The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Upping the ante in IPOB/MASSOB crisis

    Upping the ante in IPOB/MASSOB crisis

    After the death of nine people, five of whom were members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) demanding the release of Nnamdi Kanu, one of their leaders, the police have begun to talk tough. Most of the dead were killed by soldiers forcefully removing barricades mounted by the protesters on the Niger Bridge in Onitsha. The police in fact lost one of their own. Shooting unarmed protesters of course has its own legal implication, and the shooting itself may yet be investigated, though justice may be delayed. Yet, the language issuing from the mouths of security agents is not different from the one coming from the protesters, only that the protesters have spoken violence and so far used none. Has the country learnt any lesson from the Boko Haram insurgency? Perhaps not.

    A few weeks ago, this column suggested that rather than threaten fire and brimstone, the federal government should design brilliant and ingenious way of engaging the IPOB/MASSOB protesters. But apparently no one is thinking for the government. Everyone is relying on force and talking of the need to crush the protesters. The column had warned that in the modern era, few secessionists embrace direct or conventional war. The vogue is asymmetric war. If the IPOB/MASSOB campaigners were to embrace violence, they would not opt for conventional tactics; and with an unmanageable insurgency in the Northeast, the crisis could easily become messy and bloody. The wise option for the government, as it was suggested in this place, is to find accommodation with IPOB/MASSOB on a realistic and sustainable basis.

    No matter the amount of force applied, the problem will not go away. It can only get worse. Whether Southeast leaders support or deny IPOB/MASSOB is hardly the point. And whether sometime in the future an Igbo man becomes president hardly also matters. After all, Boko Haram did not regard the presidency of the late ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua, nor has it responded to that of the ascetic President Buhari. The government must therefore challenge itself to come up with a solution. As an analyst said recently, the crisis threatening to fester in the Southeast is partly due to the fact that there was no closure to the Nigerian civil war. The issues that led to the war, which issues have led to periodic eruptions all over the country, have not been addressed in any systematic or scientific fashion. There is no sense of national identity, and no lodestar around which the various ethnic and religious groups can coalesce. Nor is the country structured in such way as to eliminate or considerably attenuate political, cultural and religious frictions. Until these are done, the problem will both endure and worsen.

    By shooting unarmed protesters, the first fateful step may already have been taken in aggravating the IPOB/MASSOB crisis. If the Buhari presidency is smart as his supporters say, it will pause for some deep reflections. Campaigning on the pages of newspapers or in the media against the promoters of Biafra will achieve nothing. Even if two-thirds of the Southeast should repudiate the Biafra idea, it would profit nothing. All it takes for this kind of crisis to assume apocalyptic proportions is just for a few dedicated martyrs to offer their lives and time to prosecute the cause. And all it takes for the matter to explode out of hand is for the government to falsely believe that it has the security apparatus to check the crisis. It does not have the resources, and it is already stretched thin by Boko Haram.

    The Buhari presidency must act now while it still has the initiative. He has been accused of not really having an economic vision; at least he has not given indication he has any beyond his anti-corruption war and his idiosyncratic asceticism. And he has also been accused of not having a vision for a new social order, a vision that comes only from inside of him. It can’t be administered from outside, and cannot be taught. Worse, now, he is been accused of not having a political vision, just as ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not have one until in desperation he concocted one half-heartedly in the closing months of his presidency. Whether it can be taught or developed from within him, President Buhari has only a little time to enunciate a political vision for Nigeria. It is that vision that will inform how he responds to the Biafra crisis and other crises waiting in the wings to erupt like a volcano.

  • Dasukigate and other affairs

    For a little while longer, Nigerians will be entertained by stories of President Buhari’s anti-corruption war. There is little else, regrettably. Whatever news will come from the economic front will in the near term be about factory closures, layoffs, unavailable foreign exchange, huge inventory, and generally sad and depressing news. Perhaps when the ministers finally settle down, some of them deployed in ministries they despise, they will give Nigerians sweet bones to chew. So far, however, the diet is a simple, single one: anti-corruption, which is supposedly all-important and all-embracing.

    At the centre of that news is Col Sambo Dasuki (retd.), the cancer-stricken former National Security Adviser (NSA). He had previously been interrogated for arms possession and money laundering, and then charged in court. But he was granted bail to attend to his health in a foreign country. Almost immediately, he was blocked from traveling in what some PDP faithful described as persecution, and then later rearrested and again interrogated. This second round of investigation and interrogation has allegedly produced startling facts about how the treasury was looted via an arms deal totalling over $2bn. More disclosures are on the way.

    As a recent ill-motivated Washington Times article written by Bruce Fein on November 18 shows, the Buhari presidency must nonetheless be wary of fighting the anti-corruption war in such a way as to lose both the domestic and international publics. It is undisputable that the scale of the thievery undertaken by some former government officials is staggering, with for instance some N2.1bn paid to a television mogul for publicity. There is therefore need for full investigations and where necessary prosecution. But it is also time for the government to mind the way the war is being waged as well as begin urgently to focus on the other affairs of the country. The country’s ailing economy and society cannot be put on hold because corruption is being fought.

  • Kogi poll: INEC, APC flounder

    Kogi poll: INEC, APC flounder

    After delivering a devastating message on politics and politicians two Saturdays ago, Kogi State voters were expected to follow through with a tutorial to the country on how best to manage an electoral conundrum consequent upon both the death of one of the candidates in the election and lack of constitutional clarity. Alas, just when it mattered most, they wilted. But whether the wilting was caused by a lack of political depth or lack of principles is hard to say at the moment. By a substantial margin of 240,867 votes to 199,514 votes, the Kogi electorate had given the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket of Abubakar Audu and his running mate, Abiodun Faleke, a commanding lead over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket of Governor Idris Wada and his deputy, Yomi Awoniyi. Some 41,300 votes were said to be outstanding, nearly half of which were cancelled or unlawful votes that had no business being regarded as outstanding. The rest of the votes had not been cast at all. Out of the 41,300 votes potentially left to be cast, sources within INEC had indicated that approximately 25,000 were backed by permanent voter cards (PVCs).

    By any mathematical proposition, the real (as opposed to the registered voters) outstanding votes could not exceed the number of PVCs collected in the 91 polling units spread across some 18 local government areas of the state. But it was this elementary and unvarnished fact that INEC mystified to declare the Kogi governorship election of November 21 inconclusive. It was this electoral shenanigan that also put the otherwise thoughtful APC at sixes and sevens, its thinking process paralysed. And it was this bald reasoning incorrectly deduced from uncomplicated facts and figures that the state’s ethnic groups and senatorial districts seized upon to return to their atavistic past.

    Kogi State has sadly become a riddle. It defied all speculations, as this column hoped and foretold, to vote Prince Audu, using their head rather than their heart. The PDP reminded the electorate that Prince Audu was corrupt, having been dragged by the EFCC to court for allegedly embezzling or misappropriating more than N10bn of the about N20bn the state collected as statutory allocation in his four years in office. But Kogites ignored the rambling narratives of the PDP and the shoddiness of the EFCC, recalling in contrast that the two PDP governments which succeeded Prince Audu in 2003 to 2015 collected more than N500bn and had nothing to show for it. President Muhammadu Buhari had also remorselessly declined to attend the campaign rallies of the APC in both Okene town and Lokoja. But Kogites simply sneered at the hidden meaning of the president’s absence, and embraced both Prince Audu and his party the more. Then many armchair commentators and analysts finally weighed in and without real evidence predicted that either Prince Audu would lose or the election would be too close to call. This column wondered where they got their facts, for the objective reality on the ground favoured Prince Audu and Hon Faleke by an undisputed margin.

    In the end, the APC ticket swept the poll taking 16 local government areas to PDP’s five. Its lead, at the time INEC declared the election inconclusive, was unassailable and incontestable. INEC’s decision to hold a supplementary election and accept a substitute APC candidate are gratuitous and legally and logically unsustainable. INEC, speaking in sync with the Attorney-General, Abubakar Malami, ordered a supplementary election in the affected 91 polling units for December 5, and the replacement of the late Prince Audu. In their opinion, though the law does not explicitly provide for this scenario, an extrapolation had to be done to solve the exigent riddle. Banking on the correctness of the INEC and AGF positions, Prince Audu’s political associates from Kogi East senatorial district indicated unanimously that they would want the APC to allow Prince Audu’s son, Mohammed, a barrister, to replace the late candidate. They offered no precedence, nor suggested why they thought such monarchical disposition would bode well for a state like Kogi brimming with experienced and ambitious politicians across all political parties and from all senatorial districts, including Prince Audu’s Kogi East. If the APC should decline to put the younger Audu forward, as indeed it has done, then whoever wins the final ballot would be impeached, they threatened.

    Unprincipled and vacillating, Kogi PDP leaders have also seized upon INEC’s missteps to lampoon both INEC and the AGF, and have called for INEC to declare Governor Wada winner in the absence of Prince Audu. By their strange logic and science, they have delinked Hon. Faleke from the APC ticket. Their strange knowledge of the law in the PDP does not debar them from the sinister request of openly and grotesquely undermining the law and opening themselves to general ridicule. Kogi East, which produced Prince Audu, is also anxious to sustain their hegemony rather than recognise the inviolability of the shifting dynamics of Kogi’s electoral politics.

    However, of all the subterfuges that followed the death of Prince Audu and INEC’s declaration of the election as inconclusive, the most baffling comes from the APC itself. The party was expected to recognise clearly the victory the Audu/Faleke ticket afforded it. It was also expected to defend the victory and, in line with the relevant provisions of the law, anchor a campaign to compel INEC to declare the election conclusive, resist candidate substitution (with the attendant implication that someone else could unlawfully inherit the APC votes), and champion the moral rebirth of the country by using the Kogi impasse to sanitise the crass ethnocentrism, sectarianism and troubling power games inundating and undermining the peace and stability of Nigeria. Instead, the party paradoxically appeared eager to fritter the hard-won victory of November 21, and more enthusiastically pander to primordial politics. They have settled for Yahaya Bello, who was runner-up to Prince Audu in the state’s governorship primary. It unfathomably makes sense to the deep minds of the APC that a stranger to the Audu/Faleke ticket would be made to benefit from the electoral success of November 21 and 22. Mr Bello, like the Speaker of the House of Assembly and the Chief Justice, are Ebira from Kogi Central, the Igala’s worst enemies.

    The APC’s National Working Committee (NWC) is reportedly bitterly divided over the Kogi stalemate, and though it finally but heedlessly settled for Mr Bello as the substitute candidate, that division will not only refuse to abate, it is an ugly indication of the fissures, riotous politics and volatile fault lines in the ruling party. APC, it is clear, is not what it is cracked up to be. Judging from the crises that have engulfed it since May when it took office in Abuja, it appears to lack discipline, cohesion, character, and now reason. Having got off on the wrong foot nationally, and in the process trivialised governance, the party does not appear to possess the integrity and sound judgement necessary to build a great and enduring party, nor to rule a complex and increasingly challenged country. Its reasoning on the Kogi stalemate is horrifying and appalling. If they are unable to inspire the country by a brilliant solution to the Kogi crisis, how can they be trusted to midwife real and visionary change? How can they be relied upon to build a new social and political order for the country? Given their amateurish approach to the Kogi crisis, and the elevation of intra-party competition above justice and fairness, perhaps with an eye on 2019, could the country expect them to tackle major political and legal challenges with fortitude, dispassion and brilliance? On the Kogi crisis, the APC has behaved appallingly by turning itself into a party without depth, without reason, without a core, and without a soul. It needs to urgently rediscover itself if it is not to self-destruct, if it is to arrest the imminent disintegration the struggle for power within its ranks is making inevitable.

    The balance of opinion and the weight of informed legal interventions in the Kogi impasse are decidedly in favour of enabling Hon Faleke to embody the victory wrought by the APC two Saturdays ago, as the two boxes below show. If INEC will not reverse itself but would prefer the courts to adjudicate, the APC must be clear-headed enough not to submit to the messy ethnocentrism and sectarianism complicating the Kogi stalemate. Grafting Mr Bello from Kogi Central onto the APC governorship ticket, as they have done, is legally and morally unsustainable and certain to complicate the state’s political dynamics as well as exacerbate the grief of Kogi East. It is now certain that the frustrations of those who looked up to the APC for real change are set to grow, compounded by the party’s dithering at the national level, the amateurishness it is manifesting in Kogi, and the obvious lack of motivation, purpose, direction and grit evident in its actions so far. More and more, the electorate will begin to fear that nothing is holding the APC’s centre together, that it is drifting, and that it may end up a flash in the pan. It may be okay to see and worry about the intensity of the Kogi crisis; but it is even more apposite to see the Kogi stalemate as a barometer of the weaknesses and lack of cohesiveness of the APC, and of the impending disaster staring the party in the face.

  • Wole Olanipekun writes INEC on the conundrum

    Wole Olanipekun writes INEC on the conundrum

    …(I) The election to the office of Governor is regulated by sections 178 and 179 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), while nomination to the office is regulated by section 187 of the same Constitution. Our client believes that election to the office of Governor of Kogi State had been conducted and completed in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution…With much respect to INEC under your very distinguished chairmanship, the reasons given by (NEC for declaring the election as inconclusive are alien to the Constitution and, therefore, unconstitutional. With further respect to INEC, cancellation of election results by it cannot be a ground for declaring any election as inconclusive. INEC is enjoined to declare a winner of an election based on lawful votes cast. Thus, the cancelled results by INEC, for whatever reasons, and assuming without conceding that INEC could legitimately cancel such results, amount to unlawful votes. In effect, INEC cannot declare a well conducted election as inconclusive based on unlawful votes…

    (II) May we draw Mr. Chairman’s attention to the clear and mandatory provision of section 68(1)(c) of the Electoral Act to the effect that any result declared by Returning Officer shall be final and binding, and can only be reviewed or upturned by an Election Tribunal. In effect, the results already announced by INEC are binding, not only on all the parties, but also on INEC itself. We want to believe that INEC is not unaware of binding decisions of our appellate courts on this issue. Furthermore, by the provision of section 181 (1) of the Constitution, our client, who was the deputy governorship candidate or the associate of Prince Abubakar Audu at the already concluded election constitutionally and automatically becomes the governor-elect of the State. With much respect, INEC has no discretion in this matter. May we advise, most humbly, that INEC should not confuse this situation with what is intended in section 33 of the Electoral Act because the situation on ground has nothing to do with changing or substitution of the name of a candidate before election. In fairness to INEC, it had already announced the results of the election, and, as at the time it so did, it honestly claimed ignorance of the death of Prince Abubakar Audu.

    (III) In law and logic, no new candidate can inherit or be a beneficiary of the votes already cast, counted and declared by INEC before that candidate was nominated and purportedly sponsored. Assuming without conceding that INEC is even right to order a supplementary election, the votes already cast, counted and declared on Saturday and Sunday, 21st and 22nd November, 2015 were votes for the joint constitutional ticket of Prince Abubakar Audu and our client. Therefore, no new or ‘supplementary’ candidate can hijack, aggregate, appropriate or inherit the said votes. Assuming further, without conceding, that supplementary election in 91 polling units can hold as being suggested by INEC, it is our client who should be the automatic candidate of the party, since APC cannot conduct primary election for the supplementary election in 91 polling units…

     

    Excerpted from Chief Wole Olanipekun’s letter on behalf of Hon. Faleke to INEC chairman

  • Femi Falana on the stalemate

    Femi Falana on the stalemate

    …Notwithstanding that there is no provision in the law for the death of a candidate in the middle of an election; the INEC is not totally helpless in the circumstance. Having declared the election inconclusive, the INEC is duty bound to conclude the election within seven days in line with Section 179 of the Constitution. It is submitted that once the results of an election have been declared, whether conclusive or not, the INEC has no power to cancel same, as the power to cancel any result so declared is vested exclusively in the governorship election petition tribunal. As the APC cannot be allowed to substitute or replace the nomination of Mr. Audu at this stage of the electoral process, the INEC is legally bound to conclude the exercise. The question of falling back on the results of the primary election conducted by the APC does not arise as it conflicts with section 179 of the Constitution…

    The 20th amendment to the United States’ Constitution is in pari materia with Section 181 of the Nigerian Constitution as it allows a vice president-elect to become President if the president-elect dies before inauguration…

    In  relying  on the  US experience the INEC is urged to base its decision of the Supreme Court in the case of  Amaechi v INEC (2008) 10 W.R.N. 1, where it was held that elections are won by political parties which sponsored  candidates . Since the APC which sponsored the late Prince Audu  is deemed to have led the PDP by 41,300 votes there is no legal basis for cancelling the results of the election as both the party and the PDP are competent to take part in the supplementary  election to be conducted by the INEC. In other words, the INEC is not legally disabled from concluding the governorship election notwithstanding the unfortunate death of the APC governorship candidate.

    Since, the governorship and deputy-governorship candidates of the APC jointly contested the election pursuant to section 187 of the Constitution, the votes scored by the party in the inconclusive election remain intact and untainted…

     

    Excerpted from Femi Falana’s piece on the subject matter

  • Biafra’s rising stridency

    Biafra’s rising stridency

    From its beginnings in 1999 when the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) embodied its goals, and now when the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has given it added vibrancy and renewal, the Biafra concept has refused to be a passing fancy. It is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Both MASSOB and IPOB, sometimes now used interchangeably because their goals converge, are a recrudescence of an idea that took root in 1966, was romanticised in the sanguinary accounts of epic battles between 1967 and 1970 during the civil war, and continues to achieve striking relevance because of the dire failings of an unstructured and distorted federation. Since 2005 when Ralph Uwazuruike gave MASSOB some ideological and administrative oomph, and since early this year when Nnamdi Kanu’s Voice of Biafra Radio gave IPOB resonance and poignancy, the Biafra idea has steadily grown in scope and appeal in the hearts of southeasterners. Nigerians and their leaders, including many sceptical Southeast opponents of the idea, are mistaken to think the idea will suddenly dissipate because it is denounced or repressed by force.

    Speaking at the launching of the 2016 Armed Forces Remembrance Emblem at the Presidential Villa last Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari, who has not really addressed the ferment in the Southeast, observed that: “Our nation has recently celebrated 55 years of political independence and continues to remain as one indivisible entity despite several grievous challenges. Since independence, Nigeria has witnessed a lot of internal strife, survived a civil war and has remained united. This feat achieved by the country is an eloquent testimony to the determination of our citizens to remain as one people.” This is perhaps his first real attempt to speak to the problem that is gradually assuming a disturbing dimension. Many southeasterners themselves are ambivalent over the Biafra idea. Biafra died with Emeka Ojukwu, argue some. Yet others suggest that the economic imperatives of Nigeria and the so-called Biafra, not to say the peculiar map and demographics of the country, make the idea unattractive.

    Governors of the Southeast have been more hesitant taking a position. As elected leaders of the region, they bear the brunt of the disruptions and agitations for Biafra. Their first major attempt to address the matter was inconclusive. They will be reconvening to examine the matter more carefully, perhaps with more tact, and will doubtless take a stand sooner or later. The region’s cultural leaders have also been full of vacillation. They are sensitive about the yearnings and aspirations of Biafra’s advocates and their own relevance as traditional and social leaders of the region. They will see which way the cats are jumping before they take a more definitive position. Ohaneze Ndigbo has denounced the Biafra idea as impracticable and useless, hinging its position inelegantly on a troubling materialistic view of Igbo destiny. But it acknowledges that Southeast grievances are real and legitimate. Sundry media commentators have also equally been less squeamish in taking a position. From the safety of their media establishments and columns, some have denounced Biafra as anachronistic, and others have suggested that the federal government must engage Biafra advocates to resolve the contentious issues and controversies predisposing the region to centrifugal tendencies.

    Security and law enforcement agencies have on their own been very predictable. The police see the matter strictly as one of law and order, leading to the shooting or detention of some Biafra advocates during marches. The Department of State Service (DSS) has similarly been stereotypical in its approach. The army inexplicably speaks thunder, almost as if its officers forget the beginnings and the trajectories of the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast and how difficult it has been to combat the menace. Army commanders, who still can’t get military rule out of their veins, have spoken of their readiness to crush the separatist tendencies of Biafra’s advocates once the order is given. Do they know the implication of what they are saying? Have they done their study to find out whether once military muscle is applied, the problem would invariably yield to superior force? Have they studied contemporary military campaigns such as the United States’ Iraq War, the Syrian War, Afghanistan War, and many others which offers ample examples to militaries to look beyond the punch they pack?

    The restiveness in the Southeast is real and growing. There is nothing puzzling about it. But so far, neither the government nor the security agencies have shown any modicum of understanding of the Biafra phenomenon and what it presages. Worse, given the way they speak and the approach they have taken, it is unlikely they will view the problem with the wisdom and surefootedness needed to tackle it. Since the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo, right through those of Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, the Biafra crisis has steadily grown in scope and worsened in temper. It would not matter whether the federal government seems favourable to the Southeast, the Biafra idea will grow in stridency. And if not Biafra, then other groups, whether Boko Haram or a hypothetical Yoruba Liberation Group. The reason is clear. Youths are unemployed and drifting, and a vast majority of Nigerians are frustrated and alienated.

    Nor would it matter just how much force is applied to check the crisis. The logic and the environmental elements that feed it are expanding; and as long as the crisis remains unattended to, it will grow more menacing. It is surprising that the dithering and foolishness that enabled Boko Haram to fester are being replicated in the Southeast. Many years back, the federal government was either ignorant of the forces that birthed and fed Boko Haram or it was simply careless. Now they are displaying even worse ignorance and carelessness. Somehow, Nigerian leaders and many others, including some southeasterners, seem to believe that Biafra is nothing but a romantic and nostalgic idea. They don’t think it is a manifestation of deeper fissures in the country’s political tectonic. They think a decisive application of force, using what the army elegantly calls its rules of engagement, would be effective. Said the General Officer Commanding 81 Division, Major General Isido Edet: “It is in the public domain that certain elements are agitating for secession, though they have been counselled by elder statesmen that such exercise is not for the good of Nigerians  because we have gone through that lane before…The Nigerian Army would like to send an unequivocal warning to all and sundry, more specifically, to all those threatening and agitating for the dismemberment of the country, those committing treasonable felony and arson as well as wanton destruction of lives and property that once the army is deployed, we shall apply ROE to the letter.” The officers seem to forget that this is the age of asymmetrical war, wars without borders, wars most armies are unprepared and poorly equipped to fight, wars in which territories reclaimed by regular armies cannot be held in the face of radicalised and suicidal militants. Had the Nigerian civil war been fought today, the outcome would probably have been different.

    President Buhari should get serious about tackling the Biafra matter. And the army should keep quiet, await orders, refrain from offering unsolicited public opinion on critical issues, and avoid fouling the polity with superfluous display of valour. Whether the government likes it or not, Biafra and other separatist ideas will not fizzle out until they are scrupulously and comprehensively addressed. Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State gave probably the best indication of what needs to be done to tackle the problem. At a lecture in Abuja last week, the governor suggested: “There is a major issue that we must address urgently in Nigeria, and that is the issue of unity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Today, I must say that the only force holding Nigeria is God because all the qualities and qualifications of nations that have broken, all of them are here, and all the characteristics of a broken nation are in Nigeria.” Two observations flow from the governor’s point of view.

    One, Biafra and similar separatist tendencies flow from a lack of national identity. No government since independence has been able to unite Nigerians around a set of national values, principles and ambitions to give the country a sense of being and purpose. The constant romance with the so-called national orientation movement and ethical revolution mantra have proved wasteful, useless, sentimental and irrelevant. Right from its founding constitution as authored by a set of brilliant and philosophical leaders, the United States had envisioned a great and powerful nation, one that would assume regional and global leadership based on the universality and applicability of the principles and values it espouses. Since no leader can give what he doesn’t have, it is a ringing indictment that the absence of national guiding ethic and ambition reflects the intellectual and philosophical poverty of Nigerian leaders. The undisputable fact is that no Nigerian leader, from Balewa to the present, has ennobled the office they so grandly and garishly occupied. In consequence, the Igbo gravitate strongly around the powerful cultural values of their founding and metamorphosis; and the Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani and other ethnic groups yield supinely to their own worldviews and historical antecedents. Until Nigerian leaders can distill from their country’s national history a lofty and unifying perspective, and then imbue it with a great and robust essence and ambition, the country will continue to gravitate towards its centrifugal core. How the Nigerian Army, despite their study of great military empire builders such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great and Suleyman the Magnificent can imagine that the application of force will replace a vacuous and brittle core is hard to fathom. Can force replace the philosophical and existential magnet around which a country should successfully and enduringly coalesce?

    Two, as Gov Okorocha suggested, and as many other patriots have argued, Nigeria was founded on a poor, untenable and conflictive foundation. That foundation needs to be broken down and rebuilt. Biafra agitators are merely reminding the nation of the responsibility it has shirked for a long time. If that responsibility is not embraced now, the consequences will indeed be grave and unmanageable. Past leaders have played ducks and drakes with the national emotions. Whether it was the hedonistic Sani Abacha, or the sanctimonious Olusegun Obasanjo, or the experimentalist Ibrahim Babangida, or the opportunistic Goodluck Jonathan, none of these former leaders had altruistically attempted to restructure the country on the nationalistic foundations that conduce to a successful, united, modern, stable and prosperous nation-state.

    President Buhari will have to face the responsibility of political restructuring squarely if he is not to lose the initiative and the little momentum triggered by his ascendancy. The problem of the country is not primarily corruption which needs integrity and honesty to resolve. The problem, contrary to the president’s obsession, is largely the constitutional enthronement of an unworkable and highly flawed federation. With many national conferences already held over the decades, it may be time to take a look again to synthesize the various reports. This is necessary in order to find a workable and inspiring mean strong and sensible enough to be placed before a constituent assembly and perhaps for a referendum. Above all, this vital revolutionary change must be anchored on the president’s own political vision. For if he does not have a deep appreciation and conviction of the problem, and does not believe in his panaceas and vision for Nigeria, how can he drive the process wholeheartedly? The problem, it must be reiterated, is not whether the Igbo can survive as an independent and landlocked nation with a restrictive geographical space, as some have rightly drawn attention to. The dominant issue is that without a consensual political and economic federalism that can endure far into the future, Nigeria’s ethnic groups will continue to view irredentism as a practicable and beguiling prospect.

    Indeed, the great question is whether President Buhari, whose perspectives on economic and political issues need depth, tremendous broadening and harmonisation, can take the bold and revolutionary step to redraw Nigeria’s internal boundaries, fine-tune its demographics into coherent and harmonious parts, and rework its internal dynamics essentially along linguistic lines. The task is huge, and the risk manifold. If he fails, or if by commission or omission he embraces military application of force, the consequences may be far graver and more complicated than he imagines. The time is short, and the leeway to take bold steps is getting constricted. Now is the time for President Buhari to forswear his instinctive conservatism and hesitations and bravely and intelligently break the mould. After all, Nigeria’s present boundaries were drawn a little over a century ago. There is nothing that says certain forces cannot be unleashed to redraw it sooner or later in ways no one has contemplated.

  • Buhari’s round pegs

    Buhari’s round pegs

    Nearly six months after assuming office, President Muhammadu Buhari has finally assigned portfolios to his ministers. The universal impression is that the cabinet is star-studded and capable of delivering on the programmes and policies of the All Progressives Congress (APC). With a hint of immodesty, the president also enthusiastically indicated how he avoided the mistakes of his predecessors, consulted widely, and deftly put round pegs in round holes. Polemically, experts may question the integrity of his ‘wide consultations’ and the substance of who and what constitute round pegs and round holes. But given public perception of his assignation of portfolios, not to talk of the technocratic zeal of the ministers, Nigerians appear inspired, if not relieved, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

    President Buhari is obviously a late bloomer. From the early months of his presidency when he described federal ministers as noisemakers, and permanent secretaries as the real engine of government, he has quietly given way to disillusionment with the private but outlandish trust he reposed in top civil servants, some of whom have just been sacked and are awaiting prosecution. He seems to have now embraced an epiphanic belief in the role and attributes of federal ministers. More, given the manner he has assigned portfolios and the way he romanticises his cabinet, he even seems to believe rather immoderately that ministers are the lodestar of his government, upon whose shoulders the success or failure of his administration is expected to rest. His conversion is rapid and convincing. He will hope his trust in the men he has appointed is not misplaced or betrayed.

    Nigerians will have to become accustomed to their president’s speed. He has taken all of six months to get so far. He will take many more months to accomplish other yet weightier things, the most crucial of which is the articulation of a vision, not programmes, for the country. This vision is expected to be synthesised from his party’s manifesto or road map, and will serve as the main anchor to hold together the multifarious visions his ministers will articulate in their ministries. The body of ministers functioning as one can, however, neither conceptualise nor articulate this vision, though they may provide its building blocks and give a concrete feel to it. Only the president can. Until that vision is articulated and the country buys into it, whatever success the president achieves may not transcend the commonplaceness evident in many stable and even developed countries. That commonplaceness may be good enough for Nigerians, given their antecedents and sufferings, and even lower expectations. But for any achievement to rise to the grand and soaring level of legacy, a great vision must help to carve a niche for the country and embody the collective sacrifices and yearnings of the people.

    Six months of methodicalness have brought Nigeria to the point where President Buhari has constituted a cabinet. He has done well, and he has carried out his task admirably, albeit slowly. But the time lag may evince something much deeper than just pawky caution. It may be indicative of the disparateness of the president’s thoughts, his hesitations, his undecipherable priorities, and his lack of definable and transcendental vision. While it is good and desirable to run a country where corruption is low, where infrastructure is great, where security is sound and the country stable and peaceful, it is nothing exactly remarkable. If care is not taken, Nigeria under President Buhari may follow this trajectory. But if he appreciates that these achievements are nothing but stepping stones to a greater destination, and that the time is now to chart that almost intangible and ethereal destination, only then can it be said the president has an intuitive grasp of nationhood, that he has been to the mountaintop, and that he possesses a metaphysical connection to that great destination.

    However, on the surface, the cabinet and portfolios will be criticised for their structure and suppositions, whether intended or not. Neither the North nor the Southwest can complain. Both have been empowered and compensated. By bestowing bureaucratic power on the Southwest, the president seems to have completely disemboweled the other faction of the Yoruba elite which embraced mainstreaming during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. But either by design or accident, the president also seems to be preparing to invoke a new power elite in the zone more amenable to him, distinctly and even exclusively pro-Buhari, an organised army to be deployed for reelection and other purposes in 2019 or any other time. The history and political culture of the Southwest, however, make that latter proposition very troubling, unstable and often unworkable.

    At another general level, deliberately or inadvertently, President Buhari also seems by his cabinet and their portfolios to have bifurcated the country into two dominant power equations: the North to man the real but unseen power base of the nation, and the Southwest to man the bureaucracy; the former to inspire the levers of power, and the other to inspire the execution of programmes and policies. The perceptive southeasterner and critical South-South analyst are likely to feel shortchanged by the whole arrangement. Whether this arrangement will work remains to be seen. But surely, had the Jonathan government embraced even a little of the purposefulness being demonstrated by President Buhari, his government would have had much to show for his efforts and to still keep the PDP in office.

    As enthusiastic as this column and many Nigerians are about the Buhari cabinet and portfolio distribution and management, it is impossible not to ask why the president’s retention of the Petroleum ministry makes sense to him. It is needless, unwise, distracting and fated to create more problems for him and the country than it will solve. Retaining that portfolio may also reflect his incomplete appreciation of the magnitude of the problems he faces as he pilots Nigeria, the onerousness of the transformation the country requires, and his sanctimoniousness which he pushes in the face of the country, as if he could trust no one else to honestly direct that sensitive and graft-infested ministry.

    It is also difficult to understand what logic propelled the president to merge the three demanding ministries of power, works and housing in the hands of one minister, Babatunde Fashola, former Lagos State governor. The competence of  Mr Fashola is of course not in doubt, but it is unlikely that given the collapse already engendered in at least the power and works ministries, one minister can give the undivided attention sorely needed. It is unrealistic and unsustainable.

  • Kogi will seal its fate on Saturday one way or the other

    Kogi will seal its fate on Saturday one way or the other

    In six days, Kogi State will banish its vacillations and vote for one of the two leading candidates in the governorship election. The choice is between Governor Idris Wada, who is rounding up his first term, and former governor Abubakar Audu. One was a pilot, and the other a banker and accountant. The first a commoner, so to say, and the second a prince as a matter of fact. In stark ways, the two candidates are different, but for the electorate, the difference between them is blurred, and the choice difficult and foreboding. If they vote Governor Wada, whom his supporters describe as friendly, sensitive and easygoing, they will have voted continuity, conservatism and extreme mediocrity in line with his four-year record. But if they cast their ballots for Prince Audu, whom his opponents dismiss as uncouth, proud and abrasive, his antecedents as a rough-hewn and impatient moderniser show they will be voting for radical change and rapid infrastructural transformation.

    The choice facing Kogi is indeed inelegant. They are in short being called upon to vote with their heads or with their hearts, to buy a house for its bold and brilliant painting or for its structural integrity; to determine whether they prefer the scaffold or the building, or beauty instead of character. Left to most Kogites, they would have preferred either a Wada with the transformative proclivity of an Audu, or an Audu with the gentle manners of the accommodating and forgetful Wada. Instead, they will pick one with all his warts, and they will groan and squirm in making that choice. But needs must when the devil drives. On Saturday, barring last minute changes and shuffles, a majority of Kogites will half vote All Progressives Congress (APC) and half vote Prince Audu, the former because they are accustomed to casting their lot with the ruling party in Abuja, and the latter because their instincts tell them only the prince can rouse the state from its somnolence and retardation. In both cases, Prince Audu will be the winner.

    In the view of a significant number of Kogi voters, Governor Wada has demonstrated how terribly limited his range is: in imagination, scope of projects, and vision. He may not have disquieted the state with insensitive and dismissive comments, nor lathered it with the haughty grandstanding common with proud and impatient rulers, but in four detached years, he has almost moulded the state into a sepulchral pit of dry ideological bones, broken inner city roads and highways, and moribund factories. If he is to be rewarded with another four years, as he and his supporters have campaigned, it will not be because he had done well, but because Kogites had suspended reason. In short, the chances of reelecting the frequently amnesiac and absentee Governor Wada are not half as bright as the chances of electing a boisterous Prince Audu. For though the prince has not often talked peaceably with the people, he had outpaced all his successors in the practical art of governance and projects execution.

    In their campaigns round the state, the APC ticket of Prince Audu and Abiodun Faleke has made tremendous impact in mobilising the electorate. More Kogites have defected to the APC than have crossed over to the lines of Governor Wada’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The one-way movements have made sense. A few months ago, the contest was billed to be a close one. But fortuitously for Prince Audu, the seemingly dithering APC in Abuja has managed to assemble a cabinet that appears capable of inspiring the nation. The Buhari stock has never really gone down nationally, let alone in Kogi State which gave him a thunderous approbation in the March presidential poll. Now, that stock is high and on the rise, just days before the Kogi poll. Whether in Kogi East, West or Central, it is now more than ever likely that voters will speak with one voice; but if not with one voice, then with dissenting voices rendered in whispers — barely audible, barely significant.

    In the substantial rally the APC held last week in Okene, Kogi Central, a senatorial district previously thought to be either non-committal or outrightly opposed to the APC, the crowd surprisingly warmed up to the piddling soapbox histrionics of campaigning APC leaders. Other than perhaps the animated bombast of Edo governor Adams Oshiomhole, no one had the rhetorical fluidity or charisma to rouse the people into a frenzy. President Muhammadu Buhari is being pressured to bow to the nonsensical argument by PDP politicians to dissociate himself from the Prince Audu campaign on account of the EFCC case against the challenger. It is expected that the president will resist that strange and indefensible pressure not to be in Lokoja, Kogi State for the final rally. He will know that if he doesn’t go to Lokoja, he will be sending the inadvertent message he is contemptuous of his party’s choice, and that the PDP can as well have the state — as if the president can guarantee the rectitude of past and present PDP governors in the state. Given his cult following in Kogi, should the president campaign for Prince Audu, it will probably trigger a walkover for the APC. But whether the president makes a campaign appearance in Kogi or not, the outcome of the election is not in doubt. Governor Wada has not done anything to deserve to win; and Prince Audu has mercifully not said anything to deserve to lose.

    Moreover, throughout his time in office, Prince Audu’s government received less than N20bn from federal allocation, with which he founded a university and a polytechnic, and built a modern commissioners’ quarters, new and vital road arteries, Confluence Hotel, and many other significant projects. On the contrary, the two PDP governors of Kogi collected over N500bn in about 12 years and ended up grounding the state with nothing substantial to show for the money. Given the massive defections from the PDP, it appears the message has gone out loud and clear that the state’s PDP governors were an unmitigated disaster. Instead of a narrow victory, the APC is more likely to achieve a rout on Saturday, despite fears the PDP is rumoured to be buying voter cards and may be planning to use violence to disrupt polling, just as it imprudently wanted to use the bailout money — N50bn, the highest in the country — to sway votes.

  • Surplus ministers and Saraki’s senatorial vanguard

    Surplus ministers and Saraki’s senatorial vanguard

    As proof that President Buhari has not quite made up his mind how his cabinet would look, he has indicated that some of them would not be given portfolios, but would in a manner of speaking sit down and look while others worked. He should be embarrassed by his thoughts on the matter. Before assuming office and after, he had enough time to think the matter through. He didn’t. Now, he is foisting the tentativeness that gnaws him on the rest of the country. Has he thought of sponsoring a constitutional amendment to tackle that impediment? And if he has not, has he thought of the political implication for himself and his party in respect of states that will be assigned redundant ministers? The mere thought of it rankles.

    While President Buhari was fiddling with his ministerial list, the incorrigible Senator Saraki has persisted in making an ass of his fellow senators, about 40 of whom were reported to have again heedlessly accompanied him last week to the Code of Conduct Tribunal in solidarity. The senators, most of whom are parents, are taking Nigerians and their long-suffering families for granted. If their moral compass is so cracked that their judgement is impaired, shouldn’t they keep their errantry and shamelessness to themselves in their desecrated chamber and with their pained families? They insist Senator Saraki is being persecuted. This is sentimental drivel. If he is, let that fact come out transparently during the trial.

    Senator Saraki has done his utmost to avoid trial because he has many demons pursuing him. He should boldly take his punishment like a man, respect the laws of the land, and face trial like the courageous politician he insists he is.

  • Clark: from extravagant somersault to extraordinary recantation

    Clark: from extravagant somersault to extraordinary recantation

    Nigeria’s depressing and often humiliating politics is occasionally enlivened by letter wars of an exceedingly high quality, if not in style, then at least in vitriol. The recent war between Edwin Clark, an octogenarian Ijaw leader and former Information minister, and Reuben Abati, ex-president Goodluck Konathan’s spokesman, is no exception. The letter wars are indulged in by a few select braves, men who are loth to let the enemy have the last word. Nigerians were used to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the common denominator in many of these wars, squaring up with both Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, and Audu Ogbeh, former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman. Now the audience will have to accommodate Chief Clark and Dr Abati among the sanguinary host of wounding, open letters. Professor Soyinka is used to letter wars, and does not shirk lexical battles. So, too, are Chief Obasanjo and Chief Clark. Chief Ogbeh has proved himself a man with strong chin and firm knees. Did Dr Abati take counsel before plunging into this maelstrom?

    In early October, Chief Clark drew the first blood when he accused Dr Jonathan of lacking the political will to fight corruption. That weakness, he charged, allowed those around the former president to feather their nests and ultimately doom his presidency. Of all the things he had to say about the former president, none was as wounding as depicting Dr Jonathan as weak, a charge the public will remember the former president battled unsuccessfully throughout his presidency to dispel. At one time, he had exploded in frustration that the public was attempting to mould him into a Pharaoh or a Nebuchadnezzar. Dr Jonathan may, for tactical reasons, be reticent since he left office, he, however, does not lack defenders. One of them, Dr Abati, rose stoutly in the ex-president’s defence less than two weeks after Chief Clark released his toxic statement.

    Dr Abati virtually poured scorn on all that Chief Clark had to say, almost calling him a hypocrite, and wildly punning one of the Ijaw leader’s luxuriant, haunting statements, to wit, that when Dr Jonathan was president, he was Chief Clark’s son. Entitled ‘Clark the father; Jonathan the son,’ Dr Abati proceeded to take Chief Clark’s statement apart, piece by piece. Cut to the quick, and never one to let bad enough alone, Chief Clark issued a lengthy rebuttal of what he described as Dr Abati’s tendentious statements. The former spokesman, roared Chief Clark, was disloyal and incompetent, and was one of those who contributed to the former president’s defeat. Worse, said Chief Clark, Reuben Abati never really believed in Dr Jonathan, considering the vitriolic phrases he used as a columnist with the Guardian to denounce the former president.

    Hear Chief Clark in all his unpleasant directness: “Dr. Reuben Abati has risen to the defence of his last employer too late. He owes the former President apologies for his (Reuben Abati) failure to perform while in office. I should not be used as a scapegoat. I love Goodluck Jonathan and Goodluck Jonathan loves me… I do not recall any favourable remark made by Abati all those years when he was the chairman of the Editorial Board [of the Guardian] and syndicated columnist about the former president, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan. If I recall correctly, they were always the butt of ridicule by Dr. Reuben Abati. In fact, he became so notorious and fearless a critic of former President Jonathan and his wife in the Guardian Newspaper that I had to draw the attention of my cousin the proprietor of the Guardian newspaper to his excesses. These vitriolic attacks on former President Jonathan and his wife only stopped when he was appointed the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity by the former president.”

    The innuendoes are unmistakable. Perhaps, Dr Abati will find it fitting to respond to the impugner. And just so that everyone will know how contemptuously journalists are regarded in Nigeria, Chief Clark threw in this hard bone for media professionals to chew. Said he gratuitously: “My advice that a publicity committee made up of eminent journalists be put in place in Aso Rock and that media proprietors and senior journalists should be invited to Aso Rock were jettisoned by Abati because of what I suppose is his covetousness, particularly when many journalists and media houses always complained to me that he was not carrying them along.” It may never be known who the offended journalists and media houses are. But far be it from this column to describe Chief Clark as a liar. Was it clear enough that the Ijaw leader was asking Dr Abati to enthrone a regime of financial inducement and settlement? But was it not also clear that many occupants of the office of the president’s spokesperson had complained bitterly of the insatiability of top journalists and media houses who view Aso Villa as a gravy train? Perhaps Dr Abati will also address this matter in his rejoinder. It would be a shame if Chief Clark should have the last word, especially in view of his damaging assertions and poetic inelegance.

    Chief Clark did not end his furious and indignant reply until he had penned a panegyric on the man he first described in early October as weak. Said he of Dr Jonathan: “He tarred more roads than any of his predecessors; he turned agriculture to agro-business, a multibillion dollar business; he built the Almajiri schools in the Northern parts of this country. He established new federal universities across this nation; he allowed for free speech across this nation, and did not mind when he was criticised or, even, abused. People were not arbitrarily locked up in jail or prison, as he truly respected the rule of law… He brought transparency into the electoral process – when people could vote and the votes actually openly counted without violence. Today he stands as the first African president to concede an election to an opponent, even before the final counts,” and on and on, ad infinitum. It is not certain, however, that this fulsome, contrived and deliberate expiation atoned for the damaging description of early October. Chief Clark should have let bad enough alone.