enhance the party’s administration or recalibrate it into a powerful and invincible electoral machine, but to oppose, destroy or neutralize one man and one tendency. The new party lords could have chosen to update their registers, which had given them probably the only two elections they will ever win; instead they have chosen to create a mirage and midwife an upheaval that gives them short term gains, massages their ego, and gifts them illusions of future triumphs. The new party lords, particularly the governors, do not have the steadying philosophy and doggedness that would help them birth or lead a great party, and Mr Buni is too shifty and circumscribed by forces more powerful than his delicate conscience can expiate. They will, therefore, want to deliver at all cost the only objective of their entire scheming: to take the party away from the Oshiomhole crowd, superintend the emergence of election candidates at the local and national levels contrary to the president’s belief, and in the naive expectation of the Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello, create the largest and most powerful party in Africa. This is nothing but magic.

Judging from the remonstrance of last week, it is now clear that the Oshiomhole crowd is not sleeping. They may have refused to dare the president for tactical reasons best known to them, but now they seem to have lost both respect and fear of him. They were never in doubt as to the inattentiveness of the president, nor his legendary lack of capacity as constantly elucidated by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, nor the confusion that reigns in the presidency, nor yet the abominable and utter lack of organization and focus in the administration. But the Oshiomhole crowd seemed to know that the Buni committee was bound to exceed itself one day, and it would be necessary to prime and hone opposition to its willfully destructive methods and ways. That day seems to be near, if it has not yet come. The Oshiomhole crowd will do battle. But whether they will spring a surprise sometime later or do battle within the party soon is unclear. What is clear is just how distasteful they have found the caretaker committee in which the president inexplicably reposes so much confidence, and how even much more galling and immature they have found the plots and objectives of the new lords of the party.

When the president kick-started the registration and revalidation process in the party, he gushed that the era of dictation from Abuja was over. Endorsement of aspirants at the local or state level would not be inspired by the president, he seemed to say. Really? Was that what tore the party apart in 2019; and who told him the governors would ever surrender powers he facetiously pretended to be abdicating? It was clear in late January that the president had been hoodwinked with mischievous arguments, and led down the rose path in which idealism is deployed interchangeably with realism. But the president believed his party minders, those who work relentlessly on his simplicity and eagerness, those who manipulate him for their own goals and ambitions. The president can’t see the forest for the trees, and by 2022, he will discover that he had been duped by party smart alecs.

In 2015 when the APC produced the then candidate Buhari, the party imagined it had got the magic wand to unseat President Goodluck Jonathan. They won, thrillingly, incontrovertibly, and unprecedentedly. But the magic wand was a double-edged sword. It cut the opponent into pieces, but it also delivered a fatal blow to the victor. With the party now inspired by triflers like Gov Bello, and their doors flung open to admit hedonists and unprincipled politicians and journeymen, 2015 may have given APC victory, it may also have produced the self-destructive template that will tragically undermine the party. It produced a president in 2015 who should have lost in 2019, but it also produced a man that had no pretence to be called a leader, let alone one to inspire the biggest and most organized party in Africa. In short, President Buhari has found himself atop a party he cannot inspire or direct, and is too distant to even control the upstarts and rascals and magicians swarming all over the party and pretending to already have 2023 in their kitty.

For the APC, 2021 is not supposed to be about registration or revalidation, regardless of Article 9 of the party’s constitution inappropriately quoted by Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State. It is supposed to be about the president entrenching his legacy, and about the party rediscovering its raison d’etre, its inner core and identity, its ideological platform, and establishing why it needs to renew a country it had so recklessly led, balkanized and corrupted. It is supposed to be the year in which it will clean up the party by putting the Kaduna State tyrant and megalomaniac, the waffling and deceptive Nasir el-Rufai, in his place, relegating the vacuous Mr Bello of Kogi to the backwaters in which he should naturally wallow, and imposing discipline on rampaging, unscrupulous and unethical governors who are choking the party. It is supposed to be a year in which the presidency would have the gumption and courage to rein in the violence perpetrated by criminal herdsmen who have destroyed Nigeria’s countryside and made highways absolutely unsafe.

But in the magic book of the APC, 2021 is the year in which their registration and revalidation exercise would give them victory in 2023. Former party chairman John Odigie-Oyegun does not think registration gives victory, but he sells and embraces the dummy anyway, since in his view the Oshiomhole crowd who sacked his leadership is still left disadvantaged by the Buni committee. Somehow, even the president has been seduced into ignoring the anonymity in which the Nigerian presidency is now ensconced. But in the next election, that anonymity will be a factor, just as the party’s ideology – who knows what it is now? – has become incomprehensible. If they cannot cobble together a platform, let alone an ideology, and cannot refine same; and if they cannot find a solution to herdsmen pillaging the country or curb the wasting power of banditry and insurgency; and if they cannot produce the principles and values that would entice voters to look in their direction, they must either be prepared for magic or rig elections. They must not assume that no one knows how wasteful they became once they won the elections, or how distracted and incompetent their presidency is, or how anarchic their party has become, or how putrefying and sterile their ideas had morphed.

The only relief so far, particularly in the face of an equally impotent PDP, is that the administrative, electoral and ideological war expected in the APC will take place after all. The president’s image had been thought to be too intimidating to let anyone dare to oppose him, and the takeover of the party by the new lords too complete and total to be reversed. Both the president and the party have, however, done and said things in the past few weeks that expose their feet of clay. They will probably get the battle they have sauntered into. What is unclear is when or how.