The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Broken economy and Buhari’s logic

    Broken economy and Buhari’s logic

    Some of President Muhammadu Buhari’s weightiest public policy statements since he assumed the presidency have been made during his foreign visits. The most recent is his controversial statement on the Nigerian economy made shortly before he left New Delhi during his recent official visit to India. He had tersely declared that Nigeria was broke. Between the time he made the controversial statement towards the end of October and when he defended his logic during Senate President Bukola Saraki’s presentation of the list of confirmed ministers to him, he had the opportunity of his economic aides gently nudging him into a better understanding of the use of that technical term ‘broke’ often deployed casually and freely by the uninitiated. As former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Central Bank of Nigeria explained last year when some Nigerians described Nigeria as broke under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, Nigeria may have serious economic problems, but it was not broke. It still is not, notwithstanding what President Buhari believes and says.

    Indeed, to be fair to the president, all he had said when he was interviewed in New Delhi by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the Channels Television was that the last government plundered the economy. He had said: “Where is the money? You must have known that the Federal Government had to help 27 of the 36 states to pay salaries. Nigeria cannot pay salaries. The Federal Government itself had to summon the governor of the Central Bank to see how it would pay salaries not to talk of the agreements we signed with foreign countries, counterpart funding and so on. This country was materially vandalised and morally so and you are in a position to know even more than myself unless you are testing my knowledge whether I know it or not.”

    It was not until his interviewers asked him a leading question that he gave the following startling answer. He had been asked to make a categorical statement on whether Nigeria was broke, and he answered, “Of course, Nigeria is broke.” In her response last October to conclusions that Nigeria was broke, Dr Okonjo-Iweala had argued that Nigeria was still meeting her local and international financial obligations. Despite low revenues and difficulties in paying salaries in some states, it is a little sweeping to suggest that Nigeria is broke. It is even more surprising that when he was cautioned against drawing such conclusions, the president insisted he was merely being truthful, and that in any case, foreign investors always did due diligence on Nigeria before investing. The PDP had feared that by describing Nigeria as broke, the president could scare away investors. For the opposition party, they expected that patriotism would trump economic realities. However, as the president rightly observed, foreign investors knew more about Nigerian economic indicators than Nigerians themselves. But the real issues are in fact muffled. between the PDP’s patriotic glow and the president’s sweeping and indefensible conclusions.

    There is no doubt that the Nigerian economy was terribly mismanaged by the Jonathan government. It is also true that that unsavoury fact can’t be hidden from local and international eyes. But the president is handling and communicating that information alarmingly. He was not elected to whine about the prostrate economy, or to depress Nigerians further as if they do not already feel the pinch. He was elected partly because they thought he understood the depth of the problems, and is able to plan effective countermeasures against the rot and depression, and to communicate upbeat messages about his efforts and his own private optimism in order to drive change and renewal, and mobilise the people behind him. So far, he has sounded very negative, even painting the problem much more than it really is. He has engaged too assiduously and interminably in handwringing. And he has spent more time blaming those responsible and those not even responsible.

    If it is any help, he must recognise that Nigerians feel the problem, perhaps better than he does, and have a fair idea of those responsible for their economic woes. What they want are not sermons about what happened and who did what. What they need now are brilliant, positive and ingenious measures and efforts to drag Nigeria out of the doldrums. What the country needs is synchronisation of fiscal and monetary policies to tackle the menace. Not only is there no synchronisation, there is no effective communication of what is to be done, and worse, no encouragement that once the measures are put in place, soon the country’s troubles would be over or at least ameliorated. President Buhari was elected to make the country look at its situation as not too big to defy remedies. If he wants the people’s cooperation, he must imbue them with hope of a great future. Except this column is mistaken, Nigerians don’t have a sense of what the government plans to do beyond the president’s groans. They understood how US President Barack Obama mustered powerful economic policies to undo the damage of the George W. Bush presidency. What are President Buhari’s plans?

    The economy is in trouble; let the president give the country hope that their common pain will soon be over. Let him reconsider the school feeding programme, for there is little wisdom in what is evidently an agricultural chimera. Put parents in employment and get them paid well, and they will feed their children. Let him also reconsider the welfare payments he is proposing along the lines his party promised, for it surely makes more sense to reflate the economy, give tax breaks to companies on certain conditions, and get more people out of the welfare bracket. For in the end, five thousand naira is really insignificant and will make beneficiaries even more expectant and angry. Give an aged person five thousand naira and they will likely be grateful. A youth will be contemptuous, as attractive as the idea may sound. Overall, let President Buhari think and talk positive, and let him mobilise the people behind him, for a great purpose, for something they understand and can relate to, and for an end that is achievable and dignifying. Enough of the negative ‘realism’ and blame game.

  • Saraki’s long, winding and unflattering trial

    Saraki’s long, winding and unflattering trial

    Senate President Bukola Saraki faces three cruel choices, none of which is capable of redeeming him. One, he could be absolved of the 13-count charge slammed against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau, for which he has been facing a convoluted trial since September. Two, he could be found guilty, thus wrecking his political career and ruining his reputation for life. And, three, he could coax the government and everybody else involved in the case into a truly disingenuous political solution that could see him ending up neither innocent nor guilty, neither tried nor excused from trial. Left to him, he would have preferred that the case never came up in the first instance. Indeed, given the sordid and unpredictable choices facing him, there is no proof that in his solitude he would not want the hands of time turned back to enable him make different choices.

    The Appeal Court, which reserved ruling in the case he filed some two weeks ago to disqualify the CCT from proceeding with his trial, has now ruled it could grant no such relief. The case will now continue except he can get the Supreme Court to come to his rescue. For reasons that are not too hidden, Senator Saraki seems determined that the case should not proceed. He has mustered overwhelming support from his colleagues across the political divide, and across the two chambers of the National Assembly. And he has managed to convince himself and his supporters that the merit of the case does not count as much as the politics of the case. According to him, he is in court fighting for his honour and reputation because he summoned the effrontery to grab power in the Senate. He deploys such expiatory words as political persecution, witch-hunt, and legislative independence to stultify the case and justify his relentless rigmarole.

    This column is not privy to what Senator Saraki and his lawyers think of the case against him, whether he has hope of freedom or hopelessness of conviction. Given his determined effort to thwart the case, however, he gives the impression he fears the direction the case may take. He is alleged to have engaged in false declaration of assets and corruption. The allegations are distributed into 13 charges by the prosecution, which says it needs just two or three days to prove its case. Until the case is finally determined, however, no one can say how the pendulum would swing.

    The choices Senator Saraki faces are appalling because the implications are far-reaching. Assuming he fails at the Supreme Court, and the trial proceeds but he is absolved at the CCT, the victory will strengthen his hand, weaken the bargaining hand of the ruling party, cause a drawn-out stalemate at the ruling party level until one party to the intra-party crisis surrenders, and possibly alter the country’s political dynamics in profound and unforeseen ways. If he is found guilty, the consequence is less ambiguous: he will leave his post as Senate President not only a vanquished and humiliated man, he will vacate politics entirely a broken man. This is an outcome he will be reluctant to contemplate. But if a political solution is cobbled together, as he hopes, he and his party may declare a draw, bury their pride, and put up a brave face and move on, perhaps a little shamelessly. Indeed, a political solution will not hurt both the party and Senator Saraki as it will hurt the president and damage the integrity of his anti-graft war.

    Irrespective of the course of the CCT trial and the final outcome, Senator Saraki is unlikely to come out of the case smelling of roses. It will be remembered that he deliberately stymied the trial with legal and political shenanigans. It will be remembered that though he rhapsodises democracy and the rule of law, he nevertheless did everything in his power to undermine the case, notwithstanding the consequences to democracy and Nigeria’s political evolution. Rather than submit to the rule of law, he has cried political persecution and whipped up the National Assembly into a frenzied, divisive, unthinking and emotive assemblage of activists with cracked ethical compass. It was at first assumed that Senator Saraki was unwilling to submit to trial because it humiliated his office. The truth may be more nuanced. Had he been sure of his innocence, he would have helped advance the cause of justice and the building of institutions by submitting to a quick trial to shame the enemies he talks about so often, so engagingly and so garishly.

    Except the courts inexplicably relent, Senator Saraki will eventually come to trial. It is inconceivable he will come out unscathed. And this will not be because his so-called enemies pressed their advantage, or saw him in the political victimhood he has tried to paint himself. It will be because the substance of the case does not favour him. Worse, he will be unlikely to get the sympathy of the discerning and judicious members of the society, for they know more than he and scores of his supporters and sympathisers that the cost to the entire body politic of sparing one man is too high for the nation to pay.

     

  • PDP, Buhari and Rivers, Akwa Ibom polls

    PDP, Buhari and Rivers, Akwa Ibom polls

    In his response to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) name-calling and blame game over the judicial reversals in Akwa Ibom and Rivers, Lai Mohammed, the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman and now minister-designate, suggested that rather than whining, the PDP should rebrand and repackage itself to appeal to the electorate. That was what the APC did last year, swore Alhaji Mohammed, and that was why the party won the 2015 polls. That the APC won the polls is not in dispute; and that it repackaged itself, especially assembling a viable though tentative coalition, is also not controversial. What is in dispute is why the APC won. Indeed, it appears overall that the APC won the poll because the PDP first lost it. Alhaji Mohammed must put things in perspective.

    However, there is no argument whatsoever that the PDP needs to repackage itself in order to reclaim its former appeal. As the APC spokesman correctly observed, PDP’s 16 years in office and four electoral victories were achieved on false foundations. Its ideology was suspect, and its methods, not to say its competence in office, were abysmal. It subscribed to no inspiring ethical mantra, and it had very little vision of where Nigeria should be and its place in the world. It therefore won elections dubiously and malevolently. It muscled the system, corrupted everything it touched, and entrenched a most vicious culture of doing business, practicing law, and securing the country. In fact, the PDP had no pretext to be called a party; and when it ruled, for that was what it did, it also had no pretext to be called a government.

    It is therefore not surprising that in two separate statements last week the PDP blamed everybody but itself for its electoral debacle and its inability to sustain the victories it managed to coax from the country’s compromised law enforcement agencies and lax electoral system. The PDP argument and suppositions, as rendered by both its publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, and national secretary, Wale Oladipo, are untenable. In Prof Oladipo’s words last Thursday: “The undue interferences by the executive arm of government in the activities of the judiciary, legislature and INEC, using the Department of States Service (DSS), is clearly unacceptable to the PDP as well as the Nigerian people, and the party has resolved to vigorously resist such. The PDP finds it offensive and provocative the judiciary’s handling of cases involving it in election tribunals in some states, particularly Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Imo, Taraba, Ogun, Plateau and Lagos. The tainted judgments of these tribunals, which are evidently products of arm-twisting from the nation’s security operatives under the direct command of an APC member, remains unacceptable to us.”

    Advocating and instigating Nigerians “to rise and use all lawful means to resist anti-democratic forces now using the judiciary and security agencies in their desperate scheme to subvert the will of the people and destroy the nation’s democracy,” the more acerbic Mr Metuh further suggested very strongly: “Let it be known, and clearly too, that no matter the strong-arm, threats and manipulations by the APC government, the PDP is not willing to and will never surrender the mandate freely given to us by the people in states where we won in the last general election, neither are the people of those states willing to allow sectional invaders to exert influence on those to be in charge of their affairs.”

    He then adds: “In the last five months, after conceding defeat at the presidential elections and other polls where we lost, Nigerians are witnesses to the fact that the PDP has remained calm and steadfast to its commitment to providing mature, decent and civil opposition with more interest in the peace, unity and corporate interest of our dear nation. However, the ruling party and the APC Federal Government in their dictatorial inclinations are much more interested in playing crude, selfish and sectional politics and trying to use manipulation of judicial processes to forcefully take over states where we genuinely won in the elections.”

    The old guard still directing the affairs of the PDP appears dead set against reality and change. They have sought to divert attention away from their incompetence and unethical politics. They will continue to resist the change, remoulding and renewal their party needs to confront the APC now and in the future. Without reforming itself and restructuring its operations, without changing its leadership in a revolutionary sweep of the Augean stables, it is impossible for the party to midwife the positive outcomes it dreams of. Until a group of idealists within the party —  probably young men in their forties, digitally inspired, brilliant and ethical — take over the leadership of the PDP, the already ossified party will continue to atrophy and die. It is in the interest of Nigeria for the PDP to renew its strength and anchor itself on an inspiring and lofty foundation in order to offer the alternative that many well-wishers think it capable of. The country needs it; the APC, whether it agrees or not, also needs a strong and healthy opposition; and the PDP itself needs to be a healthy and vibrant opposition to sustain its own life.

    Except it tells itself a horrendous lie, most of the victories it procured in past elections were manipulated. The unraveling taking place at the moment is not orchestrated by the judiciary, as the PDP falsely suggests. It is the right thing to happen; and if the PDP will look at the positive side, the process of electoral reversal is helping the party to shed weight and to rediscover its real self and where its strength lies. It does not need the so-called wealthy states of Akwa Ibom and Rivers to function and remake its image. What it needs are the right and revolutionary ideas, bright young men and women able to seize the moment, and a sense of being that is transcendental, unflappable and almost immortal. This column is directly calling for a revolution in the PDP to snatch the party from the hands of the indolent and visionless masters that had constrained its future for far too long.

    The PDP and Nigeria need this change in the opposition party simply because despite the enormous goodwill that swept APC into office a few months ago, the ruling party has been unable to pull its weight. It has proved lax in controlling its men, and its highly vaunted social and economic road map has become an archival document ignored and disdained by its leaders. Its dominance in the National Assembly has led the party, not to lofty deeds, but to opprobrious manifestation of discord and aimlessness. For a party that evinced vigour and audacity late last year and early this year, it has appeared today like a man without a soul, enervated, absentminded and fractious. Its number one citizen, President Muhammadu Buhari, though it is an exaggeration to say he is dictatorial as the PDP argues, has been unable to rise to the pedestal the last electioneering anticipated.

    If the PDP can reform, renew and measure up to the hopes of the electorate, and if the APC is unable to articulate the lofty vision contained in its founding documents, nor redeem the utopia it eagerly philosophised about many months back, then the opposition can indeed flower and offer perhaps the real change that the change party can’t seem to comprehend. It is not true, as the PDP fallaciously reasons, that President Buhari can’t lead as a democrat in a democracy. What is, however, true is that so far, President Buhari seems paralysed by either his anxieties over democracy or inundated by the shenanigans in his party, or both. He will have to come out of his shell, avoid making the kind of plaintive statements he made last week about a broken and fallen economy, and boldly and courageously enunciate the requisite vision and structure that will reinvigorate Nigeria. But if he will not do it, and cannot be compelled, then let a reformed and renewed PDP seize the high ground and orchestrate a new age of enlightenment, the nirvana of Nigerians’ hopes and dreams.

     

  • Lagos, Ambode and broken infrastructure

    Lagos, Ambode and broken infrastructure

    Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s five-month old government has in recent weeks come under tremendous pressure. Critics and columnists  hold him responsible for what they describe as the grounding of Lagos. Roads are broken, the critics point out, robbers and cultists are running rampage day and night, traffic has become so snarled that nothing seems to be moving, and in general nothing seems to be working. They hold the governor responsible for the problems, in particular, for not sustaining the momentum of his predecessors and for advocating, among other panaceas, a civilised and modern method of traffic law enforcement. For commercial bus drivers who brutishly and defiantly flout traffic rules, the critics sneered that no civilised method could constrain them.

    The observations are fairly incontrovertible, and the circumstances they describe can’t be denied. There are problems with many roads, and traffic is truly snarled in many areas . In addition, robbers are running riot, whether in Ikorodu or Festac Town, or yet other areas, some of them unreported. The problem, however, is appreciating the factors responsible for the seeming breakdown. Nearly all the analyses and editorials suggest Governor Ambode is either not doing enough to arrest the drift or he is applying the wrong remedies, some of them too civilised for the brutes they are meant to control.

    Take traffic snarls for example. Soon after Governor Ambode turned his attention to the traffic pains afflicting Lagos, he ordered the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to humanise and civilise their enforcement methods. Rather than engage in high-speed chase along Lagos’ densely populated streets, or arrest and impound vehicles thereby clogging their premises, he directed them to modernise their methods. This order was interpreted to mean that no arrests whatsoever were to be countenanced by LASTMA, thus giving free rein to homicidal Danfo Bus drivers and other errant car owners, some of them military men.

    Governor Ambode may have accepted blame for the traffic madness afflicting the city state, for he is after all the governor. And he may have cleverly and desperately reversed himself. If indeed he has, he ought not to. And if he has not, he should stay the course. What is wrong is not the civilised method of law enforcement which he ordered, for that is the path to toe, but the imagination, capacity and efficiency of the government agencies saddled with the responsibility of keeping traffic flowing. The previous methods of traffic law enforcement were not only unsuitable, though they are countrywide and appeared to achieve results, they gave Nigerians a bad name globally. Governor Ambode was right in his appreciation of the problem, and he was even more sensible in the solutions he proffered. All that remained were for his team to persevere and courageously stay the course, fine-tune the panaceas, and work extra hours to enforce obedience along the modern, civilised lines he had identified.

    When critics and editorial writers suggest that the governor’s panaceas were too civilised and modern for the calibre of commercial bus drivers plying Lagos roads, they insult the black race and discountenance a rigorous analysis of the problem. Commercial bus drivers, who are mostly blamed for the traffic snarls, can be tamed intelligently without resorting to the brutal methods of the past. If Governor Ambode has reversed himself, let him at least recognise that in the near future, he will still have to revisit the modern methods he tried to unfold. He must recognise that the old methods of doing things, which the public seems to be enamoured of and are advocating, have limited utility. It is, after all, not working in policing;, Boko Haram war, and nearly in every other thing, including traffic chaos. Nigeria’s law enforcement methods are hopelessly antiquated.

    It is even more disturbing that Governor Ambode is blamed almost wholly for what appears like a resurgence of crime in Lagos. Admittedly, as governor, he has little choice but to accept blame, and he must find a way round what is building into a crisis of confidence in Lagos. But it is strange that analysts fail to accurately and fully appreciate the whole ramification of the crisis, especially the political economy of crime. Curbing crime is not just a question of policing or more patrol vehicles and superior firepower. Crime has its own violent logic. The national economy is virtually in the doldrums, with Lagos bearing a disproportionate share of the fallout. Migration into Lagos is at an all-time high, a high percentage of which is unemployed. Patrol cars and more guns will not curb the problem. For instance, Lagos ought more appropriately to be allocated funds for more than 57 local governments, equal to or even more than Kano and Jigawa combined, but it gets funds for just 24. Lagos is overwhelmed and bursting at the seams. Analysts should be putting pressure on the central government to succour Lagos very urgently.

    Cult wars and robberies predate the Ambode government, as newspaper reports throughout last year indicated very clearly. In addition, the federal government has become more, not less, irresponsible in both the quantity and quality of law enforcement. The police are badly trained, badly kitted, badly motivated and hopelessly underfunded and outnumbered. It is, therefore, necessary to encourage a holistic appreciation of the crime situation in Lagos and the measures needed to combat it. Governor Ambode of course needs to worry when Lagosians cannot sleep. He has an obligation to articulate the problem and work hard, notwithstanding the inclement economic environment, to stanch the flow of blood on Lagos streets. He will doubtless need to plot a way out of the commercial motorcycle menace suffocating Lagos. And he must look for ingenious methods of curbing traffic robberies and restoring order to the streets. But he must not panic, get desperate, or succumb to the short term and impracticable measures many people are advocating.

    Rather than condemnation, commentators must show more rigour in analysing the problems confronting Lagos State and its government. A reworked revenue allocation formula, state policing, and sound national economic policies conducing to even and countrywide spread of development would be a great advantage to take pressure off Lagos. For no matter how brilliantly Gov Ambode tackles the multiple menaces confronting Lagos, it will only make the state a magnet for every drifter and dispossessed from other parts of the country, thus reenacting and reinforcing the original problem confronting the state and rendering the solutions either short-lived or ineffective. There is a limit to what Lagos can do in the face of rising population; there is a limit to how many unemployed youths Lagos can put to work in the face of irresponsible national economic policies and poor governance in other states; and there is a limit to what Lagos can do when the federal government implacably controls the levers of security, takes a lion’s share of revenue, and is unable to control migration into the few prosperous and obviously now encumbered states like Lagos.

  • Gadfly el-Rufai needs moderation and restraint

    Gadfly el-Rufai needs moderation and restraint

    Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State told his agitated and grumbling audience in Kaduna State last week that President Muhammadu Buhari was advised not to let governors nominate his ministers. Even though he did not elucidate on who the ‘we’ who gave the advice to the president were other than to say they were a collection of governors, he was taken to task when it became public that his apolitical foster sister, or as some put it, his cousin, Zainab Ahmed, was appointed minister representing Kaduna State. Mrs Ahmed’s husband was a close ally of former Vice President Namadi Sambo.

    The grumbling began when it seemed Gov el-Rufai’s appointments were skewed. Rather than mollify their anger, the governor’s outburst worsened the pains of the complainants. While answering questions at the 4th Town Hall meeting in Kaduna Central, the bristling governor was absolutely irreverent. “If you are not happy with appointments made, you can go and climb Kufena mountain and fall.” he began furiously. “It was what you voted that you got because we are aware that there are peo­ple who did not vote for us, in fact they worked against us. But now they claim to be All Progressives Congress (APC) members and loyal to the party. We know such people. And so there is no way they would expect anything from us. You didn’t vote us but you want appointments. What you will get is zero. It is politics, and in whatever we do there is politics.”

    It is not just Gov el-Rufai that is speaking out of turn, or governors like him who ignore the virtue of restraint and moderation, even the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a party appears to be at sixes and sevens. If the president would avoid appointing governors’ nominees into his cabinet, then he should have set in motion the means of ensuring that the best and most appropriate nominees were put forward. There is not much confidence that the president’s appointments showed that that was done. And if like Gov el-Rufai says, there is indeed politics in everything politicians and governments do, it behoves the president and his advisers to take cognisance of that politics. Yet, even Gov el-Rufai did not take advantage of his own counsel. Did he mind the politics of his appointments? If he did, why would his audience take exception to many of his appointments and describe them as unfair? And rather than speak peaceably to them, he railed against them, suggesting they should go and commit suicide with their grievances.

    The nomination of the governor’s foster sister, despite her husband’s apparent political affiliations, may have unwittingly given the impression that Gov el-Rufai is closer to the president than he has confessed. He and the Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal are thought to wield some influence with the president. Whether this is true or not, his audience seemed to believe it. But what is more important is that the president and governors must act in such a manner that stakeholders  would feel that justice and equity had been served in appointments and in any other state matter. It is impolitic to angrily denounce complainants. It is not clear now who was echoing whom. But it is striking that both President Buhari and Gov el-Rufai had suggested that those who didn’t vote for them, or who voted for them marginally , could not expect to get as much attention as those who voted for them compellingly. This is not only bad politics, it is bound to backfire, even if the country should end up being run successfully. The APC must worry about its unforced errors, and the alienation it is fostering.

    In particular, the tempestuous Gov el-Rufai must watch his steps and language. He had barely been sworn in when he announced he would begin demolition of properties to clean up the state and restore its master plan. He has started the demolition, but without the redeeming features of remedial measures to tackle the politics and economics of his actions. In his customarily impulsive  manner, he also attempted to remove beggars from the streets without first preparing a place for them. He forgot that it is not everything that is lawful that is expedient.

    Gov el-Rufai is anxious to move Kaduna State to great heights, and to sanitise and remould it. The state will benefit tremendously from his energy and brilliance. But he must resist the temptation to be arrogant and irreverent, which his outbursts  suggest. He is after all running an elected government, not a military regime. As chief executive of Kaduna State, he must see himself not only as the number one citizen, but as father of all. What he says and how he says them are as important as the quality of his policies. So far, he has spoken offensively, and has given the impression of an immoderate, unrestrained politician unable to manage the enormous power and goodwill put at his disposal by the electorate. He must come down to earth and listen to his people, and persuade them of the justifiability and altruism of his actions and the enormous benefit his actions would bring to the state if allowed. Like Nigeria, Kaduna was not ruined in a day; it will take more than a day to rebuild  it. Gov. el-Rufai can begin the process, but if he is willing to accept counsel, he must be careful what kind of foundation he lays. For, whether he likes it or not, the integrity of that foundation will depend largely on the extent to which he has overhauled his own attitude and ennobled his utterances to create a great culture and tradition for Kaduna.

  • At last, the cabinet

    At last, the cabinet

    Finally, a tentative commentary on President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet appears possible. The public can’t be wrong: the cabinet is lawyerly, star-studded, eloquent, not quite gender sensitive and not too saintly, but potentially vibrant, and in many alarming ways apolitical. So far, everyone is focusing on the putative brilliance of the ministers, many of whom have been confirmed already. Soon, it will be time to discover whether that brilliance can be translated into productive, impactful work, or whether the cabinet can demonstrate the subliminal character necessary to concretise the values and principles of a great society. Soon, too, as a result of the expected synergy between the cabinet and the president, and the extent to which they meet the yearnings of the country, it will become clear just how ambitious the country is, or whether the country has diminished, as some suspect, to become frustratingly satisfied with little.

    It is unlikely that the expectations of the people concerning the cabinet, let alone its performance, will be high. Nigerians are famously not too difficult to please. But sooner or later, they will confront the critical question of assessing President Buhari’s governance philosophy and framework, not because they are complex and the people are slow of understanding, but because so far there has been no clear articulation of these indispensable foundations. The public is familiar with the president’s fight against corruption and insecurity, and his determination to plug, by dint of hard work and body language, every avenue of stealing and waste. But they will need, and will ask for, his philosophy of governance, which he has not really quite articulated. If the cabinet will help him articulate that philosophy, then it will have to do more than make the dreaded noise he recently spoke about.

    There is suspicion President Buhari will hope that the positive spinoffs from his disciplined government and brilliant cabinet will stabilise the economy and ennoble the country’s politics. Should he rely almost exclusively on these spinoffs and hope that a well-governed country with a healthy economy and normalised politics will obviate the urgent need for a governing philosophy, he will leave his government vulnerable and exposed to the vicissitudes of politics far beyond his control. It is indeed possible to govern a country well without a clear philosophy, but as France and Italy contradistinctively showed after World War II, it is impossible to sustain the legacy eked from the physical exertion of simply governing well. Somehow, the president may also view the Ahmed Joda transition report as a fitting foundation for his presidency, and consider other critical reports such as the Oronsaye report as complementary to his effort to navigate the country’s developmental warrens. But for now, notwithstanding his party’s manifesto and the engagement of these other reports, he has not given any indication of conceptualising a philosophy and framework of governance to serve as the indispensable fulcrum of his government, in the same way the world understands Reaganite America and Reaganomics, Thatcherite Britain and Thatcherism, Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Bush’s (the younger) New American Century.

    Perhaps it will take a little longer for President Buhari to give a concrete feel to the embryonic ideals emanating from his presidency. But perhaps, also, there will be no attempt by his presidency to synthesise or grow anything resembling a philosophy. It is therefore the duty of the public to demand, as indeed the business community is already doing, a definite, consistent and coherent set of programmes and ideas upon which the renewal and rebuilding of Nigeria can be anchored. The impression already is that, at bottom, President Buhari has spent more time plotting his way into office than forming and firming the ideas upon which he hopes to base his presidency. He has focused his energies on some pressing problems, and has worked hard to assemble a cabinet that could pass muster. But these will not transform into a great nation until that great nation has been built on a great idea. A fine cabinet is useful only to the extent that it is appropriately deployed in the service of a great idea; a great idea that will not manifest until it is harnessed from its disparate strands.

    Moreover, part of the crisis inundating the parliament, in which a Bukola Saraki virtually and unethically seized the legislative levers of power, could be traced to the president’s inability to conceptualise a governing philosophy for the country, as this column has repeatedly maintained. Rather than tamely surrender to what he described as the fundamentals of democracy, Nigeria needed President Buhari to develop a bold and unrivalled idea of Nigeria, and work actively instead of passively to build a unified parliamentary, judicial and political framework for it. What would Napoleonic France and indeed Napoleonic Europe be without the Napoleonic Code and, to some extent, the Continental System? The world may find this comparison and example odious, but what would Germany be without Bismarckian realpolitik and Hitler’s Mein Kampf? And what would Britain and America be without their exceptionalism, whose fiercely competitive core drove the Americans to the moon and Britain to global political and language imperialism? It is against this background that Soviet history makes sense, and Russian (Putin) redivivus becomes a sensible rather than a provocative project.

    Nigerian leadership since independence has been mediocre. In some sense, Ghana under Nkrumah, Tanzania under Nyerere, Egypt under Nasser, and South Africa under Mandela gave vague indication they knew what the situation called for. There failure, while it can be explained, cannot however be excused. But Nigeria never once attempted to approximate the ideals for which Nkrumah and the others lived and died. Yet, Nigeria has never lacked the opportunity, as the ample goodwill being made light of by President Buhari is showing. Babangida, Obasanjo and Shagari each had the chance to make something out of Nigeria. That they all failed, some very woefully, is a testament to the apparent genetic flaw inherent in their leadership.

    This column invested heavily, perhaps excessively heavily, in the Buhari project before he won the March 2015 poll. But given the undue emphasis on assembling an untainted cabinet, the inattentiveness to the parliament’s subversive and centrifugal tendencies, and the disregard for building the country’s ideological lodestar, the columnist will hope his effort and investment have not been altogether misplaced. The situation is of course not hopeless. Far from it. Yet, there is little so far to give any indication of success given the abandonment of the elements that conduce to building a great society.

     

    Theatrical Senate screening and Adebayo Shittu

    Senators and the Senate President, not leaving out the theatrical and voluble Dino Melaye, have been having a ball since the ministerial confirmation process began. They promised it would be stringent and thorough, but perhaps the Senate defines words in curious ways now. Bukola Saraki has been winking away at only God knows whom, while other senators may be in danger of cracking their ribs from the theatrics on the Senate floor. Some of the nominees themselves have embarked on incredible, extravagant somersaults to win confirmation.

    But while the Senate blithely engages in political revelry, could they be kind enough to interview nominee Adebayo Shittu from Oyo State a little more rigorously on what he knew about the April 25, 2000 religious crisis involving the Tabliq Muslim sect and the First Baptist Church, Oke Adagba, Shaki, Oyo State, which later spread into the town. Let him arm himself with the 2001 Oyo State Government White Paper on the crisis. Surely, as a prospective minister of the Federal Republic, he wouldn’t mind shedding some light on the crisis. More importantly, it would be interesting to hear his view on the matter, even if it has changed, and his projection on sectarian peace in Nigeria.

     

    Gowon and the Nigerian quandary

    On Thursday, former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, paid a condolence visit to the Awolowo family at Ikenne, Ogun State. Speaking to the press, he remarked about how ethnic diversity and sectional interests made it tough for him governing Nigeria. The same complex pastiche, he said, would make it tough for anyone to govern the country. He admonished Nigerians to be patient with President Muhammadu Buhari, almost the same gentle and indulgent manner he admonished everyone to be patient with ex-president Goodluck Jonathan.

    The contention, however, is whether the problem is actually caused by complex ethnic and sectional interests or whether the leadership lacks depth and puts little premium on justice and equity. Nigeria’s problem is not the differences between its people, as sometimes competitive as these might be, but the inability of leaders to recognise and embrace the building blocks of leadership. They refuse to acknowledge that leadership compels them to offer leadership to all interests without prejudice, and that it is compulsory to anchor their leadership on the values of justice and equity. Leaders who cannot transcend their backgrounds and prejudices have no business being in government. No, Gen Gowon, Nigeria is not difficult to govern. The problem is finding competent, transcendental leaders who have intuitive understanding of what must be done, when and how.

  • Federal appointments: Buhari versus ‘selfish’ elite

    Federal appointments: Buhari versus ‘selfish’ elite

    For those who thought President Muhammadu Buhari was not bothered by the severity of the criticisms levelled against his appointments, especially presidency positions, the good news is that he is touched, even if he is unable to frame his responses well. Speaking through Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the opening of the 21st Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) in Abuja last week, the president inexplicably suggested that selfishness was behind the criticisms. Said the president: “You find out that the elite, whether from the Southwest, Northwest or wherever, are willing to collaborate in stealing the resources of the state. It is important to point out that the idea of where a person appointed into government comes from is meant to divert attention.”

    The president was being cynical. He was in sum accusing the elite of closing ranks when their private pecuniary interests were involved, but dividing the country and creating artificial divides and diversionary barriers when the wider interests of the country should take precedence. Alas, the president is beginning to sound like his predecessors, military and elected. Rather than seek to persuade the rest of the country to his point of view, and accept that indeed, it is possible for a majority to differ from the president, he has begun to read motives into what is arguably a simple, polemical issue.

    However, barely a day after the president gave vent to this unflattering view of dissent, pressures from Niger State forced him to withdraw the nomination of Musa Ibeto from his ministerial list. Former Deputy Governor Ibeto is an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain from Niger State who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) shortly before the 2015 elections. His competence was never in doubt. But his nomination was nevertheless withdrawn because it violated Niger State’s power zoning formula. It turned out that some of the state’s key appointees and elected officials were from the Niger North senatorial district. Alhaji Ibeto hails from the same district as the Secretary to the Government of Niger State and the governor himself.

    The presidency was right to respect the power configuration of Niger State, after all, appointments are not meant to divide the state or weaken the party. So, why then was it difficult for the president to recognise the need to spread and balance appointments at the presidency? President Buhari’s argument before the NES was both unfair to the elite and misplaced. The elite, whom he denounced as selfish, and this column maintain that the president was unfeeling in the structure of his appointments. Whether he likes it or not, without a religious and ethnic spread in his appointments, his policies and programmes stand the risk of being coloured by subtle prejudices and avoidable oversight. Importantly too, it was not only the so-called selfish elite that criticised his appointments; the criticisms were widespread and remain potent. His spokesmen suggested that by the time he would be through with the appointments, everything would balance out. It remains to be seen how that would be achieved, or, given some of the decisions emanating from the presidency, how he would avoid subtle biases.

  • Politics and Buhari’s ministers

    Politics and Buhari’s ministers

    On the surface, President Muhammadu Buhari’s 21 ministerial nominees are a study in technocracy and brilliance.  Some of them were governors who achieved renown; and others are either famous for the projects they undertook or the policies and programmes they enunciated. In all, the nominees look set to add value to the Buhari presidency. But there is no wow factor in the list, and no surprise. Most of them are quite known to us and to the president himself. Why did the president then have to wait for four full months to reveal this largely familiar list? Was it a reflection of the pawky caution and methodicalness many observers attribute to him, and which he himself boasted of? Or was it a reflection of his newly acquired habit of hesitations and tentativeness, that is, assuming we accurately read his actions and administrative style as a fast-paced revolutionary when he was head of state for some 20 months in the early 80s?

    The weight of evidence so far suggests that President Buhari is more indecisive than he is cautious. The two attributes are not the same. There is no one on the list of 21 whom he could not have engaged in a month, or with a little more diligence, even before he assumed office. All of them may not be politically exposed to all parts of the country, but there is none who is not exposed one way or the other to at least a small part of the country. Had the president not demonstrated clear reservations about the usefulness of federal ministers, reservations loudly expressed at international fora and which he wished he could get away with, it seems he could have secured their services in weeks rather than in painfully tortuous months.

    The ministerial list was an anticlimax, not to say a paradox. Only last month in France, the president had denigrated the office of minister.  But before then and even after, he had announced he was assembling the best team, and probably the best brains, to add value to his government and to join hands with him in redeeming, developing and remoulding the country. Could ministers whom he snorted were only a little better than noisemakers rise to the lofty height of reformers or an army of change agents executing his party’s change mantra? There cannot be a direct or simple answer. It must be assumed, however, that being a closet satirist and humorist, President Buhari merely likened ministers to noisemakers as part of his increasingly famous predilection for self-deprecating commentaries.

    At bottom, too, perhaps the president was never really comfortable with a packed and charged group of polemicists and ideologues — only that we never really noticed when he was military head of state. From his disparaging remarks on ministers and his laudatory appraisal of the pivotal role played by permanent secretaries, perhaps the president feels more comfortable with the top civil servants and what many withering years of bureaucratic attrition has turned them into — an assortment of ideologically disemboweled group of yes-men and dutiful conformists more anxious to keep their jobs than offer sometimes radically dissenting opinions. By the time the president finalises his list of ministerial nominees, the nation will be able to pass a firmer and more accurate judgement on the cabinet and the mindset of the man who assembled them. Preliminary assessment, however, suggests that in assembling his ministers, President Buhari was stimulated by indecision and other sentiments than by carefulness or methodicalness.

    Whether by design or accident, however, the president seems to have unleashed quite a few forces destined to shape his government now and in the future, as well as determine just how re-electable he will be a few years from now. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Southwest. When the president made his first set of appointments, and it was widely judged as embarrassingly skewed in favour of the North, this column pointed out that he was inadvertently empowering a faction of the Southwest elite who bitterly opposed his election. That bitter faction had campaigned that the pro-Buhari faction was unwisely, slavishly and recklessly mortgaging the future of the South and, in particular, the Southwest. Though they lost the argument, and the Southwest embraced change, the narrowness of the first set of Buhari appointments, not to say the lack of ethnic diversity in the president’s kitchen cabinet, seemed to have armed the anti-Buhari faction of the Southwest political elite to voice their concerns to popular southern acclaim.

    For those who understand the nuances involved in the selection of the 21 ministerial nominees, the list seems capable of further fracturing the Southwest’s dominant and therefore triumphant elite. Here is why. It is well known that the Southwest’s political elite is divided into pro- and anti-Buhari tendencies. But what is not well known is the fact that even the pro-Buhari Southwest political elite is further divided into two stealthily conflicting groups. One group is radical, daring, pushy and enterprisingly and confidently ‘internationalist’, and the other is more amenable to President Buhari’s ways, less adventurous and questioning, somewhat isolationist, and anxious to serve without provoking tremors or ruffling too many feathers. The president prefers the latter and has included them in his first set of nominees. They may be intelligent and technocratic, but they will not rock the boat or dissent vigorously. Nor will they have masterful control over the Southwest, a control that was just beginning to accrete.

    As far as the first list is concerned, the president may have unwittingly empowered the anti-Buhari forces of the Southwest. This could yet prove fatal to both the president’s second term ambition and the country’s stability. Given the immense and, in some respects, unpopular concessions made by the Southwest to the Buhari project, the region’s radical elite needed to have something more substantial to show for all their efforts. In the event, the legislative leadership elections robbed them of that leverage, and in the ministerial appointments the radical internationalists of the Southwest’s pro-Buhari political elite may again have been left holding the short end of the stick. This could leave the Buhari presidency bereft of powerful defenders in the continuing national contest for political space and control. It may not be obvious, but the ultimatum given to President Buhari over the rampage of suspected Fulani herdsmen, and the hint of self-determination given by Yoruba leaders last Thursday, may be a reflection of the budding alienation being felt by the Yoruba, an alienation that seems to be underscored by the shortcomings of the legislative leadership elections, the skewed Buhari appointments, and the structure and temper of the ministerial list.

    What is even more evident from the ministerial list is the general indication of absence of political strategies. The first tentative step towards re-election is often laid by ministerial and other presidency appointments. In both the presidency appointments and the cabinet list, there has been no deft political touch, one capable of rousing the country’s constituencies and herding them into the Buhari column. And by unreasonably delaying the list for four months, it enabled the anti-Buhari elements in many states to regain their composure and begin plotting the downfall of many of the nominees or thoroughly destabilise them. Though the problem is worse in the Southwest due to its peculiar and sometimes incomprehensible divisions and factions; the absence of political strategies and calculations in the list is no less noticeable in other parts of the country, especially the rest of the South. The ruling All Progressives Congress is riven by bitter dissent and conflicts, and the president has not demonstrated the courage or sagacity to tackle it aggressively. He has dilly-dallied over the Senator Bukola Saraki rebellion, while his wife, Aisha, even delegates responsibilities to Saraki’s wife, Toyin, who is under EFCC investigations. And while he has handled the anti-Boko Haram and anti-graft wars with aplomb, the other parts of the country have neither seen him nor felt his touch in the real sense of the word.

    President Buhari does not have as much time as he thinks he has. Worse, he appears to be laying suspect foundations for his re-election, or even behaving as if he is uninterested. If he is truly uninterested in re-election, surely his party, which has made a hash of intra-party politics, cannot be uninterested. Nigerians must not only see and feel the politics in President Buhari’s cabinet, just as they want to see and feel his performance, they must also have assurance that the man they voted into office possesses the highest qualities and strength of character of a patriot, nationalist and tactician. So far neither the cabinet list nor his appointments have shown any of those attributes.

  • Edwin Clark jumps ship extravagantly

    Edwin Clark jumps ship extravagantly

    For the more than five years or so that Goodluck Jonathan was president, Edwin Clark, a former Information minister and Ijaw man from Delta State, stood vexatiously and provocatively behind him. His response in those happy days to those who deplored the president’s weakness, indulgence and overtly regional, if not outrightly ethnic, bias was that as hosts of the mainstay of the economy, oil, the South-South possessed a leverage on the nation’s politics that could not be gainsaid. If the South-South’s crude oil was good enough for the country, argued Chief Clark with unfathomable syllogism, then Dr Jonathan should be good enough for the country. And if he fell short of anyone’s expectations or standards, then the country should accommodate and endure him until he finished his term in office. That term, Chief Clark defined, was not one term of four years but two terms of eight years. In those exciting days too, Chief Clark, who already saw himself as an elder statesman, held court in Abuja, acting like a self-appointed ambassador plenipotentiary for both Dr Jonathan and the South-South.

    As the 2015 general elections approached, Chief Clark became more vociferous and incendiary. He gave the impression that if things did not favour Dr Jonathan, whom he described as his godson, he was prepared to go down with the ship, and if the ship began to sink, he would even refuse to follow the rats to the deck. Chief Clark prospered as his glib and prolific talk about the inalienable rights and manifest destiny of his beloved region intensified. He advised that for our mental health, we should take Dr Jonathan as he was, with all his warts. Noisome militants in the region also began to whoop for war, warning portentously of apocalypse should the country repudiate Dr Jonathan. Scores of visitors flocked the Abuja residence of Chief Clark, paid obeisance, and flattered and massaged his ego. They curried his favour and pined for a word on their behalf to the court of Dr Jonathan. Those were giddy days.

    Less than six months after Dr Jonathan came to grief, Chief Clark has reportedly modified his views on the former president. He lacked political will to fight corruption, said the elder statesman of his eminent compatriot. Chief Clark also insinuated that the former president was precipitate in conceding electoral defeat last March. Since he conceded defeat, there was nothing else anyone could do, he groaned. It was fruitless fighting for someone who ran for office, lost and conceded, he added. Chief Clark then added the clincher: “I no longer belong to the PDP. I won’t go to the APC either, but I will continue to talk as an elder statesman and leader of this country. I have left politics. If anyone comes to me to say he’s running for any elective position in the PDP or the APC, I won’t support you. I’m not a member of the PDP anymore.”

    Two things are clear. Chief Clark is leaving politics a frustrated man, and his frustration is anchored on both the electoral loss incurred by Dr Jonathan and the former president’s weaknesses and hasty concession of defeat. Second, knowing full well how badly it would rankle with Nigerians and even sound opportunistic should he join the new ruling party, the elder statesman has quit the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). No matter how hidden his motives are, his withdrawal from the PDP and his harsh and pejorative description of Dr Jonathan’s leadership ability so soon after the PDP’s electoral debacle gave Chief Clark out as less than altruistic. He knew he could not defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and still keep what is left of his reputation, and he was also reluctant to still be regarded as one of the backbones of the PDP, a party that has fallen badly on hard times. So he has opted to stay disingenuously detached. If he could gain nothing by being in the PDP, let him at least not lose anything by being seen by the APC as that unrepentant PDP avatar.

    While he waved and sang frantically and often irrationally for Dr Jonathan and the PDP in the good old days, this column suspected Chief Clark did not do so out of conviction. He did his calculations well, knew which side his bread was buttered, and half expected that the gravy train would continue for many years to come. Once things came to a dramatic and explosive end, the sensible and calculating Chief Clark knew it was time to move on. He pretends to follow the beaten path of former president Olusegun Obasanjo, but the former president himself absconded from politics on less than noble grounds, a victim of vaulting ambition and abject miscalculation. But whether out of altruism or mischief, the grand old man of South-South politics has taken a bow. Perhaps it is final. He wants to be called an elder statesman like Chief Obasanjo, as if that were possible by fiat or by age. Yet, neither he nor Chief Obasanjo has earned that appellation. Instead, they are recognised as the old men of Nigerian politics. If they truly wish to be statesmen, they will have to earn it — if it is not already too late; if they are not too ossified and too incorrigible to mend their ways.

  • Leadership by vote of confidence

    Leadership by vote of confidence

    By a larger plurality, and for the second time in months, the Senate has passed a vote of confidence in Senate President Bukola Saraki over his apparent face-off with his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and perhaps the president himself, Muhammadu Buhari. After a six-week recess, the Senate resumed plenary last week, and immediately, some 83 senators rose in unison to endorse the leadership of Dr Saraki. The first vote of confidence by 81 senators in late July boasted two fewer senators in Dr Saraki’s wagon. Who knows, by the time a third vote of confidence is held, for it will certainly be held as long as the ruling party is in suspended animation, perhaps nearly all of the country’s 109 taunting senators would endorse their embattled leader. Last week’s larger plurality, according to reports, was predicated on the senators’ continuing dismay at what they describe as meddlesomeness of external forces in Senate affairs. The insinuation is not lost on anyone, for even Dr Saraki himself pointedly disclosed where his troubles were coming from.

    The vote of confidence was prompted by Dr Saraki’s arraignment for offences connected with false declaration of assets, which the animated prosecuting counsel said he needed just two days to establish beyond doubt. Neither the mere fact of charging Dr Saraki in court, nor the fear of proving the Senate President as untrustworthy, nor yet the possibility of presenting him with the moral conundrum of leading Nigeria’s highest lawmaking body on shaky ethical ground, was enough to temper the enthusiasm of the 83 senators from biting the bullet. For both the consenting senators and the Senate President himself, what assumed paramountcy were the motives behind arraigning Dr Saraki before Justice Danladi Umar of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) and the independence of the legislature, not the substance and merit of the court case.

    In the view of Dr Saraki, the court case indicated nothing but persecution. He argues that by breaking ranks with his party over the zoning of legislative leadership positions, he was consequently being unfairly and needlessly harassed. But the legislature, he sermonised, must be independent of the executive arm if democracy was to flourish. It is not clear whether he believes himself. But from all indications, senators, at least the 83 who endorsed him, identify with Dr Saraki’s point of view, and regard the ethical dilemma facing the lofty and incomparable position of the Senate President as secondary to the battle for legislative independence with which they have canonised his defiance. Both in the tribunal and the resumed Senate plenary, Dr Saraki managed by sheer sophistry to frame the argument according to his liking and in his own ethically distorted worldview. Said he: “I wish to reiterate my remarks before the Tribunal, that I have no iota of doubt that I am on trial today because I am President of the Nigerian Senate, against the wishes of some powerful individuals outside this chambers. And to yield ground on this note, is to be complicit in the subversion of democracy and its core principles of separation of powers as enshrined in our constitution. This, in your wisdom, is what you have done by electing me to be the first among all of you who are my equals.”

    The monstrosity of Dr Saraki’s arguments find parallel only in the perverted logic of a man who excuses his life of crime on the grounds of parental neglect or societal and economic inequality. It is indeed possible that Dr Saraki has found himself before a tribunal today because he disagreed with his party and possibly even the president, though he has tried strenuously to dissociate the president from the court case. But for a senior lawmaker of Dr Saraki’s calibre to conflate party politics with the juridic circumstances of his alleged offence is to stretch logic and morality to their elastic limit. Unfortunately for everyone, particularly the senators, the two cases are not only distinct, the court case even takes precedence over the merit of his Senate leadership election and the so-called independence of the legislature. The court case, when it is over, will establish whether he is morally qualified to occupy the lofty position he claimed grandly and extravagantly that his colleagues bestowed upon him in June as primus inter pares.

    If senators refuse to be persuaded by the argument of those who insist on the court case proving or disproving Dr Saraki’s bona fides, it is either they lack the quality their election supposedly conferred on them, or that at bottom they are themselves facing gargantuan ethical conflicts, or even worse, that they lack the depth, strength of character and wisdom required to discriminate between complex and interwoven phenomena. Left to the chafing senators who undiscriminatingly endorsed Dr Saraki last week, had they been asked to examine the quandary former US president Richard Nixon found himself over Watergate in 1972-74, they would have blamed partisan politics for his woes rather than judge the matter on merit, and dismiss the erring president as ethically misled and unfit to hold the high office he was voted into. On Thursday, observers saw a thaw in the relationship between President Buhari and Dr Saraki during the celebration of the Independence Day anniversary at Aso Villa. Even if the smiles between the two indicated a thaw, it is unlikely to affect Dr Saraki’s court case, let alone lead the federal government to a withdrawal or amelioration of the case.

    Not only will the trial go on, irrespective of anyone’s sympathies for Dr Saraki regarding his dispute with party leaders, the case will be diligently prosecuted and justice, sans politics, served. It is incredible that Dr Saraki wishes the case against him to be settled politically, as many intermediaries suggest. Should it be settled politically, it will not only destroy the ethical foundation of President Buhari’s anti-graft war, it will pervert the cause of justice in Nigeria and establish an impregnable dichotomy between the haves and the have nots, and between the influential and the ordinary citizen. Worse, it will presuppose two forms of justice in the land. The cocooned Dr Saraki does not give the impression of a wise lawmaker or leader; this may be why he continues to conflate the issues before him. But it is even more shocking that none of the 83 senators who passed a vote of confidence in him was able to deconstruct Dr Saraki’s troubles and judge appropriately.

    Members of the House of Representatives are also reported to have unanimously mandated a willing Yakubu Dogara, the Speaker, to wade into the Dr Saraki/presidency/APC matter in order to find a political solution. They obviously see the trial as political. Perhaps too, some APC leaders believe the Saraki case should and could be settled amicably and politically. For Dr Saraki, however, the only way to settle the matter is to leave him to do what he pleases at the Senate, to enter into alliances that suit his purpose but hurt his party, and to frame the argument and its resolution along his peculiar politics and schizoid worldview.  Speaker Dogara faced a similar problem in the House of Representatives, but he managed to settle the misunderstanding with extensive concessions. However, neither the president nor APC can assume the liberty to settle the case politically before the CCT adjudicates the matter. The short-term and long-term consequences will be too grave. Indeed, irrespective of the outcome of the CCT case, and given the way Dr Saraki has framed the stalemate in the party as a dispute between him and one or two powerful APC leaders, neither the Senate for which he craves independence, nor the ruling party that sometimes seems to vacillate so mysteriously, will know peace with a political settlement.

    If the APC wishes to retain influence over its elected officials, if the values the president wishes to project are to endure and prosper, and if the legislature wishes to sustain a more realistic and lasting independence, they must not embrace the atrocious solution being foisted on them by Dr Saraki, his unreflective Senate supporters, and goody two-shoes House of Representatives sympathisers. Dr Saraki can continue to fight or arm-twist his party and party leaders, a right his position and privilege confer on him, and even plot to master the ruling party or outwit its leaders, as much as his ambition gives him wing, but the state, which transcends both him and his party, must resist being blackmailed into abandoning the CCT case. The public must also sensibly refuse to confuse the two issues. They are different, and no amount of intra-party squabble and interminable votes of confidence can expiate the infraction of the law federal prosecutors allege against the Senate President. Dr Saraki’s case is a bad one, notwithstanding the political intrigues he tries to insinuate into it, and it will in fact remain very bad irrespective of the sentimental blather lawmakers deploy to undermine public understanding of the issues. The 7th Senate was nothing to write home about in terms of the integrity, sanctity and dignity of lawmaking. The 8th Senate seems adamantly focused on going down that same or more monstrously vicious chute. The country should not indulge them even if the president were to relent.