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Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Kogi Polls: how and where the Supreme Court erred

    Kogi Polls: how and where the Supreme Court erred

    The Supreme Court last month decided the Kogi governorship election petition in favour of Governor Yahaya Bello. The apex court may be final, says Bimbo Adewale, LL.M, but it is not infallible, quoting Chukwudifu Oputa, JSC. In the following analysis, the guest writer shows why and where the apex court got it so disastrously wrong.

    The case: Hon. James Abiodun Faleke v. INEC & Anor (SC. 648/2016, unreported), was one of the four cases in which the Supreme Court of Nigeria recently affirmed the election and return of Alhaji Yahaya Bello as the Governor of Kogi State of Nigeria. Factual Setting
    On 21st November 2015, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) organized the Kogi State governorship election. The election was a straight contest between Prince Abubakar Audu and Hon. James Abiodun Faleke, as governorship and deputy governorship candidates respectively for All Progressives Congress (APC) on the one hand and Captain Idris Wada and Architect Abayomi Awoniyi as governorship and deputy-governorship candidates respectively under the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on the other hand. At the end of the polls, the results of all the local government areas of the State were announced. Prince Abubakar Audu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) scored 240,867 votes while Idris Wada of the People’s Democratic Party scored 199,514 votes. Nevertheless, the election was declared inconclusive. Shortly after the announcement of the results on November 22nd 2016, tragedy struck, as Prince Abubakar Audu died.
    Significantly, the reason given by INEC for the inconclusiveness of the November 21 election was that there were 49,000 voters in the registers of some 91 polling units, which figure exceeded the 41,000 votes with which the late Prince Abubakar Audu and Hon. James Abiodun Faleke defeated Capt. Idris Wada and Arch. Yomi Awoniyi.
    The electoral body, thereafter, arranged for the conduct of a supplementary election that held on 5th December, 2015, at the end of which less than 13,000 votes were recorded. It is noteworthy that the name of Alhaji Yahaya Bello did not feature in the main election of November 21. It only came up in the supplementary election upon being substituted with the late Prince Abubakar Audu by APC. At the end of the day, Alhaji Yahaya Bello scored only 6,000 votes. INEC, nevertheless, announced him the winner and returned him elected as governor of Kogi State.
    Being convinced that the election of November 21, 2015 had already been concluded on the basis that the Constitution, particularly Section 179(2) thereof, already deemed Prince Abubakar Audu and himself as duly elected, Hon James Abiodun Faleke, hereinafter referred to as the appellant, filed a petition at the Kogi State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal. Essentially, he challenged the declaration of INEC that the election of 21st November, 2015 was inconclusive. The Tribunal affirmed the declaration of INEC. The appellant felt dissatisfied and appealed to the Court of Appeal which court also affirmed the decision of the trial Tribunal. The case ultimately found its way to the Supreme Court.
    The apex court, on 20th September, 2016 heard and dismissed the appeal ex tempore and rendered its reasons for dismissal on 30th September 2016. Given the time within which the briefs of learned counsel for the parties were concluded and filed, it was apparent that, as at 20th September, 2016 when the case was dismissed, the Honourable Justices would not have had sufficient time to properly read, digest and reflect on the voluminous briefs of learned counsel. This brings into focus, the propriety or otherwise of a court delivering its verdict on a particular day and adjourning its reasons to a later day. The danger in this practice is, once a verdict is delivered, the court must, willy nilly, scout for reasons to justify it, however unjustifiable it may be. This practice introduces rigidity, haphazardness and sloppiness into judgment writing which often lead to injustice. It also removes elements of discretion and flexibility, which are the hallmarks of justice. Reading through the judgment, it is glaring that the court had to stress and strain itself to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion.
    There is no doubt that the decision of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in affirming Alhaji Yahaya Bello as Governor of Kogi State shocked the legal community in Nigeria and indeed the democratic world. In the midst of the shock and controversies that trailed the decision, there is, undeniably, one point of consensus. It is that the robust public image the Supreme Court enjoyed in the past has diminished, if not vanished. The Supreme Court, in the past was able to earn the respect and confidence of the people as a result of its ability to produce largely acceptable decisions. The court then was perceived as free from direct or indirect political influence, pressure and lobbying. The men that constituted the court then were, indeed, honourable, brilliant, reflective, honest and industrious. They were imbued with deep learning, courage and uprightness. Their decisions were convincing even to the unlearned, and unassailable to the learned; philosophical and predictable, as they were in consonance with good sense and established principles. Above all, their Lordships, in the past, built a concrete and an impregnable wall of integrity around themselves. And, they walked around with dignity and respect.
    The Supreme Court today, regrettably, has lost some of these sterling qualities and attributes. Only last week, the Department of State Services (DSS) exposed a little of the stench that has overwhelmed the Supreme Court of Nigeria in an operation that has left the public image of the court thoroughly battered. The outcome of the operation is disgusting as it is contemptible. The two Justices of the court, whose houses were raided by the men of DSS, Justices Nwali Sylvester Ngwuata and John Inyang Okoro, where huge sums of money in local and foreign currencies were allegedly found, were part of the panel that heard the Kogi polls appeals. As a matter of fact, Justice Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta presided over the panel. The despondency of the Nigerian populace and their new perception about the Supreme Court has been ably captured by Professor Itse Sagay as a place where cash dictates justice. This is sad.
    The Supreme Court & Its Pre-Eminence.
    The Supreme Court of Nigeria is the ultimate court in the land. Its decision is virtually final and can be altered only through legislative intervention or another judgment of the court. The power of finality of the court over cases derives from section 235 of the constitution which provides in part that “… no appeal shall lie to any other body or person from the determination of the Supreme Court” I must hasten to add here, however, that because the decision of the Supreme Court is final does not mean that it is correct. Oputa, JSC., (of blessed memory) puts it more succinctly in Adegoke Motors Ltd v. Adesanya & Anor (1989) where he said:
    “We are not final because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final. Justices of this court are human beings capable of erring. It will be short-sighted arrogance not to accept this obvious truth”
    Observation
    To say the least, the Supreme Court judgment in Faleke’s case is most boring and platitudinous. There are more than enough horrendous pronouncements to fill a book. The first point a scholarly mind will observe in the judgment is the colorlessness of its language. There is nothing inspiring in the language of the court to suggest that it is a judgment of a final court. The reasoning of the court is equally flaccid. The judgment either adopted the submissions of learned counsel for the respondents or the findings of the lower court. Consequently, what we find is a judgment that is inundated with the cliché “I agree with learned counsel for the respondents” or “I agree with the lower court”. In deciding the four issues it formulated, the words “I agree” appear not less than 15 times! Apparently, the court forgot that it was the Supreme Court and the final court for that matter, where authoritative pronouncements, exposition of law and pontifications are required to advance Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence. Unfortunately, the court subjugated this sacred duty to the reasoning of learned counsel for the respondents and that of the lower court. It is apposite at this point to examine some of the decisions of the apex court and demonstrate how the court jeopardized the cause of democracy and altered some fundamental and well-entrenched principles of our law on the altar of expediency.
    When is a governorship candidate deemed to have been duly elected? (Sections 172 (2) and 181 (1) of the 199 Constitution
    This was the most fundamental question that was put before the Supreme Court for determination. A decision of the Supreme Court on this point would surely have enriched Nigeria’s jurisprudence for its reconditeness. The determination of it necessarily revolves around the interpretation of sections 179(2) and 181(1) of the 1990 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). The two sections state:
    279 (2). A candidate for an election to the office of Governor of a State shall be deemed to have been duty elected. Where, there being two candidates –
    (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and
    (b) he has not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of at least two thirds of all the local government areas in the State.
    S. 181(1):
    If the person duly elected as Governor dies before taking and subscribing the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office, or is unable for any reason whatsoever to be sworn in, the person elected with him as deputy governor shall be sworn in as governor and he shall nominate a new deputy governor who shall be appointed by the governor with the approval of a simple majority of the House of Assembly of the State”.
    The facts before the courts (from the trial tribunal to the Supreme Court) were that the joint ticket of Audu/Faleke scored the highest number of votes of 240,867 votes and had a minimum of one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in all the local government areas in the State. It was, therefore, the contention of Faleke that the joint/ticket of Audu/Faleke satisfied the constitutional provisions. The trial Tribunal avoided the question like a plague. This was attributed to a misapprehension on its part. The Court of Appeal appreciated the point and virtually determined the question but lacked the courage to make the necessary pronouncement. In a way to demonstrate that the Appeal Court appreciated the case presented before it, the court had adumbrated,:
    “The question which logically rises from section 179(2) is whether as at 21/11/2015, the joint ticket of Prince Audu and the appellant met the requirements of the provision.
    The court then provided the legal basis for the determination of the question when it boldly held:
    “The law is trite that where any candidate to the office of a Governor meets with these requirements , he should be declared winner and returned as the duly elected Governor This much has been held in a plethora of cases such as Ngige v. Obi (2006) 14 NNLR (Pt 999) I. Agagu v. Mimiko (2009) INWLR (Pt 1140; INEC v. Oshimole (2009) 4NWLR (Pt 1132) 611; Fayemi v. Oni (2010) 9 NWLR (Pt 1223) 326; & Aregbesola v. Oyinlola (2011) 9 (Pt. 1253) 458”.
    Rather than proceed to apply the law enunciated to the facts of the case, the Court of Appeal summersaulted and went on another course entirely, looking for the definition of “return,” thereby demonstrating timidity and timorousness.
    The approach adopted by the Supreme Court in treating the most fundamental question in Hon. Faleke’s case is baffling. First and foremost it strangely held that the view expressed by the Court of Appeal, quoted above, was not a finding but review of the contentions arising from the interpretation of section (2) 179(2) and 181(1). Nothing can be further from the truth. The pronouncement of the Court Appeal in the passage was authoritative. The said court even proceeded to buttress its position with five judicial authorities. Clearly, the Supreme Court erred in pronouncing the passage a review.
    Secondly the Supreme Court abandoned the fundamental question put before it and formulated a completely different question. Rather than interpret “deemed to have been duly elected”, the apex court only interpreted “duly elected”. At page 30 of the judgment it stated:
    “The fundamental question is what do the words “duly elected” mean in the context of section 179(2) and 181 of the constitution?”
    Nobody asked the court to interpret the words “duly elected”. The apex court cleverly left out the words ‘deemed to have been duly elected’ contained in section 179 (2), which were in contention, thereby abandoning the complaint of the appellant and the course charted by him. This, of course, dealt a devastating blow to the case of the appellant as it led the Supreme Court to reach the wrong conclusion that there must be a declaration or return before a candidate can be said to have been duly elected.

    The error of the Supreme Court knocks out the foundational basis of the appellant’s case and rendered the case awkward. If this was deliberate, it is unjust, wrongful and unrighteous. If it was done out of ignorance, then it is calamitous and lamentable for this country. The consideration and determination of ‘when a candidate is deemed to have been duly elected’ formed the main thrust and crux of the entire complaint of the appellant. The failure of the Supreme Court to pronounce on the crucial point smacks of gross injustice as it has led to a miscarriage of justice. More disturbing and regrettable is the treatment of the authoritative pronouncement of the Court of Appeal on section on 179 (2) upon which no cross-appeal was lodged by the respondents. The Court of Appeal clearly stated the correct position of the law as regards the interpretation of section 179 (2). By that construction, the late Alhaji Abubakar Audu, having scored the majority of votes and secured the requisite percentage of votes in all the local government areas, by the operation of section 179 (2) ought to have been declared duly elected and returned before his demise. Consequently, upon his demise, the appellant would also have taken the benefit of section 181 (1).
    The meaning ascribed to the words: ‘duly elected’ by the Supreme Court is shocking. It is found on pages 31 and 32 of the judgment. The position of the Supreme Court is that once a returning officer makes a declaration, the requirements stipulated in section 179 (2) are fulfilled. The apex court held:
    “… the Returning Officer makes a declaration on behalf of the Electoral body of the final outcome of the election it conducted, which is in effect a confirmation that the legal requirements for that particular election have been met” (Pp 31-32).
    Is that so? This is serious!!! How did the court come to this conclusion? It was this line of reasoning that led the apex court to finally hold that the election of 21/11/2015 was inconclusive.
    There is clear evidence that the Supreme Court, for reasons best known to it, was scared in interpreting or giving effect to section 179 (2) of the Constitution. In the times of old, whenever the apex court found any difficulty in interpreting a section of the constitution, it had a practice of inviting eminent scholars and legal luminaries, as amicus curiae, (friends of the court) to shed light on the meaning of such a section. Of course, that was when the apex court was interested in dispensing justice. Surely, barring old age, that has come upon them, prominently scholars and legal practitioners such as Professor Ben Nwabueze, SAN; Chief Richard Akinjinde, SAN and Chief AfeBabalola, SAN, would readily have made their services available as friends of the court to advance the cause of justice.
    Where comes the words “Return” or “Declaration” in sections 179 (2) and 181(2) of the constitution?
    Still on the interpretation of sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) of the Constitution, it is alarming to see how the Supreme Court transposed the position of learned counsel for the respondents to that of the court. Learned counsel for the respondents had submitted that before a candidate is deemed to have been duly elected under section 179 (2) a declaration and return by INEC must have been made. The apex court, without any further exposition or enunciation of the law adopted, hook, line and sinker, the submissions of learned senior counsel for the respondents. The court held:
    “I agree with learned senior counsel for the two respondents that there must be a declaration or a return made by INEC before a candidate could be deemed to have been duly elected under section 179 (2) and 181 of the constitution.(pp. 31-32).
    This position, taken by the Supreme Court, led it to proceed to hold, albeit wrongly, that the election of 21/12/2016 was ‘inchoate.’ (p.38). The court concluded:
    “It follows therefore, that as the appellant and Prince Audu were not returned as duly elected, there was no basis for the application of Section 181 (1) of the Constitution, which allows a Deputy Governor elected with a duly elected Governor to step into the Governor’s shoes in the event of death or any other factor leading to his inability to subscribe to the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office.
    With due respect, the conclusion of the Supreme Court on this point can be faulted in two ways. First, the reading of the words “declaration” and “return” into sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) clearly subverts the age-long principle of construction of constitutional provisions and statutes, that neither the court nor learned counsel is entitled to read into a provision what it does not contain. In Action Congress & Anor v. INEC (200) the same Supreme Court held that the basic duty of a judge “is to interpret the clear and unambiguous words according to their ordinary, natural and grammatical meanings and must not add or remove any words therefrom; no onerous weight or burden must be foisted on an otherwise clear and unambiguous provision.” . It is, therefore, a grave error on the part of the Supreme Court to have read and added words into the provisions of Sections 179 (2) and 181 (1) that are not contained therein. Second, from the clear and unambiguous provisions of sections 179 (2) and 181 (2), what the Constitution emphasizes are the votes of the electorate: i.e., majority of the votes cast and one-quarter of the votes scored in two-thirds of the local government areas, not declaration or return made by INEC. In any event, declaration or return made by an electoral body has never been held by the court to be sacrosanct as same had been successfully challenged in the past and continued to be challenged till date. Governors can be removed and elections can be nullified.
    INEC GUIDELINES V. 1999 CONSTITUTION.
    The contention of the appellant on this point was that the case of the appellant fell squarely within the purview of section 179 of the Constitution which ought to have been applied. It was further argued that unfortunately, instead of giving effect to the said provision, INEC resorted to Election Guidelines instead of the Constitution in declaring the election of 21/11/2015 inconclusive. Appellant’s counsel buttressed this argument with Supreme Court authorities, particularly INEC vs Musa (2003) where the Supreme Court held:
    “…where the constitution sets the condition for doing a thing, no legislation of the National Assembly or of a State House of Assembly can alter those conditions in any way directly or indirectly, unless, of course the constitution itself as an attribute of its supremacy expressly so allowed… Howsoever it is described, when the Constitution has covered the field as to the law governing any conduct, the provision of the constitution is the authoritative statement of the law on the subject…”
    In resolving this issue, Supreme Court simply approved INEC Manual for use where it is found relevant. The court held:
    “I agree with the finding of the lower court at page 1608 of the record that the above provisions give statutory backing to the manual as a subsidiary and that where it is found to be relevant, its provisions must be invoked, applied and enforced”. (P. 34).
    The court cited CPC v. INEC (2011) but made no reference to INEC v. Musa (2003) let alone distinguishing it from the case before it.
    The Choice between Faleke and Bello
    In the course of the judgment, the Supreme Court asked a pertinent question:
    “The bone of contention therefore is, who, as between the appellant and the 2nd respondent was entitled to step into those shoes?”
    The “shoes” here refers to Prince Audu’s shoes. The first reason why the apex court preferred the 2nd respondent to the appellant is predicated on the right of a political party to nominate a candidate of its own choice to contest an election to conclusion. The court held:
    “I agree with the concurrent findings of the lower courts that by virtue of section 221 of the Constitution and section 137 (1) of the Electoral Act, the APC being the party which would be declared the winner in the event of their success at the polls as per Amaechi v. INEC (supra), the said APC had a legal interest in the votes cast on 21/11/2015 and was entitled to substitute a candidate of its own choice to contest the election to conclusion”. (P. 40-41).
    The right of a political party to choose a candidate to contest election is not in doubt. There is a plethora of authorities that have settled this exclusive right of parties in this regard. See PDP & Anor v. Sylva (2012) Onuoha v. Okafor (1983) Dalhatu v. Turaki (2003). The point must be made here, however, that there is a caveat. Political parties in exercising their rights must operate within the parameter of the law. The question that arises here is, is it just anybody that a political party can present?
    One of the points established against the 2nd respondent on record is that he is not a registered voter in Kogi State. In other words, he does not belong to the electoral community of Kogi State. In Yusuf v. Obasanjo (2005) it was held that for a person to be nominated to contest election such a candidate must be a registered elector within the constituency. The Supreme Court did not look into this point. It is indeed a travesty of democracy that a person who does not belong to the electoral community of a constituency would be made to win an election in the same constituency.
    The second reason why the Supreme Court preferred the 2nd respondent relates to the fact that the 2nd respondent contested the primary election and took a second position. The apex court held:
    “The evidence before us was that the 2nd respondent participated in the primary election conducted by the APC and came second behind Audu”
    In respect of the appellant, the Supreme Court stated that “his status remained that of a Deputy Governorship candidate to a deceased Governorship candidate, particularly as he did not participate in the party primaries, which is a pre-condition for anyone seeking elective office”. There is no doubt that these reasons, with due respect, are most untenable as they fly in the face of the law and well-entrenched principles of our law which the Supreme Court failed to consider.
    It is true that the 2nd respondent (Alhaji Yahaya Bell) contested the APC primaries but he lost to Prince Audu. A primary election is not valid for all purposes and at all times. It is circumscribed in scope in purpose. The same Supreme Court was categorical on this point when it held in CPC v. Ombugadu that “the sole purpose of a party’s primary is the emergence of a one of the contestants as the party’s candidate at the election”. It follows therefore, that once the primary election of a political party has produced a candidate, its purpose is served. There is no law which permits a political party, under any guise or circumstance (death of a candidate inclusive), to revert back to the result of a primary election that had produced a candidate. And, the Supreme Court never referred to the existence of any such law or authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in validating the nomination of the 2nd respondent on the score that he took second position as the primary election of his political party is contrary to the earlier pronouncement of the court in CPC v. Ombugadu (supra).
    As regards the fact of the appellant not participating in the party primaries, he ought not to have been made to suffer any detriment for that reason as the constitution does not require a Deputy Governorship candidate to participate in primaries. Prince Abuabkar Audu, it was, who, in compliance with the provisions of Section 187(1) of the Constitution, nominated the appellant as his running mate. The names of the duo were presented to their political party (APC) that subsequently presented same to INEC for the governorship election of 21/11/2015. It is, therefore, not clear how the Supreme Court came about the principle of independent candidacy that it tried to clothe the appellant with. One question arises from the foregoing: Does it mean whenever a party candidate dies his running mate becomes an independent candidate? If the decision of the Supreme Court is taken to its logical conclusion, it may be difficult for a Deputy-Governor or a Vice-President who did not participate in the primary election of his party to succeed the Governor or the President.
    NON-JOINDER OF APC.
    One of the reasons why the action of the appellant failed, according to the Supreme Court, was his failure to join APC. The appellant had argued that he sought no relief against his party and therefore did not consider his party a necessary party. The Supreme Court agreed but added that there “are certain matters in which the interest of party is involved…”. The Supreme Court by this decision has introduced another dimension into Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence as it said:
    “The fact that a political party is not named as a statutory respondent in Section 137(2) of the Electoral Act cannot be a bar to joining a political party as a respondent where its interest is involved and where it would be bound by the result of the action”. (P. 56).
    I hasten to interject here, with due respect, that there is no election petition that is filed in which the interest of a political party that sponsored the candidate whose return is being challenged will not be involved. There is also no election petition that is prosecuted that a political would not be bound by the result of the action. These are not novel facts or facts peculiar to the appellant’s case. The law has remained the same, that a political party is not a necessary party in an election petition.
    In Buhari v. Yusuf (2003), the Supreme Court held thus:
    “Section 131(2) of the Act requires that the person elected or returned be joined as a party. Section 133 which I earlier reproduced provides in subsection (1) for persons who may present a petition. It is either one or both of (a) a candidate at an election; (b) a political party which participated at the election. No other person may do so. In the same vein, those who shall be joined to defend the petition in accordance with subsection (2) are the person whose election (or return) is complained of, referred to as the respondent and any of the INEC officials mentioned in the subsection or any other person who took part in the conduct of the election, and in either case the petition complains of their conduct of the election. All such persons are regarded as the statutory respondents, and who only, in my view, qualify as the necessary parties. (Underlining mine for emphasis). This remained the position of the law until the decision in this case.
    Conclusion
    There is so much to lament about in the judgment under discussion but time and space will not permit. It is sufficient to conclude that the primary duty of any court at any level is to do justice, without fear or favour. Judgments given by a court in a case must often be in the overall interest of the society. It is pertinent to bear in mind that a judicial system thrives when by its judgment it instils confidence in the larger society. Such judgments must be fair, impartial and corruption-free. It may be a strong point to make, but it is a truism that a judiciary that is unjust, corrupt and unreflective of the people’s aspirations becomes irrelevant to the people and is doomed to collapse with time.
    It is also important to bear in mind that the world we live in today has become global palm. We live in a world of Internet and advanced modern technology in which the judgments given in a national court are in question of minutes being disseminated all over the world. A fair and sound judgment which is free from corruptive influence edifies a country and its global standing. On the other hand, a weak and unsound judgment reflects the state of the judicial process in a country.
    For all the majority of Kogites and all democrats of this world care, Alhaji Yahaya Bello may have won all the cases, but he did not win the election.

  • Beyond speeches and plagiarism

    Beyond speeches and plagiarism

    WHILE giving his keynote address at the launch of the “Change Begins With Me” reorientation campaign in mid-September, President Muhammadu Buhari lifted a passage from U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory speech without acknowledging the source. Readers immediately noticed the ethical contradictions inherent in a speech that seemed to talk down so sanctimoniously on Nigerians, excoriating them for dishonest behaviour, but which itself embraced dishonest intellectual practice. The presidency immediately accepted responsibility and announced that the speechwriter who borrowed the offending paragraph would be sanctioned. In the past few months, the U.S. election campaigns had been convulsed by accusations of plagiarism prompting many commentators to wonder how the offending speechwriters hoped to get away with the act in the age of Internet. It was, therefore, not expected that any speechwriter would fall victim again so quickly.
    Plagiarism is not a new thing; it will continue with humanity till the end of history. While it must be condemned and exposed, the public should be interested in something much more fundamental about speeches, especially speeches by political leaders, something that gives readers a window into the hearts and minds of those who own the speeches. This column is for instance more concerned about what the Buhari speech says about the president — his perspective, his temperament, his ideology, his character — than what he borrowed here and there without acknowledgement. It is important for him to acknowledge his borrowings, whether of ideas or phrases; but it is much more important for him to come across to his national and international audiences as possessing a genuine, progressive and coherent worldview. The Buhari “Change Begins With Me” speech, like all his speeches so far, comes across as scripted by others superimposing their worldview on the president’s limited and inchoate worldview. Now and then there are droppings of the president’s fond mantras, but substantially, there is nothing transcendental, nothing deep, and nothing expansive.
    President Buhari is not alone in this department of projecting unconvincing ideas and paradigms about society, economy and politics. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan never made any impassioned and resonating speech in his more than five years in office. Perhaps the late Umaru Yar’Adua would have managed a few or so given his auspicious beginnings when he made a speech that honestly admitted the weaknesses of Nigeria’s electoral process which had just gifted him the presidency. His urbanity, not to talk of his intellectualism and open-mindedness, would probably have afforded him the chance of deeply affecting his people and society. Mercifully, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo never attempted to make a grand speech, for he was not capable of it, seeing how unconvincing he is about everything, and how distorted and narrow his worldview has remained.
    This column is concerned about the speeches of world leaders, past and present, including those of Nigerian leaders. The British and Americans tend to pay attention to their speeches, and see them as opportunities to propound new ideas and ways of doing things, and of influencing and affecting the lives of their peoples. Nigerian leaders view speeches as opportunities to bore the public with homilies and statistics of their economic policies, and to blame the people for the country’s woes and read them the riot act. Nigerian leaders are unable to summon the passion and deep conviction, not to say the long and hard thinking, necessary to really affect the lives of the people for the better and make them believe in themselves and their country. It is not surprising that their speeches are nearly entirely the products of the exertions of speechwriters. Unfortunately, by nature, speechwriters cannot place themselves in the shoes of the leaders.
    What great leaders need are clerical assistants and researchers, for no speechwriter can sufficiently possess the moral or political or even ideational universe of the leader, or imbue them with the peculiar vigour and passion of his vision. No speechwriter could have helped the iconic US president Abraham Lincoln pen his famous 1863 Gettysburg address, one that was at first universally vilified, but which became one of the best ever with that memorable line that seems to define and encapsulate very simply what democracy is all about. Who else but a genuinely convincing Winston Churchill could have penned in 1940 during the Battle of France that equally famous and defiant peroration about fighting on the beaches, landing grounds, in the hills, in the fields and in the streets, and never contemplating surrender? And who but a Churchill could have given that inspiring and sublime line in August 1940 about the huge sacrifice of Britain’s airmen who were far outnumbered by German airmen during The Battle of Britain in World War II? “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, Churchill had said.
    No Nigerian head of state has made or written a memorable speech, though the occasion had often presented itself. Ex-head of state Murtala Mohammed’s “Africa Has Come of Age” speech was written by a bureaucrat. Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba and a few others managed to offer posterity a few inspiring elocutionary mementoes. What Nigeria has got from its leaders, nearly all of whom were neither convinced nor practicing democrats, were drab and soulless speeches propounding autocratic and short-termist ideas which future generations will not take the trouble of remembering. Until true democrats are voted into the presidency, that is, cerebral leaders with fresh and daunting ideas about remaking society, there will be no memorable speeches, only speeches regurgitated by disinterested politicians and redacted by detached and unfeeling speechwriters. It is indeed the tragedy of Nigeria that since the return to democracy in 1999, no leader worth the name has been produced.

  • Edo governorship poll: a post mortem

    Edo governorship poll: a post mortem

    SHORTLY after Godwin Obaseki of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner of the September 28 Edo State governorship election, Governor Adams Oshiomhole enthusiastically concluded that the outcome of the poll was a crushing blow to those he described as godfathers. He named them. Though he was partly right, his conclusion was nonetheless an incomplete picture of the forces that shaped the poll. Mr Obaseki had defeated Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by more than 66,000 votes, a clearly unbridgeable and even undisputable gap. But in 2012, Mr Oshiomhole had won re-election by more than 330,000 votes, a landslide that shamed the opposition in an election that boasted of more than 10,000 voters (including cancelled votes) than the 2016 turnout.
    The resurgence of the PDP in this election should give Mr Oshiomhole cause for anxiety and Mr Obaseki reasons to proceed more guardedly in his utterances and relationships when he assumes office next month. The outgoing governor is not only popular, he is also a workaholic, and has been judged to be more faithful with the state’s resources than many other governors. Indeed, Mr Obaseki’s victory may in many ways be connected with Mr Oshiomhole’s giant and iconoclastic developmental strides in the state. But, alas, probably for this same reason, the narrowness of APC’s victory may also be connected with the governor’s grating idiosyncrasies, especially his boastful denunciation of opposition patriarchs in the state, and his uncanny ability to raise apprehension among the state’s leading elites.
    Had these reservations not manifested and united Mr Oshiomhole’s enemies against him and his party, it is probable the more urbane Mr Obaseki, the governor’s chosen successor, would have run away with a much clearer and neater victory, nay a landslide. This is because Mr Ize-Iyamu is not as popular as he imagines or campaigns, regardless of his pastoral affiliations. Yes, he is somewhat populist, somewhat given to histrionics, and has a reputation for strong-arm tactics, which he partly and gleefully applied to the relief and benefit of Mr Oshiomhole himself during the 2012 campaigns and elections, but he is quite unable to soar on account of the wearisome influence of his discredited backers. Indeed, at a time during the campaigns, it seemed the PDP was poised for an upset until Mr Ize-Iyamu and the Igbinedions made their famous birthday gaffes. For Edo which perched agonisingly on tenterhooks in deciding whether to cut its own nose to spite its face by punishing the voluble Mr Oshiomhole or to vote sensibly for developmental continuity, sanity and predictability, it required only a slight push to vote either way.
    For the next four years, Mr Obaseki, who is believed to be the governor’s main brain trust, will govern Edo. He will get the cooperation of most of the state, and inherit a solid foundation to build upon. He is more polished than both the governor and Mr Ize-Iyamu, and is expected to accurately read the hidden and open implications of the September 28 electoral outcome. He has won a major and exhilarating and deserving victory, and is inheriting a stable and fairly well-governed state. But the narrowness of his victory despite Mr Oshiomhole’s strides and the salutary effects of an APC presidency imply he is also inheriting a visibly and warily divided state. He should resist the temptation to gloat like Mr Oshiomhole. He needs to work imaginatively hard, in tandem with his reputation, and also attempt to unite Edo behind his government. He can do it if he recognises the outgoing governor’s weaknesses and limitations.
    The PDP has organised rallies to protest what they describe as a stolen election, and Mr Ize-Iyamu himself has postured aggressively against the election’s outcome and promised to go to court. It is not clear what evidence they have. But given the mood of the state and the near equanimity with which a majority accepted the results of the poll, any judicial exercise may end up a wasteful and needless adventure. Mr Ize-Iyamu’s backers may be incensed by the excruciating defeat they suffered in that crucially defining poll because they rightly take it as a plebiscite on their persons and popularity, given that some of them are in their twilight years, but the candidate himself should think futuristically and strive to rise above the fray and be the responsible person and statesman his campaign tried to project him in the past few months. That is if he is capable of that beatification; if the campaigns were not just a smokescreen to burnish a futile image that had been at bottom irredeemably scarred by the excesses of youth.

  • Thinking aloud

    • In his Independence Day anniversary speech, President Muhammadu Buhari, among other things, suggested it was futile for anyone or group to take on the might of the state. “A new insurgency has reared up its head in the shape of blowing up gas and oil pipelines by groups of Niger Delta Militants,” said the president. “This Administration will not allow these mindless groups to hold the country to ransom…No group can unlawfully challenge the authority of the Federal Government and succeed.” Apart from failing to understand the logic driving militancy and the solutions to the crisis, it is clear the president sees the state in the ancient colours of a leviathan that cannot be challenged. And beyond presidential prevarications and John Paden’s speculations about the continuing incarceration of former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), it is now all but obvious why the president elevates his logic and motivation expediently above the law and the constitution.
    • Not too long after hackers rifled through the information database of the Democratic Party in the United States in an obviously subterranean effort to sow seeds of distrust and conflict among the party’s presidential contenders and to give the farcical Donald Trump some advantage, other hackers, notably Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, have promised to unleash more damaging information expected to weaken Hillary Clinton’s soaring campaign. This is the age of cyber warfare. In fact, it appears a phony Third World War is already raging, with malevolent nations hacking the databases of target nations, and influencing outcomes, undermining development and stability, and crippling social and economic progress. The shape of war is drastically changing away from territorial combats and armoured tanks and artillery pieces to something more infinitely faceless and intriguing.

  • Future more uncertain than the troubled past

    Future more uncertain than the troubled past

    WERE Nigeria to be a man, he would have fewer years ahead of him than behind him. At 56, Nigeria has lived a very animated and turbulent life. Even by the world’s average life expectancy (68.5 years), not to talk of Nigeria’s embarrassingly smaller average (47.7 years), this big African country of about 180 million people should be frustrated and growing desperate with its advancing years. It is the largest concentration of black people in the world, but it has refused to appreciate the urgency of the plight of black people everywhere, and seems uninterested in giving them leadership in a world that is increasingly crueller to the race. It has great potentials in all fields of human endeavour, including the arts, music, sports, science and philosophy, but it has neither exploited them beyond occasional eruptions of creativity nor shown any indication it has the scientific competence to recognise and tackle its challenges in ways that transcend its naturally emotive, violent and short-sighted approach to conflict resolution.

    At 56, Nigeria is advanced in age and should by now have come into its own in the world. But it still reasons and acts like a child. Traumatised by its leaders, Nigeria blames every other person but itself for its woes. Thus, its British colonial overlords were and still are responsible for its misshapen economic and political structures. However, its leaders have not explained why for more than five decades they have taken no step whatsoever in breaking down and remoulding the fundamental underpinnings of their country’s existence, and delinking themselves from the (neo-colonial and neo-imperialist) apron strings of their pre-independence rulers. The colonialists expropriated their wealth and sucked them unfairly and unequally into the vortex of the world economic system, but Nigerian leaders have said, and thought, nothing of inheriting the abhorrent mantle of becoming the new exploitative and oppressive class to their own people.

    It took the colonialists about four key constitutional conferences to realise that for a modicum of stability to be established in Nigeria, a federal structure was indispensable in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Despite their tyrannously racial and condescending leadership style, the colonialists managed to bequeath a federalist structure to Nigeria, particularly along regionalist lines. They suspected nothing else would work. But after about six military coups, four (elected) republics, and a myriad of completed and uncompleted constitutional conferences, Nigeria’s governing elite have burrowed deeper into unitarianism, parochialism and hegemonism. They arrogantly and ignorantly insist nothing else would work even when the departing colonialists, in bequeathing a political system, thoughtfully acknowledged their bequests probably fell short of addressing the colony’s special and multifarious needs.

    In an orgy of buck-passing, Nigerians continue to blame their present woes on a vague and abstract past. They snort at white colonialists who built railway lines to link the country in a triangular arrangement that locked their big, colonial snout into raw materials centres. But apart from proving inept at maintaining that railway system, with consequent destruction of the poor network of roads, successive leaders and generations have had more than five decades to extend or build better railway systems to catalyse their own developmental efforts and new economies. Instead, huge resources have been voted and wasted, and Nigeria’s railway lines have remained either creaky and abandoned or operating fitfully. The colonial civil service was a foundation upon which independence leaders could remould a more committed and sophisticated independent civil service. Instead, Nigerian leaders, especially starting from the predatory military governments that ruled the country between the 1960s and 1990s, simply destroyed that anchor of statecraft thereby introducing lasting distortions into the concept of public service.

    The problems of today are much more a function of the ineptitude, poor vision and unpreparedness of Nigerian leaders than a function of colonial tyranny and structural distortions. Yes, the colonialists arrested nation-state formations and built a questionable and highly disputed and conflictual foundation for Nigeria, and have reprovingly stood as guarantors of that suspect edifice and inspirers of those who wear the leadership mantle from time to time; but Nigerian leaders have themselves underscored the race theory of development, especially the eurocentric perspective, by being unable five decades later to extricate themselves and their country from the stranglehold of external puppeteers. For now, there are no indications that the narrative will change, or that Nigerians can begin to look forward to a future that represents a clear break from the past.

    But if Nigeria is to survive, if the past five decades and more of independence are to serve as a lesson and springboard from which to rebuild, then the county must learn the great and delicate art of producing bright and visionary leaders. The country’s many unprepared leaders have tended to pass the buck to the people, insisting that the blame for failure should be shared equitably between the ruled and the rulers. But the situation, not to say the blame, is in fact not as ambiguous as they make it look. Immediately after independence, the ruling elite took the parliamentary system of government and dashed it into pieces, blaming it for their own failures and shortcomings. Successive military regimes, enamoured of the American presidential system, also opted, in their own transition arrangements, to discard parliamentarianism completely. Yet, barely four years of the presidential system, the ruling elite again boxed themselves into a cul-de-sac, frustrated with every political system and flirting dangerously with diarchy.

    First and Second Republics, and an aborted Third Republic, soon brought the country reeling, panting and unsure of itself to a Fourth Republic. The latest republic is a product not of careful planning and political evolution, but of desperation, haste and ad hocism. By 1998, it was impossible for the country’s military rulers to go forward without a change in the ruling paradigm, having tried unskilfully to abort the process midstream in 1993. And so, a managed change was midwifed by a desperate military elite that had emasculated itself. But rather than set a free and fair template for the new republic, and quite unable to learn from the depressing experiences of the past, the military midwives again exercised a close control of the process by foisting on the country recycled leaders devoid of deep convictions or even appreciation of democracy and its processes.

    In the midst of this unremitting gloom, the country managed in 2015 to achieve a successful transition of power from one party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to another, the All Progressives Congress (APC), a feat already surpassed by some African countries. It was unprecedented in Nigeria; it was pleasantly unique. How sustainable that change will be, however, may not be known in the short term. Indeed, what remains is how to ensure the emergence of the right calibre and temper of leaders. In a country riven by primordial ethnic sentiments and fierce religious loyalties, the yardsticks for producing such leaders are not always altruistic or meritorious. Overcoming such limiting behaviours is absolutely essential for national stability and progress. After frittering away more than five precious decades during which other countries caught up with Nigeria and overtook her, that task will not be easy.

    Nigeria needs a new ethos and a new political culture. To satisfy these needs and to break the mould, new leaders with fiery intellect, deep intuitive grasp of the complex issues shaping the 21st century, and instinctive feel of the yearnings and aspirations of the people whose disparate needs are sometimes too abstract and formless to put in words, must emerge. The new leaders, detribalised and large-hearted, are the ones to act on the demands of the moment. They are the ones to drive the great processes needed to tackle the present challenges as well as brilliantly anticipate the future challenges still embedded in the womb of time. Given the intensity of the problems and challenges facing the country, not to say their complexity and ossification over time, such leaders must emerge urgently if the country is not to sink under the weight of its own contradictions and fracture irredeemably along its deep fault lines.

  • Kogi election: Where are the dissenting judgements?

    Kogi election: Where are the dissenting judgements?

    IT is inconceivable that given the extreme controversiality of the Kogi election petition there was no dissenting judgement. Yet, in the past five years, it is doubtful whether a more difficult and controversial case existed, one that desperately yearned for a great jurist to leave an extraordinary judicial imprint on the practice of law in Nigeria. But in the past nine months or so, and in respect of the James Abiodun Faleke petition in particular, and at the three levels of the election petition tribunal, Appeal Court, and Supreme Court, the eminent justices were unanimous in their decisions. That unanimity is truly intriguing, for among legal professionals everywhere, the case was touted as a difficult and puzzling one. The conclusion many commentators will draw from the judges’ unanimity is that either the lawyers who scrutinised or argued the case were overrated or the judges who decided the case had become complacently uninterested in the many juridical and intellectual possibilities the case presented to the diligent and studious.

    The judiciary has come under harsh criticism in Nigeria, with sundry allegations of either incompetence or corruption. Judicial officers have sadly done little to dispel these allegations, and contradictory judgements and seemingly flagrant abuse of rules and procedures have worsened the matter. Even the presidency, probably for narrow reasons, has been unsparing of what it describes as the inimical role the judiciary is playing in the struggle to entrench transparency, democracy and the rule of law. Indeed, what these criticisms and allegations indicate is that something is seriously amiss in the judiciary. Whether the problem is corruption, as many critics allege, or poor quality of legal education and cowardice, as friends of the judiciary fear, remains to be seen.

    That the Hon Faleke petition can pass through three judicial layers, despite the novelty of its legal circumstances, without a single dissent from any judge in the fashion of Britain’s Lord Denning or Nigeria’s Kayode Esho is truly astounding. Have the appellate courts become a bastion of camaraderie, or a haven of cowards, or a citadel of unlearned and timid judges? Yes, Nigeria is embroiled in self-made crisis as it battles mediocrity in all sectors of national life, but the country’s appellate courts used to have a reputation for courageous and learned judgements exemplified by the golden age of the Supreme Court when Justices Esho, Chukwudifu Oputa, Anthony Aniagolu, Chukwunweike Idigbe, Mohammed Bello, Adolphus Karibi-Whyte etc. passed through the land with their giant footprints.

    This column may have taken a stand almost from the beginning against the All Progressives Congress’ decision to impose/substitute Yahaya Bello in the governorship poll extended by electoral sleight of hand from November 21 to December 5, 2015, and had thought the case would present little or no complications to the judges in ensuring that justice was served. But regardless of this column’s preferences, it was expected that even if the Faleke petition would fail, surely two or three judges at the appellate levels would satisfy the country’s hunger for erudite and considered dissenting judgements enough to constitute at a later stage the bases of new laws in the fashion of Lord Denning and Justice Esho.

    Who can forget the landmark Esho dissent in the famous case of Awolowo V Shagari [1979], wherein he took very strong exceptions to the majority decision? He was barely one year in the Supreme Court at the time. But in 2016, three Election Petition Tribunal judges, five Appeal Court judges and seven Supreme Court justices sat on the Faleke petition and none dissented nor felt inspired to engage in the intellectual leisure of dissenting. What has happened to the judiciary? It is shocking that none of the justices felt the need to summon the courage to break ranks with his colleagues in the service or defence of justice. If Lord Denning could accept a ‘step down’ from the House of Lords to return to the Court Appeal in order to seize the opportunity to make judgements that would transform the law and society, what has happened to the mettle of Nigerian judges that they do not feel inspired by a sense of history?

    The opportunity to give a dissenting judgement in the novel case indicated by the Faleke petition is now lost. The onus to offer a redress will perhaps now pass to the legislature. The country may be overtaken by unremitting mediocrity, but it is hoped that somehow, a new breed of courageous and brainy judges with an eye on the future can rise to the appellate courts and begin the arduous task of restoring the glory of the Bench. That new breed is desperately needed in a country where the executive and legislative branches have dedicated themselves to undermining the cause of justice and destroying the rule of law, and the judiciary itself is too enfeebled by its many distractions to promote justice or defend the rule of law.

  • Kogi’s judicial and election debacles

    Kogi’s judicial and election debacles

    ON the surface, Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State has won a major judicial battle to entrench his reign after James Abiodun Faleke and other petitioners exhausted their appeals before the courts of the land. The victory was not without some questionable pronouncements. For instance, the election petition tribunal, in determining the disputes, either ignored the salient issues of the petition or in the end gave a perverse decision. Among other issues, Hon Faleke had in particular petitioned the tribunal to settle whether the November 21, 2015 governorship election was conclusive or not, and whether Mr Bello was right to have contested the supplementary election without a running mate. The tribunal ignored the issue of the conclusiveness of the poll, and made no definite pronouncement on Mr Bello’s presence on the ballot without a running mate.

    The Appeal Court appeared to understand some of the issues in dispute, but it either spoke on facts not in evidence before it or even deliberately built inexistent facts into the dispute in order to come to a strange conclusion. For instance, though Mr Bello’s defence did not claim he voted in the poll, and the petitioner proved he did not, the Appeal Court, without any evidence, found that he did. Worse, though INEC documents and the petitioner proved Hon Faleke was not Mr Bello’s running mate, the court bewilderingly claimed that Mr Bello adopted him. In addition, responding to other issues in the petition, the court also claimed that the manual of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) supersedes the relevant provisions of the constitution.

    The country therefore waited to see whether the Supreme Court would talk law or gymnastics, politics or jurisprudence, or whether the eminent justices would find the magical dexterity to build something on nothing. The apex court has not given reasons for affirming the position of Mr Bello and dismissing Hon Faleke’s petition, but in their unanimous judgement last week, they built a castle whose location, whether in the air, as many Kogites moan, or firmly anchored on the ground, as the governor’s supporters enthuse, no one can tell. By the end of the month, when the justices thunder as they promise, a legal analysis on the three judgements will be done and published on this column. This column has the abundant patience to wait.

    So, on the surface, Mr Bello has won the legal battle for the Kogi governorship seat after the highest court in the land gave its decision in an abominable practice of deferring the reasons for the verdict till a later date. The implication is that when the judgement is being written later, when calmness takes over the mind, and when better, intuitive perspectives well up in the intellect, the apex court can no longer change its mind. They will have to justify their decision by hook or crook. Yet, there are only some 10 days between September 20 when they announced their verdict and September 30 when they promised the reasons would be adduced.

    Mr Bello knows, however, that despite winning the court battles, he neither won the election nor the hearts of the traumatised people of Kogi, a people he is chastising with his tongue and with scorpions. Newspapers perversely reported jubilation after the apex court sustained the governor in office, as if the word had lost its meaning and exuberance. A few of the governor’s supporters in court in Abuja when the decision was announced, and some at the Government House in Lokoja, the state capital, grinned like Cheshire cats and raised their hands in victory, but there was nothing any sensible person could describe as jubilation. Instead, from the blighted plains of Okunland, to the disgruntled Savannah of Igalaland, and the harsh hills of Ebiraland, a pall of frustration and funereal silence descended upon the state the moment the apex court, upon which the good people of the state had invested their trust and confidence, voted with the inscrutable minds of the local courts.

    In barely eight months, enough time for the youthful bohemian Mr Bello to prove his bona fides and convince the state he was very much worth the mistake and quixotism of his party, the All progressives Congress (APC), the governor has instead underscored his magnificent incompetence and spitefulness. (Sometimes, incompetence and evil can indeed acquire a malevolent, beguiling and artistic form of magnificence). When Chris Ngige, former Anambra State governor and current Employment and Labour minister assumed office by a crooked manipulation of the ballot, he nonetheless proved by sheer industry, imaginativeness and charisma that something good could come from Nazareth. Mr Bello, on the other hand, has been befuddled, vicious, haughty, insensitive, imprudent and childishly sentimental. He managed to elevate these vices into an art so quickly and so comprehensively that the state groaned for a messiah. They knew the circumstances of his emergence, and loathed them, and wished, indeed pined, for salvation. The tribunal and Appeal Court proved too distracted and disinterested to be of any help. So, with bated breath, and given the antecedents of many justices of the Supreme Court since independence, Kogites summoned the instinct to expect succour at the ninth hour, hoping to be delivered from the grasping hands of Mr Bello who had their feet to the fire. When the apex court’s hammer fell anticlimactically, Kogites gnashed their teeth and have been wailing since. Any newspaper that talks of jubilation is therefore misguided and mischievous.

    But Kogi is merely a pawn in a desperate and bitter ethnic and religious power play within the heavily polarised APC. Mr Bello himself is even a more insignificant and pathetic pawn. The late Abubakar Audu, who died at the point of his electoral victory, was a supporter of Kano’s ex-governor Rabiu Kwankwaso for the presidency. Though he eventually supported the APC presidential ticket and rallied enthusiastically for APC victory in the poll, he was still treated as an outsider, and a corrupt one to boot, though no court had found him guilty. His death was thus a convenient excuse for powerful forces to jettison the APC ticket in last year’s governorship poll. Worse, since the sensible thing for the party to do was to ensure his running mate inherited the mantle, the party, clutching primordial considerations, and immersing itself in religious and intra-party power play, spurned Hon Faleke and gave the undeserving Mr Bello the inheritance.

    The consequence was that what should have been settled at the political level became a costly legal adventure destined to widen the cracks in the ruling party. The cracks have now widened to the point that no one can paper over it anymore. Mr Bello was neither registered in Kogi to vote, nor did he vote. More, he even supported the opposition against the APC when Prince Audu held the ticket. But he is smartly connected in Abuja and professes identities the power mongers in the party find enticingly congenial. Hon Faleke, they claimed, was simply the face of competition that must not be given an inch, let alone a yard. There would be no court in the land to give him the justice he was petitioning for, the power mongers swore. Demonstrating more clearly that the breaches in the APC appear irredeemable, the power mongers, who are not limited to one geopolitical zone, have expanded their forays beyond Kogi to afflict the electoral process in Ondo State.

    It will, therefore, be inaccurate to imagine that the Kogi debacles are a product of purely legal shenanigans or state manipulations. There are many camps in the APC today; and though boundaries are shifting rapidly, it is still obvious that one camp has the upper hand at the moment. That supremacy is of course very tenuous, but it is nonetheless evident. It is that camp that worked its sorcery in Kogi, that did and is still doing wonders in Ondo, and is plotting yet other chicaneries elsewhere. That camp has found willing Southwest recruits, with religion subtly deployed as a common denominator to the dismay of true democrats and liberals within the party. It is not clear what is preventing an open war, whether timing or indecision. But the fractures in the party will undoubtedly manifest sooner or later, with the war front limited in the short run to the Southwest where many of the zone’s leading politicians have spurned unity and common interest for personal and egotistic considerations.

    As the many post-judgement analyses on this page have shown, it is simplistic to imagine that the judicial pronouncements on Kogi have been limited to purely legal considerations. They are not. More importantly, the judgements have indicated both the vulnerability of the judiciary and the terrible fractures in the polity in terms of ideological, cultural and religious fissures. The APC, it is clear, is disunited and without a binding tradition and belief. More and more, thanks to President Buhari’s inability to stamp authority and a unifying ideal upon the party, the APC is looking like a multipurpose vehicle which a cabal has hijacked to luxuriate in power as an end in itself. The party appears now to cater to a narrow interest sustained by a narrow coterie of northerners and ambitious Southwest politicians who, ignoring the lessons of history, believe that they need a shifty alliance to project power. The alliance will prove unworkable, for it is impossible for it to exist in the context its architects plan, without the principles and values that ennoble and advance a great society.

    The Kogi tragedy cannot be remedied until some three years or so to come. The people may gnash their teeth all they can and watch in dismay as Mr Bello and his fellow incompetents push the state to the edge of despair, but with the disarray in the country, the entrenched divisiveness fostered by the ruling party everywhere, and the contempt security agencies have for the constitution, not to say the weakness and impotence of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), their feeling of hopelessness will be further accentuated. When the party assumed office last year and almost immediately began to get off track, this column and many others believed some gentle or fierce admonition would restore it to the path of sanity. That hope appears now lost.

    It takes a party without a sense of unity and justice to promote the nonsense in Kogi that has culminated in Mr Bello’s judicial victory. It takes even much worse for the same party to sweep the injustice in Ondo under the carpet. The implication is that the APC’s change mantra is suspect. Shorn of an ideology, shorn of principles, and bereft of a fierce dedication to great and noble values such as justice, equity and fair play, it is impossible for a party, let alone a country, to stand and prosper. Surely the APC has a commonsensical understanding of these fine points. But alas, the party appears overrated.

    After the Appeal Court undermined the principles of its own sacred and legal existence in the Kogi election dispute, and the lower tribunal shirked its responsibility with such daring and indifference, many felt the Supreme Court would save the day. That day was not saved; indeed, it is now lost. For a state that has groaned for more than 12 years under inept leaders, the next three years under a bungling Mr Bello could prove tremendously injurious and calamitous. The only thing left to hope is that the APC’s irresponsible approach to both politics and the cause of national unity will, regardless of the party’s incompetence, confine the gloom to a few states and individuals.

    But given the nature and texture of what is happening everywhere, especially the wheeler-dealing and back-stabbing in Abuja, the Southwest may not emerge into that hypothetical future unscathed. The zone has had a history of fractious and treacherous politicking. That history is being entrenched. The zone has led the country in peaceful religious co-existence, where politics is religion-blind and governors and their deputies sometimes emanated from the same religion; now its people are being foolishly divided along religious lines by short-sighted politicians who link up with alien forces and outsiders to promote religious division in Southwest states, schools and local communities, a division antagonistic to their proud and iconic culture. The Southwest may arguably be the most liberal in the country, and may also have produced a slew of great democrats and mentors, but it is highly vulnerable, and its politicians widely believed to be appallingly easy to manipulate. Last week, Kogi, and to a lesser extent, Ondo, simply showed those fault lines in all their ugly pompousness.

  • Obasanjo and political culture

    Obasanjo and political culture

    EVEN though he spent his eight years in government repudiating his own private counsel and knowledge of how democracy works, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo used the occasion of the visit of the factional chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ali Modu Sheriff, to rhapsodise the beauty of democracy. Senator Sheriff, a former Borno State governor, had in early September visited the former president to draw him into intervening in the fierce dispute stymieing the progress of the former ruling party. He would not intervene, the former president said with a sneer. He then went on to describe the PDP as soulless and dying, and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) as enervated. Chief Obasanjo’s democratic credentials may be suspect, but his characterisation of the PDP and APC appears unimpeachable.
    With a strong hint of condescension, the former president had said: “I was once the leader, for eight years. I was the leader of PDP, but the PDP that I was the leader of is not the PDP of today. The PDP of today, if you can talk of a party again as PDP, its soul has been taken out of it, and those who allowed that to happen are, unfortunately, either in the country or out of the country unperturbed about the fate of the party and indeed the fate of the country. For our democracy to thrive, we need strong political party in government and strong political party in opposition, for it to be strong and dynamic.”
    He continued: “Today, PDP cannot claim to be a strong party in opposition, I don’t know if APC can claim, at the national level, to be a strong party in government either. Now, that is part of the misfortune of this country today. It must be the concern of all Nigerians that the present democratic dispensation must not be allowed to be derailed and for it not to be derailed, we must have a strong political party in government and a strong political party in opposition.”
    The PDP may bristle at being described as a dying party, and the APC, which has done its best to pander to Chief Obasanjo’s whims may be shocked by the ex-president’s betrayal, but the truth is that there is simply no way to nurture democracy if the opposition is in disarray and the ruling party is devoid of conviction and principles. Indeed, at the moment, there is no settling the precedence between the two parties in terms of their irrelevance to the country’s democracy and progress. Chief Obasanjo says the PDP has lost its soul, almost as if it was a recent thing. It is not a new thing. The PDP’s soul began to wither when Chief Obasanjo assumed office and in characteristic military fashion launched fearsome attacks on the true founders of the party and custodians of its values. The war was so brutal and the outcome so unequivocal that many years later, after he was through with his numerous self-serving battles to burnish his depleted image, founding leaders of the PDP had been completely emasculated, and budding second tier leaders of the party in the National Assembly had been defanged.
    Chief Obasanjo worsened the party’s woes when he castrated the party’s electoral organs shortly before his second term in office ended, and barred them from producing strong and competent successors. By the time the inexperienced and irresolute ex-president Goodluck Jonathan assumed office in 2010, the PDP had not only become a soulless party wanting in every virtue possible, it had transformed into probably the most predatory political machine ever, a party completely dedicated to feasting hungrily and angrily on the commonwealth and promoting vice on a scale that beggars belief. Now, Chief Obasanjo is snickering at the party that gave him nurture, when in fact he was the architect of its misfortune. Had he promoted internal democracy in the party when he was president, and had he left a great legacy worthy of emulation in leadership recruitment, political culture and responsible and transparent governance, the stranglehold the party initially had on the polity would be as strong as ever.
    Chief Obasanjo dates the party’s woes insinuatingly to his exit from the party. It is not true. He kick-started the process, midwifed it, and waited long enough to see the edifice poised to crash before hastening indecently, half clad to the door. Rather than mock them, and knowing what he now preaches with splendid foresight about the indispensability of a strong opposition, he should encourage the party to halt its self-destructive intraparty battles. Chief Obasanjo has a long and illustrious culture of profiting from other people’s misfortune, as the civil war and coups and various tragedies of his enemies show. He will probably let the PDP stew in its juice since he sees nothing to profit from its remake. He is too old to re-enter politics on the scope and magnitude he is used to; and he is too ideologically sterile to impart great ideas on the party with the passion and conviction the moment calls for. He will, therefore, stay aloof. More, he will rail at them and get them to grovel before him like Senator Sheriff did on September 3.
    But Chief Obasanjo is right that Nigeria needs a strong opposition, especially in view of the APC’s incredible vacuity, a weakness worsened by its amazing insularity. For the sake of democracy, Nigeria must encourage the PDP to get it right and regain its unity, if not its fragile ideas. Senator Sheriff cannot lead the party, but he needs to be pacified. His nuisance value is so strong that rather than the eminent persons in the party’s leadership, the fate of the party seems annoyingly to rest on him. How to mollify his rage is the great challenge. If they still have enough intelligent people in the party, some of those who have not migrated to the APC for both succour and sustenance, perhaps they can find the formula to unlock Senator Sheriff’s adamant heart.
    The greater worry, however, is the ruling party which Chief Obasanjo accurately, but with a smirk, described as weak. It is an indisputable fact that the APC has neither seemed nor acted like a party, not to talk of a ruling party. Its core is brittle and incoherent; and its exterior full of scaly and hostile attributes. It has put whatever ideology it claimed to have during the campaigns in abeyance. And its functionaries, many of whom are emotionally disconnected from the virtues and beliefs of the party, see their loyalty not to the party or the country, but to the president. Loyalty is a virtue, but if only it is located within the wider context of the party, its culture, its ideology, and its broad and engaging vision.
    Worse for the APC, its leaders have fought like Kilkenny cats, both at the party and National Assembly levels. The executive has on its own managed to stunningly disengage from the fray, hoping it would be untouched by the frenzy, intrigues and animosities tearing the party apart. It got off on a wrong foot with its leaders’ incomprehensible and antiquated ideas of politics, economics and society. Now, with a recession in hand, and a growing and alienated populace getting too angry to be placated, the party is desperately shopping for ideas from those it has scorned. It is also feebly trying to correct its leaders’ many misconceptions, and reverse the woolly thinking and mindset they initially eulogised and promoted.
    It is clear the PDP has realised its folly, but is at a loss how to correct itself. It is unfortunately not clear the APC has reached that epiphanic moment when it is struck by its own shortcomings and mortifying feeling of littleness. For democracy to survive, the country’s political and existential software must be re-engineered to promote healing, inner confidence and conviction. If both the APC and the PDP do not cotton on to these ideas and needs, they will end up floundering, and the country itself endangered.

  • Killer herdsmen as foreign terrorists

    Killer herdsmen as foreign terrorists

    IN his Eid-el-Kabir message, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, argued against stereotyping Fulani herdsmen, most of whom he said were peace-loving and law-abiding. “All those so-called Fulani herdsmen, moving with guns, causing violence, fighting with farmers, are not Nigerians,” he posited. “These are foreigners coming into Nigeria to cause a breach of the peace of the nation. They are therefore terrorists and should be treated as such by the Nigerian security agencies.” This was not the first time he would defend local Fulani herdsmen, nor is he the only one defending them and drawing a dichotomy between local and foreign Fulani.
    Last May, Khalid Aliyu, a spokesman of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), a coalition of several Islamic groups in Nigeria, also argued that it was wrong to attribute previous attacks in Agatu, Benue State, Nimbo, Enugu state and some parts of Nasarawa state to Fulani herdsmen. Insisting that the JNI statement could be attributed to the Sultan, he said of the alleged Fulani herdsmen attacks: “It is indeed absurd and most unfortunate that certain groups or people ascribe the incidence to ethnic and/or religious premise and whimsically apportion blame in order to batter the gradual restoration of peace and security in Nigeria.” Since then, however, the identities of many of the suspects arrested in some of the massacres and attacks have been indisputably Fulani, mostly local ones.
    But the Sultan’s description of the attackers as foreign terrorists has caused the most uproar. In the face of mounting evidence, the Sultan and many other Fulani leaders have struggled to dissociate the Fulani from the attacks — first the Fulani as a whole, especially over kidnappings, and then the local Fulani in connection with herdsmen/farmers clashes. The more Fulani leaders stubbornly stand their ground, the less successful they have become in convincing the nation. Barely moments after national Fulani leaders made their unsupportable arguments, local Fulani leaders accepted responsibility for the attacks, complete with reasons they argue justified the skirmishes.
    In the Benue State massacre, in which some 300 people were alleged to have been murdered in February in some communities in Agatu local government area, Saleh Bayeri, the Interim National Secretary of Gan Allah Fulani Association, gave a more detailed and believable account of the skirmish. According to him, and contrasting other national Fulani leaders’ accounts, the killings had their roots in the murder of Fulani leaders in 2013 and the unauthorised slaughter of thousands of cattle owned by herdsmen. In addition, said Bayeri, a respected Fulani leader, Ardo Madaki, who was invited to mediate the disagreements between Benue communities, especially in Agatu, and Fulani herdsmen was openly murdered and no one was brought to justice. Nothing was also done to prosecute those who murdered Shehu Abdullahi, another herdsman in the same area whose 22 cows were stolen. These murders, unlawful slaughter of cows, and rustling laid the grounds for revenge, said Mallam Bayeri.
    More damningly, Mallam Bayeri suggested that the Sultan himself had tried three times to settle the misunderstandings in Benue State, implying that national Fulani leaders knew exactly what was happening and who were doing the fighting. The grudges are local, and the fighters, bar some hired guns, are also local. The May, 2016 Nimbo, Enugu State killings, which were at first also attributed to external forces, have been proved to be local, with the grudges entirely local between herdsmen and farmers. If these clashes are to be avoided, it is unprofitable to pursue red herrings. Farmers and herdsmen, including the apparently more well-organised Fulani leaders, must realistically acknowledge the root causes of the mayhem in order to get sensible solutions.
    The killings by herdsmen in many farming communities are not instigated by foreign terrorists and attackers. The local herdsmen may hire foreign guns, which in itself is a sad commentary on the Nigerian security establishment, but the fight is local and most of the fighters are home grown. The herdsmen sometimes have justifiable reasons for the attacks, but so, too, do farmers; and both groups can rationally blame Nigeria’s weak law enforcement capabilities and the slow and ponderous and sometimes ineffective justice system. What appears to be complicating the discourse on the herdsmen/farmers clash is sadly the seeming inability of the federal government itself to find a lasting solution to the problem. Worse, law enforcement agents have sometimes needed to be angrily prodded to even arrest suspects who have engaged in open murder. Till date, Fulani leaders who provided explanations and justifications for some of the killings in parts of the country have neither been arrested nor interrogated. This has led to unfortunate suggestions that the security agencies sometimes look at the body language of the president before they carry out their constitutional responsibilities.
    Until the solutions proffered by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture are implemented, and regardless of the sentiments of Fulani leaders or even the presidency, the country must prevail on the security agencies to do their work without fear or favour. If herdsmen ruin farms, they must be arrested and made to face the law. If farmers take the law into their hands, they must also be apprehended. Rustlers must also be pursued and apprehended. It is depressing that political and ethnic leaders abjure either their oaths of office or the principles of justice to support their kith and kin against the laws of the land. More and more, it is becoming dangerous to leave in abeyance the desperate need to develop a national identity around which life and politics must revolve. Nature abhors vacuum. If that identity is not built to inspire unity, Nigerians will erect their own gods and idols and worship in their private, narrow-minded shrines.

  • Plus ça change

    Plus ça change

    THIS column assumes that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) cleared the re-launched national re-orientation campaign thematically anchored on Change Begins With Me, and that in particular President Muhammadu Buhari was briefed and was satisfied with the programme of action drawn up by the Ministry of Information, the campaign’s owner and parent. As many commentators, critics and supporters of the re-launched campaign have indicated, the All Progressives Congress (APC) government will not be the first to embark on a campaign to change public attitude to life, governance and public service. And so whether ethical revolution or national orientation, Nigerian governments are skilful in producing slogans and mantras whose conceptual foundations are sometimes amateurish and often war against facts and reality.

    On Thursday, the president kick-started the campaign with what some commentators have described as a rousing, appropriate speech on attitudinal change and re-orientation. If the reader is accustomed to scratching the surface of things, with little or no taste for plumbing the depths of complex and enigmatic issues, the speech is a satisfying piece of elocutionary barnstorming. It could of course be improved here and there, and more syntactic grace added to imbue it with life and resonance, but it fared no worse than the blather even Shakespeare himself unloaded upon his customers. It is the curse of the Ministry of Information that with every change in government, and with no one able to exorcise the ghost of superficial change created and unleashed by the Shehu Shagari presidency in the 1980s, its ministers find it compelling to concoct boondoggles of their own.

    There is nothing wrong with campaigns, for one way or the other there will always be campaigns to change anything disagreeable, either by force or by moral suasion. It is to the credit of many past governments, and indeed President Buhari who once embraced coercive change, that they seemed reluctant to employ genocidal tools in midwifing change like the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia did. Therefore, no amount of criticism, ridicule or resistance can dissuade the Ministry of Information, either under a conservative or progressive government, from indulging its romantic pastime of campaigning for attitudinal change. It is a waste of time to try. But if they exercise their right to formulate campaigns, especially on the back of the nation’s money, critics also reserve the right to draw attention to the futility of the exercise. The campaigns failed in the past, though they were sometimes backed by force or propaganda; there is nothing now to indicate they stand any chance of success.

    The Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Kar, coined a fitting epigram in the 19th century to capture the wastefulness and futility of such idealistic campaigns. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même, he moaned. Roughly translated as ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same”, it suggests that when change comes at all, it sometimes does so gradually and incrementally, almost imperceptibly. Yet, whether revolutionary or incremental change, over the centuries and from the experience of many nations, the status quo has yielded only few inches to the most assertive campaigner. Ask Napoleon Bonaparte; and ask Karl Marx. If the life and ideals of revolutionaries do not convince you, then ask Britain itself, that most famous of conservative nations whose political system, not to say its unwritten constitution, stands as a palladium of immovable change and stifling, suffocating status quo.

    If President Buhari and the Information ministry have learnt anything from the failures of the past, they have not admitted the rest of the country into that secret. Perhaps when the Information minister finally deconstructs the whole exercise, more Nigerians will become persuaded. But so far, there is little room for optimism. Given all that the president has said on the impending campaign to re-orient national attitudes and values, it is hard to see what indeed has changed — no pun intended. There is nothing in the president’s speech, absolutely nothing, to suggest that anyone in the executive arm or the ministry attempted a fundamental appreciation of the problem they hoped would yield to their ethical assault. Without a conceptual statement of the problem, and with apparently no conceptual tools to transform the intended change from its limiting and metaphoric existence, how on earth do they hope to create a new and ideal society?

    President Buhari merely restated the symptoms of Nigeria’s diseased past and present. But the nation ought to have got a gleamer of understanding of what he thinks is really the problem with the national attitude. Had he been able to fairly accurately state the conceptual foundation of the issues that war against the needed new national ethos, Nigerians might be fairly confident that the solution they dream about would not remain the chimera past governments had embraced and choked on for nearly 60 turbulent years.

    Here is the president’s prognosis. “There is no doubt that our value system has been badly eroded over the years. The long-cherished and time-honoured, time-tested virtues of honesty, integrity, hard work, punctuality, good neighbourliness, abhorrence of corruption and patriotism, have given way in the main to dishonesty, indolence, unbridled corruption and widespread impunity.

    “The resultant effect of this derailment in our value system is being felt in the social, political and economic sphere. It is the reason that some youths will take to cultism and brigandage instead of studying hard or engaging in decent living; it is the reason that some elements will break pipelines and other oil facilities, thus robbing the nation of much-needed resources; it is the reason that money belonging to our commonwealth will be brazenly stolen by the same public officials to whom they were entrusted; it is the reason a motorist drives through red traffic lights, it is the reason many will engage in thuggery and vote-stealing during elections; it is part of what has driven our economy into deep problem out of which we are now working hard to extricate ourselves. Every one of us must have a change from our old ways of doing things, we cannot fold our arms and allow things to continue the old way.

    “We must resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship, pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our country for so long. Let us summon a new spirit of responsibility, spirit of service, of patriotism and sacrifice, Let us all resolve to pitch in and work hard and look after, not only ourselves but one another, What the current problem has taught us is that we cannot have a thriving army of rent seekers and vested interests, while the majority suffers.”

    Nigerians have never been in doubt how their country’s ills manifest symptomatically. Nor have they ever lacked adequate platitudes to hurl at the combustible follies and foibles that manifest as their country’s soft underbelly. What befuddle them, on the contrary, are the conceptual foundations of those ills, and how to engineer the right tools to combat them. Driving through red lights is a little part of the symptoms, certainly not on a scale anyone should consider a major problem. Embezzling public funds is done everywhere, and majority of people would steal or cheat if half the chance offers itself; the difference in Nigeria is the quantum, a quantum that is symptomatically enabled and driven by impotent institutions. Political malfeasance is not Nigeria’s exclusive preserve, nor is it the cause of the ills a re-orientation programme can affect with platitudinous change. For every problem the president has identified, there is nothing in it remotely suggesting amenability to the balm of re-orientation he and the Information ministry wishes to apply.

    It is of course possible to strengthen institutions and identify better law enforcement methods to curb many of the tendencies the president identified in his speech last week. But neither he nor those whooping for his speech will get the new society they so wishfully dream about just because they have managed to tackle many of the ills afflicting the society. When President Shagari concocted his ethical revolution, he also inundated the country with platitudes, scratched the surface of the ills and assailed them with half-hearted ethical regimen. No government since then, not President Buhari when he was military head of state with his War Against Indiscipline (WAI), nor ex-head of state Ibrahim Babangida with his Mass Mobilisation for Social Justice, Self Reliance and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), nor yet Sani Abacha whose dissoluteness wholly and powerfully counteracted his rebranded War Against Indiscipline and Corruption (WAIC) campaigns. In his speech, President Buhari scoffs at the ‘theoretic’ exercise of fighting societal ills, probably suggesting that the problem transcended the clumsy theorising of arm-chair idealists. But whatever he has said so far has not given any indication he and his fellow programmers even have a practical appreciation of the problem or the tools to tackle it.

    This columnist has said it repeatedly, but has unfortunately been misunderstood, that what ails Nigeria fundamentally is that neither the government nor the people have a vague, not to talk of clear, concept of Nigeria, and so cannot think of developing a distinct Nigerianness so sorely needed. This terrible detachment has created a vacuum that is being filled by all manner of crazy schemes, including the jaundiced ambition of ethnic and religious irredentists, and the cracked and distorted dreams and visions of myopic politicians and leaders. On this page, President Buhari had often been advised to first produce a concept of the country he wishes to lead and to bequeath. He has not done it. Instead, by a combination of suspect anodynes and jaded templates, he has foisted upon himself, and by extension the nation, a close-knit structure of aides and advisers so insular as to be unable to conceive and enthrone the breathtaking expansiveness and ideology a modern, multicultural and heterogeneous society needs to thrive and function.

    There is no statesman, no great leader, no man with a sense of history, who has affected his nation or empire so thoroughly as President Buhari hopes to do with Nigeria, judging from his speech on re-orientation, that has not first formulated and injected into the body politic a fundamental concept of his country. It is that concept that will form the pivot on which everything without exception turns. It is that concept that differentiates the French from other Europeans, the German from the rest, the Briton from other Islanders, the American, Russian etc from yet other peoples. And it is on such a concept that the exceptionalism of great nations is built and nurtured. If the president and his Information ministry still can’t understand this, then let them go and read the history they have avoided and despised for so long, the history so near under their noses that it emits the fame and raison d’etre of the Oyo Empire, Sokoto Caliphate, Benin Empire, Kanem-Bornu Empire, and so many more.

    In forming Nigeria, the British spurned the lessons of the nation-building cataclysm (the Spring of Nations) that convulsed Europe in 1848. They, therefore, carved Nigeria after their own disingenuous expediencies, eviscerated the country of the proud, independent and gifted souls that gave its peoples hope and being, and distorted this country’s noble histories midwifed through the magnifying glasses of the iconic Oduduwa, the scholarly Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, the audacious Alafin Abiodun, the extraordinary Tsoegi, the enigmatic Mai Idris Alooma, and the celebrated Eweka I, etc. The vacuum thus created has become so deep and encompassing that it is difficult to see how campaigns and platitudes will reform a police force so poorly funded that it cannot but be evilly inventive in resolving their financial woes, a military force built on the retrogressive tradition of lording it over the people in all manner of depressing abnormalities, a civil service treated contemptibly and brusquely by the ruling class and must fend for itself outside the law, an unfeeling political class that seeks advantage over one another, even if elections had to be ingeniously postponed, and health and education systems so barren and disconnected from the people that its functionaries are incapable of embracing any other ambition but that of self.

    The national re-orientation campaign theme is ‘Change Begins With Me’. However, reading through the president’s speech, and extrapolating from what the Information ministry might be doing or contemplating, the government really hopes the campaign would begin not with the rulers, but with the ruled. The ‘Me’ in their campaign is a subterfuge. But whether the campaign begins with those in office or the hapless people subjected to gross misrule, both the rulers and the ruled would be chasing a chimera if they do not appreciate that no change can take place of the quality and structure they campaign for until Nigeria knows who it is (identity) and what its ambitions in the world are (vision). No past president has shown that requisite depth of understanding, and none has done so even now; no, not President Buhari, nor the ‘theoretic’ and highfalutin denizens of the Information ministry. Until Nigerians get a sense of a country they understand and love, and are willing to die for, all campaigns will be nothing but tilting at windmills.