The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • APC needs new approach

    IN the last presidential election, the then upstart All Progressives Congress (APC) did not seem capable of winning until towards the end of 2014 when it picked Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate. That likelihood became doubly sure when by a combination of deft running mate choice, attractive even if superficial ideological posturing, and clever campaign footwork the party struck a chord in the hearts of the electorate. Some four months later, the party’s ambitions were validated by its choices and the electorate’s approbation. But it was a victory that nearly didn’t happen, especially with the immense resources boasted by the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the political naivety of the APC candidate himself, and the widespread doubts that gnawed at the hearts of APC leaders and others who question the candidate’s electoral assets and democratic credentials.

    Three years in office in addition to the APC government’s sanctimonious and proselytising airs have done little to erase those needling doubts and answer those difficult questions. Not only did the party wrong-foot itself by the president’s indefensible appointments and indecipherable worldview, it also declared war against its members, some of whom were indispensable to the party’s unprecedented 2015 victory. That war simmered for three unbroken years, and finally culminated in open revolt a few weeks ago that saw massive defections from the APC to the PDP. The defections in turn have brought out the beast in the ruling party, demonstrating that whatever ideological convictions it claimed to possess were simply too skin deep to matter to its own operations and the victimised country suffering the consequences of their disorder, and that its pretension to organisational purity and cohesion, not to say to liberal politics, was designed to do nothing but hoodwink the electorate.

    Facing another election cycle, the APC has tried valiantly to burnish its image and give proof of its performance. It is by no means certain that the electorate would be persuaded by the raft of projects going on all over the country, or the touted personal qualities of the president himself, or the controversial anti-corruption record of the Buhari presidency. However, considering the poor judgement of the electorate and the unrestrained emotionalism that underpins politics in these parts, no one can accurately discern how far the negative records of the APC government have done damage to the government’s image, or what other repercussions the chasm between the president’s words and actions have attracted.

    Until after the party conventions, and perhaps until late December, no pundit can correctly gauge the mood of the electorate, let alone how the cats would jump in the next polls. The PDP, the only really strong opposition party, may appear to be in disarray today; there is, however, no telling whether it cannot get its act together before the end of the year. APC supporters and sympathisers may wish victory for their party in next year’s poll, but wishes are not horses. Yet, having in some sense demonstrated a fairer amount of discipline than the PDP, and having executed a few of their projects with more determination and focus than its predecessor, and above all, having had the opportunity of a president widely believed to be averse to corruption, the 2019 poll should be a cakewalk. Unfortunately, despite the APC’s moans and claims, 2019 will not be easy. Indeed, nothing is certain; and worse, the party’s victory cannot be guaranteed at all.

    More than anything else, the ruling party must change its orientation away from its many dangerous obsessions and hallucinations. As it stands today, regardless of its vaunted claims, the party is just the flipside of the PDP — vacuous or at best imprecise in ideology, amateurish organisationally, and illiberal in politics, appearing even more repressive than the PDP and unconvinced about the principles and value of democracy. Since the exit of its aloof and almost phlegmatic former chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, the party has imbibed a better and sharper culture of diligence and purpose. But, alarmingly, it is also now ruled by a chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, who is contradistinctively impatient, a micro-manager, alarmist, and an impatient and dismissive judge of opponents. It is the sad lot of the party that it finds itself operating from two extreme ends of the spectrum: either too detached or too involved, soft-spoken or loud, accommodating or insensitive,  mild-mannered or gruff. Where Mr Odigie-Oyegun seems to be unsure what democracy is all about; Mr Oshiomhole, a former governor himself, is apparently secretly contemptuous of democracy.

    If the party is to have a lasting impression on the public, if its electoral fortunes are not to depend mainly on the controversial records of its detached president, if it is not to suffer the fate of its predecessor which now finds itself holding the short end of the stick, the APC must deliberately enthrone a great and admirable culture of running both the party and the country along civilised and constitutional lines. Except it deceives itself, its manners, approach to politics, and view of the rule of law are a little too hysterical and obsessed to be of any use to itself and the county. It has in its ranks more schemers, disdainful Young Turks, and autocrats than the PDP ever boasted in its 16 years in office. Kogi groans under the despicable rule of the young sybarite, Yahaya Bello; Kaduna chafes under the suffocating administration of the intolerant and excessive Nasir el-Rufai; Imo is bemused by the comedic displays of the equally irascible monarchist, Rochas Okorocha; and many other APC states are performing either below average or have become plain apparitions of what a government should be.

    Rather than spend inordinate amount of time plotting frenzied outcomes in the National Assembly, as if the party does not possess enough character or gumption to rule the country regardless of a hostile legislature, it should allocate quality time to restrain, and if necessary cajole, its schizoid ministers and governors to institute the best leadership culture in their states and ministries. They are obsessed with removing Senate President Bukola Saraki, and have sold many boondoggles about him, with Mr Oshiomhole making the loudest shrieks. But Dr Saraki is not the reason for their legislative and administrative clumsiness; he merely profits from their failings. He is not why they have found it hard to create a culture of conciliation and consensus-building. He is merely a symptom of their incompetence. And hostile lawmakers and governors are not the reason for the stasis that ravaged the ruling party for almost three years. They are in fact their own worst enemies.

    Yet, the APC does not have the luxury of time to dither or experiment. Another election cycle is upon it. It therefore needs to urgently show proof that it can reclaim the party from the hands of its homegrown tyrants and propagandists — many of whom they must beat into ploughshares — rebuild and refine its ideological foundations in order to be distinct from the PDP, and recreate the country’s security architecture away from the parochial template foisted on the country by their untravelled president. Here, the party may meet a brick wall. But they simply must bring pressure to bear on their president to help him reform his ways and politics, not to say his administrative style. He has allowed comparisons to be made between him and his vice president, when the latter, who has shown more purpose, depth and urbaneness, acts for him. His government’s passable performance will not be enough to do wonders in 2019 if he cannot demonstrate that he possesses more vision than is generally associated with him, or that he is capable of viewing the country in far broader and more multicultural lights than many presume him to be.

    Above all, the party simply must find a novel way to rediscover and renew itself. It tolerates propagandists in its ranks and encourages and teaches schemers and plotters to subvert the constitution and the law. The party has behaved most appallingly by its mishandling of the Saraki and defectors challenges, first by preying on the fears and resentments of those who do not like them, and second by promoting a sham political moral code which the defectors and the senate president are said to have violated. In responding to these unfortunate challenges, the party appears unswayed by the apocalyptic possibility of bringing the whole democratic edifice of the country down. There are far better and safer ways to respond to the crisis, a crisis they themselves once masterminded in 2014. It does not occur to the party that in treating cancer, for instance, the patient could be at risk of death, and that medical professionals must take care not to cross the tipping point.

    In responding to today’s challenges, the APC has been carelessly less swayed by futuristic considerations. Its spokesmen and leaders have spoken like PDP leaders spoke and acted in 2014-15. But there is always a tomorrow, and a party or leader has the obligation to maintain calmness in the face of fire so that the El Dorado of tomorrow is not undermined by the bravado and excesses of today. The suavity, intellect and balance with which the party handles its numerous challenges, some of them as dire as the Saraki snafu, and others as needlessly self-inflicted as the Dasuki affair, will determine the respect discerning Nigerians give it. So far, the party has employed and emboldened itself with thuggish standards, and has managed to attract only dubious, sometimes pyrrhic,  victories. It needs to refine its ways and seek new approaches of doing things. The response the public will give the opposition PDP after its convention towards the end of the year, and at least not later than December, will show whether the APC has reformed itself and persuaded the country that it can be trusted with their democracy much more than the president has controversially convinced the country to trust him with their money.

  • Atiku’s one-term presidential gambit

    FORMER vice president Atiku Abubakar has never hidden his ambition to be president. But while his ambition has remained pristine and enduring, his approach has morphed considerably, leading him to constantly engage in one of the most dramatic ideological and political flip-flops ever. And since he voiced his ambition around 2003, and came a cropper as he encountered the immovable aurochs, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the former vice president has not only been inconsolable, he has had the misfortune of repeatedly encountering destiny wreckers of all shapes and sizes. In addition, as it is now becoming obvious, in all his presidential election adventures, he has managed to acquire a desperation that is both unyielding and paradoxically edifying.

    It is safe to conclude that Alhaji Abubakar will remain unrelenting in pursuing his goal. But hate him or love him, he is exposed and cosmopolitan, far more than President Muhammadu Buhari, and with extensive contacts around the country. He is far better than the president at mentoring, even though like all Nigerian mentors, he has had great difficulty in retaining the loyalty of his mentees. He is also far more cerebral than the president, possessing a capacity to engage meaningfully in group discussions and managing at the end to own the ideas peddled in those ardent and sometimes recondite fora. He is not a philosopher, not even close, either of politics or economics, but he possesses passing understanding of current national issues sufficient enough to help him navigate crises and propound solutions.

    Yet, as engaging as he is, and quite as fecund as he is in mentoring, and impressive as he is also at maintaining wide contacts and friendships accross the country, Alhaji Abubakar’s qualities have been incommensurately unable to give wings to his presidential ambition. He was inveigled into abandoning his ambition in 2003 to his eternal regret, crushed in 2007 in a manner that shamed Nigerian constitution and the rule of law, and was outmanoeuvred and defanged in 2015 before he could properly join the battle. It is not an exaggeration, considering his 72 years age, to regard the 2019 presidential poll as his last attempt. If his politics had a hint of urgency before, now, in his last try, it is encapsulated in tonnes of desperation. This is understandable.

    His chances of getting the ticket in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where he has again defected, are not quite as bright as when he rejoined the party. There are much younger politicians in the opposition party who are also interested in the ultimate prize, men much more acceptable on account of a cruel twist of fate working against Alhaji Abubakar. But none has his reach or experience, not to talk of his wealth and stature. Should he get the ticket, it is not clear of what use that would be in a national contest where the presumed APC candidate will run on credentials that are much more hype than reality. But there is no proof he will get the ticket. The country seems to have made up its mind cruelly against him, bewitched by propaganda and half-truths that are closer to fiction than reality.

    This may be why Alhaji Abubakar, perhaps out of desperation than anything else, is promising to do only one term should he be elected president. In an interview with the Sunday edition of ThisDay newspaper, the former vice president swore upon his honour to do only one term. That, in his thinking, should mollify the grief of southerners who fear that a new northern-born president, other than the truculent President Buhari, might want two terms instead of the one term they would be willing to endure should the APC candidate return in 2019.

    The former vice president has demonstrated enough courage and competence to rule Nigeria far better than past presidents, should he be offered the chance. But he has made enough enemies, some of them bitter and intransigent, to deny him the ultimate prize. He will need a miracle to get the ticket, and a greater miracle to win the election. Nothing is impossible, however. But given the present mood of the country, few Nigerians are willing to make him more than a cipher in the race, even if he were to promise utopia and eternal life.

  • DSS, Saraki and NASS siege

    IF Senate President Bukola Saraki is secretly thrilled by all the raucous attention he has been getting in the past few weeks, chiefly from his opponents and mainly in politics, his inscrutable face does not betray it. Perhaps he is quaking below the surface, complete with many aftershocks; or perhaps considering how many battles he has fought and won, hardly losing any, he is supremely confident that he would either triumph this time again or reach some accommodation with his enemies. It is to his enormous benefit, it seems, that even the inexplicable invasion of the National Assembly (NASS) by the Department of State Service (DSS) has been framed around his person and politics. Moreover, it can only be to his enormous satisfaction that the frenetic chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the glib and abrasive Adams Oshiomhole, has continued to obsess over the political fortunes of the Kwara senator.

    Last Tuesday, the DSS orchestrated a blockade of the NASS gates with hooded operatives. Since the secret service was too detached from the people and reality to have appoint a spokesman for its many public relations needs, including its constitution-defying actions, mystified Nigerians and a puzzled world were left to speculate about what prompted the blockade. And much more than speculations, everyone was apparently too appalled by the siege, the second in four years by Nigeria’s law enforcement agencies, to even care what the rationale was. Stunned by the invasion, for an invasion was what it looked like, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo swiftly sacked the service’s director-general, Lawal Daura, and ordered his detention. Before it had chance to catch its breath, the ruling party itself, which was locked in mortal combat with Sen Saraki over the leadership of the senate, had issued a disclaimer against the siege and denounced the inglorious attempt to undermine or weaken the parliament.

    Barely two days later, the media was awash with stories of the many sins committed by Mr Daura, a man described as impudent, haughty, corrupt and naturally rebellious to the president and his superiors in the intelligence community, and more crucially to the constitution. In one fell swoop, probably the most powerful man in the country had been dethroned and shuttled between detention centres, from police interrogation rooms to DSS sequestration, his magisterial opinions reduced to mere guesswork among uppity media professionals and giddy social media denizens. It seemed wholly implausible, but he was accused by his detractors of, among other things, defying the courts and keeping former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, and Shiite leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzakky, in interminable detention.

    The country may never know what the presidency really thinks about those many sins. But it is sufficient to the public that there are enough contradictions in the about a dozen grave offences alleged against the chief spook to cast doubt on the bona fides of the government and its vaunted altruism. What the rise and fall of Mr Daura showed in clear colours is that President Muhammdu Buhari was never in charge, regardless of the fact that the buck stops with him. That buck was often hijacked, depending on the circumstances, by a slew of cabals, two of which are fairly well known. But hijacked or not, and cabals or not, Mr Daura’s excesses indicated either complicity by the president or a lack of understanding of presidentialism and democracy. If the chief spook could defy the constitution so openly, not once, and not twice, what was the president looking at?

    But much more than incompetence, available facts actually indicate that the president was complicit in the serial defiance of Mr Daura. It was evident to most Nigerians that the chief spook did not run the agency professionally and competently, what with his unenviable and sullied antecedents. If the president did not know, then something much more worrisome must be amiss. In addition, Mr Daura was widely known to defy authority, regardless of his genuflections before the president. Surely the reports of his errancy must have come to the president. What was the president waiting for? Then, most disturbingly, the so-called constitution-defying detentions, chief among which were the Dasuki and el-Zakzakky affairs, were actions eagerly embraced and sold by the president at various local and global fora. Was the president misled?

    President Buhari once angrily denounced Sheikh el-Zakzakky as running a state within a state, and unfazed by the man’s sufferings, virtually hinted that the sect leader was being hoisted with his own petard. Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai took his cue from the president’s dismissive characterisation of the Shiite leader and inspired unlawful actions and enactments in Kaduna against the sect. Under their watch, hundreds of Shiite members were killed and buried in mass graves. They said nothing but breathe more threats against the sect they suggested was already morphing into a Boko Haram-like organisation. Col Dasuki (retd.) was admitted to bail five times, and ECOWAS Court ruled that his detention was unlawful; surely the president could not suggest under any guise that he was not embarrassed enough to dismiss the chief spook or even order him to obey the courts. The presidency, not just Mr Daura, justified and rhapsodised the unlawful detentions. So, too, did Justice minister Abubakar Malami and Itse Sagay, a professor of Law. The blame cannot go anywhere else, for the Buhari presidency has never really been enamoured of the rule of law, a concept it relates to warily and sometimes contemptuously.

    There are questions whether a malfeasant Mr Daura could have been dismissed if President Buhari was not on vacation. The country may never know, just as it may also never know whether Mr Daura would have taken that unprecedented leap into the chasm had the vice president, whom he held in contempt, not acted as president. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina suggested that the president sanctioned the sacking of the Mr Daura, but the country may never know whether Prof Osinbajo did not in fact present the president with a fait accompli, and whether the president will not secretly resent been boxed into a corner over such a momentous decision. Indeed, what no one has yet suggested is that the president ordered a diffident Prof Osinbajo to dismiss and detain Mr Daura. The country can, therefore, go on speculating. Mr Daura is history, but he has carried out fewer constitution-defying actions than even the police boss, Ibrahim Idris, asked to arrest and briefly detain him. Furthermore, the practice of subordinating one security service to another, despite the timeliness and even efficacy of such actions, are bound to affect service morale, discipline and cohesion in the medium to long run.

    There are also far more puzzling questions about the APC’s role in the invasion saga. Afraid that it might be dragged into what is indisputably a sordid anti-democratic plot, the ruling party quickly but perhaps unconvincingly dissociated itself from the invasion and proclaimed its adherence to the rule of law and passion for democracy. It managed in the same breath, however, to needlessly restate its opposition to the senate president. But a day later, it retracted the statement and launched into a tirade over what it then described as a PDP plot gone very awry. The whole shenanigan, wailed the party and its often hysterical chairman, was masterminded by Sen Saraki and the party to which he just defected to make President Buhari and the APC look bad in the eyes of the public. The party ignored the 2014 precedent which showed similar desperation by the then ruling party, the PDP, and the invasion a few months ago of the senate by mace-snatching vagrants in cahoots with the same secret service. The second APC statement, said to be corroborated by the interim police report on the saga, inadvertently showed the ruling party as desperate and unprincipled. It should have stuck with the first statement, which covered everything, and let investigations unearth the other grisly details.

    The DSS invasion, whoever inspired it, was a clear threat to democracy. Rather than muddy the waters with speculations of conspiracies yet to be fathomed, the country should rise in unison to condemn the siege and pressure the government to call its masterminds to account in a fair, just and non-partisan manner. Sen Saraki may be Machiavellian, unprincipled and possibly inadequate for a modern parliament, but the manner the APC has pursued the goal of dethroning him has unwittingly exposed the ruling party itself as obsessed, unprincipled and, despite claiming to love democracy, quite unable to grasp the fundamental fact that the country will survive the APC and the PDP as well as the main political actors of today. If Mr Daura, who thought himself to be invincible and untouchable, could be dethroned and arrested and detained by the police, and even faced the spectre of being detained near Col Dasuki (retd.), his and the president’s old nemesis, perhaps in the same DSS facility, it must be a humbling epiphany about the transience of power, if not of life itself.

  • APC’s vacillation on Daura’s sacking

    THE ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) achieved the impossible between August 7 and August 8 when it embraced and heartily enunciated two parallel positions on the fairly straightforward issue of the August 7 blockade of the National Assembly by the Department of State Service (DSS). Last Tuesday, when the blockade was still fresh and the nerves of ardent constitutionalists raw, the party, through its acting spokesman, Yekini Nabena, issued a strong denunciation of the siege. It was not clear at the time what processes took place within the party to authorise the statement. But a day later, the same Mr Nabena issued another and even more emphatic statement espousing the siege and conflating it with the general indiscretions of Senate President Bukola Saraki.

    Both in their denunciation of the siege and the approval of the DSS action, the party deployed powerful and evocative language to underscore its ambivalence. In the first statement, the party fumed: “Our party wholly dissociates itself from any act of brigandage and affront on the sacred symbols of our budding democracy. Our party remains a law-abiding political organisation and advises every constituent part to abide by the tenets of our constitution and our democracy. Whilst our contention with the leadership of the National Assembly as currently constituted is a matter of public record, we still believe that the legislature as an independent arm of government must be allowed free reign for vibrant contestation of ideas and values amongst its members within the context of their constitutional mandate and for the benefit of the Nigerian people. We call for a more harmonious working relationship between the various arms of government in the general interest of the country.”

    For a party which bravely faced similar persecutions in 2014, when the shoe was on the other foot, few expected it to vacillate on the meaning of the siege or its consequence for the shaky, incoherent and expensive democracy bequeathed to the country by the military. Unfortunately, the August 7 statement, though a little stirring and assertive in part, failed overall to rise above the party’s customary half-heartedness and the murky issues that probably informed the siege. The country may never know why the APC needed to reiterate its law-abiding credential, but perhaps it was an indication of its confusion, if not sometimes contempt, for the rule of law. And did the APC see the siege as a consequence of a lack of harmony between the executive and the legislature, especially going by its superfluous advice to the various arms of government to work together? Perhaps. But for a party adamant about its unflinching love for democratic tenets, indeed a party that hugely benefited from the hesitant adherence of its predecessor to those tenets, few would have anticipated the quibbling that suffused that statement.

    The August 7 statement was indicative of the many dubieties that still plague the APC’s understanding and practice of democracy. However, for those who read and take statements and party positions at face value, it was still a fairly robust and spontaneous outing for the ruling party. But unable to let bad enough alone, and itching to explain itself further, the same party spokesman, Mr Nabena, issued a fiery and antagonistic repudiation of the party’s earlier statement. Hear him as he conflated issues and meandered between unsustainable positions: “Following Tuesday’s incident at the National Assembly, our investigations have now uncovered the sinister plot hatched by the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to foment violence in the legislative chamber, all in a bid to stop his impeachment. Our investigations uncovered and noted the following: We are now aware that the timely intervention of the security operatives forestalled the planned violence, which could have led to possible deaths, injuries and destruction of property in the National Assembly on Tuesday. Why did the Senate president mobilise thugs to the National Assembly who almost lynched Hon. E.J. Agbonayinma, the only APC federal lawmaker present, but for the timely intervention of security operatives? Why did the Senate president reconvene the National Assembly? Ostensibly as a pre-emptive move to frustrate federal lawmakers’ move to impeach him. Is it not curious that only Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) federal lawmakers were present in their numbers, some as early as 7a.m., while the majority APC federal lawmakers were elsewhere holding a caucus meeting on the state of the nation?”

    It is true that investigations are still going on to unravel who authorised and probably inspired the DSS siege, and in fact the posers raised by Mr Nabena need urgent answers. But the APC spokesman managed in the same deplorable breath to both justify the siege and capriciously espouse the cause of democracy. The party is simply being disingenuous. Not only does it forget why Nigerians voted for it — to help midwife a real and substantial change in the practice of democracy and the ethics of government — it has sadly and now almost wholly repudiated its own founding principles and raison d’etre. The party must understand that those who denounce its methods are not oblivious of the failings, duplicity and infidelity of the PDP, nor of the Machiavellian proclivity of Dr Saraki, but neither the PDP’s past abuses nor the senate president’s chicanery can expiate the APC’s deliberate and hideous lurch to the abyss. If the APC will not rediscover itself and take the high ground, it will find itself in the coming months embracing more and more desperate measures and standards that are both abhorrent and inexcusable.

  • Ranches and deaths and government-inspired tradeoffs

    PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Femi Adesina will hope that the controversy surrounding his latest gaffe will blow over very quickly. He had misspoken on a television programme last Tuesday when he appeared to suggest that to avert the killings perpetrated by herdsmen it would not be a bad idea for besieged states to provide land for ranching as advised by the National Economic Council. It did not occur to him that he seemed in the same breath to have suggested that herdsmen could continue the killings until ranches were provided.

    Mr Adesina had been asked how easy it was for landowners to part with lands with which they had ancestral attachment. Here is his incredible answer: “Ancestral attachment? You can only have ancestral attachment when you are alive. If you are talking about ancestral attachment, if you are dead, how does the attachment matter? The National Economic Council that recommended ranching didn’t just legislate it, there were recommendations. So, if your state genuinely does not have land for ranching, it is understandable; not every state will have land for ranches. But where you have land and you can do something, please do for peace. What will the land be used for if those who own it are dead at the end of the day?”

    The presidential spokesman very clearly did not think his response through before venturing an explanation that suggested land could be used as ransom for people’s souls. It is unlikely that Mr Adesina’s view does not reflect the thinking of the presidency. As a spokesman, he is sensible enough to know that he could offer no private views on national issues. Taking the job implies that he had agreed to subordinate his views to his employer’s view for the duration of his national assignment. But he has a responsibility to make it easier for his media colleagues not to keep criticising him on account of some of his indefensible opinions.

    Examined closely, Mr Adesina’s views are atrocious and difficult to rationalise. How can he make light of people’s ancestral attachment to their lands? Does he not know that he seems to justify the killings on account of states failing to provide land for ranching? Even if someone is dead, his family survives him and sustains the attachment to their lands. So, dead or alive, the attachment goes on. And given Mr Adesina’s horrifying explanation, which is even crueler than the bewildering explanations given by the president and his appointees, it is not surprising that the problem has defied sensible and lasting solutions. Astonishingly, the president is now going after politicians whom he said are sponsoring the killings. But which of the killings? The ones masterminded by herders who boldly but indifferently claim responsibility? or the ones masterminded by landowners resisting the appropriation of their lands and the killing of their people?

    Well, it is now clear that the sum of all what the federal government is saying is that to avoid deaths at the hands of herdsmen, states should offer land ransoms. Although he qualifies which states should offer ranches by suggesting that only those with lands to give should give, that qualification is meaningless and provocative. It is enough to know that the federal government has taken sides with herders, and caused a link to be established between donation of ranches and peace. It is also clear that the federal government will do little to curb the killings going on especially in the Middle Belt. Having made their position known, the federal government has passed the buck to Nigerians to determine how to proceed in this gory and maddening situation, whether to buy their lives with donation of ranches or to defend their lands. This is truly depressing.

    • First published July 8, 2018
    • Palladium returns next week

  • Ekiti: A post-mortem

    THE July 14 governorship poll in Ekiti State is instructive for its general transparency and the open frankness with which it announces and promotes the electorate’s base instincts. Neither the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nor the All Progressives Congress (APC) denied buying votes on a massive scale. The Ekiti voters themselves happily sold their votes. The vote sellers may be overpriced, as many men of conscience now think, and the buyers themselves quite cynical and indulgent, but two Saturdays ago, Nigerians saw how a people and their politicians reinforced the appalling mockery politics in these parts has become. It is pointless trying to determine who outbid the other, or whether there is merit in Governor Ayo Fayose’s complaints of election-rigging, or whether the APC would have lost if they had not prostituted votes. What is important is that Kayode Fayemi of the APC secured a second term after a four-year hiatus, and the PDP’s Kolapo Olusola, who was reduced to a silhouette by the daunting and overwhelming presence of Mr Fayose in the race, lost by a narrow and dignified margin.

    No one should dwell too much on how the votes were priced in Ekiti. Let the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security agencies, if they can divorce themselves from their slavish subordination to the government, find a way to check that distortionary menace. If he likes too, and if he can find the depth and vision required, let the president look for novel and non-partisan ways to deal buying and selling of votes a death blow. Like Kano State which has a penchant for changing parties in their governorship elections and defending their votes, Ekiti may be approaching a truly democratic community. The Ekiti journey to a civic culture is undoubtedly flawed and unprincipled, and the electorate somewhat destitute of character and depth, but they have admirably and co-incidentally manifested the right democratic characteristics of reserving the right and independence to change their governments.

    In 2014, they threw out Dr Fayemi, even though he worked hard and innovatively for the state. Ekiti lives on the old glory of having the highest number of professors per capita in Nigeria. Today, with as many poorly educated young people as other states, the state matches the rest of the country ignorance for ignorance, and in the process manages to make their peculiar brand of ignorance even sexy. Long regarded as eminent scions of educated egg heads, it was strange indeed that Ekiti people in 2014 complained about what they described as Dr Fayemi’s inaccessible elitism and insufferable snobbishness. As a result the state, emboldened by federal rigging machines, angrily repudiated him and his politics, and embraced Mr Fayose whom many have characterised as hysterical and incompetent. What the electorate embraced in 2014 was of course not competence, as they acknowledged, nor did they imply that they even thought of it or desired it. It was enough that Mr Fayose had the endearing common touch that they panted for, and that he possessed a truly bohemian nature that gave them hope that their own nothingness was irreproachable. After all, he genuinely took steps and cobbled together pell-mell policies that transformed their defeatism into triumph, and their commonness into royalty. They were satisfied with his earthiness and jocosity, not to say his false religiosity, and were indeed eager to shame Dr Fayemi’s urbanity that appeared to mock their provincial coarseness.

    But four years later, after having had their fill of the filth and unpredictability that hallmarked Mr Fayose’s government, Ekiti’s adventurous electorate chose to immerse themselves in the splendour of their choice and independence. They must be saluted, even though in procuring a new identity for themselves, they managed to split that identity, a sort of bipolarity that speaks more to their confusion and true psychological state than to their contrition and conversion. More than a quarter of a million of them refused to collect their PVCs. Of the about 667,000 who did, some 56 percent of them voted. On the surface, this figure is a little better than the national average that sees less than half of the constantly grumbling electorate taking the trouble to vote. However, in concrete terms, of the over 900,000 people who registered to vote, some 41.12 percent voted. And of the about three million people populating Ekiti, only 12.52 percent took the decision two Saturdays ago to determine who should rule them and who should not.

    The figures, sadly, take a much darker hue when viewed closely. It is true that the APC has been less exultant about their victory than they should, not just because they also participated in the buying of votes, and even outflanked and outpunched the PDP, but because, the sensible people that they are, their number crunching reveals to them why clearly they must be subdued in their celebrations. Of the registered voters, only 21.62 percent endorsed Dr Fayemi, and taken as a percentage of the total population of the state, only 6.58 percent affirmed the APC legitimacy. But Dr Fayemi clearly won, regardless of Mr Fayose’s histrionics. In 2014, he conceded defeat, even though he groaned later as if he regretted that salutary step. It is not his fault that Mr Fayose has been peevish in judging the outcome of the July 14 poll. Dr Fayemi deserves his victory, but he must be worried by how it was procured, the slim margin of his victory, and the almost infinitesimally small percentage that victory constitutes out of the state’s population and registered voters.

    Much more than anything else, the slim margin of Dr Fayemi’s victory must tell him that he had a narrow escape. He has been advised by many analysts and top political leaders to view his slim victory as an indication of the polarisation existing in Ekiti, and why, unlike President Muhammadu Buhari, he must work assiduously to heal the wounds of the election and run an inclusive government. Dr Fayemi must imagine what would have been the electoral fate of the APC if Mr Fayose had not owed salaries, and had in addition to his populism and defiance entranced the people with widely dispersed projects. It is surprising that Professor Olusola got as many votes as he did. In fact, it remains at the level of conjectures whether the eminent and urbane professor would not have performed better than he did at the poll had the obtruding Mr Fayose not framed the election as a battle between himself and Dr Fayemi.

    It is unlikely that this is the kind of victory Dr Fayemi craved for, one that is so slim that both victory and defeat appear indistinguishable, a victory that depended unwholesomely on cash and intimidation, and one in which the appeal to pre- and post-2014 records went largely unheeded. The APC would have loved to beat the PDP by more than 50,000 or even 100,000 votes. Instead, a little over 19,000 votes separated the combatants. Dr Fayemi would have loved the election to be framed in terms of ideas and possibly ideologies. These also didn’t happen. The reasons are clear: the state has not escaped the decay, poverty and decline buffeting the county, and the ruling party at the centre has not been clearly as innovative as many hoped when they voted for the party in 2015. With the APC unable to stanch the flow of blood in many parts of the country, and with the Abuja government reluctant to inspire itself, let alone the people, there was no spectacular reason to ditch the PDP in Ekiti, scorn Mr Fayose’s abominable tactics, and imagine that electing Dr Fayemi would attract any synergy between Abuja and Ekiti, especially when Abuja seems to many states as completely alienated from reality.

    If Dr Fayemi is to make a success of his second term and be acknowledged and rewarded for his works, he will have to really run an inclusive government, and make his government approachable without sinking to Mr Fayose’s disgusting and counterproductive populism. He will have to think in terms of the long run, embrace genuinely democratic principles in his interaction and relationship with the opposition and the legislature; in short, rise above his discomfort with the opposition both within and outside his party, and the pedestrianism and intolerance that hobbled Mr Fayose’s government. Together with Governors Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo, he has postured and sometimes schemed as President Buhari’s countervailing powers in the Southwest, a factor that led Mr Fayose to paint him as the president’s errand boy and supporter of herdsmen ranches. He is of course entitled to support the president like any other Nigerian, but he must find accommodation with the Yoruba cognoscenti, and sustain, promote and even polish the Yoruba worldview.

    It is not clear to what extent Dr Fayemi will succeed in this regard. This is the first time the Southwest will really be playing the second fiddle at the centre, especially to a mercurial if rather unyielding leader. For a region long accustomed to the politics of opposition, this is testing not only their forbearance, culture and worldview, it is also distorting their progressive identity. There is nothing wrong in playing number one or playing second fiddle, but the eagerness and subservience with which some of the governors have immersed themselves in their new role has triggered needless wrangles and competition between them and the dominant powers in their region. There are no templates to follow, not even the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. And President Buhari and his kitchen cabinet have felt the need to counterbalance the Southwest political elite by subtly supporting conflicting caucuses and interest groups which unite around his person rather than around his ideas, or groups and individuals who unite around their pet animosities rather than around lofty ideals. Dr Fayemi and other governors like him will have to find a balance between those competing worldviews, as indeed Mr Fayose appeared to have found in his second term, and recognise that reaching accommodation with President Buhari does not invariably mean invoking regicidal tendencies.

    The APC may feel subdued by the kind of victory it procured on July 14, but it need not feel abased by it. Mr Fayose opened the gates of hell himself without possessing either the talent to stoke the inferno nor the stamina to outlast and outpace the opposition. Had the APC failed to respond in kind to the monetary incendiary thrown by the PDP, no one knows what the outcome would have been. That culture of monetised politics will not die overnight, not with the state of the economy, and not with the paralysis and insularity in Abuja. It will take time, assuming there is a conscious plan by the federal government to uproot and banish that suffocating and entrenched culture. It is also unlikely that Dr Fayemi, flowing from his loss in 2014, will imagine that he can trust the electorate to vote right simply because the governor has done well, or that in four years he could create and enforce a template that would enable Ekiti to play the right kind of politics and vote in line with the highest ideals of a civic culture. Wishes are not horses.

    President Buhari’s spokesmen have spoken glowingly of the APC victory in Ekiti. They can bask in that glory for as long as they wish. And they must feel a sense of relief, especially against the background of the coalitions being formed to thwart the ruling party’s expectations in the 2019 elections, that their plans are still on course. On the one hand is a scorched but not exterminated PDP, and on the other hand are Dr Obasanjo and a host of journeymen and political panjadrums, all of them nursing multiple grudges, and all arrayed in battle for the big day. It helps Abuja to have Ekiti in the APC. After all, Mr Fayose swayed Ekiti to the PDP in the 2015 presidential poll. And this must be why all the APC bigwigs in the Southwest rallied to Dr Fayemi’s cause, believing as they do that the worst of APC, should that be the impression, will always be better electorally than the best of PDP. They know instinctively that regardless of the outcome of the 2019 elections, it helps the Southwest worldview to sustain and consolidate the progressive cause as represented, no matter how minimally, by the APC.

    The president’s spokesmen can extrapolate all they want about the significance of the APC victory in Ekiti, and project its significance for the president’s election chances in 2019. But at bottom, it is a victory the Southwest APC leaders, as fractious and factionalised as they are, will hope will help nurture the region’s political culture and economic development far beyond 2019. Dr Fayemi understands those needs, and in his first term promoted that regional developmental agenda far better and more intellectually than Mr Fayose did in his second term. Even though the present quality of the Southwest governors has not been as inspiring as it used to be or as the region wants, the APC victory in Ekiti may help to revive the regional aspirations expected to lift the region from poverty into a showpiece.

    Mr Fayose may have projected a bold and irreverent kind of politics at a time of dangerous national schisms and parochialism, perhaps Prof Olusola would have presented a different and beguiling kind of politics and style of governance, and for many, Segun Oni might have been the needed cross between offensive populism and detached elitism, but the reality after the July 14 vote is that the state must now look to the future with Dr Fayemi. He probably understands democracy more than most of today’s governors do, and by his exposure knows the magnificent role development plays in the life of a people. If he can find the discipline to practice what he knows, walk the tightrope between the needs of the region and the distant and sometimes convoluted politics of Abuja, and moderate his proclivity for intrigues and short-term gains, he might yet build a great legacy and propel himself to higher grounds.

     

    Palladium’s leave was interrupted for this post-mortem. He resumes his vacation

     

  • Situation dire and apocalyptic

    SOMETIMES lethargic, at other times unduly polemical, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has sought unwisely to compare the killings being perpetrated by armed bandits in Zamfara and Sokoto States, with the massacre orchestrated by herdsmen in Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba, Adamawa and Plateau States. Yet what Nigerians ask for is not a dialectical consideration of the wholesale murder painting Nigeria red everywhere and sucking the country needlessly into the vortex of low-scale war, but a firm and sensible solution to end the killings, free the countryside for living and development, restore unity and peace, re-engineer the society, and haul the country’s massive bulk into the 21st century.

    For more than a year, the government has struggled to even provide both an explanation for the killings and the profile of the killers, whether the killings were done by herdsmen or by people they describe simply and simplistically as common criminals. Confused and paralysed, and sometimes spreading a veneer of bucolic jokes on the co-incidence between the identity of the herdsmen and the president’s, the government has given not less than five different and contradictory explanations for the unending killings laying the country waste. The president has proudly offered two explanations, and his security team, three. Unable to reconcile the explanations, and reluctant to divorce their backgrounds from the crisis, the government and its security teams have alternately called for either tolerance or prayers, or something even more newfangled.

    Under the Goodluck Jonathan government, the Northeast was riven by the Boko Haram war. Nigerians were at the time dismayed by the political explanations given by that government, and the general inaction of the president and the ineffectiveness of his response. Now, while the Northeast is yet to be fully pacified, the tinder in the Northwest has caught fire, with Zamfara and Sokoto virtually in flames. Worse, while sporadic fires were lit now and again by herdsmen in the Middle Belt under the Jonathan presidency, the fire has become a relentless conflagration under the Buhari presidency. Dr Jonathan met the incipient crises with ineptitude; President Buhari has met them with lethargy and, as many Middle Belt and Christian elders allege, with complicity.

    Assailed by the agonising cries of helpless Nigerians buffeted by all kinds of deadly attacks, President Buhari has again appealed to Nigerians to be patient. Patience? His spokesman, Garba Shehu released this statement on behalf of the president: “I wish to assure all Nigerians that their security is receiving the greatest attention from this administration and there is no compromise in this commitment. I appeal for your patience while my security teams rack their brains to put an end to this horrendous violence…This wanton violence against innocent people won’t be tolerated by this government, and we are working round the clock to identify the people sponsoring these heartless attacks. It is curious why any group of mass murderers would be targeting and killing innocent people for no just reason…Identifying and defeating these callous killers is receiving priority from this administration, and we shall spare no effort in tracing the root of this evil, especially their sources of funding and arms.”

    The president says his security teams are still racking their brains to put an end to the violence. Three years after his assumption of office, more than two years after the deadly killings took on added ferocity, more than one year after he was accused of pulling his punches because his Fulani kinsmen were the aggressors, and nearly a year after Christians began to allege persecution and presidential indifference, the president has still neither felt nor understood the urgency of ending the carnival of blood, but now suggests that his security chiefs are still racking their brains. It is truly perplexing to situate the president’s plea for patience against the backdrop of accusations that he deliberately skewed the appointment of his security chiefs to reflect his insularity rather than the merit, competence or relevance of the appointees. Worse, his plea for futile patience is coming well after many Nigerians, including national lawmakers, governors, and leading politicians and human rights activists, have pressured him to reshuffle both his security teams and the country’s security architecture to reflect the complexity, even intractability, and modernity of the security challenges the country is contending with.

    The president has stood idiosyncratically pat on the reshuffle question. He does not like to be pressured, let alone compelled by criticisms or evidence, to change policy, personnel or direction. The weakness in his security organisation and the ineffectual response of his government to the killings are unlikely to prompt him into making drastic changes, or making the desired changes soon enough. He sees responsiveness to both superior arguments and incontrovertible evidence as capitulation, where bedraggled Nigerians see indecision. This is why he has viewed calls for cabinet reshuffle as an attempt to stampede him into pandering to the ulterior motives of some nefarious interests. Worse, he remembers how long it took him to appoint the second eleven that his cabinet is widely believed to have become, to assemble the agency boards he pussyfooted over for years, and to concoct the abhorrent security policies to which he has genuflected for more than a year. Remembering all this, he is wary of going through the same drudgery all over again, especially when the nuances of his actions and the many interpretations associated with them escape him badly.

    No, the president’s security teams are not racking their brains, as Mallam Shehu plaintively puts it. They are at their wit’s end. What ails the security teams — how many does he have anyway? — is that they operate and reason from the same cracked and narrow cultural and moral prisms. They have all suggested that the problem is either communal or economic, with both ailments unfairly stacked against the herdsmen. They have even all suggested with indecent exculpatory arguments, and sometimes with embarrassing contradictions, that the attackers are remnants of the Libyan civil war, without explaining why those remnants would take over Middle Belt lands or avenge grudges alien to them. And the security teams, and the president too, now appear to be convinced that politicians with an eye on 2019 are sponsoring the killers even in the face of claims of responsibility by vengeful herdsmen.

    No, no racking of brains is being undertaken. What is taking place is handwringing, with the added wistfulness that the problem, like an epidemic, would expire on its own. That expiration will of course not take place. What will happen is that increasingly, and apocalyptically, the problem will metastasise into ethnic and religious conflicts far worse than their ‘racking’ brains can fathom, and too complex for the security teams to analyse, let alone find a solution. The teams are buying time and hedging their bets with a lot of existential contrivances and prevarications. They know that the crisis could jeopardise the president’s re-election. But they hope that after his re-election, and despite his inaction over the killings, he would come out more assertively to both enunciate and implement jaded, one-sided and unworkable formulae.

    One of those jaded formulae is the ranching panacea. Unwilling to examine the past, present and future of Nigeria’s animal husbandry economy, the Buhari presidency and its security teams are determined to ram the ranching panacea down the unlubricated social and economic throats of parts of the country living in dread of the herdsmen and their cantankerousness. Even the ranching panacea has also gone through unprincipled and poorly reasoned metamorphosis. They started with the idea of grazing reserves, then moved to cattle colony, and then to cattle ranches, and now back to the 415 grazing reserves they say the government owns across the country, some 177 of which they say have been gazetted. Instead of doing the hardheaded exercise of finding out why the existing cattle breeding methods have become so problematic, and what new methods exist that could eliminate clashes with farmers and avert cattle rustling, the government is bent on maintaining the old practices with which it obviously maintains sentimental attachments or nurses political undertones.

    The Buhari presidency is either incompetent or unwilling to find a solution. Consequently, it has allowed a situation that was, on its assumption of office, serious or even critical, to become dire and apocalyptic. Indeed, there is little doubt that the country is at war. Nigeria is battered by cults, bandits, herdsmen, Boko Haram insurgents, and tyrannous law enforcement agents who have run riot. No one is safe, and no state is a haven of peace. The government itself has embraced violence and strong-arm tactics in law enforcement. Like its predecessors who were denounced for their appalling tactics, the Buhari presidency has militarised the country and politics, circumscribed the rule of law, openly celebrated the use of force, and treated dialogue disdainfully. The electorate thought that changing government would bring about a change of tactics and policies. They have been bitterly disappointed. The Zamfara governor throws his hands up in resignation at the breakdown of law and order in his state; Sokoto is now tasting that same bitter pill of bandits who have lost hope in government and are determined to get their pint of blood wherever they can find it; Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Nasarawa and Adamawa are bleeding profusely; and the rest of the country are frightened, dispirited and on tenterhooks. No solution is in sight because the government’s fundamental approach to the crises is terribly defective.

    The problem is not the people’s patience, which Mallam Shehu quoted the president to be asking for. The bleeding is continuing, and victims are perilously close to damning the consequences and taking up arms to defend themselves. They have been more than patient enough in the face of official dithering and paralysis. If the government cannot demonstrate the urgency the situation demands, and the brilliance the complexity of the problem needs for a solution, it will have no basis to be called a government. Nigeria faces apocalypse; but the government which should mobilise the country and all its resources to fight the menace has proved almost completely inured to the danger. How many more deaths, seized lands, and old and abominable practices will it take to force the government to stop quibbling?

     

    • Palladium will be away for a few weeks

  • Bad atmospherics around Ekiti poll

    YESTERDAY’S governorship poll in Ekiti, regardless of the winner and the professionalism or otherwise of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), was supposed to showcase how far in sophistication the Muhammadu Buhari presidency had gone in terms of governmental atmospherics, and how deeply it had entrenched a democratic culture. The last few days of the campaign, especially by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), indicated very clearly but depressingly that the presidency was neither mindful of the so-called atmospherics nor inclined in any way to entrenching anything but the usual strong-arm and oppressive style of enforcing law and order.

    There is a limit to just how far down the line the president can pass the buck. The buck stops with him, really. If Nigerians cannot see sophistication and administrative finesse in the way elections are conducted and policed under the Buhari presidency, then they may not be quite as misguided in comparing this presidency with the Jonathan presidency or in concluding that there is no settling the precedent between the two presidencies. Dr Jonathan presided over an abhorrent system of doing things, though he still managed to redeem a little of himself by conceding defeat in the 2015 presidential poll. But in policing the 2014 poll that brought Ayo Fayose into office, Dr Jonathan displayed very poor judgement and atrocious politics.

    It is shocking that the Buhari presidency, perhaps because of its natural affinity for conservatism and reaction, could not see why it had to be different. After all, going by the APC manifesto, it had promised a new modus operandi and, even more ambitiously, a new modus vivendi. But not only has this presidency refused to distance itself from the Jonathan culture, it has also embraced and even justified it, arguing implausibly that overwhelming the state with policemen was both reasonable and defensible. It is not defensible. Mr Fayose may be accustomed to theatrical politics, as much as he is bombastic, and may have even exaggerated the assault he said he suffered at the hands of law enforcement agents, but the manner in which the police dealt with his rally — manhandling the crowd and raining tear gas on them — was despicably replicative of the Jonathan era.

    Hear the argument of the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Habila Joshak, in charge of policing the election: “Because of the tense situation, we had to do what we did. We heard that His Excellency (Fayose) was doing something in the Government House, the cyclists narrowed the road but we won’t go and block his place. We don’t want people to gather and start another rally because dispersing them with smoke is not the best. The pre-emptive measure was okay. It is better to be pre-emptive by ensuring that the situation did not degenerate.”

    Mr Joshak added: “We are not here to usurp the authority of Governor Fayose. We are not here to rubbish him because he represents the people. But we are not going to allow any unauthorised rally that can trigger violence in the state. You can see that the state is tensed up. As law enforcement agents, we must be proactive and take actions that can prevent crisis rather than trying to quell it after it might have broken out.” Then somewhat contrite a day later, he again added: “What I said was that those massing for the rally should be asked to leave because it is not good going by the mood of the state now to hold rally or street procession. I didn’t say they should use force. This is an election, and electioneering is a civil matter anywhere across the globe. So, police as security agents can’t use force on the people. But I want to assure the good people of Ekiti State that such a mistake will never repeat itself.”

    The damage was already done. The police had acted brutishly and impetuously, and the government cannot exonerate itself. First the government deployed a disproportionate number of security agents; then the police, normally overexcited, deeply officious and easily irritated, unlawfully assumed powers not vouchsafed to them by the constitution to authorise or forbid rallies; and then they besieged the Ekiti Government House and rained tear gas on the crowd. Their actions were foolish and counterproductive. They displayed bias and poor professionalism. It was clear to all many years back that Dr Jonathan was uninterested in enthroning a democratic culture in Nigeria. It is even clearer now that his successor does not know what that culture is nor what it entails.

  • nPDP, R-APC: forward to the past

    WHEN the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) faced revolt in its ranks before the 2015 general election, the Goodluck Jonathan presidency oscillated between coaxing the rebels into conformity or deploying strong-arm tactics to crush them. In the end, after coaxing and crushing half-heartedly, and torn between bowing to an unsettling form of democracy or embracing the less demanding return to autocracy, the former president and PDP leaders left the rebels alone, abandoned the stalemated fight, and turned their gazes towards the more promising strategy of buying up the electorate and, if that failed, engaging them in verbal warfare. Less than a year to the 2019 elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC),a beneficiary of the acrimonious war that sundered the former ruling party, is similarly embroiled in a fierce political combat to determine which way the country should go next year.

    Despite the lack of discipline among its ranks and the corruption that pervaded its leadership, the PDP had a better understanding of democracy than the APC. That makes the APC more dangerous and unscrupulous. Therefore, faced with rebellion in its ranks, particularly among its leaders, the APC government of President Muhammadu Buhari is in the process of determining how to deal with the rebels threatening to scuttle the party’s hold on power, rebels who come under the name of Reformed APC or R-APC. The APC can choose to deploy strong-arm tactics, as seems natural to it; or it can meet the rebellion with the pusillanimity entrenched in PDP’s genes. If history is any guide, the APC is institutionally and idiosyncratically more inclined to crushing than appeasing, and more eager to justify the subsumption of democratic values under its ephemeral and sometimes controversial ethical campaigns.

    The rebels that undid the PDP banded themselves together under the new PDP (nPDP) label, an agglomeration of hotheads, placid souls and confident schemers, some of them governors, and others legislators. They timed their defections fairly expertly, and carried them out incrementally. It is not clear whether the timing and spacing of the defections were planned, and the effects of their injurious disengagement anticipated. But in the end, the PDP was never able to recover from the bleeding occasioned by the nPDP, nor were they able to summon the wits needed to sail through the electoral storm the furious movements before the 2015 elections stirred up. The nPDP, give or take a few subtractions and additions, is essentially the same as the R-APC. Its leaders justifiably complained that they were never really integrated into the APC. And much worse is the fact that they felt they were never really wanted as a coequal entity.

    The alienation of the nPDP was complete when the president, who is himself incapable of showing warmth and running an inclusive organisation, turned his back on the leaders of the breakaway PDP. It was in the president’s power to bring all legacy parties of the APC together under one umbrella, project democratic values, and espouse human feelings. By choosing to rigidly implement his own worldview in place of the consensus needed to bind the APC legacy parties together, it was clear that such political awkwardness was bound to end in one form of explosion or the other. That explosion was predicted to come before or during the party’s convention last month. It didn’t, not because the president took extraordinary steps to remedy the factionalism within the party, but because some party leaders summoned superhuman efforts to paper over the gaping cracks in the party.

    At last, however, the cracks have widened to a point that the schisms within the party can no longer be hidden or glossed over. The leaders of the nPDP are also the leaders of the R-APC. They include Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara, both of whom are still shuffling their feet in the ruling party until they sense the moment clement enough to bare their fangs and play their joker. The hawks in the APC also appear to be ready for the upstarts, determined to play hardball and deploy state power to either ruffle their feathers or completely unhorse them. But no matter how viciously the APC deals its cards, they are unlikely to stave off the open revolt certain to cause tremors in the party in the coming months on a scale that may trigger deep and foreboding anxieties. The problem was avoidable; it is now inescapable. The party will now have to fight the enemies within and without, unsure whether it would not shoot itself in the foot or be injured by friendly fire, and unsure still how the whole imbroglio would be resolved. The APC will have to find ways of calibrating its fiery measures in order to avoid deploying disproportionate force, and it will not be able to tell until perhaps too late whether those measures have not become counterproductive.

    The R-APC leaders who announced their open split from the ruling party last week insist all they care about is reforming the party. No one believes them. If they could not cajole the party into any kind of reform when they wielded a strong hand within the party, it is inconceivable that they could propose and promote even the smallest of reforms when both fate and the APC leaders have dealt them a cruel and remorseless hand. What is, however, clear is that no matter how harshly the Buhari presidency tries to deal with the rebels, the calibre of fighters and brawlers leading them, not to say their swelling ranks, indicates they possess a strong chin and firm knees strong enough to absorb APC’s brutal blows. More, now, it is also clear that the party will go into the next elections divided, depleted, weakened and incapable of presenting even the imprecise ideological front with which it bamboozled the electorate in 2015 and confused and unnerved the then ruling party.

    The split is virtually complete and irreconcilable now. Neither President Buhari nor APC leaders are minded to seek a rapprochement with the angry and aggrieved R-APC leaders, including those yet to come out of the closet. In fact, it seems the ruling party and the president want to be rid of the rebels, in order, as they elegantly framed it, to get a grip on their party and focus on the business at hand. The new party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, is a conciliator, though his glibness sometimes compounds the problem confronting him and his party. Left to him, he will bend over backwards to reach an accommodation with the rebels, concede positions and policies to them as much as he can, and sustain a friendliness with them that is both practicable and enriching. But everything is not left to Mr Oshiomhole, for the problem that gnaws at the party is at bottom not really his making. He will, therefore, need to frequently have recourse to the president whose penchant for blaming others is as legendary as his sanctimoniousness.

    The split in the APC may be complete, but splits well managed do not significantly undermine the growth of democracy in Nigeria. Indeed, the split, not to say the constant frictions between politicians and their parties, often conduces to the solidification of democracy. There are still too many defections, amorphous ideological positions, strange cohabitations, the election and appointment of incompetent party leaders, and oversimplification of party processes and politcking itself. Undoubtedly, these problems need some shaking and shuffling and refining to form recognisable political shapes. The constant defections may appear like political prostitution, and internal rebellions may sometimes be painted as indispensable to the eviction of flotsam and jetsam, or even to the weeding of the so-called corrupt politicians fighting back, but in the end it should engender the political distillation needed to fine-tune the practice of democracy in Nigeria.

    No one doubts that APC leaders have made up their minds to be rid of R-APC. The rebels are also apparently resolute in seeking succour and refuge elsewhere. The dividing lines are ossifying, unfortunately not along ideological or even policy lines, but along the putrefying lines of partisan animosities. No one, not even the president and his hawks, knows how the rebellion will end, both for the ruling party and for Nigerian democracy. The APC were themselves rebels in 2014 when they rose to challenge the dominance of the PDP and won. In the next few months, it will be clear whether history will repeat itself, whether the R-APC will be able to harness the disaffection they claim to perceive to engineer the defeat of the ruling party.

  • Ranches and deaths and government-inspired tradeoffs

    PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Femi Adesina will hope that the controversy surrounding his latest gaffe will blow over very quickly. He had misspoken on a television programme last Tuesday when he appeared to suggest that to avert the killings perpetrated by herdsmen it would not be a bad idea for besieged states to provide land for ranching as advised by the National Economic Council. It did not occur to him that he seemed in the same breath to have suggested that herdsmen could continue the killings until ranches were provided.

    Mr Adesina had been asked how easy it was for landowners to part with lands with which they had ancestral attachment. Here is his incredible answer: “Ancestral attachment? You can only have ancestral attachment when you are alive. If you are talking about ancestral attachment, if you are dead, how does the attachment matter? The National Economic Council that recommended ranching didn’t just legislate it, there were recommendations. So, if your state genuinely does not have land for ranching, it is understandable; not every state will have land for ranches. But where you have land and you can do something, please do for peace. What will the land be used for if those who own it are dead at the end of the day?”

    The presidential spokesman very clearly did not think his response through before venturing an explanation that suggested land could be used as ransom for people’s souls. It is unlikely that Mr Adesina’s view does not reflect the thinking of the presidency. As a spokesman, he is sensible enough to know that he could offer no private views on national issues. Taking the job implies that he had agreed to subordinate his views to his employer’s view for the duration of his national assignment. But he has a responsibility to make it easier for his media colleagues not to keep criticising him on account of some of his indefensible opinions.

    Examined closely, Mr Adesina’s views are atrocious and difficult to rationalise. How can he make light of people’s ancestral attachment to their lands? Does he not know that he seems to justify the killings on account of states failing to provide land for ranching? Even if someone is dead, his family survives him and sustains the attachment to their lands. So, dead or alive, the attachment goes on. And given Mr Adesina’s horrifying explanation, which is even crueler than the bewildering explanations given by the president and his appointees, it is not surprising that the problem has defied sensible and lasting solutions. Astonishingly, the president is now going after politicians whom he said are sponsoring the killings. But which of the killings? The ones masterminded by herders who boldly but indifferently claim responsibility? or the ones masterminded by landowners resisting the appropriation of their lands and the killing of their people?

    Well, it is now clear that the sum of all what the federal government is saying is that to avoid deaths at the hands of herdsmen, states should offer land ransoms. Although he qualifies which states should offer ranches by suggesting that only those with lands to give should give, that qualification is meaningless and provocative. It is enough to know that the federal government has taken sides with herders, and caused a link to be established between donation of ranches and peace. It is also clear that the federal government will do little to curb the killings going on especially in the Middle Belt. Having made their position known, the federal government has passed the buck to Nigerians to determine how to proceed in this gory and maddening situation, whether to buy their lives with donation of ranches or to defend their lands. This is truly depressing.