AFTER the Department of State Service (DSS) raided the residences of some top judges in Abuja, one of whom was a justice of the Supreme Court, it was clear that the judiciary was ripe for radical overhaul. The raid was unprecedented, injurious to the reputation of the judiciary, dampened the spirit of many judges, but triggered excitement and small talk among the public. The immediate past Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmud Mohammed, fought the ‘invasions’ bravely and boldly, but it was clear even to him that the old ways of doing things were no longer sustainable. And when rather than appoint a new CJN the Muhammadu Buhari presidency opted for an Acting CJN, the image damage became almost incalculable. Mercifully, after a difficult and needlessly protracted process that ended anticlimactically, the same Acting CJN has been confirmed as the new CJN.
Despite the ponderous and controversial methods chosen by President Buhari to sanitise, not reform, the judiciary, both the judiciary and the wary and distrustful public they serve agree that ultimately the overriding objective is to develop and nurture a judicial system Nigeria could be proud of. In fits and starts, that objective now appears in sight. In circulars emanating from the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen and the President, Court of Appeal of Nigeria, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, calls have been made for nominations of eligible candidates from the bar and bench for appointment as Justices of the Supreme Court and Court Appeal. It appears this is the first time such an exercise will be given media prominence. In the past, appointment of judges was shrouded in secrecy, with little or no contribution from the bar.
The judiciary, it bears repetition, is an important arm of government. It exclusively plays the prominent role of settling disputes among citizens and governments. It determines the rights of individuals and governments. It is also saddled with the constitutional responsibility of providing essential checks on both the executive and legislative arms. The art of dispensing justice is also undoubtedly a sacred power with grave responsibilities. Every decision of a judge has consequences. Every error, even an unintentional one, can have serious negative effects for the parties and the society at large. A judge lives with the weight of this responsibility from the beginning of his judicial career to the end.
But in recent times, the Nigerian judiciary has come under attack and criticisms. Concern has been expressed about the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency or otherwise of Nigeria’s judicial system. Indeed, the general perception of the public is that the judiciary is corrupt. And, gradually but steadily, the confidence of the public in the judicial system is being eroded. Many judges are perceived as incompetent and lacking in integrity. This perception puts the administration of justice in grave danger and calls for urgent rescue efforts. Indeed, one of the nagging problems militating against the establishment of a credible justice delivery system is the process of appointment of judges. It is believed that the judiciary operates an obsolete process that compromises excellence. Mediocrity is enthroned. Hard work, integrity and diligence are sacrificed on the altar of expediency, religion, tribalism and state of origin. A judiciary founded upon such parochial considerations cannot raise its head in the judiciary of the civilized world. It is, therefore, a serious challenge to the CJN and Justice Bulkachuwa to abandon the old paradigm in the ongoing exercise to ensure that henceforth, appointments to the higher bench in the country are based on objective factors.
They can achieve this by making the judicial appointment process more transparent and merit-based. The process must not only be transparent but manifestly seen to be so. Candidates nominated from either the bar or the bench should be afforded the opportunity of proving his or her mettle before a credible and respectable screening or interviewing panel of the Federal Judicial Commission. And, of course, the yardsticks of measurement of appointment should include excellence, special skill, competence, integrity, comportment and notable contributions to the advancement of law. Seniority or lack of it shouldn’t be an obstacle to the appointment of deserving candidates of demonstrable high standard of integrity and excellence. The CJN and Justice Bulkachuwa should take a cue from the suggestions made by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo last Thursday at a two-day National Dialogue on Corruption organised by the Office of the Vice President in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption. Said Professor Osinbajo, himself a law teacher: “…Aside from the DSS investigation, there should be particular test and proper investigation of candidates to be appointed as judges. In some of the systems that we inherited, the UK system, for instance, there is a process of almost 17 different tests before you can become a judge of the High Court…” He counselled that judges should not be appointed on ‘man-know-man basis’, and also recommended the Lagos example of taking care of the welfare of judges in addition to modernising their courtrooms.
The competence and integrity of a judge are basic elements that form the bedrock for the enthronement of justice. The competence of a judge is defined by what he knows and the courage he brings to bear in the discharge of his judicial duties. This notion is predicated on the assumption that a knowledgeable and courageous judge will decide cases impartially. The judge’s impartiality is not only an obligation imposed by the law but by the words of his oath. It arises out of an intellectual attitude and desire to be independent. Independence here involves a conscious liberation of a judge from all forms of pressures, external and internal.
The legal profession, consisting of the bar and bench, provides the exclusive pool from where judges are drawn. But regardless of where a judge is appointed from, from the bar or bench, more attention should be paid to professional competence and personal attributes. High professional qualifications and high moral qualifications should be viewed as functionally linked, because without doubt, such character or personality traits as diligence, conscientiousness, fairness, responsibility, critical thinking, tolerance and honesty have direct effects on the actions and decisions of a judge. Hopefully, the current exercise will produce the best justices the legal profession can offer. The Nigerian judiciary at this critical stage of its history needs justices who are honest, hard-working, conscientious, brave, patient, cultivated, intellectually curious and gifted with an intuitive sense of justice, men and women justices who carry the gravitas of judicial officers with all the boldness, dignity and nobility possible.
In the end, the raids on the residences of the justices in October 2016 may help nudge the country in the direction of nurturing a judiciary the country can boast of, one of the best in the world. Then, perhaps, attention will shift more appropriately in the direction of the executive, as exemplified by the Olusegun Obasanjo and Buhari presidencies, which had and still has a notorious penchant for disobeying court judgements under the guise of defying venal courts and judges or claiming the higher moral ground, of course without any substantiation.
Category: Idowu Akinlotan
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Osinbajo, Onnoghen and appointment of justices
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Akeredolu and leadership puzzle
AS far as speeches go, Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s inauguration address was long, tedious and uninspiring. Punctuated by so many references to God, complete with a few Bible quotations, it is remarkable that it bristles with a few combative opening paragraphs that subtly repudiate the exegetical profundities of the Christian faith that formed its leitmotif. The problem was not that the speech rightly acknowledged those who made his victory possible, beginning with President Muhammadu whom he rhapsodised in soaring language, to other party chieftains, especially Odigie Oyegun, the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman, whom he venerated; the problem was how the acknowledgement was done. Whether he knew it or not, or whether he intended it or not, the speech, particularly the acknowledgements, gave the impression he still had an axe to grind with those who opposed him within his party.
The surprise is that in some paragraphs down the line, he acknowledged that political opposition was an integral part of partisan politics, but counselled that after the elections it was time to close ranks and work for the development of the state. Governor Akeredolu’s speech strangely did not profit from his own counsel. It reminds those who have followed Ondo politics for a long time of a similar inauguration address by the equally Bible-quoting ex-governor Olusegun Mimiko who at the outset of his governorship set a worrisome tone that brutally sought to detach himself from his key supporters. Though Dr Mimiko was considerably more subtle, the import of his address was nevertheless not lost on the perceptive observer.
Inauguration speeches, as that of President Muhammadu Buhari also showed, say a lot, even when they are not written by the candidates themselves. Because they are well redacted by the candidates when they still possess the best of moods as freshly coronated politicians, they tend to mirror their idiosyncrasies, set the philosophical rubric of their governments, and signpost their paths to the future. Thus Dr Mimiko’s impersonal and distant speech indicated he would not be a team player, nor be beholden to anyone within or outside his state or party. President Buhari, who borrowed the sound bite of belonging to everybody and to nobody from the late Sunday Awoniyi, indicated in his speech he was determined to call his soul his own. He has since charted a path more notable for its combative isolation than for its ideational lustre and depth.
Not too dissimilarly, Mr Akeredolu is also indicating by his speech the futility of conciliating his political foes, a fact that probably inspired the social media to run riot with a story said to have emanated from his Gala Night remarks where the newly crowned governor allegedly berated top APC politicians who congratulated him in newspaper advertisements but worked against his election. Those who know the three gentlemen well say that their political proclivities are not surprising. Nigerian politics may be fertile for President Buhari’s style of combative and isolationist politics, and Ondo State politics may be imbued with the kind of ‘nationalist’, independent and insular sentiments that United States President Donald Trump has proved are never far from the surface, but the more enduring point is that the three Nigerian politicians are merely exhibiting the very nature of their own private politics than anything else.
In 2012, this column opposed Dr Mimiko for a second term and preferred Ajayi Boroffice, a senator, to Mr Akeredolu for the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) ticket, and endorsed Olusola Oke for last year’s Ondo governorship election. The column thought that those it endorsed were more likely to approximate the concept of consensual and cerebral politics which Ondo needed and still needs. That the endorsements have yielded nothing does not vitiate the force of this column’s observations. After all, though it also endorsed President Buhari, it warned that the only thing safe in the hands of the inflexible APC candidate, as he then was, was the country’s money, not its freedoms. Today, those freedoms are gravely endangered, as court judgements are flouted with reckless and gluttonous abandon.
More, the next four years in Ondo will prove the prescience of this column’s refusal to endorse Mr Akeredolu, as the last four years justified its refusal to endorse Dr Mimiko. Ondo may today be ‘nationalistic’ in its politics, but the state’s political culture was not always like today’s hue, as the golden age of Ondo politics under the late Adekunle Ajasin showed. Ondo should brace up for combat of the most insidious sort in the coming years. But perhaps Mr Akeredolu is a quick learner, and he will appreciate the futility of fishing for enemies, fighting them and lording it over them. Both his style and nature do not suggest he can see that futility, let alone modify his ways, or find the ideological clarity whose lack undermined the governorship of his predecessor. But he can at least mitigate what is set to be an agitated time under his governorship by enacting great and populist measures to rebuild the economy of Ondo rendered incoherent and prostrate by the self-absorbed Dr Mimiko. If Mr Akeredolu cannot heal the divisions in the state, a task he shows little appetite or even inclination for, he should at least feed the people to their gills. With full bellies, the people might by less finicky about the governor’s grating style and legendary short fuse. -
The president’s health
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s minders have gone to extraordinary lengths to hide his illness, or its severity, from the public. Nothing will dissuade them from their set goals. It was even difficult to get them to agree he was ill, though that fact was in many ways obvious to the country during the presidential campaigns. But when the matter could no longer be ignored, his minders began engaging in high obfuscation, suggesting in one instance that the order of precedence between vacationing and routine medical tests was settled in his favour, and in another instance that their interpretation of vacationing must be respected despite the president being holed up in one dreary location in London. Often, this kind of complication occurs when presidential aides drag red herring before an inquisitive public, the same electorate that banished their suspicions about the president’s health to vote for him enthusiastically.
President Buhari’s minders are, however, divided into two: his official spokesmen who regurgitate what they are told about the president’s condition; and a second, closer group which has the real story but redacts it for public consumption. The social media has spent the better part of three weeks trying to determine the dissonance between what the group closer to the president has and what the public is fed by the official spokespersons. The wary and puzzled public and their irreverent social media needn’t worry. There is nothing they can do or say, nor any speculation they can make or rumour they can disseminate, that will sway the president’s close handlers. Perhaps the handlers will eventually open up to the electorate and tell them things; perhaps they will give a fair briefing of what is ailing the president and whether he can still continue in the job. Perhaps.
Until they do so, however, the public will continue to amuse themselves with the droppings from the social media and the redacted and possibly contorted information from those a little removed from the president. At the moment, the president’s handlers are not disconcerted by the eerie replay of the cat and mouse game that manifested during the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s losing battle with extreme illness. But to douse rumours, they have orchestrated visits to the president, with each visitor either enjoying photo opportunities with the supposedly ailing president or regaling the sceptical public with superlative descriptions of the president’s rebound. He had remained witty and humorous, said one visitor. Another described him as fit as a fiddle, after just one brief visit. And yet another suggested the president would soon return, perhaps at the following weekend. But barely days after these superlatives, the president had to extend his stay, this time indefinitely, now more openly for medical reasons than for vacation purposes.
That extension made nonsense of the president’s spokesmen’s waffling over whether their principal travelled for medical vacation or some other reasons qualified by semantic underpinnings. It is also pointless to speculate about the president’s ailment or when he will return to his desk. His health circumstances cannot be hidden for long. And whether they like to hear it or not, the president’s handlers have not managed the matter with the maturity and dexterity the country expected of them, especially given the sad reminder of ex-president Yar’Adua’s ordeal. More, given what the president has gone through in the past few weeks, it will be overly optimistic to expect him to return ‘as fit as a fiddle’, or with renewed and boundless energy and optimism. His age gives little hope for the display of finesse and boisterousness, as he himself confessed during a visit to South Africa in June 2015, not to talk of full recovery. If he needs an extended time to rest, not for play or vacation as previously sold to the country, he will return a little lethargic, and probably with the unremitting ennui that often characterises the leadership of ageing statesmen.
Nigerians and the president’s handlers, not to talk of the president himself, misinterpret the circumstances of his problematic health. During the campaigns, he doubtless struggled with some pains, and the public saw it; but once in office, that struggle become epical, despite the best efforts of his aides to disguise that fact. But what really ails the president is not his failing health, which many people, including this columnist, can live with, but his failing ideas. The president receives the sympathies of the public and this writer’s, but it is hard to similarly sympathise with both his ideas, assuming they exist and are coherent, and his style, which is sometimes dangerously off-putting, excessive and impracticable. It must be reiterated once again that the problem is not the president’s health, despite the inconveniences they bring; the problem is that before and after he assumed office, President Buhari neither espoused great ideas capable of impacting the economy, politics and society, nor seemed to welcome one. His health challenges will not stop the public from criticising his government or his policies, especially when those ideas don’t exist or when they miscarry. Nor should he sulk or indulge in self-pity over whether anyone prays for him or not. He is president, with all its grandness and nobility, not a baby in nursery.
If his stay in England will not end in days, the president should be advised to speak with his countrymen through teleconferencing, and possibly take two or three questions from various parts of Nigeria. Selecting one praying crowd or the other to speak to does not do his image any good. Let him speak to all; surely this is not a difficult thing. His handlers must also surely remember that former United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt won the governorship of New York in 1929 despite nursing the crippling effects of poliomyelitis or Guillian-Barre syndrome since 1921. And despite his persistent debilitation, which was to dog him for the rest of his life, he also went on to win the presidency in 1932, indeed for a record four times until his death in 1945. What sustained him was clearly not his health burden but the force, genuineness and impact of his impressive and farsighted ideas.
President Buhari’s minders will also remember from their history lessons that despite having a mild stroke in 1949, Winston Churchill returned to office as prime minister again in 1951. In fact, his leadership was sometimes so incapacitated that King George VI considered asking him to relinquish office to his deputy, Anthony Eden, had the latter not also been plagued by illness. Then in 1953, Sir Winston had another sever stroke while still in office and should have handed over power to Mr Eden had the deputy not had a botched operation on his gall bladder. Yet the considerably hobbled Mr Eden eventually succeeded Sir Winston in 1955, but resigned in 1957 due more to the Suez Canal fiasco than his own unending health challenges. President Buhari’s men should not give the impression that the country is obsessed with the president’s health challenges or that Nigerians are divided into two groups of those sympathetic to him and those cruelly insensitive. Health challenges often cause distortions in the personalities of sufferers. Given some of his actions, particularly in the matter of the rule of law, it is not excessive to find out whether the president’s afflictions have nudged him to bilious temper against his foes or charmed him into unaccustomed geniality and tenderness.
On the great and exigent issues of the day, it is important to locate where President Buhari stands. These issues range from political restructuring, economic revival and growth, societal cohesion, the rule of law and justice delivery, and ethnic and religious freedoms. So far, he has dealt with the matter of corruption symptomatically, recorded a salutary but still desultory victory over Boko Haram, and has managed in the process to retain the admiration of a majority of Nigerians far beyond his accomplishments deserve. The implication is that he has not exhausted his goodwill. Well, then, let him not overreach himself; let him come clean on his health status, and let him recognise, if it is still possible for him, that he will neither be judged nor excused by how healthy or unhealthy he was. History has bigger and better criteria to assess his presidency. From all indications, it is hard to see that history extending its munificence to him as far into the future as grovelling aides imagine and say.
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Politics, emotions and Southern Kaduna crisis
IF the Kaduna State and federal governments are to properly manage the crisis in Southern Kaduna, they will need uncommon wisdom in understanding the politics and emotions of the bloodletting between herdsmen and farmers. The security agencies have not fully deployed; but already they are having their hands full. The governor, Nasir el-Rufai, told reporters in Lagos that the state spent about N200m monthly on security operations over the crisis. The state will bleed more, particularly financially, if he does not manage to rein in his emotions and bridle his tongue. In parts of the country where herdsmen frequently clash with farmers, the security agencies have not responded as firmly and evenhandedly as they should, as the Agatu, Benue State example shows. In Southern Kaduna, at last, they give indication they have learnt a thing or two. On the other hand, if the failure of his many panaceas in the unending crisis has destabilised him, Mallam el-Rufai has not quite shown why or how, nor allowed it to tether his constant and fiery umbrage.
The crisis in Southern Kaduna, as in other parts of Nigeria where herdsmen are at daggers drawn with farmers, can however be managed, if not entirely resolved, if state and national leaders will appreciate the politics underlining the problem, eschew the sentiments befuddling it, and have the courage and brilliance to apply the right and sensible measures the situation desperately needs. But they are unlikely to do that until the problem festers very badly, and until it threatens peace and stability, as indeed it is already doing. The government and security agencies’ first instinct is to deploy troops and policemen in hot spots. But in how many hot spots are they going to deploy troops? Will they not be overextended, and thus rendered ineffective? As the Niger Delta crisis illustrates vividly, Nigeria is always tempted to think that every crisis should naturally yield to the deployment of military or police firepower.
This nonsensical approach to conflict management has even spread to combating kidnapping, a crime many states have made a capital offence, despite the obvious and published refusal of nearly all governors to sign death warrants. Emotions get in the way of solutions. If this weakness is not a racial thing, then it is time Nigerian and African leaders began to think their way through the crises that confront them. The only answer the Kaduna and federal governments apparently have for the crisis in Southern Kaduna is to appeal to the sense of patriotism of the combatants, and failing that, to impose peace by force of arms. Through and with the state government, the feds are attempting to bring the combatants to the negotiating table for talks, hoping that the combatants would see reason and sign peace. How peace can be sustained in a rapidly changing society with burgeoning population and modern and complex economic and social relations remains to be seen outside of new and restructured economic and political paradigms.
Mallam el-Rufai has given indication of his ardent desire for peace in that troubled part of his state. Perhaps his wishes are genuine. But neither by his statements nor his demeanour, nor even by his appreciation of issues and loyalties, has he shown the right capacity needed to manage that increasingly worsening crisis. He has a cabinet in place, and perhaps a retinue of advisers; but does he not have a few brilliant and independently-minded men and women who can detach themselves from religious and ethnic shackles to meet minds with him over the crisis? Often, Mallam el-Rufai speaks like a sole administrator, someone afflicted by delusion of grandeur, a politician who can never dare to be wrong.
He spoke impetuously and acted unwisely on the Shiite crisis in Zaria, but still sticks to his guns. He fouled the ground over the Southern Kaduna conflict, first by celebrating his ethnic affiliation, and then by placating those who publicly and violently espoused self-help. He has needlessly sought with self-justification to regulate the minutiae of religion by swaddling their practices with a pastiche of unworkable and self-defeating regulations. And rather than seek consensual understanding with his opponents over difficult issues, he has often shown intolerance or even hardened his position. He is of course not the only politician or leader guilty of this atrocious political behaviour. The Buhari presidency flies that same chute, and there are a few governors who simply can’t find the sense of proportion to appreciate the ephemeralness of the tenured power they hold.
Mallam el-Rufai assumed office with boundless goodwill and great popular enthusiasm. He should seek to regain that lost hope. His resolve to start another round of controversy with the Catholic Archdiocese of Kafanchan over the controversial casualty figures of the Southern Kaduna killings is needless and diversionary. He has already promised to get the security agencies to interrogate Vicar General Ibrahim Yakubu who released a figure the government believes to be exaggerated. Said the governor: “…It was the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan that said 808 Christians were killed. It is false and the bishop would be interrogated, and if he fails to explain, he would pay for it.” Reminded by reporters that such an interrogation could be perceived as persecution, the governor said he didn’t care. In his words: “Let it happen, I am here, I am the governor, try it and see what I would do to him. A person that incites others to kill and not be accountable would not be under my watch. I am reporting that Bishop, I am waiting for him, if he doesn’t explain, I am personally going to write a letter to Pope so that he doesn’t make him Cardinal…”
If Mallam el-Rufai is a wise man, he should care. As governor, he has himself said many provocative things and sometimes behaved unseemly in a way that makes it difficult for him to convince a section of the state that he could be trusted to be neutral. Even the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) figures he seems to rely on are themselves tentative and sometimes unreliable, not to talk of the security agencies’ figures which he acknowledged to be at odds with one another. Mallam el-Rufai is a hard-working governor impatient to develop his state. He should be encouraged. But he is not a convinced democrat, and he has not demonstrated the wisdom, detachment and restraint a leader needs to govern a complex, multicultural and multi-religious society like Kaduna. For someone who is so eloquent but seldom right, he should talk less and spend more time acquiring the virtues and gifts needed to rule fairly and firmly.
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Rumpus in the PDP
WITH the affirmation of Ali Modu Sheriff, former governor of Borno State, as chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the future of the former ruling party that dominated politics between 1999 and 2015 becomes even more uncertain. For about 10 months, Senator Sheriff had been locked in a leadership struggle with former governor of Kaduna State, Ahmed Makarfi, a struggle that seemed as enervating as it was intractable. Despite earnest reconciliation efforts and court interventions, both politicians have since sustained their intransigence. Now, with his hands strengthened by the Appeal Court ruling of Friday, Senator Sheriff, who has always been less inclined to conciliation, less disposed to intellectualising the party’s problems, but is more instinctive, spontaneous and gregarious, will find greater incentive to become much more inflexible than before. The party is evidently in trouble.
Senator Sheriff, party apparatchiks have long suspected, is a long distance runner. He is not wearied by war nor by its longevity, nor yet by its aftermaths. Emboldened by the Appeal Court decision, he will hope he can wear the opposition within the party down in a war of attrition he is peculiarly suited and gifted to fight. And by combining his wealth and aggression with his uncanny gregariousness, he will expect that, with time, famished foot soldiers of the party would eventually discard their resentment against him and rally behind his banner and tilt the scale against his chafing and restless opponents. Whether he succeeds in his goals will, however, depend on just how resolute the mercurial Senator Makarfi can remain in the face of disheartening judicial reverses, and how well party bosses can keep their nerves steady as rumours of disaffection course through the party’s rank and file. But more importantly, the shape of the bitter war within the party and its outcome will depend overall on how party leaders can resist the temptation to bolt from the stable as the next elections loom.
To be sure, however, party leaders, including governors and national lawmakers, favour Senator Makarfi. They see him as a team player, a reasonable man who is guided by his intellect than his emotions or by any consideration of wealth, a face of the party they could turn to the rest of the country with pride and satisfaction, an uncomplicated, honest, principled, and dispassionate politician, with no baggage, and with no airs. He is not as beefy as Senator Sheriff, but party elite think him much firmer, more mercurial, and more reformist. If they are to stand any chance of turning Friday’s setback into some sort of victory, they will have to cobble together a coalition of fighters and strategists able to unhorse the now self-satisfied Senator Sheriff. But that, alas, will depend on how the Supreme Court rules in the weeks or months to come, and how quickly too. Otherwise, the country should steady itself for the greatest mass defection in Nigeria’s political history, for it is inconceivable that party leaders would swallow their pride and rally to the cause of a man who considers himself rich and independent, and whose motives and style they suspect and resent bitterly.
Weighed on the scale, Senator Makarfi enjoys the bigger support of the two combatants. But that support is tenuous, and will get even more tenuous as the months grind towards the inexorable 2019 polls, and as party leaders in favour of Senator Makarfi get desperate. Worse, party bigwigs face a far more dispiriting prospect of fainthearted party faithful withholding their support or even hawking it in droves to willing buyers because they are unsure which side their bread is buttered and because their mercenary instincts cannot be sated. Many PDP leaders have publicly announced where they stand, even as Senator Sheriff himself has determined those the party would not welcome and who, in his opinion, had become a pariah. In fact the pugnacity of the former Borno governor has prompted the suspicion that he is in the PDP as a spoiler rather than to actualise what many politicians believe to be his presidential ambition. Senator Sheriff is unlikely to be a spoiler. He is too ambitious and conceited to lend himself as a willing tool in the hands of a puppeteer.
It is hard to tell how the Supreme Court would vote in the matter, or how quickly. But what is clear now is that because Senator Sheriff is supported by a minority, he cannot begin any serious planning or reorganisation for the 2019 polls. And because Senator Makarfi is on the other hand supported by the majority but denied by the courts, his faction cannot also begin any serious plans for the future despite their sanguine claims. Whatever modicum of progress they make will have to be eked out of the stalemate forced on them by the courts and their own factional intransigence. That progress, assuming it is noticeable, will pale into insignificance in the face of a resurgent All Progressives Congress (APC) which has mastered both the art of exposing the PDP’s 16-year underbelly of corruption and promoting the modest qualities of their ageing and sometimes infirm president, Muhammadu Buhari.
Except the Supreme Court can decide the matter very quickly, the PDP’s prospect of regaining its rhythm and verve is indeed very bleak. They are more factionalised than the APC, rudderless, poorly motivated, unable to atone for the massive corruption they inspired in public officers for more than a decade, and too fixated on the wrong things and priorities. The APC may have set a precedence in winning national elections after a short period of formation and planning. But that incredible political chutzpah, which the APC demonstrated between 2013 and 2015, is virtually difficult, if not impossible, to replicate. For now there is no opposition to the APC on account of the PDP’s obsession with internal bickering, while defections to the ruling party are taking place in trickles, with the distinct possibility that they could become a flood. And just as Senator Sheriff seems prepared to stand his ground, his opponents also appeared set to fight to the death, as they have gleefully announced.
No clairvoyant is needed to tell Nigerians that Senator Sheriff will eventually be undone, if not by the internal opposition within the PDP, then by his own excesses. But whether the new PDP that has just emerged from Friday’s pyrrhic victory is able to make a great showing in 2019 or fizzle away will depend not on how it continues to fritter away its modest accomplishments and whatever is left of its talents, but on how prodigally the APC squanders the humongous advantage gifted it by the unprecedented conflation of human goodwill and celestial sleight of hand in 2015. -
Gov Ortom’s undemocratic deadline
REACTING to the killing on February 11 of a soldier on peacekeeping duties in the restive Agatu area of Benue State, Governor Samuel Ortom gave the community where the incident happened 72 hours to produce the killers. He did not say what would happen if his ultimatum went unheeded. Would he dethrone the traditional rulers of the affected communities, or would he embark on indiscriminate arrest of suspects, or what else? He left himself to be second-guessed by a distraught community which in February last year was on the receiving end of ruthless herdsmen attacks. The killing of the soldier is thought to be a consequence of unrepentant militiamen who armed themselves against herdsmen.
By issuing an ultimatum, Mr Ortom may be trying to achieve one of two things: either to frighten the affected community where the murder took place, Ole Gadakolo near Egba in Agatu, into divulging the names of the offenders, or to dissuade the army from embarking on a revenge mission as many communities in Nigeria had at one time or the other experienced. Odi in Bayelsa State (1999), Zaki Biam in Benue State (2001), and Baga in Borno State (2013) are a few examples of such futile and damaging military reprisal attacks. Only the governor, who is the state’s chief security officer, can explain why he passed the responsibility of solving crime to the people rather than the law enforcement agencies.
But in another breath, Mr Ortom, while apologising to the army, suggested that he would do everything lawful and work with security agencies and traditional rulers to fish out the culprits. It is this other breath that should have been sufficient for the governor. The murder, as he says, is condemnable and regrettable, and no one can justify it. It is also possible that the governor’s threat to the community can produce the desired outcome. But it still will not be right, for as Nigerians witnessed in Odi in 1999, the community also received threats and ultimatums from the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency but failed to produce the suspects until an invasion that led to a massacre was authorised.
Mr Ortom’s threat evoked a disturbing imagery of an impending attack to punish an entire community for the sins of perhaps one or a few people. The governor can of course not authorise an invasion, but by not limiting himself to promising to solve the crime through the deployment of relevant security and law enforcement agencies, he seems to be suggesting that the government and the army could countenance other extrajudicial measures. They should resist the temptation. The federal government controls all the security and law enforcement agencies, and their jurisdiction in solving crime is not spatially limited by the constitution. They should use all constitutional means to solve the Agatu murder rather than issue deadlines. Here, they can borrow a leaf from the prompt but painstaking manner the Second Division of the Nigerian Army in Ibadan solved the murder of Col Anthony Okeyim, commandant of the Command Secondary School, last December.
Despite the settlements brokered by the courts in the case of Odi and Zaki Biam massacres, there is nothing to suggest that the governments which authorised the reprisals would still not be called to account some day. Certainly the Zaria and Baga massacres of 2015 and 2013 respectively remain an open sore that must be resolved sometime in the future. Nigerian laws provide for ways in which those who commit crime must be apprehended and prosecuted. If these provisions are not adequate, as they indeed seem sometimes, the government is at liberty to tighten all loose ends and reform the laws. The freedom Mr Ortom, the federal government and the security agencies do not have is to use extrajudicial methods to solve crime. They must not descend to the abhorrent methods criminals venerate, nor make unedifying and anti-democratic statements that undermine civilised living. -
Southwest’s difficult DAWN
AT a well-attended meeting of Southwest governors hosted by the feisty and voluble Ekiti governor Ayo Fayose last Monday, the region’s governors reiterated their determination to join hands and ideas to develop the region in line with the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN). They sensibly de-emphasised political leanings and other differences in order to adumbrate ideational and infrastructural landmarks they expect to foster regional integration. The reluctant proselyte and outgoing governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko, who used to hem and haw over the DAWN project in his days of glory, was in attendance. Governors Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State and Rauf Aregbesola remain very constant as probably the proudest promoters of DAWN, and rarely miss any meeting. The most noticeable and inspiring presence, however, was that of Lagos governor, Akinwumi Ambode, who needed no persuasion to identify with the initiative immediately he assumed office in 2015.
If the mood of the last meeting and the communiqué effortlessly agreed to are any indication of future promises, there is some hope that the region could be revitalised and remoulded as a pacesetter. Reading the communiqué, Mr Fayose, listed a number of decisions reached by the governors. But whereas the governor’s meeting took meaningful and practical decisions, the unity meetings that took place in the region weeks ago were less successful mainly because of their presumptions. In addition, the decisions reached at the unity meetings were vague, needlessly ambitious, and seemed to have disregarded history. The Southwest may have a dominant political party calling the shots, but that dominance is diluted by other political persuasions in the region, as well as strands of political thinking even within the dominant party. There was never a time the region spoke with one partisan voice, and may really never need to. What is important is for the region’s governments to deliver more abundant life for its people.
Equally more important is how the region would regain the “loss of (its) values and virtues” and arrest “declining moral standards” contained in the communiqué when even Mr Fayose who read the communiqué is himself engaged in a losing battle to find his own cracked moral compass, and one or two other governors in the region can’t seem to determine where to draw the line between the intangibles of constitutional rule and the ephemeral of self-aggrandisement. It is, however, reassuring that the governors have de-emphasised their individual differences and party leanings to promote development. The DAWN document is a rigorous, well conceived document capable of making the region a showpiece should governors prove capable of putting their shoulders to the wheel. If only Lagos and Ondo had been part of the agenda right from the beginning. -
Justice Onnoghen’s belaboured nomination
THE federal government continues to give the impression that the four months delay in forwarding the name of Justice Walter Onnoghen to the Senate for confirmation as the next chief justice is a reflection of its thoroughness and assiduousness. But there was nothing in the presidency’s method last week to indicate its actions were motivated by care or by duty. A month before the former chief justice, Mahmud Mohammed, vacated office, the relevant statutory bodies involved in recommending the next chief justice, to wit, the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and the National Judicial Council (NJC), had carried out their constitutional responsibilities by forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name to the president. It was not until a day or two before the former chief justice was to vacate office that a face-saving measure was suggested to the presidency. Despite precedence — and the devil is in the detail — a chief justice in acting capacity came unexpectedly to the fore.
Carefulness and thoroughness? If those were the concerns of the presidency, surely one month was more than enough to do an internal vetting of Justice Onnoghen. It was clear, whether the presidency liked it or not, that other matters preoccupied the minds of those who had the responsibility of taking a decision on who the next chief justice should be. That initial one-month delay in forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name, not to talk of the subsequent three-month hiatus, enabled speculators and other amateur mind readers to indulge themselves to the fullest. First, the Department of State Service (DSS) had to battle to dispel the furious speculation that it raided the residence of Justice Onnoghen as part of a wider conspiracy to tar the judge with misdeeds and deny a southerner that exalted juridic office. The jurist’s house was not raided nor was he under probe of any kind, the DSS struggled to assert, mindful of the flanking battle it was also waging against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
But contrary to the presidency’s self-serving reading of its own body language, other speculators and rumourmongers believed that the presidency was actually concerned about the rumoured allegations of misdeeds against Justice Onnoghen, especially the fact that his name allegedly featured in the 1994 Justice Kayode Esho panel report that probed judicial malfeasances. This newspaper, in its February 6 edition, put it succinctly, quoting reliable government sources. It reported that that the presidency ordered the following investigations to be done on Justice Onnoghen: Justice Onnoghen’s antecedent as a lawyer; What the 1994 Justice Kayode Eso (JSC) panel said on Onnoghen; How NJC Review Committee of 1999 on the Eso Panel’s report, headed by Justice Bola Babalakin (JSC), addressed issues concerning Justice Onnoghen; Outcome of recent investigation of bribery allegations against some Supreme Court Justices by the DSS; Recommendations of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and the National Judicial Council (NJC) on Onnoghen.
To round up the report explaining why Justice Onnoghen’s nomination was delayed, The Nation quoted government sources as saying, “As a matter of fact, the nomination was delayed as a result of the need to address these allegations. Now, Justice Onnoghen has been given a clean bill of health…Every allegation was investigated and proofs indicate that Onnoghen has no case to answer. The government went to this extent to ensure that the holder of the office of CJN is above board.” Perhaps the delay in the presidency making up its mind was also due to the fact that it took many discomfiting years since 1994 before the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency in 2002 (some say 1999), mandated a review of the Justice Esho Panel report. By that time, said some sources, none of the 100 copies of the report was found, and Justice Esho’s personal copy, which the review panel relied on for its work, did not have the appendix that contained details of the allegations against the accused judges.
It is pointless opening up old wounds, whether the conclusions released to the public represent the true feelings of the government or not, or whether in forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name the presidency was not simply deciding to cut what was becoming increasingly a Gordian knot. What is important is that it took all of four months for the Buhari presidency to convince itself to forward the justice’s name to the Senate. This slow method of governance is of course not uncharacteristic of this presidency. It took the same government about six months to emplace a cabinet on the excuse that a cabinet was after all excess to requirement. Indeed, it had to take the NJC needlessly pushing the constitution to its limit to again recommend Justice Onnoghen as the chief justice in acting capacity to avert another constitutional embarrassment. There is no doubt that the government could have handled the matter much better and differently.
It is, however, impossible for the Buhari presidency to convince the public that the delay was both necessary and cautionary. Or that, eventually, Justice Onnoghen was their happy choice. Had the Supreme Court been composed in such a way that would not open the government to allegations of ethnic bias, it is not certain that Justice Onnoghen’s nomination, which put the presidency at sixes and sevens, would not have been discarded. Or failing that favourable Supreme Court composition, had the presidency not made many skewed federal appointments that elicited a terrible public outcry, it would probably have nominated someone else as chief justice. In a way, unable to get the leeway it wants, the government seems to have been hoisted with its own petard. And in order to continue to make its underperforming administration a little tolerable to an angry and frustrated public, the Buhari administration will for some time to come compel itself to make more galling concessions than its customary rigidity would normally allow.
Whatever arguments the government has offered to expiate the untidy manner it nominated Justice Onnoghen do not atone for the administrative disaster that was evident right from the beginning of the affair to the very inelegant and hurried end. But at least an end, no matter how badly midwifed it was, has finally come. Whether they can now put the matter behind them and henceforth operate more thoughtfully and circumspectly remains to be seen. The Buhari presidency does not yet run like the head of an executive arm presiding over a federal system of government, nor as one imbued with the patriotic and nationalistic instinct and gumption that conduce to a secular and multiethnic society. And its security organisations, including the heavily underfunded police, have often acted with the passion and culture of a dictatorship eternally at war with its own citizens. The Buhari presidency is the most recognisable public face of the ruling All Progressives Congress. At its current dismal steam and amperage, and at its present unthinking worst, it is inconceivable that anyone will give it any electoral hearing in a little over two years to come.
But two years is a long time in politics. Fortunately for the Buhari presidency, it has no ideological conviction to recant, no lofty administrative height to fall from, and no philosophical principles and great public precepts whose disavowal would make it fear self-immolation. It can, therefore, on paper, still change, since there are no complications to deter or fluster it. But that is if it does not keep up the adamantine delusion that change begins with others.
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Security agencies and brutalisation of civil populace
TWO recent incidents remind Nigerians of the difficult and intractable relationship that exists between security agencies and the civil populace. The first was the February 2 invasion of the Federal Government Girls’ College (FGGC), Calabar by operatives of the Cross River Command of the Department of State Service (DSS), during which some teachers were brutalised for allegedly caning a daughter of a DSS operative. Shots were fired during the invasion and the consequent brutalisation that took place right in the presence of gawking and squirming students and administrators. The DSS at first tried to explain away the invasion. Then it arrogantly mellowed. The second was the brutalisation in Onitsha of a physically challenged man, Chijioke Orakwu, who was accused of unlawfully wearing military camouflage dress. The two soldiers involved in the flogging of the hapless man on wheelchair are being disciplined. The Nigerian Army made no attempt to justify the soldiers’ irresponsible behaviour.
No matter how slow or reluctantly, the DSS will have to come to terms with the gross indiscipline of their operatives. They will ask themselves how easy it was for an operative to mobilise her colleagues in the execution of a private and nefarious objective. They will also ask whether the wasteful and carefree use of arms by the accused operatives accorded with the Service’s rules of engagement. And, finally, they will ask themselves whether the offenders really understand the objectives of the Service and its responsibility to the society. After many years of misadventure and false starts, the army seems better prepared to come to terms with their operational manual. In the Onitsha case, rather than waffle in the face of damning evidence, they quickly made peace with the victim and offered an unreserved apology.
But whether the army makes peace when it does not have a choice, or the DSS eventually comes to terms with the malfeasance of their operatives as protests mount, both attacks are symptomatic of deeper underlying fissures in the Nigerian society, fissures that have been recklessly expanded over the years by errant security agents, their conniving officers, and an indifferent and indecisive political leadership. The army may have made peace with Mr Orakwu, but they must ask themselves whether there is consistency, moderation and proper ethical bearing in their interactions with the civil populace, especially during a misunderstanding; or whether they are even faithful to their own rules of engagement. It took them years to redefine and refine their methods during the Boko Haram war, in fact only after domestic and international human rights watchdogs pilloried them for their brutality and ineffectiveness. And despite their exemplary response to the Onitsha public relations disaster, and their commendable preference for litigation in the Premium Times case, Nigerians still question whether their conversion is not skin deep, especially in view of the indefensible massacre they engineered against the Shiites in Zaria two Decembers ago.
While security agencies can set and enforce rules and standards for their men in uniform, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that Nigeria moves beyond reacting to repeated abuse by security agents is to consciously do something about the problem. The problem is fundamental, and is worsening. Palliatives, such as the army sensibly authorised in Onitsha last week, do not fully address a problem that has become deep-seated and embarrassing. Because security agents confer on themselves privileges neither the law nor the constitution allows them, it has become commonplace for impersonators to carry out atrocious crimes with impunity. If the leadership at federal and state levels subject themselves wholly to the rule of law, and if they show a very healthy respect for the constitution, the incentive for a security agent hiding behind his uniform somewhere to claim and misuse powers he does not have would be low.
Rather than waste resources on a futile effort to reorient Nigerians to embrace fruitless propagandist mantras developed by the government of the day, Nigerian leaders should instead engage in campaigns that promote and defend the rights of citizens and their dignity. This is a tough assignment; but it is inescapable if real and substantial progress is to be made. Former Burkinabe leader understood this sentiment perfectly when he focused on the behaviour of the men in uniform in Burkina Faso. Said he: “When you are bearing arms that can spit fire and death, and when you can receive orders standing to attention in front of a flag, without knowing who will benefit from this order or this arm, you become a potential criminal who’s just waiting to spread terror around you. How many soldiers are going around such and such a country, and bringing grief and desolation without understanding that they are fighting men and women who argue for the same ideals as their own. If they knew! Children of workers who see their parents going on strike against reactionary regimes accept to fight for the reactionary leaders since they joined the army. So a soldier without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal.”
Piecemeal and reactive approach to settling misunderstanding between security agents and the civil populace will not work. It is urgent that the government must embark on inculcating political and ideological training in Nigeria’s security agents. Without this training, without helping them to acquire the relevant political consciousness, security agents will continue to behave despotically and criminally, while the government embarks on useless fire brigade approach to settling the misunderstanding. “Revolutions are brought about by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought,” said former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah. The crying need of the moment is for Nigeria to produce leaders who can think through the country’s multifarious problems. Sadly, nothing indicates that such men with big minds have arrived.
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Uproar in Southeast over Igbo presidential ambition
WITH the mass defection of some political juggernauts in the Southeast to the All Progressives Congress (APC), a defection partly shepherded by the Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, the question on everyone’s lips is whether in the months ahead anyone in that unprincipled region would be left anywhere else. Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu,, now heading a shrinking army, has sworn to keep the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) banner flying in the region despite his Senate post being threatened and he himself assailed on all fronts by avaricious APC stalwarts and opportunistic Southeast politicians casting wary and envious glances in his direction. When Mr Okorocha gleefully announced two Saturdays ago that three governors would be defecting to the APC, thereby courting heated controversies, he was fixated on the big prize of the presidency. Whether that big prize can now be secured in the face of the uproar the defections and controversies have generated is hard to say.
But the ebullient Mr Okorocha, regardless of the abuse he has suffered in the hands of the pugnacious Anambra governor, Willie Obiano, is not an ordinary politician. His oratory, though it often lacks substance and backbone, is hugely striking. Given the chance and the pedestal, he can talk nineteen to the dozen. In fact the more important the occasion, the higher Mr Okorocha’s oratory soars. And as everyone knows, when oratory is in full flight, no one, least of all the ordinary voter, questions its relevance or lack of profundity. Oratory is but a stone’s throw from demagoguery; and demagoguery, historians have aptly noted, brought the mighty and enlightened Germany to heel in the 1930s, and can hold any people enthralled not only for moments but for longer duration than is god for their health.
No one of course says Mr Okorocha is a demagogue, for that would be belittling his fine accomplishments over the years, his unquenchable philanthropic zeal, his bold political permutations, and his general prescience. But he loves to hear himself speak. So, when he took the microphone during the Southeast political stakeholders’ meeting recently, he easily forgot, in his exuberance, the prudence of weighing his statements well before inflicting them on his animated audience. If it was true that three governors were in talks with him to defect to the APC, except he had mastered the Nixonian amenity of secretly taping his guests and subverting their privacies, there was no way his word would weigh higher than his guests’ in the court of public opinion. Yet, it was difficult to imagine the Imo governor telling a lie against the hypothetical three, nor that having misread the enthusiasm of his guests, he exaggerated the import of their discussions and intentions.
With the coming into the APC of virtually every Igbo politician of consequence, including the dour and ageing politician, Emmanuel Inwuanyanwu, and others like the publisher Orji Uzor Kalu, Jim Nwobodo, Ifeanyi Araraume, Emeka Offor, Tony Eze, George Moughalu, and Ken Nnamani to whom Mr Okorocha flippantly ceded leadership, it is not certain that any stouthearted politician remains outside the fold. After all, the enigmatic and level-headed Ogbonnaya Onu has been with the APC from the beginning, though not well appreciated or rewarded in a way that is commensurate with his effort to legitimise the party in the Southeast when it mattered. So, too, is the charismatic Chris Ngige, a sturdy politician and medical practitioner trapped in the unyielding and unexciting ministerial portfolio of Labour. And despite renouncing the APC with so much pageantry, nothing says that Senator Ekweremadu, nor any of the so-called hypothetical three, will not defect to the ruling party on a fortuitous tomorrow should the stock of President Muhammadu Buhari defy gravity and begin a relentless rise to the stratosphere.
To be sure, there are still enough men of clout in the other parties in the Southeast to give the APC a run for their money in 2019; but at the furious rate of defection at the moment, it is hard to see many resolute politicians remaining inured to the ruling party’s talisman. The Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) may rail all they can, but the casual and carefree inducement thrown to the Southeast by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo is probably the most enticing bait the region has happened upon in a long time. Coupled with the Okorocha razzmatazz aforesaid, the noisy and almost tumultuous defections to the APC engineered by incredible circumstances in recent months, and the general lack of enthusiasm for opposition politics in the region, an avalanche may soon occur.
But first the uproar. Chief Obasanjo’s bait to the Southeast cannot be dismissed out of hand. Once nature gifted him the leadership of Nigeria in 1976, he brusquely shoved nature aside and took over the fortunes that came his way since then, and it seems also, the fortunes that came the way of most of his successors. He is himself neither a principled politician nor even a brilliant leader. He is in fact the perfect example of an average leader, a classic underachiever whose only redeeming feature is his inordinate love for hard work unrestrained by his well-known health challenges. Yet, this same proud and unfeeling and visionless leader has managed by dint of good fortune and unfathomable circumstances to crown himself the most successful kingmaker of this era. He badmouthed Ibrahim Babangida out of power, enthroned Umaru Yar’Adua as well as subverted him in the same ceaseless and reckless breath, emplaced Goodluck Jonathan and also ruined him with emphasis and completeness, and contributed immensely to returning the ossified and permanently disenchanted President Buhari to office. If the same man could therefore mention, no matter how glibly, that the Southeast should take a shot at the presidency in 2019, the region is likely to pay more than a cursory attention to his sweet nothings.
There has been much talk of whether Chief Obasanjo meant 2019 or 2023 when he admonsihed the Igbo to take a shot. Hear him, as quoted by a newspaper, and draw your own conclusions: “But, irrespective of the thinking of the people ahead of 2019, I personally think that the Southeast should have a go at the Presidency, too.” There is no other way to interpret that statement. He meant 2019, but probably without much or any reflection. The group inspired by Mr Okorocha would prefer to take the shot in 2023, having servilely endorsed President Buhari for re-election in 2019, of course irrespective of whether the president possesses the stamina to continue or whether his policies ameliorate the stifling conditions of the people. Like the Southwest, the Southeast may never be clear who should speak for them: the governors and powerful political groups or the socio-cultural and partly political organisation, the Ohaneze Ndigbo. But it does seem overall that the regnant wisdom in the Southeast is for the region to support President Buhari in 2019 and to take a shot at the presidency in 2023, perhaps with a coronation in view.
In short, the Southeast is gambling on the APC retaining its relevance and dominance in the foreseeable future, when in fact there are no objective conditions to suggest the bumbling party can manage to do so. Worse, by their sheepish and slavish mentality towards President Buhari, as exampled by their endorsement of his re-election when he has himself not said a word about his future electoral ambition, the group purporting to speak for the Southeast is taking a much huger and probably humiliating gamble. Who tells them that even if the contentious and fratricidal APC manages to keep its chin up till 2023, and by some celestial intervention President Buhari also holds out against his political and health challenges, that both the party and its truculent president would endorse a Southeast candidate? Do his present appointments, as skewed as they obviously are, indicate that admirable, equitable bent? Or is it simply because Chief Obasanjo suggested it could be their turn?
The Southwest may be fractious and regicidal, as stereotype suggests, but given the behaviour of Southeast politicians and the bewildering choices they often make, not to say their loathing for opposition politics and the tough discipline and overbearing regimen it imposes, the Igbo obviously need far more tutoring and ear pinching to get their priorities right than the other regions in the South. Those in the Southeast who endorse President Buhari for re-election in 2019, and who shun the value of staying strong and building a powerful, principled and ideological national party, give no consideration to ethics or historical examples. The region has obviously not learnt from others that where the president comes from is not as important as his capacity to rule, nor as his judgement and his sense of fairness and justice.
The Igbo must change course and deepen their politics. Apart from producing and nurturing a great politician with a pan-Nigerian outlook, the Igbo candidate must possess the sophistication these times call for, the ideology that can be sold by the aspirant and bought by the electorate, the charisma that will endear him to his immediate people and the rest of the country, and an admirable sense of justice that will shame that of President Buhari. In addition, the candidate must understand the geopolitical dynamics of Nigeria and get his permutations right. Nothing will come automatically. And unlike 2015 when there was a desperation to force out the more enlightened Dr Jonathan in place of the inscrutable candidate Buhari, that mistake will not be repeated, not in 2019, and not in 2023. The next president will be a democrat, and he will earn every vote that comes his way. The nonsense about ethnicity will be de-emphasised. So, too, will religion. Nigerians have seen where both superficialities have got them. And let the Southeast ponder what dilemma would confront them should the PDP, by a stroke of good fortune, start to rise in influence, ethics and appeal in the months ahead, as implausible as that might sound at the moment. For after all, there is a limit to how far rhapsodising the ruling party or the president can get a people.