The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Why APC lost Rivers

    Why APC lost Rivers

    President Muhammadu Buhari is conscious he has approximately three years left in office. Even more, he is aware he has so far not quite justified his election or the abundant goodwill and trust reposed in him by those who voted him last year. Addressing the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) last Thursday in Abuja, he promised real and substantial improvement in the circumstances and welfare of his people. He did not quite give a speech, for apparently, he was always hobbled by the gravity of formal occasions. What he gave instead were remarks that came across quite well, and in which he admitted his failings where he needed to, refused to excuse his mistakes, and promised to meet his longsuffering compatriots at their points of need on account of the more than three million naira the Treasury Single Account (TSA) had enabled his government to save.

    Before last week’s APC NEC meeting, President Buhari had given scores of formal and boring speeches, including his inauguration address,  and a couple of wisecracks, some of them, especially those given during his foreign trips, misspoken. In none of those speeches and brief remarks did he come across as a politician or conciliator. In one breath, he would speak candidly, forcefully and sometimes unreflectively of how fortune and fate in equal measure dealt him a cruel hand regarding the limiting effects of his age and the falling price of crude oil. And sometimes exhilarated, he would speak wistfully from the hangover of his regimented background, attempting to juxtapose his nostalgic past with what he feels is his unresponsive and frustrating present. On Thursday, however, he spoke as a politician and conciliator. If he can act his newfound speech and press the spirit of his rhetoric, who knows, he may yet save his presidency.

    But whatever he does from now on cannot save his party from defeat and humiliation in Rivers State, and indeed in most other Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) states. He will in fact struggle to sustain his party’s hold on some controversial and borderline APC states, many of which he has neither shown commitment to nor displayed affection for. The rerun elections in Rivers were enveloped in violence, with many murdered before, during and after the polls. A party’s defeat may admittedly sometimes be explained in terms of who is the more disposed to violence between two leading political gladiators in any election. But in the case of Rivers, neither former governor Rotimi Amaechi, who is now Minister of Transport, nor APC chairman, Odigie Oyegun, conducted himself in such a manner as to engender victory for their party. However, ultimately, the responsibility for the party’s defeat in that state lies with the party leader, President Buhari.

    This column indicated immediately after the Supreme Court validated Nyesom Wike’s election as governor that the APC would have a tough job winning a substantial part of the rerun polls. Except perhaps to the APC, the reasons were clear. Mr. Amaechi may be popular in the state, and may even have governed well, but Riverians are not so stupid as not to recognise that voting for APC lawmakers would prolong and entrench the stalemate in the state and predispose it to more violence. In the opinion of this column, Mr. Wike had not always acted with the maturity and brilliance expected of a governor, but having been installed as governor, it was unlikely that the structure of Nigeria’s unitary and patronage-ridden economy would lead the state’s electorate to repudiate him. They longed for peace, but would not mind submitting to the more practical and debilitating purveyor of evil among their political leaders.

    In addition, rather than speak loftily, and perhaps dreamily, of the Rivers State of their vision, the APC chairman and other party officials had spoken deprecatingly and materialistically of the state as that oil-rich state, almost akin to how the president himself later described the Niger Delta as a lucrative part of Nigeria. Together with Mr. Amaechi’s impetuousness and Mr. Oyegun’s materialistic view of politics, it was impossible to imagine that Riverians would be enamoured of the APC, or feel indebted to its misbegotten principles and values. The president should do all in his power to bring to justice all those who fomented violence in Rivers State, including those who inspired it, but he should do nothing to interfere with the composition and inauguration of the state legislature. The civilised world may have reservations about how Mr. Wike conducted himself before and during the polls, but it is not enough to halt or abridge any of the processes leading to the inauguration of the House of Assembly if a quorum is formed.

    As crucial to APC’s defeat in Rivers as the widespread violence in the state was, and not ignoring the orientation and conduct of Messrs Oyegun and Amaechi, probably the most important other reason for the debacle is the president’s inattentiveness to politics, in substance and ornamentation. However, it seems the president may just be starting to appreciate politics, if his remarks at last Thursday’s APC NEC meeting in Abuja is anything to go by. He had misrepresented politics when he suggested in his inauguration address that he belonged to everybody and to nobody. He had at the time unbelievably given the impression he became president by dint of his own hard work, appeal and merit, and would therefore not be beholden to anybody. He couldn’t be more wrong. If it were left to him and merit alone, he would have retired from politics long before 2015.

    Not only does the president in fact belong to his party and individuals who broke their backs to ensure his victory, he needs them to sustain himself in office, entrench and protect his legacy, and run for a second term, if he desires one. But with a divided party and an apparently disenchanted following, it is not surprising that his party has fared badly in most of the elections that have taken place under his watch. It could get much worse, and not simply because of violence or the Independent National Electoral Commission’s inability to get its act together. The reasons are nuanced. First, since he assumed office, President Buhari has done precious little to instill confidence in the nations laws, constitution and processes. He has dithered badly on the rule of law in his anti-corruption campaign, thereby giving the opposition the impression he had no regard for due process and seemingly suggesting that the fittest could always take the trophy regardless of what the law says. In addition, he has behaved awkwardly and intimidatingly to the judiciary, again convincing Mr. Wike and others like him that whatever they needed should be taken by force, perhaps extrajudicially and remorselessly.

    Second, by repudiating and even denouncing the politics of accommodation and consensus, the president virtually told indigenes of the South-South and Southeast geopolitical zones that they should look elsewhere for affiliation and attention. He would not offer them sop on the scale he would give his avid supporters meat and delicacies, he had whined incredibly and paradoxically as a victor. Then he worsened an already bad situation by his unsympathetic approach to the Biafra idea vis-a-vis other rebellious groups in the North, and gave ministerial portfolios considered of little influence to the region. The implication is that with two swift blows to the head, the two regions swore to close ranks and shut down their politics against the APC. The president needed to woo his ‘enemies’; instead he harangued them. Thus APC lost Bayelsa and the rerun polls in Rivers and Akwa Ibom, and had any other poll been called for anywhere else in the two geopolitical zones, the party would have lost woefully. In the circumstance, the best the president can do leading his troops to the next polls is to mitigate the scale of his party’s defeat, for that defeat will surely come. The presidnt must also rue how the momentum the APC carried into the 2015 polls came barely a few months later to a wrenching and agonising stop.

    Third, in order to gain in stature and earn respect in hostile states, the president needed to act subliminally as a statesman in almost everything, from elections to judicial proceedings and respect for the laws of the land, and from inter-party politics to inter-ethnic relations. Instead, he seems to have foresworn that sublimeness. He should have acted decisively in arresting the political drift towards the unrelenting parochialism authored by his party in the Kogi governorship election; instead he has merely regretted the inconclusiveness of the poll, thereby giving the impression to the cognoscenti that he has no deep and abiding understanding of the principles of justice and equity. The president’s discomfort with the tenets of justice has emboldened politicians like Mr. Wike and Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, to embrace brinkmanship and flirt with dangerous and cataclysmic propositions. Messrs Wike and Fayose lack principles and political morality, but they will continue to dismiss President Buhari’s efforts as sanctimoniousness, and stiffen their increasingly contagious opposition to his ideas and policies.

    Fourth, it was necessary for the president to travel to Rivers before the polls, meet with the gladiators, admonish them on peace and impactful politicking, address a town hall meeting on the values and virtues that must underpin Nigerian politics, engage traditional rulers and the youths, and encourage law enforcement agents to be fair and impartial. Instead, he said nothing to a state like Rivers so unused to the amenities of elections, and mobilised no one who could help to prod the state in the right direction. He is right to vow retribution against those who killed and maimed in the Rivers rerun, but the damage is already done, both to the state as a whole, and to the APC’s image in particular.

    Fifth, unfortunately for President Buhari, he has not articulated any lofty idea of the economy, politics, and society. He has spent about one year in office, but it is doubtful whether he has any convert to any great cause, for a convert must embrace an idea or a man of ideas. Though his APC NEC remarks are full of sensible ideas, he nonetheless seems to think once the economy is revamped his job is done. Both the president and his party must begin to come to terms with a different and more sublime reality. They can lose elections even with a growing economy, defeated Boko Haram, and low crime rate. Worse, like the PDP has shown, APC’s legacies (as a party, and as a president) can be subverted and pulverised if they are unable to enthrone enduring and endearing philosophy of government and society. This was why ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and his successors were a disaster despite growing economy, and their legacies quickly denuded and bastardised. They did not imbue the nation with an identity and character worthy of remark and attention. If President Buhari wishes to attract the respect and reverence of the country, irrespective of political, ethnic and religious affiliations, he must go beyond reforms to treat the legislature, judiciary and other groups in the society with veneration, in the process carefully calibrating the urgent need to midwife reforms vis-a-vis the constitutional obligation of building and strengthening institutions.

    States and their leading politicians will not support President Buhari and the APC just because of who they are. They must first see the ruling party and its leaders as embodying inspiring ideas and principles before offering them the respect and support they covet. That Rivers State is PDP today does not mean it cannot be APC tomorrow. But before Riverians will pitch tent with APC they must see in the president and his party unusual and soaring qualities of depth and character, and of poise and carriage, something and everything beyond the mundane and mechanical. The president must learn to woo his enemies and opponents, nurture and retain his friends, exemplify great ideas and principles, build and sustain institutions, rise above his biases and prejudices, transcend his comfort zone, and situate his country firmly and regally not in the restricted confine of his own limited background but in the difficult, expansive, conflict-ridden and boisterous global context that continues to demean the black man and treat many African nations contemptuously.

    If despite their towering statures and achievements great historical personages could lose elections, both President Buhari and the APC must acknowledge that their puny statures, poverty of noble and catalysing ideas, poor appreciation of and relationship with national institutions, and general and dangerous parochialisms, make them exceedingly vulnerable. Rather than blame the judiciary and violence for their electoral reverses, they should help Rivers back on its feet. The fault for the political morass in which Nigeria is immersed at the moment lies with the president and his party. The buck stops on their desks. To return to winning ways, the party and president should rise to the occasion by imbibing the skills and discipline necessary to deal with cantankerous foes like Messrs Fayose and Wike, and obstreperous and combative opposition party leaders like Ali Modu Sheriff.

    President Buhari’s remarks at the APC’s NEC meeting last week indicate he may have begun to understand what should be done. If the transformation is real, he owes the amelioration of his stiff and unattractive politics to his critics, not his sycophants. And if the transformation is to endure, he should seek out more critics who will coax him back to nobility and mould him into a statesmanlike stature, a sculpture of him that many, because of his stiffness and intransigence, have long described as an illusion and given up on.

  • Justice Haliru’s welcome boldness

    Justice Haliru’s welcome boldness

    Not since a Supreme Court justice blew his tops sometime in 2007 over ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s meddlesomeness (in either the Rotimi Amaechi governorship qualification case or ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar’s presidential qualification case) have Nigerians seen a judge so angry at officialdom as when Justice Yusuf Haliru of an Abuja High Court blasted the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for trampling on the constitution. Last week, Justice Haliru had taken on both the EFCC and the Nigerian Army in the case of the enforcement of the rights of Col. Nicholas Ashinze detained since December. The detained officer, a former aide of Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), was first locked up by the EFCC without charge or bail, and then handed over to the army, which also locked him up without charge or bail.

    A furious Justice Haliru had exploded thus: “The EFCC is a creation of the law. The court will not allow it to act as if it is above the law. It is remarkable to note that the motto of the EFCC is that nobody is above the law, yet they are acting as if they are above the law. The EFCC Act is not superior to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The respondents in this matter have not behaved as if we are in a civilised society. They have behaved as if we are in a military dictatorship where they arrest and release persons at will. The respondents —the EFCC and the Army— I must be bold to say, have behaved like illiterates. Why has the 1st respondent kept the applicant without bringing him to court? Why was the applicant, being a serving military officer, who could be easily reached, not granted administrative bail? Or is it that the applicant has been found guilty and already serving his jail term? Nobody should be subjected to the whims and caprices of the EFCC. The essence of the rule of law and constitutional provisions is to ensure a just balance between the ruler and the ruled, between the powerful and the weak. Though the EFCC has the responsibility to investigate financial crime, it must, however, conduct its operations in accordance with the rule of law. The court is empowered to guard against improper use of power by any member of the society or agency, EFCC inclusive.”

    It is impossible to render Justice Haliru’s view on the issue, and in the matter of individual rights and justice, better than he has framed it himself. His view is weighty, balanced, succinct, bold and magisterial. If the Col. Ashinze case had not taken place in the context of increasing high-handedness of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, Justice Haliru would still have been right and measured to declaim upon the matter before him in the manner he did. That the case is heard in the current abysmal atmosphere of creeping executive and bureaucratic excesses makes the eminent judge’s candour even more attractive and indispensable. The judge begins by acknowledging the credo of the EFCC, a credo which by the way, and right from inception, they never had the culture of respecting in their messianic pursuit of the anti-graft war. EFCC assumes that because it offers a great service to society by fighting those who plunder the country, the public should naturally and unquestioningly rally behind them, whether evidence hold up in court or not, and whether adequate investigations have been done or not.

    Justice Haliru follows up by reminding the anti-graft agency that the EFCC Act is not superior to the Nigerian Constitution that guarantees the rights of citizens and determines under what conditions those rights can be suspended or forfeited. This point is lost on many Nigerians who, in their patriotic concern for good and ethical governance, often embrace and acquiesce to executive excesses and lawlessness. The eminent judge then descends on both organisations, describing them as behaving like illiterates living and operating in an uncivilised society. Finally, in case some Nigerians forget the role the judiciary plays, just as the Buhari presidency appears to do, the judge reminds everyone that the courts are empowered to guard against excesses and oppression, and to stand between the weak and the strong. That, the judge concludes, is the essence of the rule of law. It is this rule of law that sets the civilised society apart from a barbarian society.

    It is, however, unlikely that anytime soon, Nigerians will appreciate Justice Haliru’s umbrage. They are hurting too much to care what happens to the rule of law. Their patrimony has been so alienated by a few rich and powerful people that they can’t care less what measures, civilised or not, decent or brutish, are meted out to the offenders, most of whom had been tried and convicted before ever they were charged in court. The misery and squalor in which they dwell, which are attributed to the actions of a malfeasant few, have triggered such great animus in them that they conclude that the constitution and the laws of the republic need unorthodox, even authoritarian, help to preserve and promote. Left to the public, the EFCC and the army, the suspected offenders are all guilty simply because the EFCC or the government has declared them so. Having been declared guilty, and on account of the grief and misery they are alleged to have brought upon the country, it is considered that they no longer deserve civilised treatment. The same barbarous way in which the corrupt attacked the country’s treasury, say the EFCC and those who support their extraordinary methods, make them deserving of barbarous treatment. But in the opinion of Justice Haliru, such methods would reduce the country to the hideous level of the miscreants.

    At a time when President Buhari intriguingly declared the judiciary his main headache, at a time when the EFCC was running rampant on the rule of law and promoting the belief, without necessarily saying so, that the entire judiciary was corrupt, at a time when only a few people in the country subscribed to the need to defend institutions and not succumb to mass hysteria, at a time when virtually all lawyers and judges were quaking in their boots lest the EFCC train their guns on them, it was courageous in the extreme for Justice Haliru to explode a depth bomb beneath the EFCC and the army. Both oganisations, not to talk of the Department of State Service (DSS), apparently inspired by the presidency’s indifference to the judiciary and the rule of law, were increasingly becoming arbitrary and authoritarian. The two organisations view any attack on them as an attack on the state. And they equate any attack on their methods with defending corruption and the corrupt. Even in the murkier days of Goodluck Jonathan, such a horrendous equation was not directly and flagrantly voiced or espoused.

    Justice Haliru has courageously done the judiciary a world of service. The EFCC and the army needed taming. His trenchant dismissal of the two organisations’ methods — not their functions, as he was careful to point out — reminds everyone the risk the country runs when an agency begins to trample on the rights of those who have not been tried, let alone convicted, and the rights of those who by deliberate and injurious propaganda have been virtually pronounced guilty and undeserving of civilised treatment and protection of the constitution. The judge carpeted both organisations because he was smart enough to see through their ploys. When the EFCC feels the pressure of the courts and the rule of law, it releases its captives to security organisations with a more robust and sinister contempt for the law, such as the army and the DSS which believe that without them and the sacrifice they make, the republic would be doomed. This was what the EFCC did with Col. Dasuki (retd.), whom they passed on to the DSS, and Col. Ashinze, whom they handed over to the army, two powerful organisations that now act as appellate jailors.

    Until Justice Haliru seized the bull by the horns, judges were in a panic to avoid the waspish tongue of the EFCC; and because of the bind Ricky Tarfa, a lawyer and senior advocate, found himself, lawyers tiptoed around the anti-graft agency and spoke in whispers near its officers. In fact, for many months until now, it was perhaps only the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mahmud Mohammed, who stood up to the presidency and the rampaging anti-graft agencies, warning of the danger of wholesale condemnation of the judiciary. He acknowledged that like other institutions, there were some undesirable elements in the judiciary deserving to be exposed and punished. But he also said he was appalled by the undiscriminating manner the judiciary was being harassed, intimidated and denounced.

    How, in their enthusiasm to clean up the country, President Buhari and the anti-graft agencies became inured to the dangers of provoking incalculable damage to the judiciary and even instigating public loss of faith in that vital institution is hard to explain. The first task of a president is to protect the three arms of government in line with the oath he took to defend the constitution, promote their independence despite any shortcoming or misgiving, and recognise that democracy could not survive without the stabilising and restraining influences of the tripod. Justice Haliru clearly articulated this point, and the CJN voiced his concern as well under his breath. It is indisputable that corruption endangers everything, but like every surgeon knows, how a disease is extirpated also matters. This is why chemotherapy kills healthy and cancerous cells together, and is therefore not too effective a therapy; but surgery in the hands of a skilled surgeon helps to remove bad cells and leaves healthy ones. What the fight against corruption calls for is a president and his anti-graft agencies operating as skilled surgeons, with especially a visionary president quite capable of finding the titre value of his policies in his crusades against entrenched interests and dangerous habits. If they cannot offer that expert and discriminating service, they have no business occupying the positions they have been voted or appointed into.

    It is humbling that rather than reinforce who the country is and what great and noble values and principles it stands for, its leaders have wilted before its first real existential challenge since the civil war. Like his predecessors, especially Chief Obasanjo and Dr Jonathan, President Buhari has ignored the fact that a man is defined not just by what cause he fights, but more importantly by how he fights. And when the man triumphs, it is important to see whether he will exhibit nobility or manifest coarse triumphalism. Should President Buhari continue in his present course of fighting brutally by hitting below the belt and biting in the clinches on the excuse that the mill of justice grinds too slowly for his liking, he will not only have  defined his presidency, he will have defined Nigeria and made her a laughing stock around the civilised world, far worse than the corruption he speaks loathingly about. Chief Obasanjo couldn’t define who Nigeria was; nor did Dr Jonathan. This was why both presidents could not do lofty things nor achieve far-reaching and futuristic milestones. Can President Buhari define Nigeria? Can he describe the country’s values which no provocation would make her abandon? Does he see Nigeria better than all other countries, a position he would give his life, now in its twilight years, to pursue; a position he would not allow to be mitigated by tribe, religion, partisanship or class?

    Justice Haliru’s explosive message should encourage those who work in the temple of justice to defend their great institution. They will of course need to weed out from their midst those who subvert the cause of justice, and must neither defend nor protect those who take money to pervert the cause of justice. But they will also have to stand up to the predators who desecrate the temple of justice, whether they occupy executive, legislative or appointive offices. For it is clear that many of those who deprecate the judiciary today are at bottom haters of democracy using the pretext of a few corrupt judges and lawyers as casus belli to compel the courts to do their bidding. By all means, let the judiciary do internal cleansing and support the prosecution of errant lawyers and judges; but more poignantly, let its paragons fiercely defend their independence and resist the mindless plots to subordinate the judiciary to the executive.

     

  • Ese, Yunusa and the vulnerable

    Ese, Yunusa and the vulnerable

    ON the day he was arraigned in court in Bayelsa, the man accused of abducting the then 13-year-old Ese Oruru exuded calmness and confidence. No one knows whether the composure of the accused, Inuwa Dahiru, more popularly called Yunusa or Yinusa, was prompted by what he believes to be his innocence or whether he simply couldn’t grasp the weight of the crimes alleged against him. Or perhaps he was too young and idealistic to care. When the story of the abduction and forced conversion of Miss Oruru first broke, the impression noised in many quarters was that Mallam Dahiru was probably in his 30s taking paedophilic advantage of a very young, devout and impressionable southern Christian girl just clocking teenage. Soon, the alleged abductor, whose photograph was yet to be published anywhere, was made out as a 28-year-old man. Eventually, when one newspaper spoke with his father, the elderly Dahiru revealed that his son was 25 years old. Shortly before the suspect was dragged to Abuja for interrogation, some newspapers disclosed that he was actually 22 years old. Then finally, on his charge sheet, the prosecuting authorities managed to transform him, according to a newspaper report, into an 18-year-old teenager.
    Nothing exemplifies the exasperating complexity of this controversial case as the manner in which Mallam Dahiru became progressively younger in the space of a few weeks. One or two newspapers had late last year presented the news as a case of elopement involving an older Hausa trader, who was also a tricycle operator, and a younger and outgoing Urhobo girl living in Yenagoa with her parents. At the time, whatever crime was insinuated into the escapade was believed to be mitigated by the adventurous willingness of the two so-called lovebirds to travel to Kano for an idyllic existence. The police, however, faced a conundrum separating the wheat from the chaff. But by late February, the story had become a definitive one of abduction, clash of cultures and religious bigotry in which the police and Kano’s emirate and religious authorities were complicit. The matter was compounded by pussyfooting police hierarchies, from the Bayelsa Command to the Kano Command, and disapprovingly thence to the Police Headquarters in Abuja.
    Though there were too many missing pieces in the story when it took on force in February, the news nonetheless went viral locally and internationally, lathered by emotive reactions all round, from what was alleged to be a complicit Kano Emirate authority, specifically the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, to what police authorities in Abuja feared were dithering Kano Police officers, and finally to the state’s religious authorities, the Sharia Commission, and the religious police, the Hisbah. It was tough for a dispassionate analysts to navigate the treacherous waters of the alleged abduction. Indeed, it was safer for everyone who mulled over the story to simply conclude that the accused, Mallam Dahiru, being true to the northern type, forcibly took Miss Oruru from her parents, perhaps through hypnosis or other superstitious means, converted her against her will to Islam with the connivance of typically northern Jihadists, had carnal knowledge of an underage girl, and put her in the family way.
    But by the time the legal fireworks will have settled, the abduction story may quake with doubt, as Mallam Dahiru himself hinted on the day he was charged in court. Miss Oruru’s stories, including how she got to Kano, and her relationship with the suspect, will indeed be put to the test, destabilised by its numerous gaps. What will not be threatened, irrespective of how old those involved in the saga are, is that the young girl left Bayelsa without parental consent, and the sex between the two, whether it was consensual and predated the alleged abduction, as Mallam Dahiru argued, or was coerced as the victim’s mother suggested, was between an older man and a minor. In the weeks ahead more light will be shed on the story and the public’s mood will doubtless fluctuate as the story ebbs and flows between facts and fiction.
    The story and the ensuing court case will once again offer Nigeria the opportunity to grapple with the dark areas of national life which it has preferred to downplay for decades. If the country’s leaders appreciate the complexity of the issues involved, they will see it as an opportunity to take another look at the political, cultural and religious fissures distorting development and jeopardising ethnic and religious amity in the country. The fissures are indeed worrisome, and the periodic eruptions they have triggered over the decades should instruct Nigerians that living in denial is not an option. For instance, when the Kano State Shariah Commission orchestrated the sequestration and conversion of Miss Oruru to Islam despite her age, they easily played into the hands of those who suggest that at bottom some northern public officials unthinkingly harbour destructive jihadist instincts, which they are eager to indulge in in flagrant disregard to the country’s constitution and without a care as to its disruptive, divisive and incendiary potential.
    Those who masterminded the said conversion also give the impression they are a law unto themselves and, if Kano State Government’s denial of knowledge of the Oruru case is to be believed, do not report to anyone. It may be time to set out exactly how local laws and edicts relate to the constitution in a secular society, and what level of deference to traditional and religious authorities law enforcement agents can demonstrate.
    Even if parental control was lax in the Oruru case, as many commentators have argued, and the Child Rights Act is yet to be domesticated in many states, especially in the North, it may be time to examine afresh the difficult and complex attitude in these parts toward sex. That attitude, to put it mildly, is deeply troubling. Except Mallam Dahiru’s age can be truly established to be 18 as claimed in the charge sheet and by his lawyer, thereby narrowing the psychological and physiological divide between Miss Oruru and the accused, sex with minors is rather more pervasive than many care to acknowledge. Former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani, idiosyncratically lent political and religious weight to the disturbing trend of viewing sex as an epicurean pastime, with the procurer of sex almost completely detached from the object of sex, akin to what obtains in the animal kingdom. The way the world views sexual preferences is morphing considerably; who can tell whether in time paedophilia would not become lawful just as gay relationships, marijuana use, and other habits the world frowned at many decades ago have managed to compel the obliteration of barriers?
    Not only will there never be a consensus on the topic of sex as far as many religions and cultures are concerned, with spatial differences manifesting in disturbing hues, the issues of divorce, rape, marriage — whether monogamy, polygamy, polyandry or gay union — will, with the aid of technological advancement, increasingly elicit fundamental changes in the people’s attitude to sex in ways never anticipated. Younger people have access to pornographic media unlike at any other time in human history, and are in consequence altering their behaviour, if not their biology, along clearly hedonistic lines. Crazy selfies, sexting, not to talk of lowering the age of consent, for which the laws and sometimes religions may be compelled to play ignoble catch-up, have been thrown into the dangerous mix. Mallam Dahiru suggests he had had sex with Miss Oruru even before they travelled to Kano. It is not yet clear whether the victim will be put in the dock, nor how it will established the accused is telling the truth. However, teen and even pre-teen sex, including child grooming for sex, are more rampant than many believe. The whole thing is a crazy obsession.
    The constitution and the laws of the land can to some extent help Nigeria make sense of the problems associated with sexual and amorous relationships, notwithstanding the cultural differences between the North and South of Nigeria. But they will in the long run prove ineffective in regulating sexual preferences, including lowering the age limit of sexual experience. The problem is uniquely human. With the ubiquitous availability of mobile and explicit images on various media platforms, the availability of a whole pharmacy of drugs and aphrodisiacs employed to push sex beyond unimaginable frontiers and inhibitions, and a cornucopia of shifting attitudes to sex — lawful or not — unmitigated by ethics of any kind or origin, there will be more stories like that of Mallam Dahiru and Miss Oruru, if not worse. It is not for nothing that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution in which both man and woman — not just woman, as is often portrayed — are customers.
    The Ese-Yunusa abduction trial will likely peter out into fatuity, of course after some salacious details have been revealed. Perhaps the SUV, and the identities of the accompanying two police escorts, which ferried Miss Oruru to the emir’s palace when the case was listed for hearing would be unearthed. A few policemen will be punished for dereliction of duty, and perhaps Kano State may be also be forced to re-examine the relationship between some of its statutory bodies and the constitution even in a defective federalist set up. But neither the abduction/elopement story — depending of course on what the courts find out — nor the trial itself will have any consequence on ossified and prevalent social attitudes and cultural and religious stereotypes.
    There will be intensified calls and demand for greater activism to persuade more states to domesticate the Child Rights Act, and the laws on marital relationship, rape and domestic violence may be strengthened. Even then, Nigerians may have to moderate their optimism, for as everyone knows, the country’s problem is not so much the absence of laws as the incompetence and lack of will in enforcing them. Until the country can make up its mind what kind of society it really wants to be, competently define its personality, which is at the moment seemingly bipolar, and cast in granite the rights and obligations of citizens even within the purview of their cultural differences and antagonisms, little will be gained by any effort to redress grave moral wrongs.

  • Nostalgic Obasanjo badgers EFCC with Ribadu legacy

    Nostalgic Obasanjo badgers EFCC with Ribadu legacy

    Former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s matchless candour came to the fore once again while celebrating his 79th birthday. In his short speech, he suggested that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had lost focus after the exit of Nuhu Ribadu, its pioneer chairman. A newspaper was careful to observe and publish that Chief Obasanjo made the controversial and tendentious remark as Mallam Ribadu made his way into the hall where the birthday celebration took place. Said the former president: “As all know when Nuhu Ribadu was handling the EFCC, he handled it in such a way that people coined the saying that the fear of Ribadu is the beginning of wisdom. And the thing you will ask is, how did we go down? How did we lose that… Nuhu Ribadu is still here, he is still alive, the institution that we started together is still there, what made the institution to become a toothless bull dog? We need to work things out so that we don’t take two steps forward, one step and three steps backward.”

    Chief Obasanjo has been roundly condemned for that statement. He deserves it. For while Mallam Ribadu’s style may have been jettisoned by his successors, most of them were nonetheless effective. In fact, the current chairman, Ibrahim Magu, has been as driven and propagandist as Mallam Ribadu was. And though this column has criticised Mr. Magu, as he also denounced Mallam Ribadu many years ago, he acknowledges that the current chairman has engaged himself productively and fearlessly in tackling the problem of graft. Of course, there are excesses, such as skirting dangerously on the periphery of extralegal measures, but Mr. Magu has done as well as Mallam Ribadu. The only difference, it would appear, is that more Nigerians shocked by the extralegal steps taken by Mallam Ribadu as EFCC chairman are unwilling to indulge the current chairman should he wish to deploy unethical methods in fighting graft.

    Chief Obasanjo’s outburst appears to be a reflection of his disenchantment with his rapidly fading legacies. It is balderdash to expect Mallam Ribadu’s successors to adopt his style. While some of his methods were appropriate, others were quite provocative and illegal. In his frenzy to fight corruption, Mallam Ribadu engineered the impeachment of one or two governors, aided no doubt by Chief Obasanjo’s own lawless predilections. That style will today not only be denounced vehemently, it will be successfully challenged in court. Whether Chief Obasanjo admits it or not, the archaic world he envisioned many boisterous years ago has changed considerably. Worse, it is precisely because of the atrocious methods he inspired and facilitated in the EFCC and other federal agencies, including the executive branch, that his legacy is being diminished.

    By the time he returned to office a second time, Chief Obasanjo’s achievements had been virtually wiped out. Had he learnt his lessons, he would have taken care to emplace programmes, policies and projects that would sustain his legacy. He either refused to do that, or he was unable to do so. Whatever the case, he now appears to feel the burden and humiliation of his legacies being wiped out a second time in the space of a little over eight years. Despite the hysteria of Governors Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, there will be no crazy impeachment as Chief Obasanjo imperially inspired and directed, and the EFCC, notwithstanding the instigation of the former president, will not be allowed to enact a similar subversion of the constitution.

    There is no truth in Chief Obasanjo’s claim that the EFCC has lost  focus. Mallam Ribadu’s current successor may not be perfect, and can indeed improve and, with help, criticism and advice, entrench a great anti-graft institution. What is actually wrong with Chief Obasanjo’s perspective is that his mind is playing tricks on him. Mr. Magu should be encouraged to firmly and intelligently carry out his tasks within the ambit of the law. He has no reason to panic. Let him indeed eschew propaganda, exhibitionism and short-termist approach to a great task, the kind Chief Obasanjo appears to be enamoured of and is sentimentally and cruelly instigating.

     

  • Conference on the economy?

    Conference on the economy?

    Perhaps heeding the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s call for a national conference on the economy, the Muhammadu Buhari government has promised to hold one in the coming weeks. Rather than read Prof. Soyinka’s call as a show of concern for their lack of activism on a plummeting economy, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) interpreted the call literally to mean the usual jamboree of talking shop in the entertaining and elaborate manner Nigerians have become fanatically accustomed to. But even if the professor were to mean his advice in that sense, it would still not detract from the conclusion that he felt sufficiently worried about the very little being done to salvage the nation in the face of a collapsing economy, immiseration of the people, festering crime on a nationally unmanageable scale, and general paralysis.

    However, from the general direction of the 2016 Budget, the government seems to have made up its mind on the key controversial issues of the economy, thereby making any discussion or debate nugatory. The president is implacably and even emotionally opposed to any talk of devaluation, but it is hard to see any conference not putting that issue at the heart of the debate. The government is not opposed to borrowing to finance its budget deficit, especially at a time of declining oil prices. That will also come up for debate should an economic conference hold. Indeed, for any conference to succeed, unlike the disdain and abrasiveness with which the federal government often approaches constitution-making and amendments, the Buhari government cannot afford to enunciate no-go areas.

    President Buhari incongruously agreed to hold a conference when what will come up for scathing review and debate will be his government’s economic programme or lack of it. If any conference should hold, it should be organised and led by the private sector. The government should of course attend, take notes, correct or sharpen its own paradigms, and sensibly promise and pursue reforms or amendments. Indeed, it must be settled from the outset that the federal government has no business organising an economic conference even before the ink runs dry on its budget estimates, let alone before running the now controversial document through the vetting gauntlet of the National Assembly. But if it chooses to hold a conference, it is hard to see the outcome enjoying less neglect than the ruling party’s own manifesto which intelligently adumbrates plans to reinvigorate the national economy on a scale the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) never dreamt of when it held sway.

    More germanely, President Buhari’s willingness to hold a conference signposts his and the APC’s inattentiveness to their own economic programme. (A part of the programme is excerpted in the box below as a general reminder). While it is true that the manifesto did not anticipate every distortion in the economy, especially given the rapidity with which key indicators are changing, often for the worse, it is still flexible enough to accommodate modifications, no matter how drastic they are. The manifesto is broad enough. It indicates an eight-point programme that places emphasis on “war against corruption, food security, accelerated power supply, integrated transport network, free education, devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care.” Unlike the PDP, it even more engagingly enunciates a philosophical foundation for its economic plans, the intangible driving the tangible, the abstract inspiring the real. Said the party: “Our guiding philosophy will derive its impetus from these seven principles: Belief in, and the fear of God; upholding the rule of law; preserving national unity; pursuit of a just and egalitarian society; building of strong institutions; commitment to social justice and economic progress; and promoting representative and functional participatory democracy.”

    The main problem, it seems, is not that the APC does not have elaborate plans for the economy, an economy that was already showing aggravated signs of distress during the Goodluck Jonathan years, or that those plans are not flexible enough to withstand shocks and fluctuations, or that party apparatchiks do not have sufficient understanding of the fundaments of the Nigerian economy. What ails the economy, nay the Buhari presidency, is that the president, for understandable reasons, can’t seem to find the composure to drive his party’s economic programme. And if, as everyone knows, he has shortcomings in the area of economic management, why has he neglected to find someone who can drive his economic plans? It would have been greatly helpful had he acquired the policy and theoretical wherewithal to marshal the efforts needed to revamp the economy, for then the radicalism the process would need, and the daring policy leaps the change his party talks about and the country needs, would not be threatened by the appalling ethnocentrism and sectarian bigotry that often obfuscate fundamental change and deep societal re-engineering in Nigeria.

    In the alternative, considering his own shortcomings, the president should have more responsibly identified someone, or a small and effective group, with the capacity to think through the morass and moraines of the country’s declining economy, and come up with far-reaching and farsighted policy frameworks and designs to pull Nigeria out of the confusion and decay the PDP consigned it. But rather than pay attention to this great need, the president assembled a restrictive kitchen cabinet with whom should he deign to meet minds would sometimes obsequiously pander to his whims. Rather than satisfy that great need, he also took the circumlocutory route of first deprecating ministerial work in favour of the civil service, until disillusionment set in. And finally and more bewilderingly, he then partitioned the cabinet in such a manner that it was obvious the philosophical exactitude which the APC manifesto pretended to embrace had become inappropriate, irrelevant and appeared designed to accomplish other purposes than the desperate task of revamping the economy.

    Many critics have slammed the president for entrapping himself in a political and economic time warp. They are probably right. He is struggling to respect the rule of law instead of internalising it and making adherence effortless. He has embraced and still nurtures fairly jaded ideas of politics contrary to the ambitious provisions the APC’s campaign manifesto indicated. And his economic ideas have quizzically not progressed beyond what he projected as military head of state. Thirty years out of power and 12 years trying to regain office have apparently not led him to rejig, refine and develop new and radical ideas about politics and economy, let alone the minor but important aspects of the structure and objectives of government. When he was in the wilderness, it would have been tremendously beneficial had he studied the policies that led to China’s rebirth and economic modernisation, not to talk of the great leap achieved by Brazil and the Asian Tigers in the late 60s and 80s. The lessons of those economic miracles are clear and unambiguous, and the identities and orientations of those who midwifed the changes are also not hidden.

    Instead of calling an economic conference, and seeing that the he can’t offer more than the assets of personal discipline and integrity in addressing the economic crisis, it is time the president found someone with the intellect and chutzpah to shoulder the responsibility of conceiving and effectuating the change his party talks about and the country urgently needs. Given the apocalyptic pace of Nigeria’s economic decline, and the imminent and terrifying plunge to social chaos exemplified by the upsurge in crime rate, the president should appreciate that neither he nor his party can afford the luxury of pussyfooting. He does not have an economic team in the rigid sense of the phrase, and it does not make sense to expect that either the Budget and Planning minister or the Finance minister can step into that role. They will not, partly because they were not appointed to perform that role nor were they given that brief. Nor is it clear that even if they were given that brief they would be able to accomplish the huge task. If the president can’t be like China’s Deng Xiaoping, then let him look for someone like Ludwig Erhard in Konrad Adenauer’s post-war Germany’s cabinet that designed and accomplished that country’s economic reconstruction often referred to as the Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle.

    President Buhari is fighting corruption, but he must be mindful of doing (not talking) it within the ambit of the rule of law. He must build and strengthen institutions, which could run without powerful men flaunting credentials of integrity and honesty instead of visionary and philosophical accoutrements. He must also administer Nigeria in the expansive and unifying sense of incorporating Nigerians from all ethnic groups into the task ahead contrary to his present idiosyncratic inclination towards exclusion and perhaps inadvertent insularity. And while firmness and unyielding inflexibility have their advantages in a society long used to indiscipline and laxity, he must deliberately acculturate to the democratic nuances of consensus, persuasion and debate which some of his men in the secret service and the EFCC are repudiating under the guise of public safety and public good.

    The task before him is difficult and enormous, and President Buhari has not even started, seeing how he has limited himself to just two tasks out of a myriad. And if he can’t seem to find his way around the stalagmites and stalactites of economic crisis, how can he, and when will he, address the desperate political problems truncating the country’s peace and progress? In many ways, economy and politics are interwoven, and sorting out one requires virtually the same philosophical foundations and tools as making sense of the other. If the president can’t succeed in one, it is hard to see him succeeding in the other. But he needs to succeed, for failure is not an option. Let him, therefore, demonstrate the capacity, the liberalism and the courage to change Nigeria in the substantial sense that even ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo could not fathom, nor Dr. Jonathan ever contemplate. But going by all the events of the past few months, and the crowd around the president, this column has his fears.

  • On the economy (From the All Progressives Congress manifesto)

    On the economy (From the All Progressives Congress manifesto)

    • Maintain sound macro-economic policy environment, run an efficient government and preserve the independence of the Central Bank;
    • Restore and strengthen financial confidence by putting in place a more robust monitoring, supervising and regulating of all financial institutions;
    • Make our economy one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world with a real GDP growth averaging 10% annually;
    • Embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial and skills acquisition scheme for graduates along with the creation of Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 1 million new jobs every year, for the foreseeable future;
    • Integrate the informal economy into the mainstream and prioritize the full implementation of the National Identification Scheme to generate the relevant data;
    • Expand domestic demand and consider undertaking associated public works programmes;
    • Embark on export and production diversification including investment in infrastructure; promote manufacturing through agro based industries and expand sub-regional trade through ECOWAS and AU;
    • Make Information Technology, Manufacturing, Agriculture and Entertainment key drivers of our economy;
    • Balance the economy across regions by the creation of 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness;
    • Put in place a N300bn regional growth fund (average of N50bn in each geo-political region) to be managed by the REDAs, encourage private sector enterprise and support to help places currently reliant on the public sector;
    • Amend the Constitution and the Land Use Act to create freehold/leasehold interests in land along with matching grants for states to create a nationwide electronic land title register on a state by state basis;
    • Create additional middle-class of at least 2 million new home owners in our first year in government and 1 million annually thereafter; by enacting a national mortgage system that will lend at single digit interest rates for purchase of owner occupier houses.
  • Fed Govt and the ‘sacked’ vice chancellors

    Fed Govt and the ‘sacked’ vice chancellors

    While the furore surrounding the 2016 federal budget was yet to abate, another perhaps more embarrassing one flared about two weeks ago with the report of the removal of 13 federal university (including the National Open University) vice chancellors. The Federal Ministry of Education’s statement announcing the removal, however, said nothing about sack. All the statement did was to announce President Muhamau Buhari’s approval of the appointment of the new 13 university helmsmen. “The President, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces  and Visitor to all federal universities, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has approved the appointment of new vice chancellors for the 12 under-listed Federal Universities and the National Open University of Nigeria with effect from Friday, February 12, 2016,” the statement said tersely. But because the tenure of four of the VCs was yet to end, it was generally assumed that the 13 university administrators had been sacked. This news was compounded by the federal government’s prior dissolution of the 13 universities’ Governing Councils, the body statutorily empowered to initiate the appointment or sacking of vice chancellors. Immediately after appointing the new VCs, the Education ministry appeared poised to announce the constitution of the 13 Governing Councils. The statement was silent over why the four VCs whose tenure had not yet ended were also replaced.

    Shortly after news of the peremptory changes in the 13 universities was published, a number of civil society organisations and other stakeholders condemned the Education ministry for taking that precipitate step. About nine of the vice chancellors, they argued, had already handed over to successors who would preside over their universities in acting capacity from February 15. The critics also condemned what they described as the parochialism of the ministry which appointed many of the new VCs from one university. According to them, “(The minister) appointed six professors from one university, Bayero University, Kano, and he posted them to different tertiary institutions. Not only that, he also appointed two professors from Katsina State, bringing the total to eight friends from just two states in the North.” In their earlier statement, the civil society groups had indicated that four of the new VCs came from Bayero University. A few days later, perhaps after crosschecking their facts, they raised the figure to six. The Education ministry, however, responded last week that the changes would not be reversed.

    It must be assumed that the Ministry of Education did not lie about the appointments being approved by the president. If this is so, it is doubly embarrassing. First, the Education ministry probably has a legal department that should have advised against the method embarked upon by the ministry to effect changes in the universities. But even if there was no legal department, there is hardly any graduate in Nigeria who is ignorant of the procedure involved in selecting vice chancellors. The ministry was completely and embarrassingly negligent in carrying out this rather simple task. Why the haste? Second, assuming the Education ministry did not know what to do, the visitor to the universities, to whom the process of appointing vice chancellors is not strange, should have taken caution. The presidency cannot also claim to be ignorant of the processes. Indeed, after botching the computation and presentation of the 2016 federal budget, the presidency should have been generally more careful about its subsequent actions, policies and processes.

    Neither the presidency nor the Education ministry has offered cogent reasons for the abridgement of the process of appointing VCs. If it is assumed they made a mistake, they would be accused of incompetence or confusion. But if it is assumed they knew what they were doing, knew the laws, and yet acted in the manner they did, then it would be concluded that impunity is the government’s administrative leitmotif. The position the Buhari presidency has found itself, after the budget embarrassment, is not flattering at all. The civil society groups tried to lessen the damage to the president by suggesting that the ministry was derelict in its responsibility of advising and guiding him on the right steps to take in appointing new university administrators. This is a hard sell. Both the presidency and the ministry are to blame for this misstep. Indeed, all the facts point to the conclusion that the Education ministry knowingly and mischievously effected the changes, and the presidency was inexplicably careless. But in their intervention last week, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) indicated that the 12 universities founded by the Jonathan government were not backed by law, implying that fundamentally, no law was breached when both the VCs and the Governing Councils were sacked. However, the government would have demonstrated good faith if they first enacted the law, then emplaced the Councils, and then proceeded to activate the appointments of the VCs. In effect, regardless of the ASUU explanation, the Education ministry still acted mala fide.

    While it is not clear yet how many of the VCs came from Bayero University and what their states of origin are — whether four as the protesting groups first said, or six as they later announced — there is indication that some top ministry officials do not seem to have the expansiveness needed to function at the federal level and, additionally, the instinctive appreciation of the characteristics of a complex, multi-layered society like Nigeria. How could they make that kind of mistake, or hope to get away with it? Henceforth, every appointment they make will be examined with a fine toothcomb for ethnic and religious diversity and compliance. It is all the more dismal that even in its response, the Education ministry has said nothing about the disproportionate number of new VCs from Bayero University. Could they be unaware of the implication, or of the poor image for the ministry which that skewed appointment elicits?

    The Education ministry will struggle to correct these twin errors of impunity and parochialism. Whether they will be successful or not remains to be seen. And because the ministry’s statement suggested the president’s endorsement, the Buhari government will also find it difficult to completely absolve itself of blame. Sadly, rather than make progress in ethnic and religious relations, the divisions and schisms in the polity are either widening or worse, hardening. The Olusegun Obasanjo presidency between 1999 and 2007 achieved some success in spreading appointments across the country and deepening ethnic amity. His immediate successor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, was unfortunately accused of handing the country over to a Katsina cabal, despite his own seeming personal cosmopolitanism. The Goodluck Jonathan government did not fare better than his predecessor. He was also, with some justification, accused of the worst forms of parochialism as he subjected the country to his acolytes from the South-South and Southeast.

    If the Buhari presidency is to avoid the pitfalls that unnerved and humiliated his predecessors, he will need to take more forceful and proactive steps in demolishing the barriers that have divided Nigerians for decades. The Education ministry’s missteps in the appointment of vice chancellors are an indication of the vestigial problems the country must consciously and bravely grapple with, but which the Buhari government has so far paid scant attention to. The rule of law and adherence to due process should not be a source of controversy at all. Nigerian officials must internalise these fine administrative attributes. Had the Senate done its work in screening ministers as intensively and comprehensively as the situation demands, many closet extremists and ethnocentric officials would be weeded out. It is time political leaders exhibited the consciousness that conduce to the running of a just and egalitarian society. Those who can’t shape up could choose to remain ethnic and religious champions, far from the multicultural arena both the people of Nigeria and the constitution envisage.

    Not only must the Minister of Education address the controversial appointments, explaining convincingly why he bypassed due process, he must take firm steps to redress the skewness of the appointments and restore confidence in his ability and capacity to promote and nurture fairness. He owes the country an explanation. If he will not address the matter, the Buhari presidency, which was quoted as having approved the postings, should step in and remedy the situation in order not to be accused of complicity in what is obviously an embarrassing and unforced error. The problems in the education sector are too gargantuan to be subjected to silly mistakes.

  • PDP gets lifeline, but prefers to drown

    PDP gets lifeline, but prefers to drown

    |Two Sundays ago, this column described the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) judicial triumphs in the governorship election petitions in the oil-rich states of Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Akwa Ibom as a lifeline to the opposition. It still is, for even the All Progressives Congress (APC), which mourned its judicial defeat in the three states, also thinks so. Buoyed by the victory, and catching a whiff of the tantalising but chimerical possibility of regaining electoral dominance over Nigeria in 2019, the opposition party shockingly decided to appoint former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, as the new chairman of the party. He replaced Adamu Mu’azu who relinquished the post last year May before his tenure ended. When Senator Sheriff was appointed chairman, the PDP governors who plotted his emergence cleverly refused to indicate whether it was in acting capacity or not. They left an open cheque for everyone, hoping that if the Sheriff chairmanship kite they flew drew timid flak rather than create the storm they feared, a transmutation to permanent chairmanship could be contrived.

    But Senator Sheriff is today one of Nigeria’s most controversial politicians. His unremarkable record as governor pales in comparison with his entanglement in the Boko Haram crisis. He is said to be very wealthy, which made him start out as a kingmaker in Borno politics. Soon after, he seized the throne himself, and since then has never looked back. During his two terms as governor, the Boko Haram phenomenon took root, a fact that made many commentators to attribute the emergence of the terrorist group to either his direct or indirect influence and manipulation. He denies the accusations and points out that even his family members, not to talk of himself, are not immune to Boko Haram attacks. The disfavour Senator Sheriff has found himself in many parts of the country, especially in the North, has risen in direct proportion to the sanguinary severity of the terror attacks that have virtually flattened the Northeast and drained the country of its energy and resources.

    To, therefore, make Senator Sheriff chairman of a party battling to find its way back to office in many states and Aso Villa in particular seems to be flying in the face of reason. As many of his critics have said, it does not matter whether it can be proved that he knows a thing or two about Boko Haram’s emergence and operations; what matters is public perception, and that perception is bitterly, adversarially and implacably held. If the PDP hopes to make any serious impression in the 2019 polls, critics suggest, the party will have to rid itself of any encumbrances, no matter how little. The party is now entrenched in 13 states, and has the added advantage of controlling the four oil-rich states of Delta, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Rivers. It now has the wherewithal to consolidate its hold on those states, the stomach to dare mighty things, whether just for the heck of it or as a measure of its defiance of the Buhari presidency, and the strategic ambition to project power and expand territorially.

    More importantly, given the confusion in the APC, its shambolic handling of the economy, and its inability to convince the public its democratic credentials are deep and unassailable, some Nigerians were beginning to hope that a viable PDP could, despite its obnoxious antecedents, yet serve as a veritable and viable opposition to help entrench democracy in Nigeria. If that hope is not to prove elusive, the PDP must see the Sheriff chairmanship as nothing but an interregnum in line with the consensus finally reached last week among the party’s principal organs and leaders. It is unlikely he will leave in March, as the party’s former ministers have advocated. He will stay on and organise the party’s convention in May, other things being equal; but he is unlikely to retain the chairmanship seat beyond that date.

    Senator Sheriff is, however, not the only or major problem facing the party and militating against its drive for renewal and restoration. Most of the party’s leaders have been indicted in the ongoing corruption probes. As the troubles of Olisa Metuh, the party’s spokesman, and Uche Secondus, the former acting chairman, have shown, the party needs to make a clean sweep of its discredited leadership in order to avoid distractions in the herculean task of facing up to the ruling party. More, they desperately need brilliant, courageous and visionary leaders to direct the affairs of the party. Senator Sheriff, had he not been encumbered by the Boko Haram crisis, would have satisfied a part of the requirements for leading the party. He is rambunctious, does not shirk a fight, has money and a winning mentality, and is bold, courageous and iconoclastic. After all, he and former Kano governor Ibrahim Shekarau were responsible for unhorsing President Buhari from the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) some years back. The governors who supported Senator Sheriff probably saw in him the only battering ram capable of checkmating the APC in the years ahead. But as the controversies surrounding his interim chairmanship have also indicated, the PDP may be barking up the wrong tree.

    Those who predict the collapse of the PDP are unduly hasty. Every lover of democracy must in fact hope the party will surmount its troubles in order to help check the APC’s feisty and sometimes amateurish handling of political power. The ruling party does not really have internal opposition, nor does it appear to brook any. If it had an economic programme before assuming office, it has shown no indication it remembers where the blueprint was kept. More and more, the ruling party gives the impression it was thrust into public office before it was ready to carry the huge burden of managing a country during an emergency. If the PDP can utilise the lifeline afforded it by recent judicial triumphs, and avoid drowning itself in the bilge water of murky politics inspired by third-rate politicians like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, it may make a few more gains in 2019, even if the ultimate electoral prize should prove elusive.

     

     

  • Kogi’s many absurdities

    Kogi’s many absurdities

    Today, for the second time in about nine years, Palladium is donating his column to an ardent reader who feels distraught about the desecration of the fine arts of politics in Kogi State. The youthful Governor Yahaya Bello is busy upending common sense in the state, lawmakers are divided in two, with one part, the majority, fleeing to Abuja with the mace, and another, just five of them, turning arithmetic on its head. The ordinary Kogite watches in great perplexity, unable to comprehend how the simple act of voting peacefully for the late Abubakar Audu/Abiodun ticket has turned into a farce orchestrated by both the ruling APC and INEC

    Kogi State has been in the news for the wrong reasons of late. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dealt a devastating blow to the state when on 22nd November 2015, it announced the result of the governorship election held on 21st November 2015 as inconclusive. On Sunday, 22nd November 2015, Kogites had stayed glued to their televisions to watch how the elections results from the local government areas were trickling in one after the other. Many Christians amongst them missed Sunday church services as they stayed back home to monitor the results of the election. The Returning Officer of the election, Professor Emmanuel Kucha, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, finally announced the scores of the candidates in all the 21 local government areas of the state after the collation of the figures. Kogites became agitated when Professor Kucha announced that the collation officers were proceeding on a short break. Little did anyone know then that something miserable was afoot.

    On his return from break, the professor announced that Prince Abubakar Audu (now deceased) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 240,514 votes, while Capt. Idris Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) garnered 199,514 votes. He said that the margin of votes between Messrs Audu and Wada was 41,353. He, therefore, further announced that the election was inconclusive because the total number of registered voters in 91 polling units in 19 local government areas where election was cancelled was 49,953, which according to him was higher than 41,353 votes with which Audu led Wada. The returning officer added that, by INEC guidelines, no return could be made for the election until a supplementary election was held. The supplementary election held on 5th December 2015 at the end of which Alhaji Yahaya Bello, who never participated in the main election, was declared the winner by “supplementary votes” of 6,000. It was not until 24th November 2015 that INEC owned up to the demise of Prince Audu.

    The conduct and announcements of INEC on Kogi polls have since set Kogi State on the path of absurdities, legal and political. The Kogi state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, now sitting in Abuja, is being called upon to resolve the legal absurdities. These include:  (a) The declaration by INEC that the election of 21st November 2015 was inconclusive after it had announced the results of all the local government areas; (b) The choice of INEC to use its guidelines as against applying the provisions of the Electoral Act and the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to declare the election inconclusive; (c) The propriety or otherwise of INEC conducting a supplementary election on an election that had been won and lost going by the figures INEC itself announced; (d) The constitutional basis or otherwise of INEC allowing Alhaji Yahaya Bello to contest an election without a running mate; (e) The propriety or otherwise of INEC merging the votes scored by the late Abubakar Audu/Hon. James Abiodun Faleke with the supplementary votes of Alhaji Yahaya Bello and the law that permits such a merger.

    There are many other issues that the Tribunal will be called upon to determine. All Kogites and the whole world are anxiously waiting for the decision of the learned Tribunal.

    Alhaji Bello was inaugurated as the fourth civilian governor of Kogi State on 27th January 2016. He was sworn in without a deputy. This act is unprecedented in Nigeria. Kogi State is fast becoming notorious for earning the first position in every bad political occurrence in Nigeria. In 2007, it became the first state to have the election of its governor upturned by an election tribunal. In 2011, it became the first state to have three governors in one day: the then outgoing governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris; Capt. Idris Wada sworn-in by the President of the State Customary Court of Appeal; and the Speaker of the then State House of Assembly, sworn in by the Chief Judge of the State. The state is also now on record as the first state in which the candidate who won an election died before being sworn in, calling for the application of section 181 of the Constitution.

    Alhaji Bello has spent three weeks as the governor of Kogi State. A period of three weeks may be considered too short to assess the performance of a governor. It is, however, sufficient to come to a decision on what type of governor he would make. A careful study of the actions and utterances of Alhaji Bello, as governor of Kogi State, clearly shows that he is an intemperate and sometimes unpredictable person, imbued with extraordinary energy and youthful exuberance, almost bordering on the bizarre. He has sufficiently demonstrated that he is someone who would take an action first before thinking over it. The consequence of this is that he has had to reverse himself on several issues relating to the policies he announced within the first few days of his tenure. He lacks the experience, maturity, insight, shrewdness and astuteness required to govern a state like Kogi or any state for that matter. He is naturally self-conceited and not reflective.

    Upon his inauguration, the first thing he did was to abandon Kogites and proceed to attend the meeting of the Northern Governor’s Forum. The meeting was more important to him than the plight of his people, particularly the workers of the state civil service who had been on strike for non-payment of salaries that had accumulated for four months. Alhaji Yahaya Bello returned from the meeting and announced that the hungry workers would have to undertake an elaborate screening exercise before they were paid October 2015 salaries. The exercise would have taken another one month or more to conclude. Kogi State chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress rose up to the occasion and alleged that he acted mala fide and betrayed the trust reposed in him. The Congress reminded him that it was to honour him that they agreed to call off the strike. It threatened to resume the strike within seven days if the governor failed to reverse his decision on the screening exercise. The Congress had wondered how the workers would cope with hunger for another one month. The governor immediately reversed his decision.

    Alhaji Bello promised to pay one month salary arrears to the workers. As at the time he announced this decision, he did not know the amount of money in the coffers of the government to determine whether or not the money would be sufficient to cover the wage bill. He was not even sure what the wage bill was when he made the announcement. It was a whimsical decision to score political points.  He was later faced with the stark reality as he met only N2.5 billion in the government’s account, whereas the wage bill was N3.5 billion. But he went ahead to deplete the N2.5 billion he met by first taking care of his security vote and awarding a contract of N100million for the renovation of his office, amongst other huge sums of money he had withdrawn for some other so-called state reasons. The resultant effect of all this was that almost half of the number of the workers have yet to receive their October 2015 salaries as at the time of writing this piece. And, there is no hope of them receiving their pay as no arrangements are being made in that regard. Meanwhile, he is said to have incurred some huge hotel bills at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, and another whopping sum at Reverton Hotel, Lokoja.

    Alhaji Bello knew that he needed the cooperation of the members of the State House of Assembly. He, however, approached the matter in an arrogant manner. He demonstrated his lack of skill, finesse and diplomacy on the issue. After securing the approval of the lawmakers for his nominee for the office of the Deputy Governor, Hon. Simon Achuba,  in a subterranean manner, he invited them into his private residence and addressed them roughly. He did not leave any of them in doubt that he had become the Governor of Kogi State and would remain so for the next eight years. His coarse language angered the members, majority of whom are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His immodesty made him lose control over the Kogi State House of Assembly, notwithstanding the unlawful manner he wooed them.  By the time he attempted to impose his stooge as the Speaker, the exercise ended in fiasco as only five of the twenty members were available to do his bidding. They, nevertheless, went ahead with their unconstitutional acts with the strong backing of the military and police who were deployed that day to give the five members protection. One really wonders the business of soldiers from the Army Records in Lokoja over a legislative matter that is purely civil. Perhaps the commander of the unit or the Chief of Army Staff would be in a better position to explain this. Meanwhile the governor is yet to explain to Kogites why he had to conduct the swearing-in ceremony of the Deputy Governor under a secret cover in his sitting room rather than the Confluence Stadium or any other open place. The arrogance of Alhaji Bello has also been visibly demonstrated by his decision to block the road that passes by his personal residence beside the Government House, Lokoja, thereby causing  pains and inconveniences and logjam for road users.

    The governor has exhibited ignorance of the clear provisions of the constitution. This has led him to commit unconstitutional acts and impeachable offences. He does not appear to have knowledge of the limits of his powers as a governor. He imagines that he has absolute and unfettered powers to do anything he wants. He has dissolved the Local Government commission without regard to the fact that it is unconstitutional to do so except at the expiration of its stated term. He abrogated the joint account of Local Government Councils and the State without repealing the law establishing it. He has issued directives to Universal Basic Education and Pension Bureau contrary to the extant laws and rules guiding them.

    Alhaji Bello also announced that he had granted autonomy to the local government councils, apparently, without any understanding of the implications of such a fundamental policy decision. He places no structure on the ground either by legislation or guidelines upon which such autonomy can operate. It is a blanket power conferred on the local government council chairmen to conduct the affairs of their councils as they desire. Finances and the staff salaries and welfare of the local government councils are now at the whims of the council chairmen. Indeed, the crucial question agitating the minds of right-thinking Kogites is whether or not local government autonomy can be granted by mere irrational verbal pronouncement of a governor without any legislative or constitutional backing. Given the penchant of the governor at reversing himself, it will not be surprising to hear, in the next few days, that he has reversed the decision again. One interesting aspect of the autonomy granted the council chairman is the fact that few days after the announcement of the granting of the so-called autonomy, the Governor himself proceeded to suspend all the Directors of Local Governments (DLGS) and cashiers for one month without consulting the chairmen. Right now, all permanent secretaries in the state civil service, directors of finance, deputy accountant-general and staff of accounts sections of all ministries and parastatals are being placed on one-month compulsory leave.

    His hatred for the Okuns is brewing and manifesting. He ensured that his cronies who impeached the Speaker did not give the slot to an Okun man even when it was zoned to the western Senatorial District. He also ensured that a Lokoja man got it. Furthermore, he ensured that an Okun man who was the deputy accountant general did not act for the accountant-general when the latter was sacked. He is said to be planning to bring an Ebira from Lagos to be the accountant-general of the state, a civil service position.

    Right now, Kogi State is in the hands of two amateurs and inexperienced administrators. Yahaya Bello, the Governor, and Edward Onoja, the Chief of Staff, who have demonstrated lack of capacity in governance and administration. Both of them have no political or administrative pedigree and acumen. Alhaji Bello served as civil servant at the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission for only twelve years. He never became a director to direct any affair. He is today a multi-billionaire. Edward Onoja worked in the banking system for few years before he was eased out. Both of them, regrettably, are calling the shots in Kogi courtesy of INEC’s manipulations against the will of the people of Kogi State, freely expressed at a peacefully conducted election of 21st November 2015 where nobody complained of any malpractice. Until the Tribunal rules, the absurdities in Kogi are bound to continue. Hopefully, this won’t be long.

     

    • Adeola writes from Lokoja
  • PDP gets a lifeline

    PDP gets a lifeline

    If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had lost the election lawsuits over the two oil-rich states of Akwa Ibom and Rivers, they would have found it difficult to shoulder on. The All Progressives Congress (APC), despite grumbling over their unexpected losses in the ‘rich states’, could survive economically and politically. The opposition party, apparently feeling saddled with some 13 ‘ordinary’ states, most of them without too much electoral significance, would on the other hand have been filled with dread of how to approach the 2019 polls with weakened hands. They have all of the South-South states minus Edo, and all but two of the Southeast states, but they would have derived little comfort in that regional contiguousness if fortune had not also recently smiled on them. Their plight in the north of the Rivers Niger and Benue is even much worse. They were thrown out of the Northeast almost entirely but for Gombe and Taraba, and they do not fare better in the Northwest except for the oasis of Kebbi. In the North-Central, they are non-existent.

    Until the Supreme Court gave judgement in the Rivers and Akwa Ibom election disputes, the PDP was actually in danger of fizzling out. The tribunal and the Appeal Court had earlier given judgement in both cases in favour of the APC, and it seemed nothing on earth short of judicial robbery could reverse the trend. Had the PDP ended up losing the two oil-rich states, they would have been left with not only 11 ‘ordinary’ states, but the ruling party would have got a significant toehold in the South-South and diffused the political contiguousness which the opposition was beginning to revel in and eager to leverage on. There was of course a sense in which the APC felt it had the advantage in Akwa Ibom and Rivers, especially in the judicial sense. It didn’t seem the election was held at all in many parts of the two states, and where they were held, they were thought to have been conducted in an atmosphere of unremitting violence. That the APC lost at the apex court is not because the public didn’t get a general sense of non-compliance with electoral rules, but because the party couldn’t prove its case.

    The PDP victory in the two South-South states will go on to help the opposition party consolidate in that region. They will perform much better in the coming rerun elections than they would otherwise be capable of had they lost at the apex court. They will now have the resources to entice voters, defy the ruling APC in Abuja and weaken the resolve of those who were, until the Supreme Court judgement, fired up to bury the PDP. Having successfully fought the Bayelsa poll, and now feeling the siege has been lifted, they will give the APC more than a passing headache in the coming Edo and Ondo governorship elections. The APC may get its candidature politics right this time in Ondo, but no one can guarantee they will get it right in Edo. Henceforth, everywhere the APC makes a mistake in choosing its candidates, the PDP will loom over them like a spectre to inflict the most damage.

    The PDP has been given a lifeline, as it were, by the Supreme Court. They may not deserve it, but there is little legal arguments anyone can summon to controvert the apex court decisions on all the states where judgements have been given. At any rate, it is futile, even for those seeking some kind of unprecedented probe of the judgements. It is now left for the embattled opposition party to utilise the lifeline in an appropriate manner, assuming they have the will and the discipline. Nothing is certain, however. The lifeline will help them to find an ideology (whether culture-based or politics-based) around which to coalesce their partisan political undertaking. Though their son, ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, ruled the country poorly, somehow they still feel a sense of loyalty to him. Together with the Southeast, as the boxed article below indicates, the South-South’s cultural and political elders may attempt to redress their alienation by huddling together for self-preservation.

    The PDP is fortunate that the APC is unable to deliver the killer blow. The ruling party does not appear to have the cohesion and raison d’etre needed to fuse together its legacy parties and position their party at the core of Nigeria’s ambitions. They have also been unable to mobilise the country behind them, and have advanced no strategy to woo the Southeast and the South-South. Ideologically, even the Southwest, which was dragged screaming and kicking into the APC column, has felt somewhat distant and uncomfortable. But for the PDP to exploit these weaknesses, they will have to do the unimaginable. The country needs a vibrant opposition party, as this column has argued repeatedly in his dismissal of APC’s hubris and awkwardness. That need for a virile opposition will, however, have to be nurtured by the PDP itself. They still live in denial of the effects of the anti-graft war on their party and leadership. Too many of their leaders were sucked into the vortex of corruption under Dr Jonathan. Rather than purge that leadership and enthrone credible and charismatic replacements, they have dithered and given the impression they would hang in there and challenge the anti-graft agencies in court. No such challenge can be successful. The scale of the stealing is unbearably and unthinkably huge. If it is to stand any chance of making impact in the coming polls, the PDP must urgently begin the process of atonement, reform, reorganisation and recreation.

    This column does not submit to the dismissive characterisation of the PDP as an irredeemably hopeless or dying party. The party can be reformed if those who soiled their hands in corrupt practices, some of whom are yet to be unmasked, are sidelined and defanged. Many of their leaders are also fickle. The party needs to winnow its leadership to get rid of the tainted. Then they must think futuristically of the kind of alliances and amalgamation they would need to make a significant impact in the years ahead. At the moment, no such leaders are in sight in the party, and the ongoing efforts to secure a new Board of Trustees (BoT) and emplace a new party executive may not be more than a stop-gap measure, given their pussyfooting and handwringing. If it is any consolation to the PDP, they must also understand that the APC itself is work in progress. The ruling party is still an unstable amalgam, and its leaders, not to say its members in government from top to bottom, are really not democrats or ideologues, or even visionaries. They subscribe to nearly the same political opportunism and proclivity for institution-bashing as the PDP, if not worse.

    The PDP fears that the APC’s anti-graft war may consume opposition leaders. They are right. That is precisely why the party needs new leaders. They have also suggested that the anti-graft war is selective. There is little evidence to support that defensive posturing. What the opposition should fear is that public support for President Buhari’s anti-graft war may in fact translate into good governance and abundant life for the people. That possibility exists, though it is by no means certain. But even if the new government were to rule well, it still does not make it invincible. There are many causes around which a revamped PDP can coalesce. One of these is the current government’s paranoid view of the judiciary, in which lawyers and judges are sweepingly dismissed as pro-corruption agents and saboteurs. The country needs the opposition to remind everyone of many things, among them how the Jonathan government treated the judiciary with much more restraint and better understanding than how former soldier and ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo abused the courts, albeit without attaining the excesses of the present government.