Category: Idowu Akinlotan

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari was not alone in acknowledging the violence that accompanied both the Kogi and Bayelsa November 16 governorship elections. While many Nigerians decried the scale of the violence as unprecedented, particularly in the case of Kogi State, the president saw ‘isolated incidents of violence’ or ‘pockets of unrest sponsored by desperate politicians’. But whether isolated incidents or pockets of unrest, there is little doubt that both elections were degraded by violence, while the president would have helped the cause of democracy by speaking substantially to the process of the elections, if not in his congratulatory statements, at least a little later. There will, however, be no speaking to anything, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. The portents were evident from the beginning of the campaigns in the two states, indeed since the inauguration of the Fourth Republic. If the president saw the problem as severe enough and capable of truncating democracy, he would have spoken and acted proactively. As it is, he made light of everything, including the convulsive and unmistakeable electoral violence of two Saturdays ago.

The president was enthusiastic about both elections, and quickly embraced the results. He saw the re-election ‘victory’ of Yahaya Bello of Kogi State as “a race well run and a victory well won”, and the electoral feat of David Lyon as “impressive victory”. He left the contentious issue of just how far the so-called isolated incidents of violence and pockets of unrest vitiated the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates. Perhaps it would have been unnatural for him to castigate his party’s victory, seeing that he was elected president on the platform of the same party and given the regnant and fawning culture of elevating presidents as leaders of the party. It would be inconceivable for the party’s undisputed leader to say or do anything that would undermine his own leadership and diminish his achievements.

Since the electoral commission announced the victories of the APC candidates, Nigerians have continued to grapple with an assessment of the elections, with everyone offering diverse opinions on just how much the violence on display in both polls affected the outcomes of the November 16 combat. President Buhari may have left the issue unattended to, but the country has been more forthcoming. They describe Mr Lyon’s victory as probably deserved, considering that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opponents went into battle divided, and especially because the outgoing governor, Seriake Dickson, had affronted party leaders, including former president Goodluck Jonathan. Yes, there was violence, they acknowledged, but they were not of such a scale as to substantially affect the final outcome of the poll or make the unpolished Mr Lyon less deserving of his electoral success.

After the humbling poll — perhaps even humiliating defeat — Mr Dickson himself spoke to the reasons his party’s candidate, Douye Diri, lost the election. In his opinion, the spleen widely believed to have been vented by Dr Jonathan over the PDP governorship primary was just a smokescreen for APC’s audacious electoral heist. After all, as the shell-shocked governor argued implausibly, he tried to see the former president, who is a native of the state, numberless times to mend fences. The governor refused to acknowledge that the primary that made Senator Diri the PDP candidate was flawed, and was largely quiet about the fact that his opposition to another aspirant in that primary, Timi Alaibe, was indefensibly personal, especially knowing that Dr Jonathan had a soft spot for the spurned aspirant. If Mr Dickson didn’t take determined steps to avoid fracas in his party’s primary, should he not expect that his fait accompli would be regarded by Dr Jonathan and other party elders as both insufferable and arrogant?

Violence marred the Bayelsa poll, and it was more than the pockets of unrest spoken of by the president. Indeed, in some parts of Bayelsa, thugs disgraced the electoral process and put themselves inconsiderately between the electorate and the ballot boxes. A fair appraisal of the election in the state should, however, be able to narrow the margin with which the PDP was defeated. But except Mr Dickson, Sen Diri and their party can prove that the violence was significant and rampant, their petition to an election tribunal would be doomed. More damning to Mr Dickson is that very quickly, Bayelsans have seemed to reconcile themselves to the outcome of the poll and relished the way the governor and the PDP candidate were humiliated. They left no one in doubt that they saw and liked how Dr Jonathan lent covert but unmistakeable support to the aspiration of Mr Lyon. The governor-elect will elevate malapropism to a level far in excess of Dame Patience, but who cares? Bayelsans will probably imagine that since their incoming governor thinks in Ijaw language anyway, his actions and policies will not be diminished by sloppy expressions, nor his person demeaned by any manifestation of creek culture in which he is adept.’

Read Also: PDP demands justice for slain Woman Leader, insists Kogi, Bayelsa were rigged

Unlike the Kogi election that was disgraced by every civilised standard imaginable, including the person and style of Mr Bello, the Bayelsa poll may have been truly won and lost. There will of course be comments for some time to come about whether Dr Jonathan displayed wisdom in covertly repudiating his party’s candidate or whether, as the main force in that backwater state, he acted splendidly in unhorsing the pretentious and snobby Mr Dickson. It is not even clear altogether that despite Dr Jonathan making his point handsomely and putting paid to the vaulting ambition of the governor, he himself would emerge from the combat smelling of roses. As probably the most recognisable leader of the PDP in Nigeria today, it remains to be seen whether the future recovery of his party in the country’s politics, not to say in Bayelsa itself, would not be complicated by the loss his intransigence had occasioned his party in the state, a loss that could lead to the diminution of his party and prolong its convalescence probably far beyond 2023.

Without prejudging the many strong factors that led to the PDP candidate’s defeat, or even prejudging the case Mr Dickson and Sen Diri will present before the tribunal, the Dr Jonathan factor was obviously powerful enough to sway the votes. Did the former president weigh his options with the gravity demanded of his former office and the sensitivity of the position he now occupies in the party before shooting himself in the foot? Or did he consider his options with the customary levity many of his critics attached to his presidency when he led Nigeria? Dr Jonathan may be triumphant in Bayelsa in the last governorship poll, but there is no doubt, notwithstanding the views and actions of some PDP leaders in the Niger Delta, that the former president’s standing in the PDP will henceforth be greatly diminished. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo has repeatedly boxed himself into a corner since he left office, and is today virtually neutralised in the country’s political equation. Dr Jonathan may yet have reasons in the future to wonder whether he should not have stomached the indignities offered him by the presumptuous Mr Dickson and stuck to his party in the last poll. The APC may today massage his ego and rhapsodise his ‘statesmanlike’ contributions, but in the long run, Mr Lyon will be beholden almost wholly to the APC, and Dr Jonathan will be viewed with suspicion by his chafing party.

The Kogi electoral debacle is the clearest indication that President Buhari has blatantly refused to rise to the stature of his office. During last Friday’s APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, he wondered and worried whether the APC would survive him. That such fears gnawed at him is an indication that he has done precious little to entrench the virtues and principles that should ennoble his party, the presidency, and democracy. Not only did he eagerly and warmly embrace the Kogi governor’s so-called re-election victory, he also denied the numbing tragedy that afflicted the November 16 poll and, worse, even deployed presidential powers through a conniving senate to facilitate APC dominance. He pretends not to know that the security services took their cues from the presidency to facilitate the electoral travesty that took place in Kogi both before the poll, when Mr Bello inflicted violence on the electorate and sequestered his opponents, and during polling when the law enforcement agencies sheepishly surrendered the state to armed thugs.

Before the Kogi poll, the police had announced the deployment of about 35,000 men. They either lied to the nation or they ordered their men to adopt a pacifist approach to the poll having read the mind and lips of the presidency. Mr Bello is a well known political charlatan, but he has managed to ingratiate himself with President Buhari. Indeed, the governor is proud to describe himself as soulless and determined to please the president. Despite misruling Kogi, tormenting it, absenting himself from it for much of the time, and despising it through a concatenation of sterile policies, he claims to have won the election fair and square. But he and his supporters know — and have even composed provocative songs to that effect — that they shot their way back into office through orchestrated violence so brazen that only the politics and elections of the 1960s could compare with it. If this is what the president has described as isolated incidents of violence, then he must forgive critics and observers who say he has lost touch and is not as profound as he constantly insinuates or as principled and dogged as he pretends.

If he says he is unaware of the tragedy that played out in Kogi during the poll, then he must be living in a gilded cage. If he says he is unaware of how his security agents betrayed the constitution, and he persists in describing the election as a well-run race and well-won victory, it must be clear to all that by that singular act, he has defined his presidency. Chief Obasanjo came to that fork in the road in 2007 and lost his reputation and legacy. In 2019, about six months into his second term, President Buhari also came to that fork in the road and, sentimentalising his attachment to a political charlatan, has lost courage, denied and desecrated the constitution, rebuffed common sense, insulted Nigerians to their face, and openly embraced a choice that belittles him in the eyes of the world. The world has taken a measure of the Kogi poll and denounced it. It beggars belief that the president is pleased with it.

It may be superfluous to refer to the statistical improbability of Mr Bello’s victory, but perhaps the president has not had the chance to work out the arithmetic. Would he like to know that in an election where the turnout is about 36.1 percent, the Okene stronghold of Mr Bello returned a turnout of about 86 percent? In 2015, the same Okene stronghold had a turnout of about 26 percent. But no, the president cannot be persuaded. He has made up his mind to turn a blind eye to the cruel imagination and actions of the unscrupulous governor. But if the president is unaffected by what took place in Kogi, might the judiciary be amenable to reason during the petitions that will naturally folow? It would take unprecedented courage. When Abubakar Audu ran for the governorship with James Faleke on the ticket in 2015 and died on the cusp of victory, the judiciary could not summon the courage to give justice, in some instances even glossing over the points of law argued before them. Mr Bello is unscrupulous and does not mind subverting institutions. He will do anything to keep what he has stolen, an election virtually every election observer group has called for its cancellation.

Given the wholesale betrayal enacted by security agencies in the Kogi poll, the sheer disinterestedness shown by the president as he endorsed the chaos that took place two Saturdays ago, the neutralisation and disembowelment of the judiciary, and the depressing spinelessness of the electoral commission (INEC), could a cancellation of the Kogi poll amount to anything? It is doubtful. But if it would ginger the president out of his complacency, and he would give the marching orders to the security agencies to respect the constitution, perhaps the situation could be redeemed. But calculating the dynamics of the 2023 poll, in which the APC would want to hold as many states as possible going into the next election as the party’s chairman, Adams Oshimohole, said two days ago, there is little hope that the APC and the president can stand on the side of history. A new election will after all be policed by the same conspiratorial security agencies.

Last week, in a statement felicitating with ex-president Jonathan on the occasion of his 62nd birthday, his spokesman, Femi Adesina, quoted the president as saying: “President Buhari believes the former President’s legacy of humility and patriotism will continue to resonate, inspiring generations to come on the sacrifices made for the stability of democracy and promotion of sustainable development.” The public should ignore the statement. It is routine and barren. If President Buhari could not be inspired by Dr Jonathan’s noble example of 2015, but has instead taken a very dim view of democracy and embraced an insular perspective of elections, how can he recommend the former president’s behaviour to anyone, seeing that he does not believe in it himself?

Now, clearly, given what took place on November 16, not to say the absolute lack of reflection on the part of the presidency, the impotence of both the legislature and the judiciary, and the increasing lack of professionalism by security agencies who defy the law and the constitution at will, the country will need a miracle to overcome the crisis it is certain to confront before and during the 2023 polls. It is clear that President Buhari is not a statesman and probably does not have the ambition to be one. Worse, however, even those who desire that appellation — Chief Obasanjo and Dr Jonathan — have been unable to rise to the stature and discipline the title demands of them: Chief Obasanjo by his lack of discipline and virtue, and Dr Jonathan by his lack of judgement and vision. Imagine if Chief Obasanjo had not organised a sham election in 2007, would he not have been able to speak to the sham elections of November 16? And imagine also if Dr Jonathan had kept himself above the fray in Bayelsa, stayed with his party despite the insult to his person and stature, would he not have had the moral high ground to point at the difference between his approach to politics and elections on the one hand, and the Buhari presidency’s cavalier and aggrandising approach to politics on the other hand?

Idowu Akinlotan

ON Saturday, Kogi State will go to the polls to elect their governor, and Kogi West, their senator. It is not entirely clear what the outcome would look like; but it is clear what it should look like. The state was badly treated in the last four years and should sensibly denounce and repudiate candidate Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who is currently the governor, and also punish his senatorial candidate, Smart Adeyemi. But in matters such as elections, it is often hard to know when a people have suffered enough, or when they have been thoroughly betrayed, or when they have been cheapened and abused. Kogi voters should have no qualms in deciding how to vote at the weekend, for they will in fact be deciding how they should be treated in the next four years after a frenzied and horrendous past four years of mistreatment.

In some ways, Mr Bello has lent a hand to the electorate, admonishing them with all the force and bitterness at his command that faced with the dilemma of deciding whether to dump him or elect his favourite senatorial candidate, he would rather they elect Sen Adeyemi just to punish his worst enemy, Dino Melaye. It is unlikely Mr Bello meant voters to take this abominable choice to heart. Yes, he voiced this ludicrous option at an open forum with his campaign staff and government appointees and seemed serious about it; but in fact he was in his usual opaque and mystifying way trying to say that voters should elect both him and Sen Adeyemi. Should the voters indulge his fantasy, and were they capable of decoding his macabre sense of humour, he intends to have his cake and eat it, as gluttonously as is his custom.

The campaigns by the two leading political parties, the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have been fierce but substantially devoid of issues and substance. But there is nothing in Kogi and the parties’ campaigns that suggests that the people are even interested in issues. Money, ethnic configuration, and to some extent the use, or threat, of force will determine who wins. The PDP candidate, Musa Wada, an engineer, has campaigned dominantly on the governor’s ineptitude and lethargy. It makes sense. Why expend energy on newfangled developmental ideas that would be of doubtful utility or acceptability to the electorate? Mr Bello on the other hand has little to campaign on or to drive his candidacy. Having ruled the state for the last four years or so as if there would be no re-election, he has hinged his candidature on defeating Sen Melaye and posturing for another four years reward as governor for doing nothing.

Given the backing of Abuja and his sizeable war chest, not to say his readiness to use all means foul and fair, he could try to snatch a victory, especially if Kogi West and Kogi East succumb to his blandishments. But he should never win, for he would unleash the worst punishment any politician is capable of inflicting on a state. It is, therefore, up to Kogites to determine how their future would look like. If they have suffered enough, they should not find it difficult to return the governor’s compliment, determinedly resist him, punish his senatorial candidate, and get their sweet revenge. But if they are as masochistic as Mr Bello has privately sneered, who knows, they might defy pundits and pave his return to the Kogi Government House with precious metals.

But the most unbearable part of the campaign, the one factor that should determine how a sensible people should vote, is the governor’s obsession with Sen Melaye’s candidature. The theatrical Melaye is the governor’s bête noire, without whom Mr Bello would have no reason to live. Rather than focus on the issues of governance and the little he has left in his shallow basket of misbegotten ideas for the state should he be re-elected, the governor has taken an oath to have the senator crushed totally, even at the risk of losing his own governorship seat. How on earth could someone harbour such appalling resentment, nurture it for years, and now obscenely hoist it before the electorate as a public totem worthy of veneration? How the governor is not disgusted with himself is hard to explain. Perhaps Kogites would have an explanation for the immeasurable contempt the governor has for them. That explanation will be translated to votes on Saturday, and the public will not be so dimwitted or too hard of hearing to misunderstand their message. Not only does Mr Bello deserve to lose as a poor specimen of who a governor is– and will indeed lose given all feelers from the state at the moment — he really should be locked up and the key thrown away so as not to continue to undermine whatever civilisation is left in the state.

Idowu Akinlotan

ON November 2, President Muhammadu Buhari began a private visit to the United Kingdom that is expected to end on November 17. The visit has been criticised, essentially because the president did not transmit any letter informing the National Assembly of his more than two-week visit to the UK, nor did he hand over power to the vice president. The presidency explained that the visit did not meet the 21 days threshold or the annual leave provision to demand transmitting a letter to the legislature and empowering the vice president to act. Opinion has remained divided on the matter, though the balance of argument seems to favour those who insist the president broke the law.

The presidency was obviously careful not to mention holiday as the reason for the president’s visit to the UK, and state officials were even more reluctant to insinuate whether the visit might be connected with the president’s health. All of them appear tired of speculations and recriminations over the president’s physical condition. The Buhari presidency, it is now abundantly clear, has become adept at presenting the public with faits accomplis as a means of deflecting or defanging criticisms. Does the presidency anticipate that Nigerians would have reservations over the so-called private visit? Why, the answer is to simply embark on the visit, announce it to the public matter of fact, and gloat that it is constitutional. Voila! They did this when they unilaterally dipped their hands into the country’s coffers in 2018, took a billion dollars from the excess crude account without authorisation, clothed the illegality with the noble purpose of fighting insurgency, and imbued it with a self-righteous but indefensible urgency.

Having measured the country’s literacy level and the low voltage courage of the citizenry, the Buhari presidency and a number of ministries and agencies, particularly the security agencies, have become more brazen in violating the constitution and the rights of citizens. The president is already in the UK. Of course officials know that there is nothing like private visit in the constitution; there is absolutely no mention of it. Not in the well-known Section 145, and not iin any other place. But they know that such an infraction, or even many infractions taken in combination, cannot earn him impeachment. Apart from the fearfulness of Nigeria’s ingratiating National Assembly, ponderous ethnic and religious configurations ensure that impeachment would be unsuccessful and even backfire.

The argument over whether the president could sign a bill in the UK is futile. Nigerians know clearly that the president was simply trying to clothe the illegality he had inspired with some trappings of officialdom. No CEO gets up from his desk, and without taking permission from the Board of Directors, simply abandons office and declares he is proceeding on a private visit. Every organisation has rules and regulations, just like the country has a constitution. If the Buhari presidency decides to repeatedly violate the constitution, it is not because the president and his aides don’t know the provisions of the constitution. It is simply because, overall, they have sized up the country and decided that their lack of leadership discipline means nothing to anybody. Their contempt for the law is palpable.

Having seen how brutally and contemptuously Aso Villa treats the law and the constitution, and having understood how the government tramples on the rights of the people, including particularly free speech, many state governments and agencies are following hard on the heels of the federal government. The Army simply got up one morning and declared that its officers had brainstormed over insecurity in the country and had taken the unprecedented step of demanding, between November 1 and December 23, that Nigerians would be required to produce their identity cards on demand by soldiers. They were not shamed by that inglorious measure. In fact they argued triumphantly that they were already implementing that measure in the Northeast. Even if it looked like military rule, they didn’t care. It did not matter to them that their plan was not debated and approved by the federal cabinet, nor did it strike them that it was an army thing rather than a military programme which requires the participation of the navy, air force, Department of State Service, civil defence and the police. It didn’t even occur to them that a programme of such magnitude should be announced by either the Internal Affairs ministry, the presidency, Defence ministry, or a spokesman for the joint chiefs.

Impunity has begun to take root gradually, and democracy is being lost inch by inch. It began with the presidency which should set the nation’s democratic tone, but which has instead begun to inspire dictatorship; now the cancer is spreading malevolently. The Customs, rather than the Internal Affairs ministry, also got up and announced border closures, and having done a benefit analysis instead of a cost-benefit analysis, has convinced the federal government to extend the period of the closure to next January. Flush with excitement, if not a sense of victory, the same Customs has again announced that no petrol dispensing stations would be supplied fuel within a 20kkm radius of Nigeria’s borders. Where are the calculations of the costs and benefits? And who should announce such far-reaching policies? Somehow, these knee-jerk policies, anchored on nationalist  fervour, remind many Nigerians of fascism, in particular the Nazi variety.

But worse has happened. Go to Cross River State where a journalist and publisher of the Cross River Watch, Agba Jalingo was whisked away from Lagos in August over the publication of a report alleging a N500m financial malfeasance against the governor. The Cross River State government simply dispensed with the constitution, got the police to storm Lagos and arrest Mr Jalingo, kept the journalist in jail for 34 days before even charging him in court. A conniving judiciary in Calabar perpetrated unspeakable constitutional atrocities in the process. Worse, Mr Jalingo is now charged with terrorism, treasonable felony and attempt to topple the Cross River State government. Even prosecution witnesses were unashamedly and unprecedentedly granted anonymity to testify. Treason? Well, who needs the constitution? After all, the federal government itself casually hurls treason charges at its critics.

Taking a cue from the ongoing and continuing madness, policemen from Kwara State also stormed Lagos in October and hauled Adebowale Adekoya of the News Digest into detention over a story on alleged hemp smoking in an agro-allied firm owned by former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) acting governor, Sarah Alade. Libel laws take time and, in the opinion of some of these top Nigerians, do not punish journalists enough. The DSS had also in 2016 arrested Jones Abiri, publisher of the Bayelsa State-based Weekly Source, kept him for about two years without trial, and eventually released him in 2018, only to re-arrest him early this year and charge him with acts of terrorism. And almost as if Nigerian officials and security agencies know where to charge their quarries with obscene crimes, they have found a kindred spirit in Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu who sets outrageous bail conditions for suspects.

Impunity is fuelling the spirit of authoritarianism in many parts of Nigeria, and state governments and security agencies are being seduced by federal-style impunity. Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, has cottoned onto that spirit, and the police and other security agencies are robbing Nigerian youths of the pleasures and freedoms of growing up in Nigeria. The proselytising and unprofessional security men, in the name of combating cultism and Internet fraud, now specialise in humiliating, depriving, alienating and criminalising Nigerian youths whom they unlawfully disallow from wearing certain hairstyles, clothes and dresses. Nigerians cannot now even make calls or receive calls while transiting myriads of disruptive and often extortionate checkpoints. The paranoia, repression, ignorance and impunity are unexampled.

But it is not only the youths who are being robbed of their future, the government and its security agencies are doing enormous damage to the spirit of the country in politics, business and culture. Soon the tyranny, if the vituperations of the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, are anything to go by, will be extended through stringent social media regulations, as if the ruling APC will be in office for eternity and stand no risk of falling into their own traps sometime in the future. Impunity is taking dangerous root in Nigeria. It is time to campaign against it and stop the descent into chaos and retrogression if democracy, already terribly wounded, is not to be lost altogether. The presidency is too steeped in authoritarian culture to be of any help in entrenching democracy, and the self-deprecating National Assembly is too scared of its own shadows to halt the precarious decline. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is inexplicably waiting for their footloose presidential candidate in the last presidential poll, Atiku Abubakar, is too weak and sundered to pack enough punch in the impending combat.

In equal measure, students’ unions are balkanised and denuded of culture, a voice, and any noble virtue; and civil society groups are often available for hire on both sides of the clumsy divide polluting the society. Who is left but a few voices that won’t bow to the national idol, as the space for freedom shrinks ignominiously? The government of the day does not understand democracy, and no amount of sermonising and persuasion will get them to recant their authoritarian proclivities. And with ignorance writ very large among the citizenry, the prognosis is indeed dire. But perhaps perceptive Nigerians will keep hope alive that once they become enlightened, the people will eventually kick against their oppressors and demand democratic governance and the full protection given them without conditions by the country’s imperfect and besieged constitution.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Nigerian politics would be incomparably dull without the bubbly presence of the hard-hitting Itse Sagay, law teacher and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), and Adams Oshiomhole, the equally excitable national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress. At a time when too many expendables gallivant around politics in these parts, political commentators must regard the duo as truly indispensable to national mirth. A critic only needs to glance at the leading opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to have an acute understanding of the weariness which dull politics can inflict on the mind. It is the PDP that needs excitement and feistiness to sustain its currency, but it is surprisingly the ascetic APC that is agitating Nigerian politics and relieving everybody of the tedium imposed by the Muhammadu Buhari presidency.

Just like the PDP, the APC is of course unable to produce the kind of excitement political parties need to keep their members fired up. But unlike the PDP, the APC welcomes and even promotes lively characters like Mr Oshiomhole and Prof. Sagay who stir things up both by their often unbridled remarks and by their insufferable temperaments. No matter how sometimes badly their statements are received, the two gentlemen are irrepressible. They will cannibalise anybody’s reputation, and if they lack fresh supply of victims, they think nothing of turning on each other. Former senate president Bukola Saraki and former speaker Yakubu Dogara used to give very lively filial legislative demonstrations in their days in the PDP and party leadership, the former by his imponderable political metamorphosis and the latter by his numbing inscrutability, now it behoves outsiders to the legislative houses to keep the boisterous tradition alive. Mr Oshiomhole and Prof Sagay have filled the vacuum eminently, and are unlikely to disappoint the eager public as long as the censorious Buhari presidency lasts.

There were times since the beginning of the Fourth Republic when the former labour union leader and the law teacher produced the same fundamental and harmonic tones on their tuning forks, but in recent times, as the leadership and governorship politics of their home state of Edo State drifts fearfully towards irreconcilability, they are more likely to produce more dissonant tones around the country as well as ruffle feathers in the APC. There will be no ideological dissonance between them, given that like poles repel, but they are unlikely to want to fight to the finish. That is not their fundamental nature. They are abrasive, but they are not intransigent. The recent kerfuffle between them began almost imperceptibly when the eminent law professor took umbrage at the hardline posture of Mr Oshiomhole in Edo politics, particularly his gritty opposition to the unusual and in some ways self-righteous politics of Governor Godwin Obaseki. The exchange between the two has not yet degenerated into the use of expletives, but if it is sustained, Edo politics could be considerably fouled up.

Speaking with the Independent newspaper, and obviously making reference to the unsettled politics in Edo State, Prof Sagay brusquely ordered the APC national chairman to desist from his abrasive politics if the party was not to witness a meltdown. Said the Prof: “I have advised Oshiomhole rather unsuccessfully to stop being combative, to stop punching and all this aggressive behaviour. In a leadership position, you need to stoop to conquer, you need to be restrained. Even when people are wrong and you want to correct them, you need to show that you are not after humiliating them and that you will work with them to correct things; not to be aggressive, threatening and engaging in pugilistic method. I told him this but he ignored it. Because of his aggression, we have lost quite a number of states.”

Now, there is no proof that Mr Oshiomhole’s ‘aggression’ cost the party dearly in the 2019 elections, despite the gains of the PDP, particularly in the governorship poll — after all the party swept the National Assembly poll convincingly. There were other underlying factors, and until they are properly isolated, it would be unfair to put the losses down to Mr Oshiomhole’s combativeness. The APC itself made gains where it had been thought impossible; could that also be wholly attributable to the APC chairman’s hardline politics? Mr Oshiomhole may be combative and even pugilistic, as Prof Sagay said, but he undoubtedly brought many refreshing ideas to the APC, including sanitising its administrative processes, and imbuing the party with at least some trappings of progressivism. The APC chairman did not cause the loss of Imo and Zamfara States, for instance, but analysts will recall how, particularly before the last polls, he tried to demolish privilege and snobbishness in the party. After all, the same tactics he introduced to unhorse party leaders in Imo and put their noses out of join were also replicated in Ogun State. If Imo was lost, analysts must locate the appropriate factors that alienated the electorate and caused the spectacular collapse that now miffs Prof Sagay.

Few will, however, deny that Mr Oshiomhole is combative. His aggressiveness was in fact a countervailing relief to the party when it came newly, especially in the way it offsets the chaos and decay in the party and reinvigorated it before the last polls in the face of the extreme paternalism and lethargy of his predecessor, the avuncular John Odigie-Oyegun. The party groaned for renewal before the poll, yearning for someone with enough chutzpah to put rampaging and pampered state party leaders in check. Nearly all APC governors rallied behind the banner of their former staid party leader, and resisted change of any kind. They threatened and fumed, and warned of fratricide and general debacle should the party hold its elective convention so close to a general election. But brinkmanship was not totally lost in the party, and the contrarians among the party’s leadership decided bravely to run the gauntlet. A new leadership was finally enthroned, the base of the party was energised, and APC went into the next polls with that fresh unction, assured that whatever difficult and even disruptive changes it had ingested would serve as an elixir to the party rather than a euthanising agent.

Mr Oshiomhole’s combativeness is idiosyncratic rather than bureaucratic. To him it is not an administrative style; it is instead intrinsic to his fundamental makeup. Nevertheless, it is a leadership and personal style that that could damage the party if it is not regulated. Prof Sagay’s counsel must, therefore, be viewed from that point of view — how to harness Mr Oshiomhole’s untrammelled energy towards producing more cohesion for a naturally unstable party that has failed since 2015 to run like a disciplined, purposeful and ideological organisation. That task will not be easy. To restrain Mr Oshiomhole and tap positive results from his style and ideas will require a presidency that runs in tandem with the party, respects the party, possesses enough ideas of its own even outside the party rubric, and exudes a vision that is hard to gainsay, a vision of a strong and cohesive country, of a durable democracy, of respect for the rule of law, and probably of the most powerful and pacesetting country in Africa.

Prof Sagay’s panacea is in fact utopian. Mr Oshiomhole will always be combative, even though constant criticisms may finally help him moderate his fantasies and leash his enthusiasms. But the Buhari presidency will, till its last days, remain distant and detached, mortifyingly averse to ideology or to contrary and challenging ideas, disquieted by party strictures and obligations, and at a loss how to strengthen and galvanise the party into the future. Operating within those cruel ironies will require a man of Mr Oshiomhole’s unorthodox disposition, a man of his peculiar combativeness. Had he moderated his style, even the little resolve Nigerians identify with the party today would be missing. So, by all means, let the APC chairman keep his unique talent; but hopefully he will see some sense in calibrating it.

Had Mr Oshiomhole not already moderated his pugnacious approach to leadership, as many have begun to perceive very worrisomely, he would have stared down Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State and put measures in place that would have barred him from seeking re-election. Mr Bello is the worst do-nothing governor in Nigeria today. He does not deserve to govern a local government, not to talk of a whole state. It would be inconceivable should Mr Oshiomhole not know this. But the APC chairman, on account of the said moderation, now has a better understanding of the dynamics of politics, particularly the unspoken and convoluted politics of Aso Villa behind which the incompetent Mr Bello has taken refuge. But surely this cannot be the unintended outcome so intemperately advocated by Prof Sagay, one where for the sake of party unity and advancement, inept party candidates are pampered and accommodated, one where a governor’s outlandish legislative arithmetic is glossed over as in Edo State, and one where governors have castrated their state party leaders and inoculated their Houses of Assembly against reason and common sense.

In any case, the eminent professor is himself tarred with the same brush as the party chairman he is lampooning. Where Mr Oshiomhole has challenged the style of his adversaries in order to beat their swords into ploughshares, Prof Sagay has challenged their ideas, with the potential of wounding them the more. What cannot be taken away from both of them is that they are unrelenting, and are not intimidated by opposition or criticism. The fiercer the APC chairman is assailed, the more his adrenalin pumps volumes. Needle Prof Sagay a little, and he comes against his critics hammer and tongs. The APC chairman may harry his detractors and those he thinks might become unamenable to party rules and regulations, but he is gregarious, bohemian, rhetorically gifted, and as his domestic affairs prove, loves life to the hilt. Such people are unlikely to make permanent enemies of their enemies.

Prof Sagay is the opposite side of the same combative coin. Unsparing, pugnacious, domineering and intelligent, he seldom minces words when he takes on his victims, no matter how highly placed. He once described the National Assembly, the 8th NASS that is, as the enemies of the anti-corruption war, and dismisses their salaries and allowances as unearthly, exploitative and unsustainable. Then he berated two Supreme Court justices, John Okoro and Sylvester Ngwuta, argues in favour of dispatching armed ballot box snatchers to the grave without a tinge of remorse that it could amount to extrajudicial killing, and has joined issues with critics on the subject of the rule of law, taking sides in such a manner that raises eyebrows. To a victim, it is indeed far more tolerable to bear Mr Oshiomhole’s generalised scalding than endure the effects of Prof Sagay’s depth bombs on their ideas and perceptions.

The APC chairman knows this; he knows how far and how deep the eminent professor can go; and he knows there will be no let up. This may be why when asked what his reaction to Prof Sagay’s attack on his leadership style was, Mr Oshiomhole simply hemmed and hawed. He managed to stutter:  “All I can tell you is that I have a lot of respect for Professor Itse Sagay. I do remember very well that he was one of those who said I should contest for President. I respect him; he’s a very consistent fellow. He believes in what he believes in and he pays the price for it. So, I have a lot of respect for him. If he has said those things, I’m not going to reply him through the newspapers. I will find out what he said. Then, I will call him and know what the issues are, what he’s not comfortable with. He is my brother and my elder statesman.”

Well, regardless of the APC chairman pulling his punches, the professor has drawn a red line and dared anyone to cross. If Mr Oshiomhole’s quarrel with Gov Obaseki leads to the loss of Edo State to the opposition, fumed Prof Sagay, then the position of the APC chairman would become untenable. Whether this is threat or a promise will become evident after the Edo poll. Following years of indulgence under the party’s previous chairman, many APC states have teetered towards feudal tyranny. Mr Oshiomhole must be reflecting on the quandary he has found himself — setting a huge target for himself and the party, and trying to bridge a chasm dug by years of lawlessness. If he could do nothing about Kogi’s Mr Bello, a tyrannical governor who has shown scant regard for the law or the constitution, how does he hope to deal with the Edo impasse without losing face? He will be preoccupied with caging or unhorsing Mr Obaseki, and obsess with winning the state for his party thereafter. Prof Sagay probably thinks these goals are either irreconcilable or unrealisable. It is hard to tell what Mr Oshiomhole thinks. But one thing is certain, he will try his damndest not to perish in that idiomatic stewpan that suggests no one could have his cake and eat it.

Before the 2015 presidential election, Nigerians regaled themselves with the lexical fecundity and malapropisms of Patience Jonathan, former first lady. In the last four years, no one has been able to hold the candle to her, not even the explosive Aisha Buhari. But now, at long last, the country has found worthy antagonists in Prof Sagay and Mr Oshiomhole. They will probably recognise the great burden on their shoulders, how they must not disappoint the electorate in their constant and bitter jousting, and why they must not allow civility to diminish the potency and fearsomeness of their exchange. One may be a pedigree union leader, and the other a megalith of law; but they have enough fodder and a clement political environment to keep the animosity boiling and flowing. But even if he survives his verbal tussle with the professor, the APC chairman must have no illusion what lies in wait for him in the near future as governors and key party leaders offended by his posturing in the past one year or so think of new ways of getting rid of him.

Shortly after he was impeached, the Deputy Governor of Kogi State, Simon Achuba, appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene and save the state’s All Progressives Congress (APC) from a meltdown. If the action of the Kogi State House of Assembly was not checked, he warned, there could be a breakdown of law and order.

It is not clear what he meant by a breakdown of law and order, or what he expects from his appeal to the president. The state does not have a history of civil disobedience, nor does it have a faint sense of what it means to even stand for its constitutional rights. Under their present governor, Yahaya Bello, who has either fractionalised the payment of their salaries or outrightly failed to pay wages owed some workers, long-suffering Kogites had still failed to take to the streets. They will not riot over Mr Achuba, no matter how egregiously he was cheated of his rights.

Last week, Mr Achuba was impeached by the Assembly on no grounds at all. The seven-man judicial panel set up by the state’s chief judge, Nasiru Ajana, completely exonerated the deputy governor of any wrongdoing. But barely an hour after the submission of the report by the panel led by John Baiyeshea (SAN), and despite the legislature not being in session, Mr Achuba was impeached.

The panel was aghast. Soon, a complete report of the inquiry found its way to the public domain, revealing that the deputy governor was unequivocally exonerated on all grounds. So on what grounds did the assembly impeach Mr Achuba? None? Ah, not until you hear the tortuous explanation of the assembly’s majority leader, Hassan Abdulahi, a lawmaker who was expected to reflect the depth and breadth of a supposedly honourable legislative house.

Said Mr Abdullahi: “The panel submitted its report to us, and based on the report, we gave our verdict. The rule of procedure says that the panel was a fact-finding one and as such, they were not to give judgement. This was in the rule of procedure which they accepted. They are not supposed to give any verdict in this circumstance. The decision of whether the deputy governor is guilty or not guilty is that of the House.

If you look at Section 188(11), it says that the House of Assembly is the only authority which determines what gross misconduct is. It is not for the panel to determine. How come that few minutes later, the whole reports were on social media, even before the deliberation of the House on the same report? Again, I should let you know that even the report that is in the public domain was not signed.”

The ordinary Kogite should be angry at the hypocrisy of the ruling APC, a party now giving the impression of being either wholly destitute of standard or adept at playing double standard. He should be angry that in all the confusion in Kogi State over the impeachment saga, nothing at all had come from the top party leaders in Abuja, and certainly nothing from the presidency that often claims to be the custodian of the country’s, and their party’s, ethics. It has been one unbroken and deafening silence.

The ordinary Kogite should be angry that his state is unable to muster the critical mass to stand for the truth or defend democracy, even in the face of the most horrendous torment of a civil populace ever inspired by a government. Indeed for a state afflicted by incompetent governors, the Bello governorship is without parallel. To be unable to take that government to task, and be asked to endure its chicaneries must considerably gall the ordinary Kogite.

But it is in the midst of these incongruities that the Assembly’s majority leader spewed the hooey quoted above, a jumbled mass of illogic and unrestrained tendentiousness. Not only was the majority leader misquoting the constitution and lying about the functions of a judicial panel, he also regarded Kogites as fools. He says the panel should investigate and not come to a conclusion, and that the conclusion reached by the panel was hasty and prejudicial.

In other words, Mr Abdulahi blamed the panel for concluding that the deputy governor was innocent of the allegations against him. How could investigation be done without determining guilt or innocence? And why on earth didn’t the Assembly simply go ahead without recourse to any judicial panel to pronounce guilt on the deputy governor? Why the rigmarole?

If Kogi State lawmakers and their governor took refuge in despicable logic, it was thought that the deputy governor, given the manner he was treated, would be a breath of fresh air. But by asking President Buhari to intervene in a matter that is wholly a state issue, even as defective as Nigerian federalism is, the impeached deputy governor obviously but mistakenly likens the president to Caesar.

Though this is hard to believe, Mr Achuba also appears to be completely oblivious of the immense support Abuja gives to Mr Bello. The governor is their adopted son; they would rather see the state go into perdition than forswear their support for their spoilt and pampered son.

Nigeria is in dire straits politically, economically, socially and, now especially, morally. But there is no one to speak to these vacuums, no statesman with the urgent, strident voice that gently but firmly balances the expectations of the society with the obligations of the government. No voice to arrest or muffle the damnifying tone of a censorious government that keeps reminding the people of the sacrifices they must make and of their lack of patriotism that renders their complaints treasonous.

There is no voice to aggregate the fears of the people, their anxieties, their hesitations, their burning and burgeoning resentment. There are of course still a few voices, but they have been wearied by age, by decades of attritional wars against a perpetually malevolent and intransigent government, and by an indescribable ennui that reduces their interventions to hoary, sepulchral whispers.

The country’s complicated conditions are unmistakeable. Its politics is distressed, divisive, unruly and designed by the very nature of its constricted foundations to whip the people into dangerous and counterproductive conformity. Since 1999, when the country kick-started the Fourth Republic, no election has been without controversy, no government in Abuja has been exemplary, and the country does not seem to rest on any discernible structure, let alone one that can deliver progress and inspire Nigeria’s gifted people into great feats of productivity and creativity.

In fact Nigeria’s dull and uninspiring political leadership has been unable to match the energy and creativity of the people in literature, fine arts, music, science, invention, engineering, medicine, etc. Lethargic and unambitious, they have instead served as a limiting and distracting factor on the people’s creativity. The economy has remained decidedly ad hoc or at best eclectic. Budgets after budgets have delivered alienation and complete immiseration. No budget since 1999, and yes not even the latest unrealistically utopian N10.33trn budget, has projected a philosophical direction for how the Nigerian economy should be defined, what course it must take, and what hopes it must produce.

But how can the budget even make any pretence to anything idealistic when the country’s leaders have not conceptualised, and do not seem capable of envisioning, any ambition and identity for the country? In 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping delivered a highly perceptive speech at a conference that signposted the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee held in Beijing during which he inspired a daring and in fact revolutionary break with Maoism. He was firm in his mind the direction he expected China to go in the coming decades, convinced that it was heading for the rocks should it continue the way it had done since Mao Zedong founded the Republic. Mr Deng counselled members of the conference to  “…emancipate their minds, use their heads, seek the truth in the facts, and look to the future together.” This example is obviously too far-fetched for Nigeria.

President Buhari and his predecessors have been criticised for their handling of the economy, with the present government even more culpable than the rest. So far, no one has summoned the courage to warn of a looming disaster, and few have demonstrated the depth of knowledge needed to advise a redirection. President Olusegun Obasanjo to a large extent took charge of his economic policies, but he was merely practical, relying on gut feelings, than philosophical.

President Goodluck Jonathan appeared to have acknowledged his limitations and simply surrendered the economy to the disreputable orthodoxies personified by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. But both presidents at least feigned some directions and spread a little bit of philosophical trappings on their economic plans. The Buhari presidency has made no such feints and submitted itself to no philosophical or theoretical luxury. That was why it met a floundering economy in 2015 and blithely plunged it into recession. And for the past four or five years, it has busied itself bragging and propagandising its way clumsily out of the woods.

There was no one in the real sense of the word, not even counting the hysterical natter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in its opposition days, who could speak to the consciences of the infinitely cocksure Dr Obasanjo and the eternally unsure Dr Jonathan. Sadly too, there is no one to speak to the conscience of the unknowing President Buhari, for he has outsourced the economy to no one in particular and regards every criticism of the distressed and underperforming economy as a political and security nuisance.

The leitmotif of the Buhari 2020 budget is tax and more tax. And when that hobgoblin is consigned to the nervous hands of the many wizards this government has sired, the government goes on to revel in ridiculous and unambitious allocations to the education and health ministries. Does the president have any ambition about the future at all? The shocked answer is located in a budget whose only ambition is to glory in debts and more debts and to insouciantly pass the payment and the troubles to future generations. No one has spoken to the conscience of this government, no one has questioned their appalling tactics of basking in the short-term glory which lofty projects give while passing the nefarious burden and heartaches to future generations.

Did the Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan presidencies have a vision of what the society should look like, a society that breaks with the militaristic and diarchical past, a society that promotes and ennobles democracy? Unfortunately, it was even the most hesitant of the three, Dr Jonathan, who gestured faintly in the direction of democracy.

President Buhari has neither inspired nor spoken to any social programme for the country, a social programme capable of re-engineering Nigeria from crudity and brutishness into a modern, democratic and ennobling society that inhabits the pride of the world’s black people. But there is no such ambition; no such vision. Of all the great kingdoms and empires that dot the world, there were, it seems, no examples to challenge any of Nigeria’s past presidents, and certainly nothing to even tug at the conscience of the Buhari presidency which is arguably the most militarised and gerontocratic of all the presidencies that have ruled Nigeria since 1999.

As part of a great social manifesto, it was necessary to reform and energise an independent and functioning judiciary in recognition of the doctrine of the separation of powers. After all, the government of today can become the opposition of tomorrow, and once the tradition of justice has been made to take root, it would be difficult to dismantle, and the governed and the government would have the assurance that their rights and privileges would always be protected as much as they are tasked about their obligations.

Instead, Dr Obasanjo insulted the courts and sniggered at the Supreme Court in the contentious case with Lagos State over the principles of federalism pertaining to the creation of local governments. Dr Jonathan set a horrifying precedent on the rule of law when he desecrated the Court of Appeal in the Justice Ayo Salami case. And now, without parallel, President Buhari has desecrated the Supreme Court and the entire judiciary in the case involving former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen. The society is thus completely stultified, indeed returned to its atavistic past where rights are routinely abridged by law enforcement and security agents in collusion with a judiciary that now operates more like a camorra and sets bail conditions numbingly and atrociously high.

There is muffled opposition to this return to a militaristic past. But given the awkward and unsure manner critics take the Buhari presidency to task, it is clear that that opposition lacks vigour and education. The smokescreen of anti-corruption has seemed to be sufficient to corral the support of many educated people, and few have spoken to the divisiveness and acrimony patented by this government.

While the government is not listening, few know why. Is it because it considers itself infallible, or is it because it simply can’t tell right from wrong? Whatever the answer, it is also evident that the age of the president is a factor: being so traditional a man torn between his political side and military past, he probably sees younger critics as undisciplined impostors. Once he has formed an opinion of you, there is no shifting him. To such a person, criticism, outright opposition and admonition are superfluous and vexatious.

It is tragic that the answer to a parlous economy is more taxes and debts; it is worrisome that the solution to a warped and stunted society is more regimentation, denial of rights, and reintroduction of the military into civilian affairs; and it is appalling that the response to political calcification is further denudation of federalist principles and complete rejection of any modicum of change and structural reform. These problems are worsened by the general absence of powerful, uncompromising voices of men and women of character and virtue to speak truth to power at the state and federal levels.

Nigeria is gradually being pushed into a tailspin engineered by lawless politicians, highway robbers and kidnappers, grovelling legislature and judiciary, and a citizenry too shell-shocked to defend their rights. Dr Jonathan lends very feeble and spasmodic voice to the defence of those rights, and Dr Obasanjo has been dismissed as too sanctimonious and jaded for his voice to count, despite his name recognition. But it is precisely when fewer voices are heard, and fewer men of stature lend their opinions to the grave issues of the day or speak to the conscience of a nation that the government must be wary of implosion, assuming they are sophisticated enough to care or to understand.

Idowu Akinlotan

ON Friday, hours after the John Baiyeshea-led seven-man judicial panel exculpated Kogi State deputy governor Simon Achuba of allegations of gross misconduct, the Kogi House of Assembly, which was not even in session, simply hissed at the report and proceeded posthaste to impeach him. The travesty and criminal impersonation were superintended by the Speaker, Kolawole Matthew, but inspired by the governor who for over one year had been at daggers drawn with his deputy. From the very beginning of the misunderstanding, there was really no substance to the allegations against the beleaguered Mr Achuba, but in accordance with the constitution, and given the enormous pressures from the legislature and the executive, the state’s chief judge, Nasiru Ajana, empanelled seven men to investigate the allegations. They returned a not-guilty verdict against the deputy governor, but it is not even clear whether the Assembly in their indecent haste to write their names in infamy had time to fully read the report, let alone digest it, before impeaching him.

The constitution does not prescribe any further action against a candidate slated for impeachment after a judicial panel had found him innocent. It expects that the inspirations behind the impeachment would hold their peace until another expedient time. But since the foisting of Yahaya Bello as governor of Kogi State nearly four years ago by the All Progressives Congress (APC) acting in concert with at least two northern governors and the boneless electoral commission, neither the state nor the constitution has known peace. Mr Bello is a delicate egg in the hands of Aso Villa which is trying to give the spendthrift governor N10bn said to be a refund for federal projects executed by the state on behalf of the federal government,  and in the hands of the leadership of the APC which since the John Odigie-Oyegun leadership had indulged the exuberant governor no end. Yet the egg is rotten, and it is not even being handled with care. Kogi State, by their parochialism and repeated election of bad leaders, may deserve Mr Bello, but the buffoonery playing out in Lokoja also soils the image of the country.

Despite the imperfections of the Nigerian constitution, it still contains a few provisions that should make tyranny impossible. The constitution may not preclude a governor like Mr Bello from nursing unprovoked grudges, but it bars him from supervising the process of translating his malice into reality and making it a state policy. The governor had trained his guns on Mr Achuba for reasons many Kogites believe to be frivolous, and tried to harry him into resignation. But the deputy governor is a fighter whose grit has enabled him to withstand all the salvoes of a governor who is often undeterred by his own poor logic, groundless assertions, mistaken beliefs, and inconveniencing provisions of the law and constitution. The more Mr Achuba resisted him and stoically endured the punishment inflicted by the governor, the more Mr Bello became desperate and irrational. It was not surprising, therefore, that the animosity between the two grew to the point that the governor finally contemplated impeachment.

A more rational politician would have left bad enough alone by limiting himself to emasculating the deputy governor. But Mr Bello is not gifted in anything, not to talk of moderation. He was dissatisfied with not paying the salary and allowances of Mr Achuba, and with depriving him of all his entitlements, including imprests to run the deputy governor’s office, and restricting his official activities. So he pines for more pain to inflict on his enemies. It takes a stupendous amount of foolishness and recklessness to insist on impeaching his deputy three months to the state’s governorship election, especially knowing that the charges against Mr Achuba were trumped-up. It takes even more astounding folly to prompt the Assembly to defy the constitution and the report of the judicial panel less than a month to the November 16 election. But if the governor is reckless and unwise, what of the mannequins in the Assembly, that group of so-called lawmakers who are completely empty of conviction and devoid of soul?

For four years, Mr Bello showed contempt for democracy and the constitution, and oppressed and belittled Kogites by his acts of commission and omission, both of which were inspired by his unmitigated incompetence. His four-year developmental record is also threadbare and unremarkable, pockmarked as it is by half-hearted projects, fractionalised salary payments, absenteeism, Aso Villa fawning, and the worst forms of mendacity any governor can concoct. But it is precisely Mr Bello that the APC is backing enthusiastically for re-election in November, except of course they are pretending. If they are not pretending, how can they look Kogites in the face, and how can they peruse their party’s founding principles and goals and go on to back the governor? Aso Villa backs him because they cannot feel the pains he inflicts on the state, while the anguish of the people is too distant from their expressionless faces to behold. But the party under the uppity and gregarious Adams Oshiomhole does not seem to be too far away from the disease and squalor imposed on Kogi by Mr Bello. So how is it possible for the same Mr Oshiomhole’s APC to supervise a primary that rewards a failure?

The answer may not be complicated at all. First, Mr Oshiomhole and other party leaders know that Aso Villa backs Mr Bello, and they had better fall in line. The APC is also not inured to the opinion that a bad APC governor in Kogi, nay a hopeless one, is to be desired far and above a good Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor, especially in view of future elections. It is obvious to most Nigerians by now that increasingly there is no distinction between the APC and PDP in terms of morality and ideology. What sets them apart is probably the idiosyncrasies of their members and leaders. Subjected to the same environment and issues, both parties would behave and react the same way, bar some minor, unimportant differences. Indeed, once the APC endorsed Mr Bello for re-election via a mischievously  conducted governorship primary, there was no turning back. Both the party and its incompetent candidate will have to swim or sink together.

Neither the APC nor Mr Bello will be bothered about the law and the constitution. The governor will pretend that the legislature independently impeached the deputy governor. He has at any rate asked his running mate in next month’s election and former chief of staff, Edward Onoja, to be sworn in as Mr Achuba’s replacement. The party is unlikely to say anything about the travesty playing out in Kogi. It is too late for them to denounce the process that saw them buying a pig in a poke when they foisted the governor on the state. Mr Bello is their illegitimate child; they must cuddle him. Kogites would be too numbed by the dizzying speed of the tragedy they are witnessing and experiencing to even think of composing a proper or sensible response. And Justice Ajana, the state chief judge who is expected to swear in the replacement, Mr Onoja, must by now find himself walking on electric spikes. Being a sensible and studious man, he knows that after Mr Achuba has been dragged to the gallows, he is next; for the governor has dedicated himself to unseating him and pocketing the judiciary just as he has castrated the legislature.

The APC is preoccupied with the next elections. They have not spared any thought for having an incompetent and brutal man in office. Should Mr Bello win re-election, Kogites would gash their teeth and resign to hopelessness, cursing everyday of their lives, and cursing everyone that aided and abetted the governor’s return. Mr Bello is thoroughly loathed in Kogi; surely the APC cannot pretend not to know that. He has lied about salary payments, lied about projects, including the exaggerated rice mill he recently commissioned with fanfare, lied about his friends, lied about his enemies, and does not give a damn about democracy, the rule of law and the constitution. He in fact knows nothing about anything. It is such a man that Mr Oshimhole wants to persuade Kogites to return to office? Simply because of the next elections?

No one should see Mr Achuba’s impeachment purely from the legal or constitutional angle. It has little to do with both. It has everything to do with the governor, his flawed and unlikeable personality, his obsession with controlling the state totally and ruthlessly, his base desire to massage his own ego and pursue objects that no rational man can defend. He runs a confused and superfluous executive branch, has corrupted the soul of the legislature, pauperised the civil service, laid the state’s economy waste, and has begun the mother of all battles against the judiciary. The only arm of government still engaged in a principled stand against him is the judiciary. But his fight  against them began barely two years into his governorship, and became pronounced last year. The state of the fight is hard to gauge, for at the moment it is doubtful whether Justice Ajana can confidently say the National Judicial Council (NJC) has his back as much as Mr Bello can say he has wide-ranging and top-level backing in judicial and security circles in the country.

There is hardly anyone within or outside Kogi who thinks Mr Achuba’s impeachment will stand, not even the lawmakers who authored that nonsense. But the governor and the legislature know how disruptive impeachment can be, even though it does not win the governor any plaudits or extra votes. Should the governor be re-elected, he will do much worse than he has done so far. The APC has shown itself powerless to do anything about Mr Belo’s re-election bid. To impress Aso Villa, they may in fact make significant efforts to help the bungling governor. But what of Kogites themselves? Mr Bello is Ebira, a minority group from Kogi State Central senatorial district that cannot singlehandedly win him the coveted seat. Though he is their son, the Ebira do not think he has done anything substantial to endear himself to them. But whether they hate him enough within the context of the state’s extremely parochial politics to vote for his PDP opponent remains to be seen. The chances, however, are that the turnout from that area will be low, a low turnout that could become significant if the governor’s team does not fiddle with the votes.

The Yoruba Okun people from Kogi West loathe Mr Bello, and had proved it during the last senatorial election by voting for Dino Melaye whose theatrics they resent. Their son, Sam Aro, is running mate to the PDP’s Musa Wada, but are being lured by Mr Bello with the tenuous offer that after his next four years he would back the Okun for power rotation. A number of Okun leaders have taken the bait, but it is difficult to tell in the weeks ahead whether enough of them would still rally behind Mr Bello’s bloodied and unprincipled banner. The Okun are told that four more egregious years of Mr Bello should be more tolerable than possibly eight more years of Engr. Wada, an Igala from Kogi East. When they rejected Smart Adeyemi in the last senatorial election that has now been annulled, the Okun gave indication that their politics was becoming mature and discriminating, quite unlike their past ineffective and illogical politics during the founding of the state. If experience triumphs over hope in November, the Okun will repudiate Mr Bello again.

Mr Bello’s running mate, the mercurial Mr Onoja, is Igala. But he is regarded as uncouth and trusts in the Bello government’s ability to cajole voters to choose APC. He will, however, be countermanded by the Igala-born PDP candidate who is thought to be temperamentally better than Mr Bello. But he recently and unwisely appealed to the parochialism of the Igala, prompting fear that he is cut from the same cloth as the two past insular governors of the state, Ibrahim Idris and Idris Wada, two undistinguished political families to which Mr Wada is connected either by blood or by marriage. Mr Onoja thinks his people are venal enough to embrace him and the Bello ticket. Engr. Wada, however, thinks the Igala are self-seeking enough to embrace a ticket that has an Igala man as governorship candidate. Again, like the dilemma confronting the Okun, the Igala will find themselves choosing between two candidates on the grounds of either experience or hope. Their instincts may in the final analysis be driven by the terrible experience every Kogite has had under the Bello governorship, an experience that may likely be aggravated to an intolerable level in the coming years should the governor get an undeserved second term.

The law is in abeyance in Kogi State. Its legislature decided to simply brush aside both the constitution and decorum in order to unconstitutionally impeach the deputy governor. They want the chief judge to swear in the volatile and imperious Mr Onoja as deputy governor, just weeks to the end of the Bello governorship. Hopefully, Justice Ajana, or any other judicial officer to which the Bello government might make recourse, would decline to perform that ugly and unconstitutional task both in order to prove that the panel constituted to examine the allegations against the deputy governor was not nugatory, and also to prove that the allegiance of judicial officers is to the constitution, not the governor. In impeaching Mr Achuba, the constitution was criminally dishonoured. Swearing in Mr Onoja tomorrow would be a violation of the constitution. No judicial officer should be so indifferent to the constitution as to respect the governor’s wishes. In any case, the imprudent Mr Bello can be trusted to precipitate a bigger crisis in the near future to harass Justice Ajana and subdue the judiciary should the governorship poll favour him. Self-preservation should, therefore, dictate to the chief judge and all self-respecting judicial officers that adhering scrupulously to the constitution of the country is a far better option for them. Let the incautious Mr Bello blow his top then; and let him bring on the crisis he so desperately and foolishly covets less than four weeks to his fateful re-election. Justice Ajana has nothing to lose by ensuring that the judiciary stays out of Mr Bello’s self-created logjam.

IN two dizzying weeks from September 24, 2019 to October 8, 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari had the opportunity to deliver three speeches that should inspire his audience and establish him as an accomplished statesman and possibly rhetorician. For the past four years, he had been presented with similar opportunities to galvanise his compatriots and make a powerful impression on the world stage. He has, however, not quite met the expectations of the world, nor of his people. Going into his fifth year in office, it is now very uncertain that his speeches, even if they are sincere and germane, can perform the tasks invested in them by a hopeful public. As many great leaders have proved, some of them badly flawed, soaring speeches can be made to do the impossible and exert powerful and indescribable effect on national psyche and destinies.

For Nigeria, and especially the Buhari presidency, there will probably be no great speeches of any kind in the coming years. If the country is to achieve greatness, it will be because the people inspire themselves and carry their leaders along. It will not be the other way round, as the world has become accustomed. Perhaps it is even misplaced to expect that President Buhari will be that great speechmaker, that man whose instinctive feel for the people and the nation propels him into the grandest speeches that stir the soul of the country and grab and arrest the attention of the world. The president’s supporters may argue that what matters is the ultimate goal of nation-building, such as lifting millions of his people out of poverty, not fiery and inspirational speeches. But unlike when he took office, when his admirable terseness influenced his speeches into idiosyncratic brevity, President Buhari has begun to give very long and poorly cadenced addresses.

The president’s September 24 address at the 74th sessions of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was all of 43 paragraphs, while the Independence Anniversary speech was 53 paragraphs. The October 8 Budget 2020 speech repudiated thriftiness and went full bloom into 68 incestuous and ungainly paragraphs. Many commentators have remarked that the president’s recent speeches cock a snook at English grammar, and that those speeches would have been enormously improved had they retained either their brevity or, even in their ordinariness, at least promote some succinctness. This disappointment is probably because the critics believe that the president can pay for the best speechwriters in the country, that is, should matters come to that dire pass. But right or wrong, President Buhari’s speeches are neither inspiring nor succinct. He should, therefore, have strived for both brevity and precision, two virtues always capable of redeeming any potentially bad speech.

It is possible that the speeches are afflicted by two inherent weaknesses: either the president does not believe what he is saying, or he does not have a firm grasp of the subject upon which he is declaiming. The September 24 address before the UN, probably the only one among the three that attempted to soar a little, exemplifies the first weakness. It is impossible to think that the president believes himself when he declares towards the end of his address that “In Nigeria, we have made significant strides to put our own house in order. We will work tirelessly to uphold due process. The rule of law remains the permanent, unchanging foundation of the world order.” To confirm that he was not just rambling a wayward point, the president concludes: “Freedom, tolerance and the rule of law are universal values and underline the best that this General Assembly (UN) represents. And that binds us all.” If the three values he points out are universal, surely Nigeria should be included among its exponents. After all, as he says, the world is bound by the three values, and they are the best the General Assembly represents.

President Buhari’s most fanatical supporters do not believe that he knows anything about freedom or tolerance or the rule of law. In fact they have shockingly and consistently argued that the Buhari presidency has licence to promote the axiom that says the end justifies the means, and to deploy the most vicious tactics and tools to ensnare and damn lawbreakers because by breaking the law in the first instance, the lawbreakers showed their contempt for the law and affronted civilisation. There is absolutely nothing in the Buhari presidency that indicates it has knowledge of, let alone accept, the values of freedom, tolerance and rule of law. Nothing. Not in partisan politics, not in its official relationship with the judiciary, and not in its interactions with a legislature it once deemed hostile and uncontrollable. Indeed, for those three values mentioned in his UN speech, there is little proof that the president is conversant with their meanings, not to say be eager to adopt and promote them.

One more point from the UN speech should suffice to prove the case that the president was actually not conversant with the arguments he was making. It was indeed not a point to make, not by any stretch, for it was both horrendous and absolutely misplaced. The president says: “… On cessation of hostilities after World War II, the United States in one of the greatest selfless undertakings in history decided to revive Europe through the Marshall Plan and uplift and restore Japan economically. This generous policy catalysed a great economic revival globally. This action of the United States not only benefited Europe and Japan but the United States as well through vastly improved trade and cross investments. The United States and Europe have become friends and allies since the end of the war. The United States and Japan have also become friends and allies since the end of the war. This example can be replicated with respect to Africa…A coordinated multilateral effort should be set in motion to utilise and maximise use of the enormous resources on the African continent for the benefit of all nations…”

Apart from dreadfully contextualising the Marshall Plan and naively asking for its replication in Africa, President Buhari has obviously not read the history of World War II and seems to carelessly juxtapose times and eras as well as mix up terms and concepts. The $12bn Marshall Plan was designed to effectively integrate and somewhat subordinate the economies of Western Europe to the economy of the United States, checkmate the spread of communism, remove trade barriers, and rebuild war-torn areas of that region. As wartime Britain’s prime minister Winston Churchill observed, World War II effectively put the US on the ascendancy though Britain provided the inspirational leadership that won the war. At a time the Asian Tigers proved that a region could conceive separate and original economic models and directions, and prosper by them, it is inconceivable that Nigeria would be inviting the Industrialised West to come and dictate the pace. Doesn’t Africa have pride? Must they transit from the clutches of China to which they have freely and greedily consigned themselves and return to the bear hug of the West which for decades had shackled and smothered them?

The theme of the 74th UNGA was “Galvanising multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion”. Nigeria must not try to hide under multilateralism to be spoon-fed by the developed economies. Though the point escaped President Buhari and his speechwriters, it is important for Nigeria to link up with the world economy from a position of strength. Pleading for aid and offering untrammelled access to a structurally and ideological weak Nigerian economy is short-sighted and reprehensible. The war in Europe was triggered by Nazism, a destructive, racist and right-wing ideology bathed in blood and expansionism, but purporting to redress an unjust armistice. The sporadic wars in Africa, despite the connivance of outsiders, is largely a product of the incompetence of the continent’s leaders, their lack of ideological depth and discipline, and their lack of visionary focus. Nigerians had hoped President Buhari would declaim on those germane nation-building issues and confidently admonish the West to key in as equal players.

The Independence Anniversary broadcast, on its own, took dullness to a new nadir. It was perfectly placed, as every October 1 speech is, to enable the president rouse the feelings and passions of Nigerians and galvanise them to heights they never thought possible. Churchill did it for Britain in 1940 to 1945; Fidel Castro did it for Cubans; George Washington did it for Americans oppressed by British colonialists; Abraham Lincoln did it for the future of the US by preferring to fight than succumb to an enslaving ideology. The list is indeed very long and inspiring, of great leaders in the East and West who rose to the occasion by envisioning great and mighty achievements like the moon landing, and who prove that once the society was well structured and had managed to produce a resonating ideology, nothing was impossible, nothing that they dreamt about. President Buhari’s October 1 address envisioned nothing.

The best in it is the president’s presumption that his government was “Re-elected by Nigerians on a mandate to deliver positive and enduring change – through maintaining our national security; restoring sustainable and inclusive economic growth and development; and fighting corruption against all internal and external threats.” He suggests that the change he talks about “…can only be delivered if we are united in purpose, as individuals and as a nation. We must all remain committed to achieving this positive and enduring change.” Then he reminds the country of his statement many years back in which he said that “Change does not just happen… We must change our lawless habits, our attitude to public office and public trust… simply put, to bring about change, we must change ourselves by being law-abiding citizens.” Not satisfied with homilies and platitudes, the president goes on to deliver this deadpan “…The path of hatred and distrust only leads to hostility and destruction. I believe that the vast majority of Nigerians would rather tread the path of peace and prosperity, as we continue to uphold and cherish our unity.” If there is distrust or hatred, what panaceas does he offer beyond sermonising? None.

Might the president’s budget speech, the long and statistically tedious one which he delivered to the joint session of the National Assembly last week, bring some succour then? Alas, it was one unbroken vista of statistics to which the Finance minister would have been best suited. The president’s speech didn’t need to be so long, and did not have to contain as much detail as it did. But his speechwriters think he must impress by his command of the facts and statistics, and also by his constant admonition to ethical business. And having convinced himself that he had done well, and proudly beaten his chest on the performance of last year’s budget, the president finally dropped this clincher: “Despite these anomalies, I am happy to report that we met our debt service obligations, we are current on staff salaries, and overhead costs have also been largely covered.” This is bewildering.

In the past few months, and in spite of himself and what he has managed to achieve as president so far, President Buhari has risen in confidence, especially with his health bolstered. If there is a chance he could make himself amenable to great ideas of leadership and learn from past accomplished statesmen, he should rally himself and his aides to deliver on a new Nigeria far more transcendental and surefooted than the staid and parochial one he had long envisioned. In the three speeches in reference, he gave faint sound bites of promising ideals that could change the fortune of Nigeria. It is not clear whether those faint indications represent anything substantial and fundamental in his mind and worldview. If they do, and his speeches past and present are a deviation from what he is capable of and are unworthy of his huge status, the country must hope that he can also stumble into a company of great minds that would meet minds with him and ennoble him.

The president is unlikely to reach that goal by his own deliberateness. That is not the cloth from which he is experientially or idiosyncratically cut. Indeed, reaching that desirable goal is going to be made doubly difficult for him, having determinedly moulded the judiciary injuriously into his reactionary outlook, cherry-picked the legislature into a woven assemblage of pantomimic and hesitant lawmakers, and browbeat the executive branch into a shape which, despite the talents available to it, has settled into a monarchical-support role.