The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • ADC’s unending rigmarole

    ADC’s unending rigmarole

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar was at the African Democratic Congress (ADC) national caucus meeting where it was decided that those who publicly claimed to be members of the party must resign from their previous parties and officially join the ADC. Bolaji Abdullahi, the party’s spokesman, did not give any indication the decision was rancorous. It was, as far as the public knew, unanimous. But more than one week after that decision was taken, Alhaji Atiku was yet to take his own medicine. He is too versed in politics not to recognise an ambiguity when he sees one. He understands that since no deadline was given to take the medication, and since the virus the decision sought to cure remained attenuated, he and other fence sitters were at liberty to malleate the order.

    The ADC has engaged in unending rigmarole since last July when the party burst on the national scene as the preferred, though overused, vehicle of the opposition coalition being cobbled together to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC), and in particular President Bola Tinubu. It was not until last week or two that party chieftains, nearly all of them external forces who wormed their way into the party and overthrew or compromised its lethargic national leaders, began having confidence that they now had a party they could deploy into action in 2027. The fail-safe All Democratic Alliance (ADA) whose creation they halfheartedly tried to inspire months ago may have finally been abandoned. So, to all intents and purposes, the ADC is the Goliath they will hide behind to fight in 2027.

    But of all those the order to officially register with the ADC was meant to cajole into action, Alhaji Atiku appeared to be the main target. Most of the party’s prominent leaders are already members, including the voluble former Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who straddles the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the ADC. Repudiated by the SDP, and certain that no big name would follow him when he tempestuously defected to the fringe party, he speaks the language of the ADC more than any other person, including its putative owner, Alhaji Atiku. By remaining unflappable in the face of the order to openly register with the ADC, the former vice president seems to understand something the other leaders in the party don’t. He knows that no creature can be bigger than its creator.

    By last week, no one was left in doubt who the real owners of the party were, or who stood any chance of winning a nomination battle. Alhaji Atiku has allowed and enabled an unending rigmarole in the ADC. He has teased party leaders into making nugatory orders, such as insisting on everybody registering with the party. He has, from the background or incognito, permitted all sorts of orders and regulations to be issued in order to give the impression that the party was not being run dictatorially, but democratically. And he has given everyone in the party a very long rope to hang themselves. He may lack the ultimate strategy to win elections, but he does not lack the strategy to hold a party in thrall and win nominations. He has done it over and over again, and will continue to do it regardless of the reservations many party leaders entertain concerning his suitability for the 2027 presidential poll.

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    In their heart of hearts, and even though they are galled by how they have become a spectacle, most ADC leaders know that they are working for Alhaji Atiku. He has cast his net far and wide in the ADC, and no fish, no matter how smart or big, can escape being snared. The fish themselves know it, and are transfixed by the tactical and financial dexterity of the former vice president. It, therefore, beggared belief that former president Goodluck Jonathan sleepwalked into the ADC waters to explore the possibility of running on their platform. Just one decade of staying out of power since 2015 seems to have inoculated the former president against perceiving the brutal reality of Alhaji Atiku’s make-believe detachment from the ADC’s decision echelon. No one else in the party, not Mallam el-Rufai, not River’s Rotimi Amaechi, nor even the wary and overcautious Peter Obi of the Labour Party, nor still the defiant Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, nor the increasingly tame Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto has let themselves be lured into foolish traps. They know how politically deadly Alhaji Atiku is.One thing is clear, as Alhaji Atiku’s vigorous refutation of the inaccurate reporting of his BBC Hausa interview of last Wednesday indicated, he will vie for the ADC nomination, for he is desperate enough to ignore every tug of conscience and every political sign arrayed against him. If he has engaged in pointless and endless rigmarole, it is because he thinks it serves some short-term purpose, indeed any purpose primed to deliver the presidency to him, his life’s singular obsession. No matter how much the media buffet him with tendentious or sponsored reports, the former vice president will stick to his guns and run for president. And no matter how much his party chieftains cajole him, they are unlikely to ski off-piste without crashing over the cliff. He has charted the path ADC party leaders must follow; and they are caught in a straitjacket. They imperil one another to think they can be extricated from the logjam that undid them in 2023 when they found themselves in the peculiar circumstances of seeing in Alhaji Atiku their only plausible chance to win.

  • Jonathan and Jerry Gana’s categorical imperative

    Jonathan and Jerry Gana’s categorical imperative

    Two Saturdays ago, while exulting over the successful election of new officials for the Niger State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jerry Gana, a party chieftain and former Information minister, issued the categorical imperative that Nigerians were disillusioned with the APC and wanted ex-president Goodluck Jonathan back. He didn’t make it a hypothetical imperative. He simply announced to the whole world and his party that the former president would be contesting the 2027 presidential poll on the PDP platform.

    Prof. Gana put it elegantly but provocatively: “I can confirm that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will contest the presidential election in 2027 as PDP candidate and you will vote for him to return as President again…PDP has tremendous opportunity in 2027 because it is truly a grassroots party. The people of Nigeria love the PDP because it came with programmes that were people-oriented. That is why they remember PDP immensely, and they are urging us to come back.”

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    Not only did his party issue a rebuttal the following day through its publicity secretary Debo Ologunagba, they also confirmed that Dr Jonathan was nothing more than one of the options they were contemplating. They may, however, be chasing a chimera, since the footloose Dr Jonathan may in fact be exploring other options. It is unclear that party chieftains who have spent so much to keep the party afloat would casually surrender the nomination to Dr Jonathan who had for years detached himself from the party. To reap where he did not sow would not only violate natural law, it would also fly in the face of Kant’s categorical imperative.

  • Travelling salesmen take over politics

    Travelling salesmen take over politics

    It is instructive that the three most frequently mentioned names in the political coalition being assembled to unseat the Bola Tinubu administration have neither completely divorced themselves from their former political parties nor fully identified with new ones. All three of them do not see their tentativeness as indecision, or anything to be ashamed of. In their eyes, they are being careful and calculating. In the estimation of their critics, however, they are indecisive, devoid of conviction, and lacking in the inner compass without which a leader could not have the breathtaking vision needed to redirect the future of any country. The three men, former president Goodluck Jonathan, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, and former Anambra governor Peter Obi, share something in common: they know that 2027 is their last chance to bid for the throne. In the view of this writer, however, 2023 was really their last chance.

    In the past three or four weeks, the three men and their top aides and supporters have hit the road with a vengeance, becoming itinerant salesmen peddling political surecures they believe are capable of turning Nigeria’s captivity. Few Nigerians were at first convinced that Dr Jonathan really planned a comeback, for everything seemed stacked against him: the law and constitution, his shrunken support base, the irreversible transformations that had taken place in his political party and country, his undistinguished record as president, and the much diminished power and influence of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which early this year was the first to plant the presidential race heresy in his head. The sceptics also wondered what he could prove were he to be given another chance which more than five years in office between 2010 and 2015 could not lead him to prove. They didn’t see him as effective then; they still can’t see him as effective now or going forward. They thought his judgement poor then, as he meekly allowed aides to clamber over him as president, perpetrating all sorts of sordid financial schemes; and they viewed his clumsy consultations in the past few weeks after Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed planted the heretical thought in his mind as incapable of erasing their doubts about his constant vacillations.

    Before the 2023 elections, when the former president Muhammadu Buhari also seemed unable to decide who to back for the presidency, thereby leaving the field wide open, Dr Jonathan flirted with the abomination of reentering the race. He had naively thought the discombobulated All Progressives Congress (APC) ruling party would unanimously give him the presidential ticket. He only dropped out of the race, not out of conviction, but because no one in the party would promise him the nomination, especially no one who could match words with actions. Scarred but unbowed, he has once again started to test the shallow waters of the nomination struggle at a time when there is no opposition party strong enough to give battle to the APC or wrest the crown from them. He has visited everyone that should be visited, has denounced those trying to compel him to renounce his interest, and to cap his visits, has conferred with the controversial David Mark who was only recently acknowledged as the chairman of the notoriously flirty African Democratic Congress (ADC).

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    Details of the Jonathan/Mark parley have not been disclosed, but it is thought to be a follow-up to the former president’s quest for a legally controversial second term. But why on earth would Dr Jonathan confer with the chairman of the ADC, a fringe party consistently turned into a special purpose vehicle by all manner of political journeymen eager for office? Alhaji Atiku may have restrained himself from openly announcing his membership of the party, but it is widely known that he is its main financier and inspirator because he wants to run for the highest office himself. It is also acknowledged that the current ADC leadership is entrenched at the helms of the party because the former vice president willed it so, and in any case they are beholden to him. Except the public has been badly misled, it is mystifying that Dr Jonathan would explore anything in a party that has been locked down by Alhaji Atiku, financially and politically. Indeed, not too long after the unexplained meeting, the real movers and shakers of the party began their own conference. Dr Jonathan can of course meet with anyone in any party, but for his own image and prestige, and regardless of having not disclosed which hares he is running with, he needs to be calculative in proposing and actualising any meeting. After all, everyone knows that as far as the PDP is concerned, it is almost impossible for either Alhaji Atiku or former senate president Mark to return to the party. The door has been shut against them and their ambitions.

    Days before Dr Jonathan met with the former senate president, Alhaji Atiku had visited the tempestuous former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai, obviously in furtherance of their ambitions, the former to mount the presidency, and the latter to have his pound of flesh from President Bola Tinubu, whether the Shakespearean blood is shed or not. The meeting was as usual discrete, but not before Mallam el-Rufai engaged in his customary hyperbole, shooting multiple independently targetable missiles that fills his political armamentarium. The former vice president is unlikely to have visited his enraged protégé in order to restrain him from being so offensively hysterical, for the mentor himself is in fact as dangerously hyperbolic as his mentee, and would not mind raising an army of volunteers to hurl verbal missiles at the president. The safe bet is that both gentlemen met on how to finally end their dithering and how to safely berth in a party, whether ADC or any other; for once they are committed to a party, there would be no turning back.

    In addition, they are in fact keenly aware that their long-running saga of not being bodily and spiritually committed to a party may, in the eyes of a wary and sceptical public, be painting them black as political leaders lacking in courage and judgement. Soon, however, it is expected that they will damn the consequences and throw in their lot with a party. And if they perish, they perish. Alhaji Atiku may also have become a salesman because he needs to shore up his support in the face of malleable political allies who have begun to see him or any northern candidate as a liability. This second reason may also explain why Dr Jonathan has become a salesman marketing all manner of surecures to harried political titans entertaining second doubts about the feasibility of an Atiku pitch for the presidency.

    September was truly the month of the salesmen. On September 14, former Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election took his consultation train to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s Hilltop residence on a visit in furtherance of his presidential ambition. He went in company with some of his allies. No one on the Obi team has disclosed what they discussed with the former president, or what assurances he gave them. Chief Obasanjo can sometimes be fickle or pretentious in his political attachments, and so no one can be sure whether Mr Obi got any assurances during the visit or whether the former president has since surrendered to other suitors or blandishments. Whether he knows it or not, the former president is generally dismissed as incapable of reading the signs of the times and unable to accurately gauge the mood of the country or the polity. When he backed Mr Obi in 2023, it was a miscalculation he thought he could remedy by the force of his arguments and the weight of his support as a former president and military general. The arguments and efforts failed, not because he didn’t give it his all, but because he overrated his influence at a time the country had sensibly and pragmatically veered off in a different direction from what he was used to.

    Mr Obi himself has embarked on relentless visits to anyone who cared to receive him, and has given all sorts of succour to the needy in an effusive display of penance by the rich instead of establishing foundations and structuring his contributions to a distressed society. Some five million naira here and N10 million there, he thinks, should be significant or even enough to fetch him the presidency. But no amount of gifts and offerings can replace a systematic and enduring effort to build networks and bridges across the country, the kind that made President Tinubu win the presidency in 2023. Building alliances is a long-haul formula for political relevance, an altruistic approach to convincing the electorate as to a candidate’s bona fides. Chief Obasanjo never structured his politics or campaigns for the long haul, and can, therefore, not advise Mr Obi or any other protégé on how to approach that time-tested formula. Neither Mr Obi himself nor even Alhaji Atiku has adopted the long-haul approach to their politics, hence their nomadic and itinerant salesman approach to vying for the top job.

    No one or group exemplified the episodic approach to politics than former Osun governor and Interior minister, Rauf Aregbesola, and former Ondo governor Olusegun Mimiko when on September 15 both men visited former Oyo governor Rashidi Ladoja, who was the Olubadan designate, a day after Mr Obi met Chief Obasanjo. Photographs showed all three men grinning from ear to ear, the typical political photographs projected to convince the unwary. Mr Aregbesola, who is secretary of the coalition vehicle and archetypal salesman, has been travelling around the Southwest and Abuja, perhaps more than any other ADC apparatchik. He remembers as a commissioner under the Tinubu governorship that his estranged mentor cultivated the future Olubadan in the heady days of the Obasanjo presidency when the federal government in concert with local Oyo thugs fought their future monarch. Fire brigade approach, salesman pitch, and desperate, opportunistic politics seldom convince the electorate. That is a truism the new salesmen of Nigerian presidential politics – whether Alhaji Atiku, Dr Jonathan, or Mr Obi – may be set to find out soon to their dismay and lasting mortification.

  • Nigeria at 65: old but still impressionable

    Nigeria at 65: old but still impressionable

    Using global parameters, including United Nations standard, Nigeria at 65 should qualify for the status of senior citizen. The surprise is that despite having an unimpressive life expectancy of less than 57 years, the official age for a senior citizen is 70 years and above according to the country’s National Senior Citizens Centre Act, 2017. However, in nearly all jurisdictions, 65 years is the average retirement age that qualifies a person for special privileges. At that age, whether 65 or 70, a man is not expected to still be impressionable, swayed anyhow by doctrines, ideologies, or prejudices. However, Nigeria is not a person but a country whose boundaries may sometimes be redrawn by wars and politics, but whose age may in fact be indeterminate.

    Yet, by now, Nigeria should have transcended its existential conundrums, settling down into a fairly defined or predictable way of doing things, equipping its citizens with a sense of their country and what defines its character. Unfortunately, decades after its artificial founding, the country has roamed among infinite ways of playing politics, running its economy, and organising its society. Its people and leaders have so far been unable to overcome their colonial hangover and induced inferiority complex, and have embraced a warped understanding of diverse political concepts such as democracy. It bandies and applies fanciful economic terms, and apes and regurgitates studies and orthodoxies probably best suited to other climes and peoples. The result is that Nigeria has actually become a mimic entity confused about its own identity and incapable of transcending its inherited fault lines.

    For its energies to be unleashed and potentials to be realised, Nigeria cannot avoid redefining itself. Embedded in that life-giving definition is the absolute inescapability of restructuring, a term so alienated by the elite, and so feared by the rabble that many analysts fear to mention it because of the hysteria it generates. The Bola Tinubu administration may have pragmatically tackled a few knotty issues skewing the country’s existence and stymieing its progress, such as the place and funding of local governments, but as iconoclastic as the administration has tried to be, it cannot attempt a more far-reaching effort to redo the wobbly foundation of the country. In 1999, the military bequeathed an inappropriate constitution to the country and the Fourth Republic. Since then, every administration has been stuck with it, sometimes angrily rebuffing any sympathetic effort to amend difficult areas of coexistence between religious and ethnic groups.

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    For more than six decades, Nigeria’s founding elite have shown a lack of depth. But the tragedy is that their successors, though more educated, have been far less circumspect or deep, a chasm no one has been able to bridge. This may explain why the country has oscillated between parliamentary and presidential systems, including hiatuses of sometimes brief or toxic flirtations with universally corrupt and cruel military dictatorships or diarchy. Even today, the country is uncertain what system to run: the presidential system they regard as expensive and unwieldy, or the parliamentary system they clearly lack the discipline and fortitude to operate; or worse still, the abstract homegrown unknown prescribed by the eclectic and sometimes chaotic ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo. On some occasions, the country stumbles into fail-safe methods of rotating and sharing power, but its rambunctious and self-centred elite have often done their worst to counteract any serendipitous formulae. The future, sadly, is bleak, judging from the intense opposition to the structural realignments being undertaken by the Tinubu administration, while the present is even more fraught considering how bigoted indulgent political and entitled business elites have become.

    If the country’s elite cannot selflessly grapple with the national question, they should at least have the decency and sense of responsibility to amicably part ways rather than subject hundreds of millions of people to bloodletting. At 65, they should reflect on and find ways to change the national narratives away from the sophistry the country has been inundated with and the pedantry that creates dichotomies between age groups, classes, and religious affiliations. You hear the ephemeral nonsense about ‘not too young to run’, almost as if the old should be subjected to legalised euthanasia. Donald Trump first won the presidency at 70, and got a second term at 79; Russia’s Vladimir Putin is still president at 72; Joe Biden won the presidency at 78; Winston Churchill won his last election at 75, left office at 80, and died at 90; and Malawi’s Peter Mutharika has just won the presidency at 85. It’s all about experience, imagination and competence, not age. It is time to redirect the national narratives away from mundaneness to competence and vision.

    It is also time to remake democracy, a concept lionised by Abraham Lincoln and heedlessly accepted in many countries sometimes to their detriment. In light of happenings in Europe and America, contrary to what is happening in China for instance, it is urgent that Nigeria should rediscover itself, restructure its regional and ethnic relations, resolve the age-long contention between its secular tendency and theocratic fantasy, and completely eschew the sense of entitlement polluting and complicating Nigerian politics. The next elections may very well determine whether, despite its widespread systemic failings, the country can overcome its limitations and survive the fate many doomsday prophets have predicted.

  • Obasanjo gets it wrong at Jonathan Democracy Dialogue

    Obasanjo gets it wrong at Jonathan Democracy Dialogue

    Last week, the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation hosted its fourth edition of Democracy Dialogue in Accra, Ghana. Loftily themed ‘Why Democracies Die’, it attracted high-profile personalities, including Ghana’s president John Mahama, ex-Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, 2023 Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi. This piece is not about what all of them said during the dialogue: it would be boring and repetitive. It is not even about the gentle admonition the keynote speaker, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, gave former president Goodluck Jonathan regarding the 2027 presidential election. He had warned the ex-president: “The voice of the devil is not so far from the voice of God. Listen very carefully to those who want to use you as an instrument for the elongation of their interests, and not your interests or the interests of Nigeria.”

    The piece is also not about Mr Obi’s customarily simplistic ratiocinations on national issues. He had wildly generalised that democracy was dying in Nigeria, saying: “Nigeria is a typical example of where democracy is dying because it no longer serves the needs of the people and is no longer accountable to them. In Nigeria, democracy has become a process of elite state capture, granting access to public resources for personal and family interests. To reverse this situation, Nigerians must take democracy and elections seriously by ensuring that only people with competence, capacity, character, compassion, and commitment to service are elected.” It was unclear whether he was playing to the gallery, or whether his statement reflected how far his mind could take him, or he was simply trying to ape and please Chief Obasanjo, his newfound master and choreographer.

    It was also, as a matter of fact, certainly not about Dr Jonathan himself, despite the foundation being his. All he could think about, his mind ineluctably drawn to the judiciary, is that “…No businessman can bring his money to invest in a country where the judiciary is compromised, where a government functionary can dictate to judges what judgment they will give. No man brings his money to invest in that economy because they are taking a big risk…If we must build a nation for our children and grandchildren, no matter how painful it is, we must strive to do what is right.” Dr Jonathan probably identified with the cacophony on social media suggesting that the courts compromised the lawsuits that followed the last elections. It is significant that he has said nothing about those lawsuits and the presidential poll directly. If only he was capable of giving his audience something deep relating to the theme of the dialogue, something about why democracies die, or whether a country must run Western-type democracy in order to advance the interests of its citizens.

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    Chief Obasanjo was the chairman of the dialogue, and he, as usual, made a few highfalutin and patently contradictory statements tangential to the subject matter of dying democracies. He is, therefore, the reason for this piece. This write-up will focus on two or three points he made during the panel discussion. Responding to the question of where Africa got it wrong in terms of democracy, especially in view of incompetent sit-tight leaders as well as leaders who manipulate the constitution to stay on and on, Chief Obasanjo launched into a rigmarole inspired and propelled by his interactions with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. He said he once discussed the subject of succession with Mr Kagame who told him of his unsuccessful efforts to mentor two potential successors, both of whom betrayed him and betrayed Rwanda. As a result, the Rwandan leader inspired a constitutional amendment to elongate his tenure than originally envisaged. Chief Obasanjo added that he embarked on a vox pop incognito in Kigali during which he questioned some 10 Rwandese, eight of whom admitted that they would be willing to give Mr Kagame 10 more terms should he ask for it and as long as he continued to rule well as he was doing.

    Here was Chief Obasanjo supposedly providing insight into why democracies fail and what could be done to prevent that failure in Africa but ending up making peace with tenure elongation on the excuse that potential successors failed the Rwandan president. Did he by any chance inquire into why the potential successors ‘betrayed’ Mr Kagame? What is evident from Chief Obasanjo’s rambling anecdotes and thespian imageries, particularly his conclusion that the Rwandan leader amended the constitution ‘perfectly’, is that Mr Kagame’s tenure elongation aligned exquisitely with his abjuration of Western-style democracy. He made another anecdotal reference to an African sit-tight leader, possibly Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, whom he encountered somewhere in Europe in the thick of impeachment attempts against him in Abuja, and who had counseled him to go back home and amend the Nigerian constitution. Not only was he flattered by the suggestion, but juxtaposing that counsel with his half-baked idea of democracy, he felt it unnecessary to delve deeper into the continent’s checquered democratic journey, let alone question Mr Kagame’s untenable justifications. For if the Rwandan leader could not find the right successor, supposing he dropped dead suddenly, would the country not find an answer to their existential riddle one way or the other?

    Even more mystifying is how to explain why Chief Obasanjo keeps evading a more structured and fundamental consideration of the continent’s democratic longings, a task that never crossed his mind as president, nor has he contemplated it or tasked himself after his presidency. Midway into the panel discussion, he had initially spoken about the weaknesses or failings of Western liberal democracy, that Eureka moment coming only after he had ruled for eight years and unsuccessfully tried to amend the constitution to suit his objective. But he made no rigorous or original suggestion to explicate the subject matter other than his usual self-righteous conclusions anchored on a terrible misreading of political history. He claimed, without any substantiation, that Europe’s development could be attributable largely to the reign of monarchies, stable monarchies that supposedly allowed for longevity of ideas, visions and developmental plans and executions. In other words, tenure extension for rulers like him and Mr Kagame would have produced economic development. Absolute piffle.

    Indeed, Chief Obasanjo even argued, sadly unchallenged, that America, which was founded as a protest against Europe, had no term limit until 1951, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the passage and ratification of the 22nd Amendment. The devil is, however, in the detail. Three of the foundational presidents of the United States to wit, George Washington (1st), James Madison (4th), and Thomas Jefferson (3rd), kept strictly and deliberately to two terms, with the third president insisting that to aspire to more than two terms was to strive to be a king. That king, concluded President Jefferson, could very well rule until his ‘dotard’ sustained by the ‘attachments and indulgence’ of the people. While Nigeria struggled to amend its constitution to bar a third term for presidents who complete the term of another, and managed to obfuscate it, the US constitution amended for the same purpose was explicit. It provides that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

    Chief Obasanjo has clearly not found time to study political history or understand the US system to which he made glib reference, nor given proper thought to the unstructured political systems often manipulated or exploited by malevolent and messianic leaders. On the one hand, he denounced presidents who schemed for life presidency, but on the other hand spoke wistfully of presidents who satisfied ‘certain fundamentals such as peace, security, unity that are taken as sacrosanct’ to stay longer in office. Drawing from the Rwandan example and contrasting it with the unnamed president who advised him to amend the Nigerian constitution, he gave the impression that once a president governed well or brilliantly, term limit should not rob the country of his expertise. But how could anyone tell when a brilliant and popular president has had enough? The moderator of course saw through Chief Obasanjo’s baffling logic, and unfazed by his anecdotes, decided to probe him further on his alleged third term ambition.

    Responding to the question on third term, Chief Obasanjo sought refuge in theology. He was no fool, he snickered, boasting that he would have had it had he wanted. He based his confidence on the far-fetched comparison between third term and debt relief. According to him, securing debt relief was infinitely tougher and more complex than getting third term. If he could achieve the more complicated task of securing debt relief for Nigeria, every other thing was cakewalk. Only Chief Obasanjo was capable of such comparisons. But for the rest of Nigeria, no such comparison or contrast exists. In any case, he said dismissively, no one alive or dead could accuse him of asking or scheming for a third term in office, a lie many national lawmakers and political leaders had repeatedly debunked. They described his style as plausible deniability. What Chief Obasanjo didn’t know is that contrary to the impression he tried to create of his altruism and leadership acumen, nearly all his responses to the moderator’s question in Accra last Wednesday gave indication that he saw nothing wrong with tenure elongation, regretted that he could not pull it off in 2007, and is still bitter against those who robbed him of the chance to rule until he was tired or in his dotage. And if he could not even master the art of mentoring a successor, why would he think his legacy was extraordinary enough to gift him tenure elongation? Yes, he is still mentally sound, but that soundness, not to say his sanctimoniousness, has never mitigated his lack of depth and altruism.

  • Church rethinking 2027?

    Church rethinking 2027?

    Not likely. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), which has in recent years acted as the unofficial political opposition, continues to promote active interest in both the 2023 and 2027 polls. Two Saturdays ago, at their conference in Akwa Ibom State, the Archbishop of Owerri, Lucius Ugorji, moaned that the conduct of the 2023 general election eroded confidence in the nation’s democracy. He was echoing the view of the opposition, indeed the general public impression, but without any substantiation. Responding, the electoral commission of course dismissed the bishop’s assertion as ungodly, insinuating that a section of the opposition had damagingly peddled that mendacity around the country for far too long.

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    In their communiqué, the CBCN was radical in condemning what they also concluded was a slide towards a one-party state. Again, of course, there were no facts adduced to support that conclusion, other than popular impression. Recently, some of their bishops had warned of dire consequences should the elections be rigged again. Again? Well, there was of course no proof that the 2023 elections did not reflect popular wish. Whether they dislike the judiciary or not, the fact is that no proof was tendered in court to cause the courts to decide differently. Given their propensity to immerse themselves in politics, thus sowing division among the brethren, the bishops would have, unlike the Early Church, called for a forcible overthrow of the Roman Empire government of Nero as he orchestrated bloody and barbaric persecution of Christians.

    But it is not all gloom. While the Catholics commit themselves to erasing the dividing line between church and state, the Pentecostals are beginning to have a rethink. As demonstrated by Prophet Isa El-Buba of the El-Buba Outreach Ministries in a recent interview, it had become necessary to be politically pragmatic in the preparation for the 2027 elections. In other words, some Pentecostal leaders may have cooled considerably concerning the infusion of religion into politics, and have used the present administration as a litmus test to determine that Nigeria’s religious dichotomy may not necessarily lead to subjugation or persecution. 

  • Fubara returns to seething Rivers State

    Fubara returns to seething Rivers State

    Returnee governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, was expressionless as he addressed the state last Friday. He was incredibly conciliatory. He talked approvingly about his refusal to challenge last March’s emergency rule declaration, appreciated the president for his fatherly role in the whole saga, lauded the combative former governor Nyesom Wike, held out an olive branch to the state legislature, appealed to all injured by the events of the last six months and even farther back to embrace peace, and pledged to intensify his developmental strides. Whoever wrote that speech for him was a virtuoso: it was a model in political correctness, succinctness, and self-effacement.

    While Governor Fubara’s speech was textually brilliant, and the elocution sombre, few were persuaded last week that his heart was in it. He wore a glacial expression, albeit with a pained look delicately etched on his visage, and he read the speech with a slight injection of pathos. Some of his supporters as well as cynical commentators have suggested that the governor’s return to office mimicked the fate of a subdued hero, promising that they would exact some revenge on his behalf in the next poll. It seems likely that the state will continue to seethe in the next few months or more depending on how the governor manages the aftermath of the two years of brutal battle for the control of the hearts and souls of Riverians.

    There are doubts as to the capacity of the governor to manage the aftermath. He may have read a brilliant speech, but not much effort was put into getting him to correspondingly look the part. He has a close circle of aides, something akin to a kitchen cabinet, but they were probably men and women cut from the same cloth as he is. It was his duty to surround himself with a body of advisers who have the spirit of the gods, men whose counsels would prove both unerring and farsighted. He didn’t or couldn’t. If he had such men, they would have noticed a few outstanding issues relating to his impending broadcast, and perhaps helped to instill some pretentious enthusiasm in his delivery.

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    The peace Mr Fubara so eloquently spoke about in his broadcast, the same peace so tentatively alluded to by his former enemies, will likely be tested severely in the early weeks of his return to office. Before the open confrontation broke out less than a year after he was sworn in, the legislature was skewed against him: he had about four while the other side had the preponderant 27 or so. The same skewness still prevails. Could the lawmakers, some of whom appear to be diehard opponents, be trusted to restrain themselves in their dealings with the governor? Could they be trusted not to view the governor as a defeated foe? At the local government level, all but three LGAs have been warehoused in the All Progressives Congress (APC) far out of the reach of the governor, and amenable to the fiery control of the national ruling party. Here, the governor will have little elbow room. And to boot, Mr Fubara must now submit his budget and cabinet nominations to the lawmakers for vetting in tandem with democratic principles. Indeed, he will be sorely tested. Having spurned the last opportunity offered him last February by the Supreme Court judgment which reprimanded him for his dictatorial tendencies and ordered him to make amends, could he be relied upon to sensibly judge the spirit of the times? No one can say conclusively.

    But these imponderables are not insurmountable if Mr Fubara can assemble men and women able to coax him away from the cliff edge where he seems to perch. He cannot do it the extrication by himself. He lacks the depth and temperament. But whether he can even find gifted counsellors in Rivers is hard to say, for that state in the last two years has proved too implacable for their own peace of mind. In love and hate, and especially in political affiliations, they have often yielded to damning excesses. But needs must when the devil drives. The ball, once again, is in Mr Fubara’s court. He will have to find the temper and wisdom to juggle the difficult ball downfield. He must not play offside, and must not engage in dangerous tackle. If that means stooping to conquer, by all means, let him do it in order to berth the ship of state in 2027 safely.

  • Utomi’s restless, relentless opposition

    Utomi’s restless, relentless opposition

    Sometime in July 2020, the National Consultative Forum (NCFront) announced its formation and reeled out names of some prominent Nigerians as its founding members, but some of them denounced the organisation and declared they were not consulted. Prominent lawyers Olisa Agbakoba and Femi Falana insisted they knew nothing about the group, and so too did Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, a retired colonel. A little over five years after that organisational debacle, the same NCFront, speaking through Hamisu San Turaki, who is described as its spokesman, has again announced more than a dozen prominent Nigerians presumably bonding together under the aegis of the group to push, again, for electoral reforms. In both 2020 and now, Pat Utomi, a professor of political economy, has been prominent on the list, and is indeed, the numero uno. He seems to be the main inspiration, together, this time, with former Education minister Obiageli Ezekwesili, former INEC chairman Attahiru Jega, former presidential adviser Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, fiery NNPP ideologue Buba Galadima, and of course Messrs Falana and Agbakoba. The group aims to form another organisation called the Alliance for the Defence of Democracy (ADD) tasked with pursuing electoral reforms.

    It is not known to this writer whether any of the listed names has dissociated himself from the NCFront or ADD. But after the 2020 incident, Prof. Utomi went on in 2022 to join forces with Labour Party’s Peter Obi to fight for the presidency in the 2023 election. In 2020, the NCFront seemed like an association of the rejected embittered by the outcome of the 2019 presidential election won by President Muhammadu Buhari. Today, the group is insidiously Obidient and hopes to swing the 2027 election. As in 2020, the group’s goals are not as altruistic as they seem, that is if its leaders can overcome the suspicion that someone did not presumptuously assemble the prominent names and imbue them with noble and far-reaching goals. As for their battle cry of electoral reforms, they hinge their agitations on what they insist was the miscarriage of the last elections, and hope that civil society, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) can create a collaborative template to drive the reforms or bring the administration to heel.

    They couched their mission elegantly thus: “…The initiators have decided to launch a new electoral reform platform to be known as Alliance for Defence of Democracy on October 1st as a popular alternative movement to drive and structure the campaign and mobilisation process for…critical electoral reform during the major national gathering on electoral reforms to be addressed by the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Joe Ajaero, among other leaders of conscience in Nigeria…(and launch a mass movement) to drive critical reforms in the electoral laws of Nigeria, especially those that dimmed the credibility of the 2023 elections namely; compulsory electronic transmission of election results, effective criminalisation of votes buying, enactment of early and diaspora voting as initiated by the House of Representatives, proportional representation in government, especially special seats for women and other vulnerable groups, among others.” They seem to think that without these elements, like the electronic transmission of results which has been proved by Nigerian examination bodies to be vulnerable, a fair election could not be delivered.

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    But perhaps the main plank of their agitation for reform rests on their curious and fallacious belief that the 2023 presidential election was rigged or unfair. They had few qualms about the governorship polls; what they find distressful was the presidential poll over which coincidentally the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) have not stopped agitating. If the NCFront and ADD are not disconcerted by the coincidence of assigning themselves a mission indistinguishable from that of the Obidients in particular, it may be because they have thrown caution to the wind and become inured to facts and truth that assail their bloated presumptions. More than the PDP, the Obidients who champion the cause of their standard-bearer Mr Obi have continued to insist the elections were rigged despite the LP not having any path to victory, and indeed came third in the 2023 race. The assault on facts has, however, caught on and become a general delusion among many gullible but sometimes even educated Nigerians. There is of course no institution or policy or even paradigm that cannot benefit from one reform or the other, but the agitation for change must be well-grounded. It is dishonest to use the 2023 election outcome as the basis for their agitation. The integrity of that election was not vitiated by the non-transmission of the results electronically, which was their main grouse, or by any other fallacies insinuated into the presidential poll.

    The facts of the 2023 presidential poll are clear. Each of the three leading presidential candidates won in 12 states, with Mr Obi, however, winning in 11 and Federal Capital Territory. Where exactly did the purported rigging take place – in the 12 states out of 36 states won by the eventual winner, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? Or in the 23 states plus FCT won by the candidates of the PDP and LP, especially the latter who won his Southeast region through a voter turnout troublingly out of sync with the national turnout? How more credible could an election be where there was neither a landslide nor outright and overwhelming dominance? President Tinubu lost Lagos, his base, Osun in the Southwest, and Katsina where the then sitting president Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling APC came from, and in no state did he win by a huge margin on the scale Mr Obi did in the Southeast. But analysts have distorted the presidential election outcome, raised dishonest posers and comparisons with past elections, and illogically and unconstitutionally concluded that perhaps a runoff would have lent the results credibility.

    Agitating for reforms is a democratic right. That right cannot be abridged. But it is unhelpful and counterproductive to anchor agitation on false premises and dishonest extrapolations designed more to inflame the mob, bait coups d’etat, promote discord and anarchy, and sully and humiliate national and democratic institutions. Nigeria’s democracy is not perfect; it is work in progress. To continually seek to throw out the baby with the bathwater simply because of electoral setback, especially in an increasingly fissiparous and nationalistic world, is to sail near the wind and risk a shipwreck. Nigeria is a delicate and highly vulnerable pastiche of religion and ethnicities; it is a miracle it is still standing despite the extremism and dangerous rhetoric of political leaders who show no grace and nobility in defeat. Mr Utomi’s group is one of the constitutional reform groups being cobbled together by disaffected politicians to either repudiate the progress recorded in the last elections or impugn the integrity of the poll outcome as well as the institutions that undergird democracy. It is tragic that anyone is giving them a hearing.

  • Israel’s attack on Qatar

    Israel’s attack on Qatar

    For more than two months, Israel had planned a strike against senior Hamas leaders in Qatar, including its chief negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya. Last Tuesday, the strike was carried out against the remonstrations of Israel’s Army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, and Mossad chief, David Barnea, who felt the timing was awkward. The objectors were worried that Qatar was a United States ally, with the Americans operating the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar for more than two decades, its largest in the region. Only last year, the Qataris gifted President Donald Trump and the US a $400m Boeing 747 luxury jetliner to be used as Air Force One. The Tuesday attacks killed some six lower level Hamas officials but failed to get any of the group’s leaders.

    The pretext for the air strike was that Qatar sheltered Hamas leaders who continue to direct attacks against Israel, especially last Monday’s Jerusalem killings that caused the death of six Israeli citizens. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had since the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023 put pressure on Qatar to expel Hamas from Doha for continuing to orchestrate attacks against the state of Israel. Allegations against Qatar’s sponsorship of terrorism are not new. In 2017, Saudi Arabia-led Arab League countries imposed a blockade on Qatar for sponsoring terrorism and violating the 2014 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreement of which it was a signatory. The League accused Qatar of fraternising with Iran and Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, all of which had become instruments of regional destabilisation. Israel understands the deep division in the region, especially in the context of the Sunni-Shiite divide, a division that is nevertheless not as sharp as it seems. Though the blockade, which lasted until January 2021, did not achieve its aims of drastically downgrading the relationship between Qatar and Iran, or shutting down the hostile Al Jazeera cable television, or stopping military coordination with Turkey, it signposted the fault lines in the region that Israel could potentially exploit.

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    The irony is that Qatar offered to shelter Hamas at the instance of the US and Israel. But while the US under President Trump has since upgraded relations with Qatar, a part of which privately benefits the Trump family’s businesses, Israel’s relations with Qatar have remained fraught. It is not clear that the failure of the September 9 attack against Hamas leaders was due to a tipoff from the US – though this was denied, and Israel itself has claimed it acted independently – it has probably sent signals to the GCC that, in the context of Israel, their relations with and dependence on the US will remain far more intractable than they seem on the surface. Worse, the hostage and ceasefire deals proposed by the US may now be hard to get back on line, while Israel may also begin gradually to recognise that military prowess, of which it has shown scintillating examples in recent months, has its limitations.

  • US outplaying itself on Russia, China

    US outplaying itself on Russia, China

    Decades of United States efforts to nurture strategic relations with China and India, while isolating Russia, have gone up in smoke under President Donald Trump’s tariff blitzkrieg. That nurturing produced a complicated diplomatic mosaic, which has now been considerably simplified and attenuated by Mr Trump to the detriment of the US. India and China were until the past few weeks ill at ease with each other, having fought a bitter and bloody border war in 1962; Russia and China were not the best of neighbours, with the former annexing a part of Chinese Manchuria (1858-1860), and after the Sino-Russia split in 1961, became bitter leadership rivals for the control of global communism, nearly coming to nuclear blows during the Zhenbao Island incident of 1969; while Russia and India relations had warm relations that peaked in 1971 (Friendship Treaty) but cooled and even stagnated after the collapse of Soviet Union until the 2000 Strategic Partnership, and again cooled as India veered West and fostered a rapprochement with China.

    Such diplomatic complexities, with all their intricate and delicate nuances, proved too cumbersome for President Trump to grasp. His insular view of diplomatic relations makes sense to him only if it is mediated by purely whimsical, boyish and punishing tariff impositions. On August 27, after India failed to heed US directive to desist from buying discounted Russian crude oil that saved the South Asian country $17bn, Mr Trump imposed 25% tariffs on some key Indian goods, and a further 25% punitive tariffs on those same goods, bringing the total tariffs to a whopping 50%, almost at par with the tariffs imposed on Brazilian exports to the US. Before the imposition of extraordinary tariffs on India, the South Asian country had enjoyed a trade surplus against US to the tune of over $4bn. The result of the tariffs is that India, which regards Mr Trump’s ultimatum as hostile and duplicitous, has begun to look elsewhere, defying America’s bullying tactics, and working to restore and rebuild relations with China. Much worse for the US, decades of American efforts to decouple India, the world’s biggest democracy and fifth largest economy, from China, the world’s second largest economy at $19.23 trillion to the US $30.50trn, has not only been reversed, the mistake is now probably beyond remedy. Having nurtured its relations with the West, and particularly the US, for decades, India is shocked by Mr Trump’s insensitivity and utter lack of strategic insight into global power politics as he unites the worlds’ second, third and fourth top military powers against America.

    The damage to US foreign policy and image consequent upon Mr Trump’s shallow and whimsical approach to global power politics is immense and probably irreparable. The world’s other economic and military powers will not only distrust the US, or probably hold it in contempt, they are almost certain to unite against it, a point the US president himself made in oblique reference to China’s President Xi Jinping hosting India, Russia and eighteen other countries at a two-day regional security and economic summit (The Shangai Cooperation Organisation) in Tianjin between August 31 and September 1. The purpose of the summit essentially was to intensify the effort to promote a powerful counterweight to the Western Alliance and produce a new global order. The Russo-Ukrainian war may have brought Russia down a peg or two, almost in the same way World War II paradoxically diminished the influence and power of Great Britain in contrast to the US, the Shangai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will proceed in the years ahead to entrench itself as a countervailing force to the Western Alliance. To a President Xi hungry for global power and influence, Mr Trump’s bumbling and pedantic diplomacy is godsend.

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    No country, not even in the Western Alliance, trusts the US anymore, not to talk of Mr Trump in particular. The US president has not only alienated Asia and completely damaged and repudiated the Indo-Pacific alliance carefully curated by his predecessors to produce the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), both of which aimed to whittle down the growing geopolitical assertiveness of China as well as sustain the paramountcy of liberal international order, he has also managed in the same breath to antagonise the rest of the world, including Africa and Latin America. He has promoted American exceptionalism with a nationalistic and deeply offensive fervour, twisted visa policies without regard to America’s global leadership, ridiculed and discarded his country’s value system from which most of the world previously took their compass, turned his back on science, research and intellectuals, enthroned a truly vexatious sense of triumphalism and entitlement, promoted mercenary foreign policy, and returned the country to the unprofitable isolationism and racist tendency of the early 20th century that contradict and undermine America’s global ambition and position. No president anywhere has so profoundly undermined his country’s ennobling objectives.

    Mr Trump, though a darling of American evangelicals enamoured of the prophetic, may inadvertently be fulfilling Bible prophecy. Under him, there is an almost undecipherable and dystopian future about the US. How could such a richly endowed, powerful and dominant country elect someone so unendowed, so self-centred, so averse to logic, so pedestrian? But it happened, not just once, but twice. After his reelection, he has embraced the most retrogressive and pugnacious domestic and foreign policies ever, and projected his personal insecurity upon his country. The ordinary task of analysing and explicating the future and ambition of his country eludes him in a way that made ancient Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar far his superior. Shorn of any capacity for reflection or circumspection, and unlike King Nebuchadnezzar who wondered what fate awaited Babylon after his death, Mr Trump has spared no thought for his country after his presidency, beyond of course his insufferable comparisons, nor wondered why the bible seems silent on the US while giving copious mention to the alliance between Russia and China vis-à-vis the solution to the Palestinian conundrum.

    China may not have been tested in war since Deng Xiaoping inspired its economic renaissance, but it has in the past one decade or a little more deployed its newfound economic power to forge a technological base and military machine that may have exceeded Russia’s capability. One day, inevitably, this machine will be put to use, perhaps at a time America seems truly and irrevocably isolated. If the timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union is any example, it will be futile to imagine or calculate that fateful date to be far in the future. Under Mr Trump, America has antagonised nearly every country and embarked on scorched-earth foreign policy as well as racist and divisive domestic policies. His successors, even if they are not cut from the same cloth, may find the damage hard to amend.