The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • The old bailiff arrives at Old Bailey

    The old bailiff arrives at Old Bailey

    Like an old colonial bailiff confronted by a tricky case of repossession, our own four-star general, former military and civilian head of state and revered man of letters, Olusegun Obasanjo, has fired a salvo at the Old Bailey central criminal court right there in the heart of the colonial metropolis of London. This time around, the old general is not acting the part of a gruff, taciturn man of arms. It is rather an impassioned, polite and well-reasoned plea for compassion and mercy for Ike Ekweremadu and family.

      There is Dickensian irony in the air. Those who have read Charles Dickens will appreciate. There is also a touch of cruel paradox. In his nationalist military heydays, Obasanjo treated the British establishment with bucolic aplomb and a wary distrust. But that was a long time ago. Beggars can no longer be choosers, as they say in England. Now, he is forced to eat the humble pie at the behest of a wayward compatriot and closet collaborator.

    No one can be sure where General Obasanjo’s letter-writing capacity will take him next. Perhaps he is going to pen an epistle to Kings Charles on the delicate matter of the Adubi War of 1918 which summarily abolished Egba city-state status , or the still more infamous spat over General Yakubu Gowon after the assassination of Murtala Mohammed. All that was at the high noon of Nigeria’s greatness and global relevance.

      But you must give it to the old boy, even where you vehemently disagree with his motives and what many will dub diabolical motivations. More often than not as a literary marksman, Obasanjo knows how to pick his spot and then pull the trigger with chilling resolve, like an executive executioner. Many have  been wondering whether the former president is just a letter writer among generals, but they soon discover that he is also a general among letter writers.

      Like most of his letters, this one is also filled with mixed motives, multiple intentions and objectives; coolly rational and calm on the surface but a seething cauldron of contradictions just below the surface. It is like killing four birds with one single strike. Whatever the motives and motivation, only deadly maestros do that. A born master of psychological destabilization, no one can take dissembling and dissimulation away from the Owu-born general.

     The Ekweremadu affair comes with acute moral complications for everybody, particularly for families that care for their children and want the best for them. But if we grant that as an adoring and doting father, the senator from Enugu has all the right to seek the best medical care for his beloved daughter, what about the other poor chap who has been treated like a cipher or simply as an unperson in all this?

     This is where the search for personal justice is ensnared by the eternal quest for social justice. Every human, no matter where, when and how, is born with certain inalienable rights which guarantee them some measure of respect and decency of treatment. Members of a ruling class who treat their people like cyborgs and dehumanized commodities are likely to run into an ethical tornado when they transfer the mindset to more civilized climes which have learnt to abhor political cannibalism.

      The facts of the case are so well known that they need not detain us here. Ike Ekweremadu, a ranking Nigerian senator, together with his wife and a medical doctor, Obinna Obeta, were arrested, tried and convicted for organ-harvesting. They were accused of deceiving David Nwamani, a 21 year old Lagos street trader, into donating a kidney for their daughter Sonia who is threatened with renal failure.

      After a year of trial, the prosecutor, Hugh Davies, in a damning summation, told the court that the Ekweremadus and Obeta treated Nwamini and other potential donors as “disposable assets—spare parts for reward” which is nothing but an “emotionally cold commercial transaction” reeking of “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”.

    Anyone familiar with this kind of arrogant impunity which is common place in Nigeria must appreciate why it is particularly affronting to the British general populace. Civilized societies set certain premium standards on decency and humane conduct towards others, deviation from which attracts severe reprimand. You can call it hypocrisy of the highest order, but this is how humanity is nudged to higher telos away from the savagery and criminality which is our default setting.

      Enter at this point our own General Obasanjo who insisted that the punishment must take into consideration Ekweremadu’s “good character”. At this point, a lot might be tempted to ask, what good character? Here is a man who has been tried and adjudged guilty for criminal laundering and misappropriation by the highest anti-graft agency in the land, ironically set up by Obasanjo himself. At this point, we must leave Obasanjo to his prerogative of what constitutes good character.

       But this is where his letter begins to reveal its own conditions of production and possibilities willy-nilly the author. First, Obasanjo’s letter is a product of the collapse of elite consensus in Nigeria. By writing the way he did, and obviously without any approval or endorsement from the federal authorities, he is seeking to draw insidious attention to the cold indifference to the plight of a ranking senator by the Buhari administration.

      Obasanjo’s intervention would have gained more traction if he had been working in tandem with the federal government rather than in covert animosity. This was precisely what happened when he penned a letter to all African heads of state about the need to secure a second term for Akin Adesina at the African Development Bank. Buhari’s government backed the move to the hilt and Adesina sailed through despite formidable opposition. Obasanjo’s letter would have had more gravitas with federal backing.

      But these days, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. There is open hostility and uncontrollable animus between the authorities and the Owu-born general. The case against the senator from Enugu State is clear and incontrovertible, and the lack of synergy between Obasanjo and the Buhari administration would have vitiated any chance of Ekweremadu being let off the hook lightly by his metropolitan interlocutors.

        It is a well-known fact that the government has rebuffed attempts to get it to intervene on Ekweremadu’s behalf from many quarters. Once again, Obasanjo may consciously be stoking the embers of elite discord by presenting himself as a friend and defender of the Igbo elite. What he hopes to gain by this strategic gambit remains to be seen, given the fact that on all the occasions he rose to power in the country whether as a civilian major domo or military supremo the north has been instrumental.

     The general from Daura is a person with a well-documented and legendary aptitude for long-distance feuding. Given Ekweremadu’s sinister role in the historic heist which saw Bukola Saraki emerge as senate president against the stated will and preference of his party, the former infantry general would have marked him down as the poster-boy of the corrupt and undesirable brood of politicians from a particular elite formation in the country who should not be granted any latitude.

      General Buhari’s animus towards Ekweremadu wouldn’t have mattered greatly if the elite formation that threw him up stood resolutely and valiantly behind him in pursuing its struggle for supremacy against the other countervailing hegemonic formations. But it remains about the most fractious and fractured going forward. The pursuit and achievement of individual ambition seem to matter more than collective bargaining. There is no society, only individuals, as Margaret Thatcher famously submitted.

       This has been their bane since the advent of the Fourth Republic and appears to have played out once again in the Ekweremadu affair. An irate and despondent Igbo contributor to the AIT newspaper review programme last Wednesday morning was heard calling out an influential former global diplomat of Igbo extraction for keeping quiet on the fate of Ekweremadu while Obasanjo took on the awkward role of the defender of the Igbo people in their hour of tribulation.

       Obasanjo himself had publicly stated on the occasion to mark Chukwuma Soludo’s first anniversary as governor of Anambra state that he found the Igbo elite amenable and appointable to high office because of their unflinching loyalty and competence. This is in sharp but unstated contrast to his Yoruba compatriots who he would have found to be of brittle loyalty and ever querulous insolence as far as his selfish and antediluvian vision of the nation is concerned.

      Yet among the Igbo elite, and beyond individual bargaining for plum office, a bitter infighting and mutual hostility prevail which engender a paralysis of the collective will going forward. In his memoir, Standing Strong, Ken Nnamani has some unpalatable things to say about Ike Ekweremadu. Not only did Ekweremadu strive strenuously to block his attempt to get to the senate, he was also very much at hand to prevent his emergence as Senate president.

       No wonder they deserted the book launch in droves. As the reviewer, one should know. Yet here was an Igbo leader very much respected and admired by the Buhari presidency for his solidity of character and unimpeachable integrity. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Obasanjo’s hero is Buhari’s antihero.

      It will be left to future historians to determine whether Obasanjo’s embroilment in partisan politics really messed up his sterling character and reputation for transcendental patriotism, just as it seems to have done with General Mohammadu Buhari. In his glowing tribute to Murtala Mohammed, Chief Obafemi Awolowo described his successor as “shy, deep and equally patriotic”.

    In his nationalist incarnation as a military ruler, Obasanjo did not suffer amoral fools very gladly and neither could he be found in bed with depraved scoundrels. In a towering rage against military miscreants, he was known to have cast the deciding vote that sent Colonel Wya to the stakes.

      Unable to bear the shame and trauma, the white widow of the poor fellow launched herself against a trailer a few months after on the Kaduna-Kano highway. Not only that, Obasanjo made sure that Yoruba notables such as Dr Shodipo, Major Ola Ogunmekan, aka Bros Ola, and Eji Gbadero face the music for their economic, military and criminal infractions respectively. Until the very end, the gregarious, music-loving socialite never believed that he was about to meet his maker.

     It can now be seen that what commends and recommends Ike Ekweremandu to Obasanjo is not his sterling character but a fascination with moral squalor. The problem with criminal impunity is that it never knows where and when to stop. When it behaves as if it has immunity in a foreign clime, it always comes with dire consequences. Let the old bailiff now depart for the Old Bailey court to do its job. This is what happens to a country without elite consensus on nation-building or core values about public morality. 

  • Going to the archives: Okon remembers Dino

    Going to the archives: Okon remembers Dino

    Why have some of the garrulous boys suddenly vanished? Snooper takes a forensic delight in their antics. They are products of an evil system trying to game the malign order that has thrown them up. But sometimes, the system also games them into an eerie silence of political stupefaction. In the elaborate fiction called Nigeria, the present sometimes tricks the past. This piece was written a few years back. Please enjoy.

      There are unconfirmed reports that hooded human beings in police uniforms stormed Dino Melaiye’s resting or arresting place to whisk the beleaguered senator and harried ham actor to an unknown pile. They certainly meant business, these hulking state enforcers, and were certainly not there to accord the rogue lawmaker the traditional “ okun” salutation of his sub-ethnic people.

    A day after this historic evacuation, Okon showed up with the inevitable Baba Lekki in tow wearing the uniform of an ancient herbalist and mumbling some primitive mumbo jumbo to the bargain. Okon was carrying an ancient pail stuffed with native soap and some herbal concoctions.

      “Oga, I wan quickly reach dem police cell for Abuja make man give dem Dino boy small chop and local insurance against dem mad mosquitoes and dem wild rats. Dem they laugh as dem they bite man. Na real olosi people dem police rats be. Dem sabi everybody him name. He get one of dem like dat who come they shout man him name as he dey bite Okon blokos,” the mad boy chanted breathlessly.

      “And what is the pail for?” snooper demanded.

      “Ha oga, na for dem Dino him shit. You no say for police cell everybody dey shit for floor. He get time like dat for police dem cell and dem Action Group thug dem dey call Yanga he come beat man sotey Okon dey shit for floor and shit dey everywhere. Yanga go beat Dino well well and him no go sabi him mama again”, Okon raved.

      “You see”, Baba Lekki began with an expansive drawl. “When the yeye boy dey sing Ajekun iya, I think say him get original juju. But as dem police come capture am like dem Oshodi ram like dat, the boy no get nothing. Na Sakara oloje as dem Fela dey say. But sa, man pikin be man pikin. We no go allow dem mala make him come finis dem boy like dat”.

      “So baba wetin you and dem OPC fit do?” Okon shouted.

    “ I wan go give dem boy egbe and gbetugbetu from him Egbe people. Mad pikin get him own use”, the mad old man scoffed.

      “Ha baba, as for dat, you go go your own and Okon dey go him own. I no wan enter dem mala trouble. Dem Daura man dey dangerous mood. Even baba don keep quiet and him dey survey dem Imeko border not to talk of ogogoro man like you”, Okon sneered.

      “Okon, what is in the bag?” snooper demanded.

      “ Ha oga, na Sikira him pants I wan return to dem police. Last time dem nab man dem say I be ritual killer becos I dey carry dem woman wig. You see each time I wire Sikira like dat him dey forget him pant. Sometimes sef when him head don dabaru him dey wear my trousers carry go”, Okon sniggered.

      “Na dat one dem Fela man dey call pata gbigbona or hot pants”, Baba Lekki crooned with savage delight. On that note snooper drove the crazy duo out of the house.

  • Adams Oshiomhole at 71

    Adams Oshiomhole at 71

    With an emphatic 107,110 votes to his opponent’s 55,344 votes in the Edo North senatorial race, Adams Oshiomhole again proved not only his popularity with the Edo State electorate and particularly his constituency, he also revivified his politics, presumed comatose as a result of his long and bruising battles with Edo governor Godwin Obaseki, and sustained an enduring image of himself as a progressive and likeable politician. His opponent in that February 25 race, Francis Alimekhena, was no pushover. As a two-term senator since 2015, the retired army major and foreign-trained lawyer was pushing for a third term in the senate on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he encountered the union juggernaut, Mr Oshiomhole, a former two-term governor of the state from 2008 to 2016 and one-time National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    The former governor and party chairman is now 71, and it is significant that he has not lost any of the idiosyncratic feistiness and gregariousness that have hallmarked his political career since 2007 when he first threw his hat into the ring. Since then he has become accustomed to winning, though sometimes chequered by the usual electoral heists that typify Nigerian politics. He was robbed in the 2007 Edo governorship poll, but he regained his mandate in November 2008. Four years later he won a handsome and indisputable victory gingered by a boisterous performance in office uncommon since the iconic Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, an army brigadier, ruled the combined Midwest/Bendel state as military governor.

    Mr Oshiomhole’s gregariousness had its drawbacks. He was sometimes voluble and impatient, perhaps a carry-over from his trade union activism days begun in the 1970s, culminating in his election as the General Secretary of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria in 1982, and more remarkably and powerfully, in his election as chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in 1999. His tenures were distinguished by activism and a doggedness that nearly became superlative and unsurpassable, and they helped propel him into a fulfilling and rewarding political career. In politics, he also sustained his common touch as labour union executive, and he never lost that touch as governor for eight years. He was not infallible, but he sustained an uncanny connection with the Edo electorate, both by his endearing performance and by his inimitable earthiness.

    Propelled by stellar achievements as governor, and in combination with his labour union background, he soon found himself in 2018 the practical and commonsensical replacement for the dour but disfavoured John Odgie Oyegun, a former Edo State governor, as APC chairman in June 2018. But barely two years later in 2020, after enacting a series of tumultuous but sometimes tactless measures that threw his party into upheaval, causing distress to party behemoths, including President Muhammadu Buhari, he was ousted in a civilian coup orchestrated from his ward and sealed by controversial court judgements. The fault was hardly his; his problem was his lack of strategic approach to complex political dynamics that required diplomatic and subtle handling. Mr Oshiomhole was, however, too candid to be subtle, and too impatient with humbug to suffer fools gladly. Yet there are always too many entrenched fools in politics.

    Going forward, there is nothing in the former governor’s politics or life to suggest he had acquired the subtlety required to launch his career to the very peak. He has been successful so far, and has chalked up remarkable signposts in the past decades, whether as union leader or politician. Changing his style and politics now at 71 will not only prove costly and stressful, it will also push him to territories he is neither familiar nor comfortable with. There is no apparent indication of any serious health challenge etched on his face, and he must have enjoyed very robust and rambunctious middle age enabling him to even take a much younger wife Iara, the Cape Verdian. His energy level remains the envy of his contemporaries. And though he is not naturally sculpted an Adonis, he has captivated women over the decades and has given of his time and resources, indeed an ample much of himself, to please and even titillate them.

    Mr Oshiomhole is unlikely to angle for the presidency, given his age. Had he been a little younger, and had he been advantaged by Nigeria’s regional political dynamics, he would undoubtedly have appealed to a sizable portion of the country to enable him fetch the ultimate prize. To him, at 71, the presidency is, therefore, illusory. But he retains an excellent grasp of issues, a deep and unfettered capacity for polemics which should serve him well in the National Assembly, an unquestionable rhetorical fecundity catalysed by a rich microphone voice, and an even more didactic tone capable of penetrating the armour of his worst enemy.

    No, the former governor is neither infallible nor above reproach. He has his weaknesses, failings that neither age nor new ideas could attenuate. But his uncanny talent for associating with the winning side, his untrammeled loyalty to friends, and his immense potential to socialise without being judgemental will likely help his politics in his evening years. And as his tenure as party chairman showed when he took on blustering party leaders and brought them to heel, Mr Oshiomhole also possesses that ethical forte that enables him to side courageously and effortlessly, though not always unerringly, with what is right, with what is just, and with causes that are popular.

    For four decades, the former governor had been used to executive positions which afforded him ample room to take the final decisions. In the twilight of an illustrious career catapulted by his immense talent but modest education, he will now have to get used to being led by others in the legislature. He will of course belong to one senate committee or the other, but if he chairs any, it will be on account of his membership of the ruling party and his unquestionable capacity for zesty leadership. Yet, that modest legislative leadership will be a far cry from the pontifical positions he had occupied since 1982. For Mr Oshiomhole, it has been 71 years of the best of the very best; a bohemian who contradistinctively rose to positions of splendour by his extraordinary but sometimes flawed personality than by his education or birth.

    Mysteries of Poll 2023

    It is one of the unexplained contradictions of this year’s election cycle that it is buffeted by so much illogical internal and external criticisms. In the presidential poll, three contenders did so unprecedentedly well that they virtually split the country in three equal parts. And in the National Assembly elections, the three leading contenders did remarkably well, only stopping just short of producing a hung parliament. And in the second tier of polls on March 18, again the three leading contenders and their political parties did not do very badly, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the first runner-up, avoiding the catastrophe that initially loomed over it as a result of failing to win the presidency.

    Strangely, though the first runner-up and second runner-up came from the same stock and only split before the primaries season, each of the parts expected to have won the poll, and has since spoken and acted contemptuously of the country and the electoral process, insisting that the election was stolen. It is indeed passing strange. And for the second runner-up, the Labour Party (LP), which presidential candidate, Peter Obi, took 25 percent in only 15 states out of the expected 25 states – 10 short of the mark – to speak so militantly about a stolen mandate must be a mystery that no one, least the LP itself, can sensibly explain.

    The parties which supposed themselves to have been cheated have, however, been unable to explain why they think they deserved victory. Neither their dissonant intraparty politics nor the final electoral figures favoured them, not in the least. Yet, they have spoken militantly about reclaiming ‘stolen mandate’ or pushing the country over the precipice, perhaps on the instigation of faceless but powerful backers. Surely all the leading parties could not have won the presidency at the same time. The courts will now have to try and cut the Gordian knot, that is if the militants let them without intimidation.

  • Yes daddy and his Rasputins

    Yes daddy and his Rasputins

    Daddy, I need you to speak to your people in the South-West and Kwara, the Christians in the South-West and Kwara. This is a RELIGIOUS WAR” – Peter Obi, Labour party Presidential candidate in an alleged telcon with his spiritual ‘Daddy’

    On 26 March, 2023 I wrote as follows in the article ‘Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is God Project: The Reason He Remained Unstoppable’:

    “The Almighty God must have had Bola Ahmed Tinubu in mind when He said in 2 Timothy 1:7 that He has “not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline”.

    Twice did Tinubu go, all the way, to the historic city of Abeokuta to, not only  expose the plans of his political enemies, but to also confound, and put them to shame, to make that come true which was said in Psalms 6:9-10:

    “I have heard your cry for help and I have answered your prayer. All your enemies will be discomfited and troubled. They will turn and suddenly leave in shame”.

    All these is why the ever perspicacious Yorubas say:  ‘eni Olorun da ko se fara we’, meaning that a child of God is  beyond comparison.

    What did they not do?

    What evil did they not plan?

    To how many did they not promise the presidency?

    Was it former president Goodluck Jonathan, who they went to woo, even as the decent gentleman – a minority of minorities – was still thanking God for the opportunity  He gave him to rule Nigeria?   Was it the  political neophyte, Godwin Emefiele who, having turned the Central Bank to their play thing,  they didn’t try to foist on Nigeria as if the country is a banana Republic?

    They did not stop there.

    To Senate President Ahmad Lawan they  went, he who Tinubu literally singlehandedly paved his way to high office. But God works in  mysterious ways, his wonders to behold. That happened long after God had used Lawan to partner with House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and other well meaning members of the National Assembly to CAST IN STONE, the impossibility of President Muhammadu Buhari  naming a consensus presidential candidate as the  Electoral Law, 2022, has made it mandatory for  every contestant to signify, in writing, his/her acceptance of a consensus agreement.

    By the time those working against Tinubu dropped Lawan’s name like a bomb, claiming that it was a presidential directive, Lawan had, by his own hands, helped in making consensus candidacy an impossibility as they would never have got Tinubu’s agreement on that diabolical plan.

    It could only have been God’s hand at work.”

    On Thursday, 6 April, 2023, Dele Adeoluwa, a former Editor of The Nation on Saturday wrote:

    “This is the political maestro and strategist who won the February 25, 2023 presidential election, but has continued to be derided in a most duplicitous manner. The miraculous way his victory came can only be explained within the context of a man fated by Providence to be king. His victory right from the most tempestuous primary of his party to the main rancorous election is akin to the story of the proverbial elephant, which, like a  bulldozer, uprooted all the barricades erected on his path to stop its advance to the river and dragged them along with it and when it got to the river triumphantly, it did a supple, macho dance atop the barricades-now-turned-path, to the consternation of the foes!”.

    The lesson of these short takes is that:

    God is at work in the Nigeria Project and a thousand Peter Obis and his Obidients with their colony of bishops and pastors, cannot vitiate it. It is, therefore, time these ‘gods of men’  take off their evil hands, shove their dangerous visions and salacious scheming.

    They should find something useful to do.

    It is time these Rasputins realise that not all Nigerians are like their hypnotised captives – aka church members – who have suspended their reasoning faculty because of their thoroughly illogical trust in these pastors, and to whom they preach: “ take back your country” every Sunday, as if the pulpit is a campaign podium.

    They have done enough havoc to the polity and should not turn Nigeria to another LEBANON.

    *RASPUTIN Grigori Yefimovich was the Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who completely took over the life of Russian Emperor,  Nicholas II, and ended up destroying, not only the Tsarist government, but the entire House of Romanov.

    Rasputins in history always come to grief and these troublers of Nigeria will not miss their comeuppance.

  • Hurray! Papa (Hon) Olabode Thomas Babatola is 90

    Hurray! Papa (Hon) Olabode Thomas Babatola is 90

    Winsome, sartorial, and ever elegantly turned out, the Honourable Olabode Babatola recently turned 90.

    God be praised.

    Looking back to the tumultuous 80’s in the politics of Ondo state, a period already captured for history, and posterity, by the inimitable Dare Babarinsa who was then the state correspondent of the Concord newspaper, Pa Babatola has every reason to thank God for his grace upon his life for those were truly hazardous times; doubly so for a very active participant in the politics of the state as a member of the House of Assembly.

    Pa Babatola was born into the MEYOLANU DYNASTY in Efon Alaaye in Ekiti State on 28th March 1935. His  father was PaJoseph Babatola and the mother was Mama Felicia Agbeleye,

    He attended St. Augustine’s College, Akure (now St. Peter’s College) and St. Leo’s College Abeokuta.

    He was appointed the first Bursar of Aquinas College Akure in 1954 and it was from there he proceeded to the United Kingdom in 1958 to further his studies at the Balam and Tooting College of Commerce, London.

    He returned to Nigeria as soon as he   qualified as a chartered secretary and joined the. Federal civil service.

    Given his education, exposure, leadership qualities and  eagerness to serve his people, he joined politics on the the return of politics in 1978/79.

    That was a particularly torrid time in the politics of Ondo state and apart from the orgy of killings which took the lives of patriots like Uncle Olaiya Fagbamigbe and my friend, Hon Alex Adedipe among others, there had been  staggered assassinations like. that of Pa Iluku.

    That period has been elegantly captured by Babarinsa in ‘House Of War’.

    As I recently wrote on these pages,

    the book “chronicles the bitter and bloody struggle for political power in Nigeria’s Second Republic, especially among the followers of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. It tells the story of the schism in the Awo camp and how rival factions turned against each other in the scramble for office”.

    Happily, Pa Babatola came out of it all completely unscathed.

    In 1985, he joined the Nigerian/ Italian Ceramic Company Limited, Ifon, Ondo state as an Accountant and retired voluntarily as General Manager in 1992.

    A highly regarded elder and community leader, Pa Babatola, even at his age, will not miss a Sunday service in his church.

    He is happily married and is blessed with children, grand children and great grandchildren.

    Happy birthday Sir. Many Happy returns of your day.

    Ajinde ara a ma je nyin loruko Jesu.

    Amin.

  • Instigating illegitimate interim illusion?

    Instigating illegitimate interim illusion?

    Going down a memory lane in this edition of “Followership Challenge”, this columnist is compelled to recall personal encounters that took place in 1993 while sojourning in Keffi, a town located in then Plateau State (now Nasarawa State). On this particular morning, my wife was undergoing birth pangs characteristic of imminent delivery. We both knew that delivery of a baby is imminent by the signs and symptoms showing forth one after the other as this child was expected to be the third born. My wife and I then decided to head for the maternity centre when she was registered for delivery. It was not a small journey. It was a journey of no less than 30 kilometres from Keffi to Nyanya, Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Why did we decide to register in a town far from Keffi? A story for another day. Fortunately, the journey, smooth as it was, took about 30 minutes. I was behind the wheels. The midwife welcomed us. Pronto, I was told to get into the Nyanya market almost opposite the centre to buy corn palp (Eko in Yoruba language) whilst my wife was admitted. I returned within minutes and was welcomed with good news: a baby girl had been delivered by my wife! The day was 17th November 1993. That was the day General Sanni Abacha terminated the illegal entity foisted on Nigeria by the then military junta headed by the maradonic, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).

    What was the background of this story? It is good to let the untutored and unlearned youths angling for interim government know this bit of our history. The military junta decided against all rational reasoning to annul the best election ever conducted in Nigeria and forced a laidback and lackadaisical illusion tagged interim national government (ING) on hapless and helpless Nigerians. Under intense pressure from politicians, elder statesmen and political analysts, IBB “stepped aside” (in his own diction) and inaugurated a hastily conjectured “interim government.” Nigerians that could not confront the daredevil, gun toting boys in khaki (as the soldiers were wont and wired to). IBB stepped off the stage on 27th August 1993 and the ING took over. It was topsy turvy or roller coaster ride for the ING headed by a Yoruba technocrat, Chief Ernest Shonekan (incidentally an Egba man from Ogun State, same birthplace as the acclaimed winner of the June 12 presidential election, Chief Moshood Kasimawo Osuolale Abiola, aka MKO). What a quasi-crafty conjecture of the military junta aided and abetted by some mischievous and devious politicians and retired military top brass. It was planned that the seemingly innocuous ING would unfold a transition programme that would conduct a ‘proper’ election and handover to a democratically elected government. This was not to be as the power-hungry khaki boys struck without much struggle as most power was in the hands of the then former Chief of Army Staff and then later, Minister of Defence, General Sanni Abacha. He was obviously the most senior military officer as at the time IBB stepped aside. It was a bloodless palace coup d’état that ushered in General Sanni Abacha as the Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. It is instructive to saliently state that the ING, even as some uniformed are now clamouring for one, did not last up to 100 days, as the restless military junta aborted it on 17th November 1993 – the day my darling daughter was born in Nyanya FCT. Prior to this time of delivery, there were rumours of wars necessitating the southerners to relocate from the northern part of the country. My family and I decided not to follow the bandwagon as our faith was unshakeable that there would be no war. Ultimately, there was none, even though a cacophony of ugly incidents littered certain sections of the country but Nigeria did not go to war. We survived it then! Are we going to survive it this time especially with the vociferous venting on social media?

    Initiating Interim Illusion?

    “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – Winston Churchill, erstwhile Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

    Who, taking cognizance of our history bitterly spiced with military interregna, could be toying, tossing or tinkering with the atavistic and archaic idea of stirring the polity for an agenda setting that will culminate in an awkward contraption of interim government? It is unfortunate that instead of certain known elder statesmen becoming peace builders or makers. They are even the ones in the forefront stoking the fire ferociously with their unguarded and untamed utterances in a unique time that our country needs healing and reconciliation. Who will bell the cat and bail us out? Ace columnist, Simon Kolawole, was so aghast and angst at those troubling the peaceful cohesion and coexistence of Nigeria stating it simply and squarely:

    “Peace-building seems to be going out of fashion. We now appear to have entered an era when those who should promote peace, mutual respect and understanding are the ones stoking the fire of hate and strife — all because of the political emotions of the moment. People who should call hate mongers to order and make genuine efforts to help heal our wounds are the very ones pouring fuel on the naked fire. Some are doing it openly and brazenly while others are at the backend engineering things, with their hands barely hidden. The penalties for this mischief, borne out of desperation, will sadly not spare anyone” (Thisday, Sunday, 2nd April 2023).

    Biblically, it is written in the book of Job: “Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old” (Job 12:12). Unfortunately, we cannot decipher and discern this in the present-day Nigeria! Is it not said in Yoruba common parlance: “ti omode ba nge igi ninu igbo, awon agbagba lo mo ibi to ma wo si” (meaning: if children are engaged in felling a tree in the forest, it is the elders that will know where the tree will fall)? Elder statesman, erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo, a day after the 25th February 2023 presidential and national assembly elections called for a cessation of the collation and declaration of results citing certain irregularities whereas the extant law does not support abortion of the electoral process. In an equal measure, a former erstwhile national commissioner of INEC, a cerebral sociologist, Professor Lai Olurode, countered the stand and stake of Baba Obasanjo, by asserting inter alia: “It is not a patriotic call from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, probably emanating from ‘bad belle’ and personal hatred, vendetta and settling of old scores between Obasanjo and the presidential candidate of APC whose prospects of winning eventually looks brighter, . . . Even, elections in saner and more developed societies aren’t devoid of imperfections, fiasco and skirmishes” (Premium Times of 28th February 2023). It was crystal clear that Baba Obasanjo was pandering to the political aspiration of his protege, Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential flag bearer of the Labour Party (LP). Be that as it may, there is no wrong doing in democracy in doing so, however, as an elder statesman and global personality, more sagacity laced with altruistic mien is expected; this should be the distinguishing decorum and demeanour associated with the grey headed. In this vein, vituperation venting oozing out from another elder statesman, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, politician and industrialist, proprietor of the now rested Spartan Football Club, Owerri – a club noted on the field of play for discipline, dedication and winning streaks nationally and intercontinentally. He, too on live telecast was engaged in a seeming spewing of indecorous diction at a particular tribe, which he later recanted, albeit, as the Yorubas are wont to say: words are like uncooked egg, once it is dropped on bare ground, gathering it is impossible (“eyin l’ohun, ti o ba ti jabo, ko se ko mo”). It was at the first anniversary of the creative and cerebral Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Anambra State Governor. The statements made by Chief Iwuanyanwu was deafeningly defining that it set the internet on fire! Coming on the heels of this, the Vice-Presidential candidate of LP, Senator Datti Baba-Ahmed, was on the Channels TV programme of recent and was off tangent taking cognizance of exemplary etiquette by calling on the Chief Justice of Nigeria not to contemplate the inauguration of the new government  come 29th May 2023 even as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had validly declared the presidential flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the winner of the 25th February 2023 presidential election. Is the handshake not getting beyond the elbow in this scenario? Moreover, some seemingly naïve denizens, mostly untutored youths, marched on to the fortified Defence Headquarters, Abuja begging the military to take over power! How mundane, myopic and mischievous? Do they fathom the end of the saga they were instigating or initiating? Do these overt and covert actors cum onlookers (followers sitting on the fence) reflect or ruminate on the concomitant consequences of these gibberish gangsterism who care less if the whole house is pulled down, unknown to them that just like it happened when the military took over from the then ING in 1993, so will it be, and this time, it could be more ferocious. Hopefully, though appearing toothless and benignly belated, the Directorate of State Security Service (DSSS) has waded in stating saliently that the plot of foisting ING on the country is real and the personalities involved are well known. Pray, what further nudging does the DSSS need to decisively swing into action? Is it until this house falls from one side and repairing it may be a herculean task?

    Interim Illegitimacy

    As at the time of hitting the press, many lawyers, namely, Prof. Itse Sagay, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana, Mba Ukweni, Ahmed Raji, Chief Ajibola Aribisala, Babatunde Fashanu, Adekunle Oyesanya and Emeka Etiaba, all of them Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), had pontificated that aggrieved politicians or parties should approach the law courts instead of unnecessarily heating up the polity. It is also a point in law that matters before the law courts or tribunals should not be subjected to debate, discourse or discussion as such actions are tagged sub judice in the eyes of the law! In essence, the judicial process must run its legal course. However, justice should be dutifully served, and not denied or delayed so that the common man can repose confidence in the judiciary. In surmising this point, fiery and sagacious lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, pointedly pontificated that interim government is an aberration, and abhorrent creation of the military which in modern times should be wholly jettisoned. He succinctly and saliently stated, inter alia: “there is no provision for the creation of an interim government in the 1999 Constitution. It is an extraconstitutional measure that may be set up by a military junta. The last interim government hurriedly put in place by the Ibrahim Babangida military junta in August 1993 after the annulment of the June 12 presidential election collapsed like a pack of cards after 82 days” (Nation, 31st March 2023). Should some sane minds clamour that other Nigerians follow them down this horrendous, hideous and hurting lane that set our country back for years then?

    In concluding this treatise, it is worth giving credit to whom it is due. There was a man writing as far back as 7th January 2023 who ‘saw’ many of these things coming. Writing in the Sahara Reporters (available online), Richard Odusanya is like a man looking at a peerless prophetic prism and pontificating: “to be clear: Olusegun Obasanjo, Afe Babalola and their surrogate; Peter Obi, are working for Interim Government. They know for sure that elections are not decided on the basis of sentiments and emotion. Their strategy is to discredit the 2023 Elections, which Obi and Atiku have very slim possibility of winning given the lack of cohesion of the opposition parties. They may then incite the Youths to take to the streets in protest to provide an opportunity for military takeover. Sadly, they’re unmindful of the previous errors, because the military will not take over for them, military will take over for the military. They may in fact be among the first victims of such an adventure …” What more to add? It is high time DSSS and all pertinent apparatus of government woke up from their seeming sudden slumber, and being on high alert to forestall the derailing of our nascent democracy. Shouting out, akin to what all courageous followers, a la this columnist should do, to all peace-builders and peace-makers to courageously, conscientiously and collaboratively synergize altruistically to salvage our country from interim illusionists and war mongers! We should not succumb to their smothering subterranean savagery service. It portends poisonous palates!

    John Ekundayo, Ph.D. – Harvard-Certified Leadership Strategist, and also a Development Consultant, can be reached via +2348030598267 (WhatsApp only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com

  • Remember Rwanda (1)

    Remember Rwanda (1)

    The journey from hate to holocaust

          is perilously short. . . .*

    In the national ballot just concluded:

    Many voted their tribe

         Many, their tongue

    Many saw nothing holier than

         Crosses and Crescents

    In the polling booth

         Utterly mesmerized by

    The poisonous correspondence

         Of region and religion

    Many dug up skeletal skirmishes

         From the nation’s graveyard

    Many were already glowing  from

         The flames of fires yet unborn

    War of words

         Words foretelling wars

    About who owns the land

         And who is owned by the land

    Bilious boasts, un-tethered tantrums

         Shameful shibboleths once again

    At the seething gates: blind swords from

         The armoury of the mouth

    The nation’s memory is under assault

         From marinated murmurs and slanderous slurs

    The journey from hate to holocaust

         Indeed is perilously short

    * From “Ode to Hate”, Pages from the Book of the Sun: New & Selected Poems, 2002

    (Continued next week)

  • Intergenerational dialogue

    Intergenerational dialogue

    Accomplished journalist and human rights activist, Mr Richard Akinnola is respiratory of information and knowledge about the democratic journey of the country from military to civilian administration among other historical facts on major issues in the country.

    Following the recent death of former Chief of General Staff Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya (retd), Akinnola has been sharing insightful excerpts from his book on the trial of Diya, other military officers and civilians for alleged coup plot under the Late General Sani Abacha regime.

    The excerpts highlighted what many endured under military rule and the need to guide our democratic dispensation jealously notwithstanding the imperfections.

    While responding to one of Akinola’s posts about the experience of the former editor of Diet Newspaper, Dr Niran Malaolu who was also tried and jailed for an alleged involvement coup plot of December 1997, I wrote ” If only the youths of today know what some people went through to get the democratic government we now have.”

    My comment was against the background of how much of a lack of our historical past I have seen many youths display in how they respond to some issues in the country.

    I’m usually appalled, like many others of my generation how many youths are quick to claim to know more than they know about this country. The lack of decorum in faulting some policies is so worrisome especially when some exhibit their ignorance with pride due to their limited knowledge of issues.

    Someone who responded to my comment however noted that “the youths are not oblivious of some people’s efforts to bring about democracy. But those that benefitted from such experience turned the supposed democracy to civilian rule.”

    “They stole and are stealing us dry. The tenets of democracy have been abused beyond notice. They are living large at the nation’s expense with suffering pervading the land. Those that did the underground work and strategy are either no more or living in abject penury.”

    While it’s true that not all youths are not oblivious to our past, I responded that “many are and very dismissive in the way they talk and write about issues.”

    The commentator agreed that “well that is not limited to the youth only. It’s much more a Nigerian thing. It permeates the rulership to the ruled. A bad spirit though.”

    Another person who does not agree with my accusing the youths of not knowing enough of our past said “the problem isn’t the youth, but the custodians of democracy who have failed to entrench its core principles in the interest of society.”

     “Is the youth responsible for the reckless conduct of both the Executive and Legislative arm of Government? Is the youth liable for the compromising conduct of the Judiciary? The so-called fighters of democracy have only resulted to fighting for their pockets without recourse to the needs of those they ought to serve…,” he argued.

    It may be true that some “fighters of democracy” are no longer committed to the principles of democracy in the way they go about their politics, but the point still needs to be made that many more than those in the limelight played various crucial roles that should be known about to have a deeper understanding of where we are coming from.

    While youths should be free to fault what they think is not right or criticize anyone in government, they should not always assume that they are the only one that is right and have the solution to any issue.

    They cannot insist on having their way or nothing else as some behave online and resort to abuse and the cancelling culture of anyone who has a different point of view.

    There is nothing that the youths are clamouring for today that has not been demanded in the past despite limited resources and facilities and unless there is mutual understanding and respect for each other’s perspectives on developments in the country, there will not be room for the progress we desire all desire.

  • Interim government

    Interim government

    • Present danger; permanent stupidity!

    It is good that the rumour that some people are plotting to foist another interim national government (ING) on Nigerians has now been confirmed. Both Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the president-elect, and the Department of State Services (DSS) have said there is evidence that the plot is real. It has therefore left the realm of rumour or speculation. It is now a clear and present danger requiring urgent attention. Interestingly, this is how plans to truncate democracy in the country usually begin. They start first as rumour, then get elevated to the level of speculation, from where they finally translate to reality.

    Peter Afunanya, the DSS spokesman said in a statement that the secret police has identified some key players behind the plots to truncate democracy after the 2023 general election.

    The DSS’s confirmation came about six weeks after Tinubu had made the allegation during his presidential campaign in Ekiti, Ekiti State: “They created naira scarcity to provoke you to anger so that there can be violence so that there will be disruption and so that they can postpone the election and impose an interim government. Exercise patience, even if they cause rain to fall on that day, we will vote and will win. The rat that eats poison will kill itself,” Tinubu said.

    The DSS confirmation also takes the allegation away from the realm of politics.

    Tinubu has mentioned two of the booby traps aimed at truncating democracy this time around: fuel scarcity and Naira redesign. But there are others. Census and subsidy removal. All of these are potentially explosive. Why now that the Buhari government is on its way out?

    At this juncture, I beg to disagree with the assertion by former DSS director, Mike Ejiofor, that “if INEC had delivered on its promises to Nigerians, the country would not be in the midst of a crisis right now. They said they would transmit the presidential election results in real time from the polling units to the IReV (INEC Result Viewing Portal), but this did not occur.” Should that be basis for any reasonable Nigerian to call for interim government?

    Yes, INEC might have failed in its promise to transmit the election results live. The commission has defended itself that it resorted to manual process because of hackers who were attacking its websites. As a matter of fact, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, confirmed an unusual upsurge in the threats to public websites during the general elections, from the usual 1.5million attacks daily to the 12.9 attacks recorded during the elections.

    I saw this coming.

    Peter Obi’s supporters are mainly youths who are unhappy with the state of affairs in the country. As if even the adults are happy! But we can perfectly understand their plight. The Buhari presidency has done so little to inspire confidence in Nigerians, young or old. One thing we cannot take away from these youths is their wizardry on computers and information technology, generally. I had no doubt that some of them would be tempted to play some funny games with the websites on those election days. This was why I was taken aback when INEC promised to transmit election results live. I asked myself if the commission had the capacity to safeguard the election results from hackers.

    But no one who is genuinely interested in free and fair elections would expect INEC to act like a robot when faced with this reality. That it promised to upload results live is not a constitutional requirement. Even if it is, and it encountered the challenge of hackers, it could still decide to go manual if it feels that would be a better alternative. Postponing the election could not have been an option because of cost and logistics. At any rate, the hackers would always come back and the nation cannot afford to hold off indefinitely.

    So, these are the issues. For me, I think the point should be whether the figures released reflected the popular wish of Nigerians rather than whether the commission fulfilled its promise to transmit election results live.

    But this is a problem with most of our politicians, generally. It is not about People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or Labour Party (LP). When you see our politicians hanging their case precariously on technicalities, know that they have a bad case.

    It is also wrong to assert that we wouldn’t have been having these protests if INEC had conducted free and fair election. Since when have our politicians never contested election results? Apart from former President Goodluck Jonathan, how many of our other politicians ever accepted defeat? The problem, as I always say, is that we have incredibly bad losers entering into the political ring.

    For a man like Atiku Abubakar, he lost the election the very day APC gave Tinubu its presidential ticket. That was despite the shenanigans and other plots of the PDP candidate and his backers in the seat of power. Atiku’s inability to stoop to conquer the G5 governors that fought a bitter fight with him over Iyorchia Ayu was his mistake number two. Again, Atiku is not alone in this issue of over-bloated ego. The APC had been a serial victim of this even in its southwest base.

    The Ayu that Atiku was not willing to let go has finally been suspended and it is unlikely he would ever return to his position as party chair.

    Moreover, where was Atiku when Rabiu Kwankwaso pulled out of their party? Mistake number three. What stopped him from trying to see if they could mend things so as to ensure that the massive votes that the man got in Kano could be counted for him (Atiku)? Or at least a chunk of it. Even Peter Obi broke away from the PDP. If they had not parted ways, Obi might have been able to add some votes to Atiku’s, no matter how few.

    Again, would it make sense to an Atiku that a Fulani wants to succeed another Fulani back to back in a plural society like ours?

    Summary: It would be the height of political naivety for an experienced politician like Atiku to assume that all the aforementioned would not have repercussion on his chances at the polls. But I don’t think Atiku is that naive. I have the feeling that it is some powerful people who are beating the drums that the man is dancing to its rhythm. Their Plan B would be to work towards interim government now that Atiku has seen he did not have sufficient clout to wade through the fragmented PDP that he took to the battlefront.

    Obi, in his own case has done well enough. And I would not stop saying it; that he has become an issue because the Buhari government has not performed. Once Buhari’s successor performs, Obi would be denied supply of that oxygen that was available for him on February 25. He would therefore fizzle out as he had fizzled in. He understands this perfectly well and that is why he is pretending to be an issue in the election.

    Without doubt, Obi too overestimated his political weight, that is why he is also saying he won the presidential election. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo added to his over-bloated ego of himself when he said Obi would only lose the election if outrigged. This is an Obasanjo who has never won in his polling booth. If Obi was outrigged in Lagos and elsewhere, was he also outrigged in the governorship election in his native southeast? If he was that popular, he should have swept all the available governorship slots there. Atiku too knows the February 25 election would be the last he can contest. That was the reason he wept.

    Now, both the LP and PDP are laying claims to winning the presidential election. Yet, an election can only produce one winner. Even among thieves, they say, there is honour. Not in Nigeria.

    This background is necessary for those plotting interim government to know that there is no basis for it. Moreover, it has no place in our constitution. Those who lost the election know in their hearts that they lost. They are only looking for something to hang on to and would, like a drowning man, not mind hanging on to a serpent for help.

    Unfortunately for those plotting interim government, democracy is a game of numbers. You don’t have to like somebody’s face. This idea of some tin gods acting from somewhere and imposing their personal interest on the rest of us is unacceptable and must be resisted. The same thing they did to Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola. They said he would not be president even after winning the freest and fairest election in our country’s electoral history because certain disgruntled elements in the military did not want him. What nonsense! Since when did those elements become the electoral college that would handpick a president for Nigeria?

    This is another reason I said Mr Ejiofor got it wrong. Those clamouring for interim government don’t care whether the electoral umpire conducted an election well or not. The election that Abiola won in 1993 was one of the best in Nigeria. Did that stop the interim government plotters from implementing their satanic agenda?

    We have conducted elections and those who are aggrieved have the courts to approach. Soldiers who took us down the interim government lane know it was not easy. So, let no civilian attempt anything of the sort. The result may not be as they had planned. President Buhari must know that this is not the time for undue taciturnity.

    True, and bad enough that blood was unnecessarily shed before and during the elections. But it is not the only election where blood was shed. It is on record that more people died in the 2007 election conducted in the Obasanjo years. That election was not cancelled because of that. Obasanjo did not even see it in bad light. It was Umaru Yar’Adua, the beneficiary of the election and Obasanjo’s successor  who condemned the entire process and took steps to prevent a recurrence.

    Plotters of commotion clad decoratively in the toga of interim government are doing all of these not for the country but to advance their personal interests. The truth is; many of them have so  defecated on their seats that they can’t imagine leaving power now. They want to remain in power to continue calling the shots even after May 29. They are afraid of their shadows. We must stop them at all cost to save Nigeria.

    President Buhari may be tired and anxious to return to his farm in Daura; but not these political hangers-on.

  • Tinubu, APC and interim government (5)

    Tinubu, APC and interim government (5)

    Critics, commentators and other likeminded opponents of President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s victory are determined to get him to apologise for defeating the fragmented Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 presidential poll. They will not get an apology, whether the call is made by the presumptuous and hysterical Datti Baba-Ahmed inviting a military takeover or the amorphous Free Nigeria Movement seducing the military at the Defence ministry in Abuja into rebellion. Clearly, they will also not relent in opposing and excoriating him for winning. While the votes were being tallied shortly after the poll, opponents of the victory had begun to call for the abortion of the count, and had also hinted at the need for a re-run. After the winner was announced, they became even more hysterical, with the PDP sinking into gloom and the implausible Labour Party (LP) audaciously posing as the sole offended party in the four-horse presidential race. It became clear that Asiwaju Tinubu, through no fault of his except living out his dream the best way he deemed fit, had animated their rage.

    When the restless ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo called for the abortion of the poll tally midway, the only ex-president to feign defense of the country’s electoral sanctity and honour, it was obvious he was only doing the bidding of the LP whose candidate he had heedlessly endorsed. No other former president attempted to dam the river midstream with unsubstantiated allegations of poll fiddling. They sensibly preferred to wait until the electoral body had completed its assignment. It is perhaps possible they also had their private interests in the polls, and had covertly supported or endorsed a candidate or two, perhaps in the process also hedging their bets with their customary display of conspiracy and caution, but they were too smart to rush headlong into the quicksand Chief Obasanjo now seems fated to be trapped in. It is also significant that there was no former president who openly endorsed Asiwaju Tinubu. Even now, after the poll has been won and lost, they are too mired in caution to stand up boldly and defiantly for democracy and the rule of law.

    Clearly, the president-elect is not just confronting opponents dismayed by and angry with the emphatic manner they were worsted in the February votes, he must also contend with a Camorra of ex-presidents and heads of state accustomed to enthroning their ‘boys’ in office. To elect into office for the first time a man who has a mind of his own, and who will not grovel before any power or principality, is too loathsome a prospect for the former strongmen to contemplate. Some of them may yet be persuaded to see reason and accept the February electoral outcome as a fait accompli, but Chief Obasanjo will keep up his futile opposition to his last day. It is in fact likely that the defiant ex-president will remain the backbone of the defeated candidates, instigating them into subverting the constitution and breathing rebellion against both the country and an election that will not be redone now or in the future. Even though the LP has tried to walk back its campaign for interim government, the party’s candidate and running mate have railed against the outcome of an election they stood no chance of winning despite being the first to divide the country so malevolently along religious and ethnic lines.

    Contrary to their claims that they never called for an interim government, both the PDP and LP, not to mention their army of social media rebels, had begun asking for the cancellation of the elections even before they pooled their evidence before the courts. Yes, they spoke daggers and used them, and have also indicated they have no faith in the courts. They know quite well that neither President Muhammadu Buhari nor the National Assembly could annul the polls or install an interim government; but they have persisted in covertly sponsoring street protests which, according to the secret service, are unconstitutional measures designed to procure a state of emergency. What else could the protests be designed to achieve anyway? Weeks after the presidential poll, and especially in view of the continuing resistance to the APC victory, talk of interim government became rife. With the Department of State Service (DSS) coming out more forcefully though belatedly to announce that they were monitoring the conspiracy, the plotters may become more restrained in their actions, and perhaps less audacious. But they will not stop until inauguration day. Their anger is not just that they lost the poll or that their reputations were injured or torn to shreds; their problem is Asiwaju Tinubu himself, a man who continues to wrong-foot them and against whom they have raked muck with little or no effect.

    Anyone spiritual and introspective enough will know from a cursory reading of political events in Nigeria in the last one year or two that the interim boondoggle being advocated by the opposition will fail disastrously. If almost the entire APC deployed their arsenal against Aiwaju Tinubu, including his latter-day friends who were in earlier years unalterably opposed to him, but could neither destroy him nor dissuade him from contesting, and if the PDP and LP refused to train their guns on each other but formed a double entente against him, and still could not unhorse him, there must be something much more transcendental about him and his ambition than conforms to logical explanation. Even social and traditional media loathed him, and columnists and critics and commentators held nothing back in lampooning him, his age, genealogy, education, foibles, court cases, and businesses, not to say his implacable hold on Lagos. Everything anyone could deploy, whether physical or spiritual, was hurled at him. Churches railed against him, and the few who supported him were derided and denigrated as feeding fat at his expense. Incredibly, after his victory, traditional and social media campaigns were mounted to persuade the world press and foreign governments to destroy him and deny him recognition. But everything failed.

    The main reason everything failed is not because the president-elect is such a virtuoso strategist, the mythical famous last man standing. It is not because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or because he was born in a palace. It is not because he is rich or subtle, nor because he was adept at currying favour or subverting the love of many with his wealth. It is not even because he had built a pan-Nigerian coalition, an enterprise he had been dedicated to for decades, nor because he had established a network of friends across the length and breadth of the country. It is not because he is intelligent or scholarly, or that he is more conversant than his jaded and infantile opponents in the last race with how a modern economy works. Yes, he has many of these attributes to varying degrees: he is indeed a strategist, and, cultivated far above the circumstances of his birth, he has become a smart, gregarious, courageous, secular and determined politician capable of constantly disarming his enemies and entrancing his friends with his unquenchable joie de vivre. As an analyst and keen observer of the political scene, this column had often wondered why he had such a little dose of malice than the normal or than is practical, and a huge dose of patience than is real. Finally, the answer came in an epiphanic moment: forces higher than Nigeria or anyone – church, cleric or politician – must be at work.

    Everything humanly possible had been done to undermine Asiwaju Tinubu. Nothing worked. However, nothing suggests that everyone will reconcile with that fact, not Chief Obasanjo who was a notable and unconscionable participant in the 1993 annulment saga, nor LP’s Peter Obi who is more dissembling and less reflective than PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, nor NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso who has made inaudible gasps at INEC’s ability and neutrality. Having thus scaled all the obstacles erected along his path, the president-elect, a veteran of many pro-democracy struggles at a time his February 25 opponents were in bed with dictatorship unrestrained by any democratic or constitutional scruple, will not be denied this time. Forces higher than he are dedicated to helping him overcome this last obstacle. Too bad if many religious leaders, essayists, critics, legal titans and impressionable and devious social media and ethnic influencers are too blinded by rage and malice to see the future to come. President Buhari recognises this fact and, despite the street protests and campaigns and loud denunciations on television instigated by anti-democratic forces, has insisted he will hand over the reins of power in May. He will keep his word because he can do no other. And Asiwaju Tinubu will meet his destiny, despite his imperfections. It is beyond him; it is beyond President Buhari; and whether they like it or not, it is also beyond those plotting annulment, interim government or anarchy or war. Great things are afoot in Nigeria, and the battle for the soul of the country has raged in the spiritual realm. The battle is of course already decided, but the conspiring men and women, pawns in this eternally shifting and supernatural chessboard, are not even aware of the infamous roles fate has assigned them or of the bloodshed they seem to be advocating with the ignoble casuistry of their petty trading businesses. No historian worth his certificate, and no spiritual leader worth his anointing, will fail to see what is coming.   

    PDP, LP intimidating judiciary and country

    Labour Party (LP) supporters, sometimes derisively called Obidients, have assumed a fierce and uncompromising disposition towards the outcome of the last presidential poll. Their battle cry is that there will be no swearing in of the president-elect. They must be gods. Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, running mate to Peter Obi, the LP presidential candidate, imperiously warned President Muhammadu Buhari on Channels Television against swearing in the winner of the poll, hinting darkly and apocalyptically that it could presage military intervention. And when LP protesters also stormed the Defence ministry to coax soldiers to their side in the political stalemate they biliously contrived, no one was left in doubt what the agenda of the defeated LP candidates are. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, not to forget, are also snarling on the sidelines. Both parties are not satisfied with the constitutional provisions guiding electoral dispute; they want more forceful action, an uprising to bring the country to its knees because they are fanatically convinced they won the presidential poll.

    Nothing will free them from their grand illusion, not even the impressive performance they recorded in some traditional All Progressives Congress (APC) strongholds, and certainly not the constitution which they treat with utter disdain. Riding on the crest of the unbridled fanaticism of their supporters, some of whom have threatened war, and on the shadowy endorsements they have received from some national leaders, including at least one former president, they are desperate to instigate mass revolt to achieve their purpose. The loquacious Datti Baba-Ahmed said on air that the LP had no faith in the courts; in other words, his party wants an insurrection, whether from the civilian population or, going by their hints, from the military. Predictably, LP leaders want their electoral gains to be sustained, and their losses to be trashed. LP followers have, therefore, been primed for apocalypse.

    The LP has not left the intimidation only to irrational social media propaganda which they are carrying out with the reckless and unchecked fury of terrorists, they have also sent poignant and intimidatory threats to the courts, arrogantly warning the judiciary that only decisions that uphold their pleas and prayers would be acceptable. They have pilloried Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola, insulted him over the dinner he attended in Port Harcourt, and insinuated he was already secretly meeting with the president-elect in London. A former Nigerian Bar Association chairman, Olisa Agbakoba, was also quoted at a book launch as saying that eminent justices were fond of giving ‘silly judgements’. All this is to put pressure on the courts to deliver popular judgements that will sooth the weird taste of the few but immensely vocal social media warriors let loose upon the country. The LP of course didn’t do what it should have done to win the poll, nor did the PDP, but they are both determined to appropriate that election nonetheless by all means necessary. The fanaticism of LP supporters, much more exaggerated than the PDP’s, has gradually eroded the judgement of the LP standard-bearers, and turned them into fierce and truculent opponents of democracy.

    If the pressure being brought upon the courts and justices is left unchecked, there is no certainty that the gentle justices would not wilt. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court, for instance, took the unprecedented and inadvisable step of engaging in verbal jousting with critics of the CJN. The court thereby sadly signaled that it was not inured to adversarial public opinion which the dynamics of the justice system enjoined them to take with a shrug. Having sensed that chink in the judicial armour, LP warriors and their shadowy supporters in and outside the corridors of power are pressing the advantage against the justices. The country is in consequence teetering on the brink. All men of goodwill, particularly those who fought for the democracy the country is now enjoying, those who gave their all and who appreciate that far-reaching advancements and developments have been recorded in the past two decades, must rally round the courts to preserve their independence and encourage them to be resolute. LP is a flash in the pan. It is neither ideological anchored nor structured to endure. Its leaders know nothing about democracy, the rule of law or the constitution, and they lack the administrative skills, beyond their homiletical gibberish, to run a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. They are neither deep nor reflective, for they insist they must have their way now in total disregard for political norms.

    A few members of the Buhari administration may covertly support the LP, but the president needs to decisively step in to check the dangerous campaign to undermine the courts. The judiciary as an institution plays a crucial role in maintaining the rule of law in any democratic society. It is responsible for upholding the laws, interpreting the constitution, and ensuring that justice is served impartially and fairly. There is no doubt that the judiciary is not immune to criticism and scrutiny. Critics sometimes accuse judges of bias or partisanship, particularly in high-profile cases. However, it is important to recognise that the judiciary is made up of human beings who are not infallible. Mistakes will be made, and judges will occasionally make decisions that are unpopular or controversial. However, this does not mean that the judiciary, as an institution, lacks integrity.

    Maligning the judiciary and judges collectively can have severe and far-reaching consequences for any society, lead to a breakdown of the justice system, erosion of trust in the judicial process, and ultimately, bring harm to society. It can also undermine the independence of judges. The judiciary must be independent and impartial, free from political or other external influences and pressures, to dispense justice fairly and equitably. However, when judges are subjected to unfounded criticisms, personal attacks, or threats, they may become hesitant to make decisions that go against popular opinion, powerful interests, or government officials, as the LP is projecting. This can lead to a situation where justice is not served, and citizens lose faith in the judicial system, leading to a breakdown of law and order. The LP warriors let loose upon the country in the past few months do not care about democracy; they only care about themselves and are intent on riding roughshod over everyone and every institution to achieve their aims. Indeed, they have become a self-aggrandising army which neither Mr Obi nor the intemperate Mr Baba-Ahmed can or is willing to control. If left unrestrained, soon they will furnish the country anarchy, or worse, a war.