The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Unusual Imo, Ogun rallies

    MOMENTS after Adams Oshiomhole, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), admonished the electorate in Imo State to vote for the party’s governorship candidate, Hope Uzodinma, President Muhammadu Buhari counselled the opposite, suggesting to the electorate torn between voting for Governor Rochas Okorocha’s handpicked candidate, Uche Nwosu, and the APC’s candidate to vote according to their conscience. “You can vote for whosoever you want. Do not allow intra or inter-party affairs stop you from voting for the candidates of your choice,” said the president indifferently after coaxing a promise from them to vote for him in the now postponed presidential election. Mr Okorocha, an APC stalwart and senatorial candidate, had pushed his pick, who is also his in-law, to take the nomination of the Action Alliance (AA) after the APC rejected him.

    It was clear to the impassioned APC supporters who thronged the president’s rally in Imo that President Buhari was more concerned about his candidature and the success of his re-election bid than the health, unity and progress of his party. Mr Okorocha is one of his staunchest supporters. But the Imo governor was unable to persuade his party, of which he is still a member, to adopt his preferred governorship aspirant, Mr Nwosu. He had fought tooth and nail to get his party to go along with him, but the party had stood pat, determined to foil his plot of self-succession bid, or his plan to pocket the APC. The state chapter of the APC had a kindred spirit in Mr Oshiomhole, himself a boisterous and iconoclastic politician who sometimes takes pride in slaying giants. The APC chairman enabled the party to defy the governor.

    Unable to advance the interest of Mr Okorocha, his friend in Imo State, the president went to the rally in Owerri with his mind made up to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. He presented Mr Uzodinma as the candidate of the APC quite alright, of course after making one or two of his usual gaffes, but went ahead to make the greatly offensive noncommittal statement urging the electorate to follow their conscience and vote whoever catches their fancy. Mr Oshiomhole and other APC faithful were of course nonplussed, but there was little they could do to contradict their president. They knew him to be detached and sometimes noncommittal, but they did not suspect he would be so open and direct in displaying his nonchalance.

    While the country was still bemused with the president’s serial gaffes at many of his rallies, and believing him to be incapable of repeating his openly disloyal call to the APC faithful in Imo to vote for anyone they pleased, he went to Ogun State where the party had been sundered by conflict and private interests and again asked the electorate to vote their conscience. In Ogun, the APC governor, Ibikunle Amosun, had also been unable to enthrone his preferred aspirant, Adekunle Akinlade, as the APC governorship candidate. Like Mr Okorocha, the Ogun governor pushed his preferred governorship choice to the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) to pick the ticket. While he has remained in the APC, to the extent of even picking the party’s senatorial ticket, Mr Amosun had asked the electorate in his campaigns to vote President Buhari for the presidency, himself (still in the APC) for the senate, and Mr Akinlade in the APM for the governorship.

    It is not clear to what extent the party faithful and other supporters will be confused about casting their votes, but Mr Amosun has remained imperiously and fanatically indifferent to their feelings. At the APC presidential rally last Monday in Abeokuta, the Ogun governor, in the presence of APC bigwigs and the president himself, again asked the party faithful to vote for the APC presidential and senatorial candidates, and then turn round to vote against the APC governorship candidate, Dapo Abiodun. If the president did not check Mr Okorocha’s double-dealing during the January 29, 2019 campaign in Imo, few thought he would summon the discipline to check Mr Amosun’s angry defiance in Abeokuta last week. They were right. Even the presence of the ruling party’s bigwigs was insufficient to deter the president from exhibiting appalling disloyalty to his party. True, he raised the hand of the APC governorship candidate to indicate the party’s choice, but he virtually neutralised this gesture by asking the electorate to vote their conscience.

    At the February 11, 2019 rally in Abeokuta, Mr Amosun was offensively very cheeky. Said he to the throng: “We are respecting President Muhammadu Buhari, don’t transfer your anger to APC. I have told you that you will all be one by March 3rd, and you will come back to APC. You know what to do when it is March 2nd, but please honour me on February 16 and vote for our father, President Muhammadu Buhari.” Mr Amosun was in other words indicating very provocatively that his governorship candidate was cheated out of the primary, and would win with the AA party, after which he, the governor, and Mr Akinlade would return to the APC and presumably take it over. It’s a titanic battle ahead.

    Rather than be offended by Mr Amosun’s brazen provocation, or even see the governor’s call as offensive and disloyal, the president doubled down and asked the electorate to vote their choice. He was neither needled by the criticisms that followed his insensitive Imo call in late January nor did he give any indication that after a deep reflection on the subject he had come to a better and more ennobling understanding of his role as party leader. His challenge to the party faithful was even more daring in Abeokuta. Hear him: “I advise you to practice your civic right come next Saturday, and on the 2nd of March to choose whoever you like across the parties. This is your right, so there is no problem about it, I have no problem about it, and you shouldn’t have problems about it.” The next Saturday in reference was the day the presidential election was to hold. It has been postponed to February 23, 2019. And March 2, 2019 was initially set aside for the governorship poll. It has been shifted to March 9, 2019.

    It is clear that in Abeokuta, the president faced the same dilemma he grappled with in Owerri late January. He was unable to prioritise his loyalty between his friends and his party, between his private interest and public interest, and between smaller good and larger good. No one can really tell why the president should be unable to resolve that uncomplicated dilemma, which most leaders easily resolve. As president and number one party leader, President Buhari must surely know that his public role, no matter how inconvenient, takes precedence over his private feelings. That public role must never admit of any indecision, especially at a level and scale that challenges the ethics of governance and leadership. Messrs Okorocha and Amosun are doubtless close to him, and the president will, admittedly, be wary of projecting power in such a way as to destroy the relationships he had cultivated decades ago.

    But when the subject is party supremacy, even if it is cobbled in such a way as to engender dreadful unease, there must be no question which side the president must lean. As party leader, he has an obligation to remain just that: leader. And furthermore, as party leader, he has a responsibility to set the ethical and administrative tone for the party, whether they accord with his own private interests or not, and whether they war against his principles and sentiments or not. He should be the party’s chief promoter, defender and ideologue. In both Abeokuta and Owerri, the president however showed himself to be the chief subversive. His attitude also indicates and illustrates why in both his leadership of the party and the country itself the president has been grossly unable to draw a line between public interest and private interest, and between ethnic and primordial feelings and noble sentiments and goals. There is little anyone can do. Since the president cannot give what he doesn’t have, it is impossible to educate him on the need to draw a firm line between public good and private good.

    Should he win the February 23 presidential poll, both his party and the country will have to contend with his unremitting inability to rise above sentiment and simplistic interrogation of public policies. The APC’s constant push and pull may distract and weary him, prompting him to lather the country and his party with his impatience and indifference. He will however most likely side with those who can genuflect before him and pander to his monarchical instincts. His Owerri and Abeokuta rallies have shown his lack of principles and discipline in inspiring a complex and modern political party; his party members will therefore find themselves consistently at daggers drawn, constantly struggling for dominance and pre-eminence, and offering preposterous and sentimental reasons to curry favour with the president. If the APC is to survive and flourish, the president will have to change his style and worldview. But at 76, neither he nor anyone else can provoke the sorely needed change in him.

    If President Buhari could not resolve the logjam between the Department of State Service (DSS) and the EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu, and if he could not exact a heavy price from the secret service leadership when it treasonably invaded the National Assembly, how could anyone expect him to have the clarity of perception and vision to handle the controversy he has engineered over the allegations of corruption against the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen? Many of the challenges that face a party leader and president are so nuanced and sublime that he would need intuition, depth and character to handle them. At Aso Villa, Nigeria has an enigma whose stock in trade is throwing caviar to the general rather than tackling complex issues substantially and perceptively. He can do no more than he has equipped himself over the years to do.

  • Onnoghen’s arraignment takes the wind out of judiciary’s sails

    WHEN the controversy over the incomplete assets declaration of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, broke out a few weeks ago, it is doubtful whether anyone ever thought the number one jurist would ever find himself in the dock before an administrative court over which the judiciary had no control whatsoever. Two days ago, however, what many thought was a sacrilege took place when Justice Onnoghen stood in the dock to plead to charges before Danladi Umar presiding over the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).

    Everything about the CCT defies the law. But who cares? No one, it seems. However, regardless of which side anyone, lay or lawyer, stood in the case, no one thought due process had been followed or the law and constitution respected. First, in bringing the CJN to trial, and for the first time in a democracy, the executive branch became the accuser and judge over a matter affecting another arm of government. The constitution never envisioned this, notwithstanding the widespread sentiment that the CJN brought this upon himself, and that in any case, if he had any honour left in him he would have resigned and saved the judiciary the humiliation of being put in the dock by a court the constitution does not even regard as a court of superior record.

    The CCT chairman put it very succinctly when the National Judicial Council (NJC), through the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC), sought to subordinate him to the judiciary’s disciplinary structure by querying him in line with a petition brought against him. Said Mr Umar: “With regard to the prayer of the petitioner for an appropriate sanction against the chairman, it is important to note that the chairman and members of the tribunal, not being judicial officers, are not constitutionally subject to any disciplinary proceedings by either the National Judicial Council or the Federal Judicial Service Commission  but the Presidency. The petitioner alleged that judicial oaths were breached and that the National Judicial Council should consider appropriate sanctions. It is to be noted that the chairman and members of the Code of Conduct Tribunal are not judicial officers. This is predicated on the fact that the chairman and members of the tribunal, during swearing-in, only subscribe to official oaths and not judicial oaths. Therefore, not being a judicial officer, I did not subscribe to judicial oaths as alleged.” Clearly, that settles the matter of where the CCT belongs and to whom it reports. More, it also settles the fact of whose interest the CCT is serving in the indecent haste with which it is prosecuting the CJN matter, and why it has subverted everything the law has stood for and held sacred over the decades.

    Second, the country is unlikely to witness a resolution of the abuse of due process enacted by the CCT when it gave an ex parte order for the CJN’s suspension. Not only did the CCT exceed itself, in line with its conception of its position as an appendage of the presidency and the necessity to satisfy its paymaster, it also gave reliefs no third party asked for. Third, the judiciary may never find an answer to, let alone discipline anyone, regarding why the CCT adjourned the case in order to let its jurisdiction be determined only to suddenly turn round to give the controversial ex parte order. Fourth, the judiciary and the legal profession seem to be too demoralised by the circumstances of the CJN case to ask, and take exception to, why the CCT decided to ignore the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) in respect of plea taking when court jurisdiction was still being questioned.

    No one knows where and how the whole saga will end. Popular sentiments indict the CJN and resent his refusal to resign on account of his alleged offences. Though he is unlikely to return to his seat under the Buhari presidency, which invariably terminates his career ignominiously, the judiciary will be unable to emerge from this humiliating case unscathed. There is national consensus that the judiciary must be sanitised and comprehensively reformed; the problem is how to embark on that laudable process without intimidating and weakening the third arm of government. This government cannot be trusted to superintend the process. It is too monarchical to restrain itself from seeking ways to subordinate and subjugate the two other arms of government.

    More crucially, given the manner the presidency has sought to resolve the CJN matter, it is almost certain that more dictatorial practices will be unleashed on the country in the coming months. There were samples of this nefarious and sickening tendency when the DSS invaded residences of certain judges, when the same secret service invaded the National Assembly, and now when the CCT was activated against the principles of the law to take out the CJN. No institution and person will henceforth be inviolate or immune. It is okay today to celebrate the humiliation of hated institutions and persons, and accuse and judge them in the media, but the sinister wheel will keep turning until it eventually turns full circle as the history of fascism and dictatorships has shown. For the sake of democracy, rule of law and stability, the country must hope that when the desolation begins, they are ready for the consequences of their short-sightedness. For, should President Buhari be re-elected, it will mean that the atrocious attacks on institutions and the rule of law, among other things, have been amply and generously rewarded.

     

  • 2019 presidential poll: Palladium’s endorsement

    NIGERIANS have always made heavy weather of electing their leaders. There is nothing to indicate that they will discharge their civic obligations well this time as they troop to the polls on Saturday and two weeks after to crown a set of old and new leaders. There is some global attention on Nigeria, a country recognised as the most populous black nation on earth. That attention has, however, come with some concerns about whether the elections can be conducted fairly credibly without violence, and whether Nigerians can also be trusted to sensibly put the right people in office. But perhaps much more than the global community, Nigerians themselves are anxious about both electing the right leaders and avoiding violence. Of all the elections slated for this 2019 cycle, however, the most crucial and fateful is the contest between the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate and incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari, and his main challenger, former vice president Atiku Abubakar.

    Except by a miracle, no other candidate outside the two leading contenders stands a chance of winning. Nigerian and global analysts have therefore understandably limited their endorsements or predictions to the two candidates. One of them will win, and his victory will very likely create a domino effect on the rest of the polls. In 2015, this column guardedly endorsed President Buhari, but warned the country that he could only to some extent be trusted with their money, not with their freedoms. He would safeguard their purse, the column suggested, but he could not be trusted at all to nurture or promote democracy. He had a vague understanding of what it means. Four years later, his understanding of the concept has not progressed beyond the rudimentary. Former president Goodluck Jonathan made it enormously easy to pick the lesser evil in 2015, but it was hoped at the time that when duty would call a second time four years later, the agony of picking a leader would not be as acute as it was in those panicky days. Sadly, that agony has now risen ominously to the level of stroke.

    Needs must when the devil drives, say the English in reference to the desperation that sometimes push people to suspend moral and legal codes in order to achieve short term goals. Next Saturday, what would voters suspend in order to be able to, once in their lifetime, elect the right leader? Their choices have been circumscribed by their history, particularly their colonial past, and by their ignorance, especially seeing that most of them are either illiterate or, if literate, very poor thinkers. They could put measures in place to transcend their appalling history, but they have chosen blissfully not to modify and reinforce their country’s superstructure. Consequently, they have deliberately exacerbated their cultural and ideological divisions, and aggravated those divisions by wilfully adding religious divisions into the abominable mix. They could invest in raising an enlightened citizenry susceptible, like the United States, to only occasional errors of judgement, but they have opted to nurture an ignorant populace as lasting fodder for their feudal and elitist pursuits. With that ignoble brew poured into their old and tattered wineskin, it is impossible for them in the foreseeable future to understand their circumstances and limitations, not to say find agreeable panaceas to ameliorate them.

    It is in this confused context that Nigerians are expected to elect a president for themselves on Saturday. If they re-elect President Buhari, as they seem prepared to do regardless of the predictions to the contrary by many respected global research organisations, they will be indicating that in their general and unstructured thoughts they find him less revolting than his main challenger. They imagine they know him fairly well, and that his weaknesses and limitations can be tolerated much more than those of his opponent. They know he is unpardonably insular, infused with a provincialism that has both angered and alarmed Nigeria’s power elite, but they put his narrow-mindedness down to the political exigencies of the time. They know he presides over an economy whose major indicators show alarming regression toward anomie or even state failure, and that he can’t seem to find the rationale and presence of mind to think his way through the labyrinth, but they also excuse his failings on the mismanagement of the economy and the grand stealing perpetrated by his predecessor, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan.

    More worrisomely, they know that President Buhari is uneasy about the rule of law and regrets the constitutional strictures that debar him from circumventing democratic institutions in his effort to whip the society into line, and they gleefully point to Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s deathly aphorism to the effect that a leader must sometimes go beyond the constitution to tackle lawlessness. In any case, they queried, where was democracy and the rule of law when shady characters were undermining and smothering the system? They grudgingly concede that President Buhari is really not in charge, having long abdicated control, by reason of poor health and intellectual deficit of the most severe kind, to a cabal which some say is an implacable quartet akin to the Gang of Four that plagued China after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. But they rationalise his grave leadership failing on the redemptive value of his symbolic presence in office, a languid presence they reason is nevertheless indispensable to the prosecution of the war against corruption and all other forms of indiscipline and governmental and bureaucratic excesses.

    No, they do not think President Buhari can suddenly wake up on a fortuitous tomorrow to intelligently tackle a failing economy that he triggered in the first instance by his simplistic and romantic view of economics, but they are relieved that some of his bright and sprightly ministers seem to know what they are doing, and are getting things done, even if those things do not necessarily coalesce into a coherent and consistent policy framework for the president and his government. President Buhari has trodden where angels dread, for instance as far as to the insalubrious redoubts of judges, and has in his iconoclasm got away with murder as it were; but despite whatever voters say or think, his party has sworn to stick by him through thick and thin. Party leaders’ summation of the Buhari presidential bid is even more engaging. They see how hard it has been for the opposition to regain their wits after the devastating loss of 2015. President Buhari’s victory on Saturday will therefore give them time to rebuild their broken party and probably reclaim it from the hands of the feudal cabal whose main interest is running the government, not the party. Will the cabal also try to seize control of the party after their expected victory? Few think so. It requires sacrifice and discipline to run a party; the cabal loathes discipline and sacrifice. More interestingly, the ruling party thinks that even if their candidate has not done well enough in four years to win the ballot, what with the liabilities the president has both advertently and inadvertently brought upon himself and his party, the opposition has done even precious less to avoid defeat. The APC knows that victory on Saturday may be due less to what it has done than what the PDP has not done.

    A few foreign powers seem not to be averse to an Atiku presidency. It is not clear whether their wish is fathered by the thoughts expressed by some of their global research organisations or not. What is clear, however, is that the PDP candidate may have discovered that no misstep or scandal appears sufficiently strong enough to scuttle the re-election bid of President Buhari, a man who has seemed to become a complex abstraction electorally unaffected by his failings. The bane of the Atiku presidential bid is that no one seems to believe that his victory would not set the country back by many decades. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo contributed substantially to the unfavourable image Alhaji Atiku was curried with among Nigerians. Damned with faint praise shortly after he won the PDP nomination at the party’s convention in Port Harcourt last October, the former vice president has struggled unsuccessfully to give sufficient traction to his bid. He is dogged by relentless questions of ethical rectitude, both private and public; and though he is more mentally alert and cosmopolitan than his opponent, and is even more tolerant, urbane and inclusive, he has been unable to project his ideals and personality as brilliantly and effectively as his candidacy demands.

    Worse, his party, despite many denials, is not at one with him all the way. He has anchored his bid on splitting the votes from the North, taking the entire Southeast and South-South, and also splitting the votes from the Southwest at least narrowly, but his calculations may have gone awry right from immediately after the convention. Crowds may not be the most credible barometer for measuring a candidate’s popularity, but the Buhari crowd has appeared to be more impassioned, especially in the North. Alhaji Atiku has on the other hand struggled to unite the quarrelsome Igbo behind his banner. But many in that dispirited region, particularly some of the finicky governors, have eyed him warily, and his running mate, Peter Obi, with resentment. Buffeted by internal wrangling and external subversion, the South-South has panted for the PDP candidate from a safe and hypocritical distance. They seem willing to hang separately, if it comes to that. Alhaji Atiku may be their best bet to take the fight to the truculent and forgetful president, but his base has not been quite as energised and fired up as the PDP wants. They seem to be reserving their enthusiasm for something indescribable else.

    It was necessary for Alhaji Atiku to urgently fire the imagination of Nigerians in order to make a huge and unforgettable impression on the electorate. But if he could not do that, it was necessary for his party to step in to save the day. Unfortunately for the PDP candidate, his alleged unscrupulousness and lack of ethical compass have combined lethally with his party’s slothfulness in purging and reforming itself. The PDP may not be as conflicted as the APC, but its shambolic and feeble attempt at image remediation is of little help to their sullied and wearied candidate. In short, the former vice president is on his own in the battle to win the presidency. The party has been unable to raise money as they would like, and their image and platform have not been as appealing as they had hoped at the beginning of the campaigns. If Alhaji Atiku is to win — and he still cannot be totally counted out — he will need five obscenely crazy days of hard work and pure miracle from the heavenlies. But finding out whether the heavens have invested in him or not is a tough nut to crack.

    Overall, it is impossible for this column to endorse any of the two candidates, regardless of how Nigerians vote on Saturday. Neither is fit to rule, and on balance neither is better than the other. An Atiku presidency is not believed to be capable of enthroning discipline of any texture in governance. More, some six days or so to the poll, the challenger has yet to prove himself to be capable of deep thinking more than a casual exponent of pragmatism and ad hocism. Indeed, he seems precisely the kind of politician and leader who is quite determined to let things run haphazardly on their own lukewarm steam. If more than three months into his campaign he has not recovered from Chief Obasanjo’s blistering and cruel characterisation of his person and style, the six days left before the final ballot are unlikely to be of much help. He is going into the election mortally damaged; but who knows, perhaps by some celestial trickery he will steal a march on President Buhari.

    A Buhari presidency, on the other hand, will not only imperil democracy, given its antecedents in the past four years, it will constitute a danger to national stability and unity through skewed appointments and pigheaded policies. The president may seem firm and incorruptible, even disguisedly radical, he is, however, failing to fight corruption methodically from the roots. His abject surrender to polarising and irredentist philosophy of governance and cabalistic rule, together with his government’s total lack of scientific understanding of how a modern government should run, are certain to also create tons of problems for Nigeria in the coming years. The country must now wait for the other shoe to drop, and drop it undoubtedly will, probably with tragic and catastrophic consequences. In other words, damned if Nigerians vote, and damned if they don’t. Worse, damned if they vote for President Buhari, and damned if they vote for Alhaji Atiku. No country must ever find itself in such a numbing dilemma, where a voter gingerly approaches the ballot box, holding his nose, searching for a candidate with a modicum of talent or enough clarity, humanism and patriotism to make a difference.

  • Before Onnoghen resigns

    NO issue has so divided Nigerians this year as the suspension two Fridays ago of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, by President Muhammadu Buhari acting on a spurious and untenable ex parte order by the Code of conduct Tribunal (CCT). While the controversy was still raging about the propriety of the suspension of a head of an arm of government by the head of another arm of government, and many legal minds were still queasy about the abridgement of the process used in carrying out the disciplinary measure, speculations became rife that the government and the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) were meeting minds to find a win-win way out of the legal and constitutional quagmire. They are very ambitious. This newspaper’s report on the meeting, though yet to be confirmed by the NBA, suggests that the win-win solution involves finding a soft landing for Justice Onnoghen. According to the report, the CJN will resign or retire, since all the government appears to desire is his exit, and the government, which is used interchangeably with the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), will withdraw all charges against him.

    With the refusal of the Court of Appeal to halt the Code of Conduct (CCT) trial of the CJN, a decision they gave late last week, the so-called win-win solution being cobbled together by the NBA and government negotiators may have acquired strident urgency. If Justice Onnoghen, the highest ranking judicial officer in Nigeria, is to stave off the ultimate indignity of being put in the dock by a junior court, not even a court of superior record, it is hard to see him not falling on his sword. Indeed, before this newspaper’s report was published, and in many circles around the country, the resignation of the CJN was thought to be a foregone conclusion. Those who seemed to support him, but in reality advocated due process, hoped he would stay on long enough to test the discipline of the judicial process and the validity and application of a number of rulings in similar or tangential cases. From all indications, they are unlikely to get their wishes.

    To Justice Onnoghen, each day is like a 1,000 years. His trial is expected to be restarted on Monday. It is doubtful whether the framers of the constitution envisaged that awkward and humiliating position the CJN has found himself. But whether they envisaged it or not, no one can pretend not to appreciate the consequences that arraignment would bring upon the independence of the judiciary, the doctrine of the separation of powers, the subtle power grab by the executive, and the future of democracy and the rule of law. Nigerians may of course pretend not to appreciate these dangers, or they may even attempt to downplay the significance and consequences of the CJN’s arraignment, but without doubt, sometime in the future, the chickens will come home to roost.

    Yesterday, there were also reports that Justice Onnoghen’s counsels were engaged in a last-minute effort with members of the executive arm to stave off the humiliating arraignment. It is not clear whether they will succeed; but for a presidency that has postured monarchically like its predecessors, there is no judicial sleight of hand they cannot conjure. If the NBA representatives are to get their wish, they must hope that they can stomach the cost of indirectly subverting due process and the rule of law, for the cost would be punitive. If they do not succeed in staving off the arraignment, the situation will get more sordid. For, as it is, the CJN and his counsels, and the NBA representatives and perhaps other goody two-shoes, have their backs to the wall. Indeed, they have been boxed to a corner. Some see the developing situation as a triumph for the anti-corruption war; but others see it as a humiliation for the rule of law and the constitution. Perhaps there are elements of both. What is at play, as a matter of fact, is a race for time. The government is not sure that all things considered, should the trial proceed, it can ensure a judicial victory for its position. On the other hand, in the short run, the CJN is hopeless and helpless to avoid arraignment, even though it is not mandatory for him to appear in person on Monday when the CCT restarts the trial.

    Whether they can get the win-win solution they all desire or the CJN would throw in the towel, nothing will ever remain the same again. Without prejudice to what the law says, the position of the CJN is obviously no longer tenable. He will leave office, even if how he does that may not be immediately clear. It is also unlikely that the acting CJN, Tanko Muhammad, and the CCT chairman, Danladi Umar, would both survive the punishing gale being inadvertently unleashed without consideration for the aftershocks. More, those who seemed to support Justice Onnoghen may have already failed in forcing an adherence to due process. And those who advocate the independence of institutions to make them run in a way that reinforces the rule of law and help strengthen the system and entrench democracy appear to be headed for a major collapse. Nigerians have not been exactly rational and dispassionate in their appreciation of the issues at stake, particularly the wider tangential but no less crucial issues of constitutional checks and balances. In fact, they may be sleepwalking into a future blowup.

    The NBA and the government meeting of last week reportedly considered, as part of the solution, the resignation of the CJN and the dropping of all charges against him. The meeting probably misunderstands those who, like this column, argue that the government had behaved malevolently and unconstitutionally in generating and managing the controversy. No one has seriously suggested that the CJN does not have a case to answer, or that he is above the law. But by seeking a shocking and disingenuous compromise, the NBA has demonstrated a lack of courage, and the government has also indicated that it has really never been fired by altruistic considerations in its anti-graft war. It is important for the CJN to have his day in court to convince everyone that the system possesses enough shock absorbers to ensure that unlawful acts or destabilising activities can be managed, and that the country can work well without puppeteers controlling affairs behind cynical, steel doors. But more importantly, it is indispensable that the laid-down procedure for bringing the CJN to trial must not be abridged or short-circuited. The end does not justify the means, for if a system is to endure, if democracy is to be firmly rooted, the end result must be considered to be as important as the process.

    By coaxing a deal that precludes the trial of the CJN, the system is not well served at all. If the government and its supporters do not understand this, then they can never understand anything. For the umpteenth time, let it be restated that no one is saying the CJN is above the law, or that his financial affairs do not raise eyebrows. However, by brusquely tampering with the system, a culture idiosyncratic with President Buhari whose capacity for deep reflection has been frequently tested and faulted, the government has done more harm than it imagines. Even more appalling is the coordinated media trial it has subjected its quarries to. The government first released the CJN’s asset declaration forms to stooges; then it disclosed the CJN’s financial affairs to the press provocatively and destructively piecemeal; and finally it arm-twisted both the CCB and CCT into assuming powers neither the constitution nor the law gave them.

    The constitution and the laws of Nigeria assume that there will always be infractions. Consequently, there are provisions for dealing with the problem. It must never be suggested that anyone who complains against the government’s peremptoriness in dealing with high-profile suspects are wrong to overlook the presumed guilt of the offenders. In the case of the CJN, not only did the presidency behave most irresponsibly in the sloppy manner it has handled it, but noting the lack of critical thinking in the public, it also presented the case against him as if he was already pronounced guilty. Most commentators thereafter proceeded from the point of view of the CJN’s financial dealings, particularly the bank lodgements and his forgetfulness, to skewer him and condemn him. This issue may still boomerang in the near future.

    Nigerians have unwisely embraced President Buhari’s inoperable approach to the anti-graft war. He had proceeded from the quaint mindset, probably influenced by his many electoral losses between 2003 and 2011, that the judiciary was irredeemably corrupt, yet he has neither propounded a single fundamental reform of the law nor taken any meaningful step to systematise the war against corruption. Lacking a scientific approach, the president has thus wrapped the war with emotions and, like caviar to the general, instigated the public to engage in constant judicial lynching. But the main problem is that even if the president were to be enterprising enough to propose a coherent and scientific body of judicial and legal reforms, and if he were to be capable of eschewing selfish interest in his many stillborn battles to sanitise the system, he would still be unable to achieve success. The reasons are clear.

    No thoughtful legal expert or analyst, after considering the written responses of the justices whose residences were raided by the Department of State Service (DSS) in October 2016, will not be astounded by the justices’ less than sterling written responses challenging the legality of the raids. If at the highest level of the judiciary, as the CJN has himself sadly indicated, so much mediocrity can be exhibited, where the gravitas and ethical profundity that accompany jurists are lacking, how can anyone expect justice, let alone inspiring ones, from those desecrated chambers? The appointment, promotion and discipline of judges and other judicial officers have been compromised and politicised, and mostly the wrong jurists have often been appointed to the bench. Very little profundity comes from the bench in recent years, and judges of poor character and learning have populated and overwhelmed the judiciary. Even the award of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) has also been deeply politicised and polluted by a system that operates like a camorra. President Buhari has proffered no single thought on these problems and does not seem to notice the lack of profundity in many of today’s judges, nor does he understand the demands and nuances of jurisprudence as a national leader should. Why would there not be a huge problem?

    The urgent challenge today is to identify persons and organs who can initiate the fundamental reforms needed to salvage the judiciary. The government is more reactive and censorious than it values championing needed reforms through the legislature. The NJC itself has proved over the years to be too incompetent and slothful to inspire the changes sorely needed, especially in terms of firming up and quickening that institution’s disciplinary procedure, a disciplinary regime capable of deterring judicial malfeasance or adequately punishing misconduct within the ambits of the law. It is not everyone that becomes a judge that must be promoted beyond his capacity simply because it is administratively sensible; and it is not everyone trained in law that qualifies to be a judge simply because he has the right connections. Clearly, the judiciary needs a saviour, or a group of saviours. The challenge is to find those saviours, and nudge them to promote the necessary changes without damaging or weakening the judicial arm of government. The Buhari government is too partial, too schizoid, and too insular to be of any help.

    More crucially, it must be patently clear to nearly everyone by now that the judiciary is not insulated, and cannot be isolated, from the rest of the society. With the appalling funding of the sector as recorded over the years, not to say the deliberate infiltration of the judicial arm by governments who have failed to grasp the overarching goals of a great and lofty judiciary, it is hard to see the requisite changes manifesting in the years to come. The disease afflicting the sector has metastasised, and it remains to be seen how it will be prudently managed. In addition, with a jaded and unworkable national structure, a misshapen national identity, and a crooked reward system, the judiciary will continue to fare badly until there is a massive restructuring of the federation to staff the country’s leadership with brilliant and forward-looking patriots. Hard as he may give the impression, President Buhari does not meet the expectation of nationalists, and, what is worse, none beside him fits the bill of a brilliant change agent.

    In a system rotten to the core, it is futile singling out the judiciary for a general and fundamental makeover. It won’t work. The judiciary may be lost, though not irretrievably, but so are the presidency, legislature, and a critical public quite unable to take the log from their own eyes before deigning to remove the speck from other people’s eyes. It is sad that the Buhari presidency has pulled the wool over the eyes of the people, baiting them with a judicial crisis that masks its own incompetence and egocentrism; there is no telling where the monster they have unleashed will berth. But it is at least helpful that regardless of their ulterior motives, they have helped shine the light on a crooked part of the system that once was the pride of black Africa.

  • Onnoghen: Buhari cuts Gordian knot, executes coup against constitution

    LESS than a week after ex-president Olsuegun Obasanjo characterised the Muhammadu Buhari presidency as a return to the Sani Abacha dictatorship, the president last Friday summarily suspended from office the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen.

    The president claimed to be executing the orders of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) which on January 23, 2019, asked him to swear in a replacement for the CJN. In his speech before swearing in the replacement, Tanko Muhammad, a Justice of the Supreme Court, the president chivalrously bemoaned seeing “the full weight of the Chief Justice of Nigeria descend on the tender head of one of the organs of justice under his control”. It is clear he spoke of the CCT. He also adds that “There is simply no way the officers of that court, from the Chairman to the bailiffs, can pretend to be unaffected by the influence of the leader of the Judiciary.”

    Switching to accusatory mode, in consonance with the instinct and culture of his government, the president lamented that “Practically every other day since his trial commenced, the nation has witnessed various courts granting orders and counter-orders in favour of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, all of them characterised by an unholy alacrity between the time of filing, hearing and delivery of judgment in same.” Blinded by venomous rage against lawyers whom he accused of insisting “that (court) orders, whether right or wrong are technically valid, and must be obeyed till an appellate court says otherwise”, the president betrayed his suspicion of the judiciary, if not distaste for their methods. “No doubt, that it is the proper interpretation,” he acknowledged with his unfailing inquisitorial tone, “but is it the right disposition for our nation?”

    Insisting that “In the midst of all these distracting events, the essential question of whether the accused CJN actually has a case to answer has been lost in the squabble over the form and nature of his trial”, the president magisterially decreed that “This should not be so”. Not done, the president adds in a tone that suggests that he knows justice when he sees it: “If Justice cannot be done and clearly seen to be done, society itself is at risk of the most unimaginable chaos. As a Government, we cannot stand by wailing and wringing our hands…” Then he launches into his default anti-corruption mode, rails against corruption, all but trying the CJN on media platforms, and convicts him without recourse to fair hearing or even appeal. Satisfied that he stood on unimpeachable ground, the president proceeded to cut the Gordian knot, leaned on the lame feet of the CCT order, and swore in the next in rank to Justice Onnoghen, the Justice he had all along wanted in the topmost judicial office in the land, Justice Muhammad.

    It mattered little to President Buhari that the Federal High Court, Appeal Court and Supreme Court are all headed by the Bauchi-Gombe axis. He will of course see it, as usual, as a co-incidence, perhaps in the same meritorious way he sees the concentration of the nation’s security apparatuses in the hands of his northern compatriots. As he often says, most of those appointees are people he had not met before. The president’s backers insist it is not obligatory for him to spread his appointments, or even see the country from the expansively nationalistic prism that conduces to stability and representativeness. But the question the president has never answered, and which traducers like Chief Obasanjo often needles him with is whether he needed to be persuaded to see Nigeria’s existential issues, particularly its national question, from a wide perspective.

    President Buhari anchors his suspension (which in Nigeria is tantamount to removal) of the CJN on the order of the CCT and his reading of the judicial process or, as he surmises it, judicial travesty. He says, for instance, that he deplores the alacrity with which the CJN’s lawyers and the courts were achieving their aims with “unholy alacrity between the time of filing, hearing and delivery of judgment”. The president is now widely recognised as forgetful and distracted, but even he exceeds himself when he spoke of unholy alacrity — obviously not his words, but that of a speech writer or a conspirator in the unfolding constitutional crisis in the land — between the courts, and insinuates a judicial conspiracy in favour of the CJN. Alacrity? It took more than two weeks for the CJN to get the courts to grant him some weak and tentative reprieve, from the time a former media aide of the president, Dennis Aghanya, filed a petition at the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) on January 9, 2019, and the stay of proceeding ordered by the Appeal Court on January 24, 2019.

    In contrast, it took only three working days — January 9 and January 14 — to deliver Mr Aghanya’s petition and then arraign the CJN. Though the petition was dated January 7, the CCB received it January 9, investigated it post haste before or by January 10, and filed a six-count charge against the CJN on January 11. It was obscenely hasty, far more provocative and deplorable than the alacrity the president alluded to in his speech. And as it is characteristic of conspiracies and hurried, malevolent actions, too many loopholes were created by the government action. The president claimed to have acted upon the CCT ex parte order. By now it is well known that the president is not gifted in paying attention to both logic and details. Otherwise why would it not occur to him, even if his aides had quoted some mischievous laws, that a tribunal that is not a court of superior record could not order the dethronement of a Chief Justice? Indeed that sweeping power does not inhere in any court in Nigeria.

    Even more damning is the chronology of the conspiracy against the CJN. The CCT claimed to have acted on a motion ex parte brought on January 9, 2019 by one James Akpala, an investigator of the CCB, praying the tribunal to order the CJN to step aside pending the determination of the Motion on Notice dated January 10, 2019, and for the president to swear in a replacement. Motion on Notice often comes before Motion Ex parte, or at worst the same time. Motion ex parte does not come before motion on notice as occurred in the CCB case before the CCT. Also, note very carefully that obviously, given the dates on the motions, and except the CCT made a mistake in typing its order, everything had been prepared to skewer the CJN when Mr Aghanya delivered his so-called petition on January 9. Clearly, Mr Aghanya was just a willing, idle hand to actuate a wide-ranging conspiracy that had little to do with the law and anti-corruption war.

    What is also indisputable from the proceedings before the CCT is that the presidency was not even sure how to proceed from the beginning. The Motion on Notice and Motion Ex parte were obviously firs kept in abeyance until the government feared last Thursday that its conspiracy was collapsing. Nothing was said about the motions brought by the CCB’s Mr Akpala when the CCT first heard the case and adjourned twice between January 14, 2019 and January 28, 2019. Suddenly, while its jurisdiction was still being challenged, and three days before its next adjournment, the CCT granted Mr Akpala’s Motion Ex parte, when customarily, it is the injured party, the victim of oppression, that seeks ex parte orders to protect the status quo until the determination of the case. How the president still blames the CJN and his lawyers for the abuse of the judicial process is hard to understand.

    There is no part of the constitution that empowers the CCT to assume the jurisdiction it claimed in the CJN case. Absolutely none, not Section 158 or 292, and not even the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act which in Section Three enables a public officer to admit errors and make amends without being dragged before the CCT. It is unfortunate that the presidency has tried to conflate the CJN’s problem with assets declaration with the government’s anti-corruption war, to the extent of seeing everyone who defends due process as being tolerant of corruption. It is a disingenuous attempt to weaken the hands of those who have long seen the Buhari presidency as surreptitiously, but now openly, dictatorial. The natural instinct of the Buhari presidency is clearly totalitarian. It has no scintilla of democracy in its veins, and cannot have, despite its patently false claims to the contrary in his Friday speech. Indeed, it can only get worse.

    No one of course suggests that the CJN had no case to answer, despite the president’s malicious inferences, however, the  constitution is abundantly clear how to deal with him, who has the power to suspend him, in this case not the president, and by what process he could be removed, in this case too, through the Senate. The clarity of the law and the constitution, particularly the role of the National Judicial Council (NJC), is to the intent that the CJN could not be tried while still a judicial officer. The president’s peremptory actions are anchored on his fears that he could not have his way in both the NJC and the Senate. He should have anticipated this a long time ago and sponsored the appropriate judicial and even constitutional reforms. After all, he had had almost two years to nurse his grudge, which he tries to paint in altruistic colours, to maturity, and find constitutional ways of tackling whatever ails him about the judiciary with which he is eternally at odds.

    The president swears in his speech that he is a proponent of the rule of law and lover of constitutional democracy. There is no part of his more than three years in office, or of his response to the CJN case, that portrays him as a democrat of exponent of the rule of law. He fantasises his obedience to the unlawful CCT order as an indication of his respect for the rule of law. The public will snicker at his claims on the grounds of his appalling disobedience to court orders in the cases of Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security Adviser (NSA) more than thrice admitted to bail but still kept in chains, and Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the Shiite leader ordered to be released and compensated by the courts, but still in chains. No one believes the president has respect for the rule of law except his speechwriters.

    By embracing the CCT’s atrocious order and clearly subordinating the judiciary to the executive branch, President Buhari has empowered his government and the numerous conspirators hanging around him to gravely undermine constitutional rule. He has been honest enough not to rest his actions on any part of the constitution, but on the spurious claims and orders of the CCT. In one fell swoop, the president has managed to compromise the integrity of the leadership of the CCT, castrated the acting CJN, and poisoned constitutional democracy. Even if he reverses himself based on public protests and actions, assuming Nigerians understand that fascism begins as inexorably and surreptitiously as this, his essential undemocratic self will remain as pernicious as ever, unaffected by logical or legal arguments, and unaffected by conventions. The former CJN, Mahmud Mohammed, once warned that presidents or chairmen of tribunals, such as the Tax Appeal Tribunal and Code of Conduct Tribunal, must never be referred to as Justices. Who could tell at the time that a sitting president would sometime in the future base his illegal dethronement of a chief justice on the orders of someone who is not a justice?

    No visionary president who cares about the future of his country would take these fateful steps of subverting constitutionalism, scarifying the CCT chairman and the acting CJN, and opening the country to all sorts of desperate political and judicial scheming. It can only be because, as this column maintained last week, the implications of his many actions quite seriously escape him. President Buhari’s government is used to trying cases on media platforms, social, electronic and print. Because he receives hearing and backing, he has continued the atrocious practice. He is unlikely to stop. The country campaigns to gift him another four years, despite showing his hands quite early. No people can be so remorseless and so fatalistic.

    It is humiliating for everyone concerned that a controversy was stirred over the CJN matter. The president considers the CJN’s moral authority as wounded, and expected him to step aside on his own volition. His refusal to relinquish office led to the president’s drastic and conspiratorial action. The president’s address was, therefore, a litany of self-help and extrajudicial measures, unfitting for the president of the most populous black nation on earth. Nigeria faces a clear case of mindless corruption. But that corruption is not limited to only financial corruption. It also includes the kind of corruption that sees political leaders taking extraordinary and unlawful steps to short-change the society and subvert law and order. The Buhari presidency is no less guilty. It was expected to find very intelligent ways of addressing the cankerworm. It has instead chosen abominable ways of fighting the evil, ways that are bound to have painful and deleterious effects on the constitution and the future of the country.

    Even though the constitution is clear on what should be done if and when a CJN is accused of misconduct, politicians and lawyers may, however, refuse to agree on how to proceed. What undermines the fight against corruption and other ills in Nigeria is not so much the provisions of the law, as the inability of those in high offices to summon the principles and intellect to fight the evils in lawful, sophisticated ways that do not damage the reputation of the country.

  • CCB, CJN and indeterminate future

    IT is all but certain that the next few weeks before the fateful 2019 elections, particularly the presidential election, will be pockmarked by bitter wrangling between opposing parties and open, provocative plots by the government. It is also certain that the All Progressives Congress (APC), as evidenced by the Information minister’s Friday disclosures on the collapse of Bank PHB, will be on the offensive throughout, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will be on the defensive throughout. If the APC triumphs as a result of its relentless chicaneries, it will be because voters are not too discriminating to read between the lines of the ruling party’s propaganda. But if the PDP escapes the guillotine by the skin of their teeth and wins the poll, it will be because voters are excessively indulgent. Faced with a Hobson’s choice next month, a choice the judicious will find very unpleasant to make, perhaps the most unpleasant since the founding of Nigeria, voters will troop to the polls in fewer numbers than they used to, hold their noses, and cast their ballots with a hiss and a regret.

    To make the outcome certain, however, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency in quick succession last week dragged Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) for offences connected with non-declaration of assets, and are lying in wait for Atiku Abubakar, currently travelling in the United States, whom they accused of having a hand in the collapse of Bank PHB. There will be more jokers and shenanigans in the coming days. For now, the most topical of all the subterfuges orchestrated by the presidency is the Justice Onnoghen case, a case that has bitterly divided the country into almost two equal halves, with lawyers and laymen disputing the propriety of the case using complicated and extenuating legal and moral arguments. The case is anchored on two counts: one is that the government has acted in good faith on point of law, and the other is that the government has acted mala fide both morally and legally. The gravamen of both counts is that the Buhari presidency, according to some critics, has been reckless and short-sighted.

    Aware that one half of the country has stridently argued that the case against the CJN was a conspiracy by the presidency, a conspiracy anchored on Justice Onnoghen’s alleged opposition to the government and refusal to do the government’s bidding, Vice Presidnt Yemi Osinbajo has suggested on his honour that the president did not even know until the evening of January 12, 2019 that the CJN would be dragged before the CCT. He did not indicate how the president got to know. However, according to him, “I can tell you for a fact that (the president) did not even know about this until Saturday evening.” Then he added: “He did not even know that there will be any kind of arraignment until Saturday evening. He has said categorically, ‘do not interfere with whatever institutions are doing’; sometimes, it has consequences such as we have today; such that people say how can such an important person be subjected to a trial without the federal government knowing? But I can tell you without any equivocation whatsoever that he was not even in the know because it is a specific instruction that he gave.”

    The public doubt the vice president because the federal government does not have a tradition of not micromanaging the country and subordinating and subjugating the country’s institutions. They are uncomfortable with the legislature and judiciary running independently, especially at cross-purposes with them, and are hostile to and wary of anyone in government having a mind of his own. Though the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, has tried to corroborate the argument of the vice president, few people think he is really convincing. According to Mallam el-Rufai: “Why should the President know about the prosecution of anyone? Let us please stop personalising institutions. Won’t you be worried if the President is worried about prosecution? Institutions should be allowed to function. I am the governor of Kaduna State. The constitution requires that I declare my assets before being sworn in. Also, the constitution states this specifically, in plain language. This is not law; we don’t need law to tell us this. I don’t have to know if the Attorney-General of Kaduna State goes and murder or rape someone, and the police arrest him; I don’t need to know. They should charge him to court. Institutions should be allowed to work, and we should stand up to protect the integrity of institutions. Saying that the President doesn’t know, I think it is a compliment to the president; it shows that he does not interfere with institutions and doesn’t get involved in it.”

    Could the vice president and Kaduna governor be right? The balance of argument shifts badly against them on closer examination. Dennis Aghanya, the civil society activist who authored the petition against the CJN, was a ranking member of the president’s former party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). He was a media aide to the president in their CPC days, and publicity secretary to the same party. Since 2015, he has had a history of siding with the president on controversial issues such as spending money to buy arms without appropriation, and was a chief convener of one of the president’s myriad support organisations. No one has resolved the question of how Mr Aghanya procured the CJN’s assets form. Crucially, too, Mr Aghanya presented the petition to the CCB on January 9, 2019, and in two days, the bureau had concluded investigations into the matter, obtained a badly worded and panicky response from the CJN, and then filed a six-count charge at the CCT. The pro-government forces make light of the indecent and unprecedented haste, insisting that the public should instead focus on the CJN’s admission of guilt, an admission they have ridiculed. But they are mistaken.

    Even more damning, say critics, is the synchronisation between the Justice minister’s furiously fast directive to the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to freeze the CJN’s accounts and the other actions taken against the eminent jurist. The directive to freeze the accounts was dated the same day the trial was to commence, January 14, 2018, implying a preconception days or weeks before the execution. The NFIU also received the letter the same day. The entire affair was obviously synchronised. By Thursday, January 17, the federal government had filed another motion before the CCT asking the court for an interlocutory order to compel the removal of the CJN and for the president to replace him with the next in rank, Justice Ibrahim Muhammad, their preferred candidate for the great office since the departure of the former CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, in 2016. Clearly, the intention is to attack Justice Onnoghen on many fronts until he caves in. Whether he will throw in the towel is not known, however. But there is no doubt that the attacks are coordinated.

    Prof Osinbajo may suggest that the president did not know about the Onnoghen arraignment until two Saturdays ago, and Mallam el-Rufai may applaud that unsubstantiated fact, thereby indicating simplistically that it pointed both to the independence of institutions under President Buhari and the president’s own sagacity in letting things run on their own, but few people will believe them. The president’s Justice minister was deeply involved in the plot, despite knowing what the law says on the matter. And because he unfortunately holds the two offices of the Justice ministry and the Attorney General of the Federation, it is totally inconceivable that a Justice minister would hide such a huge case that was certain to reinforce the president’s insensitivity to the South-South. No one knows who the arrowhead of the conspiracy is; but there was undoubtedly a conspiracy. Indeed, the argument about whether there was a conspiracy or not has not even weighed on the minds of the anti-Onnoghen forces as much as the CJN’s so-called admission of guilt and the wrongdoing implied in the controversial assets declaration, especially at a time when the anti-corruption war had become the main focus of public discussions.

    The coordinated but controversial case against the CJN clearly shows that the Buhari presidency does not expect that the case would be resolved in their favour in the courts. In fact, they expect the case to end either in stalemate or, going by precedent, in favour of the defendant. The Justice minister is not so unlettered in law that he does not remember the acquittal eight months ago of Supreme Court Justice, Sylvester Ngwuta, who was also accused of concealing some of his private assets and doing private business contrary to the provisions of the law. In dismissing the case, the same CCT, before which the CJN has been brought, concluded in a ruling read by William Atedze, a member of the three-man CCT panel, that “What this means is that any allegation of official misconduct will first have to be referred to the National Judicial Council to the exclusion of any other body, court or Tribunal”. And citing the Court of Appeal verdict in the Justice Hyeladzira Nganjiwa case, further held that “Judicial precedent is binding for as long as it is subsisting and until such precedent is overturned by a higher court”.

    Those who support the case against the CJN hiss at the deployment of technicality by the Justices to escape censure. They also point out that in the Justice Ngwuta case, the CCT made a Freudian slip of drawing attention to a distinction between misconduct, as contained in the constitution and official/judicial misconduct, which is not in the constitution. They suggest that the CJN case is one of general misconduct, which the CCT has jurisdiction over, not a misconduct committed in the discharge of official duties which must first be addressed by the National Judicial Council (NJC). But even the most liberal interpretation of the relevant provisions of the constitution dealing with how a judicial officer can be removed does not draw a distinction between ordinary misconduct and judicial misconduct. The constitution speaks of misconduct, nothing more and nothing less. Furthermore, there is no part of the Third and Fifth Schedules of the constitution, nor of Sections 158 and 292, that makes the trial and removal of Judicial officers a complex affair. The provisions may be inadequate — and this column thinks they require amendment — but they are not complicated. Until an amendment is done, however, the law remains the law. The Buhari presidency knows this; and that is why it has preferred to try the case in the media, hoping that public sympathy and pressure would help force the resignation of the CJN.

    The Presidency has tried to give the impression that the CJN case is simply and solely one of fighting corruption. This is not true. The case, despite the legal lacunae enveloping it, is more of politics than anything else. Since 2015, the Buhari presidency has indicated that it trusts no one with sensitive offices but those with kinship ties. Sadly, the choices have been sectional and iniquitous to fairness, leading to allegations of insularity and ethnic bigotry. The government, some suggest, expects the 2019 election to be tight and perhaps controversial, and might end in the courts. In addition, there are a number of pre-election matters that require the input of the judicial hierarchy. The government worries that nothing should be left to chance, hence the rather clumsy efforts to streamline and control things, regardless of public reservations and opposition.

    If, without conceding, the vice president and Kaduna governor are right that the president was not part of the decision to haul the CJN before the CCT, it may mean more frighteningly that the popular impression of a president not really in control of his government may be true after all. Those of his household who draw this conclusion have shouted themselves hoarse about the hijack of the presidency by cabals, and those who describe the president as inattentive to details and the affairs of state may not be as malevolent as presidential aides have campaigned. The president’s views and arguments on the farmers/ herders crisis, the replacement last September of the acting director-general of the Department of State Service (DSS), Matthew Seiyefa from the South-South, with Yusuf Bichi from the North, and the skewing of security appointments in favour of the core North have all given indication of a gross lack of depth and capacity. The CJN affair may very well fit the bill.

    Last week’s performance of the president on the Nigerian Television Authority-organised town hall meeting is an example. It was bad enough that nearly all the answers given by the president were inadequate and uninspiring; it was much worse that he hardly indicated he understood most of the questions. It was not stage fright that numbed and stifled him; he has been around public office for far too long to be discomfited by interviewers, even merciless ones. It had to be a lack of profundity and too much jadedness. The country may in fact be dealing with a leader who cannot seem to tackle issues holistically, nor, more damningly, appreciate the import of his decisions, policies and appointments. There is corruption in the judiciary, as in nearly all facets of the society. But the president has had about four years to inspire lasting reforms to tackle the rot and fight corruption in such a manner that a leg can be amputated without killing the patient. He chose to employ mundane tactics, such as orchestrated public lynching, aka media trial, and promote a disconcertingly archaic and sectional style that humiliates the country and black people everywhere, and hamstrings his own government.

    There will be no let up in pressuring the CJN to relinquish office. The Justice minister, who has shown a disturbing proclivity for regime protection than advancing the cause of the law and democracy, has already indicated in the government’s motion before the CCT whom they wish to replace the CJN. Justice Onnoghen may have surprised everyone by his response to the CCB investigations, a response he is unlikely to be proud of in the years to come, and many Nigerians may have emotionally already concluded, as is usual in media trials, that the CJN is guilty of corrupt practices. But the framers of the constitution, as exampled by Section 158 (1), were anxious to preserve the independence of, and make co-equal, the three arms of government. The Buhari presidency, despite the sham and intemperate support Mallam el-Rufai gives them, has done nothing visionary and substantial to preserve, protect, and advance the cause of the constitution, nor, worse, help the country make a ‘more perfect union’. For the sake of the future, Nigerians must not pretend to be unaware of the devices of the presidency. They must not because of their position on Justice Onnoghen inadvertently help the Buhari presidency weaken an already imperfect constitution and expose the people needlessly to creeping totalitarianism. Making Nigeria great transcends the sometimes insular goals of the presidency, any presidency for that matter.

  • Daily Trust and the military

    THE Abuja-based national newspaper, Daily Trust, must by now be reeling from accusations of being indiscrete in publishing a story on the Nigerian military’s effort to retake Baga and some other five towns in Borno State lost to Boko Haram in recent weeks. Most journalism analysts, including the President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Chris Isiguzo, believe that the paper erred in publishing the story entitled “Military prepares massive operation to retake Baga, others”, complete with a map of the contested areas. The publication, the analysts and the military suggested, undermined national security and compromised the safety of troops and the success of the campaign. Beyond this general and disputed conclusion, the analysts and the military have offered no specifics against the January 6, 2019 story.

    While none of the analysts has justified the military invasion of the Daily Trust offices in Maiduguru, Abuja and Lagos, during which computers and phones of editorial staff were carted away, the critics are almost unanimous that the paper should have restrained itself from publishing the story. Restraint is not a bad thing at all for anybody, not to talk of a newspaper whose stories could lead to terrible consequences and conflagrations. But in this case, by publishing the story, the paper has in fact served journalism very well. Daily Trust must be encouraged to continue to trust its carefully considered judgements on news. While it is a little obvious that the paper’s editors must have debated whether to publish the story or not, especially at the time it did, Nigeria and Nigerian journalists must be grateful that the paper finally published the report and helped to throw up a lot of issues surrounding the publication, the military, the state of the rule of law, and Nigerian democracy as a whole.

    There are indications that before the paper published the controversial story military authorities had invited some Nigerian newspaper editors to Maiduguri for a background briefing on the counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast. The discussions were said to be strictly off record. It is not clear whether the Daily Trust report contained some of the confidential discussions, but eventually, after debating whether to publish or not, the paper went ahead to present the story to the public. It is healthy for newspaper editors to debate stories, but it is even healthier that stories such as the paper published on January 6, 2019 get published. The paper has been damned with faint praise by many commentators. This column applauds the paper unequivocally for many reasons, and encourages them to retain confidence in their editorial judgement.

    Having read and reread the story, this column can find no part of the report where national security or troops safety was undermined, no matter how strictly or liberally the report is read and interpreted. The newspaper accompanied the story with a map. But it was neither a military nor tactical map. It was an ordinary map showing the areas Boko Haram had taken, and which the military was poised to retake. The story tells of the preparedness of the military to retake the seized towns. Not only was Boko Haram expecting a counterattack, it was logical and sensible that the army would not roll over and resign to fate; and so a counterattack had to be undertaken, which everyone expected, friends and enemies alike. In addition, the Daily Trust report assigned no dates or timelines for the retaking of the seized towns, so they could not have compromised the element of surprise. All the paper said was that the military was prepared to engage Boko Haram, as indeed everyone expected them to do.

    More crucially, there was no part of the report where the paper talked about tactics, details of ordinance, troop movements or positions other than saying troops were being assembled, or the number of brigades or divisions to be involved. Overall, the story was helpful to the military, reassuring to the public, and in fact harmless. What Daily Trust reported was not different from what other newspapers elsewhere report in time of war. It was a general news report, undoubtedly rich in background details, but beneficially copious to the military and Nigerian authorities in exposing the dynamics at play among Boko Haram factions. It is satisfying that the paper handled the story very professionally, revealing little or nothing of any use to the enemy. The report did not forewarn Boko Haram, as the military hyperbolically tried to present. After all, as Ahmad Salkida, a journalist conversant with Boko Haram history and activities, said, Boko Haram no longer has interest in holding on to territories except very briefly. When it captures a target, it expects fierce counterattacks. Its insurgency doctrine is now largely attritional, the journalist surmised.

    The extralegal reaction to the Daily Trust report exposes a worrisome retrogression in the Nigerian military’s doctrine and training concept, at a time when many militaries have become quite skilful in handling psychological operations and the legal and social frameworks of their campaigns. Perhaps due to years of being inducted into law enforcement duties, Nigerian soldiers have become sadly and alarmingly inured to the strict discipline and regimentation of their military background while at the same time becoming incapable of acquiring the delicate nuances of policing civilian entities. The acquisition of this new but dangerous culture played out in Plateau State recently when soldiers launched investigations into the murder of a retired army major-general, Idris Alkali, last September. Using extrajudicial measures and perpetrating atrocious rights abuses, soldiers were able to unearth the circumstances of the murder, arrest those they claimed plotted the murder, find the body of the slain general, and celebrate and reward the feat. The end seemed to justify the means, regardless of how well or otherwise the case holds up in court. Having been rewarded time and again in their efforts to find solutions to knotty problems through the use of extrajudicial means, it is not surprising that they invaded Daily Trust and even briefly resisted complying with the orders of their commander-in-chief to release the paper’s detained editors and return their working tools.

    The Nigerian military had a culture of abridging human and property rights under military rule. That culture has died hard even under elected governments. It is not helped by an indulgent presidency, a conniving political class, and a generally timid judiciary. The rule of law should predominate in a democracy. But the presidency has itself been lax in obeying the law or punishing disobedience. Under the constitution, not even the president nor the security agencies have the right to invade business premises without a warrant, let alone impound business tools and property, except to tackle active threats. The military unapologetically harmed Daily Trust business and the presidency has not felt the urgency to do anything to ensure a repeat never occurs. Sadly, the invasion of Daily Trust is a reflection of how badly stunted Nigerian democracy is. For as long as military commanders and other security agencies believe the presidency will continue to indulge their constitutional infractions, they will go on provoking outrages without minding the consequences. It is all the more shocking that the military invaded the Daily Trust offices when they know even the president would not execute such an invasion. A sinister form of lawlessness and impunity obviously still permeates the country’s security services.

    It is in fact beginning to seem that Nigeria is operating two contrapuntal laws, one for the military and the other for the rest of the country. That illegal culture has taken root so deeply that it is becoming almost impossible to remedy, whether under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or under the All Progressives Congress (APC). In 2014, under a PDP government led by a former university teacher, the military orchestrated terrible rights abuses and circumscribed the operations of some media establishments. That government was not apologetic. The abuses stopped only when the measure lost relevance and effectiveness. Under the APC presidency, at least two media establishments have been invaded and their businesses disrupted, and journalists were arrested and locked up on the excuse that they were after all not well known reporters. So, it will take a convinced democrat who would not brook an abuse of the law to put a halt to the illegalities.

    But does it need a fussy presidency for the security and law enforcement agencies to operate under the rule of law and their institutional rules of engagement? No. If the military top brass had carefully considered their options well, if they had debated their proposed course of action, including determining whether the Daily Trust report undermined national security, it is inconceivable that they would have ordered a misbegotten invasion in an election year. They may not care about their own image, given their imperious background and their adamant refusal to acknowledge that the times have changed, they ought to worry that the invasion would give a president fighting desperately for re-election a bad name. Arrogance breeds carelessness. If the military brass had considered all the sides to the story, and if they were convinced that the paper had done wrong, they would have found lawful ways to handle the matter rather than engaging in self-help. Surely, they have first-class legal minds in the military to advise them.

    Overall, the buck stops with the president. If his police officers disobey him and he keeps his peace, and the military seizes more powers than even the constitution gives the president, and if he refuses to fire them for embarrassing the country because he fears the loyalty and capacity of new appointees, then he must forgive analysts who conclude that he connives at his appointees’ egregious subversion of the constitution. This is truly and insufferably tragic. The problem is not that Daily Trust or any other newspaper cannot err; the problem is that though the country has laws to take care of those infractions, many appointed or elected officials simply ignore or actively subvert the law because there is no deterrence. If any agency of government goes above the law to tackle alleged wrongdoing, whether justified or not, the president who swore to defend and protect the constitution must discharge his responsibility by dismissing the excitable officers. In the case of the Daily Trust, the president has refused to take any further step beyond ordering troops to vacate the newspaper’s premises. He is oblivious of the damage the invasion has caused the image of the country, especially in a world where the Nigerian military and political class have become objects of global ridicule and malicious campaigns.

  • What parties can do with INEC figures

    POLITICAL parties have got enough help from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to secure electoral success if they are intellectually enterprising enough. Presenting the 2019 voter register and electoral guidelines to the parties in Abuja during their quarterly consultative meeting last Monday, INEC disclosed that more than 84 million people had registered to vote. It immediately suggests that Nigeria’s estimated population figure of about 180m or more could be either realistic or an understatement, especially because nearly half of the voting age population probably never take the trouble of registering, and as everyone knows, the age group below 18 years is quite substantial in any population.

    But this total figure alone may mean nothing to the parties. What should be significant to them is the breakdown done by INEC to explain the staggering figure. The accompanying geopolitical and statistical breakdown of the voting population should immediately alert a serious political party to make its pitch in the right direction and discover what electoral and permutational possibilities are available in order to secure victory. There was never anything like a monolithic South; it has also been clear for more than two decades that there is no longer anything like a monolithic North. It should then be clear to a determined political party what zonal combinations can be cobbled together to win the next polls.

    INEC has been even more helpful. It tells the parties the age groups of the registered voters, a fact obviously needed to help the parties frame their narratives and hone their appeal around the peculiar demands and characteristics of the voters. For instance, the elderly and old age groups (51-70 plus) constitute a mere six million voters, while the youths (18-35) form a humongous 43 million voters. All a party needs to discover are the issues that preoccupy relevant age groups, especially the groups that matter for electoral harvest. A serious party, knowing that females form about 40 million of the voters, should be clear about what issues to put a lot of emphasis on. In addition, if they add into the mix and their platforms the issues that entrance the middle age group (36-50) of about 25 million voters, it is hard to see that political party not making a huge impact.

    INEC may have needlessly entrapped itself in the controversy surrounding the appropriateness of giving Mrs Amina Zakari, an INEC commissioner connected to the president by marriage, a sensitive position in the electoral body, it has however done well to systematise the commission’s statistical presentation, indirectly energise politicking, and set parties tantalisingly along paths that foster electoral victory. But can the parties take advantage of the good turn done them by INEC, especially given the nearness of the next elections? It is doubtful but not altogether impossible. The parties may not be able to frame the most succinct narratives needed to grab the attention of the target age groups and zones, nor crystallise  the requisite messages capable of addressing those interests, but they can try in the remaining five or more weeks to find the keys and roads into the hearts of voters at least fairly substantially enough to make a significant difference or even trump competition.

  • Afenifere, APC and 2019

    THERE are essentially three factions jostling for the soul of Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, and the heart of the Yoruba people. One is led by Ayo Fasanmi; another is led by Reuben Fasoranti; and a third, distinctively called the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), is led by Wale Oshun. While the Fasoranti Afenifere is very active and media savvy, the Fasanmi Afenifere is no less authentic but somewhat laid back. The ARG is the most ideological and nostalgic of the three. All three factions trace their genealogy to the Afenifere formed in 1951 by Obafemi Awolowo. While they dispute one another’s authenticity and pedigree, it is safe to consider all of them as representing diverse Yoruba worldviews and political persuasions, regardless of the clamorous denunciations and characterisations they sometimes hurl at one another.

    As the 2019 presidential campaigns intensify, and are rounded up this January and mid-February, the differences between the wrangling Yoruba groups are likely to be exacerbated. No one should think that any of the three groups has an implacable hold on the Southwest. The media-savvy Fasoranti faction, now leaning heavily in the direction of the Atiku Abubakar Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidacy, will stridently portray itself as the unique, altruistic and truly representative faction determined to act in the best interests of the Yoruba. But the Fasanmi faction will remind them that their leader, Pa Fasoranti, having complained in 2015 of the distractions and contradictions rampant in their faction, resigned his position in frustration until he was prevailed upon to rescind the resignation. The Fasanmi faction also continues to indicate clearly that they are more authentic than any other.

    As the next presidential election comes into view, and given the many troubling and interconnected factors destined to shape that fateful election, the Afenifere factions are likely to become even more fractious and irreconcilable. More than a decade ago, the ARG had attempted to midwife a reconciliation in Ibadan between the factions. That spirited effort failed, leading Hon Oshun to actively pursue a different path whose trajectory sometimes coincides with the Fasanmi faction, particularly in politics. Indeed, for the purpose of the next presidential election, the three factions appeared to have filed behind the two leading presidential contenders, President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Alhaji Atiku of the PDP. More, given their political antecedents, the Fasoranti faction has been more naturally and militantly inclined towards the PDP, and the condominial Fasanmi/ARG faction has been more inclined towards the APC. The two factions debate and dispute which is the more progressive and which is the less conservative. In the face of the terrible fulminations by the groups, there are no clear answers.

    In 2015, as Nigeria headed for the polls, the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, sitting atop the PDP, appeared irredeemably conservative, if not entirely reactionary. That government was confused and profligate, and its leaders almost wholly irresponsible and incorrigible. In those days, it would have been unreasonable to regard the Jonathan presidency as progressive, and a party that ruled Nigeria for 16 years since 1999 concomitantly radical. But when elections beckoned in 2015, the Fasoranti group, despite their media and rhetorical prowess, simply cut to the chase, endorsed the Jonathan candidacy, and controversially and disingenuously imbued him with some form of progressivism on account of his promise of a distant utopia, to wit, restructuring. Though the Fasoranti group claimed to speak for the Yoruba, few hearkened to that call, and fewer still rallied to their cause.

    However, the predictable outcome of the 2015 presidential election and the ascendancy of the unreformed and truculent President Muhammadu Buhari has reawakened the fear of Fulani irredentism and the resurgence of bitter divisions in Nigeria. Consequently, what seemed like progressivism in 2015, as embodied by President Buhari and exemplified by the APC, has now transmogrified into the worst forms of conservatism. And what seemed like tolerable conservatism in 2015, as partially engendered by Dr Jonathan and emblematised by the PDP, has now become controversially acceptable progressivism. Time not only heals wounds, it also, it seems, redefines concepts and colours perspectives. Sensing the discomfort of the APC, the Fasoranti faction has, therefore, become very loud in their denunciations and triumphant in their retribution.

    There is no doubt that President Buhari — not the APC in particular — is a deeply and unrepentantly divisive figure. The Southwest is a testament to that division, a division destined to last for a much longer time in that disputatious region than the Yoruba are gifted both to manage and to heal. The Yoruba may have progressivism as the dominant strand in their democratic socialism ideology, and their cultural lodestar may be anchored on justice and fairness, yet cohesiveness and unity of purpose are generally episodic to them, not permanent features. Not even the rebellion of Afonja in Ilorin, the then Are Ona Kakanfo, could cajole them into unity until the Fulani began marching south. Even then that temporary unity was in danger of unravelling before the British took control. It also took the events surrounding the first coup and countercoup and the civil war to rally the Yoruba behind Pa Awolowo. But by 1983 and onwards, that unity was already being tested.

    Whatever they think, and no matter the fierce rhetorical exchange between them, the three squabbling Afenifere factions are unlikely in the present circumstance to forge a united approach to the next presidential election. It is doubtful whether it is even needed in the face of the conceptual ideological ambivalence that prevails in the Southwest, like elsewhere. President Buhari may typify the worst conservatism today, but there is little doubt, however, that the APC still represents a more discernible form of progressivism than the PDP, despite Alhaji Atiku’s promise of restructuring. For it is not clear how one promise or two can suddenly catapult a party from arch-conservatism to real progressivism. Indeed, what seems at play today is that Afenifere’s loyalties and ideological affiliations are a reflection of the indeterminate preferences and prejudices of key Afenifere personalities. Pa Fasoranti and Pa Fasanmi may be exempted from such insular and selfish loyalties and may in fact be really altruistic, but the younger elements in the two factions in reference are not immune to baser political, social and economic considerations.

    In particular, the younger elements in the Fasoranti faction make the mistake of seeking an impracticable unity of ideas that is neither possible nor desirable, nor yet sensible. It is not possible to make the Yoruba see either President Buhari or Candidate Atiku from the same ideological and political prisms. It makes it all the harder and inexplicable for the faction’s spokesmen to justify their rage against those in other factions — or even outside all the factions — who wish to make up their minds on whom to support based on totally extraneous factors. A Yoruba man does not have to be a member of Afenifere or support their viewpoint to be a Yoruba man. Surely, Afenifere spokesmen must see the futility of trying to bully the Southwest, using cultural and ideological concepts native to the region, into conforming to their worldview. Such bullying tactics negate the cultural lodestar that the spokesmen themselves try to preach and elevate into an ethnic ideology. Bad-tempered use of words and unflattering and sometimes libellous descriptions neither help the factions nor the Yoruba as a whole.

    The Yoruba pride themselves on being the most liberal, democratic and ideological ethnic group in the country. How is it then that they contradistinctively try to pressure their members and others into one worldview? How is it that they cannot understand that holding different political and even ideological positions do not amount to undermining the fundamental ethics of the Yoruba society? The Yoruba must begin to eschew the puerile tactics of labelling those who differ as traitors, or seeing one party as moral and the others as immoral. After all, both the APC and the PDP, given years of defections across party lines, have become operationally and ideologically indistinguishable. When the Fasoranti faction endorsed Dr Jonathan in 2015, most Yoruba were stupefied. But the faction nevertheless had the right to endorse whomsoever they wished. And when another faction endorsed President Buhari, the outcome of that endorsement has proved that no one, let alone a top faction of an ethnic group, is infallible.

    The spokesmen of the Fasoranti faction have often spoken self-righteously and indignantly about everything. It is a wrong-headed approach to politics. They of course reserve the right to lend support to anyone they like. But that right must never, ever be denied any other person or group. If the Yoruba are truly liberal as they often boast, now is the time to walk the talk. They speak glowingly of the rule of law and endearingly of the principles of natural justice; it is time they lived what they preach. No one has the right to drag the entire Yoruba people bad-temperedly into a bitter conflict over the PDP and APC, no matter what enticing promises the parties make, whether it concerns restructuring or the presidency in 2023, and no one has the right to arrogate to himself or his party the spokesman of the race.

    More importantly, the bitter and effusive spokesmen of various Afenifere factions must begin to realise that supporting one party or another does not make one faction more Yoruba or less Yoruba. In addition, regardless of the closeness of a party to the dominant Yoruba worldview, supporting that party does not make a politician more ethical than another. Given the passage of time and the huge transformations that have taken place in the politics and economy of Nigeria, attempting to herd the Yoruba into one party may be both unwise and counterproductive. Let a thousand flowers bloom. After all, as Moshood Kashimawo Abiola and President Buhari have proved, to win a presidential election today will require a candidate to either form the right alliances or possess an appeal that cuts across ethnic boundaries. But how can a candidate forge the right alliances or possess the needed cross-cultural appeal if he allows himself to be put in the straightjackets insinuated by unthinking ethnic factions?

  • Obasanjo and contentious 2023 presidential poll

    DURING a political trip to Anambra State in the closing days of December, former president Olusegun Obasanjo warned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) faithful in the Southeast to beware of the promise by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to back an Igbo man for the presidency in 2023. The former president argued that the ruling party was not sincere, and that only voting the PDP, with Peter Obi on the ticket, could facilitate the realisation of the Southeast’s presidential ambition. Is he right? It is difficult to tell. But if the doublespeak by top APC functionaries is anything to go by, it may be much harder for the Igbo to win the coveted seat as quickly as they hope.

    Chief Obasanjo’s suggestion to the Igbo not to trust the APC is probably based on the countervailing promises by  APC leaders to facilitate the presidency in 2023 for both the Southeast and the Southwest. Last July, at a mega rally in Owerri, Imo State, Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), pointedly told the Igbo to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari to enhance the chances of an Igbo man assuming the presidency in 2023. Said he: “…2019 will make or mar the chances of the Southeast zone in occupying the presidency in 2023. I call on Southeast sons and daughters to have a paradigm shift in 2019 and support Buhari’s re-election. The presidency of this nation is always negotiated and you cannot negotiate from the point of weakness. It will be determined by the votes Buhari gets from the South East, and you have to bring the same expertise you have always employed in trade and commerce into politics, to take over in 2023. It is now the choice for the South East to make.”

    Speaking again in Abuja during a visit to the president by a delegation of Igbo leaders in November, the SGF reiterated: “…There was a programme in the Southeast where Mr. President asked me to represent him and I flew the kite by telling the south-eastern states that their quickest and easiest means to presidency is to support President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term. Meaning that they can short circuit the period in terms of only having him there for another four years and whatever they do in 2019 will determine what will happen thereafter because politics is a game of numbers and it is like a cooperative society. Whatever you bring as an investment when dividends are going to be shared, you will get proportionate with your investment and your investment in politics is what you bring to the table and I urge the Southeast to look at this matter seriously that every time we have a presidency in Nigeria, it is negotiated in several ways. Either negotiated by votes or what you bring to the table and you must negotiate from the position of strength. You can’t negotiate from the point of weakness and I believe that that message resonated with the people and their response now is attributable to the fact that even before the flag-off of the campaigns, we have laid it bare on the table for Southeastern states to consider the prospect of working with us to ensure that at least by the time President Buhari finishes his second tenure, they can make a shot at the presidency depending on what they bring to the table.”

    But while conducting a door-to-door campaign in Oyo town in Oyo State, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo reportedly suggested in the presence of the Alafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, that re-electing President Buhari was the surest bet for the Yoruba to return to the presidency in 2023. Said he: “The 2019 election is our own. We are not looking at 2019 but 2023. If we get it in 2019, Yoruba will get it in 2023. Because if we don’t get it in 2019, we may not get it in 2023, and it may take a very long time to get it. We need to look at tomorrow and not because of today. What we are doing now is for tomorrow and not for today.” What does this mean? Prof Osinbajo was simply saying that rather than the Southwest waiting for probably another eight years before getting the chance to have a shot at the presidency, their surest bet was to back President Buhari and wait for only four years. Moreover, he was also saying that the Yoruba are entrenched in this government and their chances are much brighter now and will remain so in 2023 than with the Atiku/Obi ticket.

    But the wider implication, as alluded to by Chief Obasanjo, is that the APC was simply being dishonest in its promises, considering that two APC leaders could so glibly promise the presidency to two different political zones without betraying any emotions or disconcerting qualms. Incumbency is a strong factor in succession politics, as amply but unscrupulously demonstrated by Chief Obasanjo himself in 2007. But no matter how big the promise is, there is a limit to how a president can single-handedly determine his successor. Both Chief Obasanjo and the APC are obviously not familiar with the democratic tenet of reserving the choice of successors to the electorate. They are still used to imposition. By 2023, it should be clear whose view is anachronistic.