The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • PDP’s second chance

    PDP’s second chance

    BEFORE the Supreme Court gave judgement in favour of the Ahmed Makarfi faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Tuesday morning, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) thought it still had the luxury of nearly a year to get its act together, mend broken fences within the party, and quit itself like a real political organisation. The next general elections will be conducted early 2019. By the end of 2018, the election will have virtually been won and lost. Any party between the APC and PDP that hopes to pull its weight in the next general elections has approximately until August next year to make a stand and fight for its place in the sun, regardless of the looming shadow of a third party or a dark horse.

    It was inconceivable that the Supreme Court judgement could have gone any other way. Readers of this column will remember that every analysis on the quarrel within the PDP done on this page indicated that the Senator Makarfi faction was likely to clinch the victory. Except in the early months of being drafted as a political pugilist to counter the rampage of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, a former governor of Borno State, led the PDP since February 2016 with a boisterous but offensive style. Barely six months into his pro tem leadership, the self-made man and billionaire senator had alienated everyone that mattered in the party. He did not worship at any political shrine, and saw no reason to bow down before any political god. Self-willed, stout-hearted, iconoclastic, and defiant but full of schemes and stratagems, the intransigent senator believed that he was capable of vanquishing his new enemies within the party. But his brinkmanship failed.

    After months of legal fireworks, the PDP is finally free to soar. Sen. Makarfi says the judicial victory amounted to no victor, no vanquished. He exaggerates. His faction has just achieved a spectacular victory, and has begun to constitute the worst nightmare to a fractious and disputatious APC. Sen. Sheriff never had a sizable number of followers even when the Appeal Court presented him with the upper hand. The few people who followed him will now melt into the Makarfi PDP, for after all, Sen. Makarfi himself is just a national caretaker Committee chairman. It is unlikely that the proud and independent Sen. Sheriff will eat humble pie and submit himself to the leadership of his rival. He will do no such thing. He is spurned in Borno State where the affable Governor Kashim Shettima nurses a trenchant loathing for him. In addition, he never really had a following in the PDP to which he defected in an inelegant fashion after his dalliance with the neophyte APC came to grief. And whether he likes it or not, and whether Sen. Makarfi decides to show magnanimity or not, many truculent and influential leaders in the newly invigorated PDP will demand not only a pound of Sen. Sheriff’s flesh but perhaps two enervating pounds of blood.

    The PDP is lucky that the struggle within the party before the apex court vote was essentially one of style rather than substance, personality clash rather than ideological clash. It will thus be far easier than many think for the party to come together to prepare for the battles ahead. Some analysts have suggested that the PDP does not have an ideology, let alone clash over the many variants of that inexistent ideology. It is not true. The PDP is in fact generally conservative, and proud to pronounce itself so where the APC has been contrastingly and generally progressive but unsure what that means. The opposition party may not have had the opportunity to refine its ideology, but it appears more likely to engage in that enterprise now considering that its new leaders are more intellectual on the average than the set that led the party after ex-president Olsuegun Obasanjo hijacked it. It is expected that the PDP will now really define its ideology and concomitantly begin the process of refining it.

    If Sen. Sheriff had won the prolonged legal wars within the PDP, the party would have been rent in two, with a disproportionate part escaping into Nigeria’s widening political void, perhaps to remerge in an alliance with some other stragglers from the APC or any other cuckolded and bitter party. Many members from the Makarfi faction would have quietly returned to the Sen. Sheriff fold, but they would not be sizable enough nor of ample girth to help the unlikely and undeserving victor form a formidable opposition party. As it is, the Makarfi majority faction won, and that victory will portend great things for the party and augury of pain or even dismemberment for the APC. Had Sen. Sheriff won, the APC could safely continue to luxuriate in its internal rebellion, assured that the opposition was unlikely to present a united, not to say, formidable front against the ruling party.

    Alas, now, with the Makarfi faction’s victory, the APC will be forced to finally fight its own internal wars to end the brutal and sanguinary stalemate making life miserable for everyone. The APC is an amalgam of strange bedfellows that reacts to external stimuli differently. With President Buhari a hors de combat, and Acting President Yemi Osinbajo seemingly apolitical, the more ambitious and wily but ideologically vacant Senate President Bukola Saraki may make a bid for the soul of the party. For nearly two years, the hijacked Buhari presidency had elbowed the party away from the centre of power unfortunately into the waiting arms of the Saraki crowd. Having schemed their men into positions in Ondo during the governorship race, and having adopted the newly elected senator in Osun State consequent upon the unsteady, presumptuous and unsavoury politics of Gov Rauf Aregbelsola, and having wooed many other states and political leaders, the Saraki group is clearly on the ascendancy. The APC is indeed imperilled. Stopping Sen. Saraki will be a herculean task, especially given the inurement of many Southwest politicians to the danger he presents to their political future.

    The urgent task of rebuilding the PDP has just started. It will gather steam after the party has successfully conducted its elective convention. Everything indicates that the task will be crucial but easy, and the convention fairly successful. The Sheriff crowd will be checkmated even if they stir themselves to menace the newfound spirit of the party. After the convention, the party can then begin to rebuild its decimated ranks, and sharpen its ideological platform and focus with 2019 in view. But it is too early for them to speak of reclaiming power in two years. It is true the differences in the APC appear irreconcilable, and the combatants in that unruly party truly and inflexibly dug in. It is true, too, that the Buhari faction of the APC knows next to nothing about complex partisan politics, not to talk of the dynamics and mechanics of winning elections. It is also true that the Saraki group is obsessively ambitious. And it is true that the original and battle-hardened Action Congress faction will not give any quarter, sapped of all vitality and depleted in number as it may seem. But despite these reverses in the APC, the PDP will be unrealistic to wish away the power and enduring influence of the ruling party.

    What is more, the PDP has stubbornly refused to make atonement, let alone restitution, for the incalculable damage its elected and appointed officials inflicted on the country, particularly during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. Not only has the PDP failed to show remorse, it continues to live in denial by refusing to purge its ranks of party leaders who masterminded the pillaging of the country’s economy and destruction of its ethos in five short, dizzying years. The best chance the PDP has of reclaiming high office is to wish the APC should either split down the middle or be incapacitated from reconciling its proud and quarrelsome members. But often wishes are not horses. There is a chance, no matter how small and narrow, that the APC might reconcile its warring members, reset the party and imbue it with fresh unction and ideas. Should that happen, the PDP will face the arduous task of convincing the electorate that its five inglorious years in power, during which perhaps the worst stealing ever perpetrated in Nigeria took place, ought to be discountenanced in the race for office. It is hard to see Nigerians forgetting the last five years, not to talk of forgiving what took place.

    With power restored to the Makarfi faction, both the PDP and APC will now embark on a dangerous, frenetic race: the former largely to re-strategise and regain power, and the latter to reconcile its members and retain its hold on power. How each party governs its temper and give leadership to its undisciplined ranks will determine who gains the upper hand. With the implacable but surefooted Sen. Makarfi in the driver’s seat at the moment, the PDP’s prospects appear exhilarating. Unfortunately, the APC does not have a resolute leader. Instead, it has many centres of power which continue to harry worried members and perplex the cynical public. Considering also that too many issues are crying for attention and swift and inclusive resolution in the ruling party, opportunistic raids from outside enemies may further fracture and weaken the APC until it becomes destitute of soul or principles.

    The PDP has now got a second undeserved chance to redeem itself, repair its poor image, forge internal consensus, and retool and rearm itself for the struggles ahead. With the exception of Sen. Makarfi, PDP’s array of unexceptional leaders neither inspires nor exudes the confidence and philosophies a supposedly great party must possess and project. Even if they win anything at all, as their victory in Osun West senatorial district shows, it is more likely because APC leaders themselves are unable to display the imagination and the ideas, and the discipline and judgement their moralisations and propaganda often clumsily suggest. At the moment, the PDP seems more likely to get its act together quicker than the APC. The former has apparently turned the corner, albeit a dangerous corner; while the latter appears primed to get its members to fight to the death, a death it has seemed fatefully and inescapably besotted with since infancy.

  • APC must resolve impasse to avoid disaster

    APC must resolve impasse to avoid disaster

    IT isn’t an impasse in the true sense of the word, but the inability of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency to resolve the Ibrahim Magu confirmation crisis is bound to have adverse impact on the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). With the resurgence of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fresh from self-inflicted legal crisis, the APC may finally but probably reluctantly have to confront its own internal and external wars which it had shown no stomach to fight. If the ruling party does not urgently resolve the issues undermining its cohesion and growth, the opposition may deal it crushing blows in the next polls.

    Apart from the fact that the APC is unfortunately not run as a political party, and does not have leaders in the plausible sense that the PDP now seems to enjoy, it also needs to urgently resolve the Magu confirmation stalemate that threatens to rip the party apart. The party and the presidency have unwisely allowed the controversy to fester for too long. It must come to an end one way or the other.

    First, the presidency thought it had constitutional backing to keep Mr Magu as acting chairman of the EFCC indefinitely. Why it thought that made sense or was enough to make the problem go away is hard to say. Second, different legal opinions now show that in fact a closer reading of the constitution, which was promulgated before EFCC was established, indicates that the presidency is walking on thin ice in the matter. The presidency is unlikely to win in court should it opt for litigation. Having mismanaged the confirmation affair for too long, it has now reached a point where it has to decide whether to keep Mr Magu and lose everything, or sacrifice him, learn the appropriate lessons, and effectively rejig its anti-corruption war in order to fight winnable rather than sentimental wars.

  • Osinbajo, senate and the Magu snafu

    Osinbajo, senate and the Magu snafu

    IT is not often clear where to draw the line when a speaker gives an unprepared speech or interjection on behalf of someone else. The disavowal by former Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole of union leader Issa Aremu’s views on ex-military head of state, Ibrahim Babangida, is a case in point. Though there has been no refutation so far of the strident opinion expressed by the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, on the senate versus presidency wrangle over Ibrahim Magu, it is still unclear where his personal opinion ended and where the opinion of Acting President Yemi Ossinbajo, whom he represented at a function in Kaduna last week, began. Mallam el-Rufai had been asked to represent the acting president at the commissioning of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) zonal office in Kaduna last Thursday, and to make a few remarks. He did it with so much aplomb that newspapers emblazoned it on their front pages the next day.

    Professor Osinbajo is known to be firm and usually incapable of equivocation. He has the courage of his convictions. But he is also diplomatic, restrained and encouragingly conciliatory. It may be true that he asked the fiery Kaduna governor to represent him, and probably also briefed him. Whether the governor executed the brief well and accurately is another thing entirely, especially whether he faithfully conveyed the glacial sentiments and tones of the acting president. Asked to speak, however, the volcanic governor was combative, provocative, imperious as usual, and managed to wrap up everything in his exasperating tone of divine finality. Unfortunately, this column cannot determine whether while discussing with the acting president, the governor gauged the voltage of his anger on the Magu case. What is nevertheless obvious is that the governor passed on to his audience what the public and newspapers presumed to be the acting president’s message, warts and amperage.

    There is little doubt that the acting president has seemed to be more definitive and forward on the Magu case than even the president. Prof Osinbajo probably does not hide that fact nor regrets it. On an issue he feels so passionate about, including the anti-graft war and its prosecution, he is at liberty to be direct and unequivocal. It would therefore appear that Mallam el-Rufai’s stridency in Kaduna on Thursday matches the justifiable tenor of the acting president’s view on the problematic confirmation of the EFCC chairman, Mr Magu. About a week earlier, the senate had suggested that it would no longer be inclined to confirm any nominee of the president until the executive had determined, one way or the other, whether the senate does in fact have the constitutional powers to vet nominees and confirm them. The senate suspension of confirmation process had been taken as a veiled threat to force the hands of the presidency on the Magu case.

    Indeed, compounding the matter on Wednesday was what was controversially interpreted as the muted displeasure of the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, who had quibbled about how the Magu confirmation case was never brought before the Federal Executive Council (FEC). He had told the press that only the acting president, rather than FEC, could say anything on the matter. The press interpreted his statement to mean that he dissociated himself from the matter, and that the acting president, and perhaps by implication the president himself, was pursuing a private agenda. Alarmed that the cabal war in the presidency had flared up again, the public, including the less restrained Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Anti-Corruption (PACAC), Itse Sagay, took umbrage, denounced the senate, and excoriated Mr Malami and any other person they presumed to be in opposition to the anti-graft war.

    It was against this convoluted background that Mallam el-Rufai fumed in Kaduna against the anti-Magu group and insisted that both the president and the acting president, judging from what they told him, were determined to keep Mr Magu till at least 2019. Take these two quotations from two newspapers on the subject. The first newspaper quotes the Kaduna governor as asseverating thus: “We have every confidence in Magu to fight corruption to a standstill. He will remain the EFCC chairman as long as I remain the Acting President and as well as Muhammadu Buhari remains the President. It is our belief that Magu will continue to remain a nightmare for corrupt people for years to come. Mr Chairman (referring to Mr Magu), two weeks ago, I discussed the EFCC and your appointment with President Muhammadu Buhari and he told me he has every confidence in you and every confidence in the commission and the work that you have been doing, and as long as he is president you remain the chairman of the EFCC. Last night, I spoke with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who reconfirmed the position of the President and told me that as long as he remained the Acting President or Vice President, Ibrahim Magu would remain the chairman of the EFCC. That is the only message from the President; so those thinking that corruption is winning this war, Magu would remain their nightmare for the next two years or six years as the case may be.”

    The second paper quotes the Kaduna governor as saying, “I had a discussion with the President (Buhari) on the Magu issue. He said he has every confidence in the work that the commission, led by Magu, is doing, and as long as he (Buhari) is President, you (Magu) remain the chairman of the EFCC.

    For those who believe that Magu is their nightmares, he will remain there for the next two years. I spoke with the Acting President last night (Wednesday) and he affirmed what the President said.”

    Even if Mallam el-Rufai represented the acting president on Thursday in Kaduna, he still managed to inject his own idiosyncrasies, if not the whole gamut of his impatience and cocksureness. Prof Osinbajo cannot be everywhere, especially in the absence of the president who is not available to share the burden of the presidency. But the acting president knows his men and the dispositions of those who might be asked to represent him at various fora. He has a duty to ensure he is represented by those who, despite their private passions and commitments, would not complicate his views and the public perception of his stand. Mallam el-Rufai has often placed himself heedlessly at the head of very controversial issues; and Prof Sagay has often been unsparing, hasty and undiplomatic, even when he is right. Both gentlemen hardly recommend themselves as representatives of the president or acting president when a controversial matter, as exampled by the senate versus Magu grudge match, calls for restraint and diplomacy.

    Prof Osinbajo may be right to insist on Mr Magu. But he is wrong to want to leave the matter stalemated. He has a duty, as the senate says, to approach the Supreme Court to interpret the controversial section of the constitution relied upon by the executive to push the Magu case. The matter must not be left in abeyance. Worse, leaving the matter stalemated will quite clearly complicate matters for the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party which has so far managed unerringly to function as a village cultural association with no soul or conviction. The public may be indignant at the senate for seemingly condoning corruption, both within their ranks and outside, but so far, and quite irreverently too, the upper chamber has seemed to play politics devoid of the naivety that drives the Buhari presidency’s alarming proclivities. Thus, with consummate realpolitik, the senate has carried on ruthlessly wrong-footing the presidency and incensing the public.

    It is not clear when President Buhari will return, or that when he returns, as everyone hopes, he will have the stamina and presence of mind to play politics with the ardour and brilliance required of him. For even before he took ill, his testimonial in those areas had been suspect. So, Prof Osinbajo must begin gradually to understand that he is dealing with a fairly amoral senate and a fair number of political leaders dedicated to the most unctuous and atrocious form of political endgame, as the country hurtles towards 2019. He must recognise that beyond showing grit in one issue or the other, whether it has to do with confirmation or not, he also has a party to run. He is not a typical politician, and the regular amenities and chicaneries available to the typical politician obviously elude him. Yet, he has a job to do, and he must do it.

    He knows he has a fractious party to keep together, a party that has sundered so badly that it has no pretence to be called a party. He has an obstreperous senate to mollify, if the APC is not to wilt further. Perhaps those he has surrounded himself with might wish to goad him into a frontal assault on the legislature, as President Buhari was initially tempted to do in the hope of instigating a public march on the lawmakers to knock some sense into them. But going down that chute, egged on by an impatient public, is fraught with unquantifiable and unpredictable consequences. The eminent professor needs caution, despite the fiery talk around him in the presidency, and he needs diplomacy, contrary to the revolutionary fervour among Nigerians. Above all, he needs wisdom. To keep the APC as a party despite its naturally centrifugal tendencies, and coax the senate as a bulwark of the party despite its unmistakeably feudal outlook and centripetal tendencies require a balancing act of uncanny dimension.

    President Buhari did little to bridge the chasm between him and the legislature, not to talk of between him and the party itself. Even at the risk of being accused of breaking rank with the president, Prof Osinbajo should not be tempted to ape that unseemly and antagonistic style. The task of keeping the country whole and wholesome, and stable and prosperous begins with managing the divisions and interests within the ruling APC and the APC-dominated legislature. There is sadly no precedence to help him, not since 1999. The acting president must, therefore, reach within himself to pull a rabbit out of the hat, conciliating, mollifying and placating both his turgid party and seething legislature. The consequences of leaving the current divisions and wounds unattended to till next year would be impossible to measure for the APC. Many commentators believe the party simply does not have the men for these times; it must not compound its deficiencies by also giving the false impression that it has time on its hands.

  • Obasanjo and lessons not learnt

    Obasanjo and lessons not learnt

    FORMER president Olusegun Obasanjo was characteristically blunt and scathing last Tuesday when he tried to justify the retirement of military officers who were described in 1999, when he assumed office, as politically exposed. His remarks were made at the public presentation of a book on the late Brig.-Gen. Zakariya Maimalari. Probably touched by the presence of the son of the subject of the book, Lt.-Col. Abubakar Maimalari (retd.), a former military administrator himself who was swept away in the gale that affected politically exposed officers, Chief Obasanjo said he needed to explain why he took that step, but would not apologise for it.

    Said Chief Obasanjo, apparently turning to the younger Maimalari: “I have no apology, but I have explanations; it is because it is necessary to stop the sort of thing that took the life of your father prematurely that I had to take decision that all those who have tasted of power that they should never have tasted…while they were soldiers; that we should ease them out of the army so that we can have an army that will be completely free from political aberration.”

    Assured that he did the right thing at the time, the former president explained further: “And so far, since 1999, I think we seem to have got it right. Let us hope that we will continue to get it right and learn the right lessons that Nigeria has had enough sacrifices by those victims; that Nigeria deserves peace, unity and democracy. And may the sacrifices of the life of Brig. Zak Maimalari be sufficient to give this country peace, development, unity and progress.”

    Other than cursory statements, some so sweeping as to be lacking in scientific rationalisation, no study has yet been done to examine or find a correlation between the retirement of the officers and the so-called stability Nigerian democracy enjoys. Chief Obasanjo, as usual, is not incommoded by scientific rigour. He believes in what he did, as specious and fallacious as it might be, and he will continue to justify it. He will always close his eyes to other factors that explain the delicate stability of democracy in Nigeria. Sadly, in 1999, given the general frustrations with military rule, no one was willing to oppose Chief Obasanjo’s drastic and sentimental measures, whether they made sense or not.

    It is hard, however, to laud a process that presumed to anticipate a future crime and then proceed to punish the suspect based on a crime he is believed to be capable of committing. Neither the laws of the land nor the constitution, nor yet military laws of any kind under which the retired officers were punished, gave Chief Obasanjo the power to summarily retire the officers. The tragedy of 1999 was that the truncation of the military careers of the said officers was not challenged in court. Had it been challenged, it is doubtful whether a court could be found to justify the measure, whether on the pretext of saving the republic or on the excuse of averting a future crime.

    More importantly, the measure was characteristic of Chief Obasanjo’s superficial and abrasive style of judging others without the accompanying tinge of remorse or retrospection that many great leaders find invaluable in coming to terms with the pangs of conscience. The measure, not to talk of the lack of remorse at truncating many otherwise fine careers, open a window into the dark and simplistic minds of African leaders who scorn scientific and analytical tools in formulating policies for the day after tomorrow.

  • Biafra and Nigeria’s identity crisis

    Biafra and Nigeria’s identity crisis

    IF there are Nigerians who can define their country’s national identity, that is, who Nigerians are as a people, they are a very rare breed. As indicated in this place last week, without that definition, without settling the question of national identity, it is extremely difficult to run a united, stable and prosperous country. Force can of course be applied to procure unity and a semblance of national identity, but it will not last. For the past five decades and more, Nigerian leaders, starting from British colonialists, have struggled to run a country uninterested in or incapable of defining or discovering who they are. By a combination of force, emotions and presumptuousness, they hoped Nigerian unity could be forged from the anvils of collective experience. So far, they have failed. Without changing the paradigm, without attempting a deep understanding of the fundamental problems that predispose the country to endless crises, the leaders kept hoping that palliatives and tinkering with political structures would do the job. They could not be more mistaken.

    The problems created by the absence of a national identity have never been far from the surface. But in the past few months, the agitations for self-determination first spearheaded by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), and now particularly the frenzied and apocalyptic rants of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the Southeast, have brought the crisis to the fore once again. This time, a sense of urgency, not to say a feeling that the country might be confronting an endgame, confuses and aggravates the controversy. The country in fact seems surprised that the debate has appeared to follow the usual ethnic and to some extent religious fault lines. Unfortunately, both in the North and South, there is a shocking tendency to situate the discourse in the verbal excesses and apocalyptic predictions of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

    With or without Mr Kanu and the once fiery leader of MASSOB, Ralph Uwazuruike, both the agitations for Biafra and the crisis of national identity will continue. The country has a responsibility to disentangle the discourse from the textured arguments, emotions and hate speech of the past few weeks, and the reluctance by past and present leaders to understand and grapple with the elements that constitute national identity. Neither force nor placations, nor yet abuse and blackmail will dispose the country to unity and stability until national identity has been forged, if it is not already too late. It is clear that more than the people themselves, Nigerian leaders have been uninformed in their approach to the crisis — a lack of appreciation that was acquired and nurtured almost right from the beginning at independence.

    At independence, Britain did its best to provide a constitution they believed would accommodate the country’s competitive and often conflicting diversity. That constitution, as everyone knows, did not last. In fact, since 1966, Nigerian leaders have shown absolutely no understanding of what national identity means, and have done nothing to build the country into a distinctive and cohesive whole. At a point, rulers like Ibrahim Babangida even began to subvert the few elements that still sustained the country’s unity facade, such as the military, the judiciary, the police, and external relations. It was clear they learnt nothing from history.

    But a cursory reading of history would have instructed Nigeria’s past rulers on how to build a nation and forge a national identity for their country. Surely they would have understood how the Prussian (German) leader, Otto von Bismarck, in the mid-19th century ruthlessly unified the German people, outplayed Austria, balkanised Denmark, and by a shrewd understanding of the concept of national identity and force of arms raised the power and prestige of a unified Germany. Nigerians rulers would have appreciated the history of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and how brilliantly Kemal Ataturk, beginning from May 1919, created a Turkish rump from the collapsing empire, imbuing it from 1921 with a radical, secular identity that completely broke the mould from the Ottoman imperial and theocratic paradigm. Nigerian rulers would have understood why and how the 15 Soviet republics broke up in 1991, and how the main rump, Russia, is forging a national identity; and why and how in 1992, after 47 years of pretence, Yugoslavia ultimately failed to forge a national identity for its multi-ethnic society.

    There are enough lessons from history to instruct Nigerian rulers. Instead, they have skirted around religious symbols and identifications, executed incredibly unwise political and constitutional schemes, built self-centred regimes and assembled cabinets that alienated ‘others’, and promoted exceptionalism and encouraged primordial and sectional policies and politics. They hoped that despite these political and electoral shenanigans, they could use propaganda — National Orientation Agency, MAMSER, Transformation Agenda, Change Begins with Me — and other such futile and fatuous methods to instil oneness and a sense of shared destiny in the people. If France had not first built a national identity, how could they have aspired to rule Europe? Indeed would they have anything to promote and export? Was it not because they possessed something they think was worth selling that they undergirded their colonial ambition with the policy of assimilation?

    Have Nigerian rulers pondered why China is a major world economic and political player today? China’s domestic and international ambitions would have been impossible without the visionary and foundational work of Mao Zedong, and the astute and expansionist policies of their reformist leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang, and others. In fact the Chinese approach has seemed to follow classically the methods employed by  Bismarck in the mid-19th century. Forging a national identity, as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazini also showed in the case of Italy in the 1830s and 1840s, must come from within as patriotic and nationalist forces explore the elements of shared culture, language and most importantly great history. Despite its 69 years history, the Soviet Republics still collapsed in 1991 after about seven decades of consciously trying to institute elements that conduced to national identity. But knowing what to do does not even guarantee success, let alone not knowing what to do, as Nigerian rulers indicate. The leadership of Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito also proved this point. The country he singlehandedly put together after World War II sadly collapsed 47 years later, and 12 years after he died in 1980. These are histories Nigerian leaders should pay attention to.

    It is clear now that Nigerian rulers have a terrible misconception of national identity. It is also established that till today, and much worse under President Muhammadu Buhari, these rulers do not have the capacity — in ideas and character — to rule a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. It is also established that with perhaps the exception of Gen Yakubu Gowon and to a little extent Gen Murtala Mohammed, they were unable to rid themselves of their primordial sentiments. These reasons, singly or in combination, explain why they show an emotive and fruitless response to the agitation for separation in parts of Nigeria, particularly in the Southeast. They see these agitations as a challenge, as a demonstration of lack of patriotism, and as a clarion call to war or revolution. The same pedestrian thinking on the street unhappily manifests in the State House and even tertiary institutions where far more robust thinking should take place. Even in the Southeast, which is the new locus of the self-determination campaigns, many Igbo leaders are unable to respond adequately to the unfolding crisis. They choose, like the man on the street, to focus on the hysteria of Mr Kanu, when the problem is far deeper and more debilitating.

    Mr Kanu is certainly not the problem, despite his immaturity and excesses. And unknown to the Igbo themselves, many of whom have become quite apologetic for choosing a recourse to their innate self in the face of huge and unsympathetic challenges from the rest of Nigeria, particularly the North and Nigerian leadership, other factors are at play in their agitations. Mr Kanu is nothing but the clumsy and unqualified representation of that deep and understandable, even respectable, Igbo yearning for a national identity and its significant and positive effect as a catalyst for self-actualisation and fulfilment. The 1967-70 civil war became for the Igbo the closest thing to their renaissance, a time when they flowered in technology, language, culture, and religious expression, and shared, even if, brief history. They came to revolutionary and political grief; but they still apparently remember the period with great nostalgia and self-belief, convinced that the limitations others read into their existence are nothing but opportunities for greatness. After all, they held out against the ‘mighty’ Nigeria for three years.

    Until Nigerians and their rulers — most of whom see the problem from a cracked prism — recognise that nothing can be done outside the creation and establishment of a national identity as a tool for national mobilisation, the country would continue to list dangerously. Much worse is the fact that the absence of that identity would also mean a constant recourse by nationalities to the countervailing identities already in existence in their various enclaves probably for hundreds of years. In the historically stateless societies of the Southeast, the deeply embedded idea of Biafra was their first real attempt at creating a ‘universal’ Igbo identity. In that brief period, they surprised themselves at what they were capable of. Even if Nigerian rulers were to study and appreciate the factors that drive and imbue the Igbo with a great essence, they would still have found it difficult to subordinate that Igbo existential conundrum to the quest for a national identity. Unfortunately, they have not undertaken that study. They are surprised that Mr Kanu is able to harness the frustrations among the Igbo. They are miffed that Igbo leaders themselves appear to be reticent over the agitations in the Southeast.

    But it is also indisputable that the North, liberally defined, is stuck to a shared sense of caliphate thinking and world view. That caliphate mentality has smuggled itself deeply into national discourse, whether as it relates to presidential politics or even the operation of federalism. At the bottom of the caliphate instituted by Shehu Usman dan Fodio are Fulani hegemony, national dominance, subliminal understanding of power, and the inseparability of religion from public office and society. Over the years, a curious form of a sense of entitlement has even crept into the caliphate world view, with frustrations sometimes displayed whenever power shifted. After many years of caliphate ascendancy, begun with deliberate British transfer of power to the North at independence, it will be a tough job vitiating that hold and subordinating it to a national identity. The caliphate, its proponents say, represents the entire spectrum of life. There is nothing outside of it.

    Then, of course, there is the Yoruba world view, which takes its existential departure from Oduduwa, and was nurtured before colonial rule into an advanced political system, complete with empire and kingdoms that instituted checks and balances and many of the liberal concepts popularised by Western philosophical thinkers. Such a people with an advanced political system were forced by colonialism to comingle with other peoples of different and persistently conflictive cultures, civilisations and world views. The Yoruba are questioning, often unyielding, contemptuous of feudalism, urbanised and impatient to experiment with new, secular philosophies. Indeed, in their recent history, they had become so secular as to elect Moslem-Moslem political tickets. Now, corrupted by the national tendency for fundamentalism, they have also begun to embrace extremism and other political and social perversions alien to their founding philosophies and ideologies.

    It requires a deep understanding of the modern history of Nigeria to attempt, without assurance of success, the forging of a national identity. No such understanding exists, and no effort is being made. In the absence of a national identity, and especially in the face of competition and challenges where the best may not necessarily win and the losers are treated unfairly and contemptuously, other identities, especially those with strong ethnic appeal, are bound to enjoy fresh attention. Thus Biafra will continue to appeal to the Igbo whether Mr Kanu approximates its virtues and values or not. The concept of a liberal and federal Odua Republic will also retain an enormous attraction to the Yoruba whether anyone thinks the Oyo Yoruba will fight the Ekiti, and Ibadan will fight the Ijesha. The Yoruba believe, and have said so, that they have the innate endowment to run a liberal democracy far better than anyone in Africa. Also, the history of the Sokoto Caliphate will  continue to mesmerise the Hausa/Fulani no matter how deeply other nationalities resent its intrinsically feudal undertones. Indeed, as Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former Kano State governor and presidential aspirant, and Ahmed Makarfi, another former governor and party leader, showed in their defence of acerbic northern youths, primordial, caliphate feelings and a general misunderstanding of other cultures persist among top northern politicians.

    The presidency, governors and many political leaders think that regardless of the obstacles, a national identity can still be fostered to unify and stabilise Nigeria. Unable to prove that as leaders they have purged themselves of their parochialisms and religious and political intolerance, they must ask also whether, in view of their inexpert responses to the excesses of IPOB’s Mr Kanu, they really understand the issues at stake, whether they know they cannot just wish away the histories of Nigerian nationalities but must take cognisance of them, and whether they have the intellect, stamina and discipline needed to forge a fairly lasting and workable national identity. They must ask why decades of moralising about national unity have not yielded the desired result, and why Nigeria seems eternally poised on the edge of disintegration. There is nothing to show that Nigeria has the right leaders at the moment to do that great and noble job. Their present tactics and strategies are useless and futile; they will not work despite the meddling and insinuations of Britain and the United States. Nor is there proof that a return to federalism — the present system is undoubtedly unitary — will accomplish more than short-lived peace and stability built around regional agglomerations. Nigerian rulers have allowed the problem to fester for too long until it has now calcified beyond what a radical and truly patriotic leader can tame or ameliorate.

    Overall, the lack of a national identity is clearly at the root of Nigeria’s problem. It began with Hausa/Fulani distrust before independence and campaign to secede in 1966; regressed to Yoruba self-determination hunger over the MKO Abiola debacle and other general frustrations with what they described as national predilection for mediocrity, and appears now to be culminating in Igbo self-determination struggle over alienation and marginalisation. Always one problem or the other. The lack of national identity makes it impossible for the leader to appreciate the inviolability of the law and the constitution, encourages law enforcement agents to brazenly abuse their powers and commit rights excesses, forces nationalities to retreat into their parochial existence and loyalties during competition for resources and power, and guarantees that both leaders and the led are in equal measure reluctant to make inspiring sacrifices, sometimes to the death, for the nation.

     

     

     

  • Osinbajo, Bakare wrong on Nigerian unity

    Osinbajo, Bakare wrong on Nigerian unity

    UNTIL the coalition of northern youth groups addressed the press and announced they were giving the Igbo living in the North a three-month ultimatum to quit the region, most Nigerians had become quite inured to the separatist agitations of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). The federal government of course never showed any proficiency in handling the Southeast-led agitations in the many years the region had quaked with protests, yet the situation did not seem unamenable to rational approaches and even incompetent law enforcement tactics. But with the upping of the ante by the northern youth groups, and the seeming connivance of some northern leaders, the Southeast agitations have suddenly acquired fresh and disturbing significance.

    In the past two weeks or so, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has been conducting consultations with regional stakeholders both to douse the tension created by the rash of ultimatums emanating from different parts of the country and to serve notice that the government would not countenance any challenge to Nigerian unity. In the process, he has poll parroted the refrain every Nigerian president is conversant with, that Nigerian unity is non-negotiable. In one of his consultations, the acting president gave a succinct summary of his view on the agitations, during which two key points emerged.

    Said Prof Osinbajo: “All of us have however agreed that our nation must remain one. When we spoke (yesterday) with traditional rulers from the Southeast, despite the issues that were raised here and there, I think that there is clarity as to that one thing, that our country ought to remain, must remain a united country. Just as I said to them yesterday, a lot of blood has been shed on account of the unity of our country and our faithfulness even to the lives of those who have made the supreme sacrifice to this country demands that we do everything on our part to keep this country together. And in any event, the greatest nations in the world are those nations who have the size as well as the human resources in particular to make the best of that size, and I think our nation has that and the mere fact that we have such a large nation and so well-endowed, in terms of human resources. I think that we are in the best position not only to be truly great but to ensure that all of our people benefit from the greatness of our country.”

    The acting president obviously anchors his impression of Nigerian unity on his belief that Nigerians had resolved to stay together, and that the size of the country, obviously referring to its population and land expanse, confers on it a potential for greatness it needed to exploit. In Nigeria, unity has for long undoubtedly been taken as a fait accompli. But there was no time Nigerians freely chose, despite the presumptuous position of their constitution on unity, to stay together, nor did they at any time suggest that that unity would be best served by the country’s present structure. No one of course expects the acting president to give vent to his private conviction on the structure of the country, if he has one, or the unity of Nigeria, which he probably sees is his duty to embrace wholeheartedly. He is acting president, and as this column said last week when it wondered aloud when he would experience his epiphany, the structure of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, not to say the manner the ailing president structured Aso Villa and the security apparatuses, constrains him to submit to unbearable placations.

    In any case, even if it is assumed that the 1914 arrangement bequeathed by the British colonialists to Nigerians was freely entered into, there is nothing to suggest that the arrangement is irrevocable or designed to last for all time, or that it could not be considerably restructured. Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, some other countries cobbled together by geopolitics, military might, and ideological exigencies have either restructured or balkanised, some violently, some peacefully. There is absolutely nothing inevitable about Nigeria’s borders. Even Britain, Nigeria’s former colonial master, lives gingerly on the brink of breakup. The Warsaw Pact of eight countries, since its formation in 1955, has broken up, despite their awesome military machine. Yugoslavia, Sudan, Czechoslovakia have also irretrievably fractured. The European Union (EU) will continue to alternate between expansion and contraction, based on the mood of the times and other economic, political and social dynamics and considerations. Nigeria is constituted by great empires and kingdoms of the past. If its leaders are unable to find the right balance for these developed political systems to coexist, it will collapse under the weight of inefficiency, inequity and poor leadership. There is nothing inevitable or sacrosanct about its borders. It came into being only in 1914; it will disintegrate at some time in the future if its leaders fail to anticipate that future.

    It does not matter what President Buhari or the acting president thinks. And it matters little whether anyone finds the agitations in the Southeast reprehensible or not, or whether the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is dismissed as a lout or hailed as a saviour. It is abundantly clear that there was no closure to the civil war. It is also indisputable that the war ended in military victory for Nigeria and defeat for Biafra. Since then, nothing has been done to restructure the country and manage the fissures that tore the country apart in the first instance. Despite defeat, the idea of Biafra still exerts great nostalgic pull on many south-easterners. The acting president is therefore inaccurate to suggest, as the president himself did last year, that the civil war was akin to a consensus on unity. It was not. And until the government begins to realise that the idea of Biafra can only be tackled in the minds of its adherents, not through law enforcement, the mistakes of the past will be repeated. If Serbia could not keep Yugoslavia together, and Russia could not keep the Warsaw Pact countries between the hammer and the sickle, and Sudan could not restrain South Sudan, and Israel cannot pacify Palestinians, and Russia and the United States could not, at different times, manage Afghanistan and Iraq, why does anyone think that if the Igbo decide to go, they can be restrained by force as was done in 1967-70? Or that if they choose to go, it would not sound the death knell to the country?

    The fact is that the superficial Mr Kanu is simply not the leader the Igbo want, hence their ambivalence to the struggle, notwithstanding the near consensus about the disadvantaged place of the Igbo in the scheme of things. More importantly, for economic and geographical reasons, the Igbo are unsure whether the romanticised and tantalising idea of Biafra is as engaging as IPOB and MASSOB paint it. However, the danger is that the continuing mismanagement of the IPOB/MASSOB agitations by the government may very well tip the scales in a direction no one perhaps wants. A sensible approach, therefore, is to abandon the presumptuous talk of Nigerian unity not being open to negotiation. Nigerian unity must and needs to be negotiated. The Buhari presidency, by its almost total ostracism of the Igbo, makes the case for negotiation very urgent. Surely, it must have occurred to the acting president that when he and his team met with stakeholders on the controversial ultimatums, no Igbo officer was present among his security chiefs. So, how does the government take far-reaching security decisions in the absence of the Igbo? The government must resist the temptation to focus on the histrionics of Mr Kanu, his hate speech, or future agitations, including sit-at-home campaigns. These are simply reactions, sometimes foolish, to much deeper and underlying fractures. The government should keep its eyes on the ball, rather than set or look out for offside traps that can go horribly wrong.

    Last April, and again this June, Prof Osinbajo spoke of the big size of Nigeria as an asset for development and greatness. This is a historical fallacy. Some of the greatest empire builders have come from small nations. The size of a country is just one factor in empire building and greatness of a nation. The first prerequisite is for a leader to possess the vision for greatness, as in fact Genghis Khan, the 44-year-old Mongoloid leader, 35-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican, and Alexander the Great, the Greek, all showed. What is the use of a big nation when its leaders do not possess the vision for greatness? Nigeria fought two ECOMOG wars, but fought them with incredibly vacuous mind. They sacrificed blood and toil in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but allowed the British to calmly walk in take nearly all the glory. No country has been so bereft of the idea of greatness as Nigeria has been in its sacrifice to lead ECOWAS, defeat apartheid, free Zimbabwe, stanch the flow of blood in Sergeant Samuel Doe’s and Charles Taylor’s murderous wars. With no elevated and invigorating idea of the rule of law, and unable to devise a noble, efficient and practicable political and economic arrangement, Nigeria is unable to offer leadership to itself, not to talk of any other country.

    Every great nation that produced a great leader has had a definite idea of what it wanted to do with itself and others. Size matters little. After all, Adolf Hitler recognised this in propounding his racist idea of Lebensraum. And though small Israel has not shown appetite for empires, it possesses one of the most powerful armies in the world, thrice defeating combined Arab forces — to a lesser extent in 1948, and to a greater extent in 1967 and 1973. It continues to display incredible chutzpah that belies its size, bombing nuclear reactors in Syria (Operation Orchard, 2008) and Iraq (Operation Opera, 1981), and would have attempted that of Iran had the US not restrained it. Israel has had a difficult history, and they always intend to give that history, a part of which continues to inflict searing pain on their minds, all it takes. On a distant tomorrow, an empire builder with a vision will not be dissuaded by his country’s size from taking on the world. Hitler was not dissuaded by Napoleon’s failure in the 1812 Moscow campaign, and Augustus Caesar yearned for conquests after reflecting on Alexander the Great’s conquests. The truth is that Nigeria has not done anything with its size, and indeed cannot, as this column will argue next week, given the lack of discipline and intellectual poverty of its leaders. There is nothing to suggest that a balkanised Nigeria can in fact not do much better in the world with its constituent parts.

    If Prof Osinbajo misdirected himself with his statements about Nigerian unity being non-negotiable and his suggestion that bigness is smart and potentially leads to greatness, Tunde Bakare, presiding pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly church, was even more mistaken when he suggested, as part of the unity discourse, that the election of Emmanuel Macron in France was perhaps indicative of a global paradigm shift in leadership. He is absolutely wrong. Nothing has shifted anywhere, not paradigm, not societal, not political. Nothing is shifting. Vision, intelligence, character, charisma — all ingredients of great leadership — are not the preserve of any age group. Though he was reluctant to admit it, the pastor knows that President Buhari’s anachronisms have nothing to do with his age or his illness-induced lethargy. The unvarnished fact is that President Buhari lacks depth and expansive vision. His election was predicated on the supposition that he would surround himself with very bright and charismatic Nigerians from all walks. Sadly, even doing that apparently requires not only depth, but also a substantial element of vision. Indeed, the president simply ignored everything else and surrounded himself with parochial kith and kin who have no inspiring concept of Nigeria.

    Had Pastor Bakare read world history fairly well, he would have recognise that there was no historical epoch that did not have young and old leaders contemporaneously. When he assumed leadership, Alexander the Great was only 20 years old, and at the age of 30 had conquered the known world, dying some three years later at 33. Many of the leaders of his time were in their 40s. The highly revered Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a little older when he assumed leadership at 26. By contrast, Winston Churchill was 66 when he became Prime Minister of Britain, growing to become one of the world’s most renowned leaders. Charles de Gaulle, who saw himself in the mould of Saint Joan of Arc and Napoleon, perhaps even as their reincarnation, did not become elected president of France until the age of 68. Like Mr Churchill, his influence in world history cannot be diminished.

    The age of a leader and size of a country play little or nothing in building a great nation or empire. What matters are the ideas of the leaders, their visions, and a combination of other factors, some of them quite mystical and even elemental. Acting President Osinbajo may be forgiven for mouthing the same jaded and impractical ideas of past rulers and presidents, including the man he is acting for. Were it to be his presidency, Nigerians would know how to tackle him. However, even though he is ruling in acting capacity, he must sensibly and boldly attempt to tackle the nonsense going on in the country. The northern youths who gave the Igbo an ultimatum ought to have been picked up immediately. They are not ghosts.

    The security agencies under President Buhari have behaved irresponsibly parochial. Even if he cannot change the structure of anything fundamentally, Prof Osinbajo should put his foot down and do what is right within the framework of President Buhari’s difficult and antiquated structure. And contrary to what the acting president thinks, the agitations in the Southeast cannot be placated with justice alone, justice that nevertheless addresses the ostracism of the Igbo, particularly in the security architecture of the country. Biafra is a nostalgic concept consisting of cultural and political elements, and if care is not taken, may soon include religious elements. It should be tackled in the realm of politics and the mind, sensibly and structurally, without the hideous abuse and bitterness that many in the North and surprisingly elsewhere have been tempted to exude. There was no closure to Biafra. Let the government find one. Perhaps if there had been an honest appraisal of the war and the factors that engendered it — for after all, the same issues and problems also affect the North-central and Southwest — no one would be agitating for separation. Nigeria should be tired of this whirligig.

  • Vindication of Saraki

    Vindication of Saraki

    SENATE President Bukola Saraki will naturally dismiss any suggestion that the not-guilty verdict returned in his favour by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), before which he was tried for false asset declaration and other related offences, was concocted. His lawyers and supporters believe the decision of the two-man panel led by Justice Danladi Umar was fair, even though tortuous. Senator Saraki faced 18 charges. Through a no-case submission filed by his lawyers after the prosecution closed its case with 48 exhibits, the plucky but embattled senator escaped the state’s legal dragnet unhurt. The state has indicated it will appeal what it described as an absurd judgement, and from all indications, the matter may yet get to the Supreme Court.

    Aside his lawyers, aides and supporters, it is unlikely anyone else in Nigeria thinks Senator Saraki innocent. The public followed the case avidly, watched the prosecutors’ and defender’s nuances closely, and, though unschooled in law, believed that enough evidence had been adduced to scupper the Kwara senator’s political career finally. But from a position of weakness and anxiety, not only in the law courts but also in the senate itself at inauguration, Senator Saraki has grown into a self-confident, pugnacious and exerting leader. He was famous for possessing an implacable hold on Kwara State; now he in addition enjoys a relentless, if not absolute, hold on the senate. Once in danger of falling from his Olympian senate heights, his career is now set to blossom so brightly that the rays are capable of blinding the best eyes.

    The ingredients of exculpation were evident from the very beginning. First was his legal team’s obfuscatory and fancy footwork; then followed a cornucopia of give and take between the senate, which goosesteped behind Dr Saraki, and the presidency riven by internal dissension and abject lack of focus and judgement; and then, finally, surrender by the ailing president who after many months of duelling with young legislative phantoms suddenly discovered that he lacked both the will and the tactics to fight the senate president and win. Worse, with the senate remaining impenetrable, not to talk of anyone getting the chance to strew the chamber with banana peels, and the public wearied by the incessant adjournments of the case, of course in addition to the EFCC snapping at the heels of the trial judges themselves, the case against Dr Saraki simply became at once quixotic and toxic. Those who swore at the beginning, including this column, that the case would be a barometer for President Buhari’s anti-graft war, became harried by doubts. Doubts soon gave way to fear, and fear to suspicion of conspiracy.

    Whatever the case, Dr Saraki is now really a free man. Using his well-known talisman, which libel laws will not allow this column to identify, he will tighten his hold on the senate, snicker behind closed doors at his disbelieving country, eye the vacillating Buhari presidency with a mischievous glint in his eyes, and speak condescendingly to party men whom he has long described as rivals or enemies. With this acquittal, it will require a legal legerdemain of unearthly proportions to get the appellate courts to reverse the CCT judgement. For about two years, it was impossible to summon the will in the senate to fight Dr Saraki. There will now be no one left in that inflexible and single-minded chamber eager to fight him. He had taken on the All Progressives Congress (APC) and won. Then he took on the presidency, and there is no dispute what the outcome of the battle is. Dr Saraki’s raison d’etre, as a confirmed feudalist, is fighting and scheming. He will look for a fight anywhere, for that is the ingredient upon which his political growth depends, and he will not shirk a fight.

    He is rumoured to harbour interest in the presidency, especially because it will take a miracle to restore President Buhari to vibrancy. There is indeed every indication he will weigh his chances and throw his hat into the ring if the situation permits. Having worsted a few gladiators along the line, his adamant and less eloquent father not excluded, he will entertain no fear about the toughness of his future opponents. This is because he knows, like many other politicians in these parts, that Nigeria has a knack for producing presidents generally against the run of play, presidents so often unqualified as to appear to affront common sense. Dr Saraki doubtless feels invincible, and that supposed invincibility will egg him on to take on stiffer and more compelling challenges.

    But while his fighting spirit sustains him, and his scheming talent nurtures his political advancement, including getting him judicial victories, there is really nothing else to the young gladiator. If President Buhari could campaign for high office and win on the strength of his truculence and obstinacy, why would Dr Saraki find it compelling to place premium on the virtue of ideas, philosophies, character, judgement and intuition? In his entire time at the senate, not to say his two terms as governor, not one original and innovative idea ever issued from him. As senate president, he is obsessed with holding on to office, whatever the cost. Perhaps he thinks ideas are laborious; or perhaps he feels ideas alarm the public. Indeed, going by those who form his immediate support base, such as the hysterical and inimitably comical Dino Melaye, there will be no ideas of any kind coming from Dr Saraki throughout his tenure as senate president. And should he attempt to vie for the presidency, it will, like others have shown, not be anchored on ideas or philosophies.

    Dr Saraki’s victory at the CCT does not imply an end to President Buhari’s anti-graft war. The problem right from the beginning was that the campaign was poorly conceived and made to rest ungainly  on military style and inspiration. Without prejudice to what the appellate courts will decide on the Saraki case, President Buhari and his team must plan the war afresh and establish a sound legal and constitutional foundation for it. But to do this, the president must reconstitute his team, both kitchen and general cabinets, make it national and knowledgeable, and re-engineer his own world view. At 74, the president can, however, neither acquire new ideas nor utilise them well. His first and natural instinct is to suspect new ideas. And at that age, and having failed over the years out of office to expand his horizon, it is hard to see him adopting the liberal and multicultural ideas necessary to govern a complex and impatient country.

    The prosecution fought well, despite former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s infantile reservations about government prosecutors. And the case against Dr Saraki was fairly straightforward and admit of no stultifying detours and ambush. If the Buhari presidency does not rethink the anti-graft war and imbue the government with fresh, uplifting and nationalistic ideas; if it does not close ranks and prevent presidential aides from confecting outside alliances; if it does not think in terms of the country rather than in terms of one section or religion, it may yet lose many more cases, regardless of the brilliance of its prosecutors.

    Dr Saraki may have won this round, and in the eyes of the law is thus viewed as innocent; but even if this victory lasts and clothes him with the aura of invincibility, it will, however, not transform him into the leader he imagines for himself, his hold on the senate notwithstanding. But unlike the ageing and ailing President Buhari, Dr Saraki has youth on his side, youth to revitalise himself and correct his politics. However, going by his antecedents and the facile manner politics in Nigeria rewards its exponents, the chances of using that youth to acquire the essentials of great leadership through rigorous thinking and hard work are indeed slim. In fact, as Senator Melaye and the majority of senators sworn to silence in the legislature have proved, the incentive to project disciplined politics and rest it on great and noble ideas simply does not exist.

  • Osinbajo yet to be truly tested

    Osinbajo yet to be truly tested

    FOR the unspecified period Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will hold the fort for the ailing President Muhammadu Buhari, he will walk a tightrope in the most gingerly and exasperating fashion possible. The president left many knots entangled before travelling abroad for medical attention; there is very little Professor Osinbajo can do to disentangle them. The president didn’t assemble the most inspiring of cabinets, especially his fairly insular kitchen cabinet; the vice president can do nothing about that. No matter how much he pretends, it will gall the vice president to have to embrace the status quo with smiles for the duration of the president’s uncertain absence. He will see and feel how urgently he needs to take action concerning deep and fundamental problems assailing the country, but he will be constrained by the straitjacket bequeathed him by the president.

    When he first acted for the president last year, Prof Osinbajo dazzled the country with his placatory visits to areas of discontent. For a country on tenterhooks before the president travelled, it warmed the cockles of the people’s hearts that the acting president spoke peace and helped establish peace. But beyond superficialities, Prof Osinbajo was unable to do much else. Even the little he accomplished in tinkering with the system drew the ire of vested interests and caused tremors to pulsate through the ranks of the president’s diehard aides. It took some special efforts to douse the enthusiastic comparisons — some of them sarcastic, and others quite morbid — which commentators launched into before the president made an abrupt and premature return to the country. It is therefore not surprising that this time around, the vice president has been more muted and more philosophical about the country’s many ills.

    Should the president stay away for much longer than seems logically and constitutionally tolerable, Prof Osinbajo will face real and far more troubling tests that will compel him to deploy and project powers the president’s aides may be unwilling to yield. On the surface, there will of course be no attempt to circumscribe the acting president’s powers, whether in acting or in substantive capacity. But behind the presidential villa’s oak doors, President Buhari and his formal and informal kitchen cabinets have structured the reins of power in such a manner that any other person, no matter how constitutionally empowered, is an outsider.

    One of those fiery tests is already manifesting. The separatist ferment poisoning interethnic and interreligious relationships in the country was of course evident even before the president took gravely ill. His style of tackling it was to dismiss it contemptuously with both a wave of the hand and the platitudinous talk about the unity of Nigeria being non-negotiable. Prof Osinbajo himself, perhaps more out of caution and dread than conviction, has parroted that impractical and futile line. Whether his fond wish for Nigerian unity will prove strong enough to resolve a problem that is seething and festering beyond any remedy can assuage remains to be seen. And whether that wish and the various meetings he scheduled with stakeholders can translate into something more positive in the face of the bellicose utterances of separatist campaigners is also uncertain.

    Nigeria is perching dangerously on the edge of a cliff. The deep fissures in the country require the intervention and innovation of a president enjoying and deploying his full powers and exuding such knowledge and brilliance that it is impossible for anyone to gainsay. Not only was President Buhari almost wholly without such amenities, even as he preferred to live in denial, the acting president is obviously unable to project such powers, assuming he has them, not to say deploy them. What is certain is that one day, the separatist clamour, herdsmen rampage, and other dangerous fuses could trigger a wider revolt. With the president unable to anticipate these troubles and thus prepare against them, and the acting president barred by circumstances and strictures from dealing with them proactively, it will be difficult to put out the fire when it is finally lit.

    Presidential aides, the kitchen cabinet, and the vice president’s men may deny it all they want, it is however unlikely that Prof Osinbajo can do more than just breath salubrious air in the rarefied and forested precincts of the villa, placate angry groups as best as he can on an ad hoc basis, paper over the social, religious and political cracks gnawing at the heart of the country, tiptoe around the controversial issues of regional and ethnic power dynamics, and moralise in general but ineffective terms about the virtues of nation-building. He cannot appoint anyone of substance into any high position, and cannot on his own sack anyone of substance, as indicated by the unlawful violation of the PenCom Act which he permitted. The president’s kitchen cabinet, divided even in the best of times, will continue to hold the fort, even as the acting president gives the impression of being in office and in power. Indeed, there is nothing the acting president can do about the dichotomised power structure that is evident in Aso Villa. It is the structure he met; and it is a structure he cannot change.

    If Prof Osinbajo faces a test bigger and more severe than he has faced so far, he will have to resolve, one way or the other, the conundrums stymieing the progress of the country, especially the change the All Progressives Congress (APC) promised without a clue regarding how to implement or energise it. There is nothing to suggest that with the president staying away for much longer than a few more months, the genial and eloquent but apparently apolitical professor will not finally confront the dilemma of being in office but not in power, surrounded by general and kitchen cabinet misfits, and shackled by parochial forces who view the country and its security structures through ethnic and religious prisms. Would to God the auguries were less alarming than they really are.

  • How world leaders are learning to handle Donald Trump

    How world leaders are learning to handle Donald Trump

    THE world leaders who met with Donald Trump on his Grand Tour of the Middle East and Europe over the last nine days may not have read Judah Grunstein’s essay in World Politics Review earlier this month, “How To Play the U.S. PresidentAnd Win,” but if not, their instincts and intelligence services gave them a good steer.
    How else to explain Trump’s impression, apparently sincere, that the journey was a triumph? “Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs” he tweeted as he landed Friday in Sicily on the last stop of his journey, and, on Saturday as he took off: “Just left the #G7Summit. Had great meetings on everything, especially on trade where…. we push for the removal of all trade-distorting practices….to foster a truly level playing field.”
    In fact, earlier in Saudi Arabia and Israel, he opened the door to deepening and ever deadlier involvement in the Middle East, with the potential that either of those countriestails that have been trying like hell for many years to wag the American dogwill start a war with Iran that Trump will feel he has to try to finish.
    At the Vatican, in Brussels, and at the G7, while off-the-record comments chronicled a litany of contempt by his counterparts, and photographers captured images of a scowling pope, a downcast British Prime Minister Theresa May, a head-faking French President Emmanuel Macron, by and large the leaders seemed to be ignoring Trump’s schoolboy bully demeanor and execrable etiquette.
    They got what they could get on a variety of subjects, listened to his bluster, let him pontificate about terrorism, his favorite theme, and agreed to let him ponder for another week at least the U.S. commitment to the Paris accord on climate change, as if he’d just begun to find out what’s involved and what’s at stake. Which may be the case:
    Trump “came here to learn,” his economic advisor Gary Cohn told reporters at the G7 summit in Taormina, Sicily. “He came here to get smart. His views are evolving… exactly as they should be.”
    All the other leaders were presumed to be smart before they took office. Every one of Trump’s counterparts, even 39-year-old French presidential ingenue Macron, have years more experience in government than he does. All have better manners. And, all were playing by what we might call Grunstein’s Rules:
    Come bearing gifts: Trump wants people to believe, and probably wants to believe himself, that he will always get the better of any negotiation, and always in the cause of “America first!”
    So, as Grunstein says, “the most important thing a savvy world leader should bring to [a] first meeting or interaction with Trump is an initial token concession.” China’s leader, Xi Jinping, set the standard for this, promising deals already arranged under the Obama administration, or vowing currency concessions over chocolate cake at Mar-a-lago that already are being rescinded.
    The Saudis offered rather more substantial payouts: hundreds of billions of dollars supposed to be invested in American arms and American infrastructure, but such promises have proved evanescent in the past. And of course they come with a quid pro quo: the demonization of Iran and the Shia; the willful obliviousness to the role of Sunni fundamentalism aiding and abetting al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State.
    In many cases, says Grunstein, who is the editor in chief of the Paris-based World Politics Review, the largess directed at Trump need not be so grand, “Window dressing will do, preferably something that can be expressed in 140 characters.”
    Keep It Simple, Stupid: “The KISS acronym here serves a dual purpose,” writes Grunstein in a particularly biting paragraph. “Trump is notoriously detail-averse and unabashedly uninformed. So visiting leaders should not expect a deep understanding of the relevant issues, or even a superficial familiarity with them, nor should they seek to engage him on a granular level of policy.
    Instead, they should focus on building a personal rapport. Trump’s confident and narcissistic public persona hides deep insecurities and a brittle ego. Whereas Barack Obama famously avoided personal connections with most of his fellow world leaders, Trump seems to crave their acceptance, to the point of clinging to imagined friendships with them. Obama was all business, man; Trump is a businessman, but a needy one in search of affection.”
    This rule was followed as rigorously as possible by virtually all the leaders Trump met, including the pope. He even emerged from his meeting with Macron, who defeated Trump’s favorite in the French elections, seeming to think they had gotten along famously.
    It’s complicated: The new American president has said pretty frankly in a number of interviews that all this foreign policy stuff that looked so simple from the outside of the tent, is a whole lot more delicate and dangerous when you’re really in the thick of it. He’s also discovered, as Grunstein writes, that the United States actually needs the cooperation of a wide range of countries to achieve its objectives.
    “So once the gift-giving and rapport-building are out of the way, a smart leader will find an opportune moment to explain the reality of the situation, highlighting how much he or she wants to help out, but how difficult that actually is.”
    This seems to have been the process at work on the issue of NATO “dues,” which are not dues to the organization at all, but targets for domestic defense spending as a portion of gross domestic product. Even addressing the other leaders in Brussels, after what must have been many briefings about this, Trump seemed to think this issue could be described as if it were tardy membership fees at one of his golf clubs.
    The other leaders listened, vowed to make their 2 percent of GDP targets by 2024, as they had committed to do when Barack Obama was president, and hoped that Trump’s views would continue to “evolve” enough to save the most important strategic alliance the United States has.
    Climate change was the other “explainer,” with Pope Francis trying to get Trump to recognize the obvious validity of climate science and the need to act on its rational conclusions. (Americans may be surprised to know how much more faith in science the pope has than POTUS, but there you go.) And the message was reiterated at Taormina by the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom, whose final communique was a united show of support for the Paris accord.
    Trump told them as he told the pope, that he’d think about it. Evolving. Evolving …
    Work the refs: Grunstein suggests the American president’s outrageous ad libs and Twitter storms “are Trump’s way of working off steam, and it’s a mistake to respond to them directly or even to take them that seriously. Smart leaders will instead find the influencers in Trump’s entourage and the relevant arguments most likely to shape his opinion, and make their case with them. This means getting creative; anyone who is still calling the relevant desk at the State Department hasn’t been paying attention.”
    Son-in-law Jared Kushner would be an obvious go-to guy. (And that’s obviously what the Russians figured.) And it was not for nothing that German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited presidential daughter Ivanka Trump to a conference in Berlin a few weeks ago.
    Work the phones: “Refusing to buckle in the face of Trump’s threats is easier when it is presented to him as a common position. This is likely to become more effective with time, as Trump seems to be realizing that a zero-sum pursuit of his America First agenda is actually a recipe for an America Alone world.”
    Viz the climate change declaration by the G6 up again the American G1.
    “The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” Merkel said as Trump flew off. “There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”
    But the Big Six were not about to back down. As Macron told the French weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche, alluding to his now famous death-grip photo op with Trump in Brussels, “My handshake with him, it wasn’t innocent.” Tweaking Grunstein’s rule one, Macron said, “You have to show you’re not going to make little concessions, even symbolic ones, but not play them up too much in the media either.”
    As the JDD noted, those white knuckles and that look straight into the eyes of POTUS were conscious markers. “Donald Trump, the Turkish president, or the Russian president operate in the context of power relationships, and that doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in diplomacy based on public invective, but in bilateral dialogues I don’t let anything pass. That’s how you make yourself respected.”
    So the six held firm: “The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” read the final communique out of Taormina.
    “Understanding this process, the heads of state and of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and the presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement,” it added.
    The bottom line on the G6 side was basically, “We understand you Mr. President, but you need to understand us. You need a little time? Okay. But every move you make tells us we’re going to have to learn to get along without you.”
    This was also the gist of an extraordinarily vituperative editorial in Germany’s Der Spiegel late in the week, which argued that Trump is a danger to the world and has to go, but probably won’t.

    The only alternative: “The international community wakes up and finds a way to circumvent the White House and free itself of its dependence on the U.S.”
    Manage expectations: “Forestalling radical upheaval,” writes Grunstein, “is about the best any world leader can realistically hope for. Trump is temperamentally volatile and capricious, and would be hard-pressed to focus his attention long enough to reach major deals that require steady leadership and patient stewardship.
    Moreover, as a weak president who has had difficulty passing legislation despite enjoying a majority in both houses of Congress, he cannot be counted upon to deliver anything that requires congressional approval. That means that key areas of cooperation and major landmark deals are likely to stall during his presidency. Instead, avoiding worst-case scenarios should be considered a major victory.”
    “Following these simple steps will allow any world leader to emerge smiling from a meeting with Trump,” Grunstein wrote in a particularly prescient conclusion. “Unfortunately, it will be a smile of relief rather than satisfaction. Real progress will be hard to come by, and any victories will likely be Pyrrhicfor the United States and the world.”

  • Saraki, Dogara: Where are their press conferences?

    Saraki, Dogara: Where are their press conferences?

    UNLIKE President Donald Trump of the United States who has no presidential bone or cell in his body to fit his vaulting but misplaced political ambition, both Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara have grown hesitantly into their roles as top leaders of the National Assembly. Despite massive criticisms and sometimes bad press, they have held down their jobs quite compellingly. Both fought bravely and ferociously to win office, holding as they went along nearly all rules and regulations governing such contests with all the realpolitik contemptuousness they could muster. Dr Saraki won because he dispensed with standard administrative ethics, and he has ruled the senate with an implacable hold of its jugular. Hon Dogara, on the other hand, triumphed more ethically, supported by hardened and menacing backers, but without the subterranean machinations that defined the struggle in the upper chamber.

    However, about two years into the job, and despite growing into it as well as they can manage, and holding their offices resolutely, neither has seemed to demonstrate a deep understanding of the gravitas that ordinarily surrounds their positions. Neither has seemed to want to go beyond holding office and fending off rebellion. Given largely the disinterestedness of the presidency in the affairs of the legislature, especially the hobbling intrusion of the president’s health challenges, both principal officers seem set to last very long in office. Rather ironically, their staying power and the chance accretion of authority and gravitas to their image, if not reputation, have combined to widen their appeal in the legislature and weaken the legal and legislative opposition to their reigns.

    They are, however, not invincible. They should ennoble the offices they occupy, as much as those offices have in fact ennobled them as bright and perceptive politicians and principal officers. But until Dr Saraki is done with his huge legal encumbrances and the ethical challenge that vitiated the force and appeal of his election in the senate, it is hard to see him ennobling that office. He has played politics with a suavity that is uncommon in the chamber, and he has balanced interests as much as the situation will permit him. In addition, he has incentivised lawmakers and fiercely defended the power and independence of the senate. Yet, despite his seeming brilliance, despite his hold on members, and despite his calculating moves behind the scenes, there is absolutely no ethical or ideational depth to his politics. Indeed, given his business background, much of which paid no attention to his future political prospects, there can be no depth whatsoever.

    Hon Dogara may not be enmeshed in an ethical miasma like Dr Saraki — if the Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin challenge to his leadership is discounted — and he has also seemed to run the affairs of the lower chamber with much aplomb. But he too has not displayed the kind of ideological surefootedness the country needs in these desperately barren times. Some of his speeches have soared, and his past actions have not attracted so much revulsion, and he has taken positions on germane issues that prove in retrospect to be sensible. But he has sometimes seemed as if there is a disconnect between his person, which he has done well to camouflage and emits confusing signals, and his actions and positions. In short there is a meretriciousness to his actions and policies, as if he is desperate to please, unlike the more bullish and iconoclastic Dr Saraki.

    Except the country can find the judicial muscle to unhorse Dr Saraki, he will hold court in the senate for the next two years. The significantly hobbled Buhari presidency — perhaps more because of the divisions inside Aso Villa — does not mind working with and tolerating a Saraki senate. Dr Saraki himself has enjoyed that division, and on occasions, such as the stalemated confirmation process of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss, Ibrahim Magu, he has synergised quite robustly with the powerful secret service. Dr Saraki will continue to have the back of the president, as he showed during a consideration of that disingenuous second medical leave letter written by President Muhammadu Buhari; and both the president and the presidency, seeing him as a counterpoise to certain powerful political interests, will also have his back.

    Hon Dogara seems even more likely to survive till the next polls, regardless of his bitter conflict with his governor, Mohammed Abubakar, a lawyer like himself. Not only is he representing his Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa federal constituency for the third time, he is popular in Bauchi State and the House of Representatives. He has also proved a consensus builder, and somewhat an iconoclast, given the way he defied his party to contest for the Speaker’s office and his description of Gov Abubakar as being irrelevant to the needs of Bauchi people.

    In the early days of the anti-corruption war, when both the senate president and speaker were regarded as a part of the problem, it had appeared like the electorate favoured the sacking of the National Assembly (NASS). That wish proved to be grandiose, unrealistic and hasty, especially in view of the dictatorial tendency shown by the Buhari presidency. The NASS is more entrenched now than it was last year, and will undoubtedly become much more forceful and active in the years ahead. The country needs a strong but more importantly ethical legislature. Gradually, too, more qualified and ethical candidates will get elected into the legislature if voters show the perceptiveness needed to turn things around and put the right people in office. That transformation will not happen overnight, nor, as other parliaments elsewhere have shown, will corruption, conspiracy and injurious connivance be completely expunged from the business of lawmaking. As everyone knows, the parliament, irrespective of its deficiencies, is the greatest bulwark against absolutism and the erraticism of military adventurers.

    The poor health of President Buhari may have complicated the politics of re-election in 2019 and put the country on tenterhooks. But while nothing can be taken for granted, the NASS leadership may consider setting a great but different precedence. The Nigerian constitution borrowed heavily from the American presidential system. It is perhaps time Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara took that borrowing a notch higher by frequently addressing press conferences to expatiate on legislative issues and give the public insights and perspectives into critical executive actions and policies. The chairmen of the NASS media committees cannot do the job as well as the two principal officers. If the president, at a time, recognised the need to have a media chat, but abandoned it because of lack of depth and discipline and democratic convictions, it would not hurt the more modern Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara to consider conducting frequent 30min or one hour press conferences.

    Dr Saraki seldom addresses press conferences, except when he can’t avoid a controlled interview, perhaps because he doesn’t trust himself to answer, without gaffes, some of the radical questions newsmen may put to him. What, for instance, would he say if he was asked why he had not stepped down over his trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal? He would stammer. Hon Dogara seems more at home answering questions, and does not appear to possess the imperious and irritating habit of flying off the handle when naughty questions are thrown at him. But even he can sometimes fidget. Constant interactions with the press would show the mettle a principal legislative officer is made of, provide insights into the workings of government, humanise the principal officers, and help the country assess the legislature and even empathise with them. It is time they cut the aloofness.

    President Buhari is unlikely to have another media chat before 2019. Neither he nor his aides have the appetite to organise one. It was during his first, and of course last, chat that he came across as an unrepentant dictator. He had made up his mind on Col Sambo Dasuki (retd.), the former National Security Adviser’s incarceration regardless of what the law and the constitution say — in effect indicating the matter was personal. He had also made up his mind on Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the detained Shiite leader who is held unlawfully and unconstitutionally without trial, also indicating that he had contempt for the constitution and the tenets of democracy. Rather than allow too many disconcerting things to come out of the media chats, the president and his minders simply axed the programme. For all their atrocious faults, it is unlikely Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara possess that searing dislike for, or suspicion of, democracy. They should seize upon the option of interacting with the press to cultivate the people, show that despite their own weaknesses and failings, and their inability to adequately ennoble their offices, they still possess a modicum of vision needed to help entrench the principles and practice of democracy. Should they initiate this practice, no future principal officer will be able to abolish it. More importantly, the credit will go to them.