The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • SNAPSONG  263 

    SNAPSONG  263 

    Super Power

         Killer Power

    How can a civil world

         Survive this explosive madness?

    My bomb is bigger than yours

         My rocket is a ruthless arrow from hell

    I own the piece of sky above your house

         I can send death on countless errands

    From a thousand million miles

         Our missiles can spot your innermost hideaway

    We can strike you in your bedroom

         And pluck you clean from the bosom of your wife

    Our missiles never miss

         And when they ‘obliterate’ unintended targets

    We possess the Super Power Impunity

         To ‘obliterate’ our crime

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    Nothing is ever wrong

         Unless we say it is

    Never ever right

         If we decree it’s never so

    Super Power corrupts

         Super Power corrupts dangerously 

    Too many deadly toys in the hands

         Of those who act before they think

  • That petition against Okpebholo

    That petition against Okpebholo

    LAST Monday, a civil society organisation, the Leadership and Accountability Initiative (LAI), submitted a petition to the United States embassy in Nigeria pleading with the US to place a visa ban on Edo governor Monday Okpebholo and his family for allegedly threatening the life of former Anambra governor and Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the last election, Peter Obi. The petition alleged that the governor warned Mr Obi, leader of the volatile and irascible Obidient Movement, not to visit the state due to security challenges. The governor was further alleged to have said that should Mr Obi remain obdurate, ‘whatever he sees, he should take’. The governor’s threat, the civil society organisation wailed, threatened ‘democratic stability and political coexistence’. It is unclear whether the US would pay attention to LAI’s inane request.

    LAI is one of the many civil society organisations informally and fanatically loyal to the spirit of the Obidient Movement and to Mr Obi in particular. The movement has been captured many times on record threatening, shaming, and bullying dissenters who denounce their nefarious methods and causes. The affiliated civil society organisations turn a blind eye to these constant and repeated cyberbullying by the Obidients. Now, after alleging that the Edo governor had ‘threatened’ their idol, they have begun to flex muscles. Mr Obi himself has said little about the governor’s travel advisory except insisting he would visit whenever he wanted to, but he is widely known to bask in the cultic following the Obidient Movement gives him, in addition to reveling in their aggressive posturing against his detractors. Clearly, trouble lies ahead. The Edo governor has of course doubled down on the travel advisory he issued to Mr Obi, insisting that the former LP candidate was no ordinary person and was too polarising not to be capable of provoking a breakdown of law and order. It may seem farfetched, but Mr Okpebholo seems to want to err on the side of caution.

    The Edo governor may have been strident about the travel advisory to Mr Obi, but his action appears to reflect and react to the frothing political undertones of the state. It is well known that the Obidients are a little more energized and unscrupulous in Edo than in most other South-South states. They are uppity, more voter conscious than the natives, and hunt like a wolf-pack. Mr Okpebholo is not unmindful of the dangerous undercurrents he faces in the state, and may be desirous of defanging the fanaticism many Edolites observe in the Obidients in Edo. The very nature, political dynamics and ethnic pastiche of the state, which harked back to the civil war era, ensure that the tug of war between the political factions in the state will continue for a while. It will take deft politicking, particularly ensuring that Edo continues to experience three-horse election races in the state, to tame and pacify a group as relentless, immoderate, and seasonal as the Obidients.

    Read Also: Okpebholo lauds Falcons for securing WAFCON  final spot 

    But much more than the hysteria displayed by the petitioning civil society group, LAI, is the more rankling decision to petition the US, yes the same US now presided over by probably the most anti-democratic and narcissistic president in US history, Donald J. Trump. In 2020, when Mr Trump lost his reelection bid, he encouraged his supporters to storm America’s democratic citadel, the Capitol. The assault was defeated, but not before substantial damage was done to American prestige. Who called for a travel or visa ban on Mr Trump and his supporters? In fact, as recent as a few weeks ago, the US president threatened his former ally, billionaire Elon Musk, not to lend support to the Democratic Party. That threat, on which Mr Trump has doubled down, is a hundred times more severe and frightening than any threat the Edo governor allegedly issued against Mr Obi. In the past few months, the US has ceased to be the chief promoter or custodian of democracy as the concept is known. But it is to a country repudiating democracy and belittling global leaders that the anachronistic Nigerian civil society group has appealed for help.

    American embassy officials are not morons. They will of course take receipt of any petition by any group, whether the petition makes sense or not. But they will be secretly amused, if not appalled, by how foolish a group can be to elevate a travel advisory against their hero, even if questionable, to a global issue that portrays Nigeria in a bad light. The Americans will confirm what they had long suspected that many Nigerian groups and even public officials display inferiority complex by reporting themselves to the prefectural US. Even if the Americans sneer at the petition, and they will be justified to do so, they will still take secret delight in the fact that many Nigerians continue to manifest the worst forms of neocolonialism. They can’t of course do anything about the Nigerian malaise, nor should they take it as their responsibility to decolonise the minds of Nigerians. However, their job is to represent the US as best as they can, and reinforce actions that elevate the prefectural image of America globally.

    Unfortunately, there is no law in Nigeria banning the self-deprecation many civil society organisations operating locally subject their country. They are too dimwitted to know the difference, too stuck in the past to know that even if Nigeria has its limitations and defects, the anomalies are best resolved internally. To that extent, there may not be an end, in the immediate future, to Nigerian groups and even political leaders reporting their country and leaders to Washington and London. There will sadly be no end, it seems, to some Nigerians making a spectacle of themselves before the whole world.

  • Hope rising for PDP

    Hope rising for PDP

    The Acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Umar Damagum, was probably right in suggesting that his party’s problems were largely self-inflicted, but his analysis of how far back that problem went remains unpersuasive. Speaking at a pre-National Executive Committee meeting last week, he said: “But we must also confront the hard truth. Much of the injury the PDP has suffered has been self-inflicted. From the Obasanjo era to this moment, we have too often jettisoned ideology in favour of personal ambition. This has cost us dearly. Yet, there is still a beauty that exists only in the PDP: our founding vision, our commitment to internal democracy, our enduring mechanisms for dialogue and reconciliation, and our true national outlook.”

    Read Also: PDP to hold national convention in Ibadan

    Ambassador Damagum may be uncomfortable acknowledging that his party has been supplanted by the APC in all the attributes he mentioned, but he was at least forthcoming in accepting the fact the current problems had their roots way back in the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. Chief Obasanjo ignored the salient task of laying a solid and democratic foundation for the PDP, having ruled both Nigeria and his party like a despot, a culture that ossified over the years. But for the party chairman to suggest that the PDP often abandoned ideology for personal ambition appears cynical. The party never achieved nor enjoyed clarity in ideology.

    The acting chairman’s boast that the party would regain its beauty, which he highlighted in his remarks, is heartening. Nigeria may take solace in the fact that the PDP is less fanatical and irrational than either Labour Party (LP) or the coalition vehicle, the African Democratic Congress (ADC). The Nigerian political system needs the contributions and opposition of the PDP. It should rediscover itself and offer the sensible, firm and measured opposition it is famed for. For the PDP, it is hope rising.

  • The sympathetic undertaker

    The sympathetic undertaker

    It was a spectacular display of public mourning, never seen in the annals of the nation. A benumbing enactment of political distress, it sent signals far and wide to the most remote of political congregations and the innermost sanctuaries of power. Some incurable cynics have dubbed it the ultimate example of political grandstanding enacted for audience present and absent, seen and unseen, near and far away  for the purpose of securing some political advantage or gaining some electoral equities. “It is the twelve million votes!” they mumbled like a thief about to be robbed. Whatever it is, the master choreographer who put it all together made sure that he was in total and absolute control from start to finish. There was no room for any margin of error in this kind of political necromancy. The would- be ethno-religious pallbearers were banished to the margins of utter irrelevance where they choked on their own bile while the opportunistic interlopers could only watch proceedings in anger and from the shadows of self-banishment. It was an emphatic display of the awesome capacity and capability of the postcolonial state to control the crowd in life and death.

    The state funeral of General Mohammadu Buhari was the first of its kind ever witnessed in the history of the nation. It was an event watched by millions of his compatriots, a signal parting draped in exquisite ironies, symbolism and the mystery of final and irreversible departure. From the moment his death was announced till the moment the remains were lowered into mother earth after a thunderous gun salute, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took absolute charge and made sure the state funeral proceeded according to his wish and willpower. The picture of the Nigerian president emotively hugging the coffin of his predecessor as it was about to be lowered into mother earth would remain a fetching symbol of patriotism and pan-Nigerian possibilities for a long time to come.

      It was a moment of radical epiphany, as if in death, General Buhari was admitting to possibilities and political permutations which he refused to entertain while alive. Twice in this column in the past we had broached the possibility that the north may yet be rescued from its morass of underdevelopment, de-education and millennial immiseration by a historical figure originating from outside the region. We had thought that with his vast following among the northern masses, his mystique and messianic authority combined with the aura of irreproachable integrity and pious irritability with injustice and inequities, the general from Daura was the obvious candidate to rescue his beloved people from the quagmire of multi-dimensional poverty and Stone Age suffering. Throwing money at the people was an early sign of fumbling incompetence that was unsettling in its arrogant ignorance.

       It reminds one of Emperor Haile Sellasie throwing coins at his stricken subjects in a condition of dire famine and biblical hunger. In the light of General Buhari’s failure to rescue the north, attention began to be shifted somewhere else outside the region. Let’s face it, enlightened self-interest dictates that the north must be helped out of its misery. For as long as we remain one entity and the north remains the way it is, we are going nowhere. Just consider this fact. The north often inflicts its misery and trauma on the rest of the country by brutalizing it to corporate compliance with its parlous plight. This comes in the guise of periodic pogroms, frenzied ethno-religious assaults, regular offloading of economic miscreants and zealots, forcible occupation of choice farmlands and deliberate infiltration of its cities by armed gangs. No nation can witness any meaningful development or political stability with this level of internal destabilization and disruption.

      As soon as it became obvious that General Buhari was in no position to fulfill what appeared to be his manifest destiny, it became imperative to look outside the region for a nucleus of compassionate leadership sympathetic to the plight of the elites without shirking its responsibility of rescuing its teeming masses as they transit from feudal serfdom and servitude to modern citizenship. In the run up to the 2023 elections, this column cautioned the northern leaders to moderate and modulate their hostilities to the then Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu because in the light of the dramatic interplay of structural contingency and human agency playing out at that point in time in the nation’s history, the former senator represented the best hope of the north. Tinubu is obviously not antagonistic or hostile to the core economic interests of the north or the political aspirations of its leadership as long as they recognize the implicit power sharing arrangement encoded in the constitution of all major parties in the country. This sensible devolution of power between the competing and countervailing power elites of the nation is what has helped the Fourth Republic along in its fraught and perilous journey towards a “more perfect” democracy.

       With their old format and dogmatic mindset about power-sharing, it was clear that General Buhari and his fanatic followers, particularly the anti-democratic political mob that held him in messianic awe, were going nowhere whether they were in APP or ANPP and even CPC. If the general from Daura liked, he could have cried from here to eternity and nothing would have changed. The truth is that in a fractious multi-ethnic nation seething with tension and polarities, no section of the country can impose its narrow, circumscribed views and vision on the rest of the country without momentous consequences. This was how General Buhari and his frenzied supporters were compelled by exigent circumstances to reform themselves particularly after the presidential elections in which both the dog and the baboon were soaked in blood in conformity with the general’s dire predictions. But it was to no avail. As a shrewd man of force and violence himself, the general knew where the balance of power resides despite the orchestrated arson and vicious bloodletting. The following was how this writer described the unfortunate circumstances in an article titled: Between the Messiah and the Militia. (2011)

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    “Anybody who has watched a Buhari rally in recent times, or the crowd waiting to receive him in public places must come to one conclusion. This is not an exultant crowd waiting for a political emancipator. This is a traumatized mob waiting for a messiah.

       There is a feral frenzy to these fellows; there is the manic glint of the politicized fanatic in their eyes; there is an all -consuming raw anger which is implacable in its thirst for vengeance; there is a wild and merciless ruthlessness of resolve which does not recognize the template and rubric of law and order, or its corollary of logic and rationality. Law and order have come a sorry pass because they are not always at the service of justice and equity. Unhappy indeed is the land that needs a hero. This is not your run of the mill multitude that will accept any result however fair or some digitalized fantasies for that matter. But the rest of the country must also fear. A mob is not a democratic crowd. Because of its traumatized antecedents and psychic disposition, this crowd is not rooting for a political saviour but its anointed messiah. It will vote all right, but the vote is merely the lightning rod for its high wattage of savage inquisition.   In case you still don’t get it; in case the fancy language gets in the way of clear understanding, what we are saying is that the genie of massive revolution has berthed in the north of the nation. We have on our hands a rampaging horde radicalized by hunger, brutish want and millennial misery. Like an awakening mammoth, the stirring has been slow, but it has been there for the discerning to glimpse. This is what you get when a self-pampered political elite decide to commit suicide as a result of greed and lack of vision. It is the messianization of politics. The twelfth imam is here with us.

     Everything predicted in the column came to pass a fortnight after. But this column also cautioned the general and his rampaging mob that they must never hope to accede to power in Nigeria unless they changed tack and their modus operandi. “As it is, the Buhari ticket cannot gain complete ascendancy over the whole nation without dissolving itself into a pan-Nigerian coalition of progressive forces which will modulate and temper its dangerous messianism.” The old Buhari movement seemed to have taken this cautionary advice to heart by teaming up with South West progressives who taught them how to stay and protect their vote after voting. They also helped to spruce up the general and soften his image as a stern and uncompromising unreformed and seemingly unreformable autocrat and military despot. The rest is history. Needless to add that humongous resources must have gone into this project.

      You cannot step into the same river twice.  There cannot be two Buharis in the same generation. The Buhari block vote and warehouse are gone forever. Whatever remains are like stragglers after a major battle waiting to be mopped up. Given his stellar performance at the state funeral for the departed general, his genuine empathy for his family and his inspired role in the transformation of the Buhari inflammables into a regular movement and electable commodity, President Tinubu is in pole position for prime vote harvesting. Unless there is a subsequent catastrophic slippage somewhere, this makes him virtually unstoppable in the presidential sweepstakes come 2027.  By then, what rolled out of Lagos in 2007 as a beaten and dominated political rump after General Obasanjo’s electoral heist would have become the dominant political tendency in the country.

     And this is where the paradox turns on its head. The sympathetic undertaker himself needs our sympathy. While total dominance and political supremacy based on deal-making and the construction of ingenious alliances among different factions of the political elites will do for electoral triumph, hegemony is more enduring and more deeply rooted because it is based on a set of ideals forged in the political imaginary of the people and burnt into their consciousness. This is why the Buhari tendency will fade off and fizzle out in a matter of years. Beyond an emotive identification with the northern masses and divisive recourse to ethnic exceptionalism, Buhari never set down his ideals in writing, unlike Nasser with his Pan-Arabic nationalism and Muammar Ghadaffi with his anti-Western polemics. You cannot give what you don’t have. Buhari was never a man of ideas and never pretended to be an intellectual. But this is also why after almost a decade in power he could not make a serious dent on the condition of the northern masses, unlike Nasser and Ghadaffi. President Tinubu should avoid this trap of power pragmatism in which holding on to power is all that matters. It is the graveyard of enduring legacy. 

  • A royal slippage of intriguing consequences

    A royal slippage of intriguing consequences

    It is a sign of the times. The economic, political and social insecurities Nigerians have been going through in the last two decades have led to a sense of siege among the various nationalities. There is a dramatic raise of the bar of cultural conformity. What used to be passed off as harmless jokes about your host communities now attract severe verbal sanctions or even worse. Deliberate infractions invite aggressive and threatening behavior or severe verbal thrashing. If you are unlucky, things may get physical. Among the normally liberal and accommodating Yoruba race, you dare not joke about the sacred customs of the people and hope to get away with it lightly. There are cultural police and traffic wardens of compliance everywhere. People seem to take exception to the invasion and desecration of their sacred tradition which is the realm of their metaphysical prowess and the armoury of their mystique and general wellbeing. When and where the offender happens to be a traditional ruler who is the custodian and ultimate defender and Praetorian guard of the selfsame tradition, then all hell is let loose.

      Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, a revered monarch and visionary leader of his people who transformed his native Ijebu-Ode from a rural municipality to a thriving and bustling modern city, has found himself in the crosshairs of the fierce artillery bombardment of his own people and many other concerned Yoruba cultural patriots for his startling and astonishing indiscretions about the customs of his people and the traditional rites of coming and passage of the king. If as a youthful twenty six year old prince repatriated from England, the late Awujale had no control over the rites of initiation, he has taken his revenge by making sure he was buried according to his private wish as a Muslim. The handful adherents of traditional customs who showed up at the interment were treated like orphans from the nearest orphanage. After that all hell broke loose with some folks calling for the head of the late Oba even in death since he acceded to the throne by deception.

    Read Also: Royal families defend Oluwo

     Let our royal fathers beware of incurring the wrath and ire of their own people in these testy times. In fact if verbal fusillades could wake up a dead king, the Awujale would have been back in the storied comfort of the royal boudoir. A man of plucky courage and amazing forthrightness, the Awujale was given to equally amazing indiscretions. With characteristic imperial hauteur, he would have dismissed the whole brouhaha as a storm in a royal tea cup stirred up by some of his jobless subjects and other miserable interlopers. It was not that he did not give enough hint of what was to come. In his autobiography published eleven years earlier on his eightieth anniversary, the late Oba openly disemboweled the customs of his people and the sacred rites of royal installation. The quietude among the larger Ijebu populace on both occasions suggests a degree of complicity and conspiracy. Had the Ijebu people been less “civilized”, less tolerant and less accommodating of royal foibles and eccentricities, the entire populace would have risen as one to exhume the royal corpse and subject it to frightening indignities before throwing it away.

       The politically savvy and worldly wise Yoruba people are faced with a conundrum in circumstances of traumatic transition to modernity superintended by both Islamic and Judaic civilizations. While it is not meet or wise for an Oba to be seen championing or openly supervising the desecration of the sacred tradition of his people, nothing can, or as ever stopped, the march of modernity.  While custom is constant, culture is ever evolving ultimately catching up with and forcing custom to accede to its dictates as it struggles to break free of the cobwebs of outworn tradition in all its retarding stupefaction. In overarching traditional societies marked by vibrant sub-cultures, the development is uneven and irregular with some cultures at the frontiers, a few straddling the middle ground while others cling to the certainties of ancient traditions. The wise conclave of Ijebu kingmakers who insisted that after Oba Adesanya the next Awujale should be an educated person knew what risks they were taking by bypassing the father. After the long transformational rule of Sikiru, we dare say that the next Awujale cannot be a throwback to atavistic fantasies and fetishes.   

  • Power without power

    Power without power

    • Whatever power state govts have on power sector is useless if tariffs are still centrally determined.

    IF there is anything that could pass for a good problem, it is the brouhaha sparked by the Enugu Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (EERC) decision to tamper with the extant tariff regime for Band A electricity customers in Enugu State. EERC has decided to review the tariff for the affected customers from N209.5 per kilowatt-hour to N160/kWh. This would have taken effect from August 1, but for the dampener from the sector’s regulator, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC) which said state governments do not have the right to determine power tariffs in so far as they still get power from the so-called national grid.

    Band A customers receive at least 20 hours or more of power supply daily and pay N209.5/kWh.

    The journey to the increased tariff actually started in April 2024 when NERC approved a steep tariff hike for ‘Band A’ electricity consumers, from N68/kWh to N225/kWh. This was later revised to N206.8 and again to N209.5/kWh.

    Band B: minimum 16 hours of electricity supply per day (N63/kwh), Band C: 12 hours (54/kwh), Band D: eight hours (N48/kwh) and Band E: four hours (N43/kwh).

    Power consumers in Band A decried the over 200 per cent hike then to no avail. Even the rich cried and have been crying that the difference of about four hours of power supply daily could not have justified the huge disparity in the tariffs paid by Bands A and B power consumers, respectively.

    This was the situation until July 20 when EERC announced that it had reduced the Band A tariff in the state from N209/kWh to N160/kWh, while keeping tariffs for Bands B, C, D, and E frozen. The commission then issued a new tariff order to MainPower Electricity Distribution Limited, its new subsidiary to this effect.

    According to the Order No. EERC/2025/003, the move was deemed cost-reflective, adding that the tariff must reflect the power generation subsidy by the Federal Government.

    EERC Chairman, Chijioke Okonkwo, explained in an interview with AIT on July 21 that “We have put out regulations that would guide the development of our own state-specific electricity market. One of our regulations happens to be the Tariff Methodology Regulation of 2024.

    “This work on tariff review started over six months ago when we assumed full regulatory oversight over our electricity space in Enugu State. And following that, we have since issued a number of regulations to guide the development of our own state-specific electricity market, including the Tariff Methodology Regulation of 2024,” he said.

    Expectedly, all the stakeholders in the power sector cried foul. The Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Power Generation Companies (GenCos) Joy Ogaji, said that EERC had set a dangerous precedent for other state electricity companies to follow despite the fact that its action did not reflect the true cost of electricity generation.

    Ogaji said “It is imperative to state that there is no FGN policy on subsidies. It is a debt accumulation,” she stated, warning ”that the N45 per kWh being covered leaves a 60 per cent cost gap that EERC assumed would be filled by the Federal Government, despite no official or cash-backed subsidies in place.

    Enugu State is the first state to come up with this type of decision.

    At this juncture it is appropriate to point out that EERC and indeed other state governments that are now trying to assert themselves in the power equation derive their power from the signing into law of some 16 amendments to the constitution by then President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023. The good news came via a tweet by the presidential media spokesperson, Tolu Ogunlesi.

     “Another landmark change: By virtue of the presidential assent, Nigerian states can now generate, transmit and distribute electricity in areas covered by the national grid. (This) wasn’t allowed pre-amendment. This is genuine, realistic restructuring — through the constitution.”

    Read ALso: Traders count losses as power outage ruins businesses at Osun’s biggest shopping complex

    Expectedly, too, some other states have said they would review the tariff regime, especially for Band A customers. Inasmuch as all the states in the country now have the power to generate and distribute electricity, at least seven states, according to the NERC now control their electricity markets in accordance with the Electricity Act 2023.

    As we speak, some of the states are beginning to indicate their desire to also reduce the tariffs. These include Plateau State Electricity Commission. The chairman of the commission, Bagudu Hirse, said “We are working towards making life better for the citizens of Plateau State, and we will bring down the electricity tariff for our people. Take it from me, as soon as we resume, that will be our focus,” Hirse stated.

    On its part, the Lagos State Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Biodun Ogunleye, said Lagos was studying the tariff plan and that it would announce its own soon. “We are studying what they (EERC) have released. We are looking at the number, and we are going to make some pronouncements shortly”.

    Also, the Ondo State Government said it would soon reduce electricity tariffs like Enugu State. The state commissioner for energy and mineral resources, Johnson Alabi, said “We are the first in all ramifications to carry out this kind of thing; others are only learning from us. What is happening in Enugu is already happening here. The only thing is that we have not spoken to the media about what we are doing…

    “Once we sign our power purchase agreement, we will determine what the tariff will be. We will determine it by ourselves. We are already determining tariffs for some would-be investors who are here because we are buying our energy ourselves, which is strange for any state so far. It is only in those states that have initiated electricity market operation whereby we purchase our power directly from the Transmission Company of Nigeria.”

    I want to see the new development spawned by EERC’s tariff review for Band A downward as a good problem because this would probably be the first time that DisCos are having the heat really turned on them. And that is part of the beauty of liberalisation. All over the world, the customer is said to be king. Not in Nigeria; specifically not with the DisCos. They have always served as the accuser, the policeman and judge in matters affecting them and their customers.

    There is no doubt that EERC may be wrong in its assumptions about what should constitute the real elements of the Band A billing. Just as there is also no doubt that other states that may carry out similar reviews may also not be entirely right. But the undeniable fact too is that the DisCos have been generally a bundle of disappointment as far as many Nigerians are concerned. We do not have any cause not to doubt too that the so-called Band A tariff is not overpriced.

    As a matter of fact, even the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, saw this ambiguity and announced government’s intention to regularise it sometime ago. Apparently this has not been possible because of threats from Labour and perhaps other pressure groups.

    But my advice to the state governments and other serious-minded entities that may want to take advantage of this Buhari law on power is that they should find every possible way to boycott particularly the DisCos because that is the only way this country can break from the shackles of darkness. Our experience with them has shown that they cannot take us anywhere. 

    Indeed, I am not surprised that they are already vehemently opposing EERC’s idea. It could not have been otherwise for DisCos that have been spoon-fed ever since their so-called privatisation by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2013.

    These are mostly entities that lacked both the technical and financial capacities but were just handed over the organisations on ‘paddy-paddy’ basis. And everybody seems to be saying this, yet, successive governments seem comfy with tolerating them at the expense of Nigerians.

    Ever since I was born, we never bought electricity meters in Nigeria until the DisCos came. Now you buy meters that you cannot take away from one location to the other when you are changing apartments (because it is not all the time that landlords pay for these meters).  A tenant that pays for his meter forfeits that meter when changing apartment. In fact,  the whole arrangement is just ridiculous. These are entities that know little or nothing about good corporate governance. I doubt if what the NERC is now saying was what Buhari had in mind when he further liberalised the sector by granting the state governments the autonomy to generate and distribute power.

    Pricing has remained contentious in the power equation for decades. That is why any independence given the state governments to take charge of power supply in their respective domains is useless if they cannot determine the tariff. Only those who handed us the current tariffs know the basis of their computation. The suspicion of most Nigerians is that we are paying for every affliction that the DisCos in particular suffer from — corruption, inefficiency, incompetence and what have you.

    But, why did we get this far before the state regulatory agencies are realising that they cannot fix tariff? Did they not go through the deals they signed with the NERC before they got their licences?

    Anyway, we should first drive away the thief before chastising the owner of the stolen property that he too did not keep his property well.

    With this depressing development from NERC what the situation calls for is for the state governments to look well into the agreements that they signed while they were being handed their independence and see if there is a way they could challenge the NERC’s position in court.

    At any rate, NERC could even be right by law; but that legal position cannot take the country anywhere, especially if we are truly desirous of achieving the $200bn economy by 2030.

    Alternatively, the state governments should put on their thinking caps and begin to look for ways to bypass the DisCos by having entities that can compete with them, however they do that.

    Even the minister said in February that ”They (DisCos) have refused to invest in this sector. Fine, it can be explained in a way…” I don’t know what can be explained in any way beyond the fact that the companies got their licences on a platter, with Nigerians now being forced to subsidise their operations. Rather than go to bank to source for funds, they extort all manner of charges from customers only to start repaying with electricity units in cases where the customers have a voice. Only God knows how many voiceless Nigerians the DisCos have got their money under false pretense.

    I have always said it; that Nigerians do not have to die for DisCos to live. This is what successive governments have been doing pampering them. It should not continue under our Renewed Hope Agenda.

    Whatever independence the state governments have on power supply is meaningless if they cannot determine tariff. If these DisCos are the ones to take us to the promised land, it would’ve been so evident in the last 12 years.

  • Constitutional matters

    Constitutional matters

    Apart from a flag, an anthem and a seat on the United Nations, the one other thing that was needed to define a new nation was a written constitution. There was a time when a national airline was another fixture of a new nation status but that seems to have passed out of fashion now, as the ownership of airlines, has been cornered by a few Middle East countries.  But when Nigeria became independent all those many years ago, she came equipped with an airline which like many things associated with that period has subsequently become extinct. There was also a time when even the Nigerian constitution like the Nigerian Airways was simply swept aside or if the truth be told, just discarded like a spent rag by home-grown coup makers.

    When Nigeria became independent in 1960, she had a brand-new constitution to go with that status. That constitution was painstakingly put together under British supervision at Lancaster House in London, the traditional venue of other Commonwealth constitutional talks. There, Nigerian political leaders and traditional rulers; emirs, obas and ezes, from each of the existing three regions met to produce the document which was to lay down the principles which were to guide the new country on what was hoped was the path of peace, progress and unity. At least, that was the aim of that exercise.

    In deference to the ethnic and other diversities which governed the country, it was decided that a federal system based on the three regions existing at the time should be adopted. The desire to create a Federation was dictated by the need to protect the autonomy of the three regions which existed at the time. Other salient points adopted included a parliamentary system of government with a bicameral legislature, three regional governments as well as a ceremonial head of state who at independence was also the representative of the English crown in Nigeria. It was by no means a perfect document, but it was far from being a complete disaster when it came into operation. However, there were also signs of stress from the get-go. But these could be appreciated for what they were or appeared to be; teething problems. In any case, the Independence constitution had been designed with a life span of no more than three years as it expired quietly in 1963 to be replaced by the Republican constitution when Nigeria was transformed into a Republic within what was known at the time as the British Commonwealth.

    The first serious challenge to the new constitution was mounted predictably, some may say, by forces in the Western Region, the seat of the of the official (loyal) opposition to the Federal government. Following the inconclusive Federal elections of December 1959, the NPC made up of Northern elements formed a governing alliance with the NCNC, the ruling party in the Eastern Region leaving the AG from the West in opposition. Within a few months however, the AG imploded and plunged the Western Region into crisis which led to the declaration of a state of emergency by the opposition Federal government as early as 1962. From this point on, the Federation began to unravel, principally along ethnic lines, leaving the constitution in tatters. From then on, crisis after crisis undermined the viability of the Federation and then the Republic, to such an extent that by January 1966, the military overthrew the civilian government and tossed the constitution into the dustbin. Sixty years later, we have not yet come to terms with settling a viable constitutional agenda for Nigeria, a situation which has hamstrung our national development to a significant extent.

    For all the noise over ⁷written national constitutions these days, one may be forgiven for not knowing that they are a modern invention. The first constitution that was made to measure was put together by the framers of the American constitution which was designed to monitor the interaction between American citizens living in one of the states on the eastern seaboard of the nascent country now known as the United States. It also regulated the relationship between the various states which made up the new country. Virtually all countries since then has arrived fully clothed with a written constitution.

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    By far the most memorable words of the American constitution as frequently pointed out by Nigerian commentators are the first three words; ‘We, the people’. These are the same words on the Nigerian constitution. They are there to give ownership of the constitution to the people for whom the document was written as it was supposed to have done to the original users of those words. But who indeed are the people referred to here? In the case of the American constitution, it is clear that a significant number of people, if not a majority of them were excluded from consideration as people. Women and Blacks were, for example not enfranchised members of the community. Women were denied the vote until 1920 and there are still parts of the USA where black people cannot take their voting rights for granted. As for the men, most of them were excluded from the process of constitution making as only the members of the elite were even aware that there were people who had been saddled with the responsibility of producing a constitution to be used to guide the affairs of the new republic. The writers of the American constitution were representatives of the original states which made up the republic in 1783. However it would be stretching things too far to refer to them as the people. As for the constitution of Nigeria, it was put together by a committee which was handpicked by military governments, first in 1979 and then in 1999. This may explain why the respective constitutions which were fostered on the country were virtual copies of each other. From this point of view, those who question the legitimacy of ascribing the Nigerian constitution to the people of Nigeria have a valid case in point. It can be argued that there is no way that a document generated at the behest of the unrepresentative Nigerian military can be ascribed to ‘we the people’ of Nigeria.

    The first military constitution of 1979 prescribed the presidential system of government for Nigeria in the imitation of what is practised in the USA, complete with state governors, bicameral legislature, an independent Judiciary as well a separation of powers between the Presidency, the Legislature and the Judiciary.

    The Republican constitution was trashed in 1966 and replaced with a unitary system with twelve states, the number of which had increased to nineteen by the time that the military handed over power to civilians under the 1979 constitution. This put an end to the elaborate Regional system which had been designed to manage the diverse ethnic and religious differences which existed within the country. There are many who think that the inadequacies of that constitution were responsible for the abject failure of the civilian government which had been put in place to rule the country on its basis. A shade over four years after the return to civil rule, the military were back, barking orders at the civil population. Within a few months after the military seized the power they had only recently relinquished, it was clear that they were out of their depth as they stumbled from one fiasco to the other. Since they were adept at the management of violence however, there was little if anything that the powerless civilians could do to ameliorate the discomforts of those days. Consequently, for sixteen sterile years, the military rode rough shod over the rest of us. And when they were finally shamed into dropping the reins of power, they had no qualms about dusting off the 1979 constitution which had failed so spectacularly and hanging it around our collective neck. 

    • To be continued.
  • Yusuf Buhari: Dining with elders

    Yusuf Buhari: Dining with elders

    As a Yoruba saying goes, “When a young person knows how to wash their own hands, they dine with elders.” The funeral rites of and tributes to President Muhammadu Buhari involved an array of elders and leaders of this nation. But it also had a place for the youth. For example, Seyi Tinubu, Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s son, could be seen ‘standing sentry’ to his father at the graveyard of our late president. Even more notably, Yusuf Buhari, the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s son, was seen taking part in the most sacred physical, religious and spiritual duties of the interment of his father.

    Yusuf came into national consciousness after he had a near-fatal accident on a power-bike in Abuja on Tuesday, 26 December, 2017, while playing one of the games that children of well-to-do parents play.  Following that incident, he seemed to have appreciably disappeared from public view. Then on Friday, 20 August, 2021, he re-emerged for his wedding. He was again in the public glare on 13 July, 2025 taking brisk steps and with an unflappable disposition in the London Clinic where his father had just passed away.

    Most noticeably, Yusuf captured public imagination at the burial of his father on 15 July, 2025, where he was seemingly the Chief Mourner to President Buhari. Yusuf showed how suddenly a young person could have thrust upon them the responsibilities of a much older person. And he discharged those responsibilities with grace and remarkable composure.

    Taking part in the interment of a departed Muslim is believed to be a most spiritually rewarding act. Adherents of Islam therefore strive not to let the opportunity to take part in the performance of that sacred duty pass them by, wherever and whenever they can. When a person is a close relative, or, as in Yusuf’s case, a son to the departed, that duty assumes an even grander significance.

    Yusuf could be seen, along with others, receiving the body of his father shorn of all appurtenances of office and worldly embellishments, and lowering him, with all sacredness, into the simple grave that had been dug as his last worldly abode. Following this, there was the arrangement of planks and the laying of mats on them to prevent heaping sand directly on the body. Next was the mud-dressing of the grave.

    At this point, Yusuf himself seemed to have risen above worldly care. With the sleeves of his kaftan rolled up, and kneeling down to ensure that he could reach the right points of the grave, he received mud from the late President Buhari’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Malam Isa Ali Ibrahim, otherwise called Isa Ali Pantami, who is an Islamic scholar in his own right, and performed the sacred duty to his father. In his company at this sobering moment was also the teary and profusely sweating Governor of Katsina State, Malam Dikko Umar Radda.

    When the dressing of the lower part of the top of the grave was completed, the Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency Kashim Shettima, among others, took a shovel and partook in the final spread of sand on the grave, symbolising the Federal Government’s optimal discharge of one of its most sacred duties to our departed President.

    If a dead person can see what those they left behind are doing, President Muhammadu Buhari must be proud of the solemn honour that his dear son had done him. Hajiya Aisha Buhari, the former First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, must also be comforted to see the demonstration of her successful motherhood, seeing Yusuf come of age so admirably in the family’s moment of trial. And Yusuf’s sisters must be pleased seeing how competently he was assuming the role of the man of the house. The Daura Emirate must also be reassured that they acted right in conferring on Yusuf the title of Talban Daura, a top traditional position, in 2021.

    In the continuing performance of his duty to his departed father, Yusuf was with and spoke for the family at the Special Expanded Federal Executive Council Meeting held in honour of the late President. President Tinubu had endearingly spoken about President Muhammed Buhari.

    In deep appreciation of all of the care, sympathies, accolades, and honour, Yusuf Buhari read the following prepared speech:

    “Good evening, everyone. I would like to acknowledge the protocols already established. On behalf of the entire members of the family of the late Muhammadu Buhari, …  I wish to sincerely extend our deepest gratitude to Mr. President, His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the Vice-President, His Excellency Kashim Shettima, and his wife, Hajiya Nana Kashim, for your outstanding support [to] the family from the time he took ill until he peacefully passed on … on Sunday 13th July, 2025.

     “It has shown that he was regarded [as] far more than a politician, but regarded as a friend, and a father to all members of the Federal Executive Council. For the care and befitting burial accorded to our late father, we appreciate you all.

    “I also wish to thank the Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and all the distinguished and honourable members of the National Assembly for honouring the memory of our late father during the state burial in Daura. I will also not forget to mention and convey our appreciation for the support from the Attorney-General of the Federation and members of the Judiciary, Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nigeria High Commission in London, the Governor of Katsina State, Borno State as well, and all his colleagues for identifying and standing firmly with us during this difficult period.

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    “Let me specially and specifically acknowledge the Chief of Defence Staff, the Service Chiefs, Heads of Security and Law Enforcement Agencies, as well as all members of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, our late father’s first and primary constituency, for the esprit de corps, solidarity and the befitting military burial given to our late father.

    “Finally, we thank all members of the diplomatic corps, traditional and religious leaders, political associates, friends, family members, the press and indeed all Nigerians at home and in diaspora for the numerous calls, messages, condolence visits and prayers offered for the repose of the gentle soul of our departed father. Your visits, calls, and prayers symbolise a great honour to the memory of our late father and we’re sincerely grateful for all the support and solidarity extended to the family. May Allah continue to bless us all and to bless all of us.

    “Thank you, daddy. Thank you, daddy. Thank you, daddy. May Allah continue to bless, guide and protect you throughout your tenure successfully. Long live Mr. President and long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Thank you.”

    The comprehensive appreciation was a fine speech for a 33-year old man addressing a rare major public forum for the first time, and it accordingly generated resounding applause.  

    Before the programme ended, President Tinubu proposed: “In honour of his memory, with this Special Session of the Federal Executive Council (Expanded), can we adopt the renaming of University of Maiduguri … as Muhammadu Buhari University, Maiduguri.” The proposal was approved with thunderous applause.

    Muhammadu Buhari University, Maiduguri

    The Federal Government’s decision to rename the University of Maiduguri after President Buhari has elicited different reactions. Some have received the decision with excitement and have commended the government. Such supporters have cited the fact that he was the military Governor of North-Eastern State with its capital in Maiduguri and he was the first military Governor of Borno State, and that he had repelled Chadian soldiers who invaded parts of Borno State in the past. They also noted that, even as President, Buhari showed strong affinity with the state and most likely visited it more than he did any other state in the country.

    However, some have condemned the decision. For example, in a 24 July, 2025 set of resolutions of the University of Maiduguri Branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the union states as follows: “Congress views any attempt to rename the University of Maiduguri after fifty (50) years of esteemed existence as a flagrant disregard for University Autonomy, a disruption of cherished academic traditions and a direct affront to the collective heritage and identity of the University Community.”

    The union also said: “Congress mandates the ASUU-UNIMAID Executive Committee (EXCO) to explore all available legal avenues to challenge the renaming and ensure that the University’s original identity is preserved.”

    The UNIMAID Branch of ASUU further stated: “The Congress calls upon ASUU at the branches, zone and national levels to urgently engaged the National Assembly, Civil Society Organizations, and other relevant stakeholders, including students to resist any legislative endorsement of the renaming.”

    Time will tell how this will pan out. Meanwhile, it is important to note that the University of Maiduguri itself has honoured President Buhari by naming the Senate Building of the University after him. Moreover, the Maiduguri International Airport has been named after him. Some of those who oppose the renaming of the University of Maiduguri after President Muhammadu Buhari argue that it is superfluous to rename the university after him.

    Regarding this argument, it is important to note that naming one thing after a public figure of note does not preclude naming other things after the same person. A good example of this is former United States President J.F. Kennedy. Several things including an airport, a university, or key units of universities have been named after him, even outside the United States. Looking at the various things named after him, it would be noticed that there is a gradation of honours.

    With respect to President Buhari, the naming of the University of Maiduguri after him could be regarded as a magnum opus – the greatest of the honours that could be done to him, given the wider global reach of a university and the rarity of President Buhari’s globally acknowledged personal character. This point is important, because one of the cancers eating up every part of Nigeria’s body politic is corruption.

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s rare public morality would therefore be a wonderful subject of intellectual inquiry, which can produce results which could help to get Nigeria out of its moral morass. Indeed, if the renaming of the University of Maiduguri stands, it could be an opportunity for establishing the university or any of its set of appropriate units as a Centre of Excellence in Public Ethics.    

  • APC acquiring political depth

    APC acquiring political depth

    For the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the past one or two weeks have been the most exhilarating. In contrast, for the opposition parties, especially the coalition platform called the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the same period has been disconcerting. The opposition parties are snarled up in internal strife or bewildered by legal conundrums, and have begun to philosophise away their troubles and anxieties. The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which had lived in denial for years, has started to accept the reality of their condition, particularly the defections they have suffered in the past few months. The APC is not just ecstatic about the troubles bedeviling the opposition, they are also keeping their powder dry, waiting for advantageous moments to spring lethal surprises.

    But far beyond the tit for tat that has characterised its relationship with the opposition, the APC appears to be acquiring substantial political depth in terms of its internal organisation and external relations. In a 109-member Senate, they now have 70 seats after waves of defections saw them gain about 11 senators, just three seats shy of the mythical majority needed to railroad mandates, programmes, and agenda through the Senate. They are, however, unlikely to want to capitalise on that backdoor method to swell their ranks in the lower chamber because they appreciate the difficulty of achieving the same feat or having the same latitude. Last month, they had some 207 members in the House of Representatives, and 23 governors. The ruling party has largely bled the main opposition party to get the number they now boast of. With such commanding presence in the states and National Assembly, the APC has managed, admittedly by unorthodox methods, to acquire significant depth to confidently propose earthshaking legislations. If they are reluctant to do so, it will be because they are dissuaded by Nigeria’s ethnic and religious peculiarities.

    Despite the unending bad press the ruling party still seems fated to attract, mainly because of the radical policies it is administering on the country in order to reset the economy, it probably has the highest number of technocrats in government than at any time in the country’s history. This has led them to courageously propound and defend policies in nearly all sectors of the economy, be they in education, health or tax sectors. It is likely that in the months ahead, they may shock the nation on law reforms. They are sufficiently strong in the legislature to drive these newfangled but effective and proactive policies. Even though the former APC national chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, is a PhD holder, the new one, an engineering professor, is one notch higher. The deputy national secretary of the party, Abdulkarim Kana, is a Law professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Law, Nasarawa State University. He will doubtless bring his training to the job. The party now in fact has distinguished thinkers at the helm of their organisation. If they fail, it will not be because they cannot think or solve problems, it will be because of other failings, perhaps relating to character issues.

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    The presidency is not exempted from the policy and organisational depth permeating the APC. The president and vice president are highly educated, with both possessing strong personalities that ordinarily make it tasking for them not to rub each other up the wrong way during policy debates and appointment considerations. There are speculations already that the relationship between the two may be a little awkward. That is expected of intellectuals. Hopefully they will find ways of managing their mutual awkwardness in the midst of political permutations in the gossip-ridden and ethnic-baiting corridors of power. With depth in the legislature, in the ruling party, and in the executive itself, the APC may be in a position to influence, if not dominate, Nigerian politics for decades to come. They may not always win elections, or form the government, but if they produce fewer charlatans than the other parties, they stand a good chance of overseeing politics in these parts for a long time and exporting their know-how to the rest of Africa.

    In fact, here precisely is where the depth they are acquiring becomes useful. Eminent scholar and political scientist, Richard Sklar, once described the defunct Action Group (AG) of the Western Region as “the best organised, best financed, and most efficiently run political party in Nigeria.” If the APC desires that label and is ambitious and visionary enough, it could aspire to become the modern equivalent of what the AG was in the 1950s and 1960s. There is of course public misgiving regarding how the APC is run, with some critics accusing President Tinubu of dominating the party and moulding it after his own image. Great parties, however, seldom escape the imbuement of their foundational leader’s characteristics and worldview. And so, whether Obafemi Awolowo or Kwame Nkrumah, or Chinese presidents starting from Mao Zedong and later Deng Xiaoping, a party often reflects the image of its birth leader. This does not of course excuse irrational influences or tyrannical overreach. But given the depth the APC is beginning to develop, President Tinbu has the opportunity to be deliberate, futuristic, and methodical about configuring the ruling party.

    The late ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, sadly, paid little attention to the party, preferring to run it ad hoc, and allowing small cabals to push and pull the party in different directions. President Tinubu should rather develop a new approach to running the APC, far better and more coherently than he did with the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). The PDP was eclectic and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) chaotic and insular. This was why the PDP eventually came to grief when it mattered most, for the Fourth Republic’s foundational president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had no innate gift to found or run a party, let alone imbue it with anything noble or lasting. President Tinubu will be sorely tempted to exercise iron grip on the party; he should resist the temptation, despite the presence of many barracudas in the party who want to exploit and hijack it for short-term gains. He should be less paranoid about what former vice president Atiku Abubakar and others are doing in any other hijacked party, including the ADC and the now fractured Social Democratic Party (SDP). Alhaji Atiku does not found parties and lacks the temper to run them, for he specialises in pulling down structures than in building them.

    There are already indications that the APC is beginning to be managed by administrators gifted with the depth and temper to run things. There are also indications that the party is becoming a fairly disciplined organisation capable of fighting and winning political battles. President Tinubu should have his eyes on the future in a way that Chief Obasanjo did not do with the PDP. Not only should the president encourage all the organs to function well, he should equally pay attention to the party’s internal democracy, a culture the APC has not so far shown the capacity to exude. The last few primaries the party conducted, including for the Lagos local government poll, were shambolic and disappointing. If the APC is to go into the next defining battle in the 2027 elections as a disciplined force, then the president must inescapably ensure that all the dross that soils its methods and image are removed. He must convince himself of what he wants and how best to achieve it. Above all, seeing that the party has begun to develop depth, it may be time he got the party to build and manage a leadership academy that would produce the next generation of Nigerian leaders. He can conceive it; and the APC has the wherewithal to execute it.

  • Civil societies inciting rebellion

    Civil societies inciting rebellion

    The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has been consistent in its opposition to the government of the day, particularly right from the days of the Muhammadu Buhari administration. But much more than its consistency, it has also been hyperbolic. Virtually every statement its spokesmen issue has been tinged with hysterical denunciation of the administrations, with some of the statements bordering on incitement. Like any other civil society organisation, HURIWA has the constitutional right to advocate any cause intended to promote democracy and good and accountable governance. But to veer to incitement, knowingly or otherwise, is indefensible. Indeed, the organisation’s hysterical response to the long-standing culture of political defections is difficult to justify.

    Last week, in their attempt to discourage defections, HURIWA attempted to correlate the migration of some lawmakers and even governors to the ruling party with a crime worthy of a coup d’etat. It is far-fetched, but the group’s national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, managed to find corollaries to justify his inciting conclusions. “We are sounding a strong note of warning and a profound caution to Nigeria’s legislators to comply with the constitutional provisions on defections,” he began impatiently, “and stop the current political insanity represented by their unbridled cross-carpeting from their original parties into the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).” He then added: “This anti-constitutional practice by the politicians constitute a dangerous threat to multiparty democracy, even as this politically sinister tendency of defecting from their parties to the ruling party could provide the needed motivation and elixir for coupists to attempt to torpedo democracy.”

    Apart from the value judgements that surreptitiously filtered into the statement, it is not also clear whether Mr Onwubiko understood that he was also planting the seed of a forcible overthrow of the government, and by implication democracy, in the minds of ambitious coupists. Defections have been rife in Nigeria since ages, the Fourth Republic not excluded. More importantly, the defections have in the past two decades and more not been unidirectional. So, how on earth could this set of ongoing defections lead both to a one-party state, not to talk of attract a coup d’etat? And just in case anyone thought Mr Onwubiko minced words, he repeated himself by condemning those he described as “these anti-constitutional and anti-democratic forces embedded in the National Assembly for flagrantly flouting the law with the hidden agenda to motivate ambitious people within the military to try to overthrow constitutional democracy.”

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    Anyone or group can openly or secretly admire any political party or party leader, as Mr Onwubiko is obviously doing. And they also have the constitutional right to support or oppose anyone or view or position. But they do not have the right to incite the overthrow of constitutional order. Since its formation in 2007, HURIWA has not been known for measured responses. If they are not strident today, they are apocalyptic tomorrow, and their reasoning and conclusions are sometimes excessive and illogical. More, they have found it difficult to resist being politically prejudiced. As a civil society group, nothing stops them from testing in court the defections that have drawn their ire. As a matter of fact, there are many civil and democratic options available to them, assuming they have not already made up their minds, as some CSOs have done in the past few years, to incite and insinuate the collapse of the democracy they insincerely claim to be promoting and defending.