The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Jonathan embarks on phantom post-mortem

    Jonathan embarks on phantom post-mortem

    Like everything else about President Goodluck Jonathan’s approach to critical issues, his post-mortem of the general elections is as superficial as his shambolic reelection campaign. Last Thursday, while reacting to the post-election report presented to him by the head of his campaign organisation, Ahmadu Ali, a former minister and denizen of the PDP, the president attributed his defeat to anything but his failings and his party’s lack of great ideas and cohesion. “The PDP is still the dominant party,” the president boasted. “If you look at the results, the difference is just 2.5 million votes, and if you look at the areas where it is perceived that the PDP scored so low, the PDP couldn’t have got those kinds of scores. But the elections are over, so the country first.”

    By narrowing his defeat to just one area out of the many-sided beatings he took on both March 28 and April 11, he gave the impression of a politician who liked to clutch at straws. What is obvious to everyone who has taken the pains to analyse the results of the presidential and other polls is that, far beyond the about 2.5 million votes that separated the loser from the winner, and far beyond the fact that he was beaten virtually everywhere and on all fronts, the country could not wait to angrily repudiate Dr Jonathan as leader. He was no longer liked, and the electorate blamed him for all the things that had gone wrong with the country, be it insecurity, declining economy, Chibok schoolgirls abductions, bad external image, etc.

    Strangely, the president still manages to describe his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the dominant party. Dominant where? Did he take care to look at the statistics of his defeat at all? He and his party lost on all fronts, and their dominance has been taken away from them so comprehensively that no one is left in doubt which is the dominant party today. In addition, Dr Jonathan disputes the margins by which he and his party lost in many states. Yet, it is precisely in the states where he and his party won that voter turnout was implausibly high, far above the national and even world averages.

    The president was of course not done with deriving cold comfort from his quaint interpretation of the merciless beating he took. Said he while trying to encourage his demoralised party: “Our duty is to go back and identify areas of challenges so that the party will come up strong and play the role as a very strong party. The PDP is still the most organised party, is still the party that is not owned by anybody, is still the party that whatever you are, you can get to any level with your competencies and so on.” Here, the president again submits to very wild, unsubstantiated claims. There is no proof, in the face of the APC’s devastating electoral showing and tight organisation, that the PDP is the ‘most organised party.’ But the president makes the claim notwithstanding.

    Dr Jonathan follows up by describing the PDP as not owned by anybody. It is not clear what he had in mind, whether actually he thought he did not himself dominate the PDP so brutally that those who could not endure his suffocating hold had no choice but to disengage themselves from the party. He confuses dominant party philosophy, as exemplified by the APC, with personal, idiosyncratic dominance, as symbolised by what he and a few others did to the PDP. For a party that precluded many aspirants from even contesting the presidential primary, and one that enthroned a few vicious, uncouth and ruthless politicians in key positions at the federal and state levels — men and women who had become gods that could not be challenged — it is surprising that Dr Jonathan talks of his party as not having a glass ceiling.

    The president regrets his defeat, and is bitter at the manner he was humiliated and repudiated. He may not regret conceding defeat, for it saved him and his wife much trouble, local and international, but he has clearly not got over the March and April losses. His inability to reconcile himself to his new status has led him to vicious retribution against some of his appointees, including the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, whom he recently fired. If he and his party will continue to live in denial and blame others for their defeat, they will be unable to do the clinical post-mortem required to understand why they failed and how to recover lost grounds. Judging from Dr Jonathan’s reaction and his party’s uncoordinated assessment of the debacle, the PDP will need new faces untainted by defeat, hearts and minds not shattered by the terrible electoral losses, and judgement not coloured by face-saving rationalisations. None among those who lead the PDP today has shown the kind of depth, dispassion and sobriety the party requires for the politics of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

  • After the war, APC struggles to manage the peace

    After the war, APC struggles to manage the peace

    Considering how difficult it has been for them to come up with a zoning formula to share the spoils of war, the still exulting All Progressives Congress (APC) is beginning to discover that the easiest part of what they achieved a few weeks ago is fighting the electoral war that castrated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Their nightmare may have just begun, however. Even after surmounting the difficult task of sharing the legislative and top cabinet and presidency posts available, APC leaders, many of them set in their ways and defined by their rigid and unsparing outlook, will find themselves engaging in fresh supremacy battles. By Thursday, the party’s leaders were yet to agree on who gets what, particularly in the legislative branch. After failing to agree, they excused their tardiness on the fact that neither their National Executive Committee (NEC) nor their National Working Committee (NWC) had met over the sharing formula.

    The eminent gentlemen who met on Thursday in Abuja, however, constitute the real movers and shakers of the party, personalities behind whom no great decisions could be taken nor binding agreements reached. Yet they floundered in their very first post-war task. They probably see their failure to agree on the spoils as one of those political things; for after all, everyone predicted apocalypse in 2012 when the party was formed and teething, and more virulently again last year when the party’s juggernauts arrayed themselves in battle to elect party candidates. But they are still standing, not keeling, and are even winning battles and wars, and garnering trophies. Perhaps after testing themselves sorely to their elastic limits, they will surprise us with a stupefyingly easy agreement. If they do, their long-suffering supporters must hope that the injuries from the internecine battles will not aggravate the lacerations from past intra-party squabbles.

    There is a chance the party will get so complacent and feel so invincible that its leaders will stoically see every internal battle as indispensable for sharpening party philosophy and strengthening party cords. There is also a chance that they may even become so battle-hardened that they will intentionally furnish themselves wars in order to sustain excitement and purpose. However, it is also possible that the party’s elders are conscious of the fact that these struggles are necessary in the party’s early years to enable it define itself, its worldview, and its philosophy. But it is no use second-guessing them. What is important is that they must not overrate their strength or internal cohesion, nor pretend they do not know a bitter and defeated opposition waits threateningly and even treacherously on the sidelines to pounce on them.

    From experience, the victorious party must have understood during the poll war that other than two or three print media establishments, and one or two electronic media houses, the party is encompassed by very hostile media sworn to undermining and crippling it using the artifices of misinformation and disinformation. The party has few media friends. Their media enemies will seize upon every mistake by the party to emphasise and prolong its discomfort. President Goodluck Jonathan put that hostile media to good use in the Southwest to reduce the APC’s advantage and very nearly created an upset in Lagos. That same hostile media are still deeply upset by the Buhari victory and are willing to be deployed in battle against a party they deem sanctimonious, unbearable and meddlesome.

    The PDP fractured badly in the last months of the campaigns, so badly and unexpectedly that it never recovered. The APC must know that whatever unity it lays claim to now is tenuous and skin deep. If the PDP did not survive its divisions, despite having the resources and time to construct a party to its own taste, it would be presumptuous of the APC to imagine it can withstand a major early test when it has not demonstrated the kind of cohesiveness and ideological clarity capable of sustaining the new party through thick and thin. There are indeed already visible factional lines within the victorious party —factional lines engendered by powerful and sometimes resentful blocs — and a few other tendencies showing their disturbing and dangerous silhouettes.

    APC leaders must start to ask themselves whether their talents transcend, as they hope, fighting electoral wars, and whether truly they even understand themselves and the various tendencies and interest groups within the country it is now their privilege to govern. Surely they must appreciate that if five zones came together to deliver the presidency and a majority of state governorships to the APC, a few factors must have been responsible for that unity of purpose. The agreement is not eternal; it is tentative. Subtract, for instance, the North-Central or the Northeast from the victory equation, and the APC could not achieve the success it recorded in the last polls. Similarly, take either the Northwest or the Southwest from the equation, and the victory could have gone to the PDP.

    In the end, the APC will agree to a zoning arrangement. Whether that arrangement will satisfy every tendency within the party is a different thing. Whether that arrangement will not also create more troubles for the party than it can manage is another thing. So far, however, the ongoing disagreements show that the party is still evolving, perhaps just as the country itself is evolving. It is evident that the party, like the PDP it defeated, still does not have a centralising idea, something much bigger and ennobling than the mere acts of merging parties, winning electoral battles, and sharing war booty. Even if they manage to overcome the present squabbles, the APC must still develop an idea of itself and its mission, as well as an idea of the country. Then they will have to market these ideas to the rest of the country, and hope that the ideas would be bought and embraced.

    If the PDP, with all the resources it could muster to placate aggrieved party members and leaders, still unravelled months before the polls, the APC must not feel so sanguine. If the zoning arrangement is not properly managed, the victorious party could lose its leadership of either or both chambers of the National Assembly. The party’s enemies would help exacerbate the divisions, even as aggrieved zones dictate what directions their national lawmakers would go. The Northeast, for instance, is campaigning for either the Senate presidency or Speaker of the lower house. And it argues that the Southwest, which is also reportedly angling for the Speaker’s post, should be contented with the vice presidential position and Deputy Speaker. It is not impossible the Southwest probably reasons that it needs greater influence in the legislature to advance great constitutional changes and other ideas, but after championing the huge change the country is about to enjoy, the Southwest needs to calculate the cost of party disunity which regional disaffections are bound to make prohibitive.

    Rather than expend energy squabbling over positions, the APC should more appropriately prepare for the daunting task of ruling the country and extricating it from the tragic decay the outgoing government had consigned it. The outgoing government has laced the country with booby traps and other potentially destructive and divisive policies, cultures and practices. Countering these problems and dissipating them will not be easy for the APC, especially if the countermeasures are complicated by aggrieved zones mischievously seeking their pound of flesh. It is, therefore, important that the zoning arrangement must be fair and inclusive, not presumptuous, not insensitive. The party will not be helped by the incoming opposition, nor by a hostile media, nor yet by an impatient, oppressed and angry electorate. The APC will in fact again need the talisman that gave it great primaries, credible convention and a great and stupendous victory in the polls.

    Neither the electorate nor this column has great confidence in the party’s elders to manage the internal crisis unfolding in the party and on the nation. There is a certain rapacity for posts and influence going on in the party, and there are too many young hot heads who have overstated and overrated their contributions to the party, some of them governors accustomed to unquestioning loyalty and obedience in their states. Thrown into this mix is a potpourri of fanatical jobholders, ethnic champions, and ambitious persons with an eye on the future. It took extraordinary efforts to rein them in before and during the primaries and convention, and especially when the Buhari Campaign Organisation was being constituted. With the presidency safe in their pockets, and fearing that whatever happens early in the life of the new government would likely be sustained hereafter, the jostling for positions and influence may take a more deathly tenor.

    If squabbling APC leaders manage to overcome their divisions and take effective hold of the Senate and Reps leadership without serious consequences for party unity, then perhaps they have more mettle and wisdom than Nigerians are prepared to acknowledge. From experience elsewhere, conservatives do much better at sustaining party unity than progressives. But if gold rust, as the PDP showed in its fractiousness and loss of the presidency, what then will iron do in the case of squabbling APC? APC leaders must be told indeed that their supporters and Nigerians who have a favourable opinion of their party are embarrassed by their squabbles and manoeuvres. They must summon the maturity and wisdom required to rule, far in excess of the brawn and reckless daring with which they applied themselves to warring for the coveted presidency.

  • Last weeks of the Jonathan presidency

    Last weeks of the Jonathan presidency

    President Goodluck Jonathan may have easily conceded defeat to APC’s Muhammadu Buhari, but he is definitely still hurting from the ignominious loss he suffered in the last polls, particularly how almost irretrievably he led his party to a humiliating defenestration. Even before he cast his own ballot, he wore a cadaverous look on his face, as if he felt and exuded defeat. He had been interviewed in Otuoke where he was to vote eventually, and while responding to a question on live television, he was absentmindedly chewing on something. He was unpresidential on that occasion; but it was more a reflection of how bad he felt and how sunken he was in spirit before the ballots were cast.

    Had former Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, been a perceptive law enforcement officer, he would have known that for the next few weeks before handover, Dr Jonathan would act desperately like a scorched snake, eager to strike at anyone he thought contributed to his defeat, or anyone he thought ridiculed him. Mr Abba is a luckless police officer, the first victim of Dr Jonathan’s last malignant attacks. Since his appointment some nine months ago, he had not shown either guile or perceptiveness in carrying out his responsibilities as the nation’s top police officer. Because he lacked character, and knowing he still had a few years to go before retirement, he began to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. He was consequently spewed out of the president’s mouth.

    Dr Jonathan will do more spewing should anyone bait his anger. That he conceded defeat to Gen Buhari and acted, in the exaggerated estimation of many of his countrymen, as a statesman does not mean he had suddenly acquired the intellectual and philosophical depth required to place his loss in the right perspective, nor to look to the future with the calm maturity necessary to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world. More and more, the presidency will look deserted in the weeks ahead, and the president himself will flash wan smiles at anyone, human or animal, who saunters into the presidential precincts. His hair will grey faster of course, and when he is alone he will fall into such abject lugubriousness commonly associated with men on death row that few would bear to look in his face.

    In retrospect, Dr Jonathan was right to suggest single term of seven years for the president. That way the president will have his cake and eat it; and when he is done gorging on the cake and wine after seven perhaps notorious and uneventful years, he will still leave with his head held high and his dignity unaffected by the scandals he had fomented. But Nigerians can’t say because the effect of his defeat is apocalyptic, the country must adopt that unwholesome and unsanitary one-term scheme. Dr Jonathan failed the country, and is leaving it humiliated and more divided than it had ever been. Let him in the next few weeks before the change of baton also partake of the pain and agony of the psychological defeat he has brought upon the country.

  • APC and the Tinubu phenomenon

    APC and the Tinubu phenomenon

    In 2003 when he broke ranks with his fellow Southwest governors and declined to form an ethnically motivated political and electoral alliance with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, few people knew what really motivated Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was at the time Lagos State governor. When the alliance blew up in the faces of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors who blundered into it, it was suggested that Asiwaju Tinubu was prescient. It was obvious he could not trust Chief Obasanjo whom he considered adept at ambushing friends and enemies alike and skillful in seeking advantage over them, often unscrupulously. But there was a second, perhaps more potent, reason for balking at the deal with the former president. Asiwaju Tinubu was naturally uninterested in any alliance not anchored on ideas. Allying with Chief Obasanjo simply because he was Yoruba, especially one who neither approximated nor projected Yoruba worldview and values, was to him ignoble.

    In retrospect, Asiwaju Tinubu served notice early in the day what kind of politics he wished to play, and what kind of person he liked to be thought of. His ideas might not possess Aristotelian streaks, but he was passionate about them, and he took inordinate risk imbuing them with life. He was not afraid to walk alone, nor be pilloried fairly or maliciously, and he seemed to take pleasure in risking everything he had for the sake of causes, and if it came to that, persons, he believed in. But he took care to outlive the enemy rather than hug reckless martyrdom. He of course recognised he was not always right, but he seemed at peace with himself even when he was wrong. Sometimes brusque, sometimes combative, a little obtruding and consciously ruthless, he was in equal measure humane, farsighted, sacrificial and thoughtful. He in fact seemed to have built his political career on a curious amalgam of virtues and vices that made him one of the most loathed and loved, but more accurately paradoxically indefinable, person in politics today.

    Twelve years after he defined his place as a huge risk taker in politics, and after more than a decade of plotting and scheming, envisioning and practicalising, Asiwaju Tinubu has worked himself into a central position as an ideologue, kingmaker and democrat to whom, more than anyone, the country owes both the deepening of its democracy and the dramatic electoral overthrow of the Goodluck Jonathan government. He could have shortsightedly entered into the unwholesome and opportunistic electoral arrangement with Chief Obasanjo in 2003, and settled any discussion as to what kind of man he was. And in 2007, he could also have accepted the government of national unity offered by his close friend and former Katsina State governor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua. But on both occasions, his instinctive understanding of the value of opposition politics, his unstated belief in the superiority of his ideas, and his charismatic independence, even aloofness bordering on isolation, compelled him into a different political trajectory.

    That trajectory has taken him through a roller coaster of emotions, plucked him from the politics of one state — Lagos — and hopped, stepped and jumped him via regional politics of the Southwest, and landed him smack in the coveted middle of national politics, as tactician, strategist and kingmaker. Now, even his enemies, of whom there are hundreds, will respect him though they continue to loath him. Asiwaju Tinubu’s success and prominence in politics must, however, be properly contextualised. In the 2015 polls, he was simply well positioned. Dr Jonathan had worked up the electorate into a fever over his poor handling of national affairs, including unemployment, Chibok schoolgirls abductions, declining economy, corruption and many debilitating and vexatious policies. A change had become desirable by as early as 2013. Gen Buhari, the APC candidate had also recognised the limitations of his politics of exclusion and non-compromise, and had risen astronomically in the stock of the electorate to achieve cult following. And the world itself, especially the great powers and superpowers, had become quite fed up with the mediocrity in Nigeria. The conditions were ripe for change, and it required someone of uncommon perception, vision and courage to midwife it.

    Nigeria was fortunate that the ripe conditions were met by one man (or what a great wit poignantly and cryptically describes as ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’), Asiwaju Tinubu, who showed fierce determination and character in 2003, reinforced that character and self-belief in 2007, expanded his horizon from thence onward, and in 2011 began to envision the kind of alliances and friendship across ethnic groups, regions and religions that were necessary to change the old order. While still confined to his Lagos State as a lone survivor of the Obasanjo Tsunami, and whereas the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) controlled more states than his Action Congress (AC), he began to act and speak as the national opposition, unafraid he could be crushed by a dominant Abuja and a domineering and unsparing President Obasnjo.

    Not only did he succour former Plateau State governor, Joshua Chbbi Dariye, who was unlawfully impeached and hunted by both President Obasanjo and a colluding PDP in 2006, he also lent a helping hand to former Oyo State governor, Rashidi Ladoja, who had also come under President Obasanjo’s impeachment axe in the same year. To underscore the fact that his political convictions were not a fluke, he was to later extend the same assistance to the impeached Governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako. An incurable believer in presidentialism and its undergirding principle of federalism, Asiwaju Tinubu gladly reached out as a champion of the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers to anyone oppressed. It was no surprise that he took active interest in the electoral processes of Southwest states, including the South-South state of Edo; nor was it also surprising that many ambitious politicians saw him as a reliable friend and bulwark in the fight for electoral probity. He fought to reclaim Ekiti, Osun, Ondo and Edo States; and by the next round of polls in 2011, he offered more than an arm and a leg to claim Ogun and Oyo States.

    Between 1999 and 2011, it was clear to every observer that the presidency meddled in the affairs of the National Assembly, thereby robbing Nigeria of one of the main legs for the sustenance of democracy. In particular, Chief Obasanjo meddled actively in the legislature, enthroning and dethroning at will. Even out of power, in 2011, he still attempted to enthrone Hon Mulikat Adeola-Akande as the Speaker. By that time, however, Asiwaju Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had come of age. Brushing aside the sentiment of zoning and ethnicity, and recognising that his party held the ace in the Southwest, and also aware that he needed to stamp his authority on the democratic process, he forged an alliance with other independent forces within and outside the House of Representatives to elect a Speaker of their choice, Aminu Tambuwal.

    It took enormous courage to embrace a prescient choice that at face value seemed to disadvantage the Southwest to which the PDP had zoned the position. But needs must when the devil drives, and Asiwaju Tinubu shut his eyes, steadied his nerves and bit the bullet. The recriminations that followed were fearsome and unrelenting for more than four years. He was blamed for every problem in the region, and in particular for Dr Jonathan’s deliberate and orchestrated marginalisation of the Yoruba. The grey hairs and hot blood of the Afenifere and Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) respectively assailed him, and propped up the Teflon Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State as the new rallying point for the Yoruba. They are now all silent, their last hoary gasp made when Oba Rilwan Akiolu of Lagos took the Igbo in Lagos to task.

    It is not clear at what point Asiwaju Tinubu began to entertain the thought of winning the centre, especially because he had unsuccessfully tried to forge a winning alliance both in 2007 and 2011 for that purpose. But after seeing the political spinoff from his fortuitous backing of Hon Tambuwal for the position of Speaker, and considering the doors it opened to the North, and the fact that many permutations suddenly became appealingly possible, a fresh and more vigorous attempt to form an alliance looked realistic. The Yoruba organisation, Afenifere, bitterly opposed the ACN, denounced Asiwaju Tinubu, and blamed him for all the region’s woes. Undeterred, however, a new broad-based alliance, which took advantage of the estrangement of some five or seven PDP governors, was formed a year after in 2012. But notwithstanding the flourish and excitement with which the new party called APC presented its roadmap and manifesto, few knew that barely two years later, they could sweep so dramatically and grandly into power.

    If Asiwaju Tinubu dreamt of winning the presidency for the APC, he did not speak it confidently. There were the structure and organisation of the gangling and unsteady party to contend with, as many old party hands resisted new ones. There were also contentious primaries to overcome, not to talk of the more volatile election of a presidential candidate. Indeed, every prognostication was unfavourable, with many analysts, including former Aviation minister Ebenezer Babatope, swearing that sooner or later the new party would implode. Surprisingly, perhaps also to the party’s leaders, the party held together. It also became clear that the driving force was Asiwaju Tinubu, who worked tirelessly and imaginatively to keep the new alliance going. Even if he could not get the ultimate prize of the presidency for the APC, he thought, the party could at least rise to become a strong and powerful opposition with expanded reach. A number of Southwest groups, including Afenifere, accused him of helping the North to enslave the Yoruba, but he forged on nonetheless.

    Any astute politician who studied the statistics of the 2011 polls would know it is sentimental nonsense to speak of enslavement. Dr Jonathan himself had to forge an alliance between at least four geopolitical zones to win in 2011. No northern or south-western politician could win the presidency without a strong alliance. A smart politician would appreciate that Dr Jonathan’s policies had alienated the North. It was, therefore, ready for an alliance. The Southwest, notwithstanding the outlandish conclusions of the Afenifere, was also frustrated and alienated, and was ready for a deal. If no other zone embraced the change mantra, four zones already implicitly did. Having secured the friendship of the North, instead of hating and preaching to them like the Afenifere did, Asiwaju Tinubu managed to finally cobble together a winning alliance and formula which even the controversy over the presidential running mate could not scupper.

    Two final factors seal the reputation of Asiwaju Tinubu. Not only was he ready to work with difficult politicians like Chief Obasanjo, whose crippling conservatism and meddlesomeness many Nigerians resented, since 1999 he had imbibed the Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello culture of leadership recruitment, building young men and women whom he unleashed on the country as future leaders, while also reconciling with his powerful detractors to the point of even describing Chief Obasanjo incredulously as the navigator. Those future leaders sometimes disagreed with him, and even took advantage of his liberal spirit and forbearance, but he seemed to have an uncanny appreciation of their limitations and thus readily accommodated or overlooked their foibles.

    He may not be president-elect or vice president-elect, but the role he played in deepening democracy, sustaining and nurturing the culture of opposition, and strategising the defeat of the PDP, have all raised his profile sky-high. Like the APC, his main challenge will be how to manage both his success and new profile. Two years after its formation, the APC won the presidency even before it had time to solidify its structure and reinforce its raison d’etre. It is, after all, clear that the party has many tendencies, and its core values may seem even tenuous and fragile, especially seeing how a mixed multitude had flocked into its membership in the past months. Asiwaju Tinubu himself, the man with the onomatopoeic Borgu (kwara State) traditional title of Jagaban, is not the most patient of men when it comes to running with a vision; but while he is doubtless a progressive, he appears more pragmatic than philosophical, more practical than an ideologue.

    The APC is a young party, undoubtedly precocious. But it is also brash and to some extent inexperienced. It needs time to establish itself and concretise its philosophy and traditions. Asiwaju Tinubu is tarred with the same brush. Though he sometimes sounds eclectic, his ideas are nonetheless still in formation. But much more challenging to him is that not being president or vice president, and being consumed by a gripping vision for the seemingly impossible, he must now watch how his party and other elected officials would run with the vision. He will assume that everyone has cottoned on to the vision; but more, he will squirm and writhe in anxiety from a point (which point?) in the scheme of things that posterity will place him. For someone so enormously endowed, but one also abounding in his own idiosyncratic shortcomings, his greatest battles may be ahead of him: not battles of strategising and winning elections; but battles of sustaining the lofty height he has climbed as a person and politician, and turning the APC into a more cohesive, disciplined and philosophical organisation, one capable of both midwifing the change the country yearned for when it voted Gen Buhari and developing Nigeria into a developmental tiger far surpassing those of Asia.

  • ‘Statesman’ Jonathan in last-ditch manoeuvres

    ‘Statesman’ Jonathan in last-ditch manoeuvres

    Nigeria was awash with reports a day before the governorship and Houses of Assembly polls that President Goodluck Jonathan had visited Lagos on Thursday to confer with PDP leaders on how to win the state elections. He also conferred inexplicably with Gani Adams, a factional leader of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), who has dedicated himself as an enforcement instrument in the hands of the president. After grieving for a week or more over the lost presidential poll, Dr Jonathan suddenly on Thursday bestirred himself, perhaps on advice from hawkish aides, and began to plot far-fetched schemes either to grab power in a few key states, such as Lagos and Rivers, or to engineer crisis of undetermined and far-reaching consequences.

    While it was not clear last week just how far he was willing to go — whether he would go for broke, or whether he would fail again — it is at least evident that his capitulation two Tuesdays ago was not due to any altruism on his part, as he said yesterday in Bayelsa State, or what was misconceived as his statesmanlike disposition. Given the president’s desperate and despairing manoeuvres moments before the state polls, it is believed that his capitulation was probably due more to international pressures, particularly from the United States.

    Dr Jonathan has never been truly and fully convinced about democracy or its indispensability for growth, peace and stability. In fact, in all his public discussions and speeches, he has offered nothing original on the topic. Those who ascribe to him noble deeds and democratic principles are, therefore, grossly exaggerating. He is also not a democrat by any interpretation of the concept, and had shown throughout his presidency that at bottom he was uncomfortable with the term. Given his dazed and vacant look on television moments after conceding defeat to the APC’s Muhammadu Buhari, Dr Jonathan gave the impression he wished a miracle could rejigger the result of the presidential poll, or even upturn the entire election and end his private nightmare. Until he hands over on May 29, the scorched Dr Jonathan remains unpredictable.

    At the time of writing this column, polling in some parts of Lagos was being marred by violence and irregularities. Sporadic shooting, ballot box snatching, wrong result sheets and other electoral malpractices were already reported in some parts of the state. Some of the disruptions were allegedly sponsored by uniformed security personnel, whether genuine or fake. Two days before the polls, the APC had alerted the country to alleged plans by the president’s men to subvert popular will through various forms of electoral shenanigans. The party’s spokesman had disclosed that the president met with some PDP state leaders and Mr Adams, the OPC factional leader who secured a multi-billion naira pipeline protection contract and openly swore to work for the victory of the PDP. The APC spokesman also disclosed that police, NYSC and military uniforms were being procured and distributed to thugs to engage in electoral violence.

    But Reuben Abati, presidential spokesman, suggested that there was nothing wrong with the president meeting anyone. Though he confirmed the APC spokesman’s disclosures, Dr Abati nonetheless argued that there was nothing unusual in the president’s Thursday meetings, including meeting Mr Adams. The president of course has the right to meet anyone, but it speaks volumes about Dr Jonathan’s sense of propriety and judgement that on the eve of a major election, he saw nothing wrong in meeting Mr Adams who a few weeks ago paraded the streets of Lagos with OPC militants destroying APC billboards and openly mocking the impotence of the security agencies.

    Dr Abati also tried to testify to the president’s fairness and impartiality by suggesting that because he conceded defeat, he could do nothing to jeopardise the polls. But what does the country make of the presidency’s interference in police postings? A few days before the poll, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, had shuffled the posting of some top police officers, perhaps in an effort to ensure peaceful polling. But both in Lagos and Rivers, the two states allegedly targetted by the presidency for the PDP, the IGP’s postings were overruled without notice. Obviously the presidency is engaged in desperate measures to accomplish certain goals. There is no explanation Dr Abati can offer to persuade the country of Dr Jonathan’s altruism. Clearly, the president regrets his defeat, and perhaps, too, is still shaken by his hasty concession. He is unable to reconcile himself with the political tragedy that visited him, and can’t seem to appreciate the value of what relief and reassurance that widely acclaimed concession of defeat has done to the country.

    As this column suggested last week, while Dr Jonathan did well in the particular instance of conceding defeat to Gen Buhari, that lone act does not compensate for his many malfeasances, poor judgement, bad policies, poor leadership, and considerable misdirection of the country. One act, no matter how weighty, does not make a statesman. As events are showing, including the president’s last-ditch effort to reverse or mitigate his loss and lessen the damage to his image, not to talk of his meeting with characters who do not ennoble his blighted presidency, there is nothing fundamentally statesmanlike about him.

  • Impeachment notice: farce and politics in Ekiti

    Impeachment notice: farce and politics in Ekiti

    In the continuing saga of Governor Ayo Fayose’s impeachment, it is hard to tell who enjoys the most support: the governor, House of Assembly Speaker Adewale Omirin, or the constitution. Mr Fayose was last week served impeachment notice by 19 members of the House of Assembly led by Dr Omirin. The governor has done his best to evade direct service, and has instead tried to mobilise public sympathy. He argues that the 19 lawmakers, all members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), were attempting to use the tool of impeachment to secure what they lost through the ballot box.

    Does the governor have the people’s support? There is no doubt that his supporters, most of whom have been publicly identified as trade union members, artisans, and office holders, are very vocal and troublesome and have loudly proclaimed their support for the governor and bitterness against the 19 lawmakers and the APC. These supporters have taken to the street and are constantly in the news, presenting a facade of huge and undeniable support for the paranoid Mr Fayose. There is, however, no doubt that over the months, as the governor displayed greater imbecility, the angry crowd of supporters, though still vociferous and implacable, had thinned out.

    Dr Omirin also commands a huge and perhaps discrete following, first from a majority of lawmakers, and second from those pained by the precipitous decline of public morals and standards in this state of great learning. The Speaker’s educated supporters select and calibrate their responses, preferring the rule of law and due process. They naturally face the dilemma of seeming to be either docile in the face of Mr Fayose’s monstrous behaviour, or are in reality not too bothered whichever way the pendulum would swing.

    The third force in the saga is of course the constitution, which at the moment seems pristinely alone and isolated. No matter what support both Mr Fayose and Dr Omirin get from their partisans, the constitution is at the heart of the quarrel and controversy, and will probably be the deciding factor. Who between the governor and the Speaker has acted constitutionally? And what does the constitution say about the impeachment? In the view of Femi Falana, a lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), the impeachment notice served by the 19 lawmakers is in order and has precedence. The notice, anchored on eight constitutional breaches against the governor, appeared to have been inspired by the continuing buffoonery of the governor, including dealing with seven lawmakers as the legal and properly constituted House of Assembly under the leadership of the usurper, Dele Olugbemi.

    It does not, however, appear that too many people are paying attention to what the constitution says. Politics predominates, and decisions and actions are determined by whom the partisans support. While Ekiti and Nigerians wait to see whether the Chief Judge would set up an investigative panel as directed by the House of Assembly under Speaker Omirin, some lawyers cite a judgement of the Supreme Court, referenced in the case of the impeachment of former Oyo State governor, Rashidi Ladoja, indicating that impeachment notice could not be valid except it proceeded from a sitting in the legislative chamber. But what if the lawmakers were barred from the legislative chamber by violent groups, such as clearly happened in Ekiti last week?

    It is not certain how the impeachment matter would be resolved. But if the farcical performance of Mr Olugbemi, leader of the Group of Seven who pretends to be the Speaker, is anything to go by, Ekiti is in trouble. Mr Olugbemi speaks very bad English, could hardly read his own prepared statement disputing Dr Omirin’s impeachment notice, his brief remarks were redolent with so many shibboleths, and he obviously knew little law and legislative practices. It was thus puzzling to see the governor embrace such appalling farce rather than concoct his own farce for which he is eminently gifted.

  • Soft landing for top officials?

    There are indications the incoming government of President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari might be willing to consider a soft landing for a few top government officials to help smoothen the transition process. All Gen Buhari has told the public is that Dr Jonathan has nothing to fear from him. Whether that meant he would not be probed for alleged wrongdoings is left to anyone’s interpretation. It is also speculated that the so-called soft landing could be extended to some other top officials of the Jonathan presidency and those who perpetrated violence and murdered opponents during the last elections. The public will wait until the Buhari government makes a categorical statement on the matter.

    But the public must anticipate the Buhari government and let officials know that in case they think of extending any soft landing to any other top official of the Jonathan presidency, that act would meet with public displeasure. There is no way a President Buhari would not inquire into many acts of the previous government, especially when it becomes quite inevitable. If what is unearthed is mindboggling, the decision to do something about it is unlikely to rest with the government. Public pressure will be the deciding factor, for after all, sovereignty resides with the people.

  • Buhari’s delicate victory

    Buhari’s delicate victory

    Even before one ballot was cast in the March 28 presidential and legislative elections, few could resist the temptation to see the election as a referendum on the Goodluck Jonathan government rather than an endorsement of Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate. Gen Buhari is undoubtedly qualified to rule, and he brings into the presidency rare qualities seldom found in Nigerian rulers, to wit, discipline, honesty, reliability and determination. But Dr Jonathan’s weaknesses were even more striking and electorally damaging than the general’s strengths were electorally productive and praiseworthy. Though the APC candidate trumped his PDP opponent by a robust two million plus votes, the winning party must judge the strength of the foundations upon which its March 28 victory is built if it is to finalise the design and construction of the former opposition party, achieve success, and build a lasting legacy.

    As comprehensive as the party’s victory in the North may appear, and as solid as that victory may seem in the North-Central and in the Southwest, APC’s electoral performance, which will most probably be replicated in Saturday’s state polls, may be more tentative than the party may want to believe. While its victory is unprecedented, making it the first time in Nigeria a ruling party was defeated by the opposition at the national level, it is not clear the party’s success is due mainly to the strength of its manifesto or to the voters’ love for the party. The opposition party’s victory is of course not attenuated by fears of future disappointment; but given the scale of the rot left by Dr Jonathan and his team, and the drastic remedies the winner will need to administer very deeply and quickly, the infatuation between the voters and the APC could very quickly turn into frustration or, worse, repudiation.

    If the APC is able to measure the structure and amperage of the victory it secured over the PDP last Tuesday, it will put things in the right perspective. It will easily recognise that the talents and industry it required to defeat the PDP and Dr Jonathan are somewhat fundamentally different from the qualifications and attributes it needs to manage its success and govern well. There is nothing in their short pedigree, having come all of two years, nor in the rapid and drastic manner they secured victory, to suggest they do not have the men to lift the party above the common level, or the tactics and strategies to cobble together a great and successful cabinet.

    The party appears to know already the priorities of the electorate. First is the economy, which decline is indicated by revenue shortfalls and states unable to pay salaries or execute major projects. Second is insecurity, also depicted by the humiliating help Nigeria is receiving from neighbouring countries and mercenaries to fight Boko Haram. On Friday, the Chadian army chief publicly mourned the near absence of Nigerian troops on the frontlines. Third is the abducted Chibok schoolgirls whose rescue and return the country craves badly. And fourth, on the aesthetic level, is the need to build the support pillars of Nigerian politics and democracy, a task the PDP forsook for 16 years.

    The APC made history last week by winning the March 28 polls, and changing the face of the incoming National Assembly; it stands on the threshold of a much bigger history if it manages against all predictions to assemble a competent multicultural and multidimensional cabinet to right the wrongs of decades past. It will need the disciplined commitment of the president-elect himself, the energy and vision of men like Bola Ahmed Tinubu, guardians of the constitution and civil rights like the incoming vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, and the maturity of party elders like John Oyegun and Ogbonnaya Onu. Atiku Abubakar will have a say, though he had often showed a willingness to run with the hare and hunt with the hound; and so, too, will former president Olusegun Obasanjo, notwithstanding his imperiousness and messianism.

    Though he is a man of few words, yet even in his quietude, Gen Buhari has given the impression he is loth to inquire into the financial and probably also political madness that unhinged the country and predisposed it to disequilibrium. However, he really has little choice but to probe the past, for the scale of the madness must be investigated and requited if similar malfeasances are not to be repeated. There was hardly any election in much of the Southeast and South-South last month; even if the APC will not head for the tribunal, it must document what went wrong, and in the case of criminal acts, such as were orchestrated in Rivers State before and during the presidential poll, those indicted must without fail be brought to justice. Dr Jonathan appears to have got some soft landing; but everyone knows he opened the country’s financial tap and let loose a gale of subversion of the people’s will through unrestrained inducement. Surely, the money came from somewhere. The country needs to know, if not immediately, then sometime in the near future, how and why institutional controls failed so woefully. If perpetrators are not called to account now, nature itself will withhold its goodwill. The blood of the innocent must be avenged in Rivers State and elsewhere.

    The nature and dynamics of the APC victory is in many ways instructive of the present and the future. The Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, actively campaigned for Dr Jonathan on the dubiety that voting for APC was an endorsement of the enslavement of the Yoruba by the North. But both the results of the 2011 and March 28, 2015 polls showed clearly that the nature and dynamics of Nigeria’s electoral politics had changed considerably. No zone, let alone a cabal, can win elections without an active alliance with some other zones. Dr Jonathan realised this in 2011 but strangely failed to nurture and sustain the alliance that brought him to power. Gen Buhari failed in 2011 because he embraced the old politics of dominance, but succeeded last month partly because he embraced the new politics of accommodation. If its victory is not to be a fluke, the APC must recognise and nurture these new dynamics. Despite the shape of its electoral performance, especially its near zero impact on the Southeast, it must not fail to bring into the cabinet great minds from that protesting or absentminded region, men and women like Charles Soludo, Pat Utomi and Victoria Ezekwesili. There is no room for the bitter, malicious and acrimonious politics of the past, the kind still risibly and anachronistically subscribed to by Afenifere.

    Above all, the APC must assign itself the legacy responsibility of laying a solid foundation for democracy, the best in Africa. The PDP failed disastrously to carry out this responsibility. Now is the time for real democratic and structural change. To this end, APC must reform the system fundamentally and build and defend national institutions, including the security services bastardised by Dr Jonathan. It must also ensure that subsequent elections improve on the use of technology as well as neutralise violence in politics. The party won a historic election; after April 11, it must now settle down to its historic duty.

  • Dressing Jonathan in borrowed ‘statesman’ robes

    Dressing Jonathan in borrowed ‘statesman’ robes

    For conceding defeat to the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in the March 28 poll, President Goodluck Jonathan has been lavishly described as a statesman. The word is debauched. Nigeria was doubtless on edge shortly before and after the poll, with many people stockpiling food and provisions and relocating from towns and cities they feared could erupt in violence if the poll results did not favour one of the contestants. But by placing a call to Gen Buhari and conceding defeat, the unbearable tension was instantly relieved. A grateful nation, it seems, could not have enough of the new Jonathan, whom they immediately dressed in the borrowed robes of a statesman.

    A stupefied Abdulsalami Abubakar, former military head of state, ran breathless, together with his new National Peace Committee, to the president to thank him for his kind consideration and understanding. World leaders, awash in emotions, also sent word appreciating the new Dr Jonathan for placing country above self and ensuring post-poll peace. Even the APC itself, the main beneficiary of the electoral revolution that took place seemingly against the run of play, gushed to the president in coded language that all was forgiven. The president’s friends, hangers-on, and the media he dedicated to himself for the reelection race, have all painted him in glowing statesmanlike colours.

    It is apparently so soon forgotten that Dr Jonathan, more than any other person, politician or unprincipled security agent, was responsible for the tension that convulsed the country weeks before the fateful race. He destroyed the security services, disemboweled them, and turned them into his party’s enforcement arm, to the extent that the world scorned what had become of Nigeria, and neighbouring countries ridiculed its armed services. It is also forgotten that the president was directly and solely responsible for creating and fostering religious and ethnic divisions in the country, and aggravated his irresponsible behaviour by condoning the threats and sabre rattling from Niger Delta militants and larcenous political elders sworn to his protection.

    Moreover, though he was unable to deploy troops for counterinsurgency duties in the Northeast and had had to rely on Chadian soldiers and other heavily paid mercenaries, Dr Jonathan found the temerity to deploy soldiers for election duties in Ekiti and Osun States, and then finally on March 28, all over the country. Together with the police, the troops undermined balloting in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Delta States. Such mindless intimidation never occurred in these parts before, let alone on that sickening and humiliating scale.

    And finally, who could fail to notice that after securing postponement of the polls for six crazy and indefensible weeks, Dr Jonathan then sidelined his campaign organisation, opened the vaults and proceeded to seduce and induce those he identified as opinion moulders and grassroots mobilisers in the Southwest and a few other parts of the county. In any other country, the insane spending that closed the last week or so of electioneering, which the president unconscionably masterminded, should be enough to get him locked up for life.

    Yet, after Dr Jonathan spent more than four years nurturing these horrifying malfeasances, he is today dressed as a statesman by public commentators, many of whom are satisfied with low public morals and standards. Everyone is lining up in the shrine to pour libation to the new statesman. Palladium will not, even though he recognises that Dr Jonathan redeemed a little of the damage he had done to the polity by calling Gen Buhari and conceding defeat. If Dr Jonathan’s expiatory afterthought is what it takes to be a statesman in Nigeria, the country must begin to mourn the loss of its future, and in particular the loss of the great values that undergird every sane and stable society. A nauseous culture is seemingly being bred — indeed as the cult of former heads of state already indicates — whereby a leader propitiates his misrule by the simple act of vacating power.

  • Lagos’ll vote APC governor

    There are fears in some quarters that Lagos State, given the more than 600,000 votes it gave the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the recently concluded presidential election, would vote for the defeated party in the state governorship race. The possibility does not exist. The PDP got that number of votes because the voters hoped Dr Jonathan would win at the centre, and then instigate a stupendous and unprecedented win in Lagos on April 11. Now that he failed, who thinks Lagos would ignore the pains it had endured for about 16 years while in opposition to the ruling party in Abuja, and now foolishly vote to enter into another slavery and opposition to the (APC) national government? Are they sadists or gluttons for punishment?

    For 16 years, Lagos was abandoned by the federal government to rot and pine away in hopelessness. No one said a word in its defence, and no one came to its help. Without doubt, on April 11, the state will vote APC governor in order to get the help its beleaguered people have richly deserved since the federal capital moved to Abuja. It had consistently craved more local governments and a special status. This is the state’s finest chance to land both prizes. Those who hazard APC’s loss in the Lagos governorship race should instead prepare themselves for the election of an APC governor by a healthy and irresistible plurality, and not only in Lagos, but perhaps in states like Imo, Rivers and Akwa Ibom.