The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

Map for map, they marched to ‘electoral’ war

It was billed either as a contest of ideas — such ideas and philosophies as could be gleaned from their disparate thoughts and statements — or as a contest of men: with Muhammadu Buhari on one side, stolid, taciturn, combustive and unyielding; and Goodluck Jonathan on the other side, flighty, prickly, variable and conspiratorial. Perhaps, in some ways, the contest for the presidency, which took place yesterday, was some of these. But after reporting the contest for months, the media, in the last week of the campaign, turned it into a contest of maps. Map for map, both media and contestants marched into battle, their ensigns held behind their backs or trampled under feet, their principles in abeyance, and their virtues a smouldering wreck.

First to fire the early shots among the great national newspapers last Sunday were The Nation and The Punch whose predictive maps looked eerily similar in many respects. Eight states would be battlegrounds, predicted The Nation — three from the North-Central, two from the Northeast, two from the South-South, and one from the Southeast. The paper gave Ekiti in the Southwest to Dr Jonathan, perhaps on account of the disruptive power of Governor Ayo Fayose rather than the conviction of the state’s electorate. But The Punch thought seven states and the FCT would be battlegrounds, with one form the Southwest, three from the North-Central and the FCT, and two from the Northeast. Minus the battleground states, both The Nation and The Punch seemed to give Gen Buhari victory, especially because the APC was expected to sweep the states with high electoral votes.

Not to be outdone, The Sun published its own map a few days before the poll. Only five states, according to the paper, would be battlegrounds — two in the North-Central plus the FCT, and two in the Southwest, among which was, shockingly, Lagos. In terms of the high electoral votes states, The Sun seemed to say the contest could go the way of Gen Buhari. With three major newspapers appearing to give the contest away to Gen Buhari, it was like telling Dr Jonathan to go into pasture. But not if the Jonathan campaign could come up with a joker of its own, literally and figuratively. And, presto, Dr Jonathan’s men came out bullish with their own map published on the front pages of many newspapers across the country, expenses not spared, and with no thoughts absolutely for moderation.

In the great contrarian map, the PDP/Dr Jonathan camp gave the battle to themselves, not by a whisker, but by a huge and insurmountable margin. Let Gen Buhari go and hang if he wished, the new map seemed to indicate. Whereas the three major newspapers based their cartographic enterprises on explicable and internally generated sleuthing, the Jonathan map based its own on far-flung authorities, including an unknown Nigerian newspaper, and surveys by a potpourri of faceless international risk analysts. Risk? Ah, well, why not, it’s politics, isn’t it?

In the Jonathan map, only six states were grudgingly conceded to Gen Buhari, and five states were regarded as battlegrounds. The remainder were allotted willy-nilly to Dr Jonathan, lock, stock and barrel, for him to take gaily and triumphantly into his barn. The entire Southwest, minus Osun, was allotted to Dr Jonathan; so, too, the entire Southeast, all totalling 26. The battle needed not to have been fought in the first instance, going by that phantasmagoria from Dr Jonathan’s electoral and cartographic camp.

Miffed by the abuse of the fine science of cartography, and pleasantly shocked by responses from states like Gombe, Kogi, Edo and Ekiti whose leading lights swore there had been political and electoral changes in all four states in the past few weeks, changes they argued the paper’s correspondents failed to capture, The Nation felt compelled to revisit its map, and redraw it. The fresh map published on Friday was a stirring, ringing and thunderous one-sided contest and victory for Gen Buhari. It also showed that the Buhari territory had broadened considerably, while the Jonathan country had shrunk ominously. Nine states became battlegrounds, instead of eight. Alas, the Jonathan camp could not respond to this new cartographic affront from The Nation: it was just one day to polling.

After the results are known, perhaps late Monday or early Tuesday, it will be evident which newspapers hosted the most gifted cartographers, and which ghosts had the temerity to adjust boundaries while wearied and innocent men slept. Who knows, if the polling went well, the elections could become a landslide, and poets could even compose all sorts of poems such as the one below.

Map for map, the media marched to war.

Cheek by jowl they drew and shuffled their boundaries,

Partisan cudgels on their necks like albatrosses;

Swayed by the morsels of PDP and APC.

Ethics foresworn; logic vaporised,

To convince all who of the two candidates deserves victory.

Map for map, they thrust forward,

Marching drunkenly between transformation and change.

The maps may not be the most important landmark of the 2015 electioneering, considering the role money has played and the expertise the PDP has deployed into dispensing financial inducement. Indeed, the entire Southwest was abuzz three to two weeks to the election, as President Jonathan virtually took control of his own campaign and sidelined his campaign organisation. He swept through the Yoruba country and smooched with traditional rulers, and according to reports, distributed financial largesse on a scale that beggars belief. The Ondo State governor, Olusegun Mimiko, also organised youths and freelance Afenifere leaders for Dr Jonathan in the guise of creating a favourable momentum for the president to implement the 2014 national conference report.

Then there was the irrepressible chicanery orchestrated by the Jonathan campaign to discredit INEC, humiliate the electoral commission chairman, subvert the use of permanent voter cards and card readers, and empower militants and militias as a counterforce to established and lawful security and paramilitary agencies.

But on the whole, the maps were the most noticeable tools that drove electioneering to giddy heights in the closing moments of the elections. They will be remembered for a long time, if not for their cartographic accuracy, at least for their political razzmatazz, and as a catalyst for politics as entertainment. The competence of media cartographers will doubtless increase in the coming years, with many of them developing skills that cannot be gainsaid domestically and internationally. Should maps in fact be capable of winning elections, Gen Buhari would be crowned tomorrow or next. But as religious leaders always say, the electorate should pray against inconclusive elections on account of the problems with card readers.

March 29, 2015
Sight and sound of 2015 electioneering

President Goodluck Jonathan is one of the candidates in this year’s presidential election. The problem, it must be emphasised again, is not that an Ijaw man rose to become president of Nigeria, as if there was any institutional bias against minority politicians, or a glass ceiling to limit anyone’s ambition. What the past five years or so have shown is that too many people, including perhaps the president himself, have entertained inaccurate notions of the qualities a president must possess to function optimally. The emphasis of most presidents, as this column warily noted a while ago, was always on building roads, hospitals and schools, among other structures. While these responsibilities are important, a president must, however, display qualities much deeper, more expansive, more inspiring, and more envisioning than just building structures. It is not clear what yesterday’s presidential poll would tell us, whether voters were able to make a sound judgement on how well Dr Jonathan had met the demands of his office in every ramification, far beyond what he had built or not built in his first term, and up to the sublime and probably the most important attributes a president must show. Whatever they say, it must be hoped it truly reflected their views, not the manipulations of powerful individuals.

By far the most important sight and sound in this year’s electioneering was the role of the media. Ideally, and especially because the major media are privately owned, they are at liberty to endorse their preferred candidates within the ambit of their professional ethics. But, in general, they seemed to have redefined their ethics, blurring the line between partisanship and indefensible behaviour. Apart from opinions that ran the gamut of partisan bias, even political advertisements oscillated wildly between the reasonable and the unreasonable. In many instances, purely defamatory advertisements were, in the case of some electronic media, combatively presented as investigations rather than advertisements, without any indemnification whatsoever.

Interestingly, despite spending humongous sums on publicity and advertisements, the PDP and the Jonathan campaign organisation repeatedly accused the APC of deploying heavy propaganda on everything, including politics. It is believed that the Jonathan campaign’s complaint indicates the impact of the APC campaign, notwithstanding deriving support from only one television station and barely three or four print media. The PDP, on the other hand, had the support of more than four or five television stations, about seven major national newspapers and scores of columnists.

If the electoral process culminates in the election of new and visionary leaders, the laborious 2015 polls will have been worth the time and money. It will indicate that the abusive propaganda, some of the most vicious of which were directed against supporters and builders of the opposition rather than aspirants and candidates, were rendered ineffective and inoperable. It will reflect the frustrations of the people exhausted by years of economic woes, social crisis and ruinous security problems.

March 29, 2015
Unprecedented election anxiety

The Goodluck Jonathan government should feel deeply mortified by the fact that since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, Nigerians have never felt so anxious and fearful during an election as they felt over yesterday’s poll. Who is to blame for this atmosphere of fear and anxiety? In his address to the nation on Friday on the elections, the president, who can’t ever manage to match his words with action, spoke about his preparedness to deal with fomenters of electoral violence. But what did he do when Gani Adams Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) ran riot on Ikorodu Road, Lagos, ostensibly in the service of a president who had just given him a contract to police pipelines?

Did the president not misuse and unconstitutionally deploy the military and the Department of State Service (DSS) during the last Ekiti and Osun governorship polls, and now in Lagos, thus militarising the polls and intimidating the electorate? Could the president pretend not to feel the apprehension of the public? The president also spoke of his preparedness to uphold the oath of office he took in 2011. But what did he do in Ogun State when former governor Gbenga Daniel frolicked with minority lawmakers committing sundry illegalities? What indeed has he done in Ekiti as the fanatical Governor Ayo Fayose continues to go berserk with seven lawmakers, assaulting judges and orchestrating violence against the opposition?

On Friday, as he addressed the nation, it was clear Dr Jonathan was insincere. He did not mean a word of what he said. More, given his indulgent handling of errant police officers such as AIG Mbu Joseph Mbu, it is apparent he has contempt for his own views (perhaps they are really his speechwriters’ views foisted on him), and feels inconvenienced by the strictures imposed by the constitution, the demands of democracy, and the pains experienced by the country he has so badly misgoverned.

March 29, 2015
ING to GNU: sheer waste of time

The past few weeks have seen Nigeria seething with rumours and plots of interim government, many of them quite fanciful and far-fetched, and a few somewhat plausible. The plots proceeded from the palpable fear that President Goodluck Jonathan would have lost the presidential poll had it held on February 14. Fearing that he would lose, and determined not to hand over power to successors he was believed to have described as unworthy, the president was alleged to have concocted a series of plots to enthrone an Interim National Government (ING) supposedly backed by many eminent Nigerians. Among those who lent credence to the rumours of ING plots was former president Olusegun Obasanjo who colourfully denounced the suggestion and castigated the Jonathan presidency for even contemplating it at all.

Though the Jonathan presidency quickly dissociated itself from the ING plots but left strong hints it was not averse to the idea, there was enough amperage in the rumours to link former military president, Ibrahim Babangida to the plot. It is curious that in the heat of the plots and rumours Gen Babangida ignored the controversy. However, late last week, in a lengthy and circumlocutious refutation, the Minna-based general swore he had nothing to do with the suggestion, adding that there was no similarity between the ING he set up in 1993 and the political conditions of today. There was no need for the truncation of democracy now, he said gravely, for he could neither see nor envisage a stalemate. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt.

But just as the ING idea was being buried, especially with President Jonathan’s upbeat feeling that the postponement of the polls had given his flagging campaign fresh impetus, and he was now in pole position to win, a new heresy called Government of National Unity (GNU) seems suddenly to be taking root. The heresy is, however, in fact an old one. Flamboyantly bandied about in 2007 after the late President Umaru Yar’Adua won a notoriously flawed presidential election, the GNU was believed to be a bait to entrap, neutralise or even destroy the then Action Congress (AC) party, the political precursor of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and latterly a constituent part of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The idea collapsed under the weight of the Yar’Adua government’s many contradictions.

The new GNU is poignantly suggested by the otherwise eminent Project Nigeria Movement (PNM), a coalition of civil society groups led by Ben Nwabueze, a respected constitutional lawyer and activist. The idea, which appears poised to gain ground, is anchored on the fear that the tight race between the incumbent and his main challenger, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military head of state and cult figure to his supporters, could explode into a conflagration either during or after the election. This anxiety is not without foundation, though the GNU suggestion is both impracticable and indefensible. Just as the idea of interim government is silly, the suggestion of unity government is even worse. They are both based on false and unsustainable premises.

Professor Nwabueze’s group has offered reasons, including the fear of electoral stalemate, that could precipitate a political explosion, and they all appear sensible. However, they assume that both the APC and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have common grounds upon which to anchor a unity government. The fact is that apart from the viperous campaigns that have sundered friendship and fouled the well of trust between the two major contestants, there are absolutely no philosophical, political or personality reasons for the two parties and challengers to come together. Both are located in the two extremes of Nigeria’s political continuum, with the PDP a smorgasbord of arcane and conflicting developmental agenda amateurishly encapsulated in the so-called transformation agenda, and the APC representing an alloy of rigid, ideological and formulaic approach to development and politics.

Not only will GNU smother the concept of opposition from which the presidential system, and indeed any democratic system, draws sustenance, it will also create an unhealthy political environment that will see whichever party is the junior partner engulfed and strangulated. In the final analysis, as Zimbabwe recently illustrated with the improbable cohabitation of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the political environment will be further poisoned, and positions hardened and rendered irreconcilable. Rather than run away from the ghosts that haunt the body politic, it is perhaps time to confront them. There are no common grounds between the two parties, for one represents the distant anachronisms of our sordid and disreputable past, and another a sense of hope and progress, no matter how faint or brittle. Both cannot cohabit in the same space, for one must necessarily yield ground to the other if the country is to make progress and achieve stability and peace.

The country is aware that one of the reasons for the Buhari resurgence is the increasing appreciation that Dr Jonathan has fallen dangerously short of the standard of leadership required to heal Nigeria’s fractiousness, whether ethnic or religious, manage the economy innovatively, tackle the country’s security nightmares, restore confidence in Nigeria’s regional leadership and continental standing, and harness Nigeria’s potential and rally the people behind great causes. The APC has indicated it has no confidence in Dr Jonathan’s ability to innovate, and has even lesser confidence in his appreciation of the major issues affecting and afflicting the country. To ask the APC to jump into bed with a leader that exhibits no leadership traits, someone they have long concluded could never rise to the level needed to renew the country, is to ask the opposition to commit political suicide.

But the resentment between the two candidates and their parties is mutual. To hear Dr Jonathan declaim on critical national issues is to get a robust sense of his antipathy towards the opposition, his almost total ignorance of modern systems of government, and the blame game he has mastered. In his opinion, his opponents sponsored the 2012 fuel subsidy removal protests because the protesters received refreshments, the media was too critical, making him the most abused president ever, and Boko Haram or any other social or economic revolt was always the manifestation of one conspiracy or the other. With such an unyielding mindset, with such boyish obsession, and with the continuous fulminations of his high-strung wife, Dame Patience, it is impossible to expect that the moderation, restraint, depth, compromise and consensus needed to drive and sustain a coalition government can be engineered by Dr Jonathan to enthrone the needed national peace and stability the Prof Nwabueze group hankers after so desperately.

As long as Dr Jonathan heads the GNU, the conflict that would assail the coalition government would be unmanageable and even insuperable. Resentment would grow apace, and the inspiration and innovation that had been lacking in the president for more than five years, and which are necessary to remake and energise Nigeria, cannot obviously be produced simply because a GNU was emplaced. The interim national government was an obnoxious, despicable idea; a government of national unity is an even more unrealistic proposition. It will not work. More, it undoubtedly cannot work.

March 15, 2015
Jonathan’s desperate forays into Southwest

It was largely the activism of the Southwest that made his ascension to the throne in 2010 possible, and he could not have won as fluidly as he did in 2011 without either the Southwest’s indifference to the Buhari presidential campaign of that year or their tacit cooperation. Yet more than five years after that momentous poll success, President Goodluck Jonathan has exhibited nothing but contempt for the Southwest, passing them over for top appointments. In-between, during the 2012 fuel price hike protests largely inspired by the politically conscious Southwest, Dr Jonathan again showed nothing but scathing disdain for the highly critical region, describing the Lagos elite as enervated and pampered, and their children spoilt brats who wastefully rode two or three cars, guzzling a disproportionately huge portion of the country’s oil resources. And in Ibadan, while campaigning at Mapo Hall in 2011, he described the Southwest progressive leaders as rascals from whom the region must be delivered. In particular, at the 52nd Independence anniversary lecture in Abuja, Dr Jonathan made shockingly ignorant remarks on the fuel subsidy protests, which in distorted logic he said were sponsored.

Dr Jonathan has never been at ease with Lagos, though he now courts them. During his 2011 campaigns, he tried to rouse ethnic hatred by suggesting openly to non-natives that if they banded together they could defeat the candidate of the ruling party in the state. The campaign failed, but it has not stopped him from pursuing that same horrifying tactics, nor discouraged him from again reaching out to ethnic groups within the state as well as wowing Lagosians themselves with promises of future projects. Perhaps he is even secretly appalled by how easily members of the Southwest elite can be compromised by contract largesse and other forms of inducements.

Throughout his first term, he never did anything major or strategic for Lagos, but he is back expecting the state to vote for him in March. Worse, other than fixing a few roads, he has done nothing concrete for the Southwest, but he has spent nearly the whole six weeks extension of the electoral timetable appealing to the region to support his reelection. Indeed, it was only a few months to the elections that he appointed a Yoruba official as his chief of staff. Otherwise, citing his displeasure with the region’s critical view of his government and the rebuff of PDP’s Mulikat Adeola-Akande as Speaker of the House of Representatives, he ensured no Yoruba appointee was among the top 15 positions in his government. After all, the region is a den of opposition, and its pungent media, with their fumigant tentacles spread all over the country with sanctimonious lack of grace, too unfriendly, too imperious, too acerbic.

If he had appointed Yoruba men and women into key government positions on his own volition, and had cited key projects in the region, he could justifiably campaign on the bases of these friendly and statesmanlike gestures to wow the region for votes. With no achievements to hawk, and with beggarly outstretched hands, he has embarked on a furious electoral drive targetted at the region’s grovelling traditional elite using the false face of Yoruba leadership and cashing in on the divisions and power struggles going on in the region. He has reportedly seduced Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) leaders who, in exchange for pipeline protection contracts, have promised him support, as if the region could be sold and bought so cavalierly in transactions masterminded by half-wit and unprincipled traders masquerading as politicians and cultural icons. And those whom he cannot seduce, he has unleashed defamatory attacks on their persons in the hope that he can alienate them from their supporters and party support base.

Dr Jonathan’s Southwest converts have thus deliberately refused to focus on his weaknesses, which are legion and alarming, and on his absolute lack of finesse, diplomacy, intellectual depth, and sound judgement, not to say his abiding suspicion and even hatred for the Southwest elite and their many organs such as the media and democratic structures that define their essence, persons and history. The converts are not discomfited by the unsavoury fact that Dr Jonathan is unreasonably promoting militant groups and other ethnic militias to usurp the functions of military and paramilitary organisations.

In spite of all these depressing manoeuvres, the real Southwest is likely to see through the Jonathan shenanigans. They will recognise that voting for Dr Jonathan is endorsing incompetence, and that voting for, say, Jimi Agbaje, no matter their unhappiness with the progressive leaders of the region, is in fact enthroning the likes of Bode George and Adeseye Ogunlewe and other scoundrels. The region is likely to recognise that should Dr Jonathan be reelected, he would enact the worst economic policies ever seen in these parts, for his government has already crippled the economy and is barely struggling to cover the mess until the elections are over. Wiser counsel is likely to prevail, for the prohibitive and burdensome cost of reelecting Dr Jonathan far outweighs the discomforts of voting Gen Buhari with all his chequered history.

March 15, 2015
Plotting election stalemate

The March 28 presidential election has been framed as a contest between a young and energetic politician and an old and infirm opposition standard-bearer, between a liberal Christian and a Muslim extremist, and between a southern federalist and a northern unitary and hegemonic slaveholder. Around these divisions have grown and flourished a noisome assemblage of vicious and unrelenting propagandists and a coterie of uncouth, remorseless and violent party supporters. And at the centre of these divisions has perched in all his resplendent best and on all fours a detached President Goodluck Jonathan sometimes conniving at the divisions, but more often feigning ignorance of these divisions or pretentiously sermonising against the deepening political and social vices spawned by his policies, politics and subdued rage against opponents.

In reality, however, and as the campaigns have shown so far, the March 28th presidential election is all about the failure of Dr Jonathan to offer brave and brilliant leadership. He doesn’t think so, and his supporters, especially his kinsmen and other paid loyalists, insist the animosity against him reflects the sectarian, regional and ethnic schisms in the country. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo even recently alluded to the president’s leadership failure, but because he himself offered uninspiring leadership in his eight years in office, his views are either discountenanced or ridiculed. Evidently, however, Dr Jonathan has indeed given his more than 170 million compatriots poor leadership, and deliberately accentuated the divisions in the country, divisions which now run dangerously wide and deep.

The opposition against Dr Jonathan, this column has always insisted, has very little to do with his background, religion, or the vaunted bogey of northern supremacy and irredentism. Everything boils down to his unsatisfactory leadership, his poor grasp of issues — whether economic, political or cultural — and his lack of colour, charisma and incomprehension of the fundamentals of leadership. His failures made the search for an alternative relevant and desirable, and the people’s preparedness to embrace former head of state Muhammadu Buhari an obligation. It does not matter that Dr Jonathan’s supporters vociferously but without substantiation portray him as the man for the moment; or that his kinsmen threaten war in case of defeat; or groups such as Afenifere mischievously rest their support for him on chimeras; or that poverty has made many susceptible to the ruling party’s fecundity in buying and enslaving consciences; or that individuals like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, having taken leave of their senses, hysterically and with unrestrained ferocity concoct lies to advance Dr Jonathan’s interests.

It is baffling to hear the president’s supporters present their case. Obviously, they are living in denial. Should Dr Jonathan win, he will doubtless take actions that will worsen the alienation being experienced in the country, compound the nation’s economic woes, aggravate divisions, and judging from the way he has allowed his reelection campaign to be run, exacerbate tension and hate speech, and enthrone propaganda, lies and vile and scurrilous media attacks on persons and opponents. In addition, he will promote all forms of assaults on civil liberties, subvert or attack the courts, and further lower Nigeria in the esteem of regional and continental neighbours and rivals. Already the image of Nigeria is badly battered. Should Dr Jonathan return, it is inconceivable he will begin to demonstrate the inspiring leadership for which he showed no inclination in his first term, or enunciate lofty values the rubric of which he has so far been incapable of grasping and evaluating, let alone projecting.

Furthermore, though Dr Jonathan has laboured strenuously to keep the economy from keeling over in the face of perhaps the most horrendous mismanagement of the economy ever experienced in these parts, should he win, he is expected to enunciate in a brutal and pigheaded fashion a devastating welter of measures certain to undermine the polity and trigger more revolts, if not a conflagration. It would be foolish to take such huge risks when in fact the country should be running in a totally different direction, exploring other options and paradigms. The choice before the people, therefore, is not between a young and energetic president and an old and infirm challenger, nor one between a liberal and an extremist. These are inaccurate and unsubstantiated labels and categorisations. The choice the country faces is one between an undisciplined, uninspiring and mentally exhausted president — in short paralysis and disaster — and a disciplined and sensible patriot — in short the country’s last straw. Nigeria should not be discouraged from trying the alternative because of Mr Fayose’s hysteria and the grudge and animosity of self-centred groups like Afenifere.

But perhaps more frighteningly, there are strong indications the Jonathan government is working ardently, in collusion with powerful cabals within the country, for a political stalemate. There is no question a second Jonathan presidency will doom democracy and enthrone fascism. But a stalemate, as is being widely speculated, will plunge the country into something far worse, something far more violent and bloody. It is believed that Dr Jonathan and a few other power mongers are determined to exclude Gen Buhari from power should he win the March 28 poll. In furtherance of this, some sources suggest, everything is being done to ensure the elections are either sabotaged and judicially postponed one more time in favour of an interim government which would be presented as a fait accompli, or the elections are compromised through rigging and/or violence. This is why many analysts are suggesting that Nigeria may be back to the trenches of 1993, and doomed to fight a fruitless and needless war of attrition all over again. Should that war be fought, it is uncertain what the fate of the country would be or what would be the end of the protagonists of the war who are playing God.

The panic believed to be fuelling this speculated stalemate is the fear that Gen Buhari is expected to win the poll, and should he win, would enunciate and implement far-reaching changes in the country’s body politic. Indeed, few believe the postponement of the elections from February 14 to March 28 was prompted by either security measures, even though that excuse on the surface seemed plausible, or by low distribution of permanent voter cards (PVCs), even though subsequent more robust efforts at distributing the PVCs give a fortuitous ring to the postponement. Had the elections held in February as originally planned, it would have been difficult to prevent the Gen Buhari/All Progressives Congress (APC) momentum from translating into victory. The momentum has been checked but not destroyed. It is even likely that one or two weeks to the polls, another Buhari momentum could be triggered. Should the elections hold on March 28, there is nothing on ground to indicate that the APC would lose or even win narrowly. This may account for why there are speculations of a contrived stalemate being engendered by the Jonathan government.

Three reasons account for the Buhari/APC momentum, and why neither the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nor Dr Jonathan will be able to arrest it. First, Dr Jonathan has not shown leadership, has been the most divisive president Nigeria has ever had, and he has run the economy and society aground. These troubles have turned many voters against the president and his government. Second, Gen Buhari, notwithstanding his weaknesses, has enjoyed cult following in many parts of the country, particularly the North. His reputation is enhanced by the absolute colourlessness and ineffectiveness of his opponent, Dr Jonathan. Third, by a seeming celestial sleight of hand, the APC has managed to put Yemi Osinbajo, a reputable professor of law, south-westerner, and leading pastor in the large pentecostal Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) on the APC presidential ticket. The worst efforts of the now morally weakened and politically compromised Southwest group, Afenifere, a group that tends to reflect only the Christian perspective of politics, has failed to make a dent on the reputation and appeal of the APC presidential ticket both in the North and in the Southwest. The PDP now fears the ticket to be solid and impregnable.

Whatever stalemate Dr Jonathan and other power cabals contrive can only end either in bitter confusion or violence that may consume the perpetrators or in the emergence of a new dawn that will exclude those who have abused their offices and the trust reposed in them. Fears of a breakup may be exaggerated. And the belief by the government that the security agencies are united behind it may also be a mirage. One way or the other, peacefully or otherwise, a faction of the political class appears destined to be demystified on March 28. It is hard to see mediocrity rewarded, or the country plodding down the same dusty and treacherous road it had trudged for about 16 years.

March 8, 2015
Presidential poll as cauldron of intrigues

No fewer than three main plots are believed to be afoot in the run-up to the March 28 presidential poll. First, it is suggested that President Goodluck Jonathan, believing he would be defeated in the poll, is intriguing to either postpone the polls or contrive an indefinite postponement. The president, the speculators suggest, is unmindful of the legal or constitutional implications of another postponement or cancellation. That he will not stand on any solid ground, they say, is not enough reason to dissuade the president from attempting that contrivance. Should Dr Jonathan proceed to give life to this plot, he will find ready support in Governor Ayo Fayose, that mindless proponent of crazy schemes, and other likeminded purveyors of subterfuges.

Second, it is also suggested that Dr Jonathan, having sworn not to hand over to a disfavoured successor, may be scheming for the emplacement of an interim government, for which he and his supporters might already be shopping for candidates. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo is thought to have spied on this scheme much earlier than most Nigerians, and has frantically warned that the president was reenacting the Ivoirien stalemate that led both to a short but brutal war and the disgrace and trial of former Cote D’Ivoire president, Laurent Gbagbo, and his wife. The president has denied the existence of such a plot, but news and speculations of the scheme have endured. In fact, a recent Abuja court order mandating INEC to register the Young Democratic Party (YDP) and include it on the ballot is cited as an indication of the tightening plot against the election. This seemingly innocuous but anomalous judgement is believed to be designed to provoke a postponement of the polls.

Third, there is a massive, relentless, incoherent and illogical campaign to replace the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, a professor of political science. The campaign is orchestrated by indulgent Niger Delta politicians sated with oil money, and leading PDP officials corrupted by power and largesse, who have even gone ahead to call for the abandonment of PVCs and card readers. Some Southwest politicians in the PDP and Afenifere whisper their support. Indeed, no day breaks without one powerful group or another calling for the head of Professor Jega, with some of them, like Mr Fayose, encouraging the president to fly in the face of common sense by either sacking the INEC chairman or sending him on leave. Heavens will not fall, says the truculent Mr Fayose. Though the president has denied any intention to remove Professor Jega, he has a history of not meaning most of what he says, a culture that has led his loyalists to continue exerting pressure on him to dispense with Professor Jega. The plot against the INEC chairman is designed to complete the three legs of determining the outcome of the polls in favour of the president and his party.

In the days ahead, many more plots will manifest with the intent to shape Poll 2015 outcomes. But it is well known that deliberate and artificial concoctions and manipulations that undermine popular will often end tragically for a scheming government. There is nothing to indicate Dr Jonathan’s schemes would end differently. If in doubt, aspiring schemers should ask the United States where their short-sighted intervention in Iraq and the regime change they inspired led them. Did it not birth ISIS, destabilise Iraq, give the hated Iran the upper hand in the region, complicate Syria’s manifold troubles, and completely undermine the so-called New American Century, a trashy piece of ambitious internationalist theory of American foreign policy?

March 8, 2015
The problem with presidential interviews

During his blitz through the Southwest more than a week ago, President Goodluck Jonathan met with many Yoruba politicians and traditional leaders to sensitise them to his political and managerial virtues, and to convince them to ignore the mixed reviews on his past five years presidency. He stressed his promises for the future, such as the implementation of the national conference reports and bountiful representation of the Yoruba in his government. A faction of the Southwest elite is convinced, without proof, that the president will keep his word. Such faith has no precedence. Dr Jonathan also granted interviews to a few media establishments, among them Tribune and THISDAY newspapers, in which he reveals far more about himself than the mere answers to the questions asked him, some of the questions ingratiating and supplicatory, indicating he still has difficulties comprehending and responding to the deeper and more complex issues of statecraft.

The interviews exposed Dr Jonathan’s curious mindset. He is prickly, somewhat superficial, excitable and boyish. Age has done nothing to temper this mindset. Nor, to borrow from his favourite exaggerated allusions and anecdotes, can 100 years on the presidential throne do much to transform or ennoble him. From the interviews, there is little doubt he wants to do great and mighty things, but he is both unable to summon the discipline required and incapable of appreciating the weight of work and the intellect necessary to match contributions with expectations. Had he any of these qualifications, either singly or, better still, in combination, his boyish and infectious innocence, not to say his yearnings for praise and renown, would have led him to extraordinary feats of statesmanship and valour.

Alas, his faults and weaknesses cannot be remedied, for they are already cast in granite. His critics and traducers must also now know that whatever they have to say of Dr Jonathan, particularly about his weaknesses, will only lead him to more resentfulness, bad temper, scurrility and tempting and insidious acts of tyranny. He is keenly aware of the bad press he has attracted, much of which he attributes to local and international consultants working for the opposition, and he is keener on ‘investing’ in managing it and turning it around. He tries to present himself as studious and cerebral, even flaunting his second class upper degree, but he frets under the weight of the anonymity of the course he studied, a course he self-deprecatingly described as ‘not prestigious.’

Now and again, he rises, in the interviews, to heights of Machiavellian ecstasy, with his panegyric to the gullible faction of the Southwest elite with whom he is today besotted, but against whom in the first few years of his presidency he contemptibly erected a benumbing architecture of exclusion and marginalisation. The love affair is waxing hot, and it is perhaps a relief that both the president and his Southwest converts are locked in embrace, else, they would have had to seek out classes and groups more virtuous than they to seduce and desecrate. No one who reads the interviews can fail to conclude that the president is pristinely untouched by the rudiments of democracy, notwithstanding his vainglorious assertions on the subject, and may never be able to comprehend its philosophical underpinnings beyond its consideration as a system of government.

A few examples from Dr Jonathan’s rich and revealing interviews will suffice. Asked to expatiate on his now discredited seven-year single tenure proposal, Dr Jonathan seems painfully incapable of understanding the irony embedded in his suggestion. It is true he is persuasive in denying his interest in benefiting from the proposal had it been accepted, but he simply could not see that the damage to the polity of an ineffective president remaining in office for seven years, just one year short of two terms of eight years, far outweighs the hazards of the cost and dislocations of electioneering. Political campaigns have their therapeutic effects, their potential to trigger a country’s renewal, and sometimes to cause an acute change of direction. Dr Jonathan simply focused on the cost of elections and the troubles of campaigning and renewing mandates almost to the total exclusion of the other benefits. The idea was roundly denounced when he first suggested it; it is a remarkable indication of his stoicism and imperviousness to reason that time and experience have not helped him to either refine his view or redefine the basis of his conviction.

Apart from erroneously claiming credit for voter awareness, affirming that he gave ‘freedom’ to Nigerians who now value their voter cards and are eager to participate in the electoral process, Dr Jonathan stretches that questionable bequest with a rueful statement. He says: “Look at the freedom Nigerians enjoy. You abuse the President and I smile. In some countries, you abuse the President, they deal with you. In so many countries, including African countries, you cannot abuse the President and go to sleep with your two eyes closed. It is only in Nigeria that you can do that.” In the first place, Nigeria is not another country, as he himself acknowledges later on in the interview, on account of the country’s diversity and complexity, and in the second place, Nigeria is not the only country where freedom of speech does not come with devastating repercussions.

But rather than celebrate this strange bequest, Dr Jonathan in fact laments it. He may deny it, but the fact is that if he had his way, those who abuse him, a word he confuses with criticism, he would deal with them, or at least make them lose sleep. That way, the quietude he pines after would be achieved. According to him: “It is easy if you write something against me for me to ask my security agents to come and arrest you and throw you into a dungeon for 24 hours, so that you know that there is government. Yes, one can do it. But is that what you use power for?” For a president who had just rhapsodised democracy, he betrayed his secret preferences by entertaining the thought of locking a critic up for 24 hours. And he entertains the thought because it is not beneath him.

His response to the Charles Soludo criticism of his economic policy is appalling. Here, he simply demonstrates an exceedingly poor grasp of economics, and illustrates his embarrassing subservience to and awe of World Bank economists. He also chafes at the Chibok abductions, that remorseless totem of his impotence, and makes the non sequitur assertion that only a failed president could preside over a failed state.

One last example. Asked to justify why he dismissed the Ekiti audio recording done by a military intelligence officer as fabricated, the president backtracks a little and puzzlingly suggests that the officer must come and defend his recording. Dr Jonathan does not show his dismay and discomfort with the fact that some of his ministers were caught on tape conspiring with an Anambra moneybag and a top army general to subvert the electoral process on behalf of his party, nor does he appear to understand that he occupies an office that has a responsibility to defend the constitution without reservation and uphold the law without fear or favour. Nor, obviously, does Dr Jonathan have the mental fortitude and intellectual depth to appreciate, like great leaders, how to build a country and a legacy. At 56, and given his mindset and intransigence, it may be a little too late for him to acquire the wherewithal for profound leadership. And should Nigeria return him to office in the next poll, as he intrigues, irrespective of his huge and irredeemable shortcomings, the country is unlikely to fare any better than it has done in the past five years.

March 1, 2015
…And Jonathan gets embroiled in land deal

It is apparently part of politics to defend the indefensible. Otherwise it seems incomprehensible that anyone, let alone a political party that claims to have set norms and standards for Nigeria, will attempt to defend Dr Jonathan’s Abuja land deal under some constructive corollary of constitutional approbation. The facts of the case are as follows. In 2011, in his second year in office, Dr Jonathan incorporated Ebele Integrated Farms Limited, with him as major shareholder. Sometime between that 2011 and 2013, the president applied for land in Abuja for farming purposes. He did not think it indiscrete. Then, in January 2014, he was granted a huge 94 hectare plot in, of all places, Abuja’s Aviation Village, a bad enough distortion as any.

When the opposition APC brought the matter to light some two weeks ago, the president’s campaign organisation rested its argument and justification on two main grounds, to wit, that when former president Olusegun Obasanjo was in office, he also applied for an even bigger plot of land and was granted; and that second, the constitution permits a sitting president, like any other government official, to do the business of farming. No other kind of business was permitted. This perhaps explains why, according to the APC, the Minister of the Federal Capital City (FCT), Bala Mohammed, incorporated a farming business, Bird Trust Agro-Allied Limited, in 2012, applied for land in Abuja over which he is minister, and was granted about 40 hectare plot by his ministry in April 2014 in the same choice Aviation Village.

It is inconceivable that both the president and the FCT minister do not consider what they have done as corrupt. Of course, had the president not set the tone, there is no way Mallam Mohammed would have imitated him. But let us examine the arguments of the president and his campaign organisation. As the APC and many commentators have argued, it is not clear how Dr Jonathan and his supporters think his land grab was excusable simply because Chief Obasanjo committed the same indiscretion. It is a lousy, childish and senseless argument to make. Two wrongs do not make a right. Second, does the constitution really sanction farming for a sitting president? Yes, it does, but it is also clear that (a) it assumes that the president was already doing the business before he assumed office, and (b) he was of course not expected to begin to use state resources, state power, and presidential influence to run that business because it would inevitably lead to a conflict of interest.

Third, and significantly, it is a bad law, one probably inspired by Chief Obasanjo himself when he was military head of state, and which the military, also inspiring our various constitutions, incongruously retained in every constitution they midwifed. The president should not be involved in any business, and every business he had before assuming office must be put in blind trust in order to avoid conflict of interest. It is certain the constitution, notwithstanding its drawbacks, expected nobility from those elected into office. Since Chief Obasanjo, Nigerian leaders have unfortunately fallen disastrously short of the standard of morality the spirit of the constitution, rather than the letter, naively presumed on their good sense.

There is no way Dr Jonathan can claim the high ground in this seedy transaction. Apart from the fact that he is naturally and personally lacking in noble deeds, and his life and politics not based on any philosophical principle or conviction, he appears bereft of an understanding of the history of the country he so undeservedly presides over. Does he remember that some First Republic leaders like Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello established or prepared the framework for universities without citing them in their own towns? Chief Awolowo conceived the then University of Ife to be established, not in his Remo Division of present Ogun State, but in Ile-Ife. Nor did Ladoke Akintola, whose government announced the establishment of the university in 1960 put it in his native Ogbomosho. And the Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, planted the Ahmadu Bello University not in Rabah, Sokoto Province, but in Zaria. Examine these facts against the unflattering fact that when Dr Jonathan would put a university in his state, he invariably put it in his small town of Otuoke in Bayelsa.

All of Dr Jonathan and his campaign organisation’s excuses are disingenuous. Applying for land under his own government was immoral and indefensible, and getting that land in Aviation Village is a bad and horrendous distortion of what that piece of territory is, from its name, reserved for. African leaders, it is said, lack discipline and moral compass to take their nations to great heights. Nigerian leaders are probably even much worse, and Dr Jonathan a far more ignoble example.

March 1, 2015
Jonathan’s Southwest endorsements

President Goodluck Jonathan was in Lagos last week to commission four warships as well as meet various Southwest leaders over next month’s polls. To win the election, he will need a sizable support from the Yoruba states, after it emerged his support base in the North could no longer be guaranteed. To help the president, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State is pressing hard on Yoruba leaders, especially the Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, to endorse the president. Some two weeks ago or so, Afenifere, tired of just being Dr Jonathan’s fanatical apologist, gave that endorsement lavishly and remorselessly as his leading southern eulogist. But since then a few things have happened, chief among which was the worldwide negative reaction to the postponement of the general elections, that shook Dr Jonathan’s confidence in his reelection chances. He thus apparently needed reassurance. That extra assurance was given him by the meeting convened by Dr Mimiko in Akure last week, a meeting presumably called to enable the Yoruba review the outcome of last year’s national conference.

Presided over by Ayo Adebanjo, and attended by, among others, Frederick Fasehun and Gani Adams, the meeting once again enthusiastically endorsed Dr Jonathan in crassly political, divisive and bigoted terms that made many wince. They were obviously more preoccupied with the politics of Jonathan’s reelection than having a dispassionate review of the confab report. For instance, reacting to the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket, which has their son Yemi Osinbajo as running mate, the Afenifere leaders said a vote for the APC was a vote for disaster. “…We have openly identified with Jonathan in this presidential election because we do not want the Buhari experience again,” began Dr Fesehun incredulously with the ethnic triumphalism and vulgar logic most of us have sensibly outgrown. ‘‘Some people said they were born to rule but we want to let them understand that Yoruba people are born to lead and guide to the right path. Some people are showing Buhari as the guiding light but they don’t know what Buhari is. Four more years of Jonathan is acceptable than eight years of nightmare under Buhari…Jonathan is the only good thing available to Nigeria and I come out to say boldly that it is either Jonathan or nothing.” Boastful, sickening.

Convinced in the words of Chief Adebanjo that voting APC presidential ticket would be a “mistake Nigeria cannot afford,” the Mimiko/PDP meeting reiterated its endorsement of Dr Jonathan and asked the Yoruba people to follow suit. Though Chief Adebanjo complained that the meeting was dominated by Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) faithful, he was not dissuaded by its partisan connotation to sign the communiqué of the meeting purporting to represent the feelings and aspirations of the Yoruba race. It is clear the Yoruba are divided, as they have been from time immemorial, and Afenifere is an unscrupulous faction in that division.

The Afenifere endorsement is unlikely to amount to much, for most voters have already made up their minds whom to vote for: whether for Dr Jonathan in the case of those who stress his Christianity but discount the president’s appalling failings, lack of vision and irritating dubieties, or for Gen Buhari in the case of those who are sick and tired of the domestic and international ridicule the president has subjected Nigeria to, and of the general indiscipline, economic decline and constitutional infractions that hallmark his presidency. For an organisation that immodestly tried to prop up Dr Mimiko as the new Yoruba leader simply on account of his October 2012 electoral victory, it is not entirely implausible that its leaders, miscomprehending the fundamentals of leadership, are driven by private and base sentiments.

Paradigms shifted when M.K.O. Abiola vied for the presidency in 1993. It became clear that anyone who hoped to win presidential election must appeal to both the North and South in sufficient percentages, must not be seen as an ethnic champion, and must be judged to be honest, fair-minded and ready to work for all. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo did not win in 1999 because he was a better thinker and politician than Olu Falae, but because he was seen as the politician with the broader appeal. Former president Umaru Yar’Adua was foisted on the country. On his own, let alone in combination with the previously unknown and undistinguished Dr Jonathan, there was no way he could have won. The question then is, does Dr Jonathan have the broad appeal, the discipline and the know-how to win in March, for which Afenifere has staked its future and whatever is left of its reputation?

The Afenifere endorsement is unlikely to have been prompted by the national conference report, as they disingenuously said, for they are not so stupid to imagine that a superficial and disinterested Dr Jonathan could unilaterally push through the restructuring they imagine. Explanations must be sought elsewhere. Perhaps the place to begin is the division among the Yoruba, which has sadly appeared to ossify broadly along two main lines: for or against APC leaders. There is no chance of conciliation in the near future, for the factors that divide the Yoruba seem cast in granite and have very little to do with Dr Jonathan’s competence or otherwise, his promises which he breaks with disarming ease, his honesty or lack of it, national conference or no conference, or even his belated federal appointment palliatives to the Yoruba which were activated by reelection politics. Afenifere leaders actually see APC leaders as intransigent, grasping and illiberal; and APC leaders see Afenifere as anachronistic, ideologically vacuous and selfish. But at bottom, the competition is really about economic/financial power and political influence.

Barely a few years after the inauguration of the Fourth Republic, APC leaders unceremoniously overthrew Afenifere hierarchs in a bloodless political coup d’etat that is still resented by the latter till today. That coup consigned Afenifere to the backbench of Yoruba politics from where they have growled and struggled to make their voices heard. The resentment will grow, and Afenifere leaders will continue to fight back, for they sense that the APC does not always have the best generals in the states they govern, or deploy the best tactics to win either elections or the hearts of the Yoruba. Poor strategies rather than poor ideas made APC to lose Ondo and Ekiti, and even the states currently under their control are only holding on by the skin of their teeth. To stand a chance at all, and under the circumstances enumerated, Afenifere has little choice but to throw in its lot with the PDP. But therein is the fatal paradox they must contend with: should the Afenifere/PDP combination overcome the APC, Afenifere would ineluctably disappear, for the logic of its existence within the PDP world would no longer be tenable.

The economic/financial factor is a major issue among the Yoruba, and has always been. If they are to survive as a group, Afenifere leaders must seek alternative sources of empowerment. The only alternative available today is the Jonathan government, from which both Dr Fasehun and Otunba Adams, envying the likes of Niger Delta militants, are fighting tooth and nail to get pipeline protection contracts. Should Dr Jonathan win, both gentlemen, who have spoken vulgarly of a sense of entitlement, would be accommodated in Nigeria’s rent economy. Like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti and Dr Mimiko, the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) leaders have a foreboding of the cruel fate that awaits them should APC win the presidency.

The division in the Southwest is only painted in grand and altruistic colours. In reality, however, it is a bitter and acrimonious struggle for life and sustenance. Afenifere and Dr Mimiko’s PDP group gave their endorsement not because they cared whether Dr Jonathan perished or Nigeria was restructured, but that APC should flounder and drown, by whatever agency that end could be procured. The endorsers do not mind being encumbered with the loathsome prejudices of the past, or that their enunciation of hatred for a section of the country could easily inspire crimes against humanity. Nor have they intelligently deconstructed the problems of Nigeria and examined the paradigms necessary for rebuilding and renewing the country. Nor do they bother, even if they appreciate the consequences, about the danger of the entire Yoruba endorsing one party, a pitfall the Ohaneze Ndigbo and the Muslim community have carefully tried to avoid.

Centuries after the Yoruba generalissimo, Afonja, famously endorsed a rebellion against the larger and deeper interest of the empire he was assigned to protect, historians have continued to assess the consequences of his fateful action. There is nothing in their past and present to show that the Yoruba have learnt any lessons, or that in the continuing dynamics of nation-building they have the cultural fluidity and intellectual depth and elasticity to make adjustments for the future. Worse, as Afenifere’s disgruntlement and ethnic and religious hatred against the North have shown, and as the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) also displayed last week in their meeting in Lagos with Dr Jonathan, the Southwest has not wholeheartedly embraced the lofty principles and values upon which their progenitors founded and nurtured their great race, principles and values that are, alas, periodically betrayed sometimes by a whole generation.

February 22, 2015