The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Atiku’s indecisiveness versus el-Rufai’s discourteousness

    Atiku’s indecisiveness versus el-Rufai’s discourteousness

    FORMER vice president Atiku Abubakar can be sometimes self-effacing despite his long history of combative politics, opinionatedness, defiance and even irreverence. On a Voice of America programme last week, the unrepentant jouster spoke of his indecision about contesting the presidency. “For now, I have not made up my mind,” he said tentatively. “When I decide, I will let the world know.” For a man who all but gave indication he migrated from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) because he felt stifled by the grovelling self-abnegation of the party’s governors, it is puzzling that he would equivocate about his presidential ambition. In fact, his unending political somersaults, which are sometimes perplexing in the ease with which he defects from one party to another and are deeply execrated by nearly all his friends and enemies, can only be explained by his obsession with the presidential seat.

    Few think Alhaji Abubakar meant his word when he talked of being unable to make up his mind. He often accuses the governors of sycophancy, a vice he and many critics think the Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai is preeminently suited, but it is an accusation driven by the former vice president’s displeasure with those who oppose his ambition. On a few occasions he had solicitously gone to see his old nemesis, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, to propitiate the old man. Alhaji Abubakar, in short, gives the impression he would do anything, placate anyone, and joust with any enemy to achieve his lifelong goal of ruling Nigeria. For such a man to go on air to indulge in a timorous display of political subterfuge, he obviously wasn’t expecting to be taken seriously.

    Should he, however, be sincere in considering whether to contest or not, it would imply that his politics has matured far beyond what the public has dismissively characterised it. Alhaji Abubakar knew he could not hope to get the nomination in the APC while the president kept his interest alive and his health was on the rebound. The former vice president and others like him, including the voluble Mallam el-Rufai himself, had nurtured some presidential ambitions while the president was away on medical vacation and didn’t seem likely to return. But after his return, and with his health getting more robust by the day, it has become apparent to any serious contender that the president would show interest in a second term and bare his fangs to guard that interest. If the ingratiating but less discerning governors that populate the APC could read the signs of the times, the more astute and less dissembling Alhaji Abubakar can be trusted to decode the moment even more adeptly. Few, except idealists, were therefore surprised by the ex-vice president’s defection.

    His return to the PDP could therefore mean only one thing: that he would do everything possible to clinch the nomination. He seems to think that once he crosses that hurdle, all things considered, he would make a short work of the president who, despite his recuperation, is unlikely to shed the toga of lethargy that still drapes both his style and government, not to talk of the campaigns when they begin in earnest. Alhaji Abubakar’s chances of getting that nomination, however, are slim, regardless of his immense wealth, bright ideas and political talent. Dr Jonathan’s surreal admonition to Alhaji Abubakar to secure Chief Obasanjo’s support before contesting the position is sadly the regnant wisdom in the PDP. But even if he embarked on the pilgrimage to Abeokuta, to the wolf’s lair, it would still be fruitless. The PDP undoubtedly needs Alhaji Abubakar, but only as a backbone not as a standard-bearer. They know by instinct, if not experience, that the country seemed to have moved on long ago beyond whatever goods and services the ex-vice president was capable of bringing to the market.

    Asked to choose between the reliable and sagacious Alhaji Abubakar and the effervescent but unprincipled el-Rufai, neither the people of Kaduna nor Nigerians as a whole would find any reason to dither. Examine the governor’s obnoxious characterisation of Alhaji Abubakar’s politics: “We in the APC were aware of it long ago that Atiku was going to leave the APC back to the PDP in December, but we even thank God that he left in November. Atiku had seen that we in the APC, especially the APC governors, had made up our mind to support President Muhammadu Buhari to run again in 2019. That is why he left APC since he was only looking for where to contest for president. Even for the 2015 APC primary election, Atiku didn’t come second; he was floored by Kwankwaso. So, even if President Buhari decides not to contest, Atiku knows that the APC ticket is not certain for him. Majority of the APC governors have endorsed President Buhari as our candidate for 2019. And God has continued to improve the health of the president. Each time I see him, I thank God and I still pray that God continue to give him sound health.

    “So, by 2019, we are waiting to see Atiku contest; we are waiting to contest against him and see what happens. I cannot lose sleep because Atiku wants to contest because, by God’s grace, this is the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari. It is agreed that in politics if you lose even only one person, it should worry you, but the utterances of the former vice-president that APC used his money; who did he give the money to? For me, I know those that supported us with their money and property that we used during the election…”

    What is most offensive about Mallam el-Rufai’s dismissive characterisation of the former vice president is not even his conclusion that the latter was unelectable or excessively ambitious. No, what worries any observer is his appalling sycophancy. His words judge him. He is probably the most officious, discourteous and ingratiating governor in the APC today. And were it not for the boundless theatricalness of the Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, a man so unamenable to seriousness and moderation, Mallam el-Rufai would probably easily rank as the worst. Nigerians, it seems, would rather have Alhaji Abubakar’s flighty and tragic politics. There is really nothing to contemplate in el-Rufai’s dangerous and sneaky obsequiousness.

  • PDP right to exult

    PDP right to exult

    THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a deeply maligned political party, both in office and now in the opposition. It was maligned for all of its 16 years in office, and deeply scorned for the five or so years ex-president Goodluck Jonathan sat on the golden stool. But regardless of the opprobrium in which it is held, and notwithstanding the amperage with which the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesmen vilify the party, it reserves the right to exult over its just concluded national elective convention. The convention was billed as the gingerly first step in rehabilitating and forgiving itself of the monstrous leadership it offered the country in the past one decade and a half. That first step reassuringly did not miscarry, despite APC spokesmen’s strange conclusions that it was a futile and undramatic first step. The convention went rather well, indeed as the APC chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, acknowledged, with the opposition party now, importantly, producing a new national chairman, Uche Secondus.

    Those crying more than the bereaved over the Southwest’s loss of the chairmanship position have spoken of deliberate and orchestrated spite of the Yoruba in the party, including making hoary cultural whispers about a supposed disrespect to former president Olusegun Obasanjo. Their grumblings are misplaced. Not only is the PDP entitled to make its permutations as keenly as their leaders like in terms of the effect on their future electoral chances, there is nothing fundamentally tragic about the Southwest not playing its cards well nor its being schemed out of that important office. The party’s chairmanship has gone to the South-South, its presidential slot is zoned liberally to the North, and its vice presidential ticket is believed by some sources to be allotted to the Southeast. By some estimations, the PDP is thought to have given up on the Southwest. Whether that is a sensible option or not is not immediately clear.

    As this column suggested before the convention, the PDP, notwithstanding its fratricidal and sometimes suicidal tendencies, should be encouraged to get its act together and offer a strong opposition to the monarchically inclined APC. While it is necessary to continuously cajole the ruling party into stepping up its game and operating as a strong and democratic party, it is also necessary to coax the opposition party into overcoming the dispiriting existential crisis it has battled with since losing the 2015 polls by a wide margin. In a country where political parties operate in a winner-takes-all environment, it is nevertheless a tall order to counsel losing parties to exercise restraint, and winning parties to celebrate in moderation. And in a country where institutions are not strong, but nearly always easily acquiesce to official dictations, winning becomes an obsession, and losing worse than a tragedy.

    It is important to celebrate the PDP’s first tentative step at rehabilitating itself and putting behind it the deserved loss it experienced in 2015. There are indications party leaders themselves see the convention as a fillip to both the party’s reorganisation and revitalisation. The PDP fought a bitter battle to extricate itself from the unrelenting hold of the former interim chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, a boisterous and implacable former governor, lawmaker and kingmaker. That battle almost ended in a Pyrrhic victory, with the more cerebral rump of the party barely winning by the skin of their teeth. Senator Sheriff is virtually now neutralised in the calculations of the PDP, but the party has managed in the process to acquire a few new demons it must sate in its perilous march towards the next polls.

    However, some party leaders see in the party’s first tentative steps more than what neutral analysts are reading into the convention outcome. As if wars are won be evacuations, as former prime minister of Britain, Winston Churchill, disdainfully remarked during World War II, and as if elections are won by one successful convention, PDP leaders are already visualising a return to the presidency just because, by all accounts, they managed to pull off a successful convention. The reality is, however, much more staggering. While it is true that the party’s reconciliation committees will make a success of placating estranged and fractious members and leaders, since many of them really have nowhere to go and are not as peripatetic as the former vice president Atiku Abubakar, some potentially destabilising variables, some human and some operational, have already been surreptitiously introduced into the mix.

    In place of a powerful, probably dogmatic and highly opinionated president calling the shots in the party, there are now a number of governors holding the bits and steering the party in various predetermined directions. The party has won a convention battle; it must now have to grapple with the nihilism and mystifying ideologies and worldviews of influential and obviously obtruding governors like Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State. Their views counted in the convention, but those views were not undergirded by stirring principles, coherent ideologies and great moral underpinnings. The party needs them, for they are indomitable fighters, and can give the ruling party blow for blow, and not yield an inch, let alone a yard; but they need to be guided by persons with far more restraint and deeper philosophies than the PDP has been accustomed to in its 16 chequered years.

    Far more than a successful convention, however, the party still has two great hurdles to scale in their longing for the throne. One is the all-important need to produce a fitting presidential candidate; and the other is their extremely reluctant desire to atone for their serial misdeeds. It was easy for them to decide on a zoning formula they think would be a countervailing match for the ruling party. The APC, it cannot be gainsaid, will present President Muhammadu Buhari for the 2019 poll. Any show of opposition in the fight for nomination will remain nothing but a show. No one, not even the president himself, has offered any convincing argument as to why he and his aides ostracised his party leaders and bulwarks, but in any case, he has embarked on a rapprochement, and seems willing to bend his reedy and ungainly frame, including his tenuous philosophies, to accommodate his angry party men. He will be successful, not because he is persuasive or eloquent, or even sincere, but because the PDP still remains a poor alternative for the powerful APC men.

    The PDP has noisily announced it is expecting significant defections from the APC in droves. It probably anchors that wish on the ruinous defections it suffered in 2014 that crippled their party. But times have changed, and the political environment, not to say a distressed economy, has made it suddenly perilous for anyone but the hardy and reckless to jump ship. Ex-vice president Abubakar is not the typical, calculating politician anyone might wish to emulate. For all his brilliance, accessibility and mentoring spirit, Alhaji Abubakar is first of all a fighter than a schemer, a brutal jouster not averse to biting in the clinches than a fencer adept at delivering daethly thrusts to the aortic valve. The country will in short not witness the kind of defections that hobbled the former ruling party. There will be a few movements here and there, one significant politician already fated to lose, and another fated to self-destruct, moving with their supporters perhaps cheek by jowl to the PDP. But beyond these minor tremors, nothing of any seismic proportion will occur to embarrass the APC led by a president unafraid to deploy the country’s enormous monarchical power to his advantage.

    By the middle of 2018, the APC will almost certainly have concluded its campaigns and scheming, way before electing its standard-bearer or affirming his coronation. The PDP on the other hand will struggle to find an acceptable candidate, even if they fearfully cede that responsibility to the meddlesome Chief Obasanjo who is already so flattered that he is anxious to lend a helping hand. Would it be Alhaji Abubakar, the stoical ex-vice president, or Ahmed Makarfi, former Kaduna State governor? Would a choice between the two not be playing too safe when they should really be seeking ways to cut the Gordian knot and look for a bright, charismatic and visionary young politician? Despite the seeming impact of progressives in Nigerian politics, particularly taking into consideration their noise and braggadocio, Nigerian politics is at bottom conservative and even reactionary. The APC knew this, and did not wince at producing the conservative Buhari, even if it meant embalming the rubric of their ideology. The PDP knows this as well, and may be disinclined from experimenting with the revolutionary breaking of the mould necessary to take the country by storm.

    Second, the opposition party needs to atone for its 16 years of ruinous politics. They have said little about this so far, and are unlikely to say anything even if they privately contemplate it. To come to terms with the disaster they created is to them, it seems, an acknowledgement of guilt, and, worse, incompetence. They will be loth to make any gesture in that direction. So far, they have equated their own dismal performance with the APC’s lacklustre governance. Incompetence, not to say savagery in governance and defilement of the constitution, is obviously not the exclusive preserve of the PDP. But whether taking consolation in the general spread of incompetence is a wise option, when the APC argues persuasively that it is bogged down undoing 16 years of PDP’s orchestrated damage, is a different thing altogether.

    For now, however, the PDP can only hope that when the APC finally holds its belated convention in the first quarter of next year, it will make very heavy weather of it. It will also hope that the defections to be engendered by disagreements flowing from the convention will be of such magnitude that the PDP could profit from them. And finally, the opposition party will also hope that by organising a successful elective convention after many months of bitter wrangling, it can take that goodwill and momentum to the far bigger and more salient issue of persuading the electorate to give it a second chance.

  • Scrapping SARS: between the scaffolding and the building

    Scrapping SARS: between the scaffolding and the building

    IN the past two weeks or so, the country has been seized by a campaign, largely triggered by the social media, calling for the scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police. The squad, according to campaigners, has become a law unto itself, a brutal killing machine delivering terror to robbers and innocent citizens alike in a disturbingly unregulated and unconstitutional way. The end-SARS campaigners had hardly found their momentum when other pro-SARS groups, both on social media and in the streets, began their own campaign to either debunk the anti-SARS groups’ arguments or call for reforms, the reforms promised by the Inspector General of police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris.

    The anti-SARS group is justifiably angry to ask for the scrapping of a squad of policemen about whom terrifying stories of abuse and irresponsible use of power have been well publicised. What is somehow even more terrifying is how the pro- and anti- campaign has been framed and become polarising. Some campaigners simplistically suggest that robbers would have a field day were the squad to be scrapped. Others, however, suggest that police brutality, which the squad best exemplifies, would reduce considerably were the squad to be reabsorbed into the police system. Neither position best frames the problem and the solutions in ways that would assuage the anger of the distressed public and find lasting solutions to the menace.

    Worse, and very disturbingly, in some parts of the country, the campaigns quickly became polarised along political lines, such as in Rivers State where the PDP is anti-SARS and APC is pro-SARS, and along ethnic lines in Lagos and  parts of Abuja where southerners ask for the scrapping of the squad and northerners rallied in support. These polarisations show how deep and fundamental the country’s divisions have ossified over the years due to leadership insufficiency and incompetence. Clearly, new leaders with a vision for a great and inclusive country are badly needed.

    The arguments about either scrapping or retaining and reforming SARS miss the point horribly. Whether SARS is absorbed back into the regular police system or not does not preclude crime fighters from orchestrating the indiscriminate brutality they have become known for. Reforms are needed, fundamental reforms, that is. But much more than these, police officers, rather than just the rank and file, must in the interim be held strictly accountable for abuse of power in their jurisdictions. Reabsorbing SARS into the regular police system will not end the abuse of power, nor, as some have argued, even compromise their effectiveness. The police are weakened by poor funding and centralisation, a problem the IGP seems set to worsen by federalising SARS. Until these two major problems are tackled, with state police instituted and well funded, it is unlikely that the situation will improve in a country whose leaders are notoriously incapable of using power responsibly. The pro- and anti-SARS campaigns usefully direct attention at a festering problem, but they confuse the scaffolding for the building.

  • Saraki, Shettima on Jonathan

    Saraki, Shettima on Jonathan

    IN their brief addresses at a book presentation in Abuja two Thursdays ago, both Senate President Bukola Saraki and Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, made very unflattering remarks about ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s leadership style and quality. “No matter what you say about him,” began Dr Saraki sanctimoniously, “I don’t think he was someone who was desperate for power. (But) he was not someone that was prepared for leadership.” He illustrated his conclusions with two personal recollections on business and politics, both suggesting that Dr Jonathan was obtuse in his handling of the economy and incomparably and incomprehensibly indulgent in his politics. But in drawing these conclusions, Dr Saraki inadvertently betrayed his own instinctively realpolitik approach to governance and politics.

    Governor Shettima was even more scathing and unsparing. Said he: “This is the second book I am reading on the Jonathan saga. I think President Jonathan is essentially a decent person, an unsophisticated country politician caught up in the vortex of power politics in Nigeria…If you look at Obasanjo, hate him or love him, you have to respect Obasanjo for not only believing in the Nigerian project but by surrounding himself with men of quality.” The governor was, however, not through with the former president. He added, with his sometimes patrician candidness, that the president was an “unsophisticated dash dash dash (the word he used is too trenchant to be repeated here). Obviously, the Borno governor is still too angry over the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction saga to allow himself a little sober reflection on Dr Jonathan’s presidency.

    In the remarks of the senate president and governor is located the unmistakeable leitmotif. Both politicians believe Dr Jonathan was unqualified to be president. In addition, except Gov Shettima who somewhat seemed to think the world of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, both agreed that Nigerian leaders assumed office unprepared. Until they expressly indicate otherwise, it is safe to assume that both politicians, one of whom Dr Jonathan’s man, Reno Omokri, described as a sycophant, really think that so far no Nigerian leader had assumed the presidency possessing the style, depth and character required of the leader of the most populous black nation on earth. It will be good to engage the two gentlemen and grill them on the subject of leadership over which they pontificate so glibly, and on the character, intuition and intellect leaders need to have to govern well, over which they also seemed to glide very effortlessly.

    Mr Abdullahi’s book, “On a Platter of Gold: How Jonathan won and lost Nigeria”, should have afforded both the senate president and former governor the opportunity to critically interrogate the components of great leadership. Instead, at least judging by newspaper reports of the book presentation, they seemed to have limited themselves essentially to passing judgement on Dr Jonathan’s style and, to some extent, his presidency. Perhaps in the coming years, the eminent zoologist, and now statesman as he likes to see himself, will give Nigeria the benefit of his memoires. In it he will hopefully attempt to give some answers and explanations to many of the very difficult puzzles that confronted him in office. Even then, he is unlikely to satisfy everybody, for the puzzles are many, difficult indeed, and incredibly perplexing.

    The most salient question needing an answer was not how Dr Jonathan’s lack of preparedness and poor qualification undermined his own presidency, but why from the very beginning to the present day no Nigerian leader, military or civilian, came into office prepared. Obviously there is a missing link somewhere, a link not attenuated by free election or the searing passion of a military coup d’etat. The circumstances behind the assumption of office of these rulers and leaders are diverse. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was duly elected, but there was nothing he did or said as prime minister that gave any indication he was prepared for office. In fact the irony of the First Republic is that the regions seemed to have had better leadership than the centre. President Muhammadu Buhari often likes to give the impression he came in prepared. But thirty years out of power neither equipped him for the complexities and difficulties of the modern era nor helped him to reflect on and fine-tune his style and vision. Between the two — the very first and the current — Nigeria has had the undistinguished honour of welcoming and tolerating a slew of poorly prepared rulers and megalomaniacs, of which admittedly Dr Jonathan was the archetype.

    Indeed, Dr Jonathan was merely the manifestation of a deep-seated national problem that is partly structural and cultural. Until those problems are addressed, with the requisite wisdom and courage the circumstances demand, the appalling merry-go-round and submission to mediocrity will continue. Nigeria is multicultural; it need not also be multi-structural in order to avert the crises and dissonance that have subverted its political, social and economic operations. Neither Dr Saraki nor Gov Shettima spoke to these underlying problems. Like most Nigerian politicians and leaders, they found it easier and even appealing to gloss over the country’s structural and cultural anomalies while emphasising the idiosyncratic and undisputed failings of Dr Jonathan. Nigeria’s structural problems are real. So, too, is its mystifying cultural malaise, with a part of the country hanging precariously on a theocratic abyss, and another part on unregulated permissiveness masquerading as liberalism. This explanation in part illustrates very vividly why it seems pernicious gangs of cabals hold the country hostage.

    It is not surprising that for more than five decades the country has been sandwiched between accidental rulers and incompetent leaders. There is not one elected president who came in prepared, and not one military ruler who had a definite idea of what he wanted to do beyond articulating his remonstrances against the previous regime’s policies. Even as recent as the Fourth Republic, the return of Chief Obasanjo was entirely the handiwork of cabalistic generals who were themselves untutored about the country’s needs, unmindful of the complexities of modern politics and governance, and visionless about the country’s future. In turn, Chief Obasanjo, himself perhaps the greatest apostle of ad hocism, and still remorselessly steeped in the old ways of doing things, arrogated to himself the task of foisting a successor on the country along his fractured worldview.

    It is that discredited and fractured worldview, often regurgitated by some governors who insist they know those who would not succeed them, that produced the late Umaru Yar’Adua and, inexorably, the subject of Dr Saraki’s and Gov Shettima’s imponderable putdown, Dr Jonathan. And as Dr Saraki said in his remarks at the book presentation, those who voted Dr Jonathan into office were also complicit in the crises the country has been facing since then. But the same Nigerians, overwhelmed by the common and retrogressive features and strictures of Nigerian politics and society, voted President Buhari into office, and seem even prepared to repeat the same electoral perversion of ignoring the huge failings of their leaders.

    It is clear Nigeria’s progress will continue to be circumscribed as long as no bright and brave politician boldly offers himself for leadership. Something simply must be done about the country’s structural and cultural anomalies. Gov Shettima may be mean to Dr Jonathan, and Dr Saraki imperious; but President Buhari is really not substantially any better than his predecessors. Indeed, contrary to what the governor and the senate president think, whoever wins in 2019 is unlikely to be any better, let alone offer the country the real change needed to forge a speedy entry into the First World. They are simply too incapable of the depth of understanding and visioning required to foster a rapid and lasting transformation of the country.

  • Between Nigeria Airways and tollgates

    Between Nigeria Airways and tollgates

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari and his aides have in the past few weeks been talking of the pressures on the government to establish a national carrier like the defunct Nigeria Airways, and rebuild the myriad of toll gates ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo woke up one morning and obliterated. So far, on the national airline matter, the president has remained sceptical. He should reinforce his scepticism. The collapse of the airline in 2003, orchestrated by Chief Obasanjo after he concluded it was not worth saving, has not left Nigeria bereaved. The collapse of the national shipping line (NNSL) has also not left the country in ruins. Unable to maintain its roads, and only able partially to tinker with the railways along archaic lines, what on earth will Nigeria be looking for in a national carrier?

    President Buhari should resist the temptation to establish a national airline, which will amount to resuscitating the Nigeria Airways. As he wondered when he talked openly about the subject, it is necessary to examine why the airline failed in the first instance, and whether any lessons had been learnt. Not only is the money to found a new national carrier not available, even on a public-private partnership basis, no one, not any private airline in these parts, has proved that the discipline, funds and infrastructure to run a profitable airline are easily available. It is a nonsensical prestige project the country can do without. If the country has surplus funds and time on its hands, let them focus on revitalising the rail system which is more than a century behind the advanced economies.

    Then, folly of all follies, and bereft of new and uplifting ideas, officials are also thinking of erecting toll gates. Where? Are these people so witless that they cannot see that, for instance, rebuilding toll gates on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway would simply tie up the road and add to the distress the people face continually? The idea of rebuilding toll gates, when other methods of funding road maintenance have not been fully explored, and when traffic density has added a lot of complications to the country’s poor road network, is so provocative that it is strange that officials have only looked at the benefit side of the story. Let them instead look for bright minds who can give them ideas if they are so short of new ones. At least, let them look at the cost side of the equation before jumping the gun as Chief Obasanjo did when he stifled debate on the subject, imperiously brushed aside public protests, and went ahead to demolish the former toll gates. That superficial approach has done nothing to lessen the road crisis facing Nigeria. The crisis should not be compounded by another bout of superficial reasoning.

  • PDP should resist cloning APC

    UNABLE to grapple with the electoral loss it suffered in 2015, and finding itself discouraged and in despair, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has sometimes found it much easier to clone the ruling party’s thinking and methods. This is unwise. Before yesterday’s convention, the party appeared to be toying with a presidential ticket that mimics the APC’s North/Southwest combination. While the party is entitled to its permutations, and may sensibly clone any party of its private fancy, including the APC when that is unavoidable, it would however be refreshing to find the opposition party striking out boldly and innovatively on a different, determined and calculating trajectory.

    What must be uppermost in the minds of Nigerians is how to nudge the PDP to sustain itself and present political and economic alternatives to the country as well as offer a vibrant opposition to the ruling party. If the country is not to collapse into a one-party state, it is important for every Nigerian to lend a helping hand to the PDP. But it is also incumbent on the PDP to help itself by promoting its own virtues, if another party is not to take its place. One-party democracy is of course not necessarily the evil liberal thinkers assume it to be, but multicultural Nigeria is both unable to engender it and, in the foreseeable future, summon the discipline, virtue and intellect to make it work.

    After its elective convention, the PDP must begin the serious work of rebuilding itself, assuming it is capable of that vision and the enormous work needed to bring it about. APC won in 2015 partly because it refused to clone the PDP. The PDP should try something novel, something to awe and shock the electorate. It must not think Nigerians are so prejudiced against it as not to give it a chance of rediscovering itself and making itself relevant to national development.

  • Osinbajo, Onnoghen and appointment of justices, March 5, 2017

    Osinbajo, Onnoghen and appointment of justices, March 5, 2017

    AFTER the Department of State Service (DSS) raided the residences of some top judges in Abuja, two of whom were justices of the Supreme Court, it was clear that the judiciary was ripe for radical overhaul. The raid was unprecedented, injurious to the reputation of the judiciary, dampened the spirit of many judges, but triggered excitement and small talk among the public. The immediate past Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmud Mohammed, fought the ‘invasions’ bravely and boldly, but it was clear even to him that the old ways of doing things were no longer sustainable. And when rather than appoint a new CJN the Muhammadu Buhari presidency opted for an Acting CJN, the image damage became almost incalculable. Mercifully, after a difficult and needlessly protracted process that ended anticlimactically, the same Acting CJN has been confirmed as the new CJN.

    Despite the ponderous and controversial methods chosen by President Buhari to sanitise — not reform — the judiciary, both the judiciary and the wary and distrustful public they serve agree that ultimately the overriding objective is to develop and nurture a judicial system which Nigeria could be proud of. In fits and starts, that objective now appears in sight. In circulars emanating from the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen and the President, Court of Appeal of Nigeria, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, nominations were invited for of eligible candidates from the bar, bench and academia for appointment as Justices of the Supreme Court and Court Appeal. This would appear the first time such an exercise was given media prominence. In the past, appointment of judges was shrouded in secrecy, with little or no contributions from the bar.

    The judiciary, it bears repetition, is an important arm of government. It exclusively plays the prominent role of settling disputes among citizens and governments. It determines the rights of individuals and governments. It is also saddled with the constitutional responsibility of providing essential checks on both the executive and legislative arms. The art of dispensing justice is also undoubtedly a sacred power with grave responsibilities. Every decision of a judge has consequences. Every error, even an unintentional one, can have serious negative effects for the parties and the society at large. A judge lives with the weight of this responsibility from the beginning of his judicial career to the end.

    But in recent times, the Nigerian judiciary has come under attack and criticisms. Concern has been expressed about the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency or otherwise of Nigeria’s judicial system. Indeed, the general perception of the public is that the judiciary is corrupt. And, gradually but steadily, the confidence of the public in the judicial system is being eroded. Many judges are perceived as incompetent and lacking in integrity. This perception puts the administration of justice in grave danger and calls for urgent rescue efforts. Indeed, one of the nagging problems militating against the establishment of a credible justice delivery system is the process of appointment of judges. It is believed that the judiciary operates an obsolete process that compromises excellence. Mediocrity is enthroned. Hard work, integrity and diligence are sacrificed on the altar of expediency, religion, tribalism and state of origin. A judiciary founded upon such parochial considerations cannot raise its head in the judiciary of the civilized world. It is, therefore, a serious challenge to the CJN and Justice Bulkachuwa to abandon the old paradigms in the ongoing exercise to ensure that henceforth, appointments to the higher bench in the country are based on objective factors.

    They can achieve this by making the judicial appointment process more transparent and merit-based. The process must not only be transparent but manifestly seen to be so. Candidates nominated from either the bar or the bench should be afforded the opportunity of proving his or her mettle before a credible and respectable screening or interviewing panel of the Federal Judicial Commission. And, of course, the yardsticks of measurement of appointment  should include excellence, special skill, competence, integrity, comportment and notable contributions to the advancement of law. Seniority or lack of it shouldn’t be an obstacle to the appointment of deserving candidates of demonstrable high standard of integrity and excellence. The CJN and Justice Bulkachuwa should take a cue from the suggestions made by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo last Thursday at a two-day National Dialogue on Corruption organised by the Office of the Vice President in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption. Said Professor Osinbajo, himself a law teacher: “…Aside from the DSS investigation, there should be particular test and proper investigation of candidates to be appointed as judges. In some of the systems that we inherited, the UK system, for instance, there is a process of almost 17 different tests before you can become a judge of the High Court…” He counselled that judges should not be appointed on ‘man-know-man basis’, and also recommended the Lagos example of taking care of the welfare of judges in addition to modernising their courtrooms.

    The competence and integrity of a judge are basic elements that form the bedrock for the enthronement of justice. The competence of a judge is defined by what he knows and the courage he brings to bear in the discharge of his judicial duties. This notion is predicated on the assumption that a knowledgeable and courageous judge will decide cases impartially. The judge’s impartiality is not only an obligation imposed by the law but by the words of his oath. It arises out of an intellectual attitude and desire to be independent. Independence here involves a conscious liberation of a judge from all forms of pressures, external and internal.

    The legal profession, consisting of the bar and bench, provides the exclusive pool from where judges are drawn. But regardless of where a judge is appointed from, from the bar or bench, more attention should be paid to professional competence and personal attributes. High professional qualifications and high moral qualifications should be viewed as functionally linked, because without doubt, such character or personality traits as diligence, conscientiousness, fairness, responsibility, critical thinking, tolerance and honesty have direct effects on the actions and decisions of a judge. Hopefully, the current exercise will produce the best justices the legal profession can offer. The Nigerian judiciary at this critical stage of its history needs justices who are honest, hard-working, conscientious, brave, patient, cultivated, intellectually curious and gifted with an intuitive sense of justice, men and women justices who carry the gravitas of judicial officers with all the boldness, dignity and nobility possible.

    In the end, the raids on the residences of the justices in October 2016 may help nudge the country in the direction of nurturing a judiciary the country can boast of, one that would rank among the best in the world. Then, perhaps, attention will shift more appropriately in the direction of the executive, as exemplified by the Olusegun Obasanjo and Buhari presidencies, which had and still has a notorious penchant for disobeying court judgements under the guise of defying venal courts and judges or claiming the higher moral ground, of course without any substantiation.

     

    First published here on March 5, 2017

  • FJSC, Court of Appeal’s controversial repudiation of standards

    FJSC, Court of Appeal’s controversial repudiation of standards

    IN January when the then Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, announced a paradigm shift in the appointment of appellate justices, this column, after observing arguments on the subject, was satisfied enough some two months later, to offer unsolicited advice. That advice, which sadly fell on deaf ears, is reproduced in the essay above today more or less to mock Nigeria’s judicial hierarchies about their lack of discipline and integrity in both the appointment of judges, including and especially appellate justices, and apparently their appalling sense of history and lack of farsightedness.

    Now, after many months of dilly-dallying, couched in what they controversially describe as a painstaking nomination process, 14 justices have been nominated to complement the 76 already functioning as Appeal Court justices. The law stipulates the appointment of 90 justices, according to Section 2 of Court Appeal (Amendment) Act, 2013. The priority list, which the National Judicial Council (NJC) in their typical obfuscation described as still undergoing processing, contains a rather lengthy addendum of another 14 justices supposedly included as the reserved list in case some of the names on the priority list do not pass muster. When in January Justice Onnoghen spoke inspiringly of instituting conditions that would lead to the appointment of great and knowledgeable jurists, and most people believed him, he did not give the impression that the list would end up as anticlimactically as his own appointment which the federal government had clumsily attempted to sabotage.

    Everybody believed the CJN in January, including this column. At any rate, the Nigerian Bar Association was chief among the converts to Justice Onnoghen’s proselytising talk. Eager and trusting that change was afoot, the NBA had assembled about 187 nominations, out of which some 12 were finally shortlisted and forwarded to the relevant quarters. In the NBA list were some of the brightest and most enterprising legal minds the country could boast of. If any of the 12 was finally considered at all Court of Appeal and the FJSC, there was no indication of that anticipated thoroughness or fidelity to judicial reformation in both the priority and reserved lists. The list, in effect, reads more like a sop to judicial dynasties than to legal proficiency, and a disingenuous abdication to wholesale quota rather than merit. The CJN promised that, as a first step to fostering a favourable perception of the appellate courts, wholly different considerations that would lead to the appointment of brilliant and qualified jurists would be enthroned. Nothing of that nature was apparently either truly intended or accomplished. Had the judicial authorities planned a 60:40 ratio in favour of merit, the outcome would not have been as lamentable as it is.

    Every Nigerian, including the CJN himself, knows that the quality of judgements coming from Nigerian courts has declined considerably. Indeed, in acknowledgement of that realisation, as demonstrated in the piece above, the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, himself a law professor, made reference to how judges were appointed in the United Kingdom, including subjecting the nominees to about 17 different tests before appointment. But perhaps the CJN and the NJC had no hands whatsoever in the compilation of the Court of Appeal list, just as the matter was squarely between the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and the Appeal Court. It is however difficult to believe that both the CJN and the NJC would wholly surrender the process to the Court of Appeal and shirk their own supervisory and regulatory responsibilities to the entire judiciary.

    The NJC should be disturbed that increasingly the intellectual gap between the bar and the bench is widening, with many lawyers of world standard being produced in Nigeria, and jurists of global standard — in character and learning — remaining in abysmal short supply. If the NJC knew the exercise would be restricted to quota rather than merit, as its diversionary argument of lopsided nominations indicated last week, it should have limited the nominations to those states that were unable to fill their quotas. By opening up the nominations to both the bar and the academia, instead of only the bench, and yet recommending only members of the bench for appointment, the approving authorities obviously acted in bad faith, though they now feign ignorance.

    A few decades ago, Nigeria was producing jurists of international repute: the Eliases, Udomas, Agudas, etc. Now the appellate courts, as the Kogi governorship case proved without a shadow of doubt, can hardly give judgements worthy of being quoted as precedence within and outside Nigeria. If the list of nominations in circulation is the best the NJC is willing to vouchsafe when it meets in two weeks, though the list comes through the FJSC, and regardless of whether it is still undergoing processing or not, then clearly what motivates the judicial authorities is anything but a need to reform and transform the judiciary. In fact, what is being enthroned is not just a conservative judiciary but a reactionary judiciary. The NJC should stop defending the indefensible, and condoning the dismal reasoning of both the Court of Appeal and the FJSC. It must ask itself why the entire exercise should not be redone, for the issue is not really about lopsidedness but about quality of jurists. And it must persuade itself and the hugely sceptical public that the present justices of the appellate courts can by their intellect and character salvage the dwindling reputation of the judiciary.

  • The Atiku response

    The Atiku response

    AT 71 years old, former vice president Atiku Abubakar probably thinks 2019 may be his last chance at running for the Nigerian presidency. He will be 72 years old when and if he runs. The oldest man yet to vie for the Nigerian presidency, Muhammadu Buhari, threw his hat into the ring at 72 years old. He will be 76 years old if he chooses to seek re-election in 2019. On the surface, what may be shaping out politically in Nigeria is the battle of gerontocracies. But in reality, Alhaji Abubakar looks as fit as a fiddle, in body and in mind, and much younger than he looks. If he does not enter the fray in 2019 at 72, he probably does not see himself entering it at 76. In other words, 2019 is probably the last time the former vice president can seek the presidency. It is, therefore, wrong to describe him as desperate. No, he is merely responding, as sensibly as anyone his age would, to the cruel and unforgiving dictates of age and the mesmerising allure of politics.

    That Alhaji Abubakar has defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) is also not surprising. As far as the ruling party is concerned, no realist will want to take on the slim behemoth straddling the party, the contradistinctive President Buhari who, despite his lean and gaunt figure, packs such a formidable and implacable punch that few are willing to take him on. Of those few, most will let it be known that they see the contest as a comical political display on their part. But whether few or majority, no one in the APC is in any doubt that the president wields enormous and even asymmetric power which he is willing, nay lusts, to use. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was bucolic but gregarious, yet when it came to using state power, and for a man whose bilious stare unnerves his enemies, he strangely tended to pull his punches at key moments in a fight. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan was apparently too educated and to nonplussed by power to wield it ruthlessly.

    President Buhari is not tarred with the same brush. He knows a thing or two about power, especially from the African perspective, and is willing, eager, and joyously able to project it. He appears inured to the consequences of deploying power brutally, and in fact can’t often seem to understand why the brutal use of state power is met by both derision and outrage. Alhaji Abubakar is clear in his mind who the president is and what he wants in 2019. More, he knows how almost impossible it is for anyone with enough amperage in his ambition to stay within the party and take on the president. And since he is too much the gentleman to fantasise a celestial sleight of hand to edge out the increasingly fortified and recuperating president, he has opted to seek his ambition elsewhere. The APC may on the surface keep their options open as far as the candidature of the party is concerned, but in reality, they know they face a Hobson’s choice. With enough sycophants like the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, left in the party to massage the president’s ego, party leaders know that the endorsements the president has received so far carry crushing weight.

    Unaccustomed to tomfoolery, Alhaji Abubakar has read the signs of the times, and has opted realistically to seek fulfilment elsewhere. Even if he chooses to deceive himself by staying in the APC, he knows how cruelly age mocks everyone, not to say someone like him with many battle scars, some of them inflicted on him as he battled party panjandrums and hopped from one party to another. For the former vice president, it is now or never. He is right to defect. He does not stand a cat in hell’s chance at stealing the president’s thunder in the APC. As events show, and even though he has been quite reticent about it, there seems to be some truth in the speculation that the Buhari presidency has trained its guns on his business interests. He will of course not yield, but he is smart enough to know that it is futile to stay within the APC and fight.

    As this column has long maintained, President Buhari will secure the ruling party’s nomination as long as he is on his feet, regardless of the internal politics of the APC, or the reservations of some party members. It will not matter whether the president is parochial, undemocratic, inflexible or insular. As long as he expresses interest in 2019, he will be handed the nomination almost on a platter. Alhaji Abubakar knows this. So, too, do many other ambitious aspirants who have learnt never to procrastinate nor to surrender to pessimism, given the experiences of many politicians, including Dr Jonathan, who rose to the presidency fortuitously. Indeed, whether they remain in the party or not, both Senate President Bukola Saraki and former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, will continue to groan in the APC. Like Alhaji Abubakar, they know they can do far better than the president, but party strictures and Nigeria’s general political dynamics make it difficult for them to express themselves as liberally as they would like.

    Alhaji Abubakar has not indicated where he is headed, whether to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as many speculate, or elsewhere as the Kano State governor, Umaru Ganduje, snorted. Wherever he berths, the former vice president is sure to give as much as he will take. Given his pugilistic past in the years when he boldly took on Chief Obasanjo, Alhaji Abubakar does not shirk a fight, and in fact loves to joust endlessly, and cares little what bloody nose he is given. It is not fully obvious how badly he takes defeat, but given his robust political style, his belief in humanity, his boundless determination to mentor talented and intellectually gifted young politicians and technocrats, he seems so well attuned to the vagaries of life and politics, displaying none of the lachrymose reaction to political defeat which the current occupant of the highest seat in the land exhibited in 2011.

    Those who suggest that Alhaji Abubakar might join some other unknown party may be mistaken. The former vice president may be capricious and flirty in his political associations, but he is not stupid. He knows that if he is to stand any chance at all in 2019, it will have to be on the platform of the leading opposition party, the PDP, from whence he came. But he will meet quite a number of other ambitious aspirants who have remained in the party through thick and thin. They may not have his charisma and exposure, nor his pluckiness and wide contacts and reach, but they will boast of their stability, reliability and absence of collateral damage, such as the allegations of business and financial malfeasances that have dogged the former vice president.

    It is one of the curious ironies of politics that Alhaji Abubakar, whom many of his mentees and followers are willing to swear by and even die for, is plagued by missteps, public distrust, and sometimes general apathy. Yet, of all the presidential contestants since 2007, he is probably the most gifted, most prepared, and most clear-headed. But the other liabilities he carries, some of them accentuated by the cynical and corrosive comments of detractors led by the caustic Chief Obasanjo, weigh him down so heavily and countermands his gifts, experience and contributions. Whether he can now surmount these drawbacks in 2019, as President Buhari managed to surmount his after three tries, remains to be seen. He will give the race his best shot, possibly on the PDP platform, and he will attempt to assemble a coalition, indeed an armada, that would deliver the coveted prize to him. But overcoming the various geopolitical considerations, the one-term-two-term dynamics, and party intrigues within and without will prove truly daunting.

  • DSS, EFCC in intractable tussle

    INTER-agency wars and mutual suspicion between establishments whose functions overlap are fairly commonplace in many parts of the world. But the brutal, shameless and continuing war between the Nigerian Department of State Service (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) really takes the biscuit! The latest flare-up concerns the gleeful attempt by the EFCC to arrest the former Directors-General of the intelligence services, Ita Ekpeyong of the DSS and Ayo Oke of the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA). Arresting both operatives, it was clear to the secret service, would confer some public relations advantages on the EFCC, an agency with which both intelligence agencies have locked horns in an intractable war. The war has been going on since the beginning of the Buhari presidency, flaring up occasionally as events, temper, mood and perhaps, too, whims dictate. The inter-agency wars have even sometimes morphed into intra-agency battles, as the shameful struggle between escort policemen in Port Harcourt indicated a few weeks ago.

    The president has a duty to put a stop to the nonsense. The finances of the secret services can be probed as the situation demands, whether openly or secretly, but it should not be by another agency in order to avoid feelings of triumphalism or the creation of a super agency. The Buhari presidency can’t tell Nigerians it doesn’t appreciate the sentiments pervading the secret services and the military and paramilitary services. As fearsome and objectionable as the operations of the secret services are, the point is not to shield them, but to deal with them in a way that does not exacerbate rivalries and create more problems than are being solved.