The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Fed Govt can’t seem to agree on Benue massacre

    Fed Govt can’t seem to agree on Benue massacre

    WHILE Garba Shehu, a presidential spokesman, was busy taking umbrage at a newspaper columnist who he growled described the president as a murderer over the Benue crisis, and warning that such descriptions amounted to hate speech, government officials and security chiefs were labouring to find common ground on their different perceptions of the Benue massacre. Mallam Shehu may not like what he is hearing about the president, but the perception in most circles is that the number one citizen has behaved less than exemplary in his approach to the herdsmen/farmers clashes in many parts of the country. Indeed, in some instances, the president is perceived to have taken sides.

    The column (not this newspaper) Mallam Shehu complained about was anchored on the widely condemned statement made by the Defence minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, to the effect that the herdsmen attacks were inevitable once grazing routes were blocked. The minister’s view seemed an insensitive  justification of the massacres. But quite apart from wrongly characterising those uncomplimentary views of the president’s approach as hate speech on the same day a Fulani lecturer from Maitama Sule University in Kano all but suggested the supremacy of the Fulani in Nigeria, it has also become clear that government officials, including, sadly, security chiefs, are unable to agree on the cause and course of the farmers/herdsmen clashes.

    The puzzle is how without a consensus on the causes and course of the bitter and bloody struggle going on in many parts of the country the government can still manage to devise a solution. There have been scores and scores of debates and analyses to explain the clashes. They range from exculpating the local Fulani and putting the blame on foreign Fulani invaders, to ascribing the bloodletting to the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) without a shred of evidence, and to suggesting laughably that the problem is a communal misunderstanding criminals are taking advantage of. Other explanations include blaming feuding farmers and herdsmen militias, and even suggesting that the anti-open grazing laws of Benue and Taraba States were responsible for the clashes. Those who blamed grazing laws did not explain why the clashes and body count predated the laws.

    While it is true that one reason does not explain the clashes, it is downright dishonest for the government to pursue red herrings when the real reasons stare them in the face. Worse, as many have suggested, it is clear that the narrow composition of the country’s security apparatus has eroded the impartiality of the government and robbed it of the healthy debates and balanced perspectives required to help produce quality decisions. In their debates, assuming they do not just deferentially reinforce one another’s biases, they are unable to accommodate different and countervailing views. This was why the Defence minister caused an outcry when he came out angrily to justify the bloody clashes. This was also why the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, also came out without any logic to blame the anti-open grazing laws of Benue and Taraba States despite the fact that farmers/herdsmen clashes predated the law and continue to take place in states where such laws do not exist.

    It is hard not to conclude, as the Senate did, that the government has not done enough to curb the bloodletting. It is also not baffling that many commentators are shocked by the government’s apparent bias. Perhaps it is time the presidency held a mirror to its face on the herdsmen crisis. It will see nothing but indecision, paralysis and confusion. That Mallam Shehu considers these worried but trenchantly uncomplimentary view of the president’s pussyfooting as hate speech and disrespectful characterisation is all the more shocking and depressing.

  • Obasanjo throws a spanner in the works

    Obasanjo throws a spanner in the works

    BY the end of 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election was not thought to be irredeemable, despite the horrific killings perpetrated by herdsmen in many parts of the country and the federal government’s chaotic and seeming impotence in dealing with the problem. After the New Year’s Day killings, however, and the desultory and provocative response of the federal government, not to talk of the scathing attacks on the president by a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na’Abba, President Buhari will need to walk on water to convince Nigerian voters that he is ready, at his age and regardless of his self-confessed slow motion, to preside over the country with all the diligence, impartiality and overarching vision required. But with last Tuesday’s deliberate and merciless lampoon directed against him by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the president will, in addition to walking on water, now need to defy both gravity and break the speed of sound to restore the integrity and appeal of his faltering presidency.

    Chief Obasanjo, now a PhD holder, may not have penned what he described as a special statement entitled “The way out: A clarion call for coalition for Nigeria movement” with all the presidential finesse expected of him, but whenever he is goaded by self-interest and a sanctimonious delight to underscore his superiority and nationalist credential, he is capable of reckless and superhuman literary feats. He deployed a part of that recklessness early last week to achieve a comprehensive demolition of President Buhari’s controversial image as a leader. There was little elegance in Dr Obasanjo’s more than 3,500-word eclectic essay. He in fact paid no attention to logic, sequence or arrangement, and cared little about truth and morality. But he made up for all the shortcomings in the essay, and made the vitriol that suffused it palatable, with a precise encapsulation of the aggravated feelings of many Nigerians sick and tired of the killings laying the country waste.

    The country had for a while expected his intervention in the grave matters that assailed the republic. He is not liked, and for all his political achievements, boasts of no idea or philosophy by which he should be remembered long after he has passed on to the other shore. He was not even a successful president himself, judging from his amoral succession politics and narcissism, but he demonstrated a more than average quality in running an inclusive government, working hard, maintaining governmental discipline regardless of his own lack of discipline, and giving hope and direction to the country in all ramifications. It is against this backdrop that this column and many other patriotic commentators have learnt to divorce the often self-indulgent man from his sometimes exemplary messages. His qualities as a man and leader may not be inspiring, but he paradoxically inspires the country when he offers himself as the opportunistic champion of the country against bad and incompetent leaders. This was why his diatribe against ex-president Goodluck Jonathan resonated, and why his vitriol against President Buhari is also resonating magnificently.

    Indeed, it is a tribute to Dr Obasanjo that the Buhari presidency’s response to his attacks was both feeble and limited to only economic matters. It is true the former president dismissed the president’s knowledge of economics and foreign affairs, but he laid emphasis on completely different issues over which President Buhari’s response was disturbingly silent. In summary, Dr Obasanjo accuses President Buhari of demonstrating three major weaknesses. The three are ‘nepotistic deployment’, a coded term for the president’s indefensible and appalling lopsided appointment of security chiefs from his own part of the country; a ‘poor understanding of the dynamics of internal politics’ that has produced division and inequality; and his grating buck-passing that sees him avoiding responsibility for unpleasant happenings. Against these three accusations, the Buhari presidency’s response was either blank or impotent. When the president himself tried to answer accusations of lopsided appointments recently, using the Southeast cabinet appointments as an example, he spoke only of his cabinet and avoided mention of how provocatively and unadvisedly he concentrated the country’s security apparatus in the hands of his fellow northerners.

    These anomalies have bred suffocating resentment in all parts of the South, and were exacerbated by the fact that the president has neither answered to the bitterness nor given the impression he understood anything is amiss. It was expected that sooner rather than later, the country’s prefects (former leaders) would speak up, probably led by the outspoken and intransigent Dr Obasanjo. It was also expected that they, or their mouthpiece, would address the dangerous divisions alienating a huge swath of the country and endangering its peace and unity. Last week, Dr Obasanjo finally let the other shoe drop. Since then, however, he has been pilloried in terms that are unexampled. But he pre-empted the insults by welcoming them in advance with his unique self-deprecating wit. For a man so inured to truth and falsehood alike, it was not unexpected that he would be indifferent to the raging storm generated by his bilious essay. He is, however, satisfied that he has thrown a spanner in the works for President Buhari; every other thing pales into insignificance.

    Before Dr Obasanjo’s dismissive essay, President Buhari was probably weighing the right time to throw his hat into the ring for re-election. With the servile and fawning Communications minister form Oyo State, Bayo Shittu, indulging in travesties to coax the president to contest in 2019, and the likes of the egotistic Nasir el-Rufai composing dithyrambs in favour of the president, President Buhari is assured of a sufficient number of supporters and aides eager to egg him on towards 2019. The president and his aides know that there will be no placating Dr Obasanjo whose antagonism becomes relentless once it begins. There will, therefore, be more shots fired in the coming months until the election is conducted, with each shot acquiring more amperage as the election draws near. The former president’s essay was more conciliating towards the end. But if he is given any reason to fire a few more, he will not pull punches. He may not be always right or moralistic in what he says or writes, but he will wound with a severity that is far more trenchant than the president and his aides are capable of deploying.

    Whether the president likes it or not, Dr Obasanjo’s essay is popular in both the South and the Middle Belt. The herdsmen attacks, the unbelievably insensitive and prejudiced Defence minister’s arguments in favour of the herdsmen, and the creation of an unprecedented and lopsided security apparatus, have convinced a huge number of Nigerians that the unity of the country is threatened. They will rally behind Dr Obasanjo, though they loathe his manners and beliefs. A few days after the former president’s acerbic essay, however, the balance of opinion still favours the president seeking a second term. It is uncertain that in the coming months his confidence will not be so shaken by the turn of events that he will actively begin reconsidering his decision. Should President Buhari contest and win in 2019, Dr Obasanjo will be completely demystified. But much worse, should the president contest and win, he will believe in his own invincibility and infallibility, and he will be encouraged to stick to his policies, appointment patterns, and whatever other secret agenda many of his opponents have read into his presidency.

    After the Defence minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, emerged from the National Security Council (NSC) meeting presided over by President Buhari last Thursday, it was clear the attendees told themselves only what they liked to hear, and apparently spoke angrily in unison. That anger and illogic were adequately communicated to the public by the minister when reporters sought to know what the government thought of the herdsmen killings and who should bear responsibility. If the skewness of the security apparatus is not corrected now when things look so dire for the government, why should it be corrected after the elections when a triumphant spirit would have taken hold of the government? The government’s approach to the herdsmen attacks, the disingenuous blame apportioned to ethnic militias attempting to combat the herdsmen, and the lack of assurance that sensible remedies have been conceived to tackle the menace threatening the peace of the country, all combine to make Dr Obasanjo’s harangue memorable, believable, timely and appropriate.

    Had the former president, however, stopped at dismissing the Buhari presidency as anachronistic and ineffective, his essay would have resonated far beyond the ordinary, indeed even acquire some degree of altruism and morality. Instead, consumed by the itch to run things, an itch certain to follow him to the grave, Dr Obasanjo has suggested the formation of a coalition for Nigeria to reclaim power from the hands of the disreputable All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His offer to participate in the coalition’s formation and operations should be properly interpreted as a desire to run it, for the eminent former president does not know how to play second fiddle to anyone, a habit he acquired immediately he assumed office as a reluctant but giddy military head of state in 1976. Not only will such an association mark the effective and complete return of Dr Obasanjo to the corridors of power, he would be unable to resist foisting another presidential ticket upon the country using his cracked moral and political prisms. The country has spent the better part of nearly 11 years trying to whittle down the unwholesome and pernicious influence of Dr Obasanjo; it would be a tragedy to allow him any leeway again. He is right about the ineffectiveness and even prejudices of President Buhari; but he is mistaken to assume that he possesses the morality, intellectual depth and philosophy to help birth a new Nigeria. He was a major part of its decay; he cannot hope to be a central part of its revival.

    There are admittedly a few Nigerians who have not written off the Buhari presidency as both misguided and irredentist. But perhaps the shock of Dr Obasanjo’s letter and the dismay it has caused everywhere in the Buhari government should encourage the president to realign his government away from the imperial and insular presidency he has run from the beginning. Except he lies to himself, he knows, and everyone knows, that his government is in the grip of a cabal. As his wife, Aisha, has repeatedly warned, except he breaks the hold of the cabal, infuse his government with the right mix of technocrats and politicians, set his party free to organise and play politics the way it should be done, and adopt a liberal and intelligent approach to governance, he will come to grief. But if he undergoes this self-immolation and rebirth, he may stand a chance of remaking and reinvigorating his presidency.

    Dr Obasanjo may have dismissed the APC and PDP, both of which have consistently and incidentally deferred to him, though obviously not enough to his satisfaction, but both parties can make a last-ditch attempt to reclaim their souls and their political savvy. In particular, if the APC is unable to reinvent itself in the next few months, much more than the PDP, it will disintegrate. Since winning office in 2015, it has shown itself to be an unstable and sometimes dangerous amalgam of ambitious and misdirected politicians. There is restiveness in the party capable of consuming its chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, if the battle is truly joined and if the issues are really pressed. But whether it is now too late to get the ruling party running like a real political party is anybody’s guess. For about three years, the president seemed quite unable to appreciate the value and utility of the APC running as a party. He may have experienced that epiphany now. But it is uncertain that whatever he does subsequently would amount to an exhilarating success. Perhaps a little success would be sufficient in the absence of a threatening so-called Third Force.

    On the other hand, the PDP began as a real political party in 1998, but its operations and soul were truncated by the same Dr Obasanjo when the party won office in 1999. Having led the country down the red gullet of crises and decay for 16 years, and having lost the last general elections by a disastrous margin, the party needs to recalibrate its oppositional mechanisms, come to terms very brutally and frankly with its failings, make atonement for its scandalous and obscene displays, and embark on concrete rejigging of its methods and structures such as the country has never witnessed. Sadly, there is nothing inside and outside the party to indicate that such a radical transformation can be done. But if the APC and PDP are not to fulfil Dr Obasanjo’s baleful prophecy, they must embrace very urgent and realistic changes deep enough to substantially convince the public that a new party, whether called third or fourth force, cannot hold the candle to the existing parties, especially if Dr Obasanjo is part of that chimerical adventure.

    No one knows exactly how Nigeria will navigate its way out of its present quandary. It seems fated to run the gauntlet of hurtful ethnic and sectarian prejudices and attacks. In addition, there is the self-serving Dr Obasanjo on one side peddling all manner of embarrassing and demeaning sure cures; then there is on the other side the ineffective and undeserving President Buhari unable, as Mallam Na’Abba suggested, to summon the depth and competence to envision a great tomorrow for the country; and there are the two leprous leading parties so riven by internal schisms and revolts as to make them incapable of offering leadership to anyone, let alone themselves; and there is the fractious electorate who can’t see the forest for the trees, not to talk of determining what their own best interests are. If only President Buhari had envisioned a transcendental Nigeria and shaped his presidency to deliver that utopia; if only the APC had managed its affairs robustly; and if only the country had not suffered the meddlesomeness of its past leaders, particularly Dr Obasanjo. Instead, the country perches precariously on the horns of a dilemma, torn between embracing the sensible suggestions Dr Obasanjo offered in his essay or rejecting his intolerable person, and hoping that in this moment of angst, President Buhari would by an inscrutable metamorphosis rise to be at least half the man the country yearns for.

     

     

     

  • Akande, presidentialism and parliamentarianism

    Akande, presidentialism and parliamentarianism

    THE debate over which is the better system of government between presidentialism and parliamentarianism is really yet to take off. It is subsumed under a far more fractious and cantankerous debate over the country’s structure. Since there is no agreement yet over structure, it appears there can be no lasting agreement over systems. The restructuring debate is unfortunately so bad-tempered that it is mediated through cracked ethnic prisms. At the press conference to mark his 79th birthday, former Interim Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bisi Akande, last Tuesday exhumed the debate over both restructuring and systems of government. He easily voted for parliamentarianism for its inclusiveness, transparency and accountability; dismissed presidentialism for being too costly and complicated; and assumed that restructuring the country was ineluctable.

    Whether they call restructuring by the name of true federalism or devolution of power, as the ruling party describes it in its manifesto to the amnestic convenience of its leaders, or restructuring, as most patriots would prefer to see it, it is inevitable that the country must one day come to terms with its misshapen structure and take concrete steps to remake it along the visionary postulations of the country’s founding fathers. Regardless of the country’s preoccupation with the politics of re-election, which is set to heighten in the coming months, Chief Akande is right to draw attention to the system of government he thinks is most appropriate for Nigeria. His view deserves more than a cursory glance, for it is really difficult to separate structure from system. Let the debate be taken together, as indeed quite a number of debaters have done in the past few months.

    In Chief Akande’s words: “President Buhari is my friend and I want him to succeed but he is running a difficult system of government. Nigeria’s democracy is a military democracy of sharing and if we continue like this, there is no how we can succeed. Up to this present age, evidence based analyses has proven parliamentary democracy to be the most accountable transparent form of government in the whole world…It has made the United Kingdom prosperous, and Israel stable, and is also transforming India from acute poverty and hunger into self sufficiency and reliability virtually in all fields. Apart from being transparent and accountable, parliamentary democracy is absolutely inclusive. It appears to be the best form of governmental structure for Nigeria now. In Nigeria’s presidential system of government, lawmakers are elected on party platforms, but as soon as they get to the parliament, the party on which platform they get the opportunity, becomes less important.”

    The former APC chairman is actually right about the evidence-based analysis he referenced. He is also right to conclude, as his party has shown at state and national levels, that lawmakers diminish their parties the moment they take their seats. He knows, as everyone else does, that the APC as a party has exercised little or no influence on both the polity and government since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office. Worse, the party’s lawmakers have acted as if both the party and the executive are aliens. Chief Akande was not just interim chairman of the ruling party, he was also governor of Osun State, making him to experience politics at both party and executive levels. His views and arguments deserve to be examined with seriousness and candour. At least he has shown that since vacating office, he has ruminated on why he had trouble with the Osun legislature, and why the country has appeared not to make tangible progress both in the practice of democracy and in the pursuit of economic development. More importantly, he is willing to engage in debate in order to see whether a common ground could not be found to engender development and stability.

    But in his New Year’s Day address to the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari was characteristically dismissive of the quest for both a new national structure, aka restructuring, and a more workable and less acrimonious system of government, especially the calls for a return to parliamentarianism. Said the president, first with his customary paternalistic airs, then irritably: ” In respect of political developments, I have kept a close watch on the on-going debate about “Restructuring”. No human law or edifice is perfect. Whatever structure we develop must periodically be perfected according to changing circumstances and the country’s socio-economic developments. We Nigerians can be very impatient and want to improve our conditions faster than may be possible considering our resources and capabilities. When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure. We tried the Parliamentary system: we jettisoned it. Now there are shrill cries for a return to the Parliamentary structure. In older democracies, these systems took centuries to evolve so we cannot expect a copied system to fit neatly our purposes. We must give a long period of trial and improvement before the system we have adopted is anywhere near fit for purpose.”

    The president spoke inaccurately of the impatience of critics, which he summed up as a national attitude. Yet, the parliamentary system was in operation after independence for essentially less than six years, when it had hardly been subjected to adequate stress tests. Meanwhile the presidential system has been in operation for about 19 years since the beginning of the Fourth Republic without any indication that it would get better. So, whether parliamentary or presidential, the country has passed through the whole gamut of patience and impatience. What is more crucial, as Chief Akande says, but which the president apparently fails to understand, is that the country must determine whether holistically the presidential system is not more opaque, more costly, and less responsive than the parliamentary system. Entwined in both is the indispensable factor of the country’s superstructure, its national question. What is obvious is that Chief Akande has had time to reflect; and President Buhari has hardly found the time.

    It is even clearer that judging from the president’s January 1 address he has not found time to study the parliamentary system of government, nor, it seems, can he convince anyone that he has patiently examined the weaknesses of the presidential system. Like anyone else, he is of course entitled to reason and maintain a position, but that position must be informed by knowledge, experience and brilliance, all far above the national average. In his speech, he did not mention one great virtue of presidentialism, nor one great vice of parliamentarianism. Beyond coming down hard on critics, it is important that he must argue his position persuasively, much more than just holding it tamely and inflexibly. Indeed, it must be clear to the president what the definitions of both systems are, and what great political principles distinguish and undergird them.

    It is not the country that is impatient, as the president surmised; he is in fact the one who is condescending. Even if he did not take a position as president and a reformed democrat, as he described himself, it was expected of him to invite rather than stifle discussions on those pertinent subjects. That is what Chief Akande has done. The former Osun State governor did not imperiously advocate one position over another; instead he simply put his observations and convictions before the public, asking them to consider whether the country should not make a recourse to the past. On the other hand, the president, without substance and foundation, called for an end to the discourse on systems and restructuring, when he should have invited more debate. The country needs the debate, only that it must be held civilly. Nigerians must be living in denial to conclude that the current system works and only needs tinkering. Even if there is no agreement on the prognosis, there can be little doubt that the current structure is not working. What will make it work is not patience.

    The president has no reason to stifle the debate on systems of government and restructuring. He should encourage it. In fact, he should join it from an informed perspective. He must not only update his knowledge on systems and structures, as these are crucially vital and indispensable, he has a responsibility, as president, to inspire and lead the debate at a level that is both productive and regenerative. It is not enough for the president to get bogged down with policies and politics, he must find quiet moments to renew himself through the aspiration and eventual application of knowledge. Had he engaged in that refining task of knowledge acquisition as president, he would definitely have anticipated the herdsmen/farmers clashes, developed alternative models, harnessed the debates on the changing structures of the Nigerian economy with reference to dairy farming, and helped the country avoid the needless bloodletting in which it is immersed.

    It is apposite to draw the attention of the president to an entry in Encyclopaedia.com by Maxwell A. Cameron, a scholar who attempts to differentiate the two systems of government. Said he: “A constitution is presidential if the executive and legislative branches of government are elected separately for fixed terms. In parliamentary systems, the executive (typically led by a prime minister) is selected from among the members of the legislature and may be removed through a vote of no confidence. The difference between these types of democratic constitutions hinges, therefore, on two distinctions. First, in a presidential system, candidates compete for seats in the legislature or for executive office by running in separate elections. In a parliamentary system, candidates run for seats in the legislature, and then form a government based on the ability of a party or coalition to win the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament. Second, presidential systems follow fixed electoral calendars. Once elected, the president and the congress typically hold office for a specified term. In parliamentary systems, the government’s term can be brought to an end at any time by a vote of no confidence or an act of dissolution.”

    The president will find that these systems are not as forbidden or unapproachable as he thinks, nor as abominable as those who have taken positions one way or the other imagine. Let the president enrich his understanding by patiently studying these systems, asking for debates and contributions on whether the systems cannot be adapted to meet local needs, as the French and many other nations have done, and seeing whether instead of being constantly and discourteously reactive and offended, he can’t find the good grace and open-mindedness to champion Nigeria into the future. Chief Akande has belled the cat; let the president imitate his courage and learning.

  • Ozekhome, free speech and Fawehinmi lecture

    Ozekhome, free speech and Fawehinmi lecture

    MIKE Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), may be used to being heckled and disparaged privately and publicly, but it is unlikely he was not rattled by the intense booing and insults he received when he attended, as a discussant, the 14th Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture in Lagos last Monday. Mr Ozekhome was mentored by the late Mr Fawehinmi, the enigmatic, charismatic and iconoclastic lawyer and activist who died in 2009. It is ironic that nine years later, the mentee suffered the indignity of first being barred by protesting youths from entering the venue of the lecture at the Lagos Airport Hotel, and when that failed, he was considerably heckled. He tried to give as much as he got from the youths, and stood defiant throughout, but his feathers were undoubtedly ruffled, if not singed.

    The protesters complained that Mr Ozekhome was a defender of corrupt people whom the late Mr Fawehinmi would never have defended. They cited the examples of three of Mr Ozekhome’s clients, to wit, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, and former First Lady Patience Jonathan. It was obvious the youths had concluded that these three persons were corrupt, regardless of the fact that no court had pronounced them guilty. It was enough that in a general sense, everyone seemed to believe they were corrupt. And though Mr Ozekhome cited cases where Mr Fawehinmi defended those summarily pronounced corrupt by past military governments, and vaguely drew attention to the Buhari presidency’s abridgment of the rule of law in the case of the 347 Shiite members massacred by security forces in December 2015, the protesters were not impressed.

    Far beyond Mr Ozekhome’s controversial decision to defend those accused of being corrupt, the more pressing worry is that the country has seemed to position itself to be hoodwinked by any populist, propagandist and megalomaniac. Mr Fawehinmi might not have defended those he thought were corrupt, and who were probably seen to be so by the public, as Femi Falana, another SAN and activist, clarified during the lecture, it is certainly within the rights of both Mr Ozekhome and his clients to give and receive legal services in courts. What the public should be concerned about is that justice, rather than its perversion, must be done and seen to be done. Cruelly, in Nigeria, that has not always been the case. But Nigeria is not alone in the world in submitting to judicial perversion, as inexcusable as this is.

    The danger of stigmatising someone for holding unpopular position or view, and going ahead to deny him his rights, is that it surreptitiously fosters a dangerously illiberal environment in which all it takes to be lynched, physically or figuratively, is for one’s enemies to foist a negative label on him. If youths or anyone for that matter should form the pernicious habit of only listening to people they agree with, Nigeria would become a miserable place. They can protest all they want, but they overreached themselves when they tried to bar Mr Ozekhome from entering the hall and airing his views. Did they rule out being won to his viewpoint? Were they indeed afraid to be persuaded? Did they fear alternative viewpoints? And must they conclude about someone’s guilt without due judicial process and pronouncement?

    It is the same folly that is at play in Ekiti State where Mr Fayose, himself a victim of oppressive public opinion and illiberal government policies, is attempting to bar Minister of Solid Minerals, Kayode Fayemi, from contesting the next governorship election in the state. It is the same indefensible behaviour that has seen former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, whom everyone believes to be guilty of corruption, kept behind bars in defiance of the rule of law. And it is the same arrant nonsense that has kept the Shiite leader, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife in detention in flagrant disobedience to the law. All it takes for the abridgement of a Nigerian’s rights is for the government and vested interests to mischievously label an opponent, and then go on to justify depriving him of his rights.

    Those who encourage this abominable practice must pray that on one inauspicious tomorrow, the shoe will not be on the other foot. The protesting youths at the Lagos Airport Hotel are of course too far gone to offer Mr Ozekhome the apology he deserves, but there is no question that free speech is endangered in Nigeria, as the government itself, shorn of every uplifting philosophy, has amply demonstrated.

  • Obasanjo, seven governors and Buhari’s second term

    Obasanjo, seven governors and Buhari’s second term

    UNTIL some two weeks ago, before the herdsmen rage exploded again upon Benue State, it was taken for granted that President Muhammadu Buhari would be seeking a second term, regardless of his age and controversial record in office for the past two years and more. Not only was he seemingly persuaded in his own mind to contest, seeing that he actively gave the impression and spoke in tones that suggested he was not averse to that ambition, many of his supporters and even enemies had also concluded he would take that fateful step. The All Progressives Congress (APC) had gleefully assumed they had an unbeatable candidate; and the dispirited Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the leading opposition party yet to find its rhythm and soul, knew they had a tough battle on their hands to find an agile and indomitable someone who could take the battle to the presumed APC standard-bearer. Indeed, they were already despairing, as the APC was exulting.

    Now, after the paroxysms of anger and grief in Benue in the past one week, no one is sure anymore whether President Buhari is that invincible champion they swore an oath to back to the hilt, or whether in fact he himself still sees his candidacy, if not victory, as a foregone conclusion. The doubts being sown in his heart and the hearts of his backers will not only linger until the party picks its ticket and adopt a platform later this year, their trepidations are likely to grow in amperage with each tentative step the president takes in confronting the political, ethnic and social evils assailing the country. Fortunately for the president the choices before him are stark and uncomplicated: whether to seek another term or leave office in a blaze of hurrays. His aides and supporters, including some governors, will egg him on. No one among them, at least no one of substance around the president, will have the courage to advise him against a second term. But in the end, the choice will be his to make; and that choice will make or mar him.

    Asked, for instance, whether he would endorse President Buhari for a second term, Nigeria’s chief endorsement merchant and leading kingmaker, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, replied tersely that it was not time to respond to such a question. He had been cornered by a reporter with THISDAY newspaper in London shortly after delivering a lecture at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford last Monday. Both the question and the answer are indications all is not well with the president’s second term ambition. Chief Obasanjo was right to dodge the question, for the president has himself not indicated whether he will be seeking re-election. And whether President Buhari will finally indicate interest or not will probably depend on how certain he is at easily getting the support of his party and various kingmakers, and going on to win. That support was fairly certain not too long after he assumed office; it is no longer certain on account of the toll his health challenges have taken on his presidency, his indefensible appointments, the latest of which truly shocked many people, and the Benue conflagration that exposed both the herdsmen’s imperious obstinacy and defiance of the law and the federal government’s impotence.

    Last November, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan described Chief Obasanjo as ‘boss of bosses’ in reference to ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar’s presidential ambition. He suggested that without Chief Obasanjo’s support, Alhaji Abubakar’s presidential quest was merely tilting at windmills. “Any politician who ignores Obasanjo,” moaned Dr Jonathan, “does so at his own peril.” It in fact took almost the entire leadership of the APC before the 2015 presidential poll to convince Chief Obasanjo to back Candidate Buhari. Once that endorsement was secured, the APC chiefs felt more confident in rallying the voters behind their standard-bearer. The impression out there is that such a support will be needed again. If they are to get it, they will sweat for it much more than they did in 2015, for it is not hard to tell when Chief Obasanjo is seething.

    It is not just the president’s handling of the Benue massacres that gnaw at everyone’s kidneys, as indefensible and inexplicable as that is. After all, a president with a high degree of the concept of justice knows that every killing, whether in revenge or self-defence, diminishes the entire country. Not only must it be investigated, the guilty party must be punished. But above all, a president is expected not to lose empathy for the people he governs, whether they agree with his worldview or not. If Chief Obasanjo is vacillating in his support for President Buhari, seeing that his silence is so loud, it may be because he has some reservations about the president’s policies and methods. It is also unlikely that he or anyone for that matter would find it amusing that in a supposed federation of 36 states, the president would concentrate his security appointments in one part of the country and hope to be able to proffer the right security and political panaceas for the country’s complicated and multidimensional problems. None of President Buhari’s predecessors ever limited himself so egregiously to such a narrow base of appointments. If that posture was unintentional or coincidental until now, last week’s replacement for the sacked Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayo Oke, was an eye-opener.

    President Buhari is in many ways more inscrutable than Chief Obasanjo. But he is less influential, less nationalistic, and less profound. It had been hoped that by underlining his nationalistic credentials, by substantiating his so-called democratic rebirth, and by standing beyond metaphors as father of the nation and displaying fairness, justice and empathy, President Buhari would begin to attenuate the meddlesomeness of Chief Obasanjo in the election of presidents. Instead, he has taken no step whatsoever to reduce Chief Obasanjo’s paternalistic and often self-centred role in the Nigerian presidency. It seems all but certain that the former president, who virtually enthroned the late Umaru Yar’Adua, Dr Jonathan, and contributed immensely to the acceptability of Candidate Buhari, will be involved once again in playing a significant role in the 2019 polls. His roles were not often altruistic, but they will sadly once again be significant and unhappily relevant.

    If at all Chief Obasanjo is to finally endorse President Buhari, a proposition that is looking increasingly difficult, he will extract a far more significant promise from him to rule the country with the open-mindedness he is not accustomed to, and without the clustered group of aides who have collectively become his lodestars. Whether the former president can secure that promise is open to debate. More, even party chiefs who may be tempted to support him a second time will also extract some agreements from him. But whether those agreements will amount to anything in the face of powerful interests surrounding the president is a different thing altogether. Before the 2015 poll, no one apparently attempted to tie the president down to any definitive agreement. His word, honesty and supposed good intentions seemed enough.

    His reinvigorated health, the rebounding of the economy coupled with high oil prices, the increasingly more assertive place of agriculture in that economy, and the salutary work against insurgency, have all combined to encourage the president to contemplate a second term. That contemplation is not only endangered now, it is also being denuded. But around the president are many governors who will want to shore up his confidence and encourage him to contest. Some of them may not be epitomes of character and inspiring leadership, but they see their political survival as inextricably intertwined with that of the president. On Friday, they were at Aso Villa to encourage the president to throw his hat in the ring for the 2019 poll. Kano’s Abdullahi Ganduje sees the diminution of his archrival, ex-governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, in terms of the ascendancy of President Buhari; Plateau’s Samuel Lalong has become surprisingly amenable to his tormentors, as ex-governor Jonah Jang said accusingly a few days ago; that vast and servile emptiness of human blank, Kogi’s Yahaya Bello, sees the Abuja air as being more salubrious than Lokoja’s and the president irreplaceable; and Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai, another nimble political gymnast so perfectly at ease with both sides of the coin, will dote on the president until someone else catches his fancy.

    Between these ancillary supporters and the president’s first line of defenders in Aso Villa is an unwritten pact to push the second term agenda. Except outside pressures supersede this internal synergy, the president will continue to be minded to seek a second term. While many things are working in his favour, he has strangely taken many steps to undermine his own ambition. Since he lacks the requisite aides and advisers to nudge him in the right direction, and since he plays ducks and drakes with the affections of his outside supporters and party chiefs, it will be clear in the coming months just how severe a damage to his ambition he has wilfully authored. Before the last major appointment he made into the vacant chair of the NIA, thus locking the entire nation’s security apparatus in the hands of northerners, obviously to the embarrassment of many top political leaders from the North, this column and many others held out hope that President Buhari would reverse some of his questionable decisions, open up his presidency to healthy influences from all over the country, reshuffle his cabinet, criss-cross the country in empathy visits before he would need to junket for the coming campaigns, and enact policies and measures that would restore the nation’s confidence in his presidency. Instead, he has doubled down. It is not clear what to make of these, what to think of the motives that spur him and inform his indescribable worldview, and what things really inspire his bravado.

    No one can tell right now whether President Buhari will go on to contest; not even he can tell. No one can tell whether the calculating Chief Obasanjo will endorse the president, for the former president himself, more than as a matter of principles, struggles to always back a winning horse even if that horse galls him. No one can also tell whether Southwest leaders can rein in their obstreperous and angry electorate, without which President Buhari can’t conceivably win. Indeed, the repudiation of a president in Nigeria, though it builds up gradually, often suddenly manifests. If President Buhari can’t turn things around in the next six months, and can’t convince the country he is liberal and open-minded, he will find it extremely difficult to make amends thereafter.

  • Abati and the Jonathan paradox

    Abati and the Jonathan paradox

    IN a piece he wrote sometime before the 2015 presidential poll, but which was published only last Tuesday as an adjoining piece on his THISDAY newspaper column, Reuben Abati, former spokesman of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, made a lot of curious arguments about the attributes of his former master and the incapacity of his challenger in that election, President Muhammadu Buhari. Entitled ‘Buhari’s “One Chance” Campaign’, the vigorous piece excoriates the eventual winner of that poll as a purveyor of “mean tactics, hate-driven propaganda, shallow costuming, third-party outsourcing of leadership, and manifold deception”.

    But in the piece, written with all the literary flourish his writings make ardently tangible, Dr Abati also rhapsodises the attributes of Dr Jonathan as someone who “…is his own man…He is tested, healthy, strong, focused and committed. He has campaigned on the basis of his record of achievements and the phenomenally positive transformation that Nigeria has witnessed under his watch in the past four years…” He went on to list some of those achievements, including “the expansion of the space for human freedoms, and a purposeful, engaging campaign for a second term”.

    The piece was not published in 2015 because opinion was divided among his potential redactors. Wise counsel, he seemed to suggest in his Tuesday piece, prevailed. That wise counsel should have still prevailed because the piece ought never to have been published, whether then or now. It is of course immensely tempting to view President Buhari’s failings as a pretext to applaud the qualities of Dr Jonathan. And as the piece illustrates, those failings have not only ossified, they also appear irredeemable. The piece itself is undoubtedly prescient in the accuracy with which it warned the electorate of the irreconcilable differences that existed between the idiosyncrasies of President Buhari and the democratic yearnings and hunger for social and economic transformation of the electorate.

    But the piece remains dangerously fallacious. Yes, the 2015 contest was essentially between Dr Jonathan, as an incumbent, and President Buhari, as the challenger at the time. And yes, the temptation was to focus almost exclusively on the contradistinctive qualities of the two men. However, the piece was finally published last week because Dr Abati felt that the embarrassing failings of President Buhari, much more than those of Dr Jonathan, disqualifies the incumbent. The writer couldn’t resist the urge to shame public judgement and expose the electorate for their gullibility.

    Before that logic gains traction, it must be emphasised that President Buhari’s failings, while not deniable, do not suddenly exculpate Dr Jonathan from his own leadership failings. There is in fact no settling the precedence between the two. But if a decision were to be forced on the public, it is inconceivable that they would opt for Dr Jonathan. The former president was a better democrat in office, far more tolerant, and more modern, strong and in possession of his own soul. Yes; but he was also incalculably undisciplined, presiding over probably the most graft-ridden and profligate government in Nigeria bar that of the late military dictator and killer, Gen Sani Abacha. His judgement was also something else, so poor and so misplaced that he unfortunately appeared inexcusably and intolerably weak. It must not be forgotten that he lost the election essentially because many Nigerians and nearly all of the rest of the world were appalled by his weak and inexpert handling of the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls.

    It is, however, a tribute to Dr Abati’s piece that Nigerians dissatisfied with President Buhari’s handling of the wearisome challenges facing the country, such as the herdsmen attacks, shocking illiberal policies, and unimaginably skewed appointments, are willing to judge the Buhari presidency against Dr Jonathan’s abysmal standard rather than against a higher standard. The piece is not “fully reflective of the mood in which it was written”, as Dr Abati presumes. But it unflatteringly demonstrates how precipitously President Buhari’s presidency has dropped from its initial Olympian height. It is even stranger still that Dr Abati professes some optimism suggesting that President Buhari can still change the narrative. He is lying. Publishing the piece at all is an indication that the man he concludes is so unalterably set in his ways remains, in the private estimation of the writer, unhelpfully intractable.

  • Restructuring and the president’s speech

    Restructuring and the president’s speech

    WHY President Muhammadu Buhari felt burdened to respond to the restructuring debate in his New Year’s Day speech will remain a mystery to the rest of the country except his speechwriters and close aides. His view on the controversial subject is well known, including how rather simple and cursory that view is, and how obstinately he opposes the restructuring panacea that has intrigued and energised the rest of the country. Before he needlessly exhumed the controversy, the country was already becoming reconciled, in a frustrating way, to tolerating the leader of a party that promised devolution of powers in its manifesto so dead set against restructuring. Despite the APC’s open acknowledgement of the country’s misshapen structure, and its promise to begin to effect crucial repairs; and regardless of empanelling a group headed by the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to examine the debate and make recommendations, the party’s number one citizen has jumped the gun and set his face and that of his party irrevocably against restructuring.

    President Buhari may be bold and assertive, and his understanding of the issues surrounding restructuring obfuscated by his background as a military man and northerner; it is nonetheless still curious why a matter that should profit from some evasiveness close to an election year managed to attract such unmitigated display of candour. The people always knew he squirmed over restructuring, a deportment that seemed to draw the whimsical support of his northern base; but the passage of time and his own reticence over the subject had started to lessen the impact of his party’s disavowal of restructuring or even devolution, neither of which the ruling party has shown any appetite to implement or tolerate. There was nothing he said about his distaste for restructuring that he had not said before. All he did on January 1, 2018 was to restate his opposition, nay, throw that opposition in the face of his southern supporters who, in electing him into office, naively reposed hope in his altruism and nationalist credential.

    In reiterating his opposition to restructuring, when he should have left his party to formally and finally come out with a compromise position, the president once again showed his inability to comprehend the major dynamics of politics, a failing that led him to three previous major electoral defeats since 2003. He is also proving once again that the idiosyncrasies that undermined his return to office for so long are still potent enough to undermine or at least vitiate his success in office. By now, he ought to have learnt from his years in the wilderness that it is not enough to just oppose a concept or panacea, he must also prove that his opposition is grounded on a visionary perception of what is best for the country. Some parts of the North may oppose restructuring for what they fear might be the consequences of the implementation of restructuring, but neither they nor the president, nor anyone else in the country, can suggest that that opposition will bode well for a country beset by intractable and multidimensional problems.

    If the All Progressives Congress (APC) hopes to make the electoral impact they expect in 2019, they must not only gently coax their president away from his antipathy towards restructuring and inclusive politics, they must also sensibly and aggressively cobble together a healthy and futuristic change agenda that would restore the country to real stability, peace and progress. If their president can’t seem to read the signs of the times in the multiple and ubiquitous upheavals engulfing the country, if he can’t understand that these upheavals suggest much more than the communal crises the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, simplistically talked about in his analysis of the killings in Benue State, then they have a responsibility as a party to steer both the discussions and recommendations surrounding restructuring away from the triteness and parochialism some APC members seem enamoured of. Far more than that, they have an obligation to ensure that the El-Rufai restructuring committee report does not simply reflect the imprecise, opaque and manipulative tendencies of the governor or a narrow group within the party.

    In his January 1 address, the president, for the first time, gave a glimpse of his misty political thoughts. The country’s problem, he said emphatically, was not that of structure, but one of process. “When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered,” he said without indicating whether that aggregation had been done and he had read the summary, “my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure.” The president, as this column has repeatedly indicated, is a conservative man and politician, if not an arch-conservative. No one who has studied the Nigerian problem in detail, and who has done so without the corrupting influences of ethnic and religious considerations, can fail to appreciate the complexity of the problem, its many-sidedness, and its irresponsiveness to general political anodynes. To now reduce such a complex problem to a simple one of process beggars belief. The most charitable view of the president’s diagnosis is that he is simply misinformed.

    It is worse when he goes on to belabour the matter in terms of the tangential argument about what system to adopt in place of the amalgam in use today. “We tried the Parliamentary system: we jettisoned it,” he argued. “Now there are shrill cries for a return to the parliamentary structure. In older democracies these systems took centuries to evolve. So, we cannot expect a copied system to fit neatly our purposes. We must give a long period of trial and improvement before the system we have adopted is anywhere near fit for purpose.” It is obvious the president has not taken time to examine the country’s structure and the system of government in operation. It should have been clear to him that the country is politically unstructured, and the system of government neither parliamentary nor presidential. It is an imitation of presidentialism, a concoction so bastardised by dangerous and myopic influences that it has no pretext whatsoever to be described as a borrowed political system, not to talk of presidential system, from America.

    There were other misconceived notions and conclusions in the address. Apparently worried that many nefarious influences could upend the next general elections, the president warned the country to beware of ethnic and religious manipulations, and concluded that the Southwest’s handling of these supposedly negative influences was salutary. Where he got that puzzling conclusion is hard to say. Perhaps it was the conclusion made by someone in his inner circle with an overly optimistic reading of political and cultural developments in the Yoruba country. “As the electioneering season approaches,” counselled the president with unaccustomed optimism, “politicians must avoid exploiting ethnicity and religion by linking ethnicity with religion and religion with politics. Such must be avoided at all costs if we are to live in harmony.” Then he adds the surprising clincher: “In this respect the rest of Nigeria could learn from the south-western states who have successfully internalised religion, ethnicity and politics.”

    In the first instance, the word ‘internalised’ was misapplied. Internalisation is the adoption of other people’s beliefs, values and attitudes, consciously or unconsciously. Nothing of that nature has happened in the Southwest. The Yoruba, by virtue of their long relationship with secularist principles and democratic values, as exampled by their colourful political history, have learnt to accommodate and tolerate (not internalise) other people’s values, beliefs and attitudes. That accommodating approach to politics and other people’s differences can of course be recommended. But even then, the president still misread current developments in the Southwest. The Yoruba were inured to religious differences and welcomed people of other stocks and beliefs. But today, assailed by the festering theocratic veneer in the North, and forced to rethink their openness by the parochialism of some parts of the South, they have begun to regress dangerously to the disreputable national mean.

    In the past, the Yoruba embraced political tickets in their states that boasted the same religion — Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian — and were indifferent to national tickets whose candidates and running mates were Muslim-Muslim. Regrettably, they no longer do so. Their history has been disembowelled by the fanaticism and close-mindedness promoted by the rest of the country. Even their welcoming culture of defending and promoting the welfare and safety of strangers is being altered in earthshaking ways. No, Mr President, the Southwest never internalised anything of the kind you spoke of. And worse, they are almost now indistinguishable from the rest of the country. But if the president feels beguiled by that general notion of the Yoruba’s accommodating culture and inurement to religious and ethnic differences, the president must ask himself to what extent he had done or said anything to promote that culture in a country that repudiated him thrice and now gave him the chance to show just how deep his ideological or perhaps personal transformation is.

    The president is wrong to foreclose restructuring, for that is what he has done despite talking evasively of being receptive to ideas that would improve governance and aid peace and stability. He is even wronger to foreclose a matter that his party, through its manifesto, has not dared to address with such numbing definitiveness. The country will of course be restructured, if not in the immediate future, then sometime in the medium run. Any visionary can see that. That the president cannot see it, and has unadvisedly promoted process, with all its nebulousness and ordinariness, over the deeper and more fundamental issue of restructuring is like sailing near the wind. If he doesn’t see the risk he is taking, and can’t see how critically he endangers his party’s electoral success in 2019, his party has an obligation to compel him to rethink history before panic sets in.

  • Father Mbaka’s controversial pronunciamentos

    Father Mbaka’s controversial pronunciamentos

    EJIKE Mbaka, a reverend father and Spiritual Director of the Adoration Ministries in Enugu, is always scathing both when he praises and when he criticises. First he exalted former president Goodluck Jonathan; then he took him and his restless and overbearing wife, Dame Patience, to the cleaners. Later he rhapsodised then Candidate Muhammadu Buhari, and now he has all but taken him to the cleaners. Accused of being a courtier, pilloried in acerbic language, and assailed by his superiors in the Catholic Church, Fr. Mbaka has kept faith with his own peculiar brand of liberation theology, almost like a modern day Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a former and now late Archbishop of Managua, Nicaragua.

    It is a mistake to think Catholic priests know only the scriptures. They know politics too, as Cardinal Obando said in the years when he intervened vigorously in Nicaraguan affairs, particularly trying to restore peace during the Sandinistan insurrection. Said the cardinal: “We (the bishops) as a hierarchy feel that we can’t be active in party politics, but we are active in politics in the broader sense, and the broader sense means looking out for the people’s common good, trying to orient them. In the broad sense, we’re active, even as a hierarchy we’re active. Who isn’t active in politics in the broad sense? Everyone is! What we believe is that we shouldn’t be actively involved in party politics.” Fr. Mbaka is probably conversant with Cardinal Obando’s legacy.

    But conversant or not, Fr. Mbaka is undoubtedly active in Nigerian politics, and perhaps hopes to play a very colourful role in making and unmaking presidents, a little like Cardinal Obando did to ex-president Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua when the latter lost the presidential election to Arnoldo Aleman in 1996. No one forgets the searing criticism Fr. Mbaka levelled against Dr Jonathan in January 2015, nor his definitive pronouncements against the first family that foreshadowed their electoral debacle in that year’s election. Nor can anyone forget how imprudently but unequivocally he composed a doxology in favour of President Buhari’s election. But whether in denouncing a president or elevating another, the controversial, fire-eating priest always prefaced his prophecies with God’s imprimatur. Now, as everyone knows, the most difficult thing about prophecies is determining beforehand whether God truly spoke or not.

    Fr. Mbaka’s Adoration faithful do not doubt their priest hears from God. The Catholic hierarchy may be less taken in by his periodic fulminations and bombasts, but they have no doubt how influential the priest has become, nor how sometimes unerringly his prophecies cum judgemental political assumptions have turned out right. In his latest pronunciamento, Fr. Mbaka dismisses President Buhari’s anti-corruption war as barbaric and archaic, his style as indolent and ineffective, his presidency as entrapped by a cabal, and that, by his selective punishment of his opponents, he has become a purveyor of moral corruption. Then curiously, by a deft use of poetical statements, he admonishes the president to ‘change or be changed’. While leaving a little room for the president to change and presumably salvage his presidency, he also bizarrely discloses that God asked him to advise the president not to seek re-election.

    It may never be known where, in all his diatribe against presidents, God stops and Fr. Mbaka begins, whether prophecies are at play in his verbal and prophetic explosions, or he is merely voicing his own private instincts. He has used some words that cannot be described as godlike, and he has passed on messages that make him appear to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. But whether it is his messages or instincts, he had in the past proved a somewhat accurate and deft reflector of the feelings and aspirations of the public. President Buhari is of course not popular in the Southeast and South-South, and his following in the Southwest is greatly tested, if not altogether unnerved. If Fr. Mbaka is simply mirroring these realities, he seems to be doing a good job of it. He, however, takes care not to ever burn his bridges when he conveys God’s messages, regardless of the extremeness of his prophecies. Indeed, his New Year’s Eve message is unlikely to have been influenced by the president’s New Year shocker which virtually shut the door against political change, whether it is called devolution or restructuring.

    Fr. Mbaka will still speak before the general elections, either to reiterate God’s message, as he describes it, or to countermand or modify it once he sees which way the cat is jumping. The country has definitely not heard the last from him. But notwithstanding the discomfiture his superiors in the Catholic Church experience over his hard prophecies, or the trusting naivety of his Adoration faithful, the priest will remain active in politics, as Cardinal Obando surmised about liberation theology in 1996. The nimble Adoration Ministry priest will always leave himself enough room to be wrong and ample room to bask in vindication. In a county that has tragically become a gymnasium where promises and manifestoes do triple summersaults, Fr. Mbaka’s pronunciamentos will walk a tightrope gingerly, expertly and remorselessly, sometimes  impassively right, and at other times far-fetched.

  • Agenda for 2018

    Agenda for 2018

    BY May 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari will be three years in office. He will be left with only one year to go, more than half of which will inevitably be spent actively campaigning or machinating for victory in the 2019 elections. The last two years and more have been spent in controversially fulfilling, in part and desultorily, the All Progressives Congress (APC) manifesto, particularly the economic and security aspects. That period has also been devoted to dutifully cleaning the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Augean stables without the advantage of diverting rivers of intellect and talents to help with the task, and straining to find a balance between the higher ideals of the rule of law and the mesmerising possibilities of the rule of man to which this presidency appears not to be averse.

    Distracted by illness and a few family distresses, the president will in addition have to contend in 2018 with the suffocating demands of politics, regardless of the general unease his ministerial team and kitchen cabinet feel about high-wire politics. Everyone around the president will in the coming months be consumed by the objective of getting the president re-elected, for he and his teams are not only keen on returning to office in 2019, they have shown since 2015 how deeply enamoured of power and its perquisites they are. In the new year, they will have to confront a rejuvenated but still ethically challenged PDP. The opposition party will of course have its own agenda and challenges as it strikes valiantly to convince the electorate that its moral core, such as it claims to possess, was not in any way vitiated by its 2015 electoral loss nor by its dissonant and profligate years in power.

    Nigerians themselves are entitled to nurture an ambition for 2018, whether they possess the rigour and discipline to coherently articulate it or not. More than five decades staying on the receiving end of spendthrift and incompetent leadership, it is clear they have not been able to convolute their simple needs of food, security, medical care and shelter. But just as they have been serially short-changed for decades, they have also been bizarrely indulgent of their leaders’ abominable practices and oppressive policies. They may not always expertly frame their needs, which undoubtedly accounts for the support they give the wrong leadership crowds, but their naivety should in fact ginger the leaders to devise the right policy mix in the clear understanding that the onus for change rests upon their frail shoulders.

    But whether it is the people or the ruling party, or even the opposition, there will be the temptation to conceive and produce an agenda that addresses mainly the physical and superficial needs of the country — bridges, roads, hospitals, schools, etc. — to the detriment of the more abstract and nuanced but infinitely more concrete needs of the people. Roads and bridges are vital and indispensable, but as great leaders know, both by experience and their capacity for abstract thinking, what is seen or felt is the product of what does not appear. Mind, they say, always triumphs over matter. It is indisputable that Nigeria aspires to be a great nation. What is not clear is whether any nation can achieve that desired greatness without first defining itself and forging an identity; for in that definition and identity lies the seed of greatness.

    There is little chance that the current set of Nigerian leaders can be persuaded to first settle the matter of their country’s self-definition. It is too tortuous and too complex for them to summon the discipline and intellect to enunciate. For the people, too, especially a people suffering deprivation and hunger, any such self-definition is nothing but a superfluous and unproductive rigmarole. For the 2019 elections, it is unlikely that both the PDP and the APC will produce a standard-bearer with the depth and competence to predicate a great nation on a rigorous national self-definition. In Africa, the nearest examples were Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, Gamel Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, Nelson Mandela’s South Africa, Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania. But even these ended up inchoate. Who today gets an inspiring sense of what Ghana, Egypt and South Africa stand for?

    If Nigeria is capable of self-definition, she must ask herself who she is and what she stands for in a complex and competing world. This in effect is the agenda for 2018. This agenda may be dismissed as idealistic and far-fetched; but without knowing who she is, and as she lets herself be swamped by many definitions, to wit, of the Igbo, of the Yoruba, of the Hausa/Fulani, etc., she will be unable to fit her leadership selection model, economic model and political model on anything concrete. The job of designing a national self-definition is, strictly speaking, not that of the people whose indeterminate thoughts often coalesce around self-gratification. It is the job of leaders, for they are expected to be above the common run, to possess qualities — mental and moral — far above the average, and to have the force of character to find a living space for their people that encapsulates ideology and vision, and projects power.

    If Vladimir Putin is today popular in inverse proportion to the performance of Russia’s economy and Russia’s image in the world, it is because he embodies his country’s essence and self-definition, an essence that has survived inclement and hostile centuries, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the vagaries of war and privations during World War I and World War II. Mr Putin has what historians call an instinctive feel of who Russia is and what and how commodious her place in the world should be. He sees himself as personifying the country in a way that is infinitely glorifying and transcendental. It was not surprising that both St. Joan of Arc and Napoleon Bonaparte described themselves as embodiments of France, and Charles de Gaulle saw himself as a combination and personification of both icons and of France. This was also why the great empires of Greece, Persia, Babylon and Rome appealed to deeper abstractions which their ordinary citizens found difficult to appreciate; and why Britain and the United States of America, inspired by those great empires, also anchored their own national visions and institutions on some of the building blocks of those illustrious empires.

    The eagerness with which Nigeria, for instance, hankers after American help in the battle against Boko Haram is a little embarrassing and is a further reflection of the inability of the country to define and identify itself. France is hunkered down in Niger Republic, and America has drones in that country, drones that fly over Nigeria ostensibly for intelligence sharing about Boko Haram movements. A perceptive leader and country would fear that their sovereignty might gradually be eroded by the presence of such firepower next door and technological deployment in a neighbouring country. Intelligence sharing must have boundaries. If America was prepared to go to war to avert the deployment of missiles in nearby Cuba in the early 1960s, and Russia brushed off international protests to take Crimea and forage for land, influence and buffer in Ukraine for strategic reasons, it is curious that Nigeria has both appeared to be helpless in the face of creeping external influence around and within its borders, and is also willing to invite foreign help, regardless of the future and strategic implications.

    Everything boils down to self-awareness, of who Nigeria is, and what she wants in her immediate region and beyond. Does she have the pride and vision of Russia, America, France, Britain and some other great countries and empires? Does she have the pride and vision which even Nkrumah, Nyerere, Nasser, among others, enunciated and embodied just a few decades ago? If Nigerian leaders cannot explain why France humbled by Germany in World War II found its way into the United Nations Security Council, and cannot explain Russia’s fascination with Mr Putin, nor understand America’s retention of military bases in many parts of the world, then it is impossible for them to establish and understand the dynamics of the link between their country’s identity and their ambition for greatness. Every other thing, including elections, security, development, social re-engineering, will be imbued with greatness only after that link has been established.

    However, if national self-definition (and a country’s awareness of its role and purpose in the world) is not constantly renewed and nurtured, it will die. It is worse for countries that have never managed to find nor embrace their raison d’etre. Nigeria is a distant concept far removed from its citizens; this is partly why it is at war with itself in all ramifications, why its leaders have no spiritual connection with their country, why its people are detached and alienated, and why the world, confused by the emptiness they see in, and of, Nigeria, struggle to give their own definitions to a country and people they have so much contempt for. This is also partly why Nigeria’s law enforcement and security services have no deeper and spiritual connection with their country beyond employer-employee relations. And this is why the next elections, as other past elections showed, will end in futility, producing rulers and a class of politicians with no real talent.

    The shocking historical fact is that the many nations cobbled together by the British colonialists to form Nigeria had embraced and nurtured far more engaging self-definitions and national meanings and significances than Nigeria itself. A close examination of Oyo Empire, Sokoto Caliphate, Kanem-Bornu, and the many kingdoms that dot the geographical space that is today Nigeria illustrates this point clearly. While the British bear responsibility for distorting the history of Nigeria and its development, their meddlesomeness does not full absolve those who have led Nigeria for the past five decades and more. Many decades after independence, the British could not be held responsible for Nigeria’s persistent inability to produce leaders with the depth of knowledge and vision needed to transform the country into a first-rate society.

    Twice this year this column had drawn attention to how great countries and empires were founded and transformed. It suggested that no Nigerian leader could achieve success without studying the histories and biographies of great nations and great leaders. It is important that they must understand how other leaders transformed their societies, appreciate the various lessons embedded in those transformations, extract examples from them, and with firmness, political savvy and intellectual depth mould Nigeria for the present and the future. No Nigerian leader has so far shown the capacity to learn, let alone, practicalise the requisite lessons. Setting agenda, as some expect, in terms of interest rates, foreign direct investment, composition of INEC, police reforms, military-civil relations, economic diplomacy, raising education budget, agricultural revolution, etc., will not bring about the lasting greatness and fame the country desires.

    This piece is a reminder to Nigerians and their rulers that there are no shortcuts to the greatness they crave. Until the country produces the right leaders, even the application of the so-called right policies stand the risk of miscarrying very badly. Let Nigeria define itself first and forge an identity, particularly within its regional, continental and racial contexts, before conceiving how far and high it needs to, and can, soar. That is the agenda for 2018, an agenda that is nevertheless proving increasingly chimerical. If a man cannot be defined by the clothes he wears nor a woman by her dresses and makeup, why would a country be defined only by what it looks like? If China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, U.S., United Kingdom, Russia etc. are not defined by their wealth or their physiognomies, why would Nigeria hope to be defined by its GDP or size? It is time to re-examine and change the country’s existential paradigm in order to put a halt to the aimless wandering of decades past.

     

     

     

     

  • Fayose indisputably right on $1bn ECA fund

    Fayose indisputably right on $1bn ECA fund

    IN his argument to support the one billion dollars Excess Crude Fund (ECA) approval given to the federal government by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), the Governor of Zamfara State and chairman of the NGF, Abdulaziz Yari, said the agreement was reached in November at one of their meetings. He did not say whether the approval was their initiative or whether the government reached out to the governors. If it was their initiative, and they can confidently claim responsibility, then Nigerians must be wary about how their governors govern the states without adherence to due process and in contempt of corporate governance. If the federal government reached out to the governors, in effect eyeing the ECA funds, then it is even more shocking that it claims ignorance of budget processes and is willing both to circumvent it and abet illegality.

    Right from the day the decision to authorise the federal government to withdraw $1bn from ECA to fund the Boko Haram war, later modified apparently under pressure to include other sundry security problems, Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose had maintained principled opposition. He is right, even though other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have also kicked against the incomprehensible idea. Mr Fayose may not be the best ambassador of anything, given his often irrational opposition to anything and everything, not to say his hysterical rantings against President Muhammadu Buhari and issues that common sense ought to resolve, his critics must however learn to look beyond the man on the few occasions when he talks sense on salient national issues. On this subject, Mr Fayose is indisputably right.

    Mr Yari, on the other hand, is unduly emotional and misdirected. There is no way to defend the unlawful approval given to the federal government to access an account that is in the first place unconstitutional. First, Mr Yari argues that the approval was secured at one of the NGF’s meetings in November, where 32 members unanimously agreed to authorise the government to take the money. There was no dissent, he said. In any case, he continued, even though Mr Fayose was absent at the meeting, such a decision was binding on all governors. After all, he added, a quorum is normally 12 governors. What he didn’t say, and he cannot pretend not to know, is that surely a decision that has constitutional implications cannot be taken and enforced on all governors without their full consent and the consent of their Houses of Assembly. Any decision on ECA funds has constitutional implications. It cannot be enforced without total endorsement.

    Mr Yari himself undermines his own argument by acknowledging that governors would require legislative approvals to give effect to the NGF decision. According to him, and it is not clear whether he accurately reported what happened when a similar measure was taken during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, State Houses of Assembly gave retroactive approval to the withdrawal of $2bn by the Jonathan government. Indeed, Mr Yari gave a lengthy explanation to back the unlawful and unconstitutional extra-budgetary spending embarked upon by past governments. Hear him: “Nigeria Governors’ Forum discussed this issue (last Thursday’s approval) at our November meeting and we agreed across party lines that this thing was done in 2014 where $2 billion was taken in agreement with the governors. And Governor Akpabio was the one who moved the motion at the time. This time around, we realised that there was need to purchase equipment for the military, so we felt we should not compromise the issue of security for the entire country. As governors, we agreed to forfeit $1 billion of our of own share of excess crude account which we are going to back up with state assembly resolutions at a later time.

    “This is not the first time a decision like this is being taken, it happened during the Jonathan era. They took $2 billion. We all agreed at that time collectively in the same chamber to withdraw $2 billion to procure equipment for the military and also for logistics for the military because they were telling us, whether it was true or false that our soldiers were being killed. Some went to social media to say that they were being killed like rats because they didn’t have equipment. That was what generated discussions at the time and there was no controversy, there was no opposition. The $2 billion taken under Jonathan’s time was not backed up by any resolution from the state assemblies…There was this decision under Yar’Adua when they were sourcing funds for Niger Delta Power Holdings. They took over N5 billion for power generation, we followed the same process. The money was withdrawn from the excess crude account, and our respective Houses of Assembly confirmed the resolution. We shouldn’t play politics with the issue of national security.”

    But Mr Fayose’s argument is simple and sound, regardless of his motive and his hysterical attribution of the $1bn to politics. Said he: “In the first instance, money in the ECA ought to have been shared by the three tiers and the question to ask is; what if the previous government did not create the ECA and leave $2.07 billion in it?…Under the Exclusive List, security is the duty of the federal government and that is one of the reasons the federal government takes 52.68 per cent; while States take 26.72 per cent and local governments 20.60 per cent. How then can the States and Local Councils that earn less than 50 percent from the federation account help the federal government to bear its burden on security?”

    Mr Yari’s response that opposing the withdrawal of $1bn amounted to playing politics with national security is emotional blackmail. The federal government has no reason or right to transfer its responsibilities to the states, especially after receiving its own share from the federation account. More crucially, where on earth did the federal government get the impression that it could access funds and spend them without appropriation? If it needs extra funds for special reasons, it cannot pretend not to know the constitutional process for achieving that end. It is noted, however, that the National Assembly gave indications last week that the money would neither be withdrawn nor spent without Senate input.

    The National Assembly is right to want to debate the matter, and hopefully will give a sensible and constitutional consideration to the subject. If the debate is to let the federal government know that constitutional steps have baeen taken to deny it access to the funds, then that superfluous exercise can be excused for its entertainment value. But, in reality, there is really nothing to debate. The federal government should simply look for other means of raising money to tackle the security challenges bedevilling the country. Those challenges are huge and undeniable, and the country must close ranks to ward off any attack capable of threatening the peace and stability of the country. There is no way Ekiti State, for instance, will go to its House of Assembly and get the retroactive approval Mr Yari is talking about. So, what happens if he does not get the legislative assent? It is clear the ECA fund is for all states, and regardless of the illegal precedence set by the Jonathan presidency, it should be shared according to the distribution formula instituted by law.

    Taking money from ECA is bad argument. There is no way to defend it. If states face emergencies, there are constitutional ways of dealing with the problems, including running to the federal government and their own legislative houses for help. If the federal government faces an emergency, there are also steps to follow in tackling the problem, but they hardly involve running to the states for help. Together with the input of the National Assembly, there are ways the federal government can raise money, including borrowing, for dire situations. Both the NGF and the presidency should stop the emotional blackmail. They should simply do the right thing the right way. Neither the NGF nor the presidency, nor yet any issue, no matter how grave, can supplant the constitution, let alone excuse that supplantation on the grounds of unanimity of opinion and objective.