The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Buhari finally prepares for re-election

    AFTER many months of waiting for the other shoe to drop, Nigerians finally heard President Muhammadu Buhari announce his readiness to fight for re-election. Many of them would have been relieved had he chosen to forego a second term; but many others were probably ecstatic about his declaration. There is nothing unusual about what he has done. It was long expected that he would find the allure of power quite irresistible, and the giddy delight of his supporters too entrancing, for him to be indifferent to a second term. When he made the terse announcement while addressing members of the ruling party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) last Monday, he significantly rested his decision on the “clamour by Nigerians”. That clamour was of course neither unanimous nor overwhelming, and it seemed even evenly divided between his supporters and opponents, but it was, to him, nonetheless a clamour still, and one worth honouring.

    And so, whether anchored on people’s clamour or rested on something more inspiring and noble, the president’s second term ambition has finally been kick-started. Given how easily his supporters are frenzied by his ambition and person, what perhaps really matters is that he has finally announced the momentous decision. Reports suggest that he received a standing ovation when he disclosed his intention, and many governors instantly jumped on the bandwagon. The ululation will doubtless continue, converts to his second term ambition will swell, and countless Nigerians will fawn over him in record number in a manner close to a mafficking. The party’s executive committee members were given the honour of being the first to hear from him directly; but even if they were not so honoured, they have always been with him lock, stock, and barrel, and would have swallowed every form of indignity hurled at them given their naturally ingratiating disposition.

    Shortly after he was elected, President Buhari had bemoaned the enervating factor of age. That age has sadly been a drawback in the past three years or so, considering that he was hospitalised on three occasions, one of which was for an extended period. It is not known whether he has overcome that restraining factor, but even if he has not, he seems, by his quest for a second term, determined to ignore the pains and mortification of age, if not the accompanying inflexibility and immobility of  policy and ideas. It took him three unsuccessful runs at the presidency to energise his image as an incorruptible person and politician, and to fuel the clamour he tersely referred to last Monday. The resilience and integrity of that image are likely to be sorely tested in the coming months as the president’s opponents within and outside the party catch their breath and regain their wits.

    On the whole, the APC’s best bet for a rancour-free presidential primary is President Buhari. But whether he will prove to be their best bet for the presidency is a different thing. In 2015, he had campaigned on three main promises, to wit, anti-corruption, security and the economy. His approach to the anti-corruption war has been desultory and generally ineffective. Like caviar to the general, it has tackled symptoms with elegant flourish more than initiate policy reforms and political and economic restructuring necessary to deoxygenate the cancer afflicting the body politic or create an institutional atmosphere that is durable, civilised and progressive.

    It is not clear whether President Buhari’s security manifesto was designed originally to focus only on the counter-insurgency operation against Boko Haram. But while that war has seemed winnable and even considerably attenuated by extensive and revitalised military operations, the militants have sometimes seemed like a hydra-headed monster. Much worse, other forms of security challenges, more damning and more daring, and to which the government has appeared flatfooted and incoherent, are threatening to overwhelm the country. Boko Haram, even at its most vicious stage, never seemed capable of throwing the country into a civil war. New forms of security challenges, most of them given fillip by the government’s appalling inability to emotionally divorce itself from the issues propelling them, appear dangerously capable of driving a wedge between the peoples of Nigeria, if not triggering apocalypse itself.

    President Buhari’s government has paid some attention to the economy, but he has never personally seemed capable of understanding its dynamics, let alone its modern manifestations. Though he continues to sell the narrative of an economy bankrupted by his predecessor, he has not fully and convincingly persuaded the public that the tailspin to which the economy was driven shortly after his assumption of office was not due in large part to his government’s naivety in economic issues. That economy, even after its emergence from recession, has not quite received the structured and nuanced shot in the arm needed to infuse it with the growth that takes a huge percentage of the people out of poverty. He will be required to propound and defend new concepts of the economy, beyond increased rice output. And, despite his age-induced lethargy, he will also be required to vigorously champion new ways of doing things. Whether he will be able to convince the electorate that he is that man for the season at 76 remains to be seen.

    In short, the jury is out on his three main campaign promises. And despite the best efforts of his aides in selling his controversial achievements, his re-election effort will rest on obviously totally different factors — factors that are located menacingly outside his party and outside his control. But despite the anger and acrimony within the party’s NEC, most of the leaders are blithely with the president. They see him as their best bet for re-election, either as party executives or governors. But those who entertain genuine fears about the president’s competence and drive, not to say his electability in the age of herdsmen attacks and pillaging, will hope that some sort of external momentum can be created to energise the opposition into a critical mass. Those insiders fear that more than three or at least four of Nigeria’s political zones are perched gingerly on the precipice of revolt against his presidency and re-election. More importantly, those who stand any chance against him, nearly all of whom are northerners, see his second term as a death sentence for their own ambitions. For them it is now or never.

    Outside the party, no one knows whether the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the largest opposition party, can get its act together to champion the electoral revolt against the APC and President Buhari. Except they receive some help, there is no indication at the moment that they are capable of the soaring obligations required of them. Indeed, there is nothing to suggest that they have done enough to regain the confidence of the electorate, let alone present a viable alternative to the president. They will hope an implosion takes place in the APC, but given the level of fawning displayed at the party’s NEC last Monday, it is doubtful whether the apocalypse APC haters dream about can be readily procured. In fact, the president has cleverly run with the hare and hunted with the hounds by conceding that the execrated executives who were the reason for the disharmony in the party could retain their offices and stand for re-election.

    The president knows instinctively that his best bet is still the party’s current NEC. He is wary of being ambushed by new faces. He hopes to have his cake and eat it by insisting on respect for the constitution while hoping and working to ensure that his adored NEC profits from the observance of the party’s rules and regulations. He is entitled to his manoeuvres. Both the APC NEC and the Simon Lalong committee have refused to hang themselves over the dispute about constitutionalism in the party. Together with the president, they have now rooted for congresses and convention; but they leave enough room to manoeuvre in case the process miscarries. In other words, whether insiders or outsiders plot for and hope that the congresses miscarry, head or tail, the APC NEC, most of whom are masters of intrigues and restless manipulators, would win. Two Mondays ago, those who wished to unhorse the APC chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, rhapsodised the president’s definitive stand against tenure extension. By last Monday, they were left wondering what colour of victory they thought they had achieved, as the president re-enacted his famous dither.

    If the PDP does not rise up to the challenge the Buhari haters hope, and ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria does not get the adrenaline surge they pant for, and the persuasive but plaintive cries of the country’s elders, including Gen T.Y. Danjuma, fall on deaf ears, the outside plot against the president may collapse in a heap. However, it is all too early to permute President Buhari’s chances. The best anyone can do at the moment is to examine the jostling between parties and between forces, rather than between individuals. It was easy in early 2015 to compute the chances of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan and Candidate Muhammadu Buhari, for the then president was too far gone in infamy to be salvaged, and the hopeful challenger had metamorphosed into the messiah of their dreamy utopia. Such permutations cannot be done now until towards the end of the year simply because the president is for now the only known quantity in the race.

    More crucially, however, President Buhari’s declaration has finally persuaded the ambitious presidential hopefuls within the APC to face reality and determine what steps to take next. Ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, ever the realist, knew long ago that President Buhari was too enamoured of power to forego a second term. He simply cut to the chase and left early for other pastures. Given the vexatious spirit of rotation and zoning Nigerians have informally draped their presidential politics with, hopeful challengers from the North know that if they do not run for the presidency now, they could not hope to run again in more than 12 years. They may, therefore, be inclined to bite the bullet, for they know they are damned if they do, and damned if they do not. Consequently, expect frenzied calculations and permutations in the next few months, regardless of the viciousness and ruthlessness of the president’s aides, nearly all of whom are neither democrats nor exponents of the rule of law, and who are as willing to demolish the president’s opponents as they are desperate to cling to power.

    It should be very clear by now to the contending parties in the APC that only a miracle can extricate it from the stranglehold of the forces currently in control of the party. They are not keen on congresses, but will cavalierly go through the process if they cannot help it, and manipulate it to their advantage if they get half the chance. They have hijacked the party in instalments since 2015, and imbued it with their distinctive aversion for ethics and propriety. It will be difficult to break their implacable hold. Neither the president nor his aides, nor yet anyone within the party in a position of influence today, sets great store by constitutionality and noble principles and values. They are content to keep the party inoculated against progress and common sense, and are willing to lend everything they have to inflate and drive the president’s own anomalous instinct for strong-arm democracy.

    Without prejudice to their chances in 2019 — for no one can say at the moment what those chances are — the reinforcement of the valueless politics of the APC by the president’s own concealed disdain for the strictures and discipline of democracy is unlikely to bode well for the country. Four more years of President Buhari would probably pass the presidential torch to the South, just as his loss would probably keep it for another eight years in the North. But students of history know that no factor in human history can be held permanently constant, and the best of calculations can sometimes be thwarted by the most innocuous of circumstances and factors, as many countries and empires have discovered to their dismay and sometimes to their relief.

    What is abundantly clear is that given the massive and continuous bloodletting, the weakness of the economy amidst a surging population, the psychological and intellectual paralysis deflating and immobilising the leaders, the untenability of the current political structure, and the stifling inability of elected officials to acquire the discipline and thinking needed to launch the country into the future, Nigeria is truly endangered. There is little in the APC today to inspire hope that the country’s multidimensional problems would be solved on a near tomorrow. The next few months will therefore be uncertain, whether in the ruling party or among opposition parties.

    No one can tell what fate awaits President Buhari’s ambition, or how vigorously his challengers will advocate politics and ideas that resonate with the electorate. But as the APC tries to smother the opposition within, while maintaining the rigidity and Machiavellian politics transforming it into a Camorra, both the president and the party’s NEC will sooner than later be forced by the depth bomb of plots and circumstances buried under their turbulent souls to reveal their true, if unflattering, identities.

  • APC finally claws its way out of disaster

    THE ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is blissfully unaware of its uncanny resemblance to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), especially in the latter’s closing months in office. With its chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, at the centre of the brouhaha in the party, and a vast array of supporters and enemies still primed for battle despite the nearness to some sort of tentative resolution, the party is becoming increasingly aware of the expediency of one man perishing so that the party could live. The party is plotting its way out of trouble, but whether it can claw its way out fast enough before the egregious implications of its misdeeds swoop on them next year remains to be seen.

    No sequence of events can be so mocking and punishing, particularly for a party that prides itself on its ideological convictions and collective capacity to midwife political, social and economic changes. Hopefully, when the fog of battle clears, the now traumatised party can still recognise itself and perhaps its raison d’être. The sequence began with the foolish adoption of a selfish motion to extend the tenure of the party’s executives at all levels, from ward to national. Then, after an epiphany, their usually detached leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, saw the political, electoral and legal perils of emplacing caretaker executives, and he forcefully made a case for the party to abide by its and the country’s constitution.

    Shocked and disarmed, the national chairman, who seemed to be the primary target of the quakes in his party, retreated into his lair, conferred with his diehard backers, and sprung a desperate trap to thwart the calculations of his interdictors. One of his backers, Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu, even attempted to reconfigure legal language, if not English entirely, by suggesting that no one at their portentous National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting a few weeks back advocated extension of tenure. What everyone called for, he said disputatiously, was a caretaker committee. He did not say how that would not amount to tenure extension, even though he tried to bamboozle the lay with the legal esotericism of ‘effluxion of time’. Said he: “There was no time at our NEC that we took a decision for tenure to be elongated. If you look at it, search and make enquiries, all what the NEC asked for was for the existing committee to work in an acting capacity or work as caretaker committee for a period not more than 12 months. So, there is nothing like tenure elongation. Their tenure will end as expected according to law. That is why the legal officers at the meeting kept using the word ‘effluxion’. What happens thereafter is what we are discussing now. It is not the intention of APC to elongate anybody’s tenure.”

    After setting up a technical committee to apparently find a way out of their quandary, and after a few more meetings, some of them held with the now somewhat resolute president, and with some of the meetings witnessing very intemperate exchanges, the party finally appeared to bow to the sensible and unambiguous provisions of their constitution. Tomorrow, when the final meeting is held, and Mr Odigie-Oyegun has bowed to the reality of holding congresses and convention, the APC will have discovered how uselessly and needlessly it worked itself up into hysteria. The party is sacrificing their chairman. He is blamed for the sorry pass to which the party has come, a condition succinctly painted by the party’s former chairman, Bisi Akande. Chief Akande had in an interview with a newspaper at the weekend blamed the current chairman for the party’s woes.

    The ruling party’s newfound resolve to run like a political party, especially by adhering to its constitution, at least in the absence of honouring its principles and ideology, is noteworthy. But whether that resolve is enough to get the party through purgatory and reconcile it with a cynical electorate, not to say help it win the next general elections, is not certain at all. Mr Odigie-Oyegun has been less than composed in performance, and must rightly bear a huge proportion of the blame for the party’s decay. But he does not bear all the blame. Indeed, he seems to many to also be a victim of the party’s lack of ideological conviction and consensus. He is at bottom not as principled as his antecedents suggest. It was, therefore, not difficult for him to take advantage of the confusion and cavalier politics of his party to chart a futile path for himself and his acolytes. After the elections, and not being a man of deep convictions, he waited in vain for the president to show leadership before he galvanised himself into anything. Instead, he discovered that the president, not being imbued with deep convictions and ideological clarity, simply surrendered the reins of power to a few chosen aides without whom he would grope in the dark. And since the aides were themselves alien to the party’s principles and ideology, they had to embark on a wary eclecticism that completely ostracised the party and promoted an insular oligarchy. Ostracised and ignored, the party, under their unprincipled chairman, simply charted an ignoble path for itself that led to the abyss. It is that path that has rendered the APC impotent.

    Yes, Mr Odigie-Oyegun was unprincipled and opportunistic, but the president did not also show leadership, especially given the delicate fact that the party was cobbled together from an uninspiring tapestry that is, even in the best of times, difficult to put in harness. The chairman may be sacrificed, but the party’s problems will remain. They will walk a tightrope of grafting their congresses and convention upon a party that does not have a soul. It was expected to develop a soul immediately after the 2015 polls, but party leaders frittered away the opportunity on the heels of a raucous competition for the spoils of office. It never developed a consensus around anything, never fine-tuned its ideology, craved no principles, and had no scintilla of notion on how to unite the country around noble ideas and deeds. It will take extreme discipline and good luck to organise their congresses and convention. If they are going to pull this off, it is hard to see the president directing the requisite give and take.

    Mr Odigie-Oyegun’s fate may be sealed, but he has spawned a complicit and fawning adders nest of supporters to keep the party prancing on hot coals. The pathetic cipher, Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, has lost a friend and supporter, if not a mentor, in Mr Odigie-Oyegun. Mr Akeredolu will sulk over the departure of the chairman and remain inconsolable because he has a long memory — the Ondo governor has a fondness for making enemies without apparently any serious provocation. Muiz Banire, the party’s legal adviser, who is not as liberal as many think, wages his own private war and allows it to colour the discharge of his duties as a party official. Indeed, it took Mr Odigie-Oyegun’s cavalier style to manage the competing groups and interests in the party’s National Working Committee (NWC). A strong chairman will find it tough going to cobble together a united party executive imbued with the discipline and principles the party would need to flourish in Nigeria’s tempestuous political waters. How that astute chairman will emerge should preoccupy the party’s leaders.

    But more saliently, for the party to be reformed, and for it to stand a decent chance in the next polls other than hoping that the opposition would remain fractionalised, will depend on how genuinely changed President Buhari becomes in the months ahead. Can he suddenly cease to be insular? Can his politics suddenly become inclusive? In view of the statement credited to his former ADC, Mustapha Jokolo, about the president’s reclusive and sanctimonious politics, can he suddenly throw his doors open, believe in the goodness and genuineness of his fellow party leaders, and run a government that is at once practical and philosophical? Indeed, can he assemble close aides from across the country into his security system in such a way that he can benefit from cross-fertilised ideas, suggestions and arguments from people of different backgrounds, whether ethnic or religious? Is he really at bottom the progressive and liberal his party and its principles and ideology presupposed?

    The APC has its work cut out for it. It will not only have to reclaim itself from the hands of buccaneers, as it is attempting to do, it will also have to develop the ideas, structure and consensus needed to run a disciplined organisation. That task is truly herculean. Had the president not been faced with the prospect of re-election, it is doubtful whether that journey of self-discovery and renewal would have begun in the first place. The problem, contrary to what many analysts and party officials say, is not that the president suffered a long-term health indisposition. The problem was that he was at the beginning not equipped to project and offer the kind of leadership his party and the country hoped for. If he is now discovering his real self, if he is already taking the first few tentative steps in that direction, the next few months will show whether his party and his own politics are indeed salvageable. For now, no one should give him the benefit of the doubt.

    The problem faced by the APC is not peculiar. The greatest need of the hour, if not in all of eternity, is finding a few men of character and judgement into whose hands the levers of power can be safely deposited. The world is impoverished by a lack of sound leaders. Nigeria is not an exception. And, sadly, the APC will soon find out how difficult it is to find one such leader to head their party, reform it, and prepare it for greatness. President Buhari only partially fits that bill at the State House; and since the APC appears stuck with him, should he win re-election, the country must be prepared to make do with half measures in the foreseeable future. The more urgent task, however, is for the party to find such a leader at the party level. There is no proof they will get one, except they are extremely lucky. They have noised a few men about, but none is likely to prove adequate. If they get a partial fit, would the party’s contextual but hostile and divided ideological environment make it possible for such a man to flourish and reposition the party? It is hard to tell.

    The opposition PDP hopes for a miracle to catapult them back into Aso Villa. It is foolish to rely on miracles, for even if that were possible, they could not hope to rule by miracles, as their disastrous 16 years in office proved. The APC could also be hoping for a miracle to get the right party chairman, and possibly to regenerate and refine President Buhari’s apolitical heart. They are welcome to chase their chimera. If ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria nirvana does not pick up momentum, if the revolutionary momentum the disaffected and the uproarious not-too-young-to-rule hope for does not occur, then Nigerians must hope that either the APC or the PDP gets it right. The tantalising prospect of getting it right lies better with the APC if they are able to overcome their fractionalisation and petty-minded politics.

  • Buhari’s approval and Excess Crude $1bn

    PRESIDENTIAL spokesman, Femi Adesina, was wrong last week to describe as impatient those vexed by President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval of the withdrawal of $1bn from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to fight insecurity. The critics are not impatient; they are patriots — more patriotic than those who made the decision to unlawfully access ECA to enable the federal government carry out its functions. The Defence minister, Mansur Dan Ali, had last Wednesday after a meeting between the president and security chiefs announced the president’s approval to take the money.

    Last December, when the news first filtered out that the governors had given the federal government the go-ahead to withdraw the money to fight insurgency and other forms of insecurity, the public had complained bitterly that neither the governors nor the president had such powers to authorise the release of the money. They pointed out that the assent of the 36 state Houses of Assemblies and appropriation by the National Assembly were needed. Despite the emotional blackmail which supporters of the decision to take money from ECA launched at critics, it was thought at the time that superior argument had won the day. Apparently everyone was mistaken.

    Last Wednesday’s announcement by the Defence minister provocatively paints the government as deliberately trying to violate the constitution. Mr Adesina’s sophistry that approval did not preclude the National Assembly from doing its work on the ECA fund is futile. Approval is approval. It was expected that after the fiery arguments of last December, the President would simply forward a supplementary estimate to the parliament seeking $1bn to fight insurgency, and showing where, other than ECA, it hoped to source the money. Instead, the next thing the public heard was the approval which the president was in no position to give.

    If the president thinks that throwing money at insurgency and insecurity, which are widening in scope despite the so-called technical defeat inflicted on Boko Haram, is fine, he is entitled to his misconception. By all means, let him source the money and apply it to the problems he was elected to solve. But he has no right to rifle through ECA to source for money, regardless of the governors’ approval. What he has the right to do is to present his plans before the National Assembly, show where the funds would come from, and then get parliamentary approval. Any other thing is unacceptable, unconstitutional, and absolutely illegal.

    The parliament must be careful in their deliberations not to indulge the government in sourcing money from ECA pool, as ex-presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan did. That both former presidents committed that illegality and got away with it does not make it right. The right thing should be done. Rejection should force the Buhari presidency to review their security and counterinsurgency strategies closely. Their strategies are faulty, archaic and counterproductive. They seem to think that by setting up more military bases, buying more military equipment, and caring little about those they saddle with security and law enforcement responsibilities, insecurity and insurgency can be knocked into a cocked hat. It is wishful thinking. The country is today drenched in blood, and all sorts of conspiracy theories about the causes and course of the security challenges the country faces are rife. It is time the president reappraised his methods and panaceas. Excess Crude Account is a no-go area.

  • PDP’s feeble, tentative penance

    THREE days after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman, Uche Secondus, offered a public apology to Nigerians for his party’s misdeeds in office, the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, responding to a challenge from the opposition party, named him as one of those who allegedly looted the country. Mr Mohammed was careful to rest the naming and shaming on ongoing court cases, perhaps aware that his claims could be litigated. Should Mr Secondus decide to challenge the minister, it is not clear whether he would stand on any solid ground. No one can say, in addition, whether Mr Mohammed’s ploy of naming and shaming was not actually designed to diminish the gravity and importance of the public apology offered by the PDP chairman. If Mr Secondus hoped that his public apology would serve as the main talking point for quite some time, or even inspire a revival in that political behemoth of years past, that hope must now be totally lost.

    It is practical politics for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to skewer the PDP and take the shine off its imponderable and belated apology. This probably explains why a day after the apology, the APC downplayed the value of apology as against the usefulness of restitution. Nigerians did not want an apology, the APC mocked, only a return of the loot squirreled away by members and friends of the former ruling party. The PDP of course countered, suggesting that even the APC, despite its sanctimonious politics, was funded and enthroned by looted funds. There will be no end to the brickbats from both sides of Nigeria’s apparently politically irreconcilable divide. Perhaps a reconciliation is not even needed. The PDP has apologised, and it seems enough for now to examine what that apology is worth.

    There is no proof that the PDP chairman’s apology proceeded from a consensus within the party, even though he suggested that it did. The apology in fact seemed at once spontaneous and contrived, lacking depth and substance, not to say conviction and vigour. He offered the apology in Abuja on Monday when he spoke at a public discourse where the mechanics and dynamics of nation building preoccupied him, his party and other conferees. Said he: “PDP made many mistakes and we accept that there may have been impunity and imposition in the past, this is human. But the ability to admit making mistakes is one of the best ways to make amends and progress. Let me use this opportunity to apologise to Nigerians for our past mistakes. This is the best way forward and we want to set a precedent that if one makes mistakes it is wise to apologise and to move forward on a new note. We do not want to behave like the APC which would rather tell lies. On behalf of members of my NWC I apologise to Nigerians and ask for your support in seeking to rebuild the country. This is a clear departure from what the APC is known for because the party believes in using lies.”

    Mr Secondus suggested that there “might have been impunity and imposition in the past”. If he was unsure of his party’s transgressions, why would he embark on that self-abnegating path of grovelling before his party’s mockers? It is true, as he says, that the APC has imperiously refused to acknowledge its own faults, especially its inability to offer profound and proactive leadership, but the PDP chairman’s apology is vitiated by any sort of comparison with the APC’s demonstrable lack of capacity. What the country appeared to ask for was a sincere apology from the PDP unfettered by any comparison with the APC, and backed by both a purge of its ranks and a projection of great ideas and philosophies for the future. The APC asks for restitution. That is not for the PDP to act upon; it is the courts’ responsibility to exact revenge and catharsis on behalf the sullen and wounded public.

    Even if the public apology was a product of the PDP’s consensus, Mr Secondus managed to present it with a striking ungainliness, bereft of the passion and ethical conviction real and deep penance is associated with. The PDP chairman is himself not a very charismatic man. He is undoubtedly accommodating, fairly well spoken, possesses a great measure of grace and even some striking nobility. But where his words needed to be driven with gusto and flair, and where his ideas needed to be accompanied by fire and hail, he had inexplicably chosen either a sepulchral silence or whisper, or an inscrutable gaze and tame posture. Mr Secondus is the perfect example of why the PDP is destitute of men and leaders. He might be the party’s safe bet after the turbulent reign of the rambunctious Ali Modu Sheriff, but he seems hardly the appropriate man to match the permanent spuriousness of the APC, a ruling party whose men and leaders, apart from taking office unprepared, behave more with the radical and sometimes regicidal strain of anarchists.

    The PDP chairman’s uninspiring outlook is compounded by the contumacious politics of the fiery duo of Nyesom Wike and Ayo Fayose, governors of Rivers and Ekiti States respectively, who singlehandedly enthroned him. Both governors are practical men and exponents of realpolitik, not men of ideas; enforcers and antagonists, not men known for their placability. To be backed by this unprincipled pair and succoured by them is to completely empty oneself of any conviction, no matter how grandly pretentious or annoyingly pedestrian that conviction is. Yet, given the mercurial but generally fruitless demeanour of President Muhammadu Buhari, and given Nigeria’s sterile politics, the PDP desperately needs a chairman with some depth, drive, steel and courage. Senator Sheriff, who was also a governor, was partially that man. Wealthy, pugnacious and daring, and full of acrimonious persistence, he would have matched the APC naira for naira, and punch for punch. Yet, he was unlikely to tower above the ruling party’s dubious morality, seeing that he himself is politically devious. But at least the APC would not be indifferent to him, nor fail to be mortified by his continuous presence on newspaper front pages.

    However, instead of a barren apology, especially one not accompanied by restitutive eagerness, Nigerians had expected from the PDP a thorough transformation and regeneration of its leadership and membership. More, they expected that in about three years, the tremors of defeat would have worn off and the party would rework its existential structure and philosophy. Unfortunately, its leaders are now being dragged through the muck of corruption allegations, its structure is left forlorn and unwieldy, its ranks left perplexed by defeat and incompetent leadership, and its hope of regaining paradise more doubtful than even before it was electorally pulverised. Yet the country needs a strong and enterprising opposition, one that Nigerians hope could be typified by the PDP, as crippled as it has seemed.

    The PDP, it must be admitted, has made some efforts. It fought off the rampage by Sen. Sheriff, reconstituted its leadership through a surprisingly well-managed convention, one that is perhaps better than the APC could conceivably organise, conducted one or two conferences, and energised its secretariat to respond to the APC’s tenuous maledictions. But these are clearly not enough. Since it cannot overthrow its chairman nor dismantle the Nyesom-Fayose condominium, nor yet pretend to be what it had never been, the progress of the party, not to say its possible return to office in Abuja in 2019, will depend almost entirely on APC’s anticipated implosion. The APC ensemble, like any other futile political smorgasbord, could not win in 2015 without the meltdown suffered by the PDP; the PDP will perhaps now hope to procure the same demons to help fracture the ruling party and gnaw away at its liver. This political gambling is, alas, idiosyncratically Nigerian.

    Luckily for the PDP, the APC is in mortal dread of itself, fearful of conducting congresses and convention, and scared of even its own shadow. It is now being dragged screaming and kicking into holding a convention. Its current leadership is reluctant to engage that unsettling and potentially explosive process, whether it is constitutional or not; and so it has resorted to the worst forms of intrigues ever. (See box). Whether the party can hold out against the persistent call for change within itself is hard to say. If it goes ahead to organise its congresses and convention, and by some miracle stays together beyond that elective process, the PDP will need not just an external force to give it victory or make a strong showing in the next general elections, it will in fact need a miracle akin to that which saw Jesus walk on water.

    The PDP should not be surprised that no one is taken in by its feeble penance, nor be shocked that everyone sees its touted change as tentative and hesitant. The party is, in addition, clearly unable to embrace restitution. For whatever it is worth, therefore, it should be encouraged over and over again to purge its leadership of those who in the eyes of the law personify corruption, to propound great and uplifting ideas about how the fractured and impotent Nigerian society should be run, and to show a clear readiness to offer Nigeria a convincing alternative to the APC’s complaisant but ineffective politicking. More, the party must assemble a group of technocrats and politicians whose instincts are sound and whose ideas resonate with the public. There is nothing to show that Mr Secondus can chart that new direction, nor does there seem to be anyone in the party or its leadership who can help him to shoulder that great burden. The party must urgently do something, indeed anything, other than wait for the ruling party to splinter. For if that splintering does not occur, the PDP would be hard put to find a formula to sustain its relevance beyond 2019. A defeat in the next general elections, especially of the kind and scale that stupefied it for some three years, could sound its death knell.

  • APC can’t live or breathe without intrigues

    IT took extensive intrigues in February for the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) to suddenly propose and approve a two-year tenure extension for its functionaries, the main beneficiaries being party executives at national, state, local government and ward  levels. The ostensible explanation was that, given the existing rifts within the party, it would be both acrimonious and disastrous for the party, less than a year before the next polls, to kick-start the process of electing new party officials. It is true that the party is riven by various interests and conflicting forces and groups, some of them so strong and so independent that they have become unmanageable and invincible. Since many party leaders knew that congresses and convention would virtually determine their survival in the party, it was reasoned that a fight to the death could ensue. To avert that apocalyptic scenario, and obviously to keep their gains untouched by any fancy political or strategic foot work, officials devised the bright idea to flout their own and the country’s constitutions to retain their little fiefdoms.

    But last week, just like the tenure extension proposal popped up suddenly, a bright idea to defeat the proposal, this time inspired by President Muhammadu Buhari, also suddenly came up. The president’s position was anchored on the law and the constitution. At the follow-up NEC meeting, and in the presence of confident and exulting proponents of extension, the president brutally burst the bubble of those who had positioned themselves and their supporters to benefit from the extension. The uproar was intense, and the arguments bitter and implacable. Clearly, the battle is by no means over, for regardless of the law and the constitution, there are many forces in the party who have set great store by the extension, and who would do anything to sustain their advantageous positions.

    APC watchers are not surprised that the party is polarised, or that the schisms seem to follow a roughly pro- and anti-Bola Tinubu line, or that the leading legal arguments were advocated by south-westerners who have squirmed over their relationship with Asiwaju Tinubu, or that the extension advocates would do anything to win the argument in order to cement the rebellion they fomented in the party shortly after the 2015 polls. The campaign for extension may be painted in altruistic colours, but in reality the pro-extension forces tire of the rigour, discipline and leadership exemplified by the depleted Tinubu forces. In late February, the pro-extension forces fired the first shot. Last week, they suffered unexpected reverses. They will not give up until the battle is fully joined in the coming weeks, for they have already sounded the battle cry and are eager to break out in open rebellion against the president’s superior legal arguments.

    Some three years ago, the PDP expired under a hail of intrigues, and the APC coolly and calmly walked in and picked up the pieces. But, comparatively, it is debatable whether the PDP was in those years capable of the intensity, variety and volume of intrigues that today swaddle the APC. Neither the president nor Asiwaju Tinubu should imagine that the last shots have been fired. The heavy guns will be rolled out soon. It is rumoured that some party leaders might be inclined to enthroning former Edo governor, Adamas Oshiomhole, as the new party chairman, assuming the party can safely deliver the convention. Mr Oshiomhole is neither the radical and revolutionary his background presupposes, nor the intellectual and progressive his political trajectory implies. He is a natural and instinctive establishment man who will always do the bidding of the president, regardless of his boisterousness and workaholism.

    Though the pro-extension forces can always become turncoats and find a new champion, even if that champion has to be the inventive and prodigious improviser, Mr Oshiomhole, there will be no end to the intrigues convulsing the ruling party. This anomaly had to do with the party’s eclectic beginnings, its formation on the Ouija board of disparate, rebellious, unstable, insatiable and aggressive politicians. They live and breathe intrigues. They cannot imagine any other existence outside their petty rivalries, for rivalry, scheming and plotting are the air they breathe. The president has spoken law, Asiwaju Tinubu has spoken party discipline, and Mr Odgie-Oyegun has spoken the suzerainty of the party’s more numerous and fledgling regicides. Somehow, the country might just be witnessing the perfect lull before the storm.

  • The Dapchi puzzle

    NO one is sure what to make of the threat by President Muhammadu Buhari to punish politicians he said were inclined to politicise the Dapchi affair and every other security situation in the country. Nor is it clear, beyond the sensible and legitimate questioning of the government’s style of fighting terrorism, whether indeed anyone has tried to politicise what the president in his remarks last Friday at Aso Villa described as security situation. But no matter how threateningly vicious the government may become, Nigerians will question the anti-terror war, whether of Fulani herdsmen or of Boko Haram insurgents. They will question the government’s style, philosophy and objectives, and they will not be restrained. If past military regimes, despite their despicable and dictatorial brutishness, could not silence them, it is hard to see them now bow before the Buhari presidency’s  orchestrated and undemocratic circumscription.

    The Dapchi abductions and rescue were probably the trigger for the president’s cautionary threats. Some Nigerians, including the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had questioned the veracity of the February 19 abductions, suspected that the tragedy was stage-managed, and wondered why from the very outset the government spoke so confidently and imperturbably of rescuing the girls swiftly. It seemed to the doubters that there was more to the abductions than met the eyes. But Presidential spokesmen had chafed at why anyone would suggest that the presidency, acting in concert with international organisations and third countries, would try to orchestrate and profit from a tragedy involving innocent schoolgirls. For the doubters, the circumstances in which the girls were released and the flourish with which they were transported back to Dapchi also reeked of conspiracy. These things were unprecedented, they groaned.

    Angered by the doubts and impatient with the remonstrances of armchair critics who read evil motives into the government’s handling of the abductions and the rescue, the Buhari presidency has warned of dire consequences for such idle talks. So, rather than feel the burden of introducing more transparency into the whole Dapchi affair, the Buhari presidency prefers to talk tough, obviously ignoring the fact that no matter how stupid, insensitive and unwholesome a view is, there is constitutional protection for voicing it. The onus is on the government to convince as many people as possible that its actions, whether in the Dapchi affair or in any other affair, are bound by law, are altruistic, and are designed to preserve and secure the country. Everyone will not be convinced, and need not be, for the country to make steady progress.

    To accuse the government of acting in bad faith in the Dapchi affair, particularly to suggest that the abductions were orchestrated, may be far-fetched. However, it is not so ridiculous to be shocked and discomfited by the triumphal procession allowed the insurgents. That procession alone, regardless of the elaborate defence of the military asserting that it was part of the negotiations for the girls’ release, seemed to have engendered some general mistrust. The people recall how the first batch of the abducted Chibok girls were released last year, without the exaggerated celebrations and razzmatazz that appeared insensitively to have accompanied the Dapchi case. It is legitimate to be puzzled and to express doubts. Even if the Boko Haram procession to Dapchi was part of the agreement reached with the insurgents, was it wise and dignified? Does it make sense?

    It appears that the Buhari presidency, despite its resolute contempt for the freedom of expression, must be constantly reminded that the government sworn in in 2015 is the product of a democratic process, and that that process cannot be embraced in part but in whole. The president and his government have repeatedly violated the freedoms he incredibly thinks the constitution vouchsafed the people. Consequently, using emotional blackmail, the presidency has frequently tried to convince the angry and long-suffering public that those accused of one malfeasance or the other, especially egregious financial crimes, do not deserve the protection inalienably guaranteed by the constitution, and that in fact, those malfeasances more crucially undermine the same constitution.

    The Buhari presidency is awkward in its appreciation of the concept of democracy. Throughout the lifetime of this government, there will therefore be no disquisition on democracy, nor any stirring talk about it in public or private. There will be no attempt to strengthen the democratic process, rejig the constitution in such a way as to preserve and ennoble the freedoms contained in the constitution, and encourage citizens to question their government and compel greater transparency. This attitude is sadly the product of the bad foundations laid for democracy by the earlier presidencies of Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan.  If democracy is to flourish, Nigerians will have to head for the trenches again to fight for the freedoms given them by their imperfect constitution.

    The coming elections should offer Nigerians the chance to interrogate political parties and candidates on their views of democracy and politics. Such interrogations must not only be done informally during campaigns, it should also be done in formal settings such as governorship and presidential debates. It is not enough that the candidate is popular and his party widely recognised as a winner; the candidate must also prove his depth of understanding of salient developmental issues and esoteric political concepts that offer a window into their minds. The Fourth Republic is a constitutional democracy, not a monarchy. It is time Nigerians found out what those who aspire to lead them really believe. If something as elementary as some of the population opposing government’s position on security matters can elicit threats, then clearly something has gone horribly wrong.

    When the United States special forces took out Osama bin Laden in 2011, there were some sceptics in America who questioned whether it was true or not. When the US and Britain signed off on the invasion of Iraq, there were many who questioned whether there was enough evidence to justify a costly military campaign. Criticisms of the invasion rose to fever pitch at a point. In the end, the sceptics were justified. If the Buhari presidency will not resist the temptation to herd the people into one unthinking, unquestioning and goose-stepping column, the people themselves owe it a duty to resist the government’s cajolery. Differences of opinions expressed within constitutional framework strengthen democracy and guarantee that at all times, the polity is never bereft of choices without which the society would sink into autocracy.

    It is right and proper, notwithstanding the alarm raised by the APC and the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, for the PDP and any other person to question the integrity of the belief that an abduction took place in Dapchi last month solely on the initiative of Boko Haram. It is right for anyone to ask why the government must agree to a truce and ceasefire that allowed Boko Haram to organise a triumphal procession into Dapchi to return the girls when the girls could have been dropped off anywhere close to the nearest checkpoint along the vast front lines. And it is right for anyone to ask, no matter how stupid it seems, whether Boko Haram, given its antecedents, does not have a soft spot for President Buhari. But it is also right for the government to answer these questions without threats, disprove the suspicions about its bona fides, and convince the electorate that the government has acted from the purest of motives, in the Dapchi case and in other volatile or even mundane cases.

    After about three years in office, and from his experience as a former military head of state, President Buhari should have studied and understood the essential character of Nigerians. There is a limit to which the people can be intimidated into silence or acquiescence. British colonialists could not manage it; internal colonialists, no matter how brutal, can also not do it. What Nigerians want is a fairly honest government, one with sound judgement, and one which advances the rule of law and consolidates democracy. The Buhari presidency should concern itself with meeting these expectations like a democrat not a monarch. Even if it gets a second term, this presidency will still expire. If it does not take solid steps to advance the cause of democracy and consolidate constitutional rule, the very foundations of the Fourth Republic could be threatened. Had Dr Obasanjo done the right things in his eight years in office, he would not today find himself heading back to the trenches to engage in the fatuous and superficial exercise of putting together a coalition to remedy the electorate’s appalling choices, choices that he brusquely and irrationally inspired.

    There is of course nothing to indicate that President Buhari, out of office, and unable to affect the system as thoroughly and impactful as he supposed, would feel the remorsefulness to return and engage in a salvage operation. But Dr Obasanjo is a more remorseful man, more broad-minded, and quite capable of sometimes learning from his mistakes. It would, however, have been better had he possessed the judgement to do what was right while in office. If President Buhari is not to experience any tinge of regret out of office, let him stop acting like a monarch and start ruling like a democrat who is quite at home with fierce opposition views, whether those views are silly, farcical or even mendacious.

  • Amnesty for Boko Haram provocatively premature

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari was not all threat when he received the Dapchi schoolgirls abducted and released by a more amenable faction of the violent Boko Haram sect. He had threatened those who were disposed to politicising what he described as security situation for selfish gains. But he was unhelpfully not specific. He also spoke of redeeming his pledge to rescue every Nigerian abducted by the sect, including some 112 Chibok schoolgirls still held by the sect. But, controversially, he also offered amnesty to repentant Boko Haram insurgents. Said the president: “While further efforts are being made to secure the release of every abducted citizen in Nigeria, the government is ever ready to accept the unconditional laying down of arms by any member of the Boko Haram group, who shows strong commitment in that regard. We are ready to rehabilitate and integrate such repentant members into the larger society. This country has suffered enough of hostility. Government is, therefore, appealing to all to embrace peace for the overall development of our people and the country.”

    Predictably, and much more than the threat to deal with those politicising security, the amnesty offer has become quite controversial. The controversy is healthy.  While some fear that the process — of rehabilitation and reintegration — has not always been impeccable, leading to some of the fighters rejoining their violent cohorts, others fear that granting amnesty to killers would send wrong signals to armed robbers, kidnappers and ritual murderers. The amnesty offer has, however, been in operation for a while, even predating the Buhari presidency. With no studies done yet to ascertain the efficacy of the measure as applied in the past, why would the government simply forge ahead with the questionable policy?

    The measure is not just opaque and dubious, it is even premature. The government said it had technically defeated the sect, whatever that means, and degraded it as a fighting force. Though it tried unlawfully to raise more money to fight a force it claimed to have defeated, it is not surprising that it is still seeking a welter of ad hoc measures to tackle an insurgency about which it does not have a comprehensive understanding. What is clear from the confusion is that there is no concise and coherent policy to end the insurgency. Quite apart from not showing proof that the country has learnt the appropriate lessons from the costly and sanguinary revolt in the Northeast, nor yet determine how to bring a closure to the crisis, the government is now embarking on a policy drive it has not shown any evidence it has thought  through.

    The government gives the impression that the final extermination of Boko Haram is imminent. It should press ahead and do what it promised. But importantly too, if it is not to open itself needlessly to allegations of being cosy with the sect in one form or the other, the Buhari presidency should develop a concise and practicable amnesty programme far deeper and more convincing than its present ad hoc approach suggests. It is difficult to resist the feeling that , sometimes, the government forgets it was elected into office and that it needs to carry the people along in its decisions, not only because democracy demands it but also because it needs various inputs from diverse sections of the society to fine-tune the policy. For now, the policy is premature, raises suspicion about the government’s altruism, and shows that no serious reflection whatsoever has been done upon the critical subject of how to deal with mass murderers.

    The scale of the destruction in the Northeast and elsewhere, the huge population displaced by the fighting and terror, the deaths occasioned by the sheer violence practiced by the sect, the initial connivance at the atrocities by regional elite, and the infrastructural damage caused by the sect, all suggest that at the end of the insurgency, a crime against humanity tribunal not dissimilar to the Nuremberg trials of post-World War II should be empanelled. By waving amnesty under the noses of insurgents, the government seems to be sending a cavalier message that the moment the insurgency ends, the country can return to its default mode. It will not, at least not easily. The problem of the Northeast is huger and deeper than the government has cared to admit. The government will require cerebral depth to be able to handle the post-insurgency period far better than it has handled the shooting part of the crisis.

  • Herdsmen killings: Between sophistry and amnesia

    MUCH more than any other state in the North, Benue State is the touchstone of the bruising and bloody battle raging between herdsmen and farming communities in Nigeria. If the federal government cannot get the hang of the crisis in that bloodied and now bowed state, it will be hard to see them get it right elsewhere. All the indices of the battle are starkly evident, not in the silhouetted forms that often entrance leisure theorists propounding esoteric reasons from safe distances, but in the brutal, bloody interplay of factors and forces clearly arrayed along political, economic, sectarian and ethnic divides. Virtually everything pertaining to the killings stare the casual observer in the face, offering him an easy comprehension of the issues involved. Why the problem has persisted cannot be unconnected with the deliberate manipulation of these forces, display of primordial prejudices, lack of critical reasoning, and absence of courage.

    During his last trip to Germany, Information minister, Lai Mohammed, suggested to the Nigerian community at a town hall forum in Berlin two Fridays ago that climatological forces working in dissonance with exploding population increases and shrinking resources were more to blame for the clashes drenching Nigeria in blood. He debunked ethno-religious factors as causative agents. He was, however, not reported to have offered any insight into why the government he serves inexplicably thinks the attacks and killings are consequently inevitable. Both the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris and the Defence minister, Mansur Dan Ali, have been quoted as suggesting, in line with what is probably the dominant view in the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, that restriction of grazing routes and enactment of hostile anti-open grazing laws were probably responsible for the clashes and bloodbath.

    It is therefore not illogical to assume that the Buhari presidency views the clashes with a mixture of despondency and helplessness, concluding unwisely, if not naively, that if only Nigerians valued peaceful co-existence and saw the clashes from the exhausted and overstimulated perspective of the president’s inner security council, peace would easily be restored in the troubled states. Worse, the president’s men now seem angry and baffled that most Nigerians do not see eye to eye with the government on both the diagnosis and prognosis of the bloody attacks. In his Berlin talk, the Information minister was obviously reluctant to admit that in a country where dividing lines are sometimes neatly drawn, it is not difficult to see socio-economic crisis morphing dangerously into ethno-religious crisis. The herdsmen are principally Fulani, whether the herders are the owners of the cattle or not, and the farmers are principally not Fulani.

    Nothing, however, stops a government that knows its onions from finding urgent and lasting solutions to any crisis, whether bloody or not, or whether ethno-religious, or socio-economic, or climatalogical. The government’s mindset has been appalling right from the beginning, particularly in their presumption that some crises are either good or more tolerable than others. Unfortunately, too, the government has seemed embattled and bogged down in trying to explain why the herdsmen-farmers clashes are more environmental than anything else, and appearing in the process to neglect the urgent need to proffer sensible and practicable solutions to the crisis.

    If the problem is climatological, as the Information and Defence ministers think, and as the president also obviously suggested rather offhandedly, what practical steps have they taken beyond advocating the reclamation of Lake Chad? Have they not instead advocated the balm of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between farmers and herders without objurgating herdsmen for the forcible possession of other people’s lands? Have they not seemed to give the impression that the onus to engineer the so-called peaceful co-existence lies with farmers rather than herdsmen? The Defence minister was brazenly prejudiced in his analysis of the herdsmen attacks, and the IGP insouciantly dismissed the anti-open grazing laws of some states as insincere and provocative; why is the presidency surprised that many Nigerians suspect that his presidency is neither neutral nor interested in justice in the matter?

    President Buhari’s visit to the bruised and bleeding Taraba State, supposedly to condole with the state and victims of the clashes who number in their hundreds, did not quite end as inspiringly and nobly as many Nigerians hoped. The fault was not that of the victims who craved for succour and uplifting and reassuring words, nor that of the state government which rolled out the red carpet, nor still that of stakeholders who patiently endured their president as he limited his visit to the state capital and, worse, shockingly appeared to embrace only one side of the story and mouth only platitudes. He seemed really to have nothing to say. No, the fault was squarely that of the president. He needed to visit a few distressed settlements or sacked villages — Fulanis and farmers alike — Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs), and speak with understanding to the nature of the crisis and the fairness of the solutions his government had thought through. Instead, he left Tarabans considerably perplexed.

    It was expected that having been roundly criticised for a poor outing in Taraba, the president would, in clear mortification, put up a stellar and deeply empathetic performance in Benue, his next port of call, a state that more or less serves as the undistinguished epicentre of the herdsmen-farmers clashes. Not only was the Benue visit astoundingly brief, probably because of the coincidental visit of the outgoing United States Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to Nigeria, it was more remarkable for his inimitable gaffe on the IGP, and his brazen acquiescence to fatalism. The killings in Benue State have since January monopolised headlines, both in terms of their severity and the accompanying dramatic mass burials, at least two of which were widely reported. Having ordered the IGP to relocate to Benue ostensibly to firmly address the crisis, it is bewildering that the president made no follow-up and was not shocked that no abatement accompanied the deployment he ordered.

    It was even worse that the president publicly admitted he thought the IGP had deployed in Benue as he ordered. The order, to be sure, was inadvisable, even imprecise, and shows the emotiveness and lack of painstaking thoroughness that hobble public policy conception and execution in Nigeria, but an order is an order, and ought to be obeyed. Beyond the dramatic vitiation of his authority which the disobedience exemplified, there is also the emblematizing message of the IGP’s action and the president’s unawareness. Benue people distraught over the killings and the unchecked rampage of the herdsmen can be forgiven if they simple assume that the president appeared disinterested in the troubles visited on the state. It is clear to them that despite all the frightening reports from Benue, the president was not asking the IGP pointed and revelatory questions and updates, assuming the subject came up in their interactions. Benue’s disillusionment now seems complete. First was the impatience the president exuded when Benue elders visited him after the January massacre, when he told them to learn to accommodate their fellow countrymen herders. And second is the issue of his seeming disinterestedness, despite his repeated avowals of concern and love. And third is his refusal to indicate a rethinking of the origins of the crisis after the serial misspeaking of the IGP and Defence minister.

    If the president ever gave deep thought to the causes of the herdsmen-farmers clashes, that thought did not seem to have gone beyond the theological fatalism that has corrupted and disennobled public thinking, especially among Nigerian leaders. “The governor and I, and others here, know that we will leave one day,” began the president inelegantly, “but the relationship between farmers and herders will continue. I urge you to keep in touch with them and advise them to live peacefully. Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups with different cultures and nobody can question God for putting us together.” Quite apart from the fact that his admonitions have become nothing but mere fair words, it is deeply troubling that he seems at bottom to think that the clashes witnessed in Benue and other troubled states appear to question God’s wisdom in putting over 250 ethnic groups together in one country.

    It is a historical fact that the British cobbled Nigeria together in 1914. But even if God inspired it or allowed it, does it imply that injustice must be endured because to fight evil would amount to questioning God? This unfortunate fatalism and generalisation could cloud proper thinking at the highest level of government and occlude any chance of devising appropriate solutions. If God put Nigeria together, did He also inspire the herdsmen attacks, the disgraceful lack of proaction that has seen grazing lands constricted, and the embarrassing inability of Nigerian leaders to acknowledge that new economic models were urgently needed for livestock farming? If God inspired the creation of the Soviet Union, did it amount to questioning Him by fighting its tyrannical disposition and eventually breaking it up? If God inspired the creation of Czechoslovakia, did it amount to questioning Him and throwing his wisdom back at His face when the political elite met and divided the country into two? Did God also put evil in the heart of Adolf Hitler to murder six million Jews, despite the prophetic underpinnings of the recreation of Israel?

    What is clearly evident, as this column has maintained, is that the president is at sixes and sevens over public policy, and his limitations are not helped by his severely limited and insular kitchen cabinet and security advisers. His trips to Plateau, Taraba and Benue have merely exposed those limitations. The upcoming visits to other parts of Nigeria battling with one emergency or the other will simply confirm what is already known about the chasm between what the president’s admirers describe as his honesty and good-naturedness on the one hand, and his evident and dreadful shortcomings in public policy in a complex and modernising polity on the other hand. This was why he admitted his inability to promise the distressed people of Benue anything except when he would return for re-election campaigns.

    There is no anti-grazing law in Kogi State — indeed that state’s giddy and impressionable governor has foolishly welcomed grazing colonies — and Plateau State has openly and cynically forsworn the law. But both states have witnessed herdsmen attacks so severe that it would not be out of order to invite IGP Idris a second time before the Senate to defend his atrocious conviction of the existence of links between anti-grazing laws and herdsmen attacks. What is eminently clear is that as the sophistry in the presidency blooms, and prejudiced public officials and security chiefs submit to amnesia with careless and suicidal disdain, the bloodletting in many parts of the country will continue unabated. More, the killing fields will expand, and soon the government itself will run out of excuses and explanations. But, of course, they will not run out of futile admonitions anchored on their poor theologies and exegeses.

  • NASS must exercise override powers circumspectly

    REPORTs indicate that the National Assembly (NASS) may be preparing to override the president’s veto of some 10 bills, among which, significantly, is the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill. The president has reportedly also rejected the amendments to the Electoral Act, citing three objections. Combatively, the NASS has indicated that it will override the president’s veto if it is not convinced that the president’s objections are valid. Just like the president has the right to veto bills, the NASS also has constitutional right to override the president’s veto, subject to constitutional provisions. The legislature has signalled its readiness to exercise that right in the coming months.

    The NASS must, however, proceed cautiously and circumspectly. In fulfilling its mandate to make laws, and despite the executive’s sometimes confrontational and overbearing approach to governance, the parliament must carefully examine the president’s objections and ask themselves whether those objections do not contain great merit. More importantly, even in their combativeness, the legislature must learn to draw a line between bills and amendments that require no administrative and financial outlays and those which do.

    Two examples illustrate these vital distinctions. One is the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill, which the president thoughtfully suggested was a duplication of the roles and functions of existing security and law enforcement agencies. The president also indicated that given the tight financial position of the country, it would be unwise at the moment to engage in fresh and needless spending and expansion of the bureaucracy. Already, the government is unduly financially exposed. To override the president’s veto is to disconcertingly suggest that the legislature will somehow fish for the needed funds and proceed to set up the bureaucracy for the new organisation. Short of usurping the functions of the executive, it is not clear how the parliament hopes to achieve this.

    Second is the Electoral Act amendment. This of course requires no financial outlay of any kind. It is simply a rearrangement of existing functions by an existing agency, INEC. The president cited three objections; the NASS saw merit in two of them. It hopes to rework and return the bill to the president for assent. There is no reason to withhold assent if the president does not nurse some ulterior motives. After all, no matter the order of the 2019 elections, as the bill has reordered, if the president is sure of his popularity, he should not entertain any fear that he could be unhorsed. The NASS, despite its own egregious shortcomings, has so far incidentally helped to restrain the boisterous and sometimes anti-democratic executive. It should however moderate its activism by overriding only those bills that do not needlessly encroach on the functions of the executive.

  • Buhari, Taraba and other trouble spots

    Buhari, Taraba and other trouble spots

    LAST Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari finally began visiting troubled states that have become emblems of Nigeria’s bloodletting between frustrated farmers and host communities on the one hand, and rampaging herdsmen on the other hand. Taraba State was first on his itinerary, and what an emblematic first it was, both in terms of the spatial restriction of the visit and the peep it offered into the president’s earnest feelings about the people and the attacks and killings they have had to endure. It was a relief that he finally visited, but it was a relief tempered by the inscrutable and, in some sense, controversial remarks he made on the occasion. If his minders and aides do not coax him into far more empathetic remarks and deeper appreciation of the cultural sensibilities of his hosts, particularly victims of senseless attacks, the country should expect him to make far more revelatory, inappropriate and politically damaging remarks during his next set of ‘condolence’ visits.

    In Taraba State, where he curiously limited himself to interacting with polite stakeholders in Jalingo, the state capital, the president offered a reason for choosing the state as his first port of call. “There were more killings in Mambilla than Benue and Zamfara states,” he said touchily, perhaps aware that he needed to justify the sequence of his visits, but unaware that the tragedy is not just about statistics. “I chose to visit Taraba first, but I will be going to Benue and Zamfara after I return from Ghana to also condole with the people,” he added. It is not clear why inevitably he had to speak of Mambilla — where last year according to the Fulani more than 700 of their kinsmen were killed, but according to the state government about 23 died — interchangeably with Taraba while ranking casualty figures to justify the order of his itinerary. For many weeks, as every newspaper reader knows, there were unending controversies over the number of people killed in Mambilla, Sardauna Local Government, viz-a-viz those killed in other settlements in the state, including Lau, Ibi, Gassol and other areas. By singling out Mabilla for mention, instead of speaking of Taraba as a whole, the president unfortunately stoked suspicion about his ethnic preferences.

    Since Taraba was the first troubled state he would visit, after many months of resisting pressures from commentators, stakeholders and victims of herdsmen attacks who decried his aloofness, the president also felt compelled to explain why he dithered for so long. “As a President,” he argued strangely, “I have sources of getting intelligence on happenings across the country, and so I should not be expected to always go out to the field to make noise and insult the sensibility of Nigerians before it would be known that I am taking actions against the killings.” Why he would construe visiting trouble spots and empathising with victims as making noise is hard to fathom. There is no explanation to justify this worldview. But even if he had visited the killing fields and sounded off insincerely, could that be interpreted as insulting the people?

    It is abundantly clear that the president labours under many illusions. First, whether he accepts it or not, it is his responsibility to visit his countrymen who grieve, especially when they are victims of horrendous and planned attacks, be they farmers or herdsmen. When communal crisis is destabilising parts of the country, it becomes the responsibility of the president to pay attention and get a move on. What he does on those visits — whether noise, as he said testily, or insulting sensibility, as he imagines — is entirely up to him, and would in large part reflect the wisdom he possesses, the breadth of his appreciation of issues, and the quality of advice he receives. The president probably does not trust himself or his worldview. But he has state resources to employ brilliant aides in whom can be found “the wisdom of the gods”.

    If the president’s aides prepared him for the Taraba visit, it neither showed in his remarks nor in his natural and extemporaneous self. His aides should not flatter him that his Taraba outing was stellar. It was absolutely not. He reeled from one gaffe to another, and from one Freudian slip to another. Nigerians have long feared that the president has surrounded himself with advisers and aides who adhere rigidly to a tunnel vision of national issues, a vision coloured by tribe and religion. Every time commentators worry that the president’s perspective is insular, and his appointments are narrow, he had responded by pointing out, as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo did a few days ago, that his appointments, especially of Cabinet rank, have been broad and breathtaking. But the key question is whether those intellectuals and wise aides frequently engage in meeting of the minds with him.

    After failing to visit the killing fields for so long, the president had a responsibility to ensure that his outing was impeccable, a paragon of intellectual and polemical finesse, demonstrating astuteness about the deeper issues of tribe, religion and development that cannot be gainsaid. By any reckoning, both by his remarks and by limiting his visit to the state capital, President Buhari’s visit was fruitless and even seemed coerced. After all, according to him, he had a way of knowing what was happening around the country without stepping out of the villa. But perhaps the president should be reminded that the reason for such visits is not to gather intelligence but to demonstrate, in physical and practical terms, to the people he leads that he cares about them, their sufferings and their grief.

    If his visit to the more combustible Benue State is not to miscarry very badly or peter out into fatuity like Taraba’s, his aides need to do a better job of preparing him for his next set of visits and arming him with facts and figures. They may not be able to exorcise his tribal instincts, which have apparently metastasised, but they can lean on him sufficiently to arouse his human feelings, help him understand the issues involved, compel him to make a major policy statement about the source of the troubles endangering and shaming the country, and hope that the public offended by his hidden prejudices can at least find the resilience and good grace to tolerate his mindset. So far, as the Taraba visit embarrassingly demonstrated again, the president has restricted himself to sermonising over the herdsmen/farmers clashes. Aware that more sensible arguments have rubbished the so-called environmental/climate reason for migratory grazing, but still unmoved by those arguments, the president has been unable to repeat the jaded explanation so callously and enthusiastically expressed by the Defence minister about the dangers of constricted and disappearing grazing routes.

    When distraught Benue State leaders sought audience with him in Abuja after the New Year’s Day massacre, the president preached to them about tolerating and coexisting with their Fulani neighbours. That sermon attracted derision from all over the country. In Taraba, the president again resorted to sermonising in place of demonstrating firmness and fairness, and in place of a great policy statement. Said he, in part to traditional rulers among his audience: “Governor Darius Ishaku and I are here temporarily. We will go at the end of our tenure, but you are permanent with the people at the grassroots. So, I charge you to go back and find ways of resolving the crises in your domains. Go and give your people justice for peace to reign. When I was campaigning, I came here and promised to provide security, boost the economy and fight corruption. Today, even our worst enemy can attest to the fact that the APC-led Federal Government has done well in the area of security. We have decimated Boko Haram, while the fight against corruption is going on well. I can only appeal to the conscience of the people for them to embrace peace and live with one another in harmony so that there could be development and not destruction.”

    There was nothing in the president’s remarks that showed he recognised that the grieving and frustrated people of Taraba State were waiting for their president to show the way and come up with a solution, no matter how tentative. If they were worried that he had none, they were too polite to voice those concerns during the meeting. It is perhaps too early to prejudge how the other visits would go, or whether the visits have not in fact become political campaign feelers; but if the futile Taraba outing is a good barometer, then it is unlikely any solution to the bloodbath in the country can come from the All Progressives Congress-led federal government. The president beats his chest about how successfully his government had reined in insecurity. He is partly right. Boko Haram has been degraded; but in its place has arisen a hydra-headed monster consuming Nigerians and ravaging the society. Against this, the government has had no answer nor even the will to try something new, something revolutionary.

    If the president’s visit to Benue starting from tomorrow does not show a clear departure from the Taraba outing, many commentators will confirm their worst fears, that the president is neither abreast of the deeper issues of nationhood and statecraft, nor is he extemporaneously agile enough to hold his own in debates, not to talk of firing endearing presidential ripostes in the heat of verbal or polemical challenges. In early 2015, when presidential debates were being organised, the APC strenuously averted disaster by excusing their candidate from the fierce exchanges that hallmarked the exercise. After all, in 1999 ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo avoided matching wits with his more intellectual and eloquent opponent, Olu Falae, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF); and ex-president Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 shunned the debates, afraid he would be worsted by Nuhu Ribadu and other more gifted polemicists. If the then Candidate Buhari escaped the furnace in 2015, it was in character. But Nigerians are so angry and frustrated now that it is hard to see most of the country’s geopolitical zones voting for any candidate who avoids the coming presidential debates or performs badly in them. The clashes laying the country waste are not insoluble. Nor have the issues in dispute become so esoteric as to be inscrutable. What the country needs is a president with the presence of mind to wade through the wasteland and esoterica to deliver on the great promises of a beautiful and stable Nigeria.