The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Kachikwu’s letter sparks something sinister

    Kachikwu’s letter sparks something sinister

    In the days ahead, officials of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, like many other analysts, will be tempted to focus almost exclusively on the contents of the August 30th letter written to the president by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu. The letter accuses the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, of insubordination and bureaucratic misconduct. It is possible the NNPC boss will be found guilty of some or all the allegations levelled against him. It is also possible that the infractions listed against him may be of such tameness that he and his accusers could get away with only a slap on the wrist. But overall, the outcome of any discussions or investigations apparently being conducted by both the president and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is not certain. For now, until the investigations are concluded, it is pointless examining the content and severity of the infractions allegedly committed by Dr Baru.

    The temptation to focus only on the contents of the letter should be resisted. What is far more important and weighty is to focus on why a letter written to the president in late August, and should have been delivered not later than early September, should receive no attention until the first week of October, and only after someone leaked it to the media. The allegations are so weighty and disturbing that the letter should have received immediate attention once it got to the president’s table. If it becomes established that the letter indeed got to the president — and there is no reason it should not have got to him if the presidency has not become dysfunctional — it would even be far more worrisome to know that the president treated the letter with the idiosyncratic casualness many Nigerians attach to him when he is discomfited by the public censure that accompanies his misconceived or misplaced policies.

    Unlike the scandals that have engulfed both the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) director general, Ayodele Oke, it is impossible for the president to limit himself to the usual squirming he has become accustomed to when some of his top appointees are accused of malfeasance. In October 2016, Mr Lawal had first been accused by national lawmakers of feeding fat on contracts meant to bring succour to internally displaced persons in the Northeast. By December, the controversy over the SGF’s conduct was deafening. In January of the following year, the government hastily cleared him of any wrongdoing after what looked like an investigation. Because the noise did not die down, however, the government was forced to take a closer and second look at the allegations, and the SGF was eventually suspended in April. The president feigned disinterest in the scandal, travelled abroad on May 7 for a second medical attention in the United Kingdom, and seemed justified to leave the matter in abeyance. But he returned on August 19 and has yet to find a closure that satisfies justice and morality.

    The Kachikwu letter, however, strikes at the heart of the Buhari presidency, particularly its awkward and contradictory image as a reformist government. The letter is both denotative and connotative of the temper and philosophy of the Buhari presidency, and of the worldview and fundamental character of the president himself. It does not just insinuate that gross and unforgivable bureaucratic malfeasances were committed by a government appointee, much of it deliberate and orchestrated, it also quite clearly infers disturbing connivance at the highest echelons of government and an inexplicable and probably contemptuous foot-dragging at the presidency. This is why it is deeply troubling. That the president has suddenly woken up more than one month after Dr Kachikwu wrote him a letter does not absolve him and his aides of dereliction of responsibility.

    While the president and vice president in their interactions with the accused and the accuser are free to establish the accuracy or otherwise of the allegations, it is far more important for Nigerians to establish a few other salient facts. The first is whether the president received the letter or not. If he did not, then it is necessary to find out who held the letter up, because there must be consequences. But if the president got it, he needs to explain why he ignored it for over a month, for surely he can’t feel so unperturbed as to think that for so weighty a letter, acting with dispatch was needless, or that his office is too indpendent and too powerful not to owe those who elected him an explanation. Indeed, by acting frantically after the letter was leaked, the president seemed to indicate that he was not devoid of a sound assessment of the weightiness of the contents. In addition, the president and his aides must not go away with the impression that all they need to do is find common ground between the accuser and the accused, or rekindle esprit de corps in the NNPC. Terrible infractions have allegedly been committed. They must not only be explained and blames and punishments apportioned, the presidency must also recognise that the accusations indicate that so much is wrong with the running of government, particularly under the Buhari presidency, and ethnic and regional biases have become accentuated.

    The Kachikwu letter exemplified the author’s deep frustrations, perhaps frustrations other similarly excluded cabinet members share. By penning such vigorous and specific allegations against Dr Baru, the Minister of State appears to have resigned himself to whatever consequences his feistiness might attract. The letter not only exposed alleged wrongdoings in the NNPC, some of them truly mindboggling, it also clearly indicates that the author’s position cannot be rendered worse or more prostrate than he already was. Outflanked, outgunned and outmanoeuvred, Dr Kachikwu appears to know he was throwing his last dice. That throw would make or mar him. Should the president resolve this big dilemma — probably the biggest his troubled presidency has faced so far because it deals with his image — by simply doing away with both Dr Kachikwu and Dr Baru, he would not have shown himself or his presidency to be as courageous as he has constantly let out, nor the fair and just man he is cracked up to be.

    The president must accept responsibility for the scandalous allegations. He is Minister of Petroleum Resources though he does not need to be. That ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo kept the job to himself does not make combining the ministerial and presidential jobs sound or correct. Chief Obasanjo freaked everyone out, including the youths in his government, with his bizarre and frenetic work rate. It was purely animalistic adrenalin at work in him. However, there was nothing done in the ministry under Chief Obasanjo that showed he brought uncommon savvy to the job, or that he left the ministry far more organised and ethical than he met it. It was even more unwise for President Buhari to have resolved to keep the jobs of president and petroleum minister when he does not possess half the energy, exposure and attention to detail of Chief Obasanjo to do even one of the two.

    It appears that President Buhari was impervious to the rot alluded to by Dr Kachikwu, despite the two working together to manage the same ministry. The implication is that the president was neither supervising the ministry as closely as he should, nor setting the tone and philosophy by which it must be run. It meant that too many things were happening in that ministry without his knowledge, and if stories are to be believed, without his consent. It also meant, very sadly, that he was virtually an absentee minister. Otherwise, there is no way the controversial appointments that infuriated the Southeast, and the contracts mentioned by the Minister of State, could have been issued without him being in the driver’s seat. More damningly, for a president who swore to have the presence of mind needed for the top job, and who says he is above suspicion or capable of any connivance, how could the tempestuous controversy over the recent postings in the NNPC have escaped his attention? Surely he reads the news, and should have shown interest in what was shaping up into a national crisis, for the country was in a lather over the matter for weeks. It will, therefore, be taken with a pinch of salt to say the president, as Minister of Petroleum Resources, was ignorant of the ministry’s affairs. But if he knew, as seems sensible to speculate, his refusal to probe the controversy and arrest the drift when it began showed connivance.

    Dr Kachikwu was smart to have brought the matter to the attention of the president. Whoever leaked the letter to the media also did the minister a great favour. The worst punishment he can get is to be reshuffled out of the cabinet. But if it comes to that, he will leave with his reputation and dignity intact. He complained of being sidelined and treated shabbily by a subordinate. Now everyone knows it was not because he shirked a fight or was too unintelligent to understand when he was being insulted. Everyone now knows that the strange and indefensible policies and measures emanating from the ministry in the past one year or so came essentially not from him but from a shadowy group of powerful individuals.

    What is even more critical is that everyone now knows, without prejudice to the investigation of the $25bn contracts, that the widespread allegation of a cabal hijacking the Buhari presidency are unlikely to be an exaggeration. Dr Baru himself might still turn out to be a pawn on the convoluted chessboard of the so-called cabal, and Dr Kachikwu a victim. It may even be somewhat established that the Minister of State himself, going by the unsubstantiated allegations against him, might have performed less than stellar in some of his assignments, as many have suggested, but there is no question where the ultimate blame lies. The buck stops with the minister or the president. By combining the two positions less effectively than the positions demanded, President Buhari should tender an unreserved apology and relinquish the ministerial position. If a minister had proved incapable of supervising such an important ministry, he would be sacked. But how does the president sack himself? If he kept the portfolio because he could trust no one to handle it ethically, does his abdication of both responsibility and close supervision not amount to implicit assignation of the ministry to someone else?

    Except President Buhari is in denial, he must begin to appreciate that his presidency is more troubled than he seems to acknowledge. Apart from the intolerable skewness in his key appointments, probably the worst ever, he also dithers badly in tackling deep bureaucratic infractions committed by the offending appointees. And for an elected president, he has not shown any inkling that he understands what democracy, from which he has profited so extravagantly, is all about, nor demonstrated that he has a special liking for it. On top of his curious fondness for the wholesale application of force in every conflict that appears to challenge his political chauvinism, not to say his refusal to respond well to accusations of promoting ethnic exceptionalsim, it is uncertain that after the Buhari presidency, Nigerians will still recognise the democracy they thought they received in 1999.

    As Minister of State, Dr Kachikwu, was barred for an unhealthy long time from meeting or conferring with the Minister of Petroleum Resources, that is, the president. But after the letter leaked, he was summarily ushered into the president’s presence. However, it is doubtful whether the rapprochement is anything but a ruse. The Buhari presidency’s minders are too stouthearted and cabalistic to bend in accommodation. They will be incensed that the junior minister wrote the damning letter, and fly into a rage that the letter leaked. In fact, they will have no interest in mollifying him, or if they do, it will be grudgingly tokenistic. Instead, they will wait in ambush to unhorse him at an opportune time. No one has yet survived their strangulation, not even the sometimes idealistic and optimistic wife of the president, Aisha, whom members of the cabal reportedly painted in unflattering colours not too long ago, complete with a nom de guerre.

    A few weeks before the president returned home from his last medical treatment, Mrs Buhari had eulogised her husband’s newfound vigour and charisma in ecclesiastical allegories that suggested that those who held him captive would be publicly drawn and quartered on the canvass of public prayers. He would return and call his soul his own, she had enthused. Her optimism was unfortunately like a red rag to a bull. Not only are the president’s cynical captors stimulated by opposition, sometimes even deriding those who say the inflexible former army general has been held captive, they see the sanguinary consequences of war as both inevitable and indispensable. Dr Kachikwu may reap short term benefits from his potent and provocative letter, and perhaps be regaled by the president’s bucolic humour during very brief interactions, he will do well, however, to consider the anecdotal graves in which those who took on the president and thumbed their noses at his aides are interred. For if ‘the other room’ suffers from rising damp, there is no reason to think the president’s office, already scarified by rodents, cannot suffocate a daring epistolary upstart.

  • Nigeria at 57: The deep calls unto deep

    Nigeria at 57: The deep calls unto deep

    IN an analysis by James Wan published in African Arguments last week and posted on the internet on September 28, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo was at his pontifical and bombastic best railing against everyone and revelling in self-promotion. He execrated his successor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, whom he described as ignorant, though he foisted him on the country, mused about President Muhammadu Buhari’s rather laid-back and ponderous style, and in his refusal to say anything about ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar’s presidential ambition all but dismissed him as inconsequential and chimerical. Yet, of the 57 years Nigeria has been independent, Chief Obasanjo has ruled the longest. If sheer longevity were to be an asset, he should have, in his 11 years in office, had the most profound and lasting impact on the nation. Posterity is unlikely to be kind to him.

    Twenty-nine years of military rule and 28 years of elected government have, however, turned Nigeria into a barren and divided country. Only two days ago, one of President Buhari’s spokesmen happily announced that his principal was in fact not opposed to restructuring but only stood his ground on the indissolubility of the union. It is of course not true that he was not averse to restructuring; he showed contempt for the term and initially fobbed it off on the National Assembly and the National Council of State to grapple with that nuisance. But it is not only President Buhari and the sanctimonious Chief Obasanjo that have made a fetish of Nigeria’s indissolubility; there is hardly any politician, analyst or political leader who has courageously and openly questioned that unity.

    On the occasion of Nigeria’s 57th Independence anniversary, it is, however, time to put Nigerian leaders on the dissecting table to gauge their lack of depth and profundity, and their criminal negligence in sentencing Nigeria to mediocrity and retrogression. Their inability to read the signs of the times in the face of general insecurity, herdsmen menace, kidnapping and cultism, educational decline, and total and paralysing absence of national identity, have led precisely to a point where the unity of Nigeria must be questioned. If the country is not getting it right together, perhaps it can get it right separately. Despite their lack of method, sense and thoughtfulness, it is only the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) that has boldly questioned that unity in a manner that should compel the country to embark on total self-examination.

    It is widely assumed that Nigerian leaders reflect their personal convictions when they say that the country’s unity is non-negotiable. These leaders believe themselves, though their belief is based on ignorance. Everything is, however, negotiable, including the tenuous attachments that have kept Nigeria one. Nigerian borders were formed in 1914; it is unhistorical to say those borders will remain eternal. They will not. It is also sentimental to suggest that those borders are inviolable because God made them so. Well, even the Roman Empire, particularly its more enduring eastern half, Byzantium, lasted only 1000 years. The challenge before a government and a people is to realistically and scientifically identify the factors that conduce to the lastingness of those borders and periodically carry out renewal operations to form a more perfect union, establish ethnic and religious inclusiveness, create an insuperable national identity, and institutionalise an enduring format of leadership selection. Miracles and wishes will not sustain borders.

    If 57 years after independence Nigeria has still been unable to rejig and renew its union, but has instead produced a slew of incompetent and vacuous leaders, many of them philistines or pretentious monarchists trapped in definitional problems, the fault is clear the country’s, not the colonialists who parochially set the country up to fail. The tendency by many analysts is to ritually examine the country’s economy, politics and society during every independence anniversary, to see whether some of the policies enunciated by government can’t be done differently and perhaps better. This is a sterile exercise. The focus should instead be on the country’s leaders in order to help locate a part of the source of the disaster plaguing Nigeria.

    Scared of innovations, reluctant to examine the country’s deep structural problems and rejigger it, too uncultured to develop a theoretical and abstract foundation upon which to build a great country, and short-sighted to see Nigeria beyond today and tomorrow, let alone the day after tomorrow, Nigerian leaders from independence till date have lacked the depth of understanding required to grasp the deeper and more abstract things that form the building blocks of a great nation and great leader. In Nigeria, the deep is not calling unto deep. It is only the deep that can call unto deep because both speak a metaphysical, often inaudible and incomprehensible language which only a few people can decipher. When the deep calls unto deep, the earth’s creative potential is unleashed, its raging storms harnessed into life-given energy, and its hidden mysteries yield themselves in intangible, esoteric forms.

    Because they are not deep and cannot call unto deep, Nigerian leaders entrap themselves in rudimentary political battles which they overcome not by philosophical and scientific applications but by brutishness, in economic battles where they are fixated on building roads and bridges and growing tubers and tomatoes without a long-term perspective, in societal and cultural battles where they are obsessed with regimentation and oppression and therefore unable to fathom a re-engineered society. There is no leader who does not have one or a few achievements, but Nigeria is overall a ringing testimony to galling leadership failing on all sides.

    Tafawa Balewa was both a product and culmination of disingenuous ethnic and colonial compromises; Aguiyi Ironsi was the naive harbinger of unitary rule fated to self-destruct; Yakubu Gowon was pragmatic but not prescient; Murtala Mohammed was a patriot but impetuous and iconoclastic; and Shehu Shagari demonstrated lack of profundity and visionariness. As if in a bad relay race, these leaders were succeeded by an even worse lot. Ibrahim Babangida engaged in a pirouette of unexampled and unprecedented experimentation that deeply distorted and fractured leadership and societal ethos; Sani Abacha abandoned himself to every form of licentiousness and hideousness; Chief Obasanjo at last achieved the ultimate split personality, in which his forbearance and ethical restraint are constantly promoted in perfect miscegenation with his brutal violation of every societal ethic; and Muhammadu Buhari, who for the 32 years he stayed out of power did very little else but manage to retain his deep and abiding provincialism, has shut his mind to any other future or possibility except the one projected by the fantasies of his military career.

    But the trouble with Nigeria is more nuanced than first imagined. Even though he demonstrated none of the rigours and expansiveness of a thinker and academic, it must be conceded to Gen Babangida that he cavorted with a platoon of academicians whose intellectual and philosophical profundities unfortunately failed to register with him. It is also dismaying that President Buhari has remained pristinely unaffected by the culture and learning of the age. The only thing fairly artistic about him will remain his dry wit. There will be no romance with art, literature, architecture, music (let alone classical music), philosophy or an examination of any of life’s eternal verities. He is as fixed as the northern star, and his government and outlook of the country will retain that turgidity.

    This column posits that it is difficult for a leader without a deep longing for the aesthetic and the abstract to conceive of anything ethereal, to birth anything exotic, anything that indicates he has peeked into the future. Chief Obasanjo’s joie de vivre is remarkable, especially with his undisciplined and almost hedonistic view of women that puzzles sceptics of his new birth, but even he lacked the inspiring touch of the artistic, let alone welcomed into the State House the leading exponents of the arts of his time. Imagine then the ascetic President Buhari! If not him, as it is evident, who then under him will promote the arts, reform education as a constituent of national ambition, promote music and experiment with new and uplifting genres, redefine architecture both as a duty to the subject itself and as a symbol and exemplification of his presidency?

    A few examples should suffice for Nigerians to understand why their leaders have made very heavy weather of leadership, and why even the most common and elementary challenges of their eras have met not with scientific reasoning, but with force, vindictiveness, propaganda, bitterness and vendetta. A few examples from other lands and eras should show why Nigerian leaders, given their inadequate credentials, cannot respond adequately to challenges nor innovate to anticipate and deflect political and societal paralysis. Tutored by Aristotle, Alexander the Great was fascinated by Homer’s Iliad, took it with him on all his military expeditions, and developed a taste for learning and civilisation that was incomparable with that of any of his contemporaries, prompting him to build cities and libraries. Nigerian leaders must ask and show who inspires them and what breadth of vision they possess or are capable of, and what images of the world and their country they see in their mind’s eyes.

    Even though Napoleon Bonaparte was to execute a number of strange and execrable dalliances as emperor, he was however quite disciplined as a young man in military school, developing a sound taste for books that was quite remarkable, and telling anyone who cared to listen how he burnt the midnight oil while his mates caroused. It took a man of great learning and artistic bent to desire to visit Frederick the Great’s tomb at Potsdam, Germany, where in 1806 he remarked that had the great Prussian general and military tactician been alive, he (Napoleon) could not be at that great city, let alone defeat the armies of the Fourth Coalition of which Prussia was one and the main victim of that campaign. If still in doubt as to what is meant by the deep calling unto deep, recognise that Napoleon changed the face of military tactics for all time, particularly after Austerlitz, and claimed to have been inspired by Frederick the Great who received philosophers and artists, including Voltaire, and was described by contemporaries as a Philosopher on the Throne. Napoleon’s Civil Code, historians note, deeply and irreversibly impacted Europe, especially from 1848 onwards when Europe broke out in revolution.

    There is no record of any Nigerian president or head of state who prepared himself for leadership. None. Had they prepared, their instincts would have led them to acquire the needed learning, the appropriate and sophisticated taste, a great cause, and a noble spirit. Aso Villa would have brimmed with learning and philosophers, and a mind so suffused with culture and sophistication would have greatly impacted the society. Instead, unremitting coarseness afflicts everything about the Nigerian leadership. This is why, incredibly, in the interview published in African Arguments, Chief Obasanjo could scorn (true) federalism and objurgate those who campaign for restructuring; and why President Buhari simply cannot imagine a world outside his dualism, where problems can only be pacified by force, where the state is viewed from the constricted patrician prism that brooks no challenge, and where, in his political and religious exegeses, the values and habits acquired decades ago must remain God’s inviolable trademark.

    It has been 57 crazy years of tumultuous political, social and economic events. It has also been 57 years of abject leadership incompetence: of leaders who unable to inspire themselves cannot inspire their nation. It will be a mistake to continue to assume that democracy or one man, one vote can produce the right leader any more than monarchy or feudalism could. But if Nigerians can subject their leaders to proper scrutiny, they will discover that they need to consciously move away from electing provincials, ascetics, and religionists. For once, let them look for someone who loves life, who can think deep and call unto deep, who is enamoured of the arts, who has an eye for painting — and inexorably a great lady — who has an ear for music, and whose intellectual and secular credentials are impeccable. After all, as Napoleon said of his own legacy, “Everything on earth is soon forgotten, except the opinion we leave imprinted on history.”

     

  • Prof Akinyemi on Buhari, restructuring

    Prof Akinyemi on Buhari, restructuring

    IN an interview he granted the Sunday Punch last Sunday, former External Affairs minister, Bolaji Akinyemi, suggests that the buck to reorder the country stops squarely with President Muhammadu Buhari. Despite the excesses of separatist and self-determination organisations like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the former minister was not enamoured of the presidency’s handling of the grave national issues confronting the country. But he recognises that if anyone is to do anything to remedy the disarticulations within the country, that person has to be President Buhari whom the ordinary northerner trusts much more than any other person in that region, including ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar or even ex-head of state Ibrahim Babangida. He is, however, not sure the president will inspire the change sorely needed.

    It is doubtful whether any student of history and/or political science will come to a different conclusion, even if they disagree with some of the premises of the professor’s argument. Hear Prof Akinyemi: “In a way, the presidency of any country is a critical agent for change…I hold the belief that President Buhari has a critical role to play in moving the nation forward in averting the oncoming tragedy and in heading the country away from collision to a cooperative destination in arriving at the kind of federalism that will be acceptable to all of us. He has a responsibility to do that. Apart from being the president, he (Buhari) probably right now, is the only Nigerian that can ensure that we don’t end up in a ditch; in spite of what he says at times, he is the only Nigerian. Not that he stands the chance; he is the only person. Whether he will do it or not, is a different kettle of fish.”

    He continues: “…The present system that we have is skewed in favour of the North and the way forward will have to be the surrender of issues from the 1999 Constitution controlled by the Federal Government to the states.  Some issues on the exclusive list should be moved to the concurrent list and possibly, there should be a creation of the reserved list. So, it is the North that needs to make the concession. But if you’re going to be rational in your approach, the North has to be persuaded that it is not being asked to commit political or economic suicide and the only person right now that the North truly trusts and believes will not play politics with their interests is Muhammadu Buhari. He stands now in the kind of position that the (late) Sardauna stood in the sixties. An average person on the northern streets believes in Buhari in the way that they don’t believe in (former Vice President) Atiku (Abubakar) or my former boss, IBB, because those are the people who have spoken out forcefully calling for restructuring…”

    Rounding up his argument, Prof. Akinyemi concludes: “But Buhari stands in that position of trust in the estimation of the northern streets that ‘if he should say that we need to give up these issues, he’s not selling us.’ What we need to do is to find people in the North that Buhari trusts  people who can discuss with him, that he believes are not setting a trap for him. The Yoruba leaders’ meeting in Ibadan and this interview will not get through to Buhari. But there are people in the North who can speak with him. There must be mutual trust between Buhari and those speaking with him.”

    The former External Affairs minister offers many other arguments on restructuring, self-determination organisations, the Yoruba regional agenda, and the need for everyone to recognise that the present structure is simply not tenable and must be reworked for the country to take a great leap forward. He cites the examples of countries that have broken up and warns that nothing is inevitable. Though overall he is sceptical about the right things being done, he manages to sustain his optimism about today’s leaders appreciating their place in Nigeria’s historical conjuncture and doing everything to avoid the tragic consequences of war or disintegration.

    Indeed the lessons of history, which Nigerian leaders are tragically chary of studying, or are even completely inured to, do not lead anyone, least of all this writer, to say conclusively that the ongoing engagements in Nigeria would end optimistically. But as Prof Akinyemi suggested in the interview, President Buhari, despite his well-known aversion for broadmindedness, must be nudged into recognising the nature of the crises afflicting the country, crises that speak deeper and apocalyptic messages than many people, including the president and his aides, have apparently grasped. It is one of the enduring tragedies of Nigeria that its leaders know little of the histories of the people of Nigeria, not to talk of understanding the dynamics of their (histories) interconnectedness. Without an understanding of these complex histories and the dynamics of the people’s cultural and religious interconnectedness, not only will it be difficult for that leader to intuitively grasp what must be done at any juncture, he will even more likely also be unable to appreciate the critical responsibility history has thrust upon him as a person and leader.

    Prof Akinyemi diplomatically retained a delicately optimistic outlook of the Buhari presidency’s competence in mediating and moderating the changes needed to guarantee national peace and stability. This column is not so generous for a number of reasons. Take the IPOB crisis for example. The crisis was completely avoidable, and it ought to have been foreseen and denied the oxygen that fuelled it. For in dealing with the matter as the Buhari presidency has done, the chances and cost of creating dangerous aftershocks for the future are prohibitive and impossible to quantify. Despite the bastardisation of the Igbo cause by neophyte agitators and the absence of a consensus for secession, it is indisputable that the factors that gave fillip to the agitations are very well known. The factors predate the emergence of IPOB, leading to the formation of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in 1999. Those factors were, however, aggravated by the Buhari presidency through a series of alienating policies that stoked feelings of disenchantment and animosity in the region. In addition, the presidency then proceeded rather disingenuously to frame the narrative in a manner that portrayed the problem as the agitations themselves, especially the excesses and idiosyncrasies of IPOB leaders, rather than the stifling factors that spurred the agitations.

    It is impossible to determine whether the pacification of the Southeast will bring about the peace and stability most Nigerians desire. It is clear that every time members of two ethnic groups engage in a brawl, there will always be the danger of spillover to other parts of the country, a reminder that leaders have left many things undone. The Igbo themselves have frequently and more than any other ethnic group been at the receiving end of reprisal attacks in other parts of the country, sometimes over matters they know nothing about. That the Buhari presidency painted the apocalyptic picture of civil war as a consequence of the self-determination agitations in the Southeast, complete with broadcasting vignettes of the 1967-70 civil war, was nothing but a deplorable, albeit successful attempt to shape the narrative to avoid coming to grips with the real and substantial issues of the national question. Only the careful observer will appreciate that the fanciful and hollow ritual embarked upon by IPOB, which the government has framed as terrorism and warmongering, has actually led to far fewer fatalities than the groups which presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, last week described as mere ‘criminal gangs’, and than the Igbo have suffered in their many decades of victimhood after the civil war.

    It is obvious that the Buhari presidency needed to come up with a disingenuous narrative to justify its prior but constricted understanding of the dynamics of separatist or self-determination movements. Having portrayed the recent agitations in the Southeast as terrorism and its proponents as exponents of war to widespread approval, the government, military and other sectional leaders congratulated themselves as having by patience, hard work and deliberate interventions averted war. They are entitled to their self-congratulations. This column is, however, not taken in. Not only are the narratives horrifyingly and disconcertingly misplaced, including suggesting that the Igbo as a people, not IPOB, had virtually embraced secession, they also set the tone for the president’s implacability and misconceived and misdirected intervention on a scale that beggars belief and outweighs interventions in other far more threatening crises.

    More embarrassingly, the Buhari presidency gave the impression that only one type of intervention — a military crackdown — in the Southeast could curb the disturbances in that region. To proponents of force as a tool for pacification, this approach is logical and sensible. But in reality it is hardly defensible, as this column has consistently maintained. What the situation called for, assuming the president properly understood the factors engendering the crisis, was his direct and personal intervention in the region. He should have travelled to the region, speak with their leaders, both traditional and political, hear from them directly, come to some sort of agreement on what should be done, schedule other meetings with the so-called troublemakers, let them appreciate his genuineness and love for the people of the Southeast, and allay their fears. As a democrat, not the monarch many presumed him to be, he should have rounded off what would perhaps have been a two-day visit with a stirring, philosophical speech on unity, stability, development and constitution-making.

    Instead, after bewitching his own supporters and getting the approval of those who sanction the application of force in such matters, he spoke gruffly to the region, threatened them with fire and brimstone, and then brought down the sledgehammer. His initial success will convince him and his supporters that they have taken the right steps. It is doubtful. The problem has only been driven underground. If the factors that drove a small part of the Igbo population to reluctantly connive at the IPOB propaganda are not dealt with expeditiously, the volcano will explode sometime in the future. The IPOB leader, the imperious and impetuous Nnamdi Kanu, was never a true leader, not to say a sagacious one. Nigeria is lucky that such a megalomaniac led the IPOB cause. Had the country contended with a far more restrained, intelligent and emollient character who would not show his hands early nor deal his cards openly, the country would find it more difficult to contain him regardless of the commercial predilections of the Igbo.

    It does grave injury to the rest of the country and the presidency to describe the crude and self-centred IPOB campaigns as coterminous with the Igbo agenda. Such an unhelpful analysis and generalisation, including the fraudulently shaped narratives encapsulated in the hysteria of war, will do nothing but push the seething disaffection in the region underground. The country needs a leader who can see through the fog into the future, a leader who has been to the mountaintop and sees the promised land, someone with the right instincts and perspectives, someone who understands clearly the futility of seeking advantage for his ethnic group today only to lose those advantages when another ethnic group takes power tomorrow, someone who is fanatical about doing justice and promoting equity. Prof Akinyemi was right to suggest that neither Alhaji Atiku, despite his urbaneness and accommodation, nor Gen Babangida, regardless of his false geniality, could approximate those yearnings, nor be trusted enough by everyone, especially the North, to superintend the desired restructuring. But he was too kind to hope that President Buhari, the even more conservative apostle of ad hocism, can still be that change agent — a persona decades of anvil could not forge out of him, a persona he seems more than ever now loth to assume.

  • Lai Mohammed must tone down effusions

    Lai Mohammed must tone down effusions

    THE Information minister, Lai Mohammed, must have heard it said repeatedly that he has not quite successfully and completely transited from opposition party spokesman to ruling party and government spokesman. He was highly effective in the former; but in the latter position, he has only managed to bring the amenities of his previous position to bear. Can he change to an effective government spokesman? It will depend on whether he sees a difference between the role he played before and the one expected of him now. There is nothing to indicate that he sees that difference nor appreciates that the informational amenities he was used to, which brought him some renown, must and can be modified.

    In addressing the current agitations in the Southeast, particularly the activities of IPOB, the Information minister was thoroughly and grandiloquently propagandist. It is tragic he sees everyone who disagrees with the methods, style and objectives of the Buhari presidency as working to bring that government down. Hear him on the agitations in the Southeast: “IPOB is nothing but a contraption by those who believe they have lost political power as well as the right to loot our treasury. It is a tool in the hands of the corrupt and disgruntled elements to sabotage the Buhari administration. It fights for no one, but the corrupt and the disgruntled. It seeks to set us apart as a people, exploiting our fault lines. Its modus operandi is to trigger conflagration nationwide through attacks and reprisals.”

    Not satisfied that he had rashly attributed IPOB’s activities to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a corporate organisation, almost in the same eerie manner the PDP as a ruling party labelled the APC as a subversive organisation before 2015, he went on to make other wild assumptions. “There is no doubt that the wounds inflicted on the nation’s psyche by the activities of IPOB will take some time to heal,” he began melancholically. “But, while that happens, Nigerians must understand that IPOB was not set up to fight for the right of anyone or group, but as a tool to destabilise the nation, divert attention from the efforts of the Buhari administration and obliterate the laudable achievements of the Administration. IPOB is being sponsored by those I will call the Coalition of the Politically Disgruntled and the Treasury Looters. They believe that by sponsoring this group to destabilise the country and trigger chaos, they will realise their ambition of escaping justice and then be free to dip their hands into the nation’s treasury again.”

    Anxious that Alhaji Mohammed was directly accusing them of promoting rebellion, the opposition PDP asked him to name names and shame the offenders. The Information minister, however, suggested a few days later that it was needless naming anyone. He wouldn’t attempt it, he said dismissively. So why level criticisms when he knew he would not substantiate? Of course because he knows Nigerians well, and understands that the weight and pertinacity of government would make whatever accusations they hurl, no matter how reckless, stick. Having enjoyed hearing the sound of his own voice in the past few years and luxuriated in the glory of public approbation in recent weeks, he will indulge in many more such effusions before their time in Abuja is over.

  • IPOB, Python Dance and terrorism

    IPOB, Python Dance and terrorism

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has been listening only to himself and his aides who tell him what he wants to hear. Two weeks ago, this column urged him, in his futile struggles with alienated groups in the country, to listen now and again to his enemies, since he appeared dedicated to making more of them than making friends. But the president is headstrong, and his friends and aides, particularly from his side of the country, take pride in their tunnel vision. The result last week was the launching of Operation Python Dance II, leading to the almost total sequestration of the Southeast. Shortly after President Buhari returned from his medical trip abroad to bad-temperedly give a laconic address to his long-suffering countrymen, this column remarked, among other things, that the president’s advisory team, particularly his security team, was too restricted and insular to be of help to him in complex and demanding situations. Events of the past one week in the Southeast have conclusively proved that the country is in the grip of leaders too stiff and too isolated to shrewdly tackle the looming political storm.

    Operation Python Dance II, obviously inspired by the president’s meeting with his security chiefs two days after his resumption of duty, is designed to crush any plan of rebellion or secession in the country. The president clearly stated what he thought was the problem in the national broadcast in reference. According to him, and perhaps referencing the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the activities of Nnamdi Kanu without saying so explicitly, any self-determination campaign was a plot for secession, and, in his quaint syllogism, self-determination was next door to war. Having stated the problem so simplistically and so inelegantly, shutting out every nuance and complexity, the president virtually gave the signal, if not direct order, for a military crackdown. He may have mouthed his conversion to democracy — of course not necessarily belief in the concept — but he is at bottom an unapologetic exponent of military rule.

    No problem can be solved until it is first stated carefully and accurately. The Buhari presidency may have a general hunch of the issues that lather the Southeast, but it has not stated the problem clearly and accurately because of its lack of depth, poor reflection and little grounding in the relevant philosophical concepts required to govern Nigeria. What troubles the Southeast and Nigeria is not Mr. Kanu’s gloomy prediction of the country’s fate, nor his hate speech, as indefensible as it is, not yet IPOB’s amateurish and inflammatory approach to self-determination. To suggest irrationally that these are the problems at the core of Nigeria’s existential crisis is to connive at the president’s fulminations against Mr. Kanu and IPOB, as well as to supinely acquiesce to the silly ratiocination that stigmatises and stereotypes the Igbo but conversely and insidiously canonises the president’s ethnic preference.

    It is doubtful whether President Buhari and his advisers can yet be persuaded to take a fresh and more dispassionate look at the problems of Nigeria, and to, as academics insist to every student they teach, learn the art and science of accurately identifying the variables at play in order to properly define a problem. If they can, they will need to be cajoled into recognising that Mr. Kanu is merely the inconsequential public face of a seething national problem, a problem that is dangerously simmering below the surface, waiting for eruption. Sadly, the president has dismissively characterised restructuring as a needless campaign that is best handled by the National Assembly and the National Council of State. He refuses to admit openly that passing the buck to the two bodies was his own way of indicating the extent of his contempt for both the concept and the campaign that energises it. No one in his team has looked him in the face to tell him that his views on those salient issues are anachronistic. But they must find the pluckiness to do it.

    The issues are, in fact, not as mysterious as the president makes them. Restructuring, like the Igbo self-determination campaigns, predates President Buhari’s government and indicates long-running unease with the untenable political and economic structures that stymie productivity, creativity and stability in Nigeria. Despite the president’s frequent restatement of the fallacy that Nigeria operates a federal structure and is united beyond any fresh negotiations, few doubt that the reigning political structure is a unitary system fuelled and riveted by crude oil wealth. Worsening the debate about restructuring is the president’s own lack of savvy in advocating measures to calm feelings of alienation and exclusion. He has assembled a security and paramilitary team that is sectional and religiously coloured, and has also surrounded himself with advisers that are defined by their groupthink and admit of no devil’s advocate. Worse, he has damned complaints and threatened fire and brimstone against agitators responding fretfully and sometimes desultorily to his temperamental approach to security and governance. Apart from the problem of restructuring, the fact on the ground is that President Buhari is not running an inclusive and national government. Why is he, therefore, shocked that the Southeast — despite the advantages they supposedly received from the Goodluck Jonathan government — is up in arms against his insular style of governance?

    In 1966, faced with the crises that followed that year’s January coup and the July counter-coup, the Yakubu Gowon government split the regions into 12 states to take the wind out of the secessionist sail. It was too little too late, but it helped diffuse the reaction to the crises and weaken the opposition to the war efforts. More than five decades later, and faced with an even more potentially destructive crisis, the Buhari presidency has become indefensibly and unwisely inured to the advantages of restructuring a country that is no longer tenably run along unitary lines.

    The president has paranoiacally focused on Mr. Kanu and IPOB without correspondingly feeling unnerved by his close circle of advisers’ political and cultural shibboleths. He is strangely unaffected by the fact that all the measures he has propounded since he returned from medical care abroad have fallen in line principally with the prevailing views from the North. He has not attempted to even pause, let alone ponder, whether there are no other ways of resolving a crisis that is threatening to expand beyond control and consume the whole country. He is not anxious to examine whether more scientific and diplomatic means cannot be found to dissipate the crisis. He has not even convened a genuine meeting of south-eastern leaders and their Young Turks to brainstorm over the problems convulsing the Southeast. At least his compatriot, the late ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua, heeded wise counsel and parlayed with Niger Delta militants to find a lasting solution to the oil region’s crisis.

    What seems to drive President Buhari’s inflexible approach to the Southeast ferment is that he is persuaded by the stereotypes relentlessly drummed into his ears by his narrow circle of advisers and unrepresentative security chiefs. Somehow, they have formed the belief that the Igbo are impulsive, irrational, coarse, troublesome, clannish and aggressively determined to take over the country’s leadership, as exampled by the 1966 coup, to the exclusion of others. There may be some elements of truth in these observations, but is there any ethnic group, including the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba, which does not have its own long list of stereotypes? Is there a perfect ethnic group anywhere in the world? Should a brilliant leader not concern himself with finding ways to moderate and mediate the frictions that some of these stereotypes, assuming they are well founded, conjure?

    The Yoruba are denigrated as professional agitators, wily, materialistic and snobbish. They drive other ethnic groups up the wall with their superior airs. After enduring years of contemptuous treatment from the rest of Nigeria shortly before independence, the Hausa/Fulani are dismissed as lazy, neo-colonially minded, uncivilised, fanatical and obsessed with ruling Nigeria as a guarantee of their safety and well-being. Indeed, there is no ethnic group without its own stereotypes, whether true or misleading. It is unhelpful to focus on these so-called stereotypes in determining how to relate with one another. This is why it is urgent to restructure the country in such a manner that no group will feel threatened, discriminated against, or fearful of being dispossessed. Surely, Nigeria can find leaders who can engage themselves cerebrally to find a workable structure.

    Apparently, President Buhari is either too steeped in the ways and habits of the past or secretly harbours too many prejudices and unhelpful leadership idiosyncrasies to be of any help in this matter. Rather than engage the agitators, and forgetting that he kept virtually aloof over more vicious herdsmen terrorism, he feels the constitution — the same constitution he has violated serially — enjoins him, indeed makes it obligatory, to deal ferociously with any agitator. As a result, he has ordered a military crackdown in the Southeast to be executed by the same military battling image problems in the Northeast and elsewhere. Of course, almost immediately, using various pretexts, and egged on by strident voices from the North, soldiers vengefully swooped on the Southeast to inflict brutality upon friends and foes alike. Even harmless journalists were not spared. Yes, IPOB doubtless menaced the public and endangered the polity, but the military descended on the region with a mindset that showed contempt for both the constitution and the people. They seemed to corroborate all that Amnesty International had repeatedly said about their brutal style and total disregard for the rights and liberties of innocent citizens.

    Worse, it is indeed strange that the same North that fought bravely but unconscionably to prevent both the Nigerian government and the United States from declaring Boko Haram a terrorist organisation between 2009 and 2013, despite intensive campaigns by rights groups and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), eagerly advocated for IPOB to be declared a terrorist organisation in a matter of months. That declaration, which did not witness debates between the various organs of the Nigerian presidency, nor followed the Terrorism Act, 2011 (As amended), was then strangely and unconstitutionally assigned by faceless officials to the military to announce to the public. Southeast governors, perhaps influenced by the fiery but superficial oratory of Governor Rochas Okorocha weeks ago, have cottoned on to the declaration and hastily proscribed IPOB. What that will achieve is not clear. It is obvious that both the federal government and the governors have foreclosed any sensible, peaceful and structural resolution of the deep and underlying problems dislocating the Southeast and other geopolitical zones. How they hope strong-arm tactics would extirpate the political and economic viruses predisposing the Southeast to agitation is hard to understand.

    The Southeast governors who should know where the shoe is pinching their people have an obligation to champion a more scientific approach of identifying the factors causing the crisis. Only then can they attempt to coax the unyielding Buhari presidency into embracing lasting and perhaps permanent solution. Instead they have unwisely surrendered to Abuja’s unreflective and misplaced efforts. Their measures will not work, and will not last. The problem, inexpertly and misguidedly centred on Mr. Kanu and IPOB, despite both being merely the symptomatic manifestations of deeper, structural and more fundamental problems, may temporarily yield to force. But eventually, the volcano will erupt. It always does, regardless of the leadership’s lack of imagination and innovation. The public danger may indeed be very dire and urgent, but it is incredible that soldiers deployed in the Southeast last week found a pretext for the kind of brutality and abuse they executed not only in that region but also in the Northeast during the Boko Haram campaigns.

  • Is Nigeria now back to military rule?

    Is Nigeria now back to military rule?

    LAST November, the military deployed its troops in the Southeast for Operation Python Dance I to, as they claimed, tackle all sorts of crimes and agitations. There were protests against the deployment, coming as it were during the Christmas season, but the military went ahead, and at the end declared it a huge success. A second phase of Operation Python Dance commenced last week and saw clashes between soldiers and members of the Indigenous People of Biafra. The deployments are overwhelming. According to the military, similar training deployments, as they characterised them, will take place in the South-South and Southwest soon. Gradually but perceptibly the entire country is being militarised and the atmosphere of democracy profoundly diminished.

    Shortly before the commencement of the latest operation, the military embarked on a needless show-of-force rally in some major cities in the region. In one of those displays, soldiers instinctively invaded the Nigeria Union of Journalists offices in Umuahia in Abia State, destroying office equipment and brutalising journalists. It was a sad reminder of the military era and an inexplicable return to the barbarism of the past. When soldiers were caught on video carrying out similar attacks against innocent people in the Northeast and international organisations documented them and reprimanded the military, the military swore the reports were exaggerated or fallacious.

    Since the rights abuses orchestrated by the military would not go away, and given the insistence of concerned countries, some of them weapons suppliers to Nigeria, the federal government reluctantly set up a panel last month to probe the allegations. The panel was still sitting as soldiers enacted a brutal crackdown in Abia State. Virtually all security organisations are guilty of rights abuse. It has only got worse in the past few years. A thinking government would, therefore, recognise that the problem is far deeper and structural than they think. It is not just attitudinal. To tackle it effectively would require unusual means far above merely identifying the culprits and throwing them out of service. The authorities must find out why the problem is systemic, why it recurs virtually on a daily basis, how it shames the image of the country, and why it is urgent to find a lasting solution.

    The mistreatment of IPOB members and other civilians in Abia State last week, not to say the unnecessary invasion of the NUJ office in Umuahia, brings out the worst in Nigeria’s security services. The obsession with force is a shameful Nigerian and African culture that apparently symptomizes the terrifying malaise of black man’s irresponsible use of power. There will, however, be no remedy under this government which has proved incapable of drawing a line between democracy and military government. By the time the military expands its questionable training operations and python dances to other zones, including the utterly valueless show of force in major cities, democracy could become indistinguishable from military rule.

    There are far more effective, civilised and intelligent ways of protecting and preserving national security, building a responsive and ethical police force, and nurturing a truly patriotic people’s army. Perhaps, when a government and the political party that put it in power work together, espouse lofty and democratic ideals, eschew eye service, and encourage healthy debates, Nigeria may finally embrace radical and beneficial restructuring. There is nothing inspiring about Nigeria today, not to talk of the close-minded Camorra that stifles the polity with sectional display of power and worn-out policies.

  • The Yoruba, regionalism and future of Nigeria

    The Yoruba, regionalism and future of Nigeria

    IN a move certain to inspire the Southeast and South-South on how to peacefully pursue self-determination within a united Nigeria, prominent leaders and governors of the Southwest met in Ibadan last Thursday to examine the structure of the country and suggest ways in which peaceful co-existence among the people can be guaranteed. The meeting was well attended, and the resolutions exhaustive and pertinent. In summary, the Southwest recognised the positive attributes of the constitutions that were freely entered into by the regions and their representatives before independence and shortly after, and advocated for a return to regionalism in order to guarantee peace, development and harmony.

    As readers of this column know, the virtues of regionalism have been well promoted on this page. It is clear to any observer that the current structure cannot work, nor has it worked since the military began brusquely dismantling the pre-independence structure and inexpertly cobbling new ones together. With each constitution supervised by the military, worse, impracticable and indefensible structures had been devised. Now, despite much talk about federalism and the conviction that some tinkering can do the existing constitution much good, the fact on the ground is that the 1999 constitution is an amorphous document that makes false claims and fails to address the political, social and economic problems tearing the country apart.

    At the bottom of the cry for regionalism are the indisputable facts that Nigeria is made up of nations which were at different levels of civilisation before colonial rule, possess different worldviews, and were at varying stages of economic development. These differences do not have to be mutually exclusive, but the many crude and incompetent attempts to weld these nations together by a constitution so insufficient and so tentative that it is proving practically useless and worthless have only led to more conflicts, bitterness and chaos. Somehow, and unimaginably, it is suggested that attitudinal changes could help heal the bitterness and divisions plaguing the country. This is sheer fantasy.

    If deep structural changes are not instituted, if the restructuring most parts of Nigeria are advocating is not carried out, if Nigerian leaders do not appreciate that the crises in the Niger Delta, Southeast, Southwest and parts of the North could not be assuaged by tinkering with the current constitution, they must be prepared for far worse consequences than they imagine. The agitations will simply not go away. If civil war could not prevent the recurrence of these agitations, and the pain of punishment and all forms of political alienation could not slow the campaigns, why does anyone think that after a while the agitations will burn themselves out? What gives the self-determination campaigns ammunition and fire is the disarticulation in the country’s superstructure. Until this anomaly is recognised and tackled, the country will continue to reel from one crisis to another until the problem becomes unmanageable.

    Fortunately, a few Southeast and South-South leaders attended the Ibadan summit. The deliberations and resolutions that accompanied the summit should encourage them to coax their own agitators away from the violent and nihilistic tendencies shown by many Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) members, including their grandiloquent leader, Nnamdi kanu, and hard line militants operating in the creeks. Regions not bewildered by the search for the chimerical definition of restructuring should come together, put their feet down, and ask firmly and unequivocally for a new structure and constitution that would enable regionalism. The relevant political zones must insist on restructuring being at the core of the 2019 campaigns.

    The Yoruba leaders who gathered in Ibadan last Thursday may not be truly representative of the Yoruba people as a whole, but the resolutions they forged are in fact a much fairer representation of the ideas and principles the Southwest has fought for decades, ideas and principles they may be willing to sacrifice everything for. The Buhari presidency may be loth to pay attention to the undercurrents going on in the country, and in the case of last Thursday, in Yoruba land; it is, however, important that political leaders who seek office in 2019 must recognise the untenable position they occupy trying futilely to preside over the affairs of an unhappy and dissatisfied people.

  • 2019: Atiku fires first shot

    2019: Atiku fires first shot

    IF anyone expects ex-president Atiku Abubakar to be agitated by the furious reactions to the broadside he fired on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency last week, or by the hasty and indiscreet statements of his protégé, Aisha Alhassan, they obviously do not understand the character and politics of the Adamawa State-born politician. Senator Alhassan, who is also Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, had baited the usually reticent Buhari presidency by suggesting that the president would not be seeking a second term in 2019, or that even if he attempted it, he was sure not to receive her support. She was unalterably committed to the politics and person of Alhaji Atiku, she enthused with lyrical flourish. Warned that her intemperate view on the forbidden subject was like a red rag to a bull, especially to the hyenas and jackals in the presidency, she shrugged off their misgivings and proceeded more severely, indeed most provocatively, to describe the president as not given to the hastiness and naivety of the sycophantic crowd around him.

    Perhaps alarmed by his protégé’s boldness and daring, or acting in synchrony with her, Alhaji Atiku quickly weighed in on the controversy, and with words carefully and defiantly selected accused the Buhari presidency of sidelining him despite his efforts in helping the APC win the 2015 general elections. Asked on different occasions if they both meant the uncomplimentary remarks they made about the Buhari presidency, the former vice president and serving minister refused to back down. They meant every word, they insisted, and are contemptuous of whatever interpretations anyone might give their statements. If she were sacked for disloyalty to the Buhari government or for impertinence, the somewhat fatalistic Senator Alhassan thought it was inconsequential to her future and political career. For the former vice president, any talk of him exaggerating his status within the ruling party was absolute nonsense. His private meetings with the president, he explained impatiently, could not be equated with the more formalised and dignified party meetings and decision-making processes he would have loved to associate with.

    What has taken place, unknown to the public, and far beyond the semantics of his statements and the import of Senator Alhassan’s mild insolence, is that Alhaji Atiku has simply and knowingly fired the first shot in the coming 2019 presidential election. Whether by design or accident, the Buhari presidency, which is erroneously thought to be too detached to plot intrigues and make calculations, appeared keen on freezing 2019 politics until sometime in the second or third quarter of 2018. Such a calculation would favour the dithering cabal around the president, wrong-foot the president’s political opponents, and put the rest of the country on tenterhooks. But that calculation overlooks the skill, experience and immense capacity of Alhaji Atiku, a veteran of many presidential elections with an instinctive grasp of the Buhari government’s political compass. He knew that if by the first quarter of next year the disharmony in the APC had not been resolved, and the issues that plague the party forced, his presidential ambition could be imperilled.

    Now, whether the president and the ruling party like it or not, they will have to confront their demons frontally and boldly, for the former vice president has let loose legions of these demons and thumbed his nose at the presidency. Afraid that the party could disintegrate, unable to even constitute the Board of Trustees (BoT), let alone convene its euphemistic replacement — the Council of Elders — scared out of their wits to organise a non-elective convention, and with the president a hors de combat already, no one in the party, not even the quibbling and indecisive party chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, could summon the courage or enterprise to energise the party into the minutest action. The party’s leaders must now meet, even if it kills them, while the fear that has both hobbled and paralysed them for a year or two must be confronted, if not with courage and eagerness, then at least with urgency and pain.

    Alhaji Atiku himself, as he is wont, will want to run rings around the president and his cabalistic aides. He will be undeterred by their constant resort to abuse, including the dire and apocalyptic invectives presidential aides hurl at imaginary enemies. He fought against the more robust and unyielding ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo to the point of an egregious stalemate that compelled the latter to foist an unfit pair of leaders on the country; it will matter little to Alhaji Atiku to joust with the clearly more listless President Buhari, regardless of his hard and glacial looks. He will think that in any combat from now on, someone of his background, courage and acumen can take on the president and his obviously untested aides and win. He senses, as only someone like him can do, that those who surround him are more passionate and eager for martyrdom than those who surround the president. Senator Alhassan provided the perfect litmus test. The horde in many parts of the North may be reckless and fiercely pro-Buhari, Alhaji Atiku however understands that like a great ship steered by a small rudder, these supporters react differently when the battle is between two northern political aristocrats.

    It may be too early to get the president to disclose his 2019 intentions. He will probably prevaricate on that subject, assuming reporters can get close enough to him to coax him into saying something. He had hoped to be left alone until sometime in the middle of 2018, perhaps in order to preserve both his political integrity and myth. Now, the former vice president has wrong-footed him and appears to be compelling both him and the party to make up their minds and disclose their intentions. They are unlikely to readily oblige the ex-vice president. The party will swim or sink with the president, as the former vice president very well knows, and it will wait for the president to indicate what he wants. It is, however, certain that President Buhari cannot impose anyone on the party, for he is not really a politician in the truest sense of the word nor someone adept in political machinations. He has not expanded his support base in the party; in fact he has naively managed to constrict it by shunning and exiling the coalition that gave him electoral victory, not to say also distancing himself from the methods and measures that enable a political party to flourish.

    Senator Alhassan suggested that President Buhari was minded to do only one term, and had in fact, perhaps on account of his health, made utterances to that plaintive effect. But even if he had said so, as Chief Obasanjo and ex-president Goodluck Jonathan also chorused when they confronted that political expediency in their time, it was probably an indication of desperation to win office. President Buhari, despite the gloss put on his health condition, is not fit as a fiddle. Far from it. Deep down, he may want a second term; but he can’t fight for it, nor scheme for it, nor browbeat anyone over the matter. He may refuse to disclose his ailment; but his health status is transparent enough for his opponents to judge that his restoration is a long way off, a restoration that could be jeopardised by gruelling physical, emotional and ideational campaigns. The brief 2015 campaigns did not expose him to hostile assessment. But should he indicate interest in 2019, he will be called upon to move round the country, debate, parry harsh questions, speechify relentlessly, and be made to defend his implausible and outdated position on restructuring.

    In reality, it is doubtful whether President Buhari will intrigue for a second term, despite the ingratiating statements made by Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, and the patronising hurrahs from the ruling party. That the president will probably not be seeking a second term, while trying to extend the active lifespan of his first term, does not however suggest that Alhaji Atiku will enjoy freedom of any kind to cavort within the party. The party is made up of many interests, some of them fiercely opposed to one another. There is neither a binding force to keep them together, since the president inexplicably declined that role, nor an ideology to bind their policies and vision together. For the more than two years it has ruled, the APC has not shown the cohesion and discipline necessary to impose order on its members. The implication is that with the ex-vice president beating the starting pistol, a fierce competition within the party to succeed the president is about to be unleashed. If President Buhari does not show the presence of mind and altruism to control the fission reaction certain to take place in the party in the next few months, external forces like Chief Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, all of them retired army generals, could seize control of that momentum and moderate the competition.

    It does not matter how the presidency handles the Senator Alhassan provocation, whether she is thrown out of the cabinet or not, or whether she is given the cold shoulder or ostracised completely. What is important is that ex-president Atiku will stand by her, for the political combat she has triggered is invaluable to the party, to her mentor, and to the country. There is no ideal time to grapple with that combat. Better to face the music now, even if it is a dirge, than postpone the fight and watch helplessly as the initiative and momentum pass to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

  • Championing restructuring

    Championing restructuring

    IN his broadcast two Mondays ago, President Muhammadu Buhari suggested to self-determination agitators that both the National Assembly and National Council of State were the “legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse”. He was careful not to commit the two bodies to the task of restructuring, having limited them to a one-stop roundtable for apparently palliative discourses. Restructuring would presumably be among the topics for that discourse, not the only or major one. Said the president: “The National Assembly and the National Council of State are the legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse.” In the preceding paragraph, however, the president had given a small concession, to wit, “This is not to deny that there are legitimate concerns. Every group has a grievance. But the beauty and attraction of a federation is that it allows different groups to air their grievances and work out a mode of co-existence.”

    If the president truly believes that legitimate concerns exist and every group has a grievance, it is striking that he still takes a rather detached view of the anomalies that buffet the republic. Given the severity of the concerns and grievances, which neither he nor his advisers, nor yet any Nigerian, no matter how conservative, can pretend to be unaware of, it is doubtful that redressing those problems could be done satisfactorily and expertly within a consistent, coherent and expansive visional framework of the two bodies he referenced. Over the years, the National Council of State, apart from being simply and often ineffectually advisory, has no backward or forward linkage with Nigerians. Yes, the constitution provides for it; but it is in fact absolutely nugatory in the face of Nigeria’s imperial presidency that has rendered virtually all institutions, if not every official, both elected and appointed, impotent.

    But, as the president puts it, there is appropriately the more legitimate and active National Assembly to moderate discourses and sometimes, too, mediate political disagreements through consensus building and disingenuous compromises. The parliament may be a great forum to ventilate opinions and dissect issues, and has sometimes produced political palliatives of exemplary strength and finesse, but the president may have been hyperbolic to argue that it enables the country to work out a mode of co-existence. Beyond helping to display and direct his fierce but misplaced and misdirected anger, the broadcast incorrectly assumes that Nigeria operates a federation, which he theoretically describes as a beauty.

    Last week, this column dismissed the speech as full of bombast and rage. There is nothing to suggest that an even more careful reading would not lead a cautious reader and writer to come to the same, if not worse, conclusion. What is, however, more troubling is the fact that the president obviously assumes in his broadcast that the agitation for restructuring is at bottom a needless rabble-rousing that really does not require his involvement and leadership. He further assumes that the legislature could produce the searing vision, altruism and breathtaking ideals necessary to rework the Nigerian system to make it an enduring one. He is terribly mistaken. Few parliaments anywhere in the world are capable of undertaking that kind of ennobling assignment. So far, the Nigerian legislature has proved absolutely and spectacularly incompetent to do such a job. Perhaps on a fortuitous tomorrow, they might acquire the capacity.

    President Buhari, it seems, knows quite clearly that neither the somnolent Council of State nor the constantly scheming and complacent legislature is up to the task. What is even much clearer is that, from the broadcast, the president snickered at the concept of restructuring. He thinks, as indeed many others do, particularly across the Niger, that what is required is slow and long-term tinkering. If that were to be the case, the president is right to insinuate that the legislature could carry out that responsibility, for that slothful pace is suited to their inexpert and off-putting style. Overall, the president’s speech has given the country a final indication of his unusual preferences. He is not interested in restructuring, and he sees everyone who agitates for it with a gravity and urgency that discomfit the polity to be a rabble-rouser deserving of the government’s strong-arm tactics.

    If the country would downplay the confusion over the definition of restructuring, as they really should, the question will boil down to who between the legislature or executive can best champion the great task. Since it is indisputable that the question of restructuring involves the country’s superstructure, the foundation upon which the country must be built so that no political or economic tremor, no matter how high on the Richter scale, could bring it down, it seems also settled that the Nigerian legislature cannot perform that task. Consequently, the country needs a visionary with a depth enriched by history to find the right tectonic plates and soil structure upon which to build a vibrant Nigeria. The visionary can of course not do it alone; but he must produce the skeleton, drive the debate and find the right compromises.

    President Buhari seems inappropriate for the task, given his well-known limitations, but it does not diminish the task, nor does it rule him out as a man of noble conviction with the gift of seeing into the future. If he can manage to see into the future, and if he can finally be persuaded to accept that the present structure is inadequate for both the present and the future, he will appreciate the urgency and onerousness of the task. More, he will realize how inadequate the institutional bodies he thought could carry out the task, are. It is only then he will place in the proper perspective the agitations in the Southeast against which he is needlessly emotionally wrought-up, and the cries of restructuring in the Southwest against which he stands ungainly immovable.

    But whether he agrees or not, and whether his aides and advisers coax him or not, the unshakable fact is that, at the moment, it is only the executive that can drive the restructuring effort. If the president fails to drive it peacefully, he must be prepared to stand against it militarily. The first option holds immense benefits for his image, legacy and the polity. Unfortunately, he cannot hope to win should he embrace the second option. The future is against both his perception of restructuring and any military effort should he try one. No one must fool himself to think that that Nigeria is a federation, let alone a beautiful one. It is not. Indeed, it runs an ugly and asphyxiating form of unitary government.

    The problem with restructuring is not its definition. Definitional confusion is simply a ploy by political jesters to defeat the purpose of restructuring. The first step is to agree that the present structure is both inadequate and inoperable in Nigeria, given the country’s rich and variegated history. Should it then not worry the country’s leaders that the search for a fitting and workable structure has continued since the First Republic? Has Nigeria not tried two systems of government and at least three constitutions, some of them so reworked that they became excessive and futile? Has the country not witnessed a civil war, sailed near the wind of many violent upheavals on countless occasions, one of which even metamorphosed into a full-scale Boko Haram rebellion? Just what total breakdown of law and order must it take for Nigerian leaders to reach deep into their spirits to find justification for a new structure?

    Both France and Italy were, just before and after World War II, battling serious constitutional gridlocks. France produced the far-sighted Charles de Gaulle who recognised the weakness of the Fourth Republic constitution and fought tooth and nail to produce a new, workable one, even once relinquishing power to drive home the point that if France did not restructure and produce a new constitution, it could not hope to grow strong and confident into the future. Because of its success, France has remained a stable democracy; while Italy has continued to run a game of thrones. Admittedly, de Gaulle was a deep thinker, author and military theorist, and he could engender both the discipline and intellect needed to rework the French system and produce the Fifth Republic constitution. So far, President Buhari has been unable to find the patience and open-mindedness these times call for.

    No Nigerian president at this historic juncture should fail to study other constitutions and acquaint himself with other nation-building efforts. The stability of a country and the progress it makes depend on its structure and grundnorm. President Buhari and his aides, apart from familiarising themselves with the French experience, must also find time to study the politics and efforts that underpinned Japan’s post-war constitution. The president would like to recall that just as Gen. de Gaulle virtually authored the French Fifth Republic constitution, another general, Douglas MacArthur, virtually drew up the skeletal framework of the Japanese post-war constitution, which, once fleshed out, has remained remarkably prescient. It takes brilliance, discipline, vision, altruism and far-sightedness to judge the moment, recognise the problem, and produce the confidence and boldness needed to redirect a country. If President Buhari declines the job, and equates the cult-like following he receives in some parts of the country with approval of his policies and methods, he will soon find that the country will move on without him. For the issues confronting the country are urgent and deep-seated.

    In 2015, this column campaigned for the then aspirant and candidate Buhari. It went on to foretell his victory, for it was inconceivable that the undisciplined Goodluck Jonathan should win a second term to pilot the affairs of Nigeria with the reckless abandon that became his trademark. This column will hazard another informed guess: If President Buhari should continue to set himself against the effort to remake the country, the country will move on without him, remake itself, and find a formula or formulae by which the peoples and religions of this country can co-exist. No one should indulge in the fantasy of thinking that Nigeria is a federation, or that the equally undisciplined National Assembly can inspire and author that noble future of the country’s dream. It won’t happen, despite the many constitutional amendments on stream.

  • Reading the signs of the times

    GIVEN The tumultuous events of the past few years, it is strange that Nigerians do not recognise the tumult as a sort of handwriting on the wall. The Northeast is still embroiled in the Boko Haram debacle. But all anyone has heard is the need to urgently defeat the insurgency, rebuild the region and ensure that unemployment does not feed any other rebellion. There has been no talk of lessons learnt from the mishandling of the crisis when it first broke out in 2002, not to talk of the fiery stage of the violent onset in 2009. No one has talked of the role incompetent law enforcement played, nor of the pernicious resort to extra-judicial killings, which are replicated in nearly all parts of the country. It is, however, not only government that bears responsibility for mismanaging the revolt, even the people themselves share part of the blame for initially embracing the insurgents and promoting intolerance of all categories. And then of course there is also little or no reference to the part injustice plays in the outbreak of nearly all rebellions.

    The same mistake is being repeated in the Southeast. A crisis that demands a clever and philosophical approach to whittle it down is considered to be deserving of a most simplistic and short-sighted law enforcement reaction. Why is no question asked about the unending campaign for Biafra since 1967? It is remarkable that political leaders think by quashing self-determination agitations by force or alarming everyone with stories of wars and their sanguinary concomitants, it would not flare up again. Is everyone not tired of periodic bloodletting? Rather than identify the basis of the agitations in order to find a lasting solution, the crisis has been framed as one centred on the idiotic ranting of a budding megalomaniac who was absent when the idea first took root decades ago, and will probably not be there when it flares up again many years hence if no lasting solution is found today.

    The herdsmen-farmers crisis should be telling Nigeria many things about the present and the future. But no one appears to appreciate the consequential crises triggered by climate change and desertification, not to talk of outmoded economic practices and over-extended and unimaginative law enforcement structures and methods. Even if the country is structurally paralysed by fear, it is surprising that they should also be mentally paralysed and unable to adopt flexible and scientific means of analysing problems and devising solutions. If there is an effect, surely there must be a cause or causes, both remote and immediate.

    Education in Nigeria has been degraded over the decades. Indeed, the products of Nigeria’s educational system reason bizarrely, as the social media shows, and have become unduly emotional, intolerant of other views, whether religious, political or plain philosophical, cannot sustain arguments and debates over a long period without resorting to violence and malice, and if by chance they win high office, inflict the same malaise on the public. Of course, to worsen the problem, funds are unavailable to run schools, and even public officials themselves do not patronise local schools which they dismiss as unsafe, poorly equipped and prone to policy summersaults.

    If these signposts do not tell Nigerians and their leaders that something is fundamentally wrong, and that the country is unravelling fast, what of the very fact that cities and highways have become both unsafe and chaotic? If there is no concerted effort to understand the nature, scope and magnitude of the crises the country is facing, and no sensible and scientific remedies are found to tackle them urgently, peace and unity will be endangered. It is frustrating that the government reposes so much faith in law enforcement when, for real cure, it would be far wiser to destroy the parasites at the root of the crises. But what happens when the government itself feeds fat on the parasites?