The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa polls

    Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa polls

    The three states of Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi went to the polls yesterday to pick their governors. The PDP will probably keep Bayelsa, and the APC, despite the worst efforts of the labour unions, will probably retain Imo. But Kogi’s APC and its insensitive and insular governor, Yahaya Bello, should not win the state for the ruling party’s candidate, Usman Ododo. Mr Bello plays abominable politics. He muscled out other governorship aspirants in the ruling party to pave the way for his candidate, who hails from his hometown. The governor sees nothing wrong in repudiating the fairness that should dominate politics in the state, perhaps because the Igala in Kogi East practiced the same folly for decades. Such narrow-mindedness should not be rewarded.

    Read Also: INEC uploads Bayelsa, Imo, Kogi election results on IREV

    However, the election in Kogi is a toss-up on account of the fragmentation of the opposition. Rather than cooperate with one another to punish Mr Bello’s audacious folly, the opposition think each party stands a chance. It remains to be seen, perhaps later today or tomorrow, whether their foolish gamble paid off or whether those rocky heights of the state and the rarefied metaphorical atmosphere in which they live and play their amateurish politics have addled their brains. Mr Bello is one of the worst governors among his peers, and he seems determined to reproduce after his kind. Worse, he reads Genesis literally despite fearing neither God nor man.

  • Many contradictions of Israel-Hamas war

    Many contradictions of Israel-Hamas war

    Nearly 30 days after the Palestinian militant group in Gaza, Hamas, attacked Israel and killed 1,400 people and abducted over 200, war has raged between the Jewish state and Hamas. While statistics are not entirely accurate, the death toll has surpassed 10,000. The trigger for the latest war is Hamas’ October 7 incursion into Israel, which analysts have suggested was timed to frustrate the détente with some Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia. Had the peace deal between the Saudi Arabia and Israel been consummated, it would probably have put the Palestinian issue on the back burner and strengthened the three-year-old Abraham Accords between Israel and Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, and Sudan.

    Despite repeated calls for ceasefire, the war seems fated to continue for a considerable length of time until Israel achieves its stated goal of eliminating Hamas both as a fighting force and a governing group. Whether that aim is achievable or not is hard to determine in the short term. But the war may have raised a number of daunting contradictions that are hard to resolve, contradictions that appear potent enough to complicate and contaminate, if not dangerously calcify, relations in the Middle East. It would appear that Arab countries are dedicated to the victory of Hamas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, chief among the complications is the uneasy relations between the ambitious empire-building Iran and the rather conservative Saudi Arabia which deplores the growing influence of Iran in the Middle East.

    More than any other Middle Eastern governing elite, Iran’s Ayatollahs succinctly capture the interest and ambition of the ordinary Arab. At the core of that ambition is the elimination of Israel as a nation, the development of (Arab) nuclear bomb, and making the region religiously and ethnically homogenous. To achieve these ambitions, Iran has placed itself in leadership position to cobble together an axis of resistance constituted by Iraqi Shiites, Yemeni Houthis, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Gaza’s Hamas who are, however, Sunni. The Iranians have had a running battle with the Saudis for decades, and have fought proxy wars against them using Yemeni (Shiite) Houthis against the Sunnis. This was one of the reasons the Gulf States joined Saudi Arabia to intervene, albeit unsuccessfully, in Yemen. The Sunni-Shia balance of power in the region had been disrupted by the United States intervention in Iraq after 9/11.

    The Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’ may serve the broader Arab interest of restoring the Palestinian issue to the front burner, but at bottom, most other Arab states in the region view the rising profile of Iran with suspicion and fear. They may consent to Hamas tactics against Israel on the surface, but they are in a quandary whether to connive at the militant group waging a successful war that will indirectly strengthen the hands of the Ayatollahs. Egypt, with its economy on tenterhooks, is extremely reluctant to be drawn in into the conflict in any way. It has little or no interest in Gaza, and does not wish to champion the Palestinian cause beyond rhetoric and hosting some refugee camps. Even the Palestinian authority in the West Bank led by Mahmoud Abbas has paid lip service to the cause of Hamas, having been violently upstaged in Gaza by the latter in 2007. Mr Abbas has publicly demonstrated support for Hamas, but the militants’ success may make his administration less relevant or even legitimate.

    Read Also: Kogi, Bayelsa, Imo polls: Parties, candidates sign peace accord Wednesday

    In the end, Iran is probably the only country in the region that demonstrates unalloyed support for Hamas. The Hamas and Palestinian objectives may cohere, but those objectives are complicated, if not attenuated, by their supranational support casts. There is hardly any Arab country, including Turkiye, which does not advocate the Palestinian cause, but with Iran poised for regional dominance and on the verge of becoming a nuclear force, the Hamas struggle is seen a little differently from the more desirable and uncomplicated Palestinian cause. Both Iran and Hezbollah have been deterred by the belligerent US presence in the region from opening a second front in the Israel-Hamas war. Despite threatening brimstone against Israel, both countries will be less eager to open another front. They fear being met with unequivocal countermeasures from the US. A US response could once again decimate Hezbollah and worsen Iran’s economic crisis already depleted and weakened by sanctions. Iran is unlikely to fire directly at Israel; it will rely on proxies, particularly Yemeni Houthis. A massive strike by the US, if not in concert with Israel, could devastate Iran’s nuclear facilities and retard progress in that domain. It could also complicate its economic crisis and open the prospect for regime change.

    Egypt has watched the crisis from a distance, Jordan has kept up its fierce rhetoric and may do little else, and Syria has become hors de combat – all three regionally powerful countries which had in time past led the fight against Israel. Iran may prove smart at calibrating its responses better than others had done decades ago. But the contradictions militating against the success of Hamas may doom the militants’ efforts, despite fighting a fairly advantageous urban war. However, even if it wins the war as expected, Israel may thereafter also confront its own contradictions of war and peace.

  • Justice Dattijo’s bitter exit

    Justice Dattijo’s bitter exit

    For connoisseurs of anti-establishment politics, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad’s valedictory speech seemed to have been delivered with the force and cadence of liberation theology. The speech resonated well at two levels. One, the eminent justice sounded a clarion call for reform of the justice system. He speaks about the need for transparency in the financial management of the judiciary, with special emphasis on the Supreme Court. He denounced what he observed as the dictatorial tendencies of the Chief Justice of Nigeria in general, and perhaps with the current CJN in mind, struck at creeping nepotism in the appointment of judicial officers, and without any hint of irony, lampooned what he concluded was sectionalism in the court. He drew attention to so many other issues, but did it vituperatively and shockingly without the customary temperateness many associate with jurists. For instance, when he railed against creeping sectionalism, could he by any stretch of the imagination not be promoting federal character in the dispensation of justice?

    Read Also: Kogi, Bayelsa, Imo polls: Parties, candidates sign peace accord Wednesday

    Two, by coming out forcefully and so unsparingly against his former colleagues and the entire Supreme Court that had ennobled him for years, Justice Dattijo did not seem to mind the small talk everywhere regarding his predilection for political partisanship, nor worry about the innuendoes that he scorned the composition of the panel that presided over the PDP/LP/APM presidential election petitions. The problem, in short, is not that he observed certain deficiencies in the administration of justice in Nigeria, but that he chose to ventilate those observations in a language and style that were distinctively and juridically unflattering. Indeed, by choosing to burn the barn to smoke out a rat, the eminent jurist makes the world wonder what manner of judges are appointed into the top court, why they seem shorn of the temper and philosophy many analysts thought they were capable of manifesting effortlessly. There was anger in Justice Dattijo’s admittedly sensible complaints; but there was no nobility.   

  • Biko Nyesom, ankali da kare

    Biko Nyesom, ankali da kare

    In the traditional northern homestead in Nigeria where the protection of womenfolk in purdah from pariahs and predators alike takes a cultural priority, there is always a clear signboard forbidding entrance.

    Ba shiga, the signboard proclaims to potential intruders, meaning do not enter. If the household harbours a particularly nasty canine, there is another signboard warning the trespasser to beware. Ankali da kare or beware of dogs. Dogs are not trained to be nice to heedless intruders.

      Rivers State is on the boil again. And whenever there is this kind of executive rumpus in the state of a thousand rivulets, let the rest of the country be on anarchy watch. To start with, they do not do things in half measures down there. The state house of assembly complex has already gone up in smoke.

    The governor has narrowly escaped being seen off. The immediate past governor has been danger-listed by concerned citizens. It is not a battle for political stability or economic development. It is a clash of titanic egos driven by wild unregulated self-conceit that can never be sublimated for public good or national order. This is the tragedy of postcolonial politics in Africa.

     It is not known whether Nyesom Wike, the current minister of the Federal Capital Authority, immediate past governor of Rivers State and –as some would insist—the de facto third term governor of the state, is trained to read political signboards or savvy enough to decode horoscopes of impending disaster. One thing is clear. The fascination of a moth with fireballs always leads to self-immolation.

       “You will like Richard Nixon. He is so square”. So went a billboard of the late fifties in the bible-thumping American mid-region. Richard Milhous Nixon was widely admired and very well-liked. He was clean-shaven, crew-cut, conservatively tailored and quietly brainy. He was vice-president to Dwight Eisenhower.

       The sky seemed to be the limit. There was no hint yet of the nervous insecurities and the pathological need for risk-taking which would later bring him crashing to the ground at the very pinnacle of power. But as they say, what a child loves to eat should not be the cause of gastronomic disorder.

       The very daring and breathtaking political criminalities which would propel him to the top also ensured that he eventually came a sad cropper. As he himself would say when it was all over: “Only those who have been at the top of the mountain could appreciate what it is to be at the bottom of the valley”.

      But that was another country. And another era. Not many people will like or appreciate Nyesom Wike. There is something grating and grinding about a personality that elevates pugnacity to a political art. His tongue can be waspish and needlessly nettling.

      Many victims of his political barbs are still reeling from their verbal evisceration. People of a tame and temperate temperament have found his perpetual gallivanting, his grandstanding and garrulity deeply offensive.

      But you must give something to the feisty Nkwerre man. By sheer force of personality and from being a virtually unknown person at the beginning of the post-military republic, he has propelled himself to the zenith of national politics. On his way to superstardom, he has decked many better fancied opponents and collected the scalp of more famous political adversaries.

       When President Tinubu made him the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, many were outraged by what they thought was a politically incorrect gambit of monumental proportions. But Tinubu’s capacity for daring political offensives and appetite for strategic foraging in the hinterland of prejudice and animosities remain at a high potency.

       It is now history that Wike hit the ground running, seizing Abuja by the scruff of the neck and lodging himself permanently in the country’s political imagination with his sheer irreverence and iconoclastic chutzpah. Even if you don’t like this man, you have to admire his guts, his stellar political bravery and his fierce loyalty to any cause he believes in.

       Let it not be said that this smacks of desperate political opportunism, for in politics, particularly postcolonial politics, the opportunist is the person who converts his opportunities.  As the Yoruba people will put it, if you see a man being pursued by dangerous masquerades and you do not help yourself to his pot of soup, when are you going to benefit from the generosity of ancestors?

      Despite his volcanic eruptions, his bluff and bluster and capacity for relentless political bullying, one suspects, and can sense, that Wike is at heart a friendly and kind-hearted person with a boyish joie de vivre who enjoys a drink and some hilarious pranks. He should try to be more cultivated restrained.

       This piece of advice may sound gratuitous and probably too late. The tragic irony of politics is the fact that it is the same qualities that propel a person to lofty heights that are often instrumental to their ultimate unravelling. 

    Read Also: Instrument landing system to blame for Ibadan crash —Officials

      A vibrant and politically ambitious person who has achieved significant successes in numerous battles against formidable foes will always be at the mercy of some inner voices asking him to go for it one more time. Only the wisest of people know when to resist such temptations. This is when irresistible urges to conquer and dominate collide with the impregnable fortress of resistance.

     In an extraordinary outburst, Wike has let it be known that he can demand for the entire budget of the state and for all the contracts to be awarded to him because he singlehandedly built the structure and the superstructure on which everything rests .That is politics, he was said to have added gratuitously.

     My brother, that is not politics.  In the lingo of postcolonial pillage and rapine, It is political warlordism and economic foreclosure of the state combined. The idea of a gubernatorial overlord overseeing the affairs of a state he has willingly relinquished through direct and remote control is an offshoot of the viceroy system. In a politically cohesive and homogeneous state with the same outlook, this has proved impossible, unless the feudal shogun stays put.

      In a volatile and combustible state like Rivers full of mutually antagonistic sub-nationals only recuperating from the last conflict, it is a recipe for disaster. This is even more so when and where the warring protagonists belong to two ethnic groups with a history of tension and mutual distrust.

       It is a pity that things have come to this sorry pass between two men who collaborated very well in ensuring a smooth transition and transfer of power in Rivers State. Everything went well initially. Nyesom Wike, in anointing his successor, seemed to have reached for a manual of lackeys and lickspittles. Governor Siminilayi Fubara, placid and mild-mannered as he is docile-looking and dovish in appearance, seemed to have been a perfect foil for his implacably belligerent and abrasive benefactor.

     But there is only so much humiliation and harassment even the most peaceful of men could take, particularly after being invested with the mantle of power and authority. The insults so freely dispensed, the unwarranted putdown, the lavish rebuke and the bitter resentments at being treated like a houseboy might have flooded through the retraining wall of rectitude.

      As it has been amply demonstrated in this Fourth Republic, political subalterns who take over the helm of affairs from their former commanders have proved themselves to be masters of clinical execution, often leaving their former bosses without any chance of political resurrection.

     Going by the flak Wike’s political misjudgment has drawn across party and state lines from fire-spitting Ijaw luminaries and the widespread protests over the inept attempt to remove Fubara, it is clear who has the political momentum on his side. Despite his official protestations of peace and harmony, it is only a question of time before Fubara pulls the trigger.

      In a period of massive geopolitical shifts across the country’s tectonic plates, Wike ought to have been more circumspect and adept at political husbandry rather than causing disruptions in his own base. This is where uncommon political bravery when not tempered by wisdom and discretion becomes sheer recklessness.

      By raising the banner of battle, the former governor has not only imperiled his own political prospects, he has also endangered the delicate reapproachment quietly ongoing between the new hegemonic coalition at the centre and the Ijaw nationality. This is why those reading the game with more fastidious rigour inside Aso Rock are right in pulling him back in order to restore the status quo.

      In ending, we need to investigate why this phenomenon of bickering former comrades in arms and ammunition has become so rampart in the post-military polity.  To be sure the First and Second Republics were not without their fair share of the phenomenon as seen in the Awolowo/ Akintola split, the Azikiwe/Mbadiwe schism and the Ajasin/Omoboriowo imbroglio. But it was not this widespread.

      Some comparative statistics may be imperative. Taken together, the First and Second Republics lasted barely ten years, and there were far fewer sub-national administrations. The Fourth Republic has been on for twenty four years. Apart from the decline in ideological solidity and leadership recruitment process, we may well be witnessing the final working out of the militarization of politics and its attendant traumas. 

  • A rousing goodbye to a good ambassador

    A rousing goodbye to a good ambassador

    It is said that an ambassador is a person employed to lie about his country abroad. But there are times when an ambassador by his impeccable conduct in diplomatic conduits, his bureaucratic rigour, his administrative brilliance and record of exemplary personal integrity, projects the image of his country in a better and far more luminous manner than a thousand paid publicists and other slick state panegyrists.

      It has been fulsome praises and encomiums galore for His Excellency, Sarafa Tunji Isola, the recently departed Nigeria’s High Commissioner in Great Britain and envoy to the Court of St James. From the high and mighty, to the lowest and lowly of the metropolitan hoi polloi ; from the rarefied saloons of upper crust London to the pulsating and sweltering Nigerian eateries of Peckham and Lewisham, virtually everybody has something nice and appreciative to say about this quiet and unassuming fellow.

     It has been a whirlwind tour of duty for the former minister of state. Within a short time of taking over the embassy, he had restored fiscal order to the place and straightened its finances. Before then, it was a cesspit of corruption and malfeasance. Not a few officials were known to moonlight and gaslight at the same time.

        According to testimonies by many Nigerians in Great Britain, the envoy also grappled heroically with the issuance of passport, visa and travel certificates which had been taken over by a shadowy cabal fronting for shameless racketeers lurking in the system. The embassy had become a den of deadwood and die-hard swindlers to say the least.

    A courtesy visit to the High Commission in August in company of a younger friend and political associate revealed a man driven by a passion for hard work and an unrelenting drive for excellence. Unlike the rowdy apocalyptic scenes of the past which often spilled to adjoining streets eliciting quiet stares of civilized horror from outraged denizens, the place looked orderly and well-organized.

    Read Also: Kogi, Bayelsa, Imo polls: Parties, candidates sign peace accord Wednesday

      The ambassador was already at his desk. Respectably attired in smart business-compliant agbada, he cut a figure of contentment and competence. Wafting seamlessly in the background was the sweet melodious Sakara music of Yusuf Olatunji, aka Baba L’egba. Formerly known as Joseph Olatunji until a benefactor took him to Mecca, the Oke-Ogun born master crooner has remained a regular on the menu of Yoruba musical gourmets and traditional aristocracy for ages.

      The conversation began in earnest, but without much earnestness. Ambassadors at that level rarely give information away just like that. With his quiet, self-assured mien, our man in London was probing his visitors for give-away signs. His artful evasions and cagey reticence suggested training in the highest academy of diplomatic spooking. Since he was not known to be a career ambassador, yours sincerely decided to ask him the question directly.

      His response was a classic example of diplomatic gobbledygook and yours sincerely decided to let go. The hallmark of envoys at that sublime summit is their mental toughness and psychological stamina. In a deliberately casual and seemingly offhanded request, the ambassador had asked for one’s number. Now, as we made to take our leave, the envoy demanded for my residence address but not before letting it be known that he did not normally mix up with people he had nothing to learn from.

     Around nine the following morning, a sleek chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz car pulled up at the hotel around London City Airport. Lo! It was the envoy. Yours sincerely had led him to the room where for the next ninety minutes, we engaged in a no-holds-barred discussion about the nation and some of the things that need to be done. Then he vanished as unobtrusively as he had appeared.

       Here is wishing the ambassador many more years of service to his fatherland.

  • Golda Meir saw it coming

    Golda Meir saw it coming

    Women are rarely given the credit for their superior political instincts and extraordinary gift for political clairvoyance. Angela Merkel, the immediate past German Chancellor, taught the world that a woman can perform extraordinary political stunts while remaining ordinary and unpretentious to boot.

      Much earlier, another visionary female leader gave the world a glimpse of what it means to provide uncommon leadership. The Americans had asked Golda Meir for an exchange of their best five generals. Covetous of the military excellence of the Israeli and the dominance they have achieved in the region within so short a time, the Americans quickly named two of the Israel’s most distinguished warlords, Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon, as top on their shopping list.

    Read Also: Instrument landing system to blame for Ibadan crash —Officials

      Whereupon Golda Meir retorted that Israel would have General Electric and General Motors. Aghast and terrified out of their wits, the Americans retreated. The great woman could see that far more than the exceptional quality of individual generals, it is material prosperity and technological superiority that determine who prevails on the battlefield. Man for man, Hamas has shown that its men are a match for the Israeli fighting machine. But it has all come to naught.

    Now that Israel by material might and technological heft has razed and pounded Gaza to ground, it should lead the rest of the world in nation-building in the Middle East, a task in which all the world’s leading powers have failed miserably. Golda Meir will chuckle at that one.    

  • Rivers State and Wike’s  leadership burden

    Rivers State and Wike’s  leadership burden

    Federal Capital City (FCT) minister and former governor of Rivers State Nyesom Wike is the latest to fall out with his successor. Despite the acrimony that often ensues from such crisis and the abundance of dissuasive lessons, he will not be the last. For him and other former governors plagued by that peculiar kind of political and administrative dilemma, there will always be reasons to justify disputes between predecessors and successors. In Rivers, the dispute, among other reasons, may be connected with the need to sustain the integrity and durability of state party structure. It is suggested that Governor Siminalayi Fubara is loth to inherit his predecessor’s enemies, and wishes to hew out the path of a pacifist. Mr Wike, on the other hand, fears the reintroduction of his ‘enemies’ into the state’s governing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), enemies who might be keen on taking over the party and leaving him high and dry. Whatever the reasons, real or imagined, the fight has started.

    The fight in Ondo between Governor Rotimi Akeredolu and his deputy, who merely acted as governor for a few months, is still smouldering. Had a succession taken place already, the propriety and tameness witnessed in the Rivers war, a war that erupted after only five months, would be impossible to find. Overall, there is hardly a state in which such wars broke out that the predecessor was not eventually worsted. Lagos probably bucked the trend, but only just, and in ways that are complex and nuanced. What really matters is not just that the wars exemplify administrative or ideological disagreements between two persons and contending forces, but that they are more significantly symptomatic of the crisis of leadership recruitment in Nigeria. The wars between successors and predecessors reached as high as the Nigerian presidency, between ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’Adua, and between the same Chief Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. None of the army generals who foisted Chief Obasanjo attempted to control him or fight him since they were his juniors in the army. And no one could control or fight ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, himself a retired army general. The predecessor/successor wars are idiosyncratically a civilian matter. Perhaps with time, the inevitability of such wars will convince political godfathers of the futility of imposing favoured candidates on states.

    Predecessors and successors will never lack reasons to disagree or fight open wars. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in the United States despised each other, and both engaged in rhetorical and even administrative spat. It never went beyond that. Mr Trump’s current ordeal is more a product of his personal follies and foibles than anything connected with Mr Obama. While there may, therefore, be reasons to fight succession wars, it is not always inevitable, especially if the right things are done. Firstly, regardless of the desire to protect legacies or crimes, and ensure, perhaps, ideological purity and continuity, history has amply shown that no single political leader could eternally protect legacies, crimes or ideas. It is hubris to think otherwise. Admittedly, Mr Wike may be fighting to protect his future rather than defending a legacy or covering a crime, seeing how he straddled very unusually both the ruling APC in Abuja and the PDP in Rivers. His reasons will resonate with Abuja, considering the permutations being bandied around for 2027, but they will rankle with PDP oligarchs desirous of snatching the state from the mercurial Wike and punishing him for his perfidy and apostasy.

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    Until there is a deep and coherent paradigm shift in leadership recruitment, states which produce powerful and impactful leaders may continue to witness political succession instability. In the Fourth Republic, Lagos came closest than any other state in designing pragmatic leadership succession model. But that model is still a far cry from what is desirable. It may have fostered some sort of manageable stability, and even compelled fidelity to the state’s developmental blueprint far more evident than any ever seen in the country, but it has not always produced successors capable of passing brilliant torches to the next generation of leaders. Governor Bola Tinubu, as he then was, was more pragmatic than ideological, and his successor, Babatunde Fashola was equally practical. But while Senator Tinubu was faintly ideological in his pragmatism, indeed much given to a universalist and overarching perspective of regional rulership and development model, Mr Fashola was, despite his pragmatism, less regional and probably isolationist. The next governor, Akinwumi Ambode, though a builder himself, despised templates and blueprints, and was also not ideological. Had the state not been cajoled by then Gov Tinubu into some sort of stability, the developmental strides witnessed in the state, now taken for granted and regarded as a national benchmark, would have been difficult to midwife.

    Mr Wike probably has a vision to make Rivers another Lagos, perhaps even far better in line with his insinuations during some of his expansive state dinners. While that vision may be unimpeachable, it has not been matched by an inviolable blueprint or a carefully considered succession paradigm. Where Mr Wike had postured as Israel’s King David, Mr Fubara has neither proved to be cut from the same cloth nor acted like King Solomon when assailed by complicated troubles. The fault is not Mr Fubara’s. The problem is that Mr Wike’s ambitions have proved far more transcendental than his methods and visions. The Lagos model is fraying at the edges. In Rivers, the Lagos model will prove, for want of a better word, irreplicable, and will probably unravel much faster than Mr Wike ever imagined. This is because what Mr Wike left behind lacks coherence and depth, and the man who succeeded him, while seeming like a gentleman, seems to have a lot of trouble with the character, conviction and foresight of an ideologue. There are many ways to manage someone like Mr Wike, while at the same time keeping the dogs and hyenas outside the state at bay. Staying lockstep with the tempestuous and even nuanced Mr Wike, who governed far better than his predecessor, the self-absorbed Rotimi Amaechi, requires so much depth than the current governor can display.

    By now, the FCT minister must have realised that in the somewhat impressionable Mr Fubara, not to talk of Rivers and the PDP, he has a fight on his hands. Even if his ire and methods are beyond cavil, his inability to structure the state and the governorship succession scientifically will give him nightmares in the months ahead. He has stuck stubbornly to his guns, and has spoken daggers and is prepared to use them. But if he allows his rage to consume him, he will lose on all sides in the end. President Tinubu has rallied to his side instantaneously for obvious reasons, not the least of which is the cooperation afforded the ruling party by the Rivers PDP lawmakers in the National Assembly. Mr Wike will sustain his brittle leadership in Rivers if he moderates his expectations. Mr Fubara will not be the philosopher and solid steel the FCT minister imagines the governor capable of. Meanwhile, Rivers, with the protests and counter-protests of the past week, is still in formation. It is capable of bending in any direction for now. Had Mr Wike spent as much time shaping the mind and steeling the character and worldview of the state as he did building its bridges and public buildings, and had he paid attention to the state’s leadership recruitment rubric, he could go to sleep assured that neither Rivers nor its governors in the foreseeable future would betray the cause or be bought for a morsel. It is not clear whether it is not already too late for Mr Wike, despite his threat to fight long and hard; but it would be a mistake for him to assume or project the struggle to be about him or his ideas. He should speak less, considerably less, about himself or whether anyone is betraying him; for the struggle for political unity and party sanctity should be about Rivers, and Rivers only.

  • Atiku undermines his own ambition

    Atiku undermines his own ambition

    On October 30, former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, finally spoke on his loss at the Supreme Court in the case he filed against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its victorious candidate in that election, President Bola Tinubu. The speech was undoubtedly written for him, for everything in the text stands in direct and scornful refutation of his life and ideas. He blames the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Supreme Court for his loss. As far as he is concerned, he presented all the evidence necessary to get the case decided in his favour, but his valiant and noble attempt was thwarted by the incompetence and deviousness of the two institutions. He did not have an impressive school leaving certificate, but he brandishes a diploma in law (1969) and a master’s in international relations (2021). His speech, however, displays nothing of the higher learning or political virtue his education confers on him. He misreads the electoral law, misapplies the constitution, and far more embarrassingly, especially for someone who passes himself off as a statesman and patriotic political titan, misjudges both his personal accomplishment and the mood of the country.

    In the first four paragraphs of his speech, he tells audacious lies about the role he played in Nigerian politics, including what he has stood for all his life, and insinuations about what he may yet accomplish on a hypothetical tomorrow. In those prefatory statements, where he speaks with absolute cocksureness of what he supposed was the malfeasance of the two institutions in question, he avers that history will vindicate him. He knows nothing about history. Then he pontificates about democracy and the rule of law, of which he was both an avatar and a palladium. He does not say what qualifies him for the robes he wore in the speech, for the robes were ponderous and ungainly over the thin and spectral frame of his self-confessed qualities. But because some bright and dreamy hack writer composed his diatribe against the court and INEC, he believes that by merely making those self-adulatory claims, he was invariably entitled to wear those grand and noble robes.

    He repeatedly hammers on his years of litigations, which he assumes must be noble because they exuded a long and profound history of political activism and agitation, and he thus proudly wears that hat. It escapes him that his litigiousness, much of it anchored on flimsy and self-gratifying evidence, could in fact be baleful pointers to his disputatiousness, a grumbler eternally griping about minor hurts and chasing chimeras. He then zeroes in on his last Supreme Court case, speaks fondly about United States (US) courts from which he says he had procured unassailable evidence, and damns everybody else from APC to INEC, and from the Nigerian courts to Nigerians themselves whom he dismisses as complicit. For someone who claims to have a diploma in law, it is bewildering that he neither says anything about the sanctity of laws nor talks of estimating the evidentiary worth of his foreign evidence. He then proceeds to cast aspersion on legal technicalities as if they are distinguishable from the law, and feigning dismay, pronounces glibly on how the courts should have proceeded. The lower court that adjudicated his case, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), gave its judgement on September 6, while the Supreme Court affirmed the judgement on October 26. Neither he nor his speechwriters had obviously read and digested the judgements, though they had enough time. Had he read the two documents, his law diploma should have impelled him to a better and deeper understanding of the inviolability of the justices’ reasoning and conclusions.

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    A final year law student, confronted with the arguments and evidence of the Atiku legal team, could not but come to the conclusion that the former vice president had no case, regardless of whether the student or any other person for that matter loathed the winner, President Tinubu. Worse, it did not need the same final year law student, after perusing the final address of the Atiku team, to come to the safe conclusion that the Supreme Court would unanimously dismiss his case and affirm the president’s victory in the election. Alhaji Atiku in his more than 2,700-worded speech paid no heed to the legal arguments adumbrated in the two judgements before coming to his conclusion that both the Supreme Court and INEC acted disloyally to the national cause and the cause of democracy. Instead, he focused cheerfully on the moral insinuation of a forgery he neither argued before the lower court nor tendered procedurally before the Supreme Court. He hoped his casuistry and the menace he and others had stirred in the wider and gullible public would be sufficient to intimidate the court. Six times, Alhaji Atiku tried to be president; he nearly could have become president in any of those times. For a man who trifles with facts, pays lip service to the concepts of democracy and the rule of law, speaks loftily about the future of Nigeria without discussing or propounding anchors for such a future, and wails apocalyptically about the failure of others while glossing blithely over his own abysmal moral and business failings, winning the presidency in any of those six times would have had tragic and lasting consequences for the country.

    There have been suggestions that his insistence on staying put in the country to help Nigeria in its struggle for democracy are designed to pave the way for a future run at the presidency. Despite his boastings, and notwithstanding his litigious propensity, Alhaji Atiku is not a democrat nor does he care a hoot about democracy. He never fought for it, and may even harbour contempt for the idea. Fighting for democracy implies having a deep understanding of the concept. Alhaji Atiku is decidedly and roundly superficial. His court forays, particularly weaponised to damage the credibility and reputation of President Tinubu, have also been imbued with sacredness as a way of preparing him for a future presidential race. Those who advance such arguments exaggerate Alhaji Atiku’s mental and physical capacity. Apart from his rudimentary grasp of running a modern and complex economy and society, not to say his failing strength, it will take a miracle at 81 years old in 2027 to run for president, and much bigger altruism to make him support a younger and capable candidate. He is too selfish to care. Alhaji Atiku has reached the end of his tether. He will not run for president in 2027, nor support anyone for the position; instead, he will fade away well before the next elections. 

  • THE  ROAD  TO  ABUJA

    THE  ROAD  TO  ABUJA

    (after a painting with the same title by Obiora Udechukwu)

    The road was a pot of holes

    Sizzling under the harmattan’s relentless haze

    The roadside grass wore the dust like a brave mantle

    Its roots shoed helplessly in the caked camwood mud

    Of long-forgotten rains

    Through gullies, through valleys

    Through peevish pebbles portered in

    To grace the greed of yawning craters

    Across trenches drilled deep by

    The liquid fingers of yester torrents

    We galloped on, our patient Peugeot

    Insufferably faithful, our wake

    One red army of dreadful dust

    Houses flitted by

    Like ragged masquerades on reluctant feet

    Termite-tortured, windowless in critical places

    Their faithful dwellers waving skeletal hands 

    At the cozy convoy of passing chieftains

    So used to harvesting their smiles

    And dredging their doldrum of tears

    Villages limped past

    Their corrugated brows dripping sweat and salt

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    In the scorching sun, their schooless children

    Staring vacantly into a future mortgaged

    By Eating Chiefs, Bankruptcy Bankers

    And other Vultures of the Vault

    Whose patriotic perfidies have carrioned

    A stricken nation. Dead hospitals,

    Death-trap roads, powerless days, dark, dark nights

    Perennial hunger in a land whose womb

    Is round with unborn harvests

    Broken bridges in a land of broken pledges  

    The towns limped past

    Ikole, Ilogbo, Ayegunle, Aaye….

    Whose roads know the tyres of tycoons

    On their heedless pilgrimage

    To the City of Gold

    * Originally written in December 1985 upon my return from Abuja, venue of the annual ANA convention for that year.

    (To be continued)

  • Jagaban’s new German connect and the performance bond scare

    It was another very busy week for the Ciudadano Numero Uno, right from the first day, being Sunday. All through the week, it was from one very crucial engagement to another, all of which will make one to wonder if Baba rests at all. For instance, the event that took most time of the week for the President and his entire cabinet and the crème of the public service was the 2023 Cabinet Retreat and like he said in his opening speech at the event, he meant to sit in all through the three days of the event. Surprisingly, he made good of his promise, to a large extent, his very tight schedule notwithstanding.

    Of course, for it to have been a very busy week, as indicated earlier, it means a lot of events must have found their way on to the President’s daily/weekly schedule, starting from the first day of the week. From the very significant visit of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on Sunday, to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Monday, with all the other remarkable matters and statements that attended it, to the meeting of the National Police Council on Tuesday, where the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Kayode Egbetokun was confirmed as substantive Police Chief and so on and so forth.

    However, three of the activities seemed the most remarkable, with one seeming most important to the President himself. The event that took the most time from him, being the cabinet retreat, might have made more impression with the public, especially because of some of the loud sounding statements the President made at the opening ceremony. However, to the President himself, the most significant event of the week will, without any doubt, be the visit of the German Chancellor, Scholz, and the economic benefits he came with.

    The significance of the visit to President Tinubu, especially how he felt about it, became vivid from Monday when he cast a rate over how it all went. On Monday, just before the commencement of the FEC meeting, the President indicated how very elated the event left him. He even had to thank his ministers for their contributions that made the outing a successful one.

    “Yesterday, we had a very good showing and I thank all of you for sparing your Sunday to attend to national event. The visit of the Chancellor of the Republic of Germany was to me a success. We needed more time, but we were able to cover a lot of ground”, he had said. He was so impressed with it he had to make another reference to it on Wednesday in his opening speech at the Cabinet Retreat.

    No need wondering why it made so much impression on him, everybody already knows that the focus of the administration, at the moment, is achieving economic recovery and setting a solid basis for the overall economic survival of the nation for years to come. The German Chancellor came with two arms in his entourage; the political/diplomatic officials and the government-t0-business arm, consisting of German corporations and business owners. The meeting afford Nigeria, or say the Bola Tinubu administration, the opportunity to firm up business and investment targets, just as it sent the signal out to the rest of the world that Nigeria is fast becoming both a “regional and a global powerhouse”, borrowing the assertion of the British High Commissioner to Nigeria Dr Richard Montgomery.

    He was able to extract commitments from the German team, but he had to assure them first of the safety of their investments as well as the potentials of the environments they are to put their resources. Then on Monday, he put it all on the ministers; they have to work doubly to cement the trust of investors in our economy.

    “Yesterday, we had a very good showing and I thank all of you for sparing your Sunday to attend to national event. The visit of the Chancellor of the Republic of Germany was to me a success. We need more time, but we were able to cover a lot of ground”.

    “You have opportunity to change things. Recently two or three days ago we received the Chancellor of the Republic of Germany and his delegation of investors.

    “One of their key complaints and the question is whether they can bring their capital, repatriate their dividend, or if not satisfied, take their capital away. The Minister of Trade and Investment was called upon by me to explain further, that those obstacles are gone never to come back again. We are open for business.

    “We must take our reforms seriously. The investors are interested in us. We must think inquisitively to see how we can improve and access the opportunities. There’s a lot of competition around us on the African continent and there’s a lot of competition around Europe as well.

    “There’s opportunity, even though you’re struggling to bring support to Nigeria, we are determined to transform the economic landscape of this country and like I said, investors and investment are cowardly, they don’t follow conflicts. Think outside the box, how we can do things better”, he told the ministers.

    The Cabinet Retreat will come in as the second most significant event of the week, going by all that transpired during the three days that the ministers and other functionaries has to be taken through the rudiments of their assignments. The Bola Tinubu administration had its targets set ahead of its inauguration on May 29 and they are encapsulated in the Renewed Hope Agenda. There is a need for every member of the work team of the administration to understand what the agenda is all about and what it means for the people of Nigeria.

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    It was at this event that some of the functionaries of government who might be strangers to the Jagaban’s modus operandi, especially the younger ones, who were not really attuned to how he worked as governor of Lagos State. There are also those who knew him back then, but not really at close quarters, the retreat was like a GNS101, needed to get them acquainted with what is about to be their official realities.

    Besides the lectures, seminars and explainers they were taken through, the President introduced what will determine the length of time each member of the administration will stay on the journey; either short term or through the long haul. Besides introducing the performance bond, which each minister, special adviser, senior special assistant and other top aides of the President must sign, he instituted the Result Delivery Unit (RDU), to be headed by his Special Adviser on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman. According to him, whatever this ‘perception index’ says about the individual official will determine whether he or she stays or shown the door.

    “At the end of this retreat, you’re going to sign a bond of understanding between you, the ministers, the permanent secretaries, and myself. If you are performing, nothing to fear; if you miss the objective, we’ll review; if there is no performance, you leave us. No one is an island, and the buck stops on my desk”, he said.

    Of course there were other significant happenings that found their way out from the Villa during the week. For instance, on Monday Baba put paid to a blackmail attempt on his Chief of Staff, Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, by declaring boldly “I have absolute confidence in my Chief of Staff”. Still on Monday, he presided over the FEC, which approved a number of contracts, as well as a N2.17 trillion 2023 Supplementary Budget. On Tuesday, he waded into the brewing political crisis in Rivers state and on Thursday, he handed flags over to candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi and appealed for free and fair process in the elections scheduled for November 11.

    Then on Friday, he closed the three-day Cabinet Retreat, where he told participants to set aside their personal ambitions for the task of pulling Nigerians out of poverty and observed the signing of the performance bond by officials. He also received Catherine Colonna, the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France and President Emmanuel Macron’s Special Envoy, a second European visitor within a week.

    Meanwhile, one thing was outstanding from the Jagaban’s body language, right from the beginning of the week; he made it crystal clear that he will no longer permit business as usual. First, at the FEC on Monday, Baba read the riot act while setting the ground rules of how official businesses would be conducted around the Villa, especially when it comes to events inside the Executive Council Chambers and State events where he will have to speak.

    He warned against tardiness and inappropriate conducts by officials and senior VIPs. He even warned against unguarded public comments by those he has permitted to be identified with him.

    “Again, last week I noticed the undue access of people sneaking in and out of this Council. That is not acceptable. I will announce to you those people who are supposed to be here with my content; Hadiza Bala Usman, SA Policy; Bayo Onanuga, Information and Strategy; Hakeem Muri-Okunola, Principal Private Secretary; and Damilotun Aderemi, Private Secretary.

    “Those are people who are granted exception to be here when we’re conducting the business of the nation. Unless I sent for you, don’t come, make it clear. Secretary to the Government and Head of Service, please take note. Unless your staff that are included, no one is privileged to have access sitting in this (Council Chambers), except those four that I’ve announced to you.

    “Let me also say that the planning of events of the government must be well articulated and followed. Any comment, talking points or speeches of the President, must be ready in advance. If it affects your ministry or not, if you have things to add, when we have events, make it available as quickly as possible. If the SGF is not around, make it available to the Chief of Staff. My speeches must at least be given to me in advance so that they can have my input accordingly”, he sternly asserted.

    Then on Wednesday, while delivering his speech at the opening ceremony of the2023 Cabinet Retreat, he gave the participants a peep into what the run will look like for everyone; this administration will not be a tea party, but a serious national assignment in which everyone who has been assigned a role will be duty-bound to deliver to specifications of their beats.

    The long and short of the gist is that governance in Nigeria has become a serious business and now there is a set of codes of ethics everyone in the administration is bound to give the highest level of deference to. Who are you not to, especially after you must have signed a performance bond with the administration?

    ●P.S: Ciudadano numero uno is the Spanish rendition of the coinage ‘Number one citizen’.