The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Buhari on God as architect of Nigeria

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has consistently subscribed to the religious interpretation of the formation of Nigeria. No one, it seems, can disabuse his mind. It is fully made up. Many analysts hold the British responsible for the creation of Nigeria, especially after the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914. But in a deeply religious society, there are admittedly not many analysts who will say the British acted in isolation. They had to be prompted by seen and unseen forces. Perhaps. Flowing from this, when the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 climaxed European competition for territory and trade in Africa, the inevitable result could also be attributed to God. If it makes the president happy, this point should be conceded to him.

    Now, the problem is not whether this religious interpretation of colonialism and formation of states is wrong or right; the problem is how easily these same interpreters deny the God factor in the collapse or balkanisation of empires, states and countries. Speaking while receiving the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, William Kumuyi, in Abuja on October 1, President Buhari had used the opportunity of the visit to reiterate his God explanation once more. Said he: “God did not make a mistake when he created over 250 different ethnic groups and decided to put them in a place called Nigeria. We must appreciate God for bringing us together. He knows what he was doing. He didn’t make a mistake.”

    Let it then be accepted that God did not make a mistake. Good. But the same Nigeria had for more than a century experimented with diverse political arrangements, some of them partially colonial, others regional, and yet others pseudo-federal, and still others unitary. Since Nigeria did not start with the present political arrangement after amalgamation, why must it remain stuck with it, especially when it is unstable and unfit for purpose? When the president spoke of the God factor, he was in effect suggesting that no one should question God. Yes, God will not be questioned, but who says advocating other arrangements is ungodly?

    Nigeria will not always remain the way it is. Indeed, no country remains the same forever, no matter how mighty and powerful the country is or how repressive its rulers. Nigeria’s political structure will still change, either within its present territorial construct or outside of it, balkanised peacefully or sundered forcefully. And yes, God will still be behind it, and won’t make a mistake. If He did not make a mistake in breaking up the Babylonian, Grecian, Medes/Persian, and Roman Empires, He wouldn’t also make mistake in rearranging Nigeria or breaking it up. Rulers should stop second-guessing God and blackmailing aggrieved populace. They should stop attributing their laziness in addressing and redressing Nigeria’s structural problems to God.

  • APC wins Osun by the skin of their teeth

    THE Osun State governorship election was concluded after two rounds of voting, the first widely regarded as very credible but stalemated, and the second decisive but thought to be a little controversial. Yet, it was the second round of voting, the rerun in seven polling units, that determined the outcome of the poll. Because the second round saw some pushing and shoving, not many analysts were persuaded to repose absolute confidence in their own observations and conclusions. However, on the whole, given the statistical presentation of the election, the outcome appears in large measure to be a true reflection of both the wishes of the electorate and their opinions of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition challenger, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Some other analysts may even go further to extrapolate a third aspect of the vote to predict the 2019 presidential election.

    First the statistics. Some 1.68m Osun residents registered to vote. About 1.25 of them collected their PVCs. But for one reason or the other more than 500,000 of them did not vote. Out of the about 721,607 who voted validly in both the main and supplementary elections, some 35.41 percent voted for the APC, while about 35.34 percent voted the PDP. It was indeed a nail-biting finish, but one which largely reflected popular will, contrary to the feeling of dissenters. It is indeed very significant that the turnout in both the main and supplementary elections, which could not be rigged ahead of the polls, was 42.89 percent and 42.45 percent respectively. In other words, despite allegations of disenfranchisement and violence, the rerun poll witnessed only a marginal, insignificant drop in turnout.

    Whoever won the poll between APC’s Gboyega Oyetola and Ademola Adeleke would still have needed to moderate his celebration. Not only was the turnout less than 50 percent, though a fair figure when juxtaposed with the turnout during national elections, it is even more humbling when considered against the total number of registered voters and the estimated population of the state. The winner, APC’s Mr Oyetola, persuaded only 15.19 percent of the registered voters, and a miserly 5.11 percent of the state’s estimated population of about five million. (There are no reliable population figures for Nigeria, let alone the state. In 2006, Osun was about 3.4m, and should be more than five million now). With such appalling ratios, it is important for the winner to circumscribe his victory dance despite the euphoria that accompanied his success. His mandate is severely limited both by the smallness of the turnout and by the almost indistinguishable closeness to his challenger’s figure.

    That either the APC or the PDP could have won the poll is a testament to the crazy division bifurcating Osun and the indisputable inability of the outgoing governor to engender a lasting and memorable impact on the state. They indicate that Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s policies, and possibly his style, were quite limiting, controversial, divisive and generally poorly conceived and executed. He and his supporters view his road and school building projects as imperishable legacies. To some extent they are right. He will doubtless be remembered for the many significant projects he undertook in his eight years in office. But considering how he sometimes neutralised his lofty projects by his serial indiscretions — projects at the cost of the people’s welfare, projects at the cost of sound public finance, model schools subverted by renaming and needless mergers, etc — it is not altogether clear that he would have the kind of fame he yearns for.

    Indeed, more than any other factor, Mr Aregbesola nearly lost the election for the APC. They won only by the skin of their teeth. It is suggested that the zoning controversy was an important factor in the closeness of the election outcome, and that imposition was also a critical factor, with Mr Oyetola thought in addition to be lacking in charisma. Perhaps there is some truths in these arguments. But not only did the PDP conspire to make Mr Oyetola’s presumed lack of charisma of no effect whatsoever by their election of the frivolous Mr Adeleke as their candidate, they also managed in the same breath to make the zoning issue of less significance. Instead of focusing on the APC’s rupture of the unwritten zoning arrangement, voters were torn between embracing the more level-headed and thoughtful Mr Oyetola and electing the rotund and passionate dancer who has not offered any coherent idea on any subject, including dancing and drama. No people were ever so poised on the horns of dilemma as the Osun electorate last week. In the end, they stilled their conscience and held their nose and voted, not according to their conscience as it is customarily said, but according to the momentary vacillations of their vexed souls.

    The matter of imposition is a bit more complex. But it is often a flimsy argument. Mr Oyetola is a native of Osun, and he has backers from near and far. He is entitled to his friends. He did not appear to have been imposed on his party when the APC held an incontrovertible direct primary. More importantly, it was inconceivable that he could have been imposed on the people in a statewide election. A study of elections worldwide shows clearly how in some cases friends, families and business partners support one another in local and national elections. If a candidate gets the sponsorship of a big donor, regardless of the preconceived notions about the donor, it is hard to imagine how that amounts to imposition. If a candidate or aspirant is not supported by a big sponsor, he will be supported by a powerful group. If he is not supported by either, he will have to rely on creating a mass movement of voters and angry citizens frustrated by the status quo.

    What in fact made the Osun election to be so uncomfortably close and even controversial was largely Mr Aregbesola. He came into office, not just by a remarkable legal legerdemain, as cynics suggest, but by a popular coalition eager to welcome giant developmental efforts. That coalition saw Mr Argbesola take Ijeshaland in 2011 and significantly too in 2014 by a huge plurality. The Ijesha dominate the civil service and teaching profession. The lack of regular salary payment was bound to affect them and their pensioners more than any other group. The governor’s poor handling of public finance and the chasm which that created between public projects and people’s welfare and well-being were bound to win him enemies. Had the APC taken just one thousand more votes in last week’s poll from Ijeshaland, which would still be considerably less than the margin he took in 2014, there would have been no rerun, let alone a controversy that has raised doubts in the minds of many who argue that the election was stolen.

    Not only did the APC take about 140,000 fewer votes in 2018 than it took in 2014, it lost Atakumosa West, lost Obokun, lost Oriade, lost Ilesha West, managed to win Ilesha East, but won Atakumosa East fairly well. In 2014, the APC won Ilesha East and Ilesha West by a huge vote of more than 31,000 to PDP’s approximate 11,000, took Atakumosa East and Atakumosa West by a vote of more than 28,000 to PDP’s more than 21,000, and cleared both Oriade and Obokun by more than 23,000 to PDP’s about 18,000. The discriminating Ijesha are unlikely to have viewed the more reflective Mr Oyetola with more suspicion than the absolutely less cerebral Mr Adeleke. Nor are they unmindful of the fact that Mr Aregbesola had the same backers as Mr Oyetola. The fault is in the governor, his mercilessly imposing style, his lack of methodicalness in the state’s finances, his fondness for regimentation in the true Cuban, socialist sense, and according to some, his inability to convince a section of Osun that his approach to secularism is not abysmally below par.

    Having recognised that it is coming to office with less plurality than it would have wanted, and in fact more controversy than is healthy, the APC must urgently put together an inclusive government, especially now that they must lie naked in bed and in sultry heat with the hated Iyiola Omisore, the Ife politician whom the progressives, since the assassination of former Justice minister Bola Ige, loved to demonise. Mr Aregbesola did not run an inclusive government, but he was tolerated for as long as possible because the PDP was even more execrable. Nor, it is clear, did he understand the necessity to emplace a cabinet and work together with them, rather than lecturing and hectoring them, having taken more than one year to compose his cabinet in his first term, and about three years to compose a second cabinet in his second term. Mr Oyetola should resist the temptation to think, like the outgoing governor, that he knows everything, or that the knowledge and contributions of a cabinet are superfluous. He needs them, for they will be the key to his success or failure.

    If Mr Oyetola wants to have a second term, and to get it without sweating, everything will depend on how well he performs in his first term, how well he relates with powerful groups in the state as well as the ordinary man, and just how brilliantly he reorganises the state’s almost completely broken public finance. He must again resist the temptation to think in highfalutin terms, dreaming projects the state’s resource base cannot sustain. It is okay to dream; but he needs to recognise that if he cannot find the money to match his dreams, he must opt for more sensible and impactful projects. His priority, at all times, must be the people, a people he must respect, serve, love and empower. Like Mr Aregbesola, most Southwest governors will be rounding up their second terms without having managed to build and mentor the leaders of tomorrow, state leaders and national leaders they needed to have selected and carefully mentored from all corners of their states. Mr Oyetola must break the mould, if he can. But let him learn from his own mentor — Mr Aregbesola was his boss, not his mentor.

    The governor-elect also needs to surround himself with those who can complement his own endowments. There was nothing a few weeks back to show that he ran a cohesive and brilliant campaign. He may have a good heart and a sound mind, but if the campaign he ran is any indication of his administrative acumen, then he will need help in that department, sharp minds and fearless individuals who can help him run a tight-knit administration . Few people were impressed with the campaign he ran, a campaign that gave him an unconvincing and controversial victory. It is true that much of the damage was done by the outgoing governor, but it was within his capacity, had he run a great campaign, to remedy a part of the terrible wrong that assailed his bid for office. As a matter of fact, during the campaign, the governor-elect seemed sometimes overwhelmed, uncoordinated and needlessly hesitant. As his performance in the debate also showed, he had neither the polemical skill needed for the counterthrust of debates nor a deep grasp of the facts to show convincingly that he was a far better candidate than any other. He still towers above the sybaritic Mr Adeleke, and is not hobbled by the dubieties of Mr Omisore, but he won partly because his co-contestants were non-starters. He, therefore, needs to accurately gauge his strengths without being immobilised by his weaknesses.

    The bigger lesson, hopefully, has been learnt by the APC. The national ruling party, this column will continue to maintain, does not possess grand ideas and the democratic principles needed to change the society. It has ruled with the kakistocratic indulgence of religious viziers and proud but pedantic politicians. They had to swallow their pride to get Mr Omisore to turn the Ife votes in their favour. They could easily have lost to a demonstrably inferior candidate. It took them enormous heaving and sweating to take Ekiti from the rambunctious and impolite Governor Ayo Fayose, despite fielding a much intellectually sounder candidate. Even then, the Ekiti victory was still narrow and unconvincing. As the 2019 polls draw near, the APC must ask themselves what messages Ekiti and Osun are telling them. The messages are undoubtedly full of forebodings.

    They have replaced their lethargic party chairman John Odigie-Oyegun with the feisty and sometimes insensitive Adams Oshiomhole, and are consequently running a better party than they used to. They will also field the gritty and abrasive President Muhammadu Buhari because they have no choice, not because they think he has the capacity to take Nigeria through the 21st Century. In 2019, the APC is thus likely to meet an angrier and more determined electorate willing to demand both a pound of flesh and the blood that comes with it.

    But democracy is paradoxically taking roots even within a dysfunctional and unstructured polity. Believing that there is no alternative to democracy, and impoverished and badly educated, but ruled by emotions and the social media, the electorate will more than ever take graver risks by voting candidates into office, some of them morons, and others self-professed messiahs. Mr Adeleke nearly made it into office in Osun, and those who voted for him are not sorry they did; who can tell how many unqualified candidates will make it into high office as the electorate reassert themselves in an atmosphere of rebellion and misshapen ethics, and especially at a time when none of the leading parties has demonstrated fidelity to democratic principles or to any grand plan and ideas necessary to transform society?

     

  • Subterfuge over nomination forms

    SOMEHOW, it has become trendy for top political aspirants to coax their supporters into underwriting the purchase of nomination and expression of interest forms for the 2019 polls. It is the latest subterfuge in town, an indication of the political decline and ethical crisis sending Nigeria’s pampered political elite into a swoon. They were barely through with their indiscriminate defections from one party to another, contemptuous of ideological affinity or how well those parties were run; now by initiating this drama, they suppose themselves adept at fooling everybody. President Muhammadu Buhari and ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar typify this latest display of needless and uniquely Nigerian subterfuge.

    Nigerians are, however, unlikely to be fooled. They know that those milling around the political elite, and applauding their achievements and false sense of importance, were in fact put up to the deception of buying forms. But since the aspirants to high office seem to enjoy the melodrama of nomination forms being bought for them by supposedly selfless and passionate followers, the country has played along shyly, it seems, but nevertheless unquestioningly. The joke is however on the aspirants. The President claimed to have taken a bank loan to buy himself a nomination form in the 2015 election. He gave no indication how he repaid the loan. It would probably feel awkward, he reflected, for a president who has had more than three years in office to take another bank loan to buy nomination and expression of interest forms. So a different device had to be procured. And what better stratagem than a public display of popular and selfless, if not fanatical, support. It is sheer political drama.

    The former vice president was even more mawkish. Probably relieved and overjoyed that his men had matched the president’s, the tearful Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) aspirant publicly welcomed the show of affection by supporters who procured the forms for him as a love offering. Since the president and former vice president set those unfortunate examples, a few governorship aspirants and other aspirants to legislative offices have also mined that sentimental hogwash to convince a wary public that the widespread support they claimed, evidenced by the purchase of nomination forms by excited supporters, should not be belittled. It is possible that all the aspirants who have had forms bought for them so far are popular; but since no one can tell what artful devices they would not mind deploying in their political struggles, the public would prefer not to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Alhaji Abubakar is widely believed to be at peace with the wealth he has made, and has never once apologised for it, nor pretended to be averse to luxuriating in it. Even those who have tried to make him feel guilty about his wealth have met with short shrift. He should be commended for his forthrightness, regardless of whether anyone finds it offensive or not. But President Buhari has all his life apologised on behalf of the wealthy while not being incommoded by, nor averse to, their excessive generosity. Parsimonious, contemptuous of wealth at least on the surface, and censorious about its origins, it is perplexing indeed that he has sometimes put himself at the receiving end of people’s generosities. If Alhaji Abubakar saw nothing amiss in his supporters’ donations, seeing that he himself is no stranger to both generosity and sacrifice, no one should blame him for not denouncing prohibitive nomination fees.

    On the other hand, not only is President Buhari alarmed by wealth, a strange feeling not assuaged by reason or economics, he is head of a government that is in a position to set standards for reasonable behaviour in setting nomination fees. To suggest that a high fee of N45m would discourage frivolous aspiration is absolute buncombe. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) cannot claim that managing some 100 aspirants, if it came to that, would befuddle its famed administrative ability, especially with the scathing and sometimes sardonic Adams Oshiomhole in the saddle. It is clear that as far as the president and Nigeria’s leading elite see it, anyone who wants to run for the presidency should put his money where his mouth is.

    What is even far more worrisome is that if the elite could not manage the ethical nuance of prohibitive nomination fees and the damaging effect of poor intra- and interparty relationships in a poorly regulated electoral environment, how can they ever be trusted with something much higher, say, leadership? In 2009, a former American ambassador to Nigeria, Princeton Lyman, remarked at a colloquium organised in the United States in honour of Chinua Achebe that Nigeria’s elite were both incapable of managing the wealth of Nigeria and were tentative about its future. The ambassador is widely and repeatedly quoted for warning that Nigeria was running itself into a cul-de-sac, even total irrelevance. His warnings then and now retain enough urgency and potency, but they have been largely ignored.

    Among other poignant observations, Ambassador Lyman had advocated: “…Among much of the elite today, I have the feeling that there is a belief that Nigeria is too big to fail, too important to be ignored, and that Nigerians can go on ignoring some of the most fundamental challenges they have, many of which we have talked about: disgraceful lack of infrastructure, the growing problems of unemployment, the failure to deal with the underlying problems in the Niger-Delta, the failure to consolidate  democracy and somehow feel will remain important to everybody because of all those reasons that are strategically important. And I am not sure that that is helpful.”

    He continued: “So if you look ahead ten years, is Nigeria really going to be that relevant as a major oil producer, or just another of the many oil producers, while the world moves on to alternative sources of energy and other sources of supply. And what about its influence, its contributions to the continent?  As our representative from the parliament talked about, there is a great history of those contributions. But that is history.  Is Nigeria really playing a major role today in the crisis in Niger Republic on its border, or in Guinea, or in Darfur,  or after many promises, making any contributions to Somalia? The answer is no, Nigeria is today NOT making a major impact, on its region, or on the African Union, or on the big problems of Africa that it was making before. What about its economic influence?”

    After about 19 years of imperfect democracy, Nigeria is still not any nearer peaceful polling, or even the observance of the rule of law, or sane, consistent and coherent economic policies, indeed public policy as a whole, or the enactment and execution of patriotic and nationalistic measures that bind the country together, defuse tension, reduce hate and suspicion, and harness the country’s huge potentials for development in a restructured polity. Instead, divisions have widened, with much of the country unsure whether the president is not himself, by his strange appointments, deliberately widening the rifts into an insurmountable chasm. It used to be thought that some of the presidency’s self-imposed problems like the intransigent National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) boss, and the replacement of a southerner director general of the Department of State Service (DSS) with a northerner were unforced errors. Now, it is believed in many circles that the many ills plaguing the Buhari presidency are probably orchestrated, a product of design rather than incompetence.

    Even the rather simple matter of restructuring, as the recent unproductive arguments between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and former vice president Abubakar indicated, has been dichotomously upgraded into an incomprehensible logjam where fiscal federalism is differentiated from geographical restructuring. Nigeria’s elite can’t get more inscrutable. To worsen the quagmire, at the rate the Buhari presidency insatiably gorges on foreign loans to rebuild broken infrastructure, Nigeria may find itself entangled in another debt trap not many years after it managed to exit one. The simple truth is that Nigeria’s elite is truly and unquestionably irresponsible, gross, short-sighted and ignorant. The Buhari presidency should not fool itself to think it is different or that it has come on a rescue mission. It is merely a variant of its predecessors. It may not be as grasping as those who came before it, even though that conclusion is controversial, but it is probably as unenlightened and perhaps more sanctimonious.

    Ambassador Lyman is right to suggest that Nigeria is pushing itself into irrelevance. If its domestic policies do not fully reflect this thesis, it is simply because its foreign policies strikingly tower above everything else in amateurishness and mendacity. As the ambassador says, Nigeria keeps referring to itself in grand statements and labels but without doing anything to present itself as a “good model for democracy or a good model for governance.” As he put it more than nine years ago, which conclusion is sadly still true today, “What does it mean that one in five Africans is Nigerian? It does not mean anything to a Namibian or a South African.  It is a kind of conceit.  What makes it important is what is happening to the people of Nigeria. Are their talents being tapped? Are they becoming an economic force? Is all that potential being used? And the answer is ‘Not really.’ ”

    There will still be more defections as politicians dizzyingly crisscross political parties, more brazen subterfuges about nomination forms, huger disrespect for the rule of law or make it subordinate to vaguely and puerilely defined national security interest, greater misuse of state power particularly by the uncontrollable secret service, and an obscene misconception of the presidency as an archaic or even atavistic monarchy. It is a horrifying regression to the past, exemplified by disingenuous purchase of nomination forms and cynical manipulation of appointments. In 1940, Britain needed the miracle at Dunkirk to keep its World War II hopes alive; more than at any time in its chequered history, Nigeria needs a bigger miracle to keep breathing. Yet the power elite do not even realise how precarious the situation had become.

  • Parties, second term and zoning dynamics

    NIGERIAN politicians have not given any indication that they are prepared to grapple with the problem of how zoning and second term struggles skew both political development and the entrenchment of democracy. It requires enormous courage to grapple with these issues. Most states have factored the governorship seat to rotate between their senatorial districts in order to, as they imagine, engender inclusive politics. On the surface, this means every district will not feel left out. This artificiality, it has turned out, is executed right down the line, even to state legislative seats. Of course, despite its many embarrassing lacunas, including its presumptive and encapsulating opening declaration, the constitution is smart enough not to attempt to enthrone rotation or zoning as a principle of power sharing.

    But because of the aggressive and often bitter competition for office between Nigeria’s major ethnic groups, or the now more convenient geopolitical zones, political parties have instituted an informal, extra-constitutional arrangement for rotating power. Both the informality of the rotation and the zoning arrangement itself do not indicate depth of thinking, but zoning has seemed to serve the country somewhat gingerly well. It is short-sighted; yet this device has now been taken as a political constant, a given with which the political class appears to be at peace. That such an offensive device has further complicated and subverted the intention behind the principle of zoning is severely ignored by politicians hungry for office.

    Take, for example, the office of the president. It does not matter whether at a given time a geopolitical zone has produced a very competent and charismatic aspirant; once his zone is not expected to produce the president, none of the major parties would give him a hearing, let alone a chance. Worse, even after the ‘right’ zone has produced a president, his zone and his supporters would still insist he must serve a second term regardless of his demonstrable lack of capacity, and lack of judgement and charisma. The same disease afflicts the governorship position, and to some extent other legislative positions. No one has successfully argued why a president or governor must be given a second term simply because it is the turn of his zone. Why not limit the irrational formula to only one term, with the second term plausible only because that elected person had shown proof of incomparability?

    In 2019, notwithstanding the accolades heaped on him by his fanatical supporters, or his demonstrable lack of capacity as ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo put it, President Buhari of the APC will be presented by his party both because they see him as the man to beat and because every zone that produces a president is expected willy-nilly to complete two terms. This farrago of nonsense is now hardening the arteries of Nigerian politics, and the country may have to contend with that sclerosis for a long time to come.

    The saner issue of a polity amply and foresightedly restructured to endure for centuries, and to help unleash the potential of the people in an atmosphere of healthy competition and peace, is completely subordinated to the cause of maintaining artificial and untenable balance. It does not matter to the people that a second term should be earned only to the extent that a more energetic and endowed visionary from another zone could not be found. In fact, the country, and particularly the APC, seems eager to sacrifice the pruning fork of presidential debate necessary to help the electorate assess the ideas and capacity of a candidate. But they must be compelled to debate and showcase their talents.

    No thought has been paid to the frustrating fact that Nigeria is running out of time to reinvent itself. Nigerian leaders and politicians seemed to have embraced the unhistorical argument that the country will endure forever because God, not the British, put it together, and that no amount of incompetence and elite indolence could cause it to unravel. If their celestial logic is right, perhaps they should tell the country who put the Roman Empire, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, British Empire, and other great empires, together. Engrossed in such nonsensical logic, Nigerian leaders have abdicated their responsibility to the nation, a responsibility that should see them genuinely searching for political and economic formulae to cobble together a fairly perfect union, a union not run along intolerably expensive lines and superfluous number of elected officials.

    The zoning perversion and all its attendant support organs will predominate in 2019. But this atrociousness will only guarantee, both in the states and at the centre, that mostly the wrong people will be elected or re-elected into office. They will rule like monarchs, scoff at democracy and the rule of law, waffle over the concept of restructuring which they have imbued with dozens of facile interpretations, and fiddle with jaded developmental paradigms that are neither original and coherent nor sustainable without foreign loans and foreign dictation and goodwill.

  • Flagging zeal of anti- Buhari coalition , Obasanjo

    WHEN ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo issued a scathing statement in January denouncing President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term ambition, he hoped to capitalise on the wave of discontent against the president by forming a coalition to engineer a groundswell of opposition to the government. He had noted exaggeratingly that the biggest opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was racked by division and acrimony. The scathing statement was well received, and its content fairly accurately captured the mood of the country. The former president’s analysis, his identification of the problems that beset the government, and the despair into which the country had sunk as a consequence of the hardship they were called to endure presented a sensible portrayal of the weaknesses and lethargy of the Buhari presidency.

    Chief Obasanjo’s enthusiasm was not only effervescent, it was even mildly infectious. His conclusion soared to great heights despite its obtuseness: “I, therefore, will gladly join such a Movement,” he said of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement which he was inspiring, “when one is established as Coalition for Nigeria, CN, taking Nigeria to the height God has created it to be. From now on, the Nigeria eagle must continue to soar and fly high. CN, as a Movement, will be new, green, transparent and must remain clean and always active, selflessly so.  Members must be ready to make sacrifice for the nation and pay the price of being pioneers and good Nigerians for our country to play the God-assigned role for itself, for its neighbours, for its sub-region of West Africa, for its continent and for humanity in general.  For me, the strength and sustainable success of CN will derive largely from the strong commitment of a population that is constantly mobilized to the rallying platform of the fact that going forward together is our best option for building a nation that will occupy its deserved place in the global community…”

    Determined to give the project a great push, the former president, in May, got the movement to adopt one of the registered political parties in the country, with a promise to henceforth take the back seat. Again, displaying unrestrained excitement, and still believing he was letting loose a momentum which no one could stop, let alone President Buhari whom he dismissed as somnolent and nepotistic, he addressed the press to announce the adoption he had in January given indication might be done. Said he in May: “Once again, I congratulate all members of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement, all the political parties and civil society organisations that have adopted African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a political party platform to move Nigeria up and forward and I wish them success for now and the future. The eyes of the nation and the world are on you to show that with people and organisation of like mind, a real difference is possible and you will make it. I wish you well. But always remember that Nigeria belongs to you as it belongs to those in power. If you fail to use the potent weapon democracy offers you, and that is your vote, then you have yourselves to blame. You can move on to the next stage in the democratic advance for change, unity, security, stability, good governance, prosperity and progress. So may it be for Nigeria.”

    By May when the adoption was done, it was already becoming somewhat clear to him and many others that his understanding of the gravity of the country’s problems and his estimation of his own strength and political capital were both overstated and overdone. In January, he was of two minds: to get his newfangled coalition to form a critical mass and become the fulcrum of opposition to the Buhari presidency; or to eventually adopt a political party untainted and untrammelled by the vagaries and corruption of the past. But by May, realising that no such critical mass was likely or even conceivable, he and his supporters had become desperate to save face by seeking to operate within the confines of an existing but perhaps innocent party. A few months later, however, with President Buhari’s sullied managerial and leadership image defying gravity and all kinds of ineffective handling of national crises, Chief Obasanjo’s voice had begun to lose oomph, and his customary and feared acerbity also began to wane. Now, together with those who vehemently despise the president’s controversial methods and clannish disposition, the former president has begun to yield to despair.

    Opposing the populist President Buhari was always fraught with difficulties. He has a cultic following in some parts of the country based on the general impression of his parsimoniousness. And though he proclaimed his independence at his inauguration, he has in fact been appropriated by a few cabals and sections of the country, most of whom can’t imagine life without him. To the dismay of the rest of the country, that cultic following will last for a long time. In addition, going by the simplicity of his ideas, the vexatious appeal of his gaffes, and his quaint and misplaced imageries, his supporters have found themselves strangely not alarmed by his person or put off by the dissonance in his uncomplicated ideas. Against such a man, the more complex, workaholic, and imposing Chief Obasanjo was going to have it tough going. Chief Obasanjo made sense in his January statement, and even more sense in his May press address, but the public had since learnt not to distill his enviable but apparently mainly theoretical ideals from his person. No matter how beautiful his ideas, it was bad enough that they came from him; he of indefensible superior airs, he who has never been able to propound a thought and inspire a policy without some hidden ulterior motives.

    This is of course wrong. In order for the country not to keep cutting its nose to spite its face, the public must learn to disentangle Chief Obasanjo’s person and offensive politics from his sometimes wise and practical interventions, notwithstanding his suspicious intentions. It is indisputable that President Buhari does not inspire confidence in his approach to national issues, shows a disturbing lack of capacity in economic management and consensus building, finds the great underpinnings of democracy too complex to embrace, and has a very narrow understanding of national diversity and how to manage it. These were some of the things Chief Obasanjo pointed out in his statement and press conference. What undid him, however, were his suspect motives and his unmanageable personality.

    If the former president had not been so cocksure about everything and had taken advice, he would have made his interventions without offering to champion the liberation of the people. Not only is he no liberator, he surely must sense that much of the country’s problems could be traced to his acts of omission and commission, not to say his abysmal lack of understanding of the tenets of democracy. Now, some eight months or so after he offered to emancipate the country from the parochial clutches of the Buhari presidency, Chief Obasanjo’s enthusiasm has waned very badly, and both the ADC and his Coalition for Nigeria are nearly moribund. Nigeria is rightly, if not sensibly, back to its default mould where the All Progressives Congress (APC) is expected to join battle soon with the PDP. If he cannot worm his way back into the party he spectacularly and openly repudiated some years ago, and if ultimately President Buhari wins re-election, Chief Obasanjo would be hard put to find any sizable relevance beyond occasional epistolary nuisance and verbal intimidation.

    The country must now wait with bated breath to find out which of the two main parties is able, by their objectionable recourse to amoral politics, to outplay and outmanoeuvre the other. They have matched each other defection for defection once it was clear that the PDP could not deliver the death blow the APC managed to deliver before the last general election, and they have both been unscrupulous, loud, insensitive and unprincipled. The country will face a Hobson’s choice in 2019, between a party boasting an intransigent and ancient leader and a party boasting a collegial leadership style that neither promises much nor possesses the capacity to deliver much. As every sailor knows, sailing between a rock and a hard place is not the kind of naval adventure that often envisions safe berthing, not to talk of great national rebirth.

  • Nigeria not cautious enough on China

    LIKE the rest of Africa grandly taken in by Chinese loans and grants, Nigeria has kept up a dizzying appetite for external borrowing from the Asian economic powerhouse. At the rate it is going, and considering that it already owes over $3bn to China and is negotiating a further $3.5bn from the same source, Nigeria’s indebtedness to China may create future problems for its domestic and external political and economic relations. Loans are after all not just about economics alone. China has asserted that it is different from the probing and censorious Western democracies whose patrician airs grate badly on the nerves of developing countries, and that it has little wish to meddle in the internal affairs of African countries. In reality, however, as some southern African countries like Zambia and Tanzania have discovered, China has some strange and insidious methods of throttling its debtors.

    There is no free lunch anywhere. If China gives loans, it will emplace strictures and future national goals in those credits to maximise benefits for the Chinese people. At the recently concluded summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China announced a further $60bn financing for infrastructural projects and aids in Africa. Some $15bn of the loans, China further explained, would be grants or interest-free or concessional. African leaders were ecstatic that at last they were getting help from a country that is peculiarly uninterested in their political systems or their moral integrity, or fussy about accountability and transparency. Nigeria, like the rest of Africa, is now enthusiastically looking eastward. That new direction agrees with their worldview, economic opacity, and low drive for economic independence.

    Zambia and Tanzania are examples of the difficulties dependent countries experience in the drive for Chinese funds. Their copper and gold mines, in which China has invested heavily, have exhibited poor financial and operational standards, difficult management-labour relations sometimes ending in violence and complicity by the governments of the host countries, and appalling legal lacunas. China is now heavily involved in the Nigerian economy, and sadly, the government gives little room for reflection or debate as to the propriety of the loans and investments, or where boundaries must be drawn, as Malaysia recently and sensibly did. With a National Assembly unsettled by controversy and integrity deficit, it is not clear that a thorough oversight can be done on those loans and investments to avoid the pitfalls both Zambia and Tanzania, for example, have experienced.

    Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is good. But in Nigeria where the regulatory environment is notoriously slack, and where foreigners are treated with excessive indulgence, care must be taken to avoid pushing the country into another debt trap and insidious colonialism. The fears are deep and genuine, not only for Nigeria, but also for the rest of Africa. Few questions are asked, and because African leaders have become less perceptive or intellectually astute than the independence/founding leaders, it is not clear altogether that enough care would be taken to avoid mortgaging the future.

    Even worse is the fact that African leaders are as insensitive and superficial as they are easily flattered and undiscriminating. In 2011, destitute of national and continental pride, they accepted a donation of a brand new $200m headquarters in Addis Ababa built by China. It is the only continent and power bloc that threw out the pride of a whole people to accept such indecorous donation. China-Africa trade has reached over $165bn. It is significant and valuable; but the devil is in the detail. China built up and modernise its economy beginning with Deng Xiaoping. It has managed to produce a slew of brilliant and patriotic leaders to consolidate their economic miracle and transformation. What is needed in Africa is not the mindless dependence on loans and grants from China or any other country for that matter, but an assembly of great, successive and imaginative leaders imbued with the strength of character, brilliance and vision to plot a continental economic miracle and transformation. Neither Nigeria nor any other African country has demonstrated such qualities.

    Meanwhile, it is time the legislature and other knowledgeable Nigerian leaders and economists began joining issues with the government. It must not be given the free rein to beguile the country into another debt trap or economic and power arrangements that bode ill for future generations. Coming out of a debt trap to the West, and having managed to wean the continent off the political and inconsistent staple of the industrialised democracies, it would be galling indeed to replace one master with another, or enter into a fresh slavery as pernicious as the ones being enacted by the youths of the continent in search of green pastures. Instead of being beholden to the Asian Tigers, why can African leaders not produce African Tigers? Let them instead strive for equality; let them create political systems that can rival any in the world; let them, if they can, exhibit patriotic and self-confident glow. Enough of the grovelling and humiliation.

     

  • Buhari presidency wrong on rule of law versus national security

    AFTER scorning many court orders in the trials of Messrs Sambo Dasuki and Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, and keeping them locked up for years, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has finally found the courage and legal precedent to justify its negative disposition to the rule of law. Speaking at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) annual conference in Abuja, President Buhari quoted a decision of the Supreme Court that seemed to approve the subordination of human and individual rights to national security interest. Predictably, the president’s statement has become deeply controversial because it appeared, at first view, to be constitutionally right and legally sound. But the devil is in the detail. Not only has the Buhari presidency consistently acted mala fide on the matter of rule of law and personal liberties, considering that it is a government apparently incapable of differentiating national security from private (government) interest, the legal justification cited by the presidency is jurisprudentially inexact and contextually fraudulent.

    It is not clear why it has taken more than three years for the Buhari presidency to find grounds for its disobedience of court orders. But, well, finally it has found some tenuous reasons, and has deployed them obscenely and awkwardly before the public. Citing both the provisions of the constitution and the decision by the apex court, the president loudly proclaimed that the rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest. He added: “Our apex court has had cause to adopt a position on this issue in this regard and it is now a matter of judicial recognition that where national security and public interest are threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly  responsible must take second place in favour of the greater good of society.” Even though the president did not attribute the relevant quote to any of the justices of the Supreme Court, and the Justice minister himself who last July flew that dangerous kite of subordinating civil liberties to national security also shied away from direct attribution, the apex court ruling in question was read by Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, Justice of the Supreme Court, in the 2007 bail case between Dokubo-Asari (Appellant) and the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Respondent).

    The presidency’s adoption of that so-called Supreme Court position and citation was dishonest. It was a ruling alright, but it was in respect of the specific bail application by Dokubo-Asari who was detained over allegations of treasonable felony. The self-proclaimed militant had signed a document in company with others threatening to foment armed rebellion against the state over oil politics. It is well known to the presidency that lower courts do not as a routine cite the decisions of appellate courts as precedents in bail cases since bail cases are discretionary and differ from one case to another. So, to cavalierly hurl a quotation from a Supreme Court judgement in the public face and give the impression it should serve as a precedent for all bail cases is awkward and dishonest. In the Dokubo-Asari bail case decided in 2007, he faced allegations of treasonable felony. In the cases the Buhari presidency is apparently retroactively struggling to find justifications, to wit, Col Dasuki (retd.) and Sheikh El-Zakzaky, and in the process unwisely endangering the country’s democracy, one is in respect of corruption, and the other is in respect of murder and breach of public peace.

    When Justice Muhammad gave his ruling in 2007, a decision horribly quoted out of context by the Buhari presidency, he never gave the indication that it was applicable to all bail cases. He couldn’t have. But apparently Justice Muhammad’s ruling strikes a chord in the heart of the Buhari presidency. Notwithstanding, the judgement in question in the Dokubo-Asari case, even though not universally applicable, was irreproachable. (See box 2 for excerpts). It is only being mishandled and cruelly dragged into the wrong, suspicious cause.

    It is one thing for the presidency to find justification for flouting court orders, latching on inelegantly and dishonestly to the Justice Muhammad ruling; it is quite another thing to show why that disobedience must ineluctably lead the presidency to indulge in self-help. Whether in the Justice Muhammad ruling or any other ruling whatsoever in any Nigerian court, there was never a time the authority to determine what is in the national security interest was ceded to the presidency or the executive. Never. So, even if the Buhari presidency read the Justice Muhammad ruling accurately with all its nuances and legalisms — and it didn’t anyway, because it couldn’t — there was nowhere in that judgement that the right to abridge or abrogate the rights of an accused was left in the hands of the agents of government or the government itself. The president’s address read before the nation’s judicial experts was most unfortunate. It lacked rigour, is short-sighted, does not envision a great and powerful future, and cannot and must not be defended by any legal mind whether working in government or outside of government. What is most disturbingly true is that the Buhari presidency is instinctively autocratic and has struggled unsuccessfully for many years to exorcise itself of that dangerous antidemocratic instinct that seems fated to negatively define this presidency. It tried the Col Dasuki matter in the media, found him guilty, labelled him a serial killer of hundreds of thousands through corruption and criminal negligence, and expected that the gullible public already suffused with emotions and hysteria would embrace its quaint judicial procedure. It has half succeeded, undoubtedly, but there are still enough Nigerians in possession of their minds to question and caution the Buhari presidency’s lurch towards dictatorship.

    In sum, President Buhari is wrong on his reading and understanding of the quoted Justice Muhammad judgement, and wronger still on assuming that only the executive should decide what is in the national security interest. The courts now and in the past never abdicated their responsibility to determine who fouled the law. They will not abdicate that responsibility in the future. Nor will the constitution, even in its ambiguous worst, ever cede that right to the executive. As the excerpts below indicate, especially during the golden age of the Supreme Court, there are enough judgements to illustrate why the rule of law must never be subordinated to the arbitrary whims of the executive, regardless of the threat to national security.

    It is shocking and disturbing that the Justice minister, Abubakar Malami, in July flew this horrifying kite of subordinating the rule of law to national security at the behest and say-so of the executive. Because he was not vigorously challenged at the time, and conspiratorially knowing that President Buhari was instantly and eagerly amenable to any thought, law, or precedent that promotes his general disposition to autocracy, he obviously convinced the president that the unlawful and unconstitutional actions against Messrs Dasuki and El-Zakzaky were tenable under the law as presumably interpreted by the apex court. It is disgraceful that there are no longer enough men of conscience in the country to pressure the government to obey the law. And if a few months to the next polls President Buhari can openly embrace a hideous interpretation of the law, the country must wonder what other legal monstrosities he would embrace after he must have been endorsed a second time.

    It is clear that little debate is being undertaken in the presidency. If the president’s position on the rule of law is a collective government decision, then the country is just a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship. Neither the law nor the constitution permits the president to judge with finality when a citizen has breached national security. That the president has appropriated that right and is seeking validation should shame the country into finally seeing the Dasuki and El-Zakzaky affairs as nothing more than the boondoggle the presidency wants them to be. If the National Assembly did not have a legitimacy deficit in the eyes of the public, if legislative leaders lived and operated above suspicion, it would have been far easier to determine that the president has breached the constitution he swore to protect and defend. But regardless of this little difficulty, Nigerians must rise as one to demand unquestionable adherence to the rule of law. It is Col. Dasuki (retd.) and Sheikh El-Zakzaky today; who can tell whose turn it will be tomorrow?

  • Supremacy of the rule of law. Excerpts from the judgement delivered in the case:MILITARY GOVERNOR, LAGOS STATE & ORS. V CHIEF EMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU (1986)

    Kayode ESO, JSC: [P. 1798, paras. D – E]

    “ANOTHER very important matter emanates from the act of the applicants. They have no right to take the matter into their own hands once the court was seised of it. The essence of rule of law is that it should never operate under the rule of force or fear. To use force, seek the court’s equity, is an attempt to infuse timidity into court and operate a sabotage of cherished rule of law. It must never be!”

    Andrews OBASEKI, JSC: [P. 1799, paras. C – E]

    “In the area where rule of law operates, the rule of self-help by force is abandoned. Nigeria, being one of the countries in the world, even in the third world, which profess loudly to follow the rule of law, gives no room for the rule of self-help by force to operate. Once a dispute has arisen between a person and the government or authority, and the dispute has been brought before the court, thereby invoking the judicial powers of the state, it is the duty of the government to allow the law to take its course or allow the legal and judicial powers of the state (…) it is the duty of the government to allow the law to take its course or allow the legal and judicial process to run its full course. The action the Lagos State Government took can have no other interpretation than the show of intention to preempt the decision of the court. The courts expect the utmost respect of the law from the government itself which rules by the law.”

    Andrews OBASEKI, JSC: [P. 1802, paras. B – E]

    “I will be doing injustice to the course of the rule of law if I grant this application and allow the eviction of the respondent to stand. The Nigerian Constitution is founded on the rule of law, the primary meaning of which is that everything must be done according to law. It means also that government should be conducted within the framework of recognised rules and principles which restrict discretionary power which Coke colourfully spoke of as “golden

  • Walking president versus talking PDP

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari last Thursday felt the urgency to walk back a statement attributed to one of his spokesmen suggesting that his 800m walk in Daura on Tuesday proved he was in fine fettle. His long walk, he snorted, was designed for a different purpose altogether, not the annoying and presumptive reasons bandied about in the media. The media had published, based on statements emanating from the presidency, that the president’s walk was a demonstration of his fitness for the coming presidential race. Before the great trek, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State had made oblique reference to age and health as probably militating factors in the president’s 2019 re-election ambition. But in the eyes of Garba Shehu, a presidential spokesman, the president’s 800m walk aptly disproved Mallam Tambuwal’s suppositions.

    Whether the president’s walk back on the statement will convince anyone is uncertain. In the press statement issued by Mallam Shehu, he had indicated the purpose of the 800m walk: “I think there are two things here: one is to say that the President is responsive to the enormous support and commitment of his own people who had come out in their numbers to see him and he just decided that he couldn’t go on riding in a black vehicle and he came out and walked the distance. The second thing is that he is curious that these days, one or two people who are aspiring to be President are campaigning on their youthfulness and good health. I think the President has done one thing today  that the issue is not how old one is but how fit he is; how healthy he is. Now that the President has proven his fitness and well-being, to continue in office is a settled matter…The President is fit, he is healthy; he is good to go for the second term.”

    His eagerness to prove that the president is as fit as a fiddle can be understood when juxtaposed with Mallam Tambuwal’s restrained but nevertheless terse reference to the president’s general debility. The Sokoto governor had insinuated, complete with a short treatise on leadership, that a more vibrant and healthy person was needed in Aso Villa. Said the governor: “President Muhammadu Buhari is just too old to be Nigeria’s leader, despite his integrity and impeccable character. We love President Buhari and that was why we supported him in 2015 unconditionally…But when things are wrong, we have to tell him. We still believe in his integrity, patriotism and courage, but these are not enough for a leader. We all know that there is a vacuum in the government occasioned by his indisposition probably because of his old age or health condition. That is why Nigerians are yearning for younger ones to lead this country.”

    But alarmed that his spokesman’s statement was being interpreted in a way that probably boded ill for his second term ambition, the president on Tuesday openly debunked the insinuations surrounding his long walk when he received representatives of the five local governments in Daura Emirate during the Sallah festivities. It was the undistinguished task of Mallam Garba to again publicise the clarifications. Said the president: “Much has been said about my walk in Daura a few days ago. I didn’t do it to prove my fitness to anybody. The people of my constituency came out in large numbers to see me, and the car in which I was had tinted windows. So I decided to come out of the car so that people could see me. People who know me know that I am not given to getting cheap political points. The crowd in Daura was not seeing me so I came out of the car so they could see me. I didn’t and don’t need to walk to convince anyone about my health and the decision to contest for a second term.”

    The opposition, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has been unsparing. A leading contender for the PDP presidential ticket, former vice president Atiku Abubakar sneered that he regularly jogged more than a mile, but would never think of seeking votes because of his athleticism. In his estimation, walk is quite different from work. He puts it very elegantly in a tweet: “I want my party  the PDP, and Nigerians, to vote for me because I WORK not because I WALK. I will work to create jobs. I won’t walk to create an illusion.” In the past one year or so, the PDP has been very motivated to talk rather than do, or, as President Buhari has demonstrated, walk or even work. More than the former vice president, the PDP national chairman, in a remark laden with scorn and innuendoes, was even more excoriating. He said: “A mere walk of 800 metres by the President was not enough to determine his health status and ability. When does a mere walk become readiness of someone to lead? Why celebrate a mere walk of 800 metres? Was the President on a wheelchair before? Why treat him like a child who was just learning how to walk? Is Nigeria or are Nigerians looking for walkers to lead them or someone who has the capacity to lead and tackle their problems? Now, is that what Nigeria has become? Just that someone claimed he walked 800 metres, he is good to go. When he was younger, about two or three years ago, we saw his capacity. Is it now that he is old, hardly reads and hardly grants interviews that he would do better? No, tell them that what we need is not what he is offering us.  Nigerians deserve more and he needs to do more to convince us that he can lead for the next four years.”

    All manner of politicians and opposition leaders have since weighed in on the matter, nearly all of them pummelling the president’s so-called emblematic walk. Few also seemed taken in by the president’s walk back on the tenuous connections. They believed Mallam Garba’s first statement linking the president’s walk to his fitness and readiness for the rigours of election and office duty. After all, in the original statement by the spokesman, he also suggested that the president walked that distance in order to bond with his customers. And what is more, if Nigerians are not questioning the length of the walk, some 800m as presidency officials glibly said, why would they question the motive? That the president emphasised only the issue of bonding with his admirers as motive for the walk is, to critics, obviously not enough to dissuade them from running away with the impression that the presidency treats the issue of leadership much more cavalierly than first feared.

    Regardless of the scornful remarks that followed the president’s great trek, and the president’s own desperate walk back on the motive behind the exercise, the presidency must still contend with the issue of the president’s health in the coming weeks. He will probably be crowned in September as the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard- bearer for the 2019 presidential election. He will then need to campaign, but he will probably campaign in a novel manner that manages effort and conserves stamina. As the disbelieving and rueful Mr Secondus suggests, however, the president will probably be reticent on the hustings. “We will soon see the healthy and strong president addressing rallies for fewer minutes to demonstrate that he is healthy,” he mocks. The APC may in fact be called upon to outsource part of its presidential campaigns, if the president’s medical antecedents are anything to go by. But when that happens, the party will find innovative ways of portraying that bewitching and unorthodox style as a global and fashionable trend. Who knows, they may again get away with murder.

    But while the APC will be contending with persistent concerns over the president’s health and the many failings of his presidency, style and policies alike, the PDP will be battling to translate its exuberant ability to talk nineteen to the dozen. Since its spectacular defeat in the 2015 polls, a trouncing that seemed to have sapped the party of both its physical vitality and mental acumen, the PDP has spoken blithely of its leadership potentials but has done precious little to bring them to birth, whether they concerned its administrative endowments or ideological backbone. So far, unfortunately, they have not managed to indicate by a purge of their ranks or by the acquisition of new ideas and methods that if given the chance again, their staid and suffocating leaders would trump the ossified Buhari presidency. How the PDP wishes to talk its way into victory against the cultic personality of the APC president, the vociferousness of the hysterical Adams Oshiomhole, APC chairman, and the intransigent and sometimes hyperbolic Lai Mohammed, Information minister, is hard to say.

    More depressingly, the PDP will face the dilemma of a befuddled southern part of Nigeria weighing the options of four more tolerable years of President Buhari against probably eight years of any other PDP candidate from the North. The pro-Buhari campaigners seem to sense this southern quandary, and are satisfied that if they can keep offering the electorate the meretricious ornamentation of presidential walks and some other such flimsy articles, nothing oratorically brilliant the PDP can offer will stymie the ruling party’s chances in 2019. If the PDP realises this deathly dilemma, minus perhaps the dour and gritty Alhaji Abubakar who seems to know a little of everything, nothing indicates that their fine rhetoric has addressed it at all.

  • Ajimobi, Ayefele and the Music House demolition

    WHEN he met with gospel musician and proprietor of Fresh FM radio station Yinka Ayefele in company with the Alafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, and other traditional rulers last Thursday over the state’s demolition of Music House, Governor Abiola Ajimobi found it difficult to dispel the notion that he ordered the demolition for political reasons. Fresh FM is owned by Mr Ayefele and it is located in the controversial and now partly demolished building in Ibadan. The building, according to state government officials, contravened building approval laws. It was partially brought down early last Sunday. Since then, the demolition has become deeply controversial, with Mr Ayefele feeling offended by both the short demolition notice he was given and the demolition itself, and the government sticking to its guns that it took the right steps to protect the interest of the public and the rule of law.

    There are indications Mr Ayefele’s Music House contravened building approval and town planning laws, and the musician himself has quibbled somewhat in debunking the government’s arguments. But there are also indications that the government’s position was corrupted by extraneous considerations. Even if critics ignore Mr Ayefele’s allegations that that the demolition was politically motivated, the governor subsequently provided enough clues to corroborate that unseemly conclusion. The musician alleged that government officials had repeatedly complained about the harsh commentaries broadcast on Fresh FM, and had sought a cessation or amelioration of the apparently unfavourable commentaries. But so far, no one has provided proof, written or taped, to substantiate that allegation.

    However, the ultimate proof that some politics might be involved in the controversy and the demolition was Mr Ajimobi’s response to Mr Ayefele’s observations during the conciliation meeting attended by the aforesaid traditional rulers. The Nigerian Tribune newspaper quoted the governor as saying the following: “Basically, he (Ayefele) has stated his case and I then agreed that I will let my people discuss with him. Let them see areas of conflict and look for the possibility of reconciliation. But above all, I told him that any entrepreneur must always be, at worst, neutral when it comes to politics. They should not venture into political arena. They should be the friends of all and work with all.” It is not clear where Mr Ajimobi got the impression that an entrepreneur must be apolitical, let alone a media establishment, or which law or constitution prohibits politicking by any entrepreneur, and which law empowers a political leader to demand what the law and constitution do not demand.

    Mr Ajimobi is not often diplomatic in his statements, nor, as it became evident from the interview he granted the BBC Yoruba Service, clever in judging the mood and the moment. He may have a good case in enforcing state building codes and laws, and may in fact be right in the case of the Music House demolition. But he is poor at reading the mood of his state, judging their sentiments, and speaking rightly to the occasion. He was probably shocked to see the spontaneous outpouring of love and empathy for Mr Ayefele and the massive condemnation of the actions of an unfeeling governor and government. Had he been an astute judge of people and events; had he recognised he would be leaving office in a few months and needed to leave a robust legacy; had he recognised how badly his meddling in Ibadan traditional chiefs matter resonated with the Oyo people; and had he realised he had never been a good manager of crises when his authority and the state are challenged by protests, he would have been less eager to get entangled in the manner he did in a matter involving a young and enterprising musician who had risen to be an icon in the state and beyond.

    Mr Ayefele may also have deliberately milked public sentiment over a matter he could have sorted out less publicly and acrimoniously, but it is hard to reprimand him for suspecting that the ultimate goal of the state government was to whittle down the influence and objectivity of his radio station. He can hardly be faulted for conflating the editorial independence of Fresh FM with the contravention of building and town planning laws. He imagined that had he toned down the views aired on his radio station the demolition would not have happened. However, the public will always side with Mr Ayefele, right or wrong, and the governor should have seen that coming, if he cared. In pursuing the demolition of Music House in the public interest, the circumstances surrounding Mr Ayefele as a popular musician and physically challenged entrepreneur who surmounted great obstacles to be even deserving of national honour should have prompted the governor to reach some accommodation with him outside public glare, and possibly to even offer to bear the cost of redressing the contravention. It is hard to see anyone opposing the governor had he chosen that altruistic option. He would have killed two birds with one stone and helped in great measure to mend public view of him as a callous leader incapable of judging the moment.