The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Police equivocate about anti-open grazing laws

    Police equivocate about anti-open grazing laws

    DURING a security summit organised by northern elders in Kaduna two Wednesdays ago, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, dazed Nigerians and democrats of all persuasions with his incredibly statist view on the subject of anti-open grazing laws. Forgetting that the police are all about law enforcement rather than lawmaking, and perhaps inspired by the dominant view from Aso Villa and among a coterie of top and apparently like-minded security officers, Mr Idris suggested that the law could not be enforced until certain policies and programmes were put in place.

    According to the IGP: “It is my humble suggestion that to reduce the incidence of clashes between farmers and herders in Nigeria, state governments should endeavour to establish grazing ranches in their various states before enacting laws to prohibit open rearing and grazing. It is when grazing ranches are established that herders can be arrested and punished for rearing and grazing on the open places. Doing so, I am of the opinion that it will make the law acceptable by all the parties concerned and other critical stakeholders in that all important sector. It will do us good if we avoid the hasty formulation and implementation of such laws across the country in the interest of peace and unity.” It is remarkable that the contradictions in his statement, not to say its cheekiness, escaped him.

    It was thought that having taken flak over his insensitive remarks about why the police could not do their job, the IGP would look for an opportunity to gently reverse himself, as he did when he inadvisably described the clashes in Benue State as evidence of communal crisis. Instead, no reversal has taken place. Indeed, as the Force spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, indicated to a newspaper last week, the police would rather waffle over the law than enforce it. Said Mr Moshood in response to a question on whether the police had started to enforce the law as directed by the House of Representatives: “If they are directing the IG, they have the constitutional right to give any directive to an agency over which they have an oversight. Nobody is denying that. They should be the ones to say whether we have been enforcing the ban or not. On our part, the police have been enforcing all the laws as they concern the protection of life and property. What I’m telling you is that the police are bound to enforce all laws…”

    Not only did Mr Moshood not say categorically whether the police had started to enforce the law, it is also obvious that he deliberately sidestepped the question of the grazing law enforcement, choosing instead to speak on the wider responsibility of protecting life and property. The waffling was not of such severity and complication that the public could not see through the police mendacity. The IGP has given the official police position, and it is to the effect that the law would not be enforced until grazing ranches were established. It does not matter to the police that the killings predated the anti-open grazing laws, or that the killings have persisted even in states where the law has not been enacted. The police looked for an excuse to abandon their responsibility, and they found one in the unavailability of ranches.

    More critically, in the said Kaduna summit, Mr Idris asked the states to establish ranches without which the police could not enforce the law. He did not offer any economic justification why he thinks states should take over the ranchers’ responsibility. It is not surprising that Nigeria has been found wanting in finding solutions to complex developmental and existential issues that have wider and global ramifications when its leaders and public officials cannot even resolve the rather simple and straightforward issue of hiccups in livestock farming occasioned by anachronistic agricultural practices.   

  • The Age of Power Grabbers

    The Age of Power Grabbers

    CHINA is either poised for more greatness or uncertainties. Considering its history since 1949, particularly the upheavals that pockmarked the leadership of Mao Zedong after 1956, it is a little shocking that the Chinese Communist Party last Sunday announced the repeal of the clause that limits China’s presidents to two terms of five years each. The amendment, proposed at the behest of President Xi Jingping, 64, is expected to be ratified by the National People’s Congress during its convention beginning tomorrow, and marks the clearest example yet of a new age of power grabbing dawning on the world. Deng Xiaoping (1978-1989) had inspired the two-term limit to help China avoid the kind of excesses that hobbled the leadership of Chairman Mao. Now, that effort has been effectively nullified.

    China may be the world’s second largest economy by nominal GDP, and the largest by purchasing power parity (PPP), but there are no guarantees that the new era of interminable presidential rule being inspired by Mr Xi, and which is unfolding gradually but sinisterly, would not trigger its own unfavourable and unfathomable dynamics. Mr Xi is already the most powerful man in China; but he craves much more power. Like Chairman Mao, he has inscribed his thoughts (socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era) into the constitution, and sees himself as the man best placed indispensably to guarantee the rise of China to superpower status. He believes he needs more than the fresh five-year term he got last October to consolidate on his achievements and the reforms he has masterminded. The journey he is embarking on may bring great rewards; but it will also be accompanied by grave dangers, huge uncertainties, and deep suspicions about his true objectives within and outside China.

    More importantly, it signposts a new era of power grabbing, a dynamic Nigeria has so far managed to constrain, thanks to the prescient intervention of those who saw very early the worrisomely autocratic predilections of the Muhammadu Buhari government. The power-grab phenomenon is also raging in the Philippines under the coarse President Rodrigo Duterte, 72, who assumed office in June 2016 after campaigning to rid the country of drug lords and traffickers. When he was a mayor in Davao, it is estimated that more than 1,700 people were extrajudicially murdered under his war against crime. As president since 2016, it is estimated that he has consented to the extrajudicial murder of more than 7,000 people supposedly involved in drug crimes. Though a lawyer himself, he has campaigned against the rule of law, assailed the country’s chief justice, and done everything to undermine due process. His policies are, however, popular, particularly with the poor, a fact that may resonate in Nigeria.

    Russia’s Vladimir Putin, 66, is another archetypal strongman who has grabbed power in a manner that curiously and cruelly mocks democratic principles. But he is popular in Russia, and is widely expected to win this year’s presidential election for a record fourth time, having won it twice between 2000 and 2008, and a third time in 2012 after transiting as prime minister between 2008 and 2012. Mr Putin, like Mr Xi, knows what to do with power, and how to accrete more influence to it. Made of sterner and finer stuff than Mr Duterte’s rather coarse style, the Russian leader, a former KGB operative and lawyer, seeks to recreate the political and strategic power conditions of the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. The Soviet Union may be irretrievably lost, but Mr Putin believes Russia can be remoulded as the world’s countervailing superpower deserving of awe and respect. He underscored this much in last Thursday’s annual State of the Union address where he boasted of the development of a slew of invincible sea-, land- and air-launched cruise and regular missiles, some of them travelling at about 20 times the speed of sound, and spoke about making the world to listen to Russia after their long period of inattention.

    Mr Putin belongs to a cult of leaders whose understanding of power and the charisma and intellect that undergird it has elevated them to legends. He is obsessed with restoring Russia to the old glory of the Soviet Union. This may be why he has launched a military campaign in Ukraine, seized the Crimea, forayed into Syria, and served notice that Russia would not be content with playing second fiddle to the United States. With a strong economy growing (though sometimes fluctuating) at a sometimes healthy but at least tolerable rate, a military doctrine that projects power and capability fearsomely, a weapons development system that boldly designs powerful and futuristic missiles, and a cold and calculating international strategic power matrix that elevates realpolitik to dizzying heights, as the US is beginning to find out, Mr Putin’s main aim is to match the US and earn respect for Russia on the international stage.

    Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 64, is the last example, for the purpose of this piece, to draw attention to the power grab inundating parts of the world, and probably imperilling democracy in the name of nationalism and other so-called grand state objectives. First as Mayor of Istanbul, then prime minister between 2003 and 2014, and finally president since 2014, Mr Erdogan was in the beginning a closet fundamentalist, then a half-hearted Islamist, and now indistinguishable from a tyrant, while still professing, like Messrs Xi, Putin and Duterte, to be a confirmed democrat. After repudiating Turkey’s secularist principles enunciated and bequeathed by the country’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Mr Erdogan has carefully plotted his way into power and used — if not actually deployed as a bait — the 2016 failed coup to purge the system of rivals and opposition, including the media and educationists, weaken the military, divide the Turkish people, and fiercely and remorselessly consolidate his hold on power along neo-Ottoman lines.

    But curiously, none of the four examples used in this piece followed a non-democratic path to power. Like Adolf Hitler who between 1932 and 1934 intrigued and cajoled his way into office democratically, Messrs Xi, Putin, Duterte and Erdogan have all been products of elections. Indeed, they have all remained popular. But as the Turkish example indicates, they all hark back to great periods in their histories that fill them powerfully with nostalgia: in China, Chairman Mao; in Russia, Mr Josef Stalin; and in Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, particularly the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. These power grabbers may not be as disciplined as their iconic predecessors, or possess the ethics, values, principles and charisma that shaped their leadership, but it is sufficient for them that they imagine their actions and policies capable of reversing the decay and decline that have vitiated the power and influence of their countries.

    Even though Nigeria is not out of the danger of creeping authoritarianism, the country is fortunate to have checked the rampage begun by the Buhari presidency against the rule of law, democracy itself, and the freedoms the country’s founding fathers and political activists over the decades had laboured very arduously to birth and defend. The Philippines, Russia, China and Turkey may derive thrilling short-term benefits from embracing their strongmen who have sworn to restore the glory of their lands, but as Chinese history illustrated, particularly the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the dangers and risks, not to talk of the chaotic plunge suffered by their country, far outweigh the benefits. Germany after Hitler came full circle and has since World War II struggled to grapple with the appalling circumstances that led their intellectuals, politicians, philosophers and many other patriots to embrace Nazism. Mr Erdogan may have repudiated the secularist principles of Mr Ataturk, but without the foundational work of the latter, Turkey, a product of the force of arms and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, would have been probably unrecognisable.

    No country is immune to its leaders’ power grab. Nigeria is still very vulnerable, as the last two years and more have shown, especially with the increasing propensity of security and law enforcement agencies to subvert the constitution and the law in the name of prosecuting one war or the other. Indeed, Nigeria is fast become autocratic. It is, therefore, urgent that democrats must earnestly and fiercely police their freedoms, insist on the rule of law regardless of the costs and consequences, campaign to rebuild and strengthen institutions, and, learning lessons from many years of destructive military rule,  intelligently guard against the re-emergence of strongmen.

  • Gov Bello and INEC’s scandalous prevarication

    Gov Bello and INEC’s scandalous prevarication

    IN their response to allegations that the electoral body endorsed double standard over Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello’s Temporary Voter Card (TVC), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last Thursday insisted, through the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Lokoja, James Apam, that the affair or the alleged offence had not been swept under the carpet. The governor would still be prosecuted for the offence of double registration once he no longer enjoyed immunity, he said. Mr Bello had on May 23, 2017 at an illegal voter registration centre located in Government House, Lokoja, registered as a voter a second time contrary to the law, after first registering as a voter in Wuse Zone 4, Abuja on January 30, 2011. The three INEC officials who facilitated the second registration have since been punished for their part in the illegality.

    When last December INEC suggested that it would wait for the governor to finish his term before charging him in court for the electoral crime, no one expected the electoral body would so quickly succumb to pressure to issue him a temporary voter card. INEC, however, suggested that the governor’s request to transfer his card to his ward in Okene, Kogi State, had finally been approved and legal advice could find no reason to bar him from being issued a TVC. It was the lot of Prof Apam, the REC in Lokoja, to make that incredulous argument that satisfies a suspect in a crime to the detriment of justice.

    Before INEC took action against its three staffers, two of whom were dismissed, it satisfied itself, complete with photographs of the alleged crime in Government House and the admission of Mr Bello’s spokesman regarding the May 23 second registration, that an electoral offence had been committed.  There was not only electronic evidence of the crime, the staffers admitted to aiding and abetting the crime, since they showed up in the photograph with the governor registering. INEC had an impregnable case, and it was unlikely the governor would have been acquitted despite his specious and insulting defence of having been impersonated by a ghost at the illegal Government House registration centre.

    INEC’s action of issuing the governor, a suspect in a crime, the TVC was indefensible. Had he been tried, he would almost certainly have been found guilty of dishonesty. The evidence was too damning. And had he been found guilty, regardless of whether he was jailed or fined, he would have been an ex-convict by the time of the next elections. The constitution, in Section 182 (1) (e), forbids someone convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty from standing for election. Yet, Prof Apam not only defended the issuance of the TVC to Mr Bello, he baffled Nigerians by adding that the TVC would enable the governor to vote and be voted for. Clearly, INEC has lost its mind and cast grave doubt on its independence. It had no reason whatsoever to rush to issue the Kogi governor a card when he was still a suspect in an electoral crime.

    No one believes INEC acted independently. It bowed to pressure, not legal advice. The obscene and indefensible action of the electoral body is the sad culmination of the appalling electoral travesties inflicted on Kogi State, much of it inspired by forces outside the state, and a part of it connived at by the electoral body itself. INEC had in 2015 put Mr Bello on the ballot despite not being qualified to vote or be voted for, as the events leading to the double registration showed. More defiantly of the electoral law which INEC ought to naturally defend with courage and fairness, it put Mr Bello on the ballot without a running mate. To an electoral body easy to manipulate or pressure, it was not surprising that it issued the TVC to Mr Bello and argued that such a superfluous action did not negate or vitiate its resolve to charge the governor in court at the appropriate time.

    Given the spinelessness of INEC and the connivance of political and judicial forces outside the state, that appropriate time will of course not come. Mr Bello has turned himself into the foremost cheerleader of President Muhammadu Buhari, and is constantly and shamelessly in Abuja for one irrelevant event or the other, including welcoming the president’s son back from medical treatment abroad. Like his mentors and highly placed supporters, he is not a democrat and does not give a damn about democratic principles or the rule of law. As unconscionable as they come, he will ride roughshod over and compromise institutions and anything the people hold in great esteem. He will aim to stand for the next governorship poll, and he will want to subvert everything of value to enable him win. Now that everybody knows the mettle INEC is made of, especially recognising that the electoral body cannot call its soul its own, the electorate must find ways of triumphing over the electoral body’s shenanigans and the manipulations of cruel and ruthless officials, no matter how highly placed, who have sworn to subvert Nigeria’s democracy.

  • APC’s reconciliation politics

    APC’s reconciliation politics

    THE All Progressives Congress (APC) is in the midst of an attempt to reconcile its warring members. It is not clear whether there are many within the party who are desperate to help engender that reconciliation, or whether even given the nature of its formation and beginnings, not to say its malformed ideology, structure and leadership, that reconciliation is possible now or in the future. But what is clear is that as the ungainly reconciliation train of the party began to lumber out of the station, its quarrelsome members have simply carried on regardless of peace moves, and with gusto started fresh fires with the intention of fighting one another to the death.

    Much clearer, however, is the fact that the fights, the disunity, the animosities they heartily nursed against one another were totally needless. Apart from the reality that the party was not really a party in structure and ideology when it won high office in 2015, its major problems were triggered by party leaders, particularly the president whose credulous approach to party politics and party organisation was certain to foster internal conflict and weaken cohesion. Combined with the hijack of the presidency by an apolitical group of fierce technocrats and opinion leaders destitute of the transcending and inclusive ideology of the party’s founding, disunity was writ large on the party’s mind and workings.

    But somehow, the president has seemed persuaded that once he could saddle the party’s national leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with the arduous task of reconciling the party’s warring states and interest groups, a form of tenuous unity, which is all they think they need, could be sustained through the election period to produce victory, even if it had to be by the skin of their teeth. Asiwaju Tinubu has since put his shoulder to the wheel, anxious to cobble together the unity the party needs to triumph in the next polls. His enthusiasm is infectious, but whether it can produce the results party leaders hope is another thing entirely. For not only have the divisions within the party ossified, many warring party leaders seem to revel in the discord, and are delighted to strew the peacemakers’ path with red herrings.

    Far more importantly, the party has not appeared to convince well-wishers and patriots that it understands the foundation of the crisis confronting them. There may be discord in Kaduna of such severity and virulence that no medicine can cure, and in Kogi of such jejuneness and triviality that any serious peacemaker is bound to be mocked, but really, the party’s problem can be located squarely in the presidency where, unfortunately, no anodyne can penetrate. The fractiousness and factionalism in the states and among widely dispersed and competing party functionaries are at bottom a product of the nervous breakdown and ideological stasis in the presidency. The manifestations in the states are merely symptomatic of the problem in the presidency. Heal the presidency (the mind), and the divisions (in the body) will be healed.

    It speaks to Asiwaju Tinubu’s large-heartedness and perhaps consummate love for politics that he has accepted the onerous task of reconciling a party which shoved him aside immediately after the elections were won. The urgent task that faced the party in 2015 after their victory was how to build a party out of the disparate groups that combined to snatch victory from the feeble hands of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Rather than acknowledge that responsibility, a task the presidency was best suited to organise and lead because of Nigeria’s peculiar political culture, a group of individuals without a pan-Nigerian vision, or even political reach and mandate, simply stepped in and took the diadem. Thereupon, the group embarked on the most convulsive and fratricidal scheming imaginable, one that immediately tore the party apart and created a vacuum which many ambitious individuals and groups have struggled to fill.

    In 2015, the presidency was expected, in consonance with leading party apparatchiks, to firm up the party’s ideology and structure, and prepare itself for governance. Instead a few people aggressively consolidated their private hold on the levers of power and the party. The presidency was expected to assemble a pan-Nigerian group of theorists, technocrats and pragmatic leaders to design a suitable and functional foundation for Nigeria in the 21st Century. Instead, it unwittingly created a festering environment that has pushed the country back to its atavistic past. It was expected to boldly and intelligently tackle the cancer of corruption and institute the rule of law in such a manner that Nigeria would inspire the continent and make the black man proud. Instead, it has enthroned the rule of man, constricted the war against corruption, and exhumed primordial instincts to the point that few now hold out any hope in their Nigerianness. It is this malaise that has trickled down to the states, encouraged tin-pot messiahs everywhere, caused disaffection in the party at national and local levels, and emboldened many party leaders to adopt strong-arm tactics of governance and political exclusion. (See box). To tackle these divisions, the source of the problem must be healed. Yet, there is no indication, nor has Asiwaju Tinubu suggested it to the press, that that primary healing would be undertaken first before the secondary healing is embarked upon.

    Late last year, when it became obvious that President Muhammadu Buhari would be seeking a second term, and he seemed suddenly and uncharacteristically amenable to advice from outside his immediate circle, a consensus appeared to have developed to encourage him to rejig his cabinet, purge his inner circle of ethnocentric advisers, return the country’s security infrastructure to its former state of real inclusiveness, firmly and justly tackle the herdsmen crisis, and though he seemed incapable of it, speak warmly and empathetically to grieving citizens about their rights and obligations, and then propose a soaring and visionary ideal for a new Nigeria where neither tribe nor religion mattered. Unfortunately, no steps were taken in these salutary directions, and the presidency seemed to have sunk deeper into unreflective and unproductive conservatism.

    If healing does not begin at the presidency, a healing that will restore the real and functioning APC men in the saddle of power and politics, it is hard to see healing taking place in the states and local levels. Indeed, the wound has been left to fester for far too long that, rather than hope to recreate a united APC for the sake of winning the 2019 polls, all the party’s leaders can hope for is that neither the PDP nor any newfangled political organisation organised and inspired by ex-presidents can present a credible alternative. Without a credible alternative, without anyone of some stature and gravitas showing up on the opposing side, even if unreal and affected, the APC will hope that its standard-bearer — obviously the president — will coast home to victory, regardless of the portents of that victory and its potentially harmful impact on the future and stability of the country.

    The APC is right to pursue reconciliation. But it has a responsibility to first identify the source of its troubles in order to chart a sensible and lasting solution out of its self-induced morass. The party has been lucky so far that the main opposition party, the PDP, is blithely unable to find its feet after its bad loss in 2015. But that lack of credible and inspiring opposition has lulled the ruling party to sleep, overconfidence and inexcusable arrogance. If the APC is not to be shocked a few months down the line, it should quit taking the country for granted. It has been told what needs to be done at the presidency, and how deeply irreconcilable its disaffected party men are. It should urgently and persuasively commit itself to the change it independently coined as its moniker. Above all, it simply must genuinely convince the country, which has endured the party’s lack of discipline and focus for about three years, that it is capable of imbuing the nation with a restructured political future that conduces to peace, progress and stability.

    What the party seems obsessed with and committed to, however, are how it can coax a tentative unity without restructuring their party and running an inclusive APC, and how it can win the next polls without a sustaining and coherent ideology, visionary programmes, and adequate plans to tackle the complexities and challenges of the future. After snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in 2015, they will hope to pull off the rare marvel of making lightning to strike the same place twice in 2019 without attempting a fundamental change to their orthodoxies or getting the presidency to acknowledge and receive absolution for its blame in predisposing the party to discord. By going ahead to entrust redemptive powers to others, it remains to be seen just how far the APC can go in the next few months in the face of abundant proof that its actions are spurred by electoral desperation.

  • Who’ll rein in APC’s little tyrants?

    Who’ll rein in APC’s little tyrants?

    LAST Tuesday, Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State authorised — some say led — the demolition of the new office of the Akida/Restoration faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state. The office had just been relocated and designated as the nerve centre of the operations of the faction led by both Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC Sen-Kaduna North) and Shehu Sani (APC Sen-Kaduna Central). The two senators had parted ways with Mallam el-Rufai on the grounds of his intolerance, arrogance, bad policies, and general lack of reasonableness. The demolition of the office is the culmination of the battle between the imperious el-Rufai and the intransigent senatorial duo.

    The state gave two main reasons for the demolition of the building owned and donated to the APC faction by Sen Hunkuyi. One is that ground rent had not been paid since 2010, a fact that was immediately challenged by the senator. And two is the charge that the building was converted to a use other than that for which it was registered. Even if the allegations are true, the senators argue, the demolition was still hasty, irregular, inappropriate and unlawful. Mallam el-Rufai has remained unperturbed. Indeed, he has gone on to sue Sen Sani for N2bn for defaming his character.

    It is noteworthy that in demolishing Sen Hunkuyi’s property, the governor gave the same reason he deployed to justify the demolition of the headquarters of the Shiite group in Zaria. He claimed the neighbours of both the Shiites in Zaria and the APC factional office in Kaduna were distressed by the offenders’ unruly presence. And so, regardless of what the law says and the rules and regulations guiding the state’s response to presumed violations, Mallam el-Rufai simply went ahead peremptorily to demolish the properties and then gloat over his actions.

    The Kaduna governor is not a patient man, nor a thoroughbred politician. He is even more temperamentally averse to operating under the rule of law, which he thinks is slow, restrictive and often counter-productive. If the senseless killing of 347 Shiite members by soldiers in December 2015 was not weighty enough to prick his conscience, because he argues that the sect members were a thorn in the flesh to their neighbours in Zaria, demolishing the APC factional office in Kaduna and resolving to turn it into a public park means nothing to him. He will, among many others, of course be put on trial for those Zaria killings sometime in the future, and he will not be able to shift the responsibility to others as he did over the improper allocation of FCT lands to toddlers. It was the same callous disposition that pigheadedly led him to tackle an otherwise legitimate action of remedying the damage done to education at the primary school level in Kaduna by incompetent teachers.

    Both Senators Hunkuyi and Sani have described Mallam el-Rufai as a tyrant. They are right. But he is even much more repugnant as an administrator. A self-righteous propagandist with a knack for disrespecting others, and a politician whose failings will not allow him to rise above the governorship level, Mallam el-Rufai will say or do any self-serving thing to get ahead in life. Except his opponents in Kaduna can find a bold judge to restrain their imperious governor, he will yet do more harm than he has done already. That is his nature. One day, of course, he will find himself at the receiving end of the arbitrariness he has himself orchestrated against his opponents. It will be interesting to see him squirm.

    It is tragic that the APC has many more imitation tyrants in their ranks. Having been unable to anchor their policies and operations on the rule of law or democratic practices at the federal level, it is not surprising that the ruling APC is raising hobgoblins at the state level. Their man in Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, is another depressing example of thoroughgoing tyranny. But while Mallam el-Rufai has even demonstrated some gumption, the mimic in Kogi has neither got one nor shown it. What unites them is their tyrannical disposition, a tendency that trickles down from Abuja, as the El-Zakzaky and Sambo Dasuki affairs have demonstrated.

    Who will rein in APC’s little tyrants? Nobody. The party appears incapable of drawing a line between firmness and tyranny. How can they then curb what, by their strange political ethics, they neither understand nor think is wrong? With the almost total castration of the legislature at the state level, the enthronement of misguided governors, the sever compromise of slavish law enforcement and security agencies, and the practiced perversion of mercantilist civil society groups, reining in Nigeria’s little tyrants must now depend on the judiciary — that is if judges can be found who appreciate the spiritual dimension of justice.

  • Missing the point in Kogi

    Missing the point in Kogi

    ON February 13, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo gave a keynote address at the maiden Kogi State Economic and Investment Summit. There was nothing in the speech to indicate that he attended the event reluctantly. But he read an address that was distinctly unemotional. Among other things, he revealed that the federal government had since 2015 supported the 36 states with about N1.19trn, though some components of that sum were the entitlements of the states. A few reports quoted the vice president as suggesting that he was proud of the performance of the governor, Yahaya Bello. Said the professor, according to an online report: “I’m proud of what happened in Kogi state and the governor for the outstanding works afor the people, traders, market women, artisans and people with disability. We’ll support and do anything that will can to help small business grows in Nigeria. You don’t need to know a governor or Senator or politicians before you benefit. This is the kind of country we are trying to build. A country without corruption or man-know-man. You apply, if you are eligible you get picked.” This statement could not be independently confirmed.

    Prof Osinbajo is unlikely to ever disclose what he felt in his heart going to Kogi to address the economic summit. He had a job to do as vice president, and he has apparently done it. If called again to do his job in any state, and regardless of his private feelings about the state and its chief executive, he will grace the occasion and read his speech. But no one, not even the vice president, can claim not to know the tragedy unfolding in Kogi State. Yes, a few memoranda of understanding were signed on the opening day of the summit, and a few investors showcased their readiness to put their money in the state. However, the facts on the ground in the state is that Kogi state is dysfunctional economically, politically and socially. If the organisers of the summit hoped that it would help restore the state to functionality, it remains to be seen how the state’s silent and incompetent officials hope to perform that miracle.

    The governor marked his two years in office in January. He only managed to renovate a few structures to mark the occasion. He has no real project started and completed by himself, except perhaps the so-called Revenue House. He has no clue how to pay the salaries of public sector workers on a consistent basis, and is in consequence owing them, on staggered basis, salaries in excess of five months, seven months, 10 months or more, despite his offending claims to the contrary. Even when he paid five months salaries last December, no worker was paid more than half his salary, with some, on account of deductions, going home with less than 50 percent. It is obvious that the idea of an economic summit is an abstraction to him, a distant idea with no ties to either his own vacant mind or economic and social reality. The state is in decay, its people groaning in abject poverty and government-inflicted pains, and he has engineered an oppressive air that envelopes the state.

    Completely incapable of conceiving and building landmark projects, Mr Bello has lately developed the idea of selling legacy buildings constructed by his predecessors. Reports indicate that these buildings, which he argued were not making money, include Confluence Beach Hotel, Lokoja; Kogi Hotels, GRA, Lokoja; Kogi State Liaison Office, Ikeja-Lagos GRA; Kogi State Liaison Office, GRA, Kaduna; and Lokoja International Market, Lokoja; 12-storey Kogi House in Abuja; the ample Commissioners’ quarters in Lokoja; and the House of Assembly quarters on Hassan Usman Katsina Road, Lokoja. If, as he said, they were not making money, does he not by chance have the gumption to turn things around? Such benumbing profligacy is not found anywhere else in the country, and it is tragic that Aso Villa does not give him the cold shoulder simply because he peddles his support for the president as currency for his incompetence and serial misdeeds.

    The governor makes up for all these harrowing shortcomings by turning himself into President Muhammadu Buhari’s most fanatical supporter, trumping even Nasir el-Rufai, the Kaduna State governor. Mr Bello is often in Abuja, making up for his lack of ideas by romping with the powerful and pacifying his own shortcomings. Both the president who sometimes receive him, and the vice president who has had to attend the governor’s economic summit, can pretend not to know that Kogi State is probably the most misgoverned state in the country. But surely Aso Villa has its own independent means of finding out the true situation of things in that woebegone state.

    As a demonstration of his support for the president, Mr Bello openly and rapturously supported the cattle colony idea. He thus became the first governor, and by implication the first state, since the colony controversy broke out, to embrace the idea. Even when it was clear that the federal government had not yet developed a consensus or plan on just how the colony boondoggle would be implemented, Mr Bello met with the Agriculture minister and presented him documents indicating that the state had provided 15,000 hectares for the programme. The federal government had wanted 5,000 hectares per state. Asked by reporters whether he had sorted out the compensation issue, the governor, who cannot find money to do projects or pay workers, said he was working out the compensation details.

    Mr Bello was tragically oblivious of the fact that the Agriculture ministry and the presidency had indicated that whatever lands were taken for the colony programme would be paid for by the herdsmen themselves. Why would a state impoverished by Mr Bello’s ardent misrule offer to pay for the colony lands? How does he hope to defend the purchase before the state legislature, as impotent as the lawmakers are? The answer was indirectly provided by the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Matthew Kolawole, when in response to the governor’s borrowing of N10bn ostensibly to pay salaries suggested that the governor did not need prior approval. An approval could be given later when the government would begin repayment of the loan. That appalling logic will be replicated over other matters. It escaped the Speaker that the loan was not appropriated, nor was a supplementary budget passed to accommodate it.

    The truth is that governance has virtually collapsed in the state. The executive is bereft of ideas and understanding; the legislature is fearful, ignorant and impotent; and the civil populace is intimidated, discouraged and resigned to fate. When Prof Osinbajo visited last week, he could not claim not to know the tragedy that has befallen the state. He minced his words a bit when he made reference to the federal support given to states to help them overcome their cash flow and mismanagement issues, a support the governor treated contemptuously. But the vice president should have had the courage to speak more openly and frankly about the abject horrors the people of Kogi were experiencing. The horrors are too graphic to put in proverbs or idioms. Importantly, too, by receiving the peripatetic and melodramatic Mr Bello in Aso Villa often, the presidency gives the impression that it is knowingly complicit in the tyranny and misrule being executed by Mr Bello over Kogi State.

    The gaffe-prone governor, as his recent tiff with Catholic bishops demonstrates vividly, will of course not be returning as governor in 2020, for the damage he has orchestrated upon the state cannot be remedied in the next two years of his tragic governorship. But to have him for two more years will simply stretch the forbearance of the people to its elastic limit. He ought rightly to be impeached, and those who foisted him on the state, despite his lack of qualification to vote or be voted for, should be called out and shamed — and the conspirators, as everyone knows, are distributed among governors, judges, and party leaders. Prof Osinbajo should have no reason to dignify Mr Bello with his presence anymore. The short and infamous list of those who attended his inauguration in January 2016 should serve as a national indication of the fact that Mr Bello was from the very beginning a pariah. He should remain ostracised for the rest of his governorship.

  • Saraki and order of 2019 elections

    Saraki and order of 2019 elections

    NOT too long from now, the National Assembly (NASS) will transmit the harmonised version of the Electoral Act 2010 (Amendment) Bill to the president for his assent. The bill altered the order of elections from two-tier in 2015, beginning with the presidential/NASS elections and ending with governorship and state elections, to three-tier, starting with National Assembly and on to governorship and state assemblies, and then finally to presidential in 2019. The change is believed in some quarters to be targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari whose re-election, should that improbably take place, might inflict terrible electoral losses on those who will be standing for elections in 2019 but who are not in his good books. It is not clear whether the president believes that ominous and overdramatised scenario.

    Despite the brouhaha triggered by the successful passage of the bill in the national legislature, the lawmakers fully expect that the president would assent to the bill. If he does not, they plan nevertheless to override his veto and make the new order of elections a part of the Electoral Act. No one knows whether the president has enough foot soldiers to raise a credible and impactful opposition to the bill, whether before or after he has vetoed it, but it seems certain that the whole issue will pass as nothing but a storm in a teacup. The president might, however, surprise everyone by assenting to the bill, especially if he and his men judge that opposing the bill would be a fruitless exercise. For, despite his legendary stubbornness, there is nothing to suggest that the president would not shirk a fight if he sensed blood.

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised to implement the law once it is passed, though they argue that the order of elections has not changed since 1999. They of course have no choice but to embrace the law, whether it is passed by the president’s simple assent or by a veto override. The law is, after all, the law, even if it galls the presidency, INEC and a substantial segment of the electorate. But INEC is wrong to suggest that the elections had always been conducted on a two-tier basis since 1999. As recent as the 2011 general elections, the polls were conducted on three tiers, starting with parliamentary poll (April 9, 2011), to presidential (April 16), and finally governorship and state assemblies (April 26).

    There is in fact nothing sacrosanct about the order of elections, as indeed many permutations have been tried since the return to democratic rule in 1979. In that year, the elections were held over four tiers, and in 2007 and 2015 over two tiers, with the order even reversed. At the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the order of elections was arranged along three tiers, starting from governorship and state assemblies, to National Assembly, and then on to presidential. In short, 2019 will not be the first time the presidential election will be conducted last in the order. In 1979, 1999 and 2007, the presidential poll came up last.

    The attempt by groups of politicians and idle civil society organisations to make a big issue out of the rearrangement of the order of elections is disingenuous and a sentimental attempt to polarise the country, blatantly ingratiate themselves with President Buhari, and further lather the country with bad faith. Their effort should not be countenanced by the electorate, even if the pro-status quo people have genuine reasons to fear the motives of the National Assembly headed by the imperious and sometimes intransigent Senate President Bukola Saraki and the quietly resolute Speaker Yakubu Dogara. It is indeed possible that top lawmakers and their legislative converts fear that the old order of elections could create a bandwagon effect that would unseat them. But even if this motive is proved, there is nothing to suggest that a new order of elections cannot backfire. Remember that as a consequence of the many defections that ravaged the former ruling PDP in 2014 and 2015, the Goodluck Jonathan government, either directly or indirectly, caused the order of elections to be changed from the one inherited from 2011 when elections began with parliamentary, moved on to presidential, and then ended with governorship and state assemblies. In the end, putting the presidential poll first in 2015, from which the Jonathan government hoped to gain some advantage and possibly bandwagon effect, simply led instead to dominoes falling.

    President Buhari will be wise to sign the bill and put that controversy behind him. He should resist the goody two-shoes in his government who are unbelievably attempting to politicise and interpret it as a ploy by the president’s enemies to undermine his re-election chances. Those parliamentary leaders, including the former governor of Nasarawa State, Abdulahi Adamu, a senator, who are championing the retention of the old order of elections are simply idle hands searching for relevance. The president has given the impression that his popularity is unaffected by his lopsided appointments, jaded policies, inconsistencies, and poor judgement in the case of the herdsmen killings. He should have confidence in his popularity and be ready to put it to the test. He has no business seeking for an advantage that is otherwise not existing in the old order of elections. And if indeed there is any advantage in the new order of elections for Dr Saraki and his cohorts, there is nothing to indicate that it cannot backfire when the electoral battle is finally joined at the ballots in 2019.

  • IBB runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds

    IBB runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds

    TO convey the simple message of asking President Muhammadu Buhari not to contest the 2019 presidential election, ex-military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida felt the urgency to deploy both his customary obfuscations for saying little in a grand and sometimes didactic manner and his general loathing for accepting responsibility. In short, his one message came hydra-headed. As a member of Nigeria’s prefectural troika, Gen Babangida knew that he had to say something quite striking and memorable about the state of the nation after the more pugnacious ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo delivered his damning characterisation of President Buhari’s person and government in late January. That that otherwise simple message was delivered in two dissonant statements, with neither bearing his signature, is simply typical of the 76-year-old general.

    The first statement ascribed to the general was issued by his long-standing spokesman, Kassim Afegbua. It was a rambling, justificatory statement described in the very last paragraph as a thought-provoking piece for the consumption of ‘fellow compatriots’. It took the statement all of about 40 paragraphs — of soaring and pretentious sentences inflated with importance than the words really conveyed — to say in concrete terms what could have been rendered in two or three bold and searing paragraphs. But notwithstanding the author’s annoying prolixity, the message to President Buhari to step aside manages to come out very clearly. Not so the second statement ascribed to the general, this time with his name, not signature, appended at the end. It was a courageous but doomed attempt to vitiate the general’s bold intervention. Not only was it shorter and lacking in a central theme, it was so badly written that even if the general had suffered from double-mindedness, its inelegance, cowardice, ingratiation and perfunctoriness were sever enough to dissuade him.

    It probably took nearly one week to become clear to the public that Gen Babangida has associated with Mr Afegbua’s statement. The second statement was issued by panicky aides and family members jittery about the general’s standing and their own private political calculations. It has not helped that both the police and the Department of State Service (DSS) needlessly meddled in a private family confusion they had no business with, irrespective of the fact that the general was a head of state. If the general could not prevail on his family to recognise his right to say what he said and to respect his judgement, the security services ought simply to stand aside and amuse themselves with the vacillations from Minna. It certainly was not to the general’s credit that when Dr Obasanjo, probably head of the prefectural troika, issued his own statement, both the content and the authorship carried oomph and conviction.

    After the initial hemming and hawing, it is now clear to every Nigerian, except the country’s increasingly troubled security apparatuses, that Gen Babangida’s authentic statement came through Mr Afegbua, and that it admonishes President Buhari to step aside from the 2019 presidential contest. The statement also describes the president as an analogue leader unsuited for modern intricacies and challenges, blames him for allowing bloody clashes to fester everywhere in the country, for sticking to an unproductively reactive style of leadership, and for lacking in capacity, both intellectually and idiosyncratically, to manage people and crises. Then he calls for a new breed of leaders, a restructured society to make the union work better, new and substantial change in line with the All Progressives Congress (APC) manifesto, and a new, rebranded and ambitious Nigeria. The overall tone of the statement, irrespective of its verbosity, is that President Buhari is unable to satisfy these yearnings.

    Like Dr Obasanjo, the image of Gen Babangida that endures in the popular imagination is that of a man who despicably annulled the 1993 elections, arrogantly subverted societal values, inspired greed and corruption on an astronomical scale, and, contrary to the impression he tried to create in his last week’s statement, is neither a patriot nor a visionary. These observations are unimpeachable. Even if his statement shows some prescience, it is unlikely that at his age, and with nothing inherently profound about his ideas, not to say his person and style, Gen Babangida can ever rehabilitate himself in the estimation of his countrymen. Nigerians will justifiably be wary of his interventions whenever he makes them, even if they come stiffly and gingerly as last week’s statement has done.

    The Minna-based general may be lacking in the moral standing to comment on Nigerian affairs, and may in fact be one of those chiefly responsible for Nigeria’s current distress and decay, but his views on President Buhari’s lack of perspicacity, and his courage in coming out to denounce the president’s attempt to seek a second term, are noteworthy. They add to the trenchant views of Dr Obasanjo on the same subject, and hope to help build a critical mass that would dissuade the president from going ahead with his ambition to seek the second term he has neither the philosophical hunger nor the salient vision (social, economic and political) to undergird. Dr Obasanjo’s and Gen Babangida’s statements insinuate that President Buhari is not in control of his government, having already apparently ceded it to a group of shadowy characters intent on deploying power to its bitterest and acrimonious worst. It is reassuring, despite bearing a huge part of the country’s descent to chaos and retrogression, that the two self-appointed national prefects found the shaky voice to encapsulate the people’s anguish.

    More of such interventions are needed by those who have not yielded to the Buhari talisman of waving a few achievements in the faces of Nigerians. As they say in international affairs, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. But Nigerians must be careful to constrict those interventions. The self-appointed prefects may offer their perspectives on any subject, including putting pressure on incompetent leaders to vacate office, but they must never be allowed to immerse themselves, as they seem eager to do, in producing the next president. Their track records do not bear out their altruism. They have the constitutional right to pontificate on any subject that catches their fancy, but the public must restrict such contributions to whatever analytical profundity they claim to possess. Both former leaders are glib when they assess their successors; they are not quite as forthcoming when they react to the public’s censorious rebuttal of their involvement as causative factors in the national tragedy.

    As this column suggested in the follow-up piece on Dr Obasanjo’s special statement, and regardless of the moral standing of past leaders who now denounce President Buhari, the county must still come to terms with the issues they raised. Is the president competent to rule? Both Dr Obasanjo and Gen Babangida angrily say no. There are few who will not be tempted to agree with them. Does the president possess the fairness, judgement and a sense of justice to rule a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria? Both former leaders think not. They stand on solid grounds. Is the president fighting corruption with the even-handedness expected of someone with an understanding of the expansive definition of that word? His laid-back position on the recall of the former pension reform boss, Abdulrasheed Maina, his reluctance to probe, sack and prosecute the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal, and his most shocking recall of the boss of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, while still under EFCC and ICPC probe, show very clearly that more than a lack of capacity, the country may in fact be grappling with the far worse dismay of a hijacked presidency.

    Both Dr Obasanjo and Gen Babangida mentioned the president’s inexplicable handling of the herdsmen attacks and his government’s doublespeak on peaceful co-existence and grazing rights and colonies. It is tantamount to living in extreme denial to suggest that the herdsmen crisis may not eventually become to the Buhari presidency what the Chibok schoolgirls abduction was to the Jonathan presidency. Both the herdsmen attacks and Chibok abductions, not to say the slothful approach of the two presidencies to the crises, demonstrate a gross lack of understanding of the issues inflaming the crisis, a shocking lack of capacity to envision the future from the mountaintop, and a demonstrable unwillingness to come to grips with problems that are too close for comfort. Both former leaders gave the impression in their statements that President Buhari failed the standard. The poignancy of their observations, it must be appreciated, is not vitiated by the two ex-president’s moral or ideological failings.

    It is, however, not impossible that some analysts, particularly social media denizens, think that both Dr Obasanjo and Gen Babangida should shut up and leave the scene, considering how they contributed in no small measure to imperiling the country. But that would not only be a wrong approach to the leadership emergency the country is facing; it would in fact be short-sighted. As the subversion of the powers of the Minister of State in the Petroleum ministry, Ibe Kachikwu, showed, and the denudation of the authority of the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, also demonstrated in the brusque reinstatement of the NHIS boss, a deliberate and orchestrated subversion of the principles of leadership and the rule of law is underway. These very damaging incursions will neither be mitigated by the dramatic and panic resort to the ongoing APC-inspired restructuring palliatives nor be mollified by taking refuge in the president’s personal integrity. What is at stake here is that the ship of state seems to be floundering.

    The next eight to nine months will be critical for Nigeria. On the one hand is a presidency that is clearly shooting itself in the foot every week and also gleefully and insouciantly underperforming; and on the other hand are former leaders anxious about a post-Buhari era though they are yet to show their hands. In-between are the rest of the electorate who yearn for a future without an underperforming and incapacitated government, certainly not a government imposed by amoral ex-presidents. How to walk that tightrope in the next few months will preoccupy them. They will ask themselves whether to swallow their pride and endure four more years of the Buhari presidency, or imagine the damage those four more years could inflict on the country. It is idiomatic that no one can have his cake and eat it. Nigerians will wonder whether that idiom cannot be stood on its head, for the crises presented them by leadership failings on a continuous basis are of such intensity and duration that shake the very foundations of their country and, indeed, their confidence.

  • Ayo Adebanjo and spectre of postponed polls

    Ayo Adebanjo and spectre of postponed polls

    AFENIFERE chieftain, lawyer and progressive politician, Ayo Adebanjo, 89, is both an advocate of restructuring and parliamentarianism. He has been admirably consistent in his struggle for a just and restructured society. In addition to his distinguished political pedigree, he was also a delegate to the 2014 national conference where he had the opportunity to advance some of the Southwest’s perspectives on politics and structure. He undoubtedly saw how difficult it was to get the country to reach a consensus on some of the great issues of the day.

    The ageless politician is, however, this time attempting very controversially to advocate for restructuring even if it would mean the postponement of the 2019 polls. Hear him: “If it requires postponing the election for six months, it is worth doing. That is my stand. If it is necessary to postpone the election for six months to get us agreed on a constitution that will give us peace, I support it…I don’t believe shortness of time for the election is an excuse when we know that postponing the election is the medicine for our illness…What is sacrosanct about the election if that is the way to peace? I don’t want them to use election as a pretext. What do we lose postponing the election to have peace?”

    Chief Adebanjo is being idealistic. To advocate for a postponed election is to embark on a dangerous and treacherous journey whose end no one can foresee. The objective of restructuring the country is a noble one, one that must be accomplished one of these days. No one can question Chief Adebanjo’s passion and logic in seeking to anchor a stable democracy on a solid foundation. But to deliver a pretext for tenure elongation into the hands of a government that has proved itself antagonistic to restructuring is both risky and simplistic. The ruling APC has produced a report on the areas in which they think Nigerian practice of federalism can be fine-tuned. Those areas are neither exhaustive nor even significant enough to deliver the restructuring many people like Chief Adebanjo advocate. But it is perhaps a start. However, the question Chief Adebanjo did not address before defending tenure elongation is how the restructuring would be championed and directed. The president insisted in January that the problem of Nigeria was not restructuring but process. No one can determine whether the president is suddenly converted to the noble constitutional idea promoted by Chief Adebanjo. In any case, how can a country get a president encumbered by his native prejudices to wholeheartedly and brilliantly champion a progressive and futuristic solution?

    More importantly, Chief Adebanjo surely knows how hard it is to reach a consensus on the subject of restructuring and its many fragile and contentious components. That consensus may not be reached in the six months extension he is advocating, if at all it will ever be achieved. Yet, once the journey is embarked upon, no one can tell when or how it would end. Dr Obasanjo had the opportunity to inspire the restructuring of the country, but he left the matter too late to deliver it altruistically without infusing his own selfish agenda. Dr Jonathan also began with a vociferous denunciation of restructuring until he thought it expedient, near the end of his presidency, to champion it. It also became a futile exercise to him. It does not require a clairvoyant to understand that both the Buhari presidency and his party, not to talk of a sizable part of the core North, have their suspicions about restructuring. Given half the chance, they will also exploit the subject and add to everyone’s frustrations.

    The elections must not be postponed, nor should the great and delicate subject of restructuring be entrusted to those who loathe or fear the term. Let the people instead vote visionaries who will selflessly champion the agenda and bequeath a great and noble people’s constitution to the country. If not, it will be like asking agnostics to say the Lord’s prayer or consecrate and celebrate the Eucharist. That, undoubtedly, is an irreconcilable theological nonsense.

  • Post-2019 Nigeria

    Post-2019 Nigeria

    DESPITE muffled warnings and apprehensions about the uncertain direction and future of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, uncertainties exacerbated by his non-performing aides and ministers, there is no reason to think that the 2019 elections would not hold. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo may have added to the apprehensions with the release of his merciless special statement against the president, and the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Archdiocese, Mathew Kukah, may have issued dark hints about leadership incompetence tempting another military foray into politics, and the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay, may have also uncharacteristically but pungently observed the need for the president to sack the cabal hobbling his presidency, thus confirming what many people have spoken about in hushed tones, but all things considered, next year’s general elections will hold, regardless of the cloudy and fouled political atmosphere.

    Until Dr Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria (CN), designed more specifically to castrate the president’s second term ambition, acquires both a momentum of its own and an ideology that transcends its present inchoateness and even speciousness, President Buhari will consider running for office a second time. He eagerly covets it. That ambition, as everyone knows, will however not be based so much on exemplary performance or philosophical clarity, or even vision, as on the populist and ascetic image he has cultivated for himself and his aides have conferred on him. It will also not be based on whether he has managed to run a modern, complex and inclusive government worthy of the 20th century, not to talk of the 21st century. And it will not be based on whether he is in fact capable of being responsive to criticisms, such as his indefensible security appointments or his inscrutable approach to the herdsmen crisis, for nearly everyone has felt the biting severity of his inflexibility now disguised by his friends and supporters as policy firmness.

    Undoubtedly, 2019 will come, and the elections will hold. The outcomes will of course not be certain, for no one can say at the moment whether the Obasanjo remonstrance would not override the Buhari ambition. But whether President Buhari runs and wins or someone else or another party runs and wins the presidency, there will be repercussions to the polity and to the nation far in excess of what anybody might think. As maintained on this column last week, should the president run and win, it will make him both invincible, despite doing enough between 2015 and now to receive more than two major electoral defeats in one lifetime, and infallible, regardless of the evident lack of altruism in many of his policies.

    Dr Obasanjo may have been assailed on all sides by critics, among whom was this column, but the points he raised about the president’s shortcomings are not only incontrovertible, they are also more ominously valid. He reiterated those observations again in Abeokuta on Thursday when he graced the launch of his pet coalition, this time poignantly emphasising, in a direct and mocking reference to the close-mindedness of the Buhari presidency, that “Nobody and no group should feel excluded in his or her country. Inclusion and popular participation must be visibly pursued in terms of politics, the economy and our overall social life.” By all means, critics should question Dr Obasanjo’s bona fides, especially reminding him about his own failings, but they must be careful not to recklessly gloss over his observations. Those observations, no matter how much the ex-president is hated, will define and shape post-2019 Nigeria.

    It is all too tempting to begin now to extrapolate 2023, as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, did when he spoke evasively at a reception two Saturdays ago about President Buhari’s second term being the shortest route an Igbo man could take to the presidency in 2023. It seems that everyone hopes the country would simply sleepwalk through the next four years so that a new beginning could somehow be triggered after the next four years. But without addressing some of the fundamental and existential issues raised by Dr Obasanjo, notwithstanding his emotions and motives, without coming to terms with whether the present malformed and ungainly structure of the country can conduce to development and stability, and without recognising what the country’s national ambitions and vision are, it is doubtful whether the next four years will not in fact complicate an already bad and dangerous situation.

    Dr Obasanjo did not erect the right foundations for Nigeria’s Fourth Republic democracy, and ex-presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan both ignored nation-building principles or misapplied them. Since 2015, however, even the modest gains chalked up by the last three presidents in terms of inclusive politics, application of democratic principles and the rule of law, and consistent and coherent governance have either been denuded by messianic complex or truncated by a spectacularly close-minded leadership. If President Buhari runs and wins, and given his extreme reluctance to change the things that are not working, whether his style or substance, the country will have to brace up for more of the same fundamental dissonance that has led the country away from the partial liberalism and evenly spread appointments orchestrated by the last three presidents. Dr Obasanjo spoke of President Buhari’s incompetent aides and advisers; little will be done to alter that bewildering reality before and after the elections. Professor Sagay also spoke about the incongruity of a cabal co-existing with the Buhari presidency. But the cabal is the government’s pile foundation.

    The next four years will be tumultuous and momentous. The next president, whether President Buhari himself or someone else, will be preoccupied with remedying the extraordinary damage done to the cohesion and psyche of the people, forging real peace not based on a police state or superfluous military road shows, rekindling the developmental drive and instinct that reigned in the regions in the 1950s and 1960s, and rebuilding and renewing institutions rendered prostrate by sycophancy, indolence and hero-worship. The electorate will have to determine in 2019, assuming they have the competence to choose right, who among the candidates will best approximate their yearnings, someone with the capacity and intellect to forge both national unity and national identity. The danger in abandoning reality to chase a chimera is that if nothing is done in the next four years to begin remedying the damage already evident, even the very survival of the country may itself be threatened.

    More importantly, and much more than remedying any damage, the next president must go beyond the mistakes and failings of today to sure-footedly catapult himself into the future to discover and institute the structure, constitutional principles and moral precepts upon which a nation with a solid future must be anchored. The current and unrelenting embrace of mediocrity in the name of ethnicity and religion is simply too suffocating to be ignored. A few treatises citing the examples of post-war France, post-war Japan, and China after Mao Zedong have been recommended in this place to guide a realistic and lasting solution to governance problems and also to envision and forge a great and proud country in a complex and challenging century. Those examples have of course been ignored. Nigeria lacks identity, because it has no structured understanding of who it is; lacks self-esteem because it is a chronic underperformer, no thanks to its poorly equipped leaders; and lacks ambition because it does not know where it is located at the moment and where it is headed. These issues must be resolved from next year after the elections. And that resolution must in fact begin with voting the right person into office.

    That post-2019 government must convince the country even before the ballots are cast that it has conceived and internalised a social charter of the highest contemplation, an education charter so bold that nothing on the continent compares with it, a political charter of incomparable foresight designed to find a new structure for the country capable of unleashing the people’s energies and imaginations, and a cultural charter so enriching in its diversity and depth that it will spread its wings beyond the continent. The country must not only exist, it must also find and fulfil its raison d’être if its purpose in the world is to mean anything. What exists today is chaos multiplied 100 times.

    Beyond and away from his personal failings, not to say his complicit presidency, Dr Obasanjo has drawn attention once again to the possible catastrophe awaiting Nigeria post-2019. His prognosis may not be as sound as his diagnosis — and he should be barred from seeking to profit from the solution — but it is really urgent that a way out must be found to Nigeria’s existential troubles. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is paralysed into vacuity, reposing its hope on the two-legged solution of finding a deus ex machina as its candidate and waiting for the ruling party to implode. The All Progressives Congress (APC), on the other hand, is attempting to find the right arrangement and permutation to enthrone their president for a second term. This is also wrong. Instead, they should encourage their man to come to terms with his extreme failings, reconcile with the large swath of the country he has alienated, convince sceptical voters that there is merit in his narrowly constituted security apparatus, show why every other person is wrong who has asked him to reshuffle his cabinet and run an inclusive government, engage the country in a discussion of his vision for the country, if he has any, and crisscross the country to let the people know who he really is, and that he is not the ogre hostile local and world media characterised him to be. No one will do these for him, not his aides, not party leaders, not his one-sided security chiefs, and not his ministers and apprehensive family members. His party, rather than fawn over him as they have disgracefully done in the past three years, must tell him to embark on this journey of self-discovery and canonisation if he is to stand any chance in 2019. As Dr Obasanjo showed by his acidic view of the president’s person and capacity, the race is by no means over at all.