The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Oshiomhole, Sagay on Zamfara and Rivers

    THE ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has reacted badly to the voiding of its state and national elections victories in Zamfara State by the Supreme Court. The apex court had upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal which judged that the APC did not present candidates in the said polls because it flouted the rules. The party had been sundered by internal squabbles, leading to the presentation of candidates in complete violation of party constitution and the Electoral Act. But party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, has described the apex court’s decision giving victory to the PDP as ‘imposing strangers’ on Zamfara State. He came to this conclusion because the APC appeared to have cleared the polls when they were held in February and March. He, however, said nothing of the drastic and unlawful manoeuvres engineered by the departing governor, Abdulaziz Yari, to impose candidates on the party. Nor did he say anything about how he also resisted imposition and tried valiantly to ensure the party did the right thing in other states.

    Similarly, Itse Sagay, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and professor of law, has asked the party to approach the apex court to give the jurists an opportunity to reverse their decisions on the Zamfara and Rivers State cases. He cites some legal authorities to underscore his conclusion that the court based its judgement wholly on technicalities without delivering justice. But he was generally silent on the perverse politicking that led the APC down the road of impunity, nor did he try to justify why an errant party should be rewarded or placated by the courts simply because an election had been concluded, an election that at first seemed to favour them. The eminent law teacher also said nothing about why the party should not in fact be punished for flouting the law and hoping to profit from impunity.

    The APC does not seem to be prodigiously litigious. But if the case should be reopened, the apex court should hurl it back at the appellants with fury. The problem was neither the law nor the judgement of the eminent jurists. The problem was a pampered party that hoped to deploy executive influence to profit from illegality. The message must be sent loud and clear that in no circumstance would the law countenance the kind of malfeasant behaviour indulged in by the APC in Zamfara and Rivers. The law is the law. In any case, technicality, for as long as it is still a part of the laws of Nigeria must not be demonised. The APC was punished for its errors; the case must, therefore, remain closed. If the party decides to fritter away their members’ dues by engaging in unnecessary and sentimental legal adventures, the party chairman should be held responsible. If they put their house in order next time, present the right candidates, and appeal to the needs and conscience of the electorate in subsequent election seasons, there is no reason for them to lose elections, or lose with ignominy when they don’t win, or for the courts to judicially steal their victories or impale them on the spike of legal technicalities. THE ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has reacted badly to the voiding of its state and national elections victories in Zamfara State by the Supreme Court. The apex court had upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal which judged that the APC did not present candidates in the said polls because it flouted the rules. The party had been sundered by internal squabbles, leading to the presentation of candidates in complete violation of party constitution and the Electoral Act. But party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, has described the apex court’s decision giving victory to the PDP as ‘imposing strangers’ on Zamfara State. He came to this conclusion because the APC appeared to have cleared the polls when they were held in February and March. He, however, said nothing of the drastic and unlawful manoeuvres engineered by the departing governor, Abdulaziz Yari, to impose candidates on the party. Nor did he say anything about how he also resisted imposition and tried valiantly to ensure the party did the right thing in other states.

    Similarly, Itse Sagay, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and professor of law, has asked the party to approach the apex court to give the jurists an opportunity to reverse their decisions on the Zamfara and Rivers State cases. He cites some legal authorities to underscore his conclusion that the court based its judgement wholly on technicalities without delivering justice. But he was generally silent on the perverse politicking that led the APC down the road of impunity, nor did he try to justify why an errant party should be rewarded or placated by the courts simply because an election had been concluded, an election that at first seemed to favour them. The eminent law teacher also said nothing about why the party should not in fact be punished for flouting the law and hoping to profit from impunity.

    The APC does not seem to be prodigiously litigious. But if the case should be reopened, the apex court should hurl it back at the appellants with fury. The problem was neither the law nor the judgement of the eminent jurists. The problem was a pampered party that hoped to deploy executive influence to profit from illegality. The message must be sent loud and clear that in no circumstance would the law countenance the kind of malfeasant behaviour indulged in by the APC in Zamfara and Rivers. The law is the law. In any case, technicality, for as long as it is still a part of the laws of Nigeria must not be demonised. The APC was punished for its errors; the case must, therefore, remain closed. If the party decides to fritter away their members’ dues by engaging in unnecessary and sentimental legal adventures, the party chairman should be held responsible. If they put their house in order next time, present the right candidates, and appeal to the needs and conscience of the electorate in subsequent election seasons, there is no reason for them to lose elections, or lose with ignominy when they don’t win, or for the courts to judicially steal their victories or impale them on the spike of legal technicalities.

  • Taking Obasanjo to task

    IT is hard to explain what has led to the distortion of the keynote address presented two Saturdays ago by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo at the 2019 synod of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Oleh Diocese Isoko, Delta State. Did his controversial, self-serving and almost narcissistic person get in the way of a proper comprehension of his diagnoses of the national malaise? Or was the controversy and miscomprehension triggered by the present government’s often misplaced and instinctive umbrage? Or perhaps the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, unwittingly draped the whole issue in his customary propagandist response to anything that seemed like a criticism of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency? Whatever it was, Chief Obasanjo’s copious and even remarkable examination (in nearly 10,000 words) of Nigeria’s developmental problems on May 18, 2019 was needlessly entwined in petty controversy, and the public forced into entanglements that further complicate and vitiate a good understanding of the theses he tried to promote.

    Of the about 70 paragraphs to which the address was divided, only about two or three appeared to be pointed criticisms of the Buhari presidency. The rest of the speech was taken up by useful dissections of the Nigerian condition, a few barbed references here and there, but on the whole fairly passable and well-reasoned prognostications. The former president repeatedly indulged in idolatrous references to his policy successes, taking particular note of his nationalist credentials vis-a-vis the sectionalist credentials of the incumbent president. He also barely disguised his contempt for many of the shocking shortcomings of his successors. Indeed, a sizable part of his address dealt with counsels to his successors which his own presidency glaringly spurned, and virtues he preached to them which he turned inimitably into personal vices. The contradictions have led many analysts to wrongly focus on his person than on his ideas. Chief Obasanjo cannot by any stretch be regarded as a virtuous man, or that when he seizes upon relevant public issues he can be trusted to offer the right prognoses. He likes to present himself as a man of ideas; but at bottom, he is a man only besotted with ideas.

    There is also a second reason many analysts are unwilling to give the former president a hearing. They see him as unalterably opposed to the Buhari presidency and has done and keeps doing everything to ensure its failure. Nothing, they reason (and this is the Information minister’s position) will placate him. Chief Obasanjo may be afflicted with a messianic complex, and may even secretly and controversially nurse the desire to see his successors underperform in clear contrast to himself, but there is nothing sacrosanct about his secret desire to make his successors the failures they have arguably become. He may thus be filled with contradictions, and be even inured to criticisms and abuse, but he has an uncanny ability to ferret out great public issues deserving of attention and deep scrutiny. And because he possesses the name recognition to imbue his criticisms with traction and even nobility, Nigerians may periodically be compelled to give him listening ears in spite of themselves, and must also restrain themselves from outrightly dismissing his interesting perceptions and conclusions.

    Chief Obasanjo may not be smart enough to build a great and imperishable legacy for himself, but he was sensible enough to choose the Anglican Synod held in Delta State to focus attention on a number of developmental issues troubling Nigeria. His address, as fairly remarkable as it was, would have been consigned to the archives almost immediately after he delivered it had he not chosen, in a very long speech, to make vigorous references to what he sees as the creeping Fulanisation and Islamisation of Nigeria. He did not put the blame squarely on the Buhari presidency. In fact, he argued that careless domestic policies and issues had combined in a lethal brew with external events and actors to produce and unleash processes that could sunder Nigeria. The former president, not known for mincing words, seemed even uncharacteristically wary of making pointed references to the obvious failures and weaknesses of the Buhari presidency. So he spoke obliquely.

    Hereunder are the two main references to the Buhari presidency that have drawn the ire of critics: (a) “Every issue of insecurity must be taken seriously at all levels and be addressed at once without favouritism or cuddling. Both Boko Haram and herdsmen acts of violence were not treated as they should at the beginning. They have both incubated and developed beyond what Nigeria can handle alone. They are now combined and internationalised with ISIS in control. It is no longer an issue of lack of education and lack of employment for our youth in Nigeria which it began as, it is now West African Fulanisation, African Islamisation and global organised crimes of human trafficking, money laundering, drug trafficking, gun trafficking, illegal mining and regime change. Yet we could have dealt with both earlier and nipped them in the bud, but Boko Haram boys were seen as rascals not requiring serious attention in administering holistic measures of stick and carrot. And when we woke up to the reality, it was turned to an industry for all and sundry to supply materials and equipment that were already outdated and that were not fit for active military purpose. Soldiers were poorly trained for the unusual mission, poorly equipped, poorly motivated, poorly led and made to engage in propaganda rather than achieving results. Intelligence was poor and governments embarked on games of denials while paying ransoms which strengthened the insurgents and yet governments denied payment of ransoms. Today, the security issue has gone beyond the wit and capacity of Nigerian government or even West African governments.”

    (b) “I think it is like a building, which once the foundation is faulty, becomes wobbly with the tiniest turbulence. Consequently, the issue of national identity, values, ethics and national dream must be settled once and for all. This may require a global national meeting. If Miyetti Allah is truly encouraging herdsmen violence and killings and truly they have to be appeased or placated with 100 billion naira and they are equated to Afenifere, Ohaneze Ndigbo, etc, then we have to appease those other organisations similarly or be ready to allow them to unleash havoc of their own. We need politics of a united Nigeria for all Nigerians  not one for Yoruba, one for Ibo, one for Hausa-Fulani, one for Ijaw, one for Nupe, one for Tiv, one for Kanuri and one for Isoko. If we fail to do this, I am afraid all the EFCC, ICPC, Plans and Strategies and the rest of the political re-engineering and manoeuvres such as creation or contraction/merger of states, forms of government, attempts at ethical re-orientation, constitutional amendment, etc, may not usher in the much desired peace, stability, national development, and of course, improvement in the quality of life of the majority of Nigerians…”

    Both statements of course describe the failure of the Buhari presidency and insinuate the government’s abject lack of capacity. But they are nevertheless issues that are quite in the public domain, and except the country is living in denial, they are issues that strike at the core of the country’s stability and survival. In the second quotation, the former president spoke somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and even seemed to have permitted himself a few rumours, but no one can deny that the Buhari presidency has not carelessly submitted itself to the politics of Miyetti Allah, the umbrella body of herdsmen. Chief Obasanjo was not exaggerating by dragging in the Miyetti Allah issue into his discourse as an indication of the weakness, if not complicity, of the government in the massive insecurity inundating the country. The presidency has denied budgeting N100bn to appease herdsmen, but it is incredibly setting up a radio station for their affairs, as announced by the Education minister, not Information or Communications minister. Such abominable decisions speak to Chief Obasanjo’s fears that this government has become so insensitive to its political, social and cultural surroundings that it has become tone deaf and listens only to itself. Chief Obasanjo’s person may obtrude arguments, but it does not rob him of the capacity and judgement of correctly deciphering some of the nefarious decisions being made by this government.

    But perhaps the most controversial part of Chief Obasanjo’s address are his thoughts on the Fulanisation and Islamisation of Nigeria and West Africa using the amenities of herdsmen invasions and Boko Haram insurgency. Again, whoever Chief Obasanjo may be and whatever policies he had enacted in the past do not necessarily negate his observation or vitiate its accuracy. There is nothing in his statement that suggests that he concluded that the Buhari presidency had determined to Fulanise or Islamise the country, even if that ambition was secretly nursed. The former president’s argument is in fact very simple. By allowing Boko Haram insurgency to fester for so long, which predated the Buhari presidency, and the herdsmen rampage to be treated rather cavalierly as in fact this administration is doing by its many exculpatory and vexatious arguments, the stage was being set for the balkanisation of Nigeria. Chief Obasanjo drew on the example of Somalia to illustrate his general argument about elite irresponsibility and dishonesty in tackling vexing existential problems. Who can fail to be moved by the fact that Nigeria harbours two of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups? Who can fail to be affected by the fact that herdsmen sack villages and occupy them in a country that has borders, laws and governments? For instance, last year, the Plateau State government, responding to entreaties by community leaders who said some 54 villages had been sacked and renamed by herdsmen, promised to prosecute land grabbers. Nothing has, however, been done.

    The Information minister describes Chief Obasanjo’s criticisms as divisive. Others see the former president as unqualified to raise the issues he felt were destabilising the country. Both are wrong. They may not like Chief Obasanjo, and the former president himself may be guilty of some of the wrongdoings he is alleging against the current and previous administrations, but he has sensibly drawn the attention of Nigerians to the divisions and acrimony destroying the unity of the country. The attention must not be on the messenger, particularly this deeply flawed messenger; the focus must be on the issues. The greatest issue today is that the country, particularly the North, has spawned a nest of vipers brimming with insurgents and militant herdsmen who are picking the country apart. If nothing is done very urgently, as advocated by Chief Obasanjo, this increasingly divided and misdirected country will go up in flames. Nigerians will be living in denial not to see and feel this danger. It is worse when they seize upon Chief Obasanjo’s personal flaws to deny the existence of the existential crisis facing them.

  • NJC, Kogi State and Court of Appeal judgements

    ON May 9, the Court of Appeal finally decided some of the cases filed before it by former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen. He was vindicated in three of the four interlocutory appeals he filed. Probably the most significant of the appeals was the one that concerned the ex parte order the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) surreptitiously and maliciously granted the government based on which the CJN was illegally suspended. In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, the mode of securing the ex parte order raised some questions. Justice, the court averred, must not be shrouded in secrecy.

    It is surprising then that the Court of Appeal merely dismissed the appeal, insisting that no reliefs could be granted because events had overtaken most of the reliefs the CJN sought. No weighty, censorious statements came from the court concerning the prosecution team which in clear view of the world perverted the course of justice, nor was anything said about a government that should know better but which chose to base its perpetration of injustice on what is now obviously a conspiracy to sack the CJN. Is this what justice is about in Nigeria? Is this not corruption on a scale that beggars belief and shames the entire country? If the Court of Appeal found the ex parte order flawed, after dithering for months over the case, should it not have ordered a redress? After all, “Ubis jus ubis remedium” (Where there is a wrong, there must be a remedy).

    When the former CJN was suspended and a new one appointed in clear breach of the law, this column raised the fear that both the courts and the National Judicial Council (NJC), were embarking on a journey whose end no one could foresee. NJC, the column noted particularly, had become compromised and a shadow of itself. As predicted, a few weeks later, the august judicial body was called upon to prove that its behaviour in the Justice Onnoghen matter was nothing but an aberration. The mimic Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, affecting to behave like the presidency, desired to sack the state’s chief judge, Justice Nasir Ajanah, for no reason.

    Mr Bello had taken umbrage at the Kogi State judiciary for failing to embrace the state’s civil service biometric exercise and pay-parade scheme. He then proceeded to seize the salaries of judicial workers against the provisions of the constitution and extant state laws regarding the funding of the third arm of government. Dissatisfied that the judicial workers embarked on a strike, and unable to successfully unseat Justice Ajanah whom he saw as the face of the judicial revolt, Mr Bello petitioned the NJC, alleging that the chief judge had been indicted in a state audit report. It turned out that the report had been doctored. Meanwhile, the NJC is reported to be in possession of the two reports, one real and the other forged. But instead of acting on the petition and proceeding to bring the forgers to justice, the NJC empanelled some justices to visit Kogi State. No one knew whether it was a fact-finding panel or a peacemaking panel.

    In any case, this column rebuked the NJC and asked them to deal with the petition and let justice be served rather than make peace. Instead the NJC, just as it buried its head in the sand over the Onnoghen matter, has also kept the Kogi governor’s spurious petition in abeyance. In fact, seeing that the NJC was supplicatory rather than defending constitutionality and the independence of the judiciary, and preferred to make plaintive remarks about rights and obligations rather than upholding the dignity of judicial workers, Mr Bello became remorselessly emboldened to harass the chief judge, walk him out of a state judicial function, refuse to pay the salaries of judicial workers, and continues to create a regime of fear and terror in Kogi. All because the courts are timid and the NJC is hemming and hawing.

    It started with Justice Onnoghen, when the courts supinely surrendered to the judicial corruption enacted by the presidency, and has persisted with the NJC remaining conspiratorially muffled. Now the train has lumbered into Kogi. Who and where is next in the inglorious and provocative march to distort and corrupt an already weakened judicial arm?

  • *We have never had it so bad

    Rummaging through the Palladium archive, this piece pops up as a ready offer to help the reader reminisce on the sameness and tedium of Nigerian politics. Very little has changed since 2007 when it was first published in January of that year. No wonder the French say plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose (The more things change, the more they stay the same). This piece, with all its connotative parallels, should at least elicit a wry smile from even the most implacable of critics. Savour it.

    WHILE I was on vacation, momentous events occurred. Because I stayed discreetly away from news about Nigeria, I had some respite from depressing stories and was tempted to even begin thinking less harshly of President Olusegun Obasanjo and his third-rate cabinet. My discreet isolation was, however, not total. Now and then, some really stubborn news flittered through the thick layers of my self-imposed isolation. Those news were hotly pursued by the comical and amateurish manipulations in the House of Assembly in Oyo and Anambra States, and the equally elliptical interpretation of our cherished constitution by Bayo Ojo, Minister of Justice. (See Court of Appeal below).

    My colleagues and others unknown to me have done a great job of assaulting the palladium of lawlessness in the political parties and in government. But at the risk of repeating myself and therefore sounding like a boor, I cannot help but refer the reader to the grand opportunities being wasted by the principal actors in the Obasanjo presidency. You know I have had a bad opinion of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The party claims to be a “truly national party”, one that gives “power to the people”. Both claims are, or course, dubious. The PDP perhaps sees its spread all over the country, especially among teeming jobholders and sundry rabble rousers, as proof of its national identity. But there is always a huge difference between fact and fiction and between geography and reality. PDP’s geographical spread is incontrovertible; but that is all it can claim. It has not spread in the hearts and minds of Nigerians. Instead, it has become an insular assemblage of a few men  Obasanjo, Tony Anenih (now less so), Olabode George, Dr. Ahmadu Ali and their motley spokesmen  bonded together by their common contempt for the constitution and the rule of law.

    As to the party’s claim to be an expression of power to the people, the PDP here combines mendacity with arrogance. Its life and passion have been devoted, since 1999, to nothing else but taking power away from the people. Even if we avoid the sophistry of discussing indirect power  economic, educational and otherwise  it is still obvious that the PDP has taken every ounce of direct power away from the people. It did it in 2003 when some states recorded 99 per cent voter turnout, when twice many people voted for the president than the governor in the same state and same election time, and when it treasured and cultivated lawmakers who disregarded the constitution during impeachment proceedings. (See Federal-inspired lawlessness in Ibadan).

    Apart from the lengthy and consistent weakening of the National Assembly, the PDP-controlled federal government has woven a tapestry of usurper governments around many states where minority lawmakers were cajoled by security agencies to unseat their majority colleagues, and thereafter their governors. Court judgments were either disregarded or the court were generally circumvented. Instinctively, the PDP marked every constitutional provision that discomfited it and every politician that disgraced its argument, for destruction or decapitation. The history of the party and the federal government it controls is one of enduring and remorseless lawlessness. A natural concomitance of this lawlessness is the upsurge in crime in the country and more brazenness by the presidency.

    A corollary of the convention that took place during my vacation was the demystification of many politicians. Retired army brigadier, Buba Marwa, was a perfect example of this category. His tenure in Lagos was judged by many a success, especially following hard on the heels of the do-nothing Olagunsoye Oyinlola. But Marwa’s flip-flop, fluid principles and eager subordination of his values to the whims of the presidency in the fight against the Vice president, Atiku Abubakar, showed him to be as dangerously hollow and capricious as the president himself. Despite Marwa’s acrobatics, he was fully trounced at the PDP convention, thus signalling perhaps the end of his politics. He was arguably a better administrator than many, including the president, but he was also lacking in character as nearly all Nigerian politicians are. Like former head of state, Ibrahim Babangida, he came into national life a disputed hero, and he is leaving it much the same way he came in: disputed, evasive, demystified and ordinary.

    I may have missed the convention, but how could I miss the selection of the Governor of Katsina State, Umar Musa Yar’Adu, as the standard-bearer of the  PDP in the coming presidential election? How could I miss the uncanny resemblance of his selection to the process that led to the emergence of Chief Obasanjo himself in 1998, when Babangida played God and affected to know more than everyone else what kind of man we needed? Our sufferings, the shallowness of our democracy, the pervasive lawlessness, and the alienation, frustration and despair in the land are all testimonies to the folly of one man and one imposition. And we seem doomed to relive 1998, and to a little extent, 1978, all over again with the foisting of Malam Yar’Adua on the PDP and the wild and sweeping talk about April 2007 as if it were a certainty he and the PDP would win.

    The perilous time we live in is compounded by the trashiness of the Obasanjo cabinet, now downsized, with barely four months to go before a new government is inaugurated. It is a salient mark of the poverty of this federal government that its brightest minds include Femi Fani-Kayode, whose strength is embedded in his ineffectual world; Uba Sani, the archetypal jobholder and migrant mind; Nasir el-Rufai, all bluster and no tactics; Nuhu Ribadu, whose sweeping generalization and epigrammatic style has won him more distrust than respect, and that common denominator of planlesness, Babalola Borishade, whom no one seems sure is either a Ph.D. holder or professor.

    But a poorly assembled cabinet can be redeemed by a scrupulous adherence to constitutionality and due process. Instead, everywhere we turn, all sorts of adulterine laws and edicts are imposed on the people, and the government all but gets away with murder. This is our condition as we prepare for general election in April, elections whose outcomes seemed already predetermined. It is instructive that despite all this, and all the constitutional infractions, the president has not been impeached. Our pusillanimous National Assembly and Nigeria’s excessively religious population preach and pray for inaction. Perhaps it is time we modified our prayers to include not only peace in Nigeria but justice for all our people. It is this quest for justice that has seized the National Judicial Council (NJC) and explains the well-meaning changes taking place in the body. Justice, as we all know, can occasion intense pains for perpetrators of injustice. We need to look in this direction if the elections are to be free and fair, and if the right leaders are to replace the present caucus of hollow and ritualistic leaders.

  • Federal-inspired lawlessness in Ibadan

    SO far, all the lawful strategies to rein in the Ibadan-based and federal-inspired anarchists in Oyo State have come to grief. The capital reason for this spectacular failure is that Lamidi Adedibu  chief architect of the lawlessness reigning in the state  and his federal backers led by President Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr. Ahmadu Ali, Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), consider the provisions of the constitution as social and political impediments. To their simple minds, the rule of law is a complex and demanding task to decipher. A second reason, or course, is the incurable patience of Oyo State citizens: they are slow to anger, suffer fools memorably and gladly, and are not averse to being taken for a ride even on the back of leprous mules. In a sentence, Oyo people’s simplicity is overwhelmed and abused by Chief Adedibu’s prodigious talent for mischief.

    If, as Oyo demonstrates, a slave is content with his chains, there is no reason for the slaveholders to pretend to altruism, or worry about the slaves’ pains, or cry more than the bereaved. No one is challenging Chief Adedibu and his men; so, he is at liberty to wax doctrinaire: first he was, as they say, capitalist, and he talked the talk; then he stopped paying the people for their labour, and he became feudalist; now he is feeding ravenously on the people on whose he necks he keeps his elephantine feet. If the people of Oyo are not complaining, why should Chief Adedibu, the happy beneficiary of their timidity, groan?

    Oyo Lawmakers, the lighting rod of Adedibu’s anger and caprices, have become the latest and most visible emblem of the prevailing anarchy in the state. By their education, temperament and demeanour, they have shown themselves to be inclined more towards the ludicrous and the senile. Perhaps I defame the eminent members of the state legislature. If so, I offer my reserved apology. But facts in Oyo State do not corroborate the wish of many that the state lawmakers are of sound mind. They have often behaved foolishly, conducted  themselves without a shred of dignity, willingly subordinated their souls to an unelected and unprincipled political strongman, and disregarded and affronted civilized behaviour. Their logic, only a trifle better than kindergarten, disgraces elementary thinking. Indeed, if the quality of the reasoning of all 19 pro-Adedibu legislators was bunched together, it would scarcely exceed that of Dr. Ahmadu Ali, the PDP’s most famous apostle of tautology. In case you forgot, Ali was the great mastermind who argued that in a democracy, it was okay to subject a whole state to an un-elected strongman, and that the people did not constitute an electorate but a garrison.

  • Court of Appeal, Bayo Ojo Division

    IF the cantankerous lawmakers from Oyo State show contempt for democracy and work hard to undermine the rule of law, we of course do not expect anything better from them; for, as street toughs, they have long been used to the amenities of bare knuckle boxing. But to have a federal attorney general and Justice minister override court rulings and judgments is something very hard for any enlightened Nigerian to take. In at least two recent cases  Governor Rashidi Ladoja versus Pro-Adedibu lawmakers, and Governor Peter Obi versus Mike Balonwu-led legislators  Mr. Ojo not only rewrote jurisprudence, he virtually constituted himself into the most important division of the Court of Appeal. He grants stay of execution unsolicited, he encourages parties to a suit to file appeals, and he makes rulings alien to the cases in dispute. So far, it is only the Supreme Court that he seems to give some grudging respect.

    It is apparent Mr. Ojo does not see himself as the chief law officer of the country but as that of the president who appointed him, and that of the ruling party, the PDP. Alas, by his obsession to please his benefactors, the Justice minister shows he has no regard for the photographs of his eminent predecessors hung on the walls of his office. Mr. Ojo may have been elevated to the seat once used by Teslim Elias and Augustine Nnamani, but he lacks their gravity. When the history of the office of the country’s federal attorneys general is written, it would not be a bad idea to skip the brief period Mr Ojo wore the famous gown of Nigeria’s chief law officer. If most of his predecessors had comported themselves like he now does, and quite like our policemen now do, there would be no justice system to run, let alone relish for its jurisprudential finesse.

    But perhaps Mr. Ojo has removed the photographs from his view because their steely, indicting gaze mock him both privately and publicly. If so, that explains his insufferable calmness and equanimity in the face of his disrespect for the law and disingenuous interpretation of our statutes.

     

    • First published January14, 2007

  • The waspish el-Rufai

    IN the past one week or so, the media has been awash with Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai’s inflammatory remarks against national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The governor is entitled to his views, and reserves the right to hate or love anyone who catches his fancy. Much of his views was of course libellous, but that is a matter between him and the object of his loathing. No person or politician can hope to be loved all the time; just as it is unnatural to be hated all the time. But love or hate, societal standards demand some propriety in expressing one’s sentiments. The sum of Mallam el-Rufai’s sentiments two Saturdays ago at the Bridge Club, a social club founded only last year in Lagos, is that Asiwaju Tinubu is a godfather, and he should be dethroned. He cites the example of his own politics, in which he claims to have unhorsed four godfathers in Kaduna, and recommends the same revolutionary and regicidal method to the businessmen and politicians who listened to him pontificate effusively on politics.

    Among his audience was Muiz Banire, a former APC national legal adviser and thrice commissioner mentored by Asiwaju Tinubu from 1999. Indeed, the most inflammatory of el-Rufai’s statements on that day at the Bridge Club, concerning how to overthrow a godfather, was his response to Mr Banire’s cheeky and provocative question. In other words, if the cheeky question was innocent, then Mr Banire would need some political lessons from the brainy, now vastly experienced but scheming Mallam el-Rufai. They form a good pair, even if they have no right to vulgarise the important issues of development and national democratic stability. Mallam el-Rufai of course has the right to his associations, no matter how objectionable; and Mr Banire has the right to take lessons from anyone he wants. It is in the nature of freedom and democracy to exercise one’s liberties. This column will defend their right to assert their positions and proclaim their views.

    It is not certain that Asiwaju Tinubu wilfully associates with the label of godfather slammed on him by detractors. But by popular acclamation, he is seen as one. Does that make him evil and the term itself pejorative? Even the most insistent of critics, let alone social scientists wary of sweeping generalisations, must suspect that there are a lot of grey areas in the term. Mr Banire is a lawyer, and Mallam el-Rufai graduated with first-class honours. Between both of them, regardless of the bitterness of their passions and prejudices, statements and actions need to be modulated by restraint, accurate appreciation of issues, and overall interest of the polity. Mr Banire is, however, too wrought up by the truncation of his governorship ambition to exercise the due restraint both his background and political trajectory impose on him. He had many options to reach the top of his political career. But he has limited himself to either getting himself adopted by his hated mentor or, failing that, neutralising him. What of realising his ambition through another party? Or why not build a party from scratch if a hated godfather stood in his way?

    In Nigeria where binary thinking dominates and energises the polity, support for President Muhammadu Buhari must translate to hatred for Atiku Abubakar, his challenger at the last poll. Defending the rule of law, for instance, is also invariably a vote for corruption. And criticising the military’s flawed counterinsurgency operations or the police’s malfeasant and often high-handed approach to law and order is deemed a subversion of national security. The brilliant Mallam el-Rufai understands this binary thinking and seeks to exploit it for his own benefit. Indeed, he already anticipates that his criticisms of Asiwaju Tinubu could elicit counterattacks from sympathisers, and he describes the expected rejoinders as unleashing the hired  forces of the APC leader’s media group. But this should not stop anyone from ignoring his blackmail and joining issues with him.

    In November 2015, in the giddy early days of his governorship, Mallam el-Rufai invited Asiwaju Tinubu to commission Kaduna’s new cab scheme. It is hard to explain why the acerbic views he now publishes did not dissuade him from extending an invitation to a man he described at the time as “esteemed”. The Kaduna governor’s gloomy attacks underscore why everyone, especially leaders, must be careful with whom they associate. Mallam el-Rufai is book brilliant, eloquent and, in direct contrast to his size, somewhat charismatic and persuasive. But scratch him a little, and what comes to view can be quite disconcerting. A little scratch reveals a self-willed, pompous, heady, fanatical and divisive person and politician. He has done quite some remarkable administrative rejigging in Kaduna State, but nothing he has done matches the revolutionary undertakings and progress Lagos has witnessed since 1999 pound for pound– at least nothing matching the size of his egotism and extravagant displays. He has ostracised Southern Kaduna and exposed the people of that region to needless bloodletting, promoted ethnic exceptionalism while disguising his methods as progressive and iconoclastic, and has denounced, hated, and ridiculed everyone nature has undeservedly brought his way to help him along in life.

    What is more, Mallam el-Rufai disdains press freedom and has baited them. It is no wonder that a man so completely destitute of character once badmouthed even President Buhari before whom he now genuflects, and has repeatedly tried to tear to shreds the image of former vice president Atiku, the man who brought him into public limelight and protected him against the hyenas of the National Assembly. By now, even Alhaji Atiku must have realised that it is not everyone that deserves to be mentored. There are some potential mentees a leader must scrupulously avoid, as the history of World War II shows in the case of Germany and Adolf Hitler.

    Brilliance is one thing; character is another. They do not always commingle, nor are they often coterminous. Mallam el-Rufai typifies that corrosive paradox in a Goebbelsian fashion. Asiwaju Tinubu is believed to harbour presidential ambitions for 2023. He is entitled to his ambition, and the electorate will have to determine whether to accept or reject him. It is also suggested that Mallam el-Rufai might wish to take a shot at the presidency in the next election cycle. Good for him, despite instigating the president against those he said were beginning to manifest excessive ambition so early after the last elections. Perhaps in the months ahead, those who wish to have a shot at the topmost office in the land will ignore every sense of moderation and decency and attempt to tear one another to pieces. Here, Mallam el-Rufai, never known for any kind of moderation, will exceed himself with his customary cynicism and egotism.

    The public must be careful not to allow the fanatical and illiberal narratives peddled by Mallam el-Rufai and his ilk colour their appreciation of Nigerian politics. Nigeria has been repeatedly undone by the clumsy and distorted manner the electorate’s attention is focused on the image of a politician painted and distorted by propagandists and interest groups. History reveals numerous leaders whose persons were regarded as openly disagreeable, but whose capacity for mind-blowing achievements became legendary. If voters want orators, they can have them. But they must know that they can’t have their cake and eat it. If they want megalomaniacs, good for them. But if they want those who have a deep understanding of Nigeria, its place at the moment, and the future it must aspire to, then they must decide whether to be hodwinked by glib and pompous people without character.

    There are not many politicians with a firm grasp of the existential quandary Nigeria is entrapped in, issues that have paralysed the country and made her vulnerable. Those who do, however, are often in danger of being shoved aside and destroyed by a combination of propaganda and venomous ethnic and religious politics. It is doubtful whether the country is not even engaged in endgame already. If disaster is to be averted, voters must denounce and repudiate the politics of tribe and religion. The next presidential poll must never be about where a person comes from, or whether his face is liked or not, or whether he is rich or poor. For if he is rich, there is a tendency to fear and envy his wealth; and if he is poor, there is a tendency to suspect his bona fides. What should matter is whether the people can instinctively gauge the candidate’s competence, open-mindedness, joie de vivre, and democratic credentials. Mallam el-Rufai is for instance rumoured to be interested in 2023. It would be disheartening to even give a tyrant who has set out to destroy his opponents within and outside the party a hearing.

    The next election cycle is going to be a titanic struggle. It is estimated that President Buhari might become a lame duck president before the third year of his second term. Given the fever that has lathered the APC and the contemptuous and disdainful politics being played by Mallam el-Rufai and his cohorts, 2023 may have already begun. The APC is in for a rough time. It was never really a party, and if it had not faced a candidate weakened by ethical challenges, they would have come a cropper in the 2019 presidential poll. It is now almost certain that a fierce fight for the soul of the party will soon ensue. The initial euphoria that followed their recent poll victory has become a mirage. Party chairman Adams Oshiomhole will intensify his sanitising efforts, face up to the turmoil in the party and clip the wings of nascent oligarchs like Mallam el-Rufai who wish to create feudal enclaves for themselves and their cronies.

    In the buildup to the 2019 National Assembly poll, Mr Oshiomhole seemed to detest the overbearing politics of the Kaduna governor, and would have favoured more temperate politicians like Senator Shehu Sani, but he found it impossible to pull off the moderation and reconciliation he desired. Mallam el-Rufai knows his party chairman’s preferences, and, from his surly remarks at the Bridge Club, is obviously in the process of coaxing a rebellious alliance out of the many aggrieved or ambitious Southwest politicians roaming the land. The new coalition thinks the time is right, and with pejorative labels and terms carelessly hurled at opponents, they expect victory.

    Southwest is firmly delineated between the Tinubu forces and the countervailing forces among rival old and incoming governors. The APC leader knows this himself, and so too do Mallam el-Rufai and the president. While the president may be wary of revealing his hand too quickly, Mr Oshiomhole seems clear where to head. Whether his instincts tell him or not, he knows that the Yoruba hate politicians from their region forming nefarious external alliances to undermine one of their own. Mr Banire may have stayed too long in Lagos, and his political antenna may have become dulled to the ruinous consequences of First and Second Republic political intrigues against Obafemi Awolowo that led to the defeat and extinction of many Yoruba conspirators. But surely he has read enough of the two eras to know that he is treading on thin ice. Mallam el-Rufai can be forgiven for knowing little of the Yoruba politics and worldview. He is not a patient man, and often gets ahead of himself, impelled by his abstract and unfeeling head than his childish heart.

    President Buhari was never able to manage the internal squabbles within the APC in his first term, and the party almost self-destruct under the somnolent leadership of John Odigie-Oyegun. Indeed, when the former party chairman lost the argument, and Mr Oshiomhole boisterously assumed office, many Southwest governors who had opposed him predicted apocalypse. The party survived the ordeal, and buoyed by what they saw as a tentative return to ideological politics, its leaders began to reorganise and imbue themselves with fresh unction. But even that tentativeness was not potent enough to inoculate the combative Mr Oshiomhole against taking the fight to APC governors who resisted change. The party had some difficulties reining in a few obstreperous governors, and consequently suffered devastating losses. But on the whole, they have done admirably well, and seemed encouraged to double down on their refining and purifying agenda.

    The president may be coaxed into deploying state security machinery against party leaders if matters came to a head; but in the face of a cautious, deliberate and incisive rebuilding embarked upon by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), both the president and his party may think twice about allowing disagreements in their party to fester beyond control. In the last polls, despite dithering almost endlessly, the president eventually chose to walk a tightrope by running with the hare and hunting with the hound. It paid him ultimately. It remains to be seen whether even so aloof a president will let the party go up in flames just to placate the grovelling Mallam el-Rufai and his Southwest allies. It is reassuring that the president has begun to make mention of “true federalism”, a subject that had grated on his nerves for years. Perhaps, the president is not after all as impervious to reason and change as he has been made out to be.

    Mr Oshiomhole, who himself sometimes flies off the handle easily, should be encouraged to intensify the reforms taking place in the APC. Reforms? No, not exactly. What is in fact taking place is restoration, an intense reimposition of rules and regulations to make the party operate like a political organisation, one in which discipline, ideology and progressive politics and programmes are enthroned. Mallam el-Rufai was one of the leading architects of the imposition of the infantile governor of Kogi State, the exuberant and incompetent Yahaya Bello. It was a deliberate and cynical manifestation of the callous ethnic and religious politics the Kaduna governor heartily plays behind closed doors, out of sight and the reach of credulous Nigerians. Mr Banire is himself naturally conspiratorial and ideologically unstable. Aggrieved and desperate, they have both reached out to like-minded politicians, exploited the Akinwumi Ambode fiasco, and are creating an alliance they hope to unleash to reclaim the party from Mr Oshiomhole and his fellow ideologues. They also hope to deploy the alliance for their nefarious, sectionalist and religious agenda. It is in the interest of the party to recognise them for who they are, and resist them. After all, the PDP is waiting in the wings to spring a surprise, for no amount of anti-corruption war or abuse of the rule of law can obliterate them.

     

     

     

  • Buhari’s kitchen cabinet is key

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s electoral success in March did not come as a surprise. Most pundits expected him to win, including those who had reservations about his temperament, health and capacity, his controversial record as president notwithstanding. But due to the fact that he had just muddled through a first four-year term between 2015 and 2019, few expected him to go about the task of assembling his new cabinets (kitchen and general) with the casualness, narrowness and languid indifference with which he approached the matter after he was announced winner in 2015. He is not starting from scratch; he is now fairly experienced, and cannot pretend not to know his staff and appointees of four years and other great minds who possess the intellect and character indispensable to his government.

    After his first poll victory in 2015, he curiously held court with the aplomb of a monarch, receiving visitors and lapping up all manner of effusive congratulations. If he spared a thought for the tasks ahead, especially given the destruction visited upon the country’s finances and values by his predecessor, he did not betray it at all. Perhaps he outsourced that inconvenience. Whether in Katsina, his home state where he felt more at home, or the soulless federal capital city, Abuja, the then president-elect received hordes of visitors massaging his ego and pandering to his every whim. In the end, when he finally and reluctantly assembled his general cabinet, no tremors were felt anywhere. When he disclosed his kitchen cabinet, some of them revealed by default or a slip of the tongue, the country was astounded by its narrowness and restrictiveness. Perhaps the president knew something the country did not.

    More alarmingly, months of perusing handover notes and reconciling transition programmes and policies led precisely to, at best, a peculiar floundering, and in some instances, to a cul-de-sac. It became obvious that the president-elect spent the many months before inauguration preoccupied with inhaling and regaling himself with the trappings of power. Few policy initiatives were announced, and he did not give the country the benefit of his thoughts on the salient issues that either bothered the people or held within its rubric a catastrophic potential for the future. But when despite himself his government managed to announce discernible policies, some of them were inexorably undermined by incoherent actions and weak or excessive supervision. Recession was inevitable, and so too was the attendant blame game.

    Now, it must be assumed that the president has grown up. He knows the country far better than he did before assuming office in 2015, but it is doubtful whether he knows enough for the good of his presidency. His fiery but inscrutable temper has also been moderated a little by the refusal of the country to pay obeisance to his monarchist bent. Some of his excesses have no doubt endured, chiefly relating to his persistent misreading of the constitution and his inexpert drawing of boundaries between his powers and the privileges of the citizens. But now he has developed a fair sense of where he stands in respect of the rights of the people and the deliberate and provocative leeway he has granted his presidency. He knows little about the rule of law, and he has never been comfortable with the arcanum of justice, but on the whole, he will sense that he must continue the hated habit of giving and taking that typifies politics.

    But it is not his experience and maturity, both of which have admittedly inched up in quality, that will determine his success in his second term. His difficult and ascetic nature and disputed lack of capacity appears programmed to give him an uneventful and undistinguished second term. However, what indeed will make the difference this time around will be the quality of his kitchen cabinet, not even his general cabinet. For his general cabinet, the constitution constrains him to some degree of national spread. Since he was never a man about town, and is unused to the amenities of the fine arts, and his reclusiveness would have led him to mysticism had he been steeped in religion as his visage infers, it is unlikely he can have total control of the selection of his general cabinet, regardless of how stony-faced he postures. More frighteningly, there is nothing in his background or which acquired in his first term that gives any indication he will use the best or most scientific yardsticks to pick that cabinet.

    Notwithstanding this, his general cabinet will be a fair representation of the country, probably deliver a mechanical balance between Christians and Muslims, gesture in the direction of competence, and contain a sampling of women. If he should manage to produce enough open-mindedness to spread the powerful ministries among appointees from all parts of the country, irrespective of tribe, religion or gender, it will be a very pleasant surprise indeed. But don’t count on it. That decision requires depth, philosophy and vision. His last general cabinet produced some high achievers, nearly all of them men who by dint of their own mental strength and vision produced remarkable performance. Their individual achievements had little to do with the president’s own vision. Indeed, those achievements transcended the president’s incoherent vision. It is, however, expected that in large measure, even if by accident, the president will still manage to assemble enough serious men and women to help take his presidency a notch higher.

    If the president is to put up a superlative performance and ensure an enduring legacy, he must pay thrice more attention to picking his kitchen cabinet than he has paid to picking his general cabinet. Here, sadly, the chances are very slim. In his first term, his kitchen cabinet was essentially made up of a powerful cabal quartet. They wielded huge influence in picking his general cabinet and security team, and masterminded a ferocious takeover of key ministries and agencies. They sometimes worked at cross-purposes, leading to high-profile disputes in the appointment and retention of agency heads; but overall, the quartet became the mind and soul of the president. In fact, by some accounts, they even determined the president’s likes and dislikes to the point of sowing acrimony where it matters most to the president. The kitchen cabinet was powerful and influential; but it was also insular and schizoid. There was nothing expansive about their worldview: no vision of a multicultural country, and no idea about a common national destiny and identity, or global reach and ambition. Nothing about them was deep or transcendental. And nothing was really ever altruistic.

    The president, it is now widely believed, assembled his 2015 kitchen cabinet almost by default, because the quartet had always been integral to his adolescence. If he is to produce a superlative performance in his second term, he must do two things: he must know the value of a kitchen cabinet, whether they are cabalistic or not; and he must subdue his own prejudices to pick the wisest he can find in the country. If ancient kings and emperors knew the value of close advisers, and constantly seek among their captives who to induct into that select group, President Buhari has no excuse in this day and age to restrict himself as he unwisely did as a military head of state and in his first term. He is the architect of his own misfortune. Whether he likes it or not, few describe him as wise in the strictest definition of the word. And fewer still recognise him as a broadminded leader exposed to modern global trends. He will therefore need a kitchen cabinet composed of deep, wise minds, men and women of exemplary courage, conduct and judgement. They may not grovel before him, as Governors Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna and Yahaya Bello of Kogi do, but he must recognise that wise and confident officials will offer him the best advice possible and protect him from error and perverse judgement.

    His success as president is really in his hands. If he makes the right call, he will succeed beyond his wildest imagination. If he sticks to his narrow base, a base so contorted by ethnicity and religion that it is of no national use, then he will have signposted his own defeat and neutralised any legacy he might dream of. Does history not tell the president that he could never succeed by picking a kitchen cabinet that is from one section of a country comprising more than 250 ethnic groups, and a security team from that same narrow section? How does his security team consider and debate the issues and challenges that affect the entire country? Could they be trusted to give him the kind of advice John F. Kennedy’s kitchen cabinet gave him during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? George W. Bush may not be the most cerebral of United States presidents, but he had a kitchen cabinet that at least devised the New American Century, a concept upon which almost the entire Bush presidency was anchored. That concept was deeply flawed, as top political scientists and philosophers very well knew; but it gave the US and Bush presidency a raison d’être.

    In his first term, President Buhari devised nothing spectacular in terms of grand and uplifting policy initiatives. He settled for the mundane. There is of course the question of whether he has the capacity to grasp anything complex and philosophical, let alone follow the complicated trajectory that helps a country produce the ambition needed for regional, continental or global dominance. However, President Buhari must surely possess a modicum of native wisdom potent enough to help him fish for the right men and women these times urgently need. He gravitates towards the naturally obsequious, perhaps in line with his fundamental mindset, but he must subdue that instinct, and like Ronald Reagan who acknowledged his shortcomings, look for those who will add value to his predictable presidency. Already, the fear is that given the choices he made over the last four years, nothing in President Buhari indicates he will substantially modify his style or ideas, or even ensure, unlike ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, that his successor would be a strong candidate capable of exceeding his achievements and refining his agenda. In 46BC, Julius Caesar made Augustus Caesar his legatee because he saw courage, character and capacity in his young but sickly grand-nephew. A leader has an uncanny ability to see far deeper and larger and longer than the ordinary man, if only he can subdue and control his base instinct. By selecting a kitchen cabinet in 2015 that reinforced his self-doubt rather than challenged his failings, President Buhari didn’t show enlightened self-interest and gravely risked his entire presidency. Now, he needs to say more, do better and tolerate even much more than he has ever done to show his capacity for leadership and greatness.

    The success of his second term, and by implication his entire presidency, will depend on what he does with his kitchen cabinet in the next four years. The general cabinet is undoubtedly important, but its value is not anywhere near that of the president’s kitchen cabinet. Before the 2015 poll, this column was one of the president’s most avid supporters. Immediately the complexion of his kitchen cabinet became known, this column wrote him off. When the shape and complexion of the president’s kitchen cabinet for his second term is exposed, this column will determine whether to hold out hope for his success or rule him out completely and finally. The option he does not have at all is to retain his existing kitchen cabinet. His struggle should be finding ways to pick the very best, the wisest, not the most obsequious. It makes no sense that in a nation of about 200 million people, some of them first-class brains and liberals par excellence, the president has restricted himself to a suffocating narrow base.

  • Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and $500,000 gift

    LAST Friday, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency announced it had made a set of donations to help facilitate Guinea Bissau’s legislative elections. The announcement is an example of how information should not be disseminated. Government spokesman, Garba Shehu had written: “In his capacity as Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State, President Muhammadu Buhari, this morning (Friday) directed the  Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, to undertake an urgent mission as his Special Envoy to Guinea Bissau in company with the ECOWAS Commission President, Jean-Claude Brou. President Buhari had in response to an urgent request for assistance by the government of Guinea Bissau graciously approved support for the country’s election process, including 350 units of electoral kits, 10 motorcycles, five (Toyota) Hilux, two light trucks and $500,000. This vital assistance ensured that legislative elections held in Guinea Bissau, which should help in stabilising the country.”

    But the devil is in the detail. The only thing that was current in the announcement was the trip of the Nigerian Foreign Affairs minister. The elections, for which President Buhari presumably made donations on behalf of Nigeria, were conducted on March 10, 2019 after many postponements. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) won 47 of the 102 seats. It is still the largest party in the country of about 1.8m people. The ruling party, however, lost 10 seats, resulting in a hung parliament. But a coalition agreement with the Assembly of the People United (five seats), the New Democracy Party (one seat) and the Union for Change (one seat) has given the PAIGC-led coalition a six-seat majority in the National People’s Assembly.

    The Nigerian announcement did not, however, indicate when the donations were made in respect of last month’s legislative poll. It is assumed that the announcement was just for information. Guinea-Bissau is a volatile country, and it is appropriate that they should receive help from any country favourably disposed to them, including a country like Nigeria. About 16 coup attempts had unsettled and destabilised the country for decades, out of which four were successful. The country is dirt poor, with education and other critical sectors in dire need of funding and external assistance, while politics is crisis-ridden. Poverty and political crises have made the country vulnerable to drug trade, and complicated their internal affairs.

    Mr Shehu did not provide any insight into why Nigeria did not announce its donations when they were made. Was it because they coincided with the 2019 Nigerian elections? Perhaps they will shed more light on it in the near future. On the surface, it is not a bad idea for big brother to look out for smaller countries like Guinea-Bissau. This is not the first time Nigeria would be showing generosity to needy African countries. It sacrificed a little fewer than 2,000 soldiers and blew some $8bn to restore peace in war-ravaged Liberia and Sierra Leone. It also put its economy on the line to champion the liberation of Zimbabwe, Angola and South Africa. Though its huge sacrifices were seldom rewarded, as some Southern African countries are showing, Nigeria has not been deterred from pursuing activist foreign policy in Africa. That activism has undoubtedly waned in recent years, but in one attenuated form or the other it has continued.

    There are arguments suggesting that one of the reasons Nigeria’s foreign policy activism has attracted little reward is because the country runs a poorly structured foreign affairs. Most countries dishing out loans and aides do so with strings attached. Nigeria festoons its own generosity with smiles and nothing more than good wishes. Consequently, it has been unable to exert much influence over the countries it sacrificed its young soldiers and billions of dollars to save. Nigeria can of course not argue that attaching strings to the help it offers other countries is ethically problematic. They are not. Other countries do it with gusto.

    Indeed, one of the main reasons for such paltry returns on its investments — for that is what they really are — is Nigeria’s inability over the decades to formulate deeper and loftier philosophical foundations for its foreign affairs. This failing is in turn a reflection of the country’s much more difficult problem in defining itself and conceptualising a vision for humanity and the world. If recipients of Nigeria’s help are to embrace Nigeria as big brother and look up to the largest black nation on earth for inspiration and leadership, then they must first be clear that their potential role model knows itself, knows its place in the world, and knows what ideas and values it hopes to project, either by money, stealth or force. The problem is that Nigeria suffers from an identity crisis, unsure whether to be a united country or not; and if the answer is yes, then to find the most sustainable structure upon which to anchor that self-definition. So far, Nigeria’s leading tribes are engaged in a fierce and deathly struggle for pre-eminence.

    In addition, Nigeria has no consistent or even coherent idea of any value it hopes to project. The rule of law is not so terribly nuanced as to challenge understanding. Nigeria is, however, unable to comprehend the role of that concept in the sustenance of a polity, and have sought to redefine or modify it to suit all sorts of moral, policy and political expediencies. How then can other countries be inspired? Nigeria runs a quasi-federal structure that is in large measure unitary. How can it inspire other African countries, many of which are pastiches of countervailing entities disintegrating in a seething cauldron, nearly all of them arbitrarily cobbled together by cynical and callous colonialists during the 1884-85 Berlin West African Conference? Nigeria has no viable and durable political structure to recommend to other troubled countries. More worrisomely, it has not enriched itself by noble values such as freedom and justice, and has not nurtured an effective and truly functional criminal justice system to challenge continental despots. Worse, it has no significant cultural export for anyone to fawn over — except of course the individual efforts by enterprising young Nigerians gifted in the arts, gifts which the country has nevertheless done its worst to stifle or destroy.

    It is doubtful whether any country in Africa has shown more care for its neighbours than Nigeria. But it has not reaped commensurate rewards for all its efforts. It has outspent every country in Africa, and has outgiven its young people’s blood. But it will continue to be overshadowed by the United States and Britain both of which have deeper and far more enticing ideas and worldviews to offer. And it will be consistently outfoxed by economically aggressive countries like China, for that Asian country possesses more discipline, tact and ambition than Nigeria is able to produce under its short-sighted leaders. The sad and humbling truth is that Nigeria’s leadership recruitment process, political structure, and proclivity for embracing scandalous populism will continue to make it impossible for it to reap even where it has sown.

    If nothing is done to repair the breaches, if the country is unable to transcend its ethnic and religious cleavages, if it continues to make dangerous and unrealistic presumptions about its national question, then rather than seek to project power and influence, it must instead desperately seek to avoid an apocalyptic fate far worse than that of Yugoslavia, regardless of official optimism. After all, a country that could not even manage executive-judiciary relationship, and had had to clumsily unseat its number one jurist, has nothing to teach anyone. Nigeria has done well for Guinea-Bissau, helping them to pull off a reasonably successful legislative election, perhaps much better than Nigeria itself manage in the last polls. But what else can Nigeria really do other than to give money or goods, all of them perishable items? In any case, did it not do even better for other countries in the past few decades? Yet, all the altruism it has shown in about three decades will amount to nothing if it is not put in the service of ideas and values far nobler and less perishable than anything it has ever shown, and much sturdier than the grit it has projected in any of the foreign wars it has fought with some resoluteness.

  • Gov Bello and harassed Kogi judiciary

    GOVERNOR Yahaya Bello of Kogi State seems more at ease provoking critics than governing the state on which he was foisted more than three years ago. The context of his rise to the governorship in 2016 is not flattering, but he had the opportunity to transcend that murky political background by deploying his youth and energy to enthrone probably the most vigorous and enterprising state administration in Nigeria. Instead, by a combination of lackadaisical approach to governance and poor judgement, he has courted criticisms with unparalleled ardour while also bristling at the opposition. Two weeks ago, this column wondered why Mr Bello wanted a second term, especially when he has alienated virtually every sector of Kogi life. Why, the puzzle is not so remote: the governor is a political trapeze artist.

    One of those alienated sectors is the state judiciary which has been on strike for about five months over 10 months salary arrears as well as other provocative constitutional issues. The governor, citing the refusal of the judiciary to subject their staff to the state’s data capturing and futile pay-parade policies, unconstitutionally withheld the salaries of judicial staff for 10 months. The state government has stuck dogmatically to the biometric exercise as if that is the elixir needed to make the payment of salary backlogs possible. As good as data capturing is, it has proved costly, time-wasting and useless to the Kogi government which today owes civil servants months and months of salary arrears, some totalling more than 20 months.

    Probably worried that judicial workers all over Nigeria had last April threatened to go on strike if the Kogi judicial workers’ salary crisis was not resolved, and perhaps prodded by the presidency which had shown some interest in what was happening in Kogi, the National Judicial Council (NJC) sent a fact-finding mission to the state. On Wednesday, the five-man panel met the state government in company with the chief judge and then later interacted with the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN). JUSUN sources disclosed that the fact-finding mission seemed more placatory of the state government than censorious of their meddlesomeness. This consequently inspired the governor’s media chief, Kingsley Fanwo, to declare that a compromise had been reached that asked the state judiciary to embrace the government’s biometric and pay-parade policies.

    But the NJC is yet to determine its course of action in the Kogi crisis. Weeks ago, when the state legislature was being instigated to remove Chief Judge Nasir Ajana on the grounds that the state’s auditor-general had indicted him over financial wrongdoing, the state government had in addition sent a petition to the NJC accusing him of engaging in financial impropriety. But JUSUN sources indicated that the state government  in fact redacted the 2016 auditor-general’s report and gave the erroneous impression that it was a recent report. It is not clear whether the NJC fact-finding mission was actually meant to establish the veracity or otherwise of the issues raised in the petition, or, as a newspaper reported last week, try and engineer a peaceful or amicable resolution of the face-off between the state government and judiciary.

    Mr Fanwo suggests in his hasty press statement on the NJC visit that the state judiciary had been asked to submit to the state’s data capturing exercise preparatory to embracing the obnoxious and degrading pay-parade/table-payment style. JUSUN, in a statement late last week, debunked Mr Fanwo’s assertions, insisting that the substance of the discussions and conclusions between the NJC, the state’s Chief Judge and the government were inconsistent with media reports of the visit. The biometric exercise, if it came to that, said JUSUN, would be undertaken by the State Judicial Service Commission, not the state government. In any case, the union further stated, the constitution never envisaged that the judiciary would be held in thrall by the state government or humiliated by unconstitutionally withholding their salaries.

    The NJC may wish to guide themselves in writing their report by first of all discounting Mr Fanwo’s mendacities. Secondly, the judicial body must be conscious of the fact that flowing from its abysmal tameness in the matter involving the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, and especially because the presidency engineered his removal by foul and unconstitutional means, its independence, influence and power have been considerably whittled, if not entirely abrogated. In the Kogi matter, the NJC is expected to courageously determine whether Justice Ajana is guilty of the allegations levelled against him by the state government or whether the state government is infernally and meddlesomely wrong in the pay-parade affair. The NJC’s job is not to make peace or reconcile the state and the judiciary. Its job is primarily to let justice be done, and secondarily to protect the independence of the judiciary. Governor Bello does not understand these nuances. He should be educated. If he proves uneducable, then he should be put in his place.

    Surely, the NJC cannot pretend not to see the similarities between the deposition of Justice Onnoghen and the impetuous and impudent attempt to unseat the Kogi State Chief Judge. The similarities are striking and disturbing. This column had noted in the heat of the Onnoghen affair that the country was entering a dark tunnel of impunity whose end no one could foresee. Sadly, this generation of Nigerians is witness to the damage which politics and indiscipline in both the executive and the judiciary can inflict. It is not clear whether the NJC will blink first before Mr Bello, as they blinked repeatedly before President Muhammadu Buhari. But whatever the case, history is chronicling the roles being played by everyone and every group — some as they betray causes, and others as they ennoble causes.