The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • A season of forgiveness?

    A season of forgiveness?

    The worry about the avalanche of calls for forgiveness by departing political office holders is that none of them has been able to put a finger on what wrong decisions they must have made. 

    “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  — John 1:9

    “Allah pardon you! Why did you excuse them until it was clear to you which of them were telling the truth and until you knew the liars?” – Surat At-Tawba, 43

    “But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and puts things right, Allah will turn towards him” – Surat Al-Maida, 39

    If a politically literate person were visiting Nigeria for the first time in the last three or more weeks, he or she would have thought that the country was under a Truth and Reconciliation decree. In truth, what has been happening since General Buhari (now President Buhari won the 2015 presidential election) is that many of the country’s political office holders from the president down to governors have been asking for forgiveness from fellow Nigerians for whatever they did or did not do while in office. And the calls for forgiveness were made without anyone plucking the courage to identify anything that each of them believed he had done wrong.

    From their pedigrees, each of those calling for forgiveness for themselves or groups they identify with emotionally appears to be Muslim or Christian. As the quotations overleaf indicate, each of the two major globe-wide religions insists that truth about mistakes made must precede plea for forgiveness. In Catholicism in particular, nobody asks for forgiveness until he or she has given full disclosure in a confession ritual of what he or she had done wrong. The worry about the avalanche of calls for forgiveness by departing political office holders is that none of them has been able to put a finger on what wrong decisions they must have made. Some of the political leaders in their valedictory ceremonies even felt emboldened to leave blueprints to be implemented for those succeeding them, regardless of the fact that their regime was replaced on account of its anti-citizen governance style.

    Despite periodic show of bravado by PDP leaders who called on President Buhari to focus on implementing his election manifesto, the trail of demand for forgiveness was blazed by the outgoing President himself. He and his wife pleaded with Nigerians to pardon them for whatever they must have done in the discharge of their official duties to offend anyone. As if it was not good enough that President Jonathan had graciously accepted electoral defeat and, in the process, according to General Buhari changed the course of Nigeria’s history, President Jonathan expressed fear of being ‘persecuted’ along with his aides and pleaded that should anyone desire to probe his administration, that person should not forget such other leaders as Yakubu Gowon, Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, AbdusalamAbubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo. This was an indirect way of saying that if all these former leaders had been forgiven so far for whatever they did or failed to do, his plea for forgiveness has no reason to fall on deaf ears. He pleaded that he not be scapegoated at the risk of opening a Pandora’s box that is better kept closed. (This was weeks before the allegation by EFCC that billions of dollars meant for fighting Boko Haram had disappeared into the pockets of individuals and companies not connected to arms production and sale).

    Even the outgoing Vice President,Namadi Sambo, did not want to be left out of the ceremony of asking for forgiveness from citizens. He and his wife spoke passionately about how they believed that they must have offended some people in the way they performed their duties. (This was long before the allegation that N20 million monthly stipend was paid to his office from the fund for military equipment to fight Boko Haram).Similarly at the state level, many governors did not want to be left out of the ritual of calling for forgiveness. For example, the outgoing governor of Benue State was the most vocal of such governors. In his own case, Gabriel Suswam was specific about those whose forgiveness he would need. The lapse he boldly acknowledged was his inability to pay the state’s civil servants their salaries for months. And his reason for this was the nation-wide economic challenges facing Nigeria as a whole after the plunge in oil price. Despite this challenge, he was able to donate some vehicles to his successor, to ease transportation during the period of transition. Some would wonder why Suswam would need to apologise for problems beyond his control.(Suswam’s profuse apology came before his invitation to appear before the nosy EFCC). But Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State was the most specific about who should forgive him. He called on the accountant-general of his state not to abandon him on the eve of his departure from office and not to fail to tell him whatever lapse he (Uduaghan) might have made, a subtle way to ask for forgiveness.

    In the context of Nigeria, calls by outgoing political office holders for forgiveness and understanding at the end of their tenure are not totally unexpected. It should be expected that those looking forward to come back to power and plum of office in 2019 would need to be in good terms with most of their supporters on their way to what they see only as leave of absence from political office. Correspondingly, those who do not share the optimism of their party leaders about 2019 may need to talk right while they wait for soft landing or mercy from the regime that had promised before election to set Nigeria right.

    In the last few days in particular, a new love for plea bargaining has entered the country’s public conversation. After the revelations about what is now named in the media as Dasukigate, traditional and social media have been clogged by calls for plea bargaining, corruption amnesty, and truth and reconciliation, where such intervention is expected to replace traditional investigation, prosecution, and punishment of individuals accused of wrongdoing. It has also been reported that there are moves by ethnic and regional leaders to plead with President Buhari to use the route of corruption amnesty, instead of insisting on the crime and punishment approach.

    When this article first appeared in this column two weeks after the inauguration of President Buhari, the writer urged President Buhari to have a multipronged approach to the fight against corruption. Corruption amnesty that allows for plea bargaining was one of the major approaches suggested, in addition to the traditional crime and punishment approach, and a restructuring that could make corruption less easy and attractive than it has been in our free-for-all governance system. Instructively, President Buhari himself announced recently that his government has been recovering stolen money from political office holders and public servants, adding that he would, at a more auspicious time, release detailed information about those who returned their loot and how much they had returned. Those calling now for plea bargaining or corruption amnesty with respect to allegation of diversion of money meant for procurement of military equipment to personal gifts need not worry about those who have already pleaded not guilty. Amnesty is in logical terms not for those who are not guilty; it is for those who accept responsibility for what they have done wrong and then plead for special mercy.

    Ethnic or regional leaders should thus allow President Buhari to follow the two options he has chosen for fighting corruption: investigation/prosecution and corruption amnesty. In the context of today’s Nigeria, nobody should be obsessed that his kinsman or woman has been accused of corruption. The average Nigerian knows that this is a social cancer that cuts across ethnic and religious lines. To turn allegation of corruption into a regional or political issue is to trivialise the role of corruption in the destruction of nation-enhancing values pivotal to underdevelopment of the polity, economy, and society.

  • Itching to be embedded

    Itching to be embedded

    It is unfair to have left some of us out of the ‘train’

    Embedded. Hum, embedded! That is one word that is now trending in the country, following the recent expose on the $2.1billion arms fund scandal. I had thought I knew the meaning of the word ’embed’; but my knowledge paled into insignificance when the Emeritus Chairman of DAAR Communications, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, who has been accused of collecting N2.1billion from the arms money told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), among other things, that he “was embedded in various (media) organisations” for the Office of the former National Security Adviser (ONSA), Col Sambo Dasuki (rtd).

    That is one problem with Nigeria’s big men. They like to mystify Nigerians with big grammar or try outright to invent words in their trying moments. That is when you know that the rich also cry. One does not know whether it is out of fear or just because they want to daze the rest of us with big vocabulary, some of which they invented. Imagine General Oladapo Diya when he appeared before the tribunal trying him and others for alleged coup plot in the Abacha era.  General Diya that we hitherto thought was a strong man suddenly became lily-livered during interrogation. The shocked and embarrassed general asked the coup tribunal panel: “Bamaiyi is the masterminder (sic) of this. Where is he?” (when actually he meant mastermind). Just like some other words and concepts that we are already used to in the country (another such word is parastatal) but which cannot be found in any good dictionary, I have tried in vain to check the word masterminder, to no avail. A handsome reward awaits whoever succeeds in finding the word in any dictionary – good or bad.

    Anyway, back to Chief Dokpesi. Those who saw him on television when the story broke would testify he was truly ’embedded’, given the way he shied away from facing the camera. Chief Dokpesi should have saved us all the trouble by simply saying he spent what he got on media publicity for the government. If it was as simple as this, why daze us with a big word? I was told even the EFCC did not know what Chief Dokpesi meant by “he was embedded” and they therefore asked him to break it down. “We don’t know what he meant and we have written the affected media to explain if they were given any share of the N2.1billion for publicity”, one of the commission’s officials was quoted as saying. Imagine the trauma that even the anti-graft agency passed through just because of one word!

    I am still at a loss as to how I missed out completely from these actions. Although I must confess I did not know the NSA; not to talk of his office, ONSA, which was doling out money in a way that would make many of our religious fathers fall over themselves inviting him for thanksgiving in their churches; that did not appear to be a criterion. After all, one of those who said he got only $30,000 confessed that he did not know the NSA. So, what could be wrong with me? It is not funny that of all the categories – embedded, consultancy – I was cruelly neglected? Even the princely N4.6billion that was said to have been allocated for “spiritual purpose”, I could not make a dime from. Well, one is not even sure whether the N4.6billion was full and final payment for the spiritualists consulted, or it was just one of the tranches. But that is hardly important. Even if it was the N4.6billion that was at stake, it was something. Beyond that, however, the EFCC must be interested in which spiritualist got what because, apparently quacks must have been consulted to do the job; that is why things turned out the way they have. Those of us who could have fasted and done vigil and our sacrifices would have ascended were ignored.

    Anyway, what I am saying so far, for those who might not have known where I am headed is that EFCC’s concern is not necessarily my concern. I am not even worried by what is worrying the Federal Government on this matter. As they say, different folks; different strokes. They can be interested in who did what with the arms fund. But I am more interested in how I missed out in the action. Why was I nowhere near being captured in the radar? Indeed, it is now I know how little I am in this country, and, but for my Christian conscience, I would have started to review my continued citizenship. How could people be getting embedded left, right, centre and I was missing all through? With three decades of what I used to think was meritorious media practice, I feel I am eminently qualified to be embedded in the media campaigns.

    Now, the EFCC has asked some of those embedded in (or is it with?) the arms fund to provide some documents, including their tax certificates. The commission would do better by asking those of us who were marginalised to also submit our petitions so they can ask those in charge why they found us unworthy for being embedded or consulted despite our long years of service which, naturally, should be an added advantage. I was reliably informed that editors from a particular region in the country were favoured in the ’embedment’.

    Apparently, like most other things Nigerian, due process was not followed in determining those to consult or embed. Yet, this country belongs to us all. Why should only some people be enjoying the fruits of the land by way of ’embedment’ to the detriment of the rest of us? It is memories like this that make some people want to get out of our union. But as the patriot that I am, I won’t quit because I am sure this my public petition will bear fruit. God definitely did not make a mistake putting me here.

    For now, I hold no grudge against anyone for not embedding me when it mattered most. But I will forever hold it against them if at this juncture they still do not deem it fit to get me into the train. What I am saying is that I am still available to be embedded. After all, they say it is better late than never. In a system where the minimum take-away by the lucky ones that got embedded was N100 million (except the media houses whose operations were disrupted last year by government’s troops that got a paltry N10million each from which N1million was also creamed off for the organisation that brokered the inexplicable truce between government and the newspaper houses) any right-thinking person would not mind being involved in that arrangement. Indeed, from what is already in the public domain, it appears the roll call of those embedded parades the who’s who in the country. And the song is not over yet. We are still likely to hear more as the trial progresses. So, since being embedded (is like gonorrhea which was known to be a disease of the famous when I was growing up) appears to be the in-thing, I think it would not be a bad idea to ask the EFCC to ’embed’ me in the suits in anticipation that this application of mine will be favourably considered. This is my irreducible condition to be on the same page with the commission.

    And just in case there are no more beds for me to be embedded, I would not mind to be enmatted. After all, in many parts of southern Nigeria, when a woman gives birth to a bouncing baby boy, people (including other women) rejoice with the parents, wholeheartedly. But if a woman gave birth to a baby girl (mind the missing operational word ‘bouncing’ in this instance, we don’t have anything like bouncing baby girl) people only rejoice with the parents, reluctantly. The well-wishers’ response is usually “a girl is also good”.

    So, if I can’t get bed to embed upon, a mat is also good. Let me be enmatted. You don’t worry about the risk because the risks too have been ’embedded’. I must put to shame those witches and wizards in the village that made me not to be embedded when it was fashionable to so be.

     

  • Dasukigate and controversial media payments

    Of all the fiery elements of Dasukigate, the scandalous arms deal and financial bazaar superintended but not necessarily wholly inspired by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), three controversial payments concerned the media and have fuelled animated discussions all over the country, some of them sensible, but most misplaced, confused and emotional. The arithmetic of the arms deal and slush funds payments is still being worked out, and no single, final sum has yet been produced. But as far as the media is concerned, three payments stick out like a sore thumb.

    The first, over N2bn, was made out in favour of chairman emeritus of Africa Independent Television (AIT), Raymond Dokpesi, ostensibly for publicity of indeterminate scope. The second, over N500m, was made out in favour of Nduka Obaigbena, publisher of ThisDay newspaper, ostensibly to compensate him for the damage done by Boko Haram to the ThisDay office in Abuja in 2012. The third, some N120m, was meant for media houses whose operations were disrupted by the army in 2014, but channeled through the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN) and Mr Obaigbena in particular. The Nation newspaper bore the brunt of that attack and disruption.

    It is pointless debating the payments to leaders of the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whether the funds were meant for politics, to buy consciences, or to appease or settle militants. For the purpose of this piece, the main focus will be the payments to media proprietors and media houses, in particular the latter. Both Chief Dokpesi and Mr. Obaigbena insist the sizable payments made to them were perfectly legitimate. Few believe them.  Indeed, their long-suffering media establishments will be shocked and embarrassed by the size of the payments. In addition to the general controversy regarding how the NSA became the former ruling party’s and the ex-president’s bursar, not to talk of the needless and infinite distractions the money and the payments constituted to the onerous work of the security adviser, questions have been asked about the processes as well as the objectives of the payments.

    Both Chief Dokpesi and Mr Obaigbena cannot plausibly argue that the payments did not influence their editorial judgements. The AIT was unabashedly pro-PDP, going in many instances beyond the bounds of propriety and decency to malign the reputation of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s opponents and impugning their character. The television station broadcast scurrilous campaigns with enthusiasm and reckless abandon. However, the television station retained the right to support  whomsoever it wishes, but given the huge payments involved, critics suggest that its editorial decision was consequently no longer independently made, contrary to the ethics of the profession. Chief Dokpesi will find it hard, if not impossible, to absolve himself of blame.

    Media watchers noticed that before and during the campaigns, ThisDay was also unapologetic about its support for the PDP and Dr Jonathan. It is suggested that that choice was also influenced not by altruistic reasons but by pecuniary considerations. There is nothing wrong with being partisan, or if not partisan, at least supporting a party for ideological or certain other reasons. What is reprehensible theoretically is how the decision to support one against the other is reached, whether by logic and reason, or by financial inducement. The onus is on both Chief Dokpesi and Mr. Obaigbena to prove they were not induced to flagrantly breach media ethics. First impression, however, suggests they compromised.

    Questions have also been asked, in the case of Mr. Obaigbena, how without a contract he was able to get over half a billion naira in payments. He has suggested that the federal government’s needless rescue of the United Nations, whose Abuja building was partially destroyed by Boko Haram, set a precedence for the payment he asked for and received from the Jonathan government. He is not persuasive. But by far the most damning piece of evidence was the N120m paid to harassed media houses through Mr. Obaigbena’s personal company rather than through NPAN.

    Consequently, what should have been a perfectly legitimate transaction between two parties seeking non-litigious way out of a dispute became embroiled in controversy. Indeed, the discussions have become so obfuscated that extraneous matters are creeping in and wholly misdirected and illogical inferences are being drawn. First, it is suggested that it was immoral of the affected newspapers to have collected any payment whatsoever from the government, and that anything outside of a transparent court process would be open to subversion or corruption of media ethics. This is pure nonsense. In the first instance, out-of-court settlements are a part of Nigeria’s jurisprudence. In fact, far better is alternative dispute resolution than a costly and time-consuming court process.

    Two, it is also suggested that it was immoral to collect payment from funds set aside to buy arms or prosecute counterinsurgency. But how on earth were media houses to know the sources of the payments they were beneficiaries of? Is it not silly to query sources of payments from a government? Indeed, is it not foolish and paralysing to question the account from which a company is making a payment after a transaction had been sealed? Critics are simply being wise after the fact. Some media houses had a dispute with the federal government, a settlement was reached outside of court, and payments made. It is foolish to worry about where the government is sourcing the money. Media houses which preferred to go to court were free to do so; and those which opted to settle out of court were also free to. None is ethically superior to the other. It is strange to begin to draw ethical lessons from exercising one’s lawful options.

    It is also suggested that now that it is evident the federal government’s payment was made through a disputed and inappropriate account, the beneficiaries should return the money and apologise to the military, especially the dead who lost their lives in operations against Boko Haram due to poor equipment. This is another sentimental buncombe. Let the government initiate moves to reclaim the money paid to the affected media houses; and let the media houses in turn sue the government for the full value of the disruptions to their operations. If the current government can’t draw a line in its anti-corruption war, then let them insist on full judicial processes and be prepared for huge judgement debts.

    The Nation newspaper was a part of the settlement midwifed by NPAN. It collected nine million naira. It should not apologise, for it neither did anything wrong nor influenced or exploited Mr Obaigbena’s unorthodox financial dealings. Of the few newspapers that opposed the Jonathan government and fought its predatory habits, none was as vehement as this newspaper, wholly on ideological and principled grounds. This was why it bore the brunt of the military’s clampdown on newspapers. Anyone who thinks this newspaper’s soul was bought with nine million naira must have contempt for this newspaper and what they think it is worth, and must also suffer from amnesia, choosing to forget the unrivalled role this paper played in the defeat suffered by Dr Jonathan and the victory the APC and President Buhari achieved early this year.

  • The Children of Barabbas

    Snooper apologises ahead to some of our numerous readers for this rather heavy-going piece, but it is in the nature of the business at hand.  You can take a man out of his professorial habitat, but you cannot take the professorial habitat out of a man. An unhappy consciousness stalks the land. This deep distress and disappointment with everything and everybody manifests itself in many ways. Nigerian kids are no longer napping. They are kidnapping. And kidnapping is a serious business, like the stealing of a nation’s patrimony by a criminal elite.

    The kidnappers do not appropriate the patrimony of a nation directly; they do it by indirect labour. And in so doing, they stand the whole logic of patrimony on its head. The kid has become the real father of the man. Welcome to the kidnappers manifesto; or, Barabbas Syndrome.

    Barabbas Syndrome is the latest manifestation of our peculiar post-colonial condition. At least a malignant psychological ailment like Oedipus complex is straightforward enough. Every son, according to Freud, drawing on the Sophoclean drama, wants to marry his mother after killing his father. For Freud, this is the primal motive of human existence and the root of all human conflicts.

    But Barabbas Syndome is not so clear and straightforward. It is indeed a different kettle of fish. It is a dark and deeply recondite drama of human existence itself, full of contradictory impulses and motives, some of these noble and heroic; others criminal and perverted. The kidnappers are criminals because, lacking in ideological education, they seek to disrupt the order of corruption rather than the corruption of order. But in disrupting the order of corruption, they may worsen the corruption of order, which is not a bad thing at all.

    Herein surfaces the difficulties and troubling complications at the heart of the Barabbas story. But before we come to elucidate on this, the unhappy consciousness, its ideological soul-mate, beckons. The unhappy consciousness has been with humankind since the dawn of the human society. The absolute discomfort with one’s lot and one’s society is the driving force behind all phenomenal occurrences in civilization and hence of human evolution itself.

    Anybody closely monitoring the contemporary Nigerian society in all its riotous disequilibrium will notice the unhappy consciousness at work in every facet of our national life. Even if it occludes or elides itself in circuitous ideological camouflage, it is there. It is there in politics, it is there in the economy, it is there in religion, and it is there in the traditional concept of marriage which is vast dissolving as new economic realities take a grenade to the feudal set up where women were thought to be the lower gender. Finally, it is there in the intellectual space as every article attracts hundreds of furious and frank rejoinders.

    The intellectual ferment in Nigeria today, replete with émigré bazooka, is reminiscent of pre-Revolution Russia when the Russian people finally caught up with the idiocies and odiousness of Tsarist rule and the bankruptcy of the ancient class. But of all these disruptions of the epistemic logic on which the crumbling order is based, none is more potentially devastating than the rising wave of armed critiques of the nation-in- crisis whether it emanates from ethnic, regional, religious or sheer class disaffection.

    It is within the logic of class confrontation that we must situate the rising wave of kidnapping and abduction throughout the length and breadth of the country. Although most severe in the east, it is a pan-Nigerian phenomenon. There are new kids on the block. The new kids are kidnappers. Anybody who has closely monitored the drama of the abduction of the four journalists and the capillary network of informants, rogue policemen, rogue security people, rogue traditional rulers and rogue state operatives must conclude that we are in totally uncharted territory. This is not to talk of the sharp clarity with which the kidnappers defined the objectives of their criminal enterprise.

    This criminal redistribution of criminally acquired wealth is anarchy on the march. But anarchy, we need to remind ourselves, is not the collapse of law and order but the collapse of lawlessness and disorder. Perhaps we need to summon G.F.W Hegel, the great German philosophical genius and theorist of the unhappy consciousness. Hegel was a great man but a frank racist to boot who believed that Africa and Africans never left the cradle of humankind; a dark jungle of uncultured and uncultivated savages.

    Hegel was forced to resolve the cruel existential dilemma of the unhappy consciousness in favour of the modern state and its implacable masters. According to him, the unhappy consciousness usually dissolves itself into hedonism and asceticism, and at a later stage in history into cynicism and scepticism. Throughout his life, Hegel was bedevilled by an unthinking glorification of the power and majesty of the nascent Prussian state. It was unchallenged and unchallengeable. “What is real is rational and what is rational is real”, Hegel famously proclaimed.

    Having resurrected the master-slave dialectic, Hegel did not know what to do with it. For him, it was unthinkable and unfeasible that the slave should trump and triumph over his master even when the master is abominably inferior to the slave. The unhappy consciousness courts disaster and the cult of futile martyrdom, all for the glory and magnification of something he calls the Absolute Spirit, which is a euphemism for God.

    It was left to Karl Marx, the great philosopher of radical consciousness, to stand Hegel’s logic on its head. Drawing deeply on Ludwig Feuerbach, another great German materialist philosopher, Marx avers that rather than being an ordinary drama of existence, the master-slave dialectic, or class struggle unto death, is the fulcrum on which history revolves and human society evolves.

    There is nothing like the absolute spirit but the disguised will of humanity. Rather than seeing paradise as an otherworldly pursuit, it is indeed a worldly possibility which must be struggled and fought for. For good measure, and as if he was heckling Hegel, Marx famously thundered: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it!!”

    It was as if Barabbas had anticipated Marx. Although often demonised as a violent thief and armed robber in Christian mythology, he was indeed a more stirring and intriguing historical figure. Barabbas was also a freedom fighter, having taken part in several uprisings against the local Roman tyranny. Echoes of our own kidnappers?

    In Mark 15:7, Barabbas was described as a member of the Jewish resistance who was in jail because he had taken part in a recent uprising. Many biblical scholars actually believed that he was an important figure in the local resistance. This might explain why the local crowd was rooting for him instead of Jesus. Barabbas might have been a thief, but he was also a local hero.

    The Roman authorities were not neutral arbiters. Through shrewd and strategic thinking, they might have come to the conclusion that the heroic thief was a lesser social risk than the man who called himself the messiah and who was beginning to acquire a huge following. If the strange man were to parlay and leverage his religious popularity in favour of political insurrection, that would surely be the end of Roman suzerainty in the land.

    There is an interesting twist at the end of this tale of Barabbas which has a peculiar resonance for contemporary Nigerian society and its kidnappers. Apart from Barabbas and Jesus sharing the same distinction as heroic rebel leaders, they also shared the same first name. Barabbas was actually Jesus Barabbas which was a very popular name around that place and period. In subsequent Christian literature, the name was deliberately expunged because the writers could not bear their religious hero share the same name as a common criminal.

    Like Barabbas who was a hero and a thief at the same time, kidnapping or hostage-taking combines heroism with perversion and criminality. Lest we forget, the original acts of hostage taking and kidnapping before it went industrial were isolated acts of considerable valour that were designed to draw attention to the parlous condition in the Niger Delta.

    But very soon, human prospecting became the equivalent of oil prospecting along the patterns of thievery and gangsterism. The militias originally trained to murder opponents and rig election now transformed into an equal opportunity employer of violence and forcible abduction in their own right.

    Why then are we so blest?  In Aramaic language, the name Barabbas, or bar Abba means the son of the father. The kidnappers are true sons of their fathers who have kidnapped the Nigerian state and appropriated resources belonging to a whole nation. The kidnappers seek not only to emulate their fathers but they also will like to immolate them. In this they appear to be a step ahead of their fathers in terms of criminal perversion. The son is truly the father of the man. The prospects are grim.

    In addition to all the measures to be put in place to eradicate the menace of kidnapping, greater surveillance, community policing, a better network of state informants, greater scrutiny of state bribery and money laundering, the resuscitation of the death penalty etc, please try this simple one. Let Barabbas stop stealing our money and let us see if his children will not stop kidnapping our people.

     

    (First published in July, 2010.)

  • Desperately seeking Christmas

    Was there not a time in this country when something called ‘Christmas bonus’, given to workers in the form of physical gifts or an extra ‘thirteenth month’ salary, ensured that people had a jolly time of Christmas? Now the only gifts workers are getting are months of unpaid salaries

    When I think I have heard all the jokes about Christmas, more keep coming. It began with the year former Head of State, now Pa Olusegun Obasanjo, was said to have attempted to cancel Christmas. That was when money was beginning to be scarce and the insurance was not paying up, mainly because I think no one had taken out an insurance against unforeseen happenings like unpaid salaries. Mostly, insurance firms insure against traumatic events like robbery, accidents, sickness, loss, etc., but I don’t think they have a column for traumas caused by ‘unpaid salary’.

    Then it went on to the year when an attempt was said to have been made to change the date of Christmas. I think that had to do with the times salaries began to come late; so there was this attempt to shift the date of Christmas to tally with the times salaries would be paid.

    After that came the period when they said Christmas was endangered and needed to be saved. I think that happened when everyone experienced the sort of low spirit that comes through things like job losses, loved ones losses, economic wars, insurgencies, etc. That was when people lost hope, threw up their hands and cried in desolation, ‘what is this life worth even?’ Ask me; I really wish I knew the answer to that one. Now, I have it on good authority that Christmas is lost and we need to seek her, desperately.

    I once watched a show on TV titled ‘Desperately seeking someone or the other’ but I could never really understand it because I thought the character everyone was seeking was right there in their midst, laughing and talking and joking with them. Why then I thought, in my naivety, should anyone seek the fellow? After all, you seek only that which is lost.

    That was exactly what I thought too, when I heard that people were now looking for Christmas. I thought it rather queer that the season of goodwill to all men, when people charge at you bearing gifts and beaming smiles, could hardly be said to be lost. It has been bearing down upon us all for a while now. Indeed, you know you are right in the midst of the Christmas season when you look outside and see nothing but the dusty haze, sheep crying from hunger, homes not much better than stables and people sleeping on straws – no money for mattresses any more. So yes, we are in the season of gifts.

    What gifts?, someone asked me. When last did you receive a gift? Was there not a time in this country when something called ‘Christmas bonus’ given to workers in the form of physical gifts or an extra ‘thirteenth month’ salary ensured that people had a jolly time of Christmas? Now the only gifts workers getting are months of unpaid salaries. That, they said, is why Christmas seems to be lost. Oh dear, dear me, that is sad, cause many people will be forced to live on borrowed money.

    Well, someone else said, living on borrowed money in Nigeria right now is not as easy as it used to be. To start with, you are owing your creditor real big because whoever loans you money is literally lord of your life. When he coughs, you think it means something. More importantly, taking your borrowed money to the market is proving really hazardous these days, what with the way prices are moving – worse than space-rocket speed; and that’s when you can even get anything to buy. Someone I know tried in vain for one week to buy fuel into his car, even on borrowed money.

    Everyone is of course blaming the rise in dollar and fall in Naira; and everyone is blaming that one on the fall in crude oil prices; and everyone is blaming that one on oil glut in the world market; and everyone is blaming… I tell you, there’s a big blame game going on. It just convinces me more that there is a real conspiracy against Christmas orchestrated by the economic market.

    Not wanting to join the blame game, I resolved to find my own Christmas and the joy that goes with it, even if everyone else seems to be in the doldrums about it. I decided that the Naira may rise and fall like the old Malian Empire as it likes, and the crude oil may fall and not rise like the Songhai Empire as it likes, I would go in search of Christmas and find it.

    First step, I headed for the shops. They weren’t too hard to find. Most of them had carols softly beaming out of loud speakers and tinsel colours romancing the atmosphere to infuse cups of Christmas cheers into the economically weary shopper. Taken, I had a look at the lights on sale. After all, there was nothing wrong with trying to get some colourful lights to brighten up the ol’ stable that is now my house and give the ‘horses’ a bit of relief.

    I looked more closely at the lights: there was something wrong with their prices: they were in thousands of naira. How can decorative items cost thousands of naira? I called the attention of the salesperson and pointed out that the real price had not been fixed on the string of lights that caught my attention. She looked, saw, and checked with her supervisor and reported that the price on the item was correct. I gulped; she gave me a pitying look. Fresh straw on the stable floor will have to do this year for colours.

    Next, I examined my old Christmas tree; it was in tatters, with pieces literally falling out. No Christmas is complete without that tree – it symbolises life; it symbolises hope. It also symbolises an economic investment – I thought I could always sell it when all else failed. Instead, it fell into pieces. I was thrown into a panic; my investment had gone down the drain and I had no tree. To replace the tattered one was not going to be easy but I went shopping for a new one.

    The price of the tree that appealed to me, however, made me laugh; it was way beyond that borrowed living status we have been talking about. I decided quickly: a fresh tree from the back of the house will have to do this year for that symbol of hope. Besides, I hear good trees are now worth a lot on the China market.

    To really bring home my Christmas, I decided a chicken or two or three might be helpful. Perhaps their clucking sounds might cajole and convince the season to come out of hiding. When I approached the chicken stall in the market, however, I was not too sure anymore. There they were, clucking heartily away, really encouragingly. That gave me hope that Christmas would come out of those birds. However, the clucks in the form of prices coming out of their sellers were not so pleasing. Their excuse?; the dollar had risen and the naira fallen! What the…! What on earth has the dollar got to do with the price of chicken?

    Ah, the sellers chorused, don’t I know that chicken feed is imported? Don’t I know that chicken wire is imported? Don’t I know that chicken this or chicken that is imported? Heck, I thought, shouldn’t chicken names be imported while we were at it?, as I stormed away. Obviously, for Christmas to be found this year, the head of the house must go hunting for a bush fowl!

    Have a very cheery Christmas, reader; I’m sure you’ll find it.

  • Now, bloggers are their nemesis

    Now, bloggers are their nemesis

    If not for anything else, the current senate will be remembered for ages to come as a body without any sense of shame or propriety. With this lot, Nigeria has really scraped the bottom of the barrel. At a time when it should be working round the clock to redeem its battered image and to shore up its badly damaged credibility, the senate is coming up with the equivalent of a final solution for its critics in the guise of Social Media Bill which will put the fear of the Lord in its tormentors.

    It has been quite a hilarious sight this past week watching the members of the august assembly whip themselves into such frenzy. Snooper was particularly entertained by Senator Biodun Olujimi from Ekiti state who was so hopping mad with the cyber urchins that she became almost apoplectic with rage. One can imagine the irate Ekiti woman chasing around the urchins with a pestle for yam pounding. If only one had not known the former Ms Biodun Ariyo of old NTA Ibadan fame as an irrepressible journalist herself. How times change.

    But it is said that when you are in a hole, you must stop digging. The senate is furiously digging, shaming those who believe that perhaps by some miraculous reprieve the members may yet be able to salvage some honour and dignity from the epic mess. The scale of venom and fury its attempt to muzzle its critics through this quixotic bill has attracted should be enough to convince the senators of their dismal standing with their compatriots. Even a freshly minted exemplar of press freedom like old General Muhammadu Buhari has wisely and discreetly distanced himself from the grosser absurdities of the proposed bill.

    This proposed bill fails significantly on the two major templates of integrity that must drive public spirited reforms in a patriotic political class. First the timing is suspect, coming at a time when the senate is under public siege for what is widely perceived as its brazen ethical lapses in the conduct of its own business. Second, the sponsoring body is itself a serial suspect in the moral suborning of a nation. It is a trite supposition in law that you cannot be a judge in your own case.

    Given what Messrs Julian Assang» and others have done to expose the ritzy rituals of state subterfuges in the last decade, it is a case of compounding felony with obtuseness that the Nigerian senate should put itself on the path of a global earthquake against state manipulation of information. It is said that if knowledge is power, then secret knowledge is secret power.

    The Nigerian senate should have kept its ammunition dry for another day. In the global explosion of blogging and citizens’ patrol of their state patrollers, what regulates the trade is not authoritarian and draconian legislation but a simple test of credibility and integrity. In the last decade alone, how many blogging websites set up for the purposes of blackmail and corrupt ensnarement have disappeared with their owners permanently disgraced?

    But the Sahara Reporters, the senate bête noire, has continued to grow from strength to strength, whatever the occasional exuberance and youthful enthusiasm. Its owner, the hell-raising and punitively proactive Omoyele Sowore, is no spring chicken when it comes to these matters. An outstanding Students Union leader at the University of Lagos at the turn of the nineties, Sowore has a historic and heroic record of defending to the last drop of his blood the notion of public interest as he perceives it.

    Sowore’s scary exploits as a student union leader include wresting to the ground with service pistol flung afar a former naval chieftain and future no 2 in Nigeria over a university dispute concerning examinations disruption.  The late admiral was a moonlighting law student. If the young man is not going to be fazed by the real thing, it is a hard to see how mere senate sabre-rattling can drive him out of business.

    Snooper can testify to the fact that Sahara Reporters started in a small backroom office with Sowore’s  medium-sized SUV serving as communication centre. At that point in time, the jalopy reminded one of a burgled and thoroughly vandalized electronics shop. From such humble beginnings, the intrepid fellow has put himself and his nation on the global map of citizens’ journalism.

    How time flies! It is almost a decade ago that Sahara Reporters was officially launched at the Empire State Building in New York. Snooper was there all the way from San Antonio and distributed a prepared text. This morning, we republish that address as a timely reminder to those who believe they can scorch an idea whose time has come.  Here is wishing Sokoti many more years of productive service to his fatherland and humanity at large.

  • A revolutionary condemned to live through anti-revolutionary times: for Eskor Toyo (1929-2015)

    A revolutionary condemned to live through anti-revolutionary times: for Eskor Toyo (1929-2015)

    The fact that people endure a situation does not mean that they like or accept it. A revolution is an extremely difficult and risky affair. It is for this reason that pre-capitalist slavery lasted for many centuries and so did feudalism. In history, oppressive regimes are very seldom overthrown by the underlings. The continuation of electo-plutocracy is far from being an evidence of its validity.
    Eskor Toyo, “The Question of Democracy in a Development Economy”

    Nigerians have been traumatised to no end, listening to the unbelievable revelations emanating from the $2.1billion Armsgate. No thanks to an outrageously weak President Goodluck Jonathan who, believing that his re-election superseded everything else, failed miserably to exhibit the expected level of responsibility over his six-year rule even though nobody has said he profited a penny. The former president certainly sinned against God, and humanity when, knowing how he had allowed a complete misapplication of funds meant for properly kitting the soldiers, he still permitted the trial, and sentencing to death, of 54 soldiers who, without  requisite  arms, were sent to recapture Delwa, Bulabulin and Damboa from Boko Haram. Without a doubt, their commander, Lt.-Col. Opurum, would most probably have led them to a certain death; a death they finally escaped because the redoubtable Femi Falana SAN, agreed to represent them at the General Court Martial to which they were hounded even when the military high command knew that PDP bigwigs had shared the money meant for arms and ammunition. It is equally unforgivable that, for exposing this evil, then President Goodluck Jonathan masterminded the impeachment of Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and caused that unfortunate state untold political upheavals which, however, happily saw to the unmasking of the true progressive credentials of a once highly regarded Nuhu Ribadu.

    Many of those named in this murderous Armsgate have since been hauled before the courts but missing from the charges is their core crime: that of mass murder of Nigerian soldiers and others, young and old. The onus to prove otherwise must now be placed squarely in their hands. From the depth of their deprivations, Nigerians are beginning to talk on this and a cocktail of other issues, particularly  via the social media; the same medium which rankles our senators so much they would rather banish or criminalise it.

    Here are samples of what Nigerians are talking about.

     CORRUPTION

    “Like I did say, you don’t need rocket science to fight corruption. What we need is political will. There is a saying that a tree does not make a forest. But if you remove some trees from the forest, the forest will feel it. I have said it times without number that we don’t need to treat the issue of corruption with kid gloves. Nigerian elite are very funny. Nigerian elite love their freedom. When you accuse him of corruption, if he is actually corrupt, he will play one of two cards. He will play ethnic or religious card: ‘O! I’m being persecuted because I’m this. Oh! I’m being persecuted because of my religion. Oh! I’m being persecuted because I don’t belong to the ruling party.’ But there is one thing Nigerian elite fear, they don’t want to die. If you get two or three public officers punished by tying them to the stake before shooting, I can assure you that corruption will stop. We have had that experience in this country. When two or three people were shot for drug pushing, throughout the 18-month period of General Buhari, no single case of drug pushing was reported in Nigeria again. People who are stealing us blind are not up to one per cent of the population. We can afford to do away with them. We can afford to lose them. What you need is a state of honest people”-Niyi Akintola SAN.

    “It is only the very naive that holds the opinion of corruption hanging its hands by the sides when its existence is being threatened. To the corrupt, nothing matters, not human lives or anything whatever besides money and power. It is not important how many millions of Nigerians are lost to Boko Haram. Nor do the tens of hundreds that are lost due to bad roads. Agents of corruption do not care about the shameful high maternal mortality and childhood mortality rates in Nigeria. The decline in our Health Care Delivery System is of no concern to them. After all, at tax payers’ expense, they and their families have access to high quality health care anywhere in the world.

    “Our education is in shambles. It continues its downward slide year after year. Agents of corruption are not interested in the least. Their children and wards have high quality education, paid for with proceeds of corruption. The war on corruption is a war that must be won. No one should be above the law. Anyone who acquires wealth through dubious means or by abusing people’s trust must be made to pay back and be punished. It is irrelevant how powerful they think they are. Nigeria is greater than all of us. It is a shame that these rogue politicians and their collaborators are allowed to continue to exploit our docility” -Mama (Dr) Adebimpe Okunade -Retired university teacher.

    We have to thank God for little mercies. But for his love for Nigeria that made a regime change possible, despite all the road blocks, these revelations would not have seen the light of day and we would have been no wiser. While innocent civilians together with hundreds of our hapless soldiers in the North East were ‘sharing blood’ (apologies Madam P.) under imminent strangulation by Boko Haram, the PDP people were busy SHARING the bounty:  money meant to defend them.  Honestly, l struggle to take in some of these things -wondering how people appointed to serve could, together with their crooked allies, descend to this level of debauchery! Someone should by DEED POLL change PDP name to Peoples Sharing Party of Nigeria.

    Rawlings on my mind! – Dr Biodun Adu, Consultant, O& G.

     

    ON THE KOGI ELECTION CONUNDRUM

    “The conclusion which I have reached is not that I have, by any stretch of the construction of any of the provisions of the laws cited by counsel, affirm the correctness of the decision of the first defendant (INEC) to declare the election as inconclusive and, or affirm the validity of the supplementary election scheduled for 5 December, 2015” – Mr Justice Gabriel Kolawole.

    ON THE ANTI PEOPLE SOCIAL MEDIA BILL

    “Because ISIS is recruiting massively through the internet, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, two of the aspirants in the forthcoming U.S Presidential election, want some parts of the internet shut down for security reasons. Our senators here in Nigeria, for outlandishly selfish reasons, are clamouring for the same thing just so they can prevent the disclosure of their wayward ways, among them their incredibly huge quarterly allowances. Even with oil prices now below $40.  However, despite the security-related reasons driving the suggestion in the U.S, it is still a non starter. Conversely, our senators, with a once-upon a one-time activist, Dino Melaye, as its chief  motivator,  even if as a bag man, are insisting on passing a law to criminalise the Social Media in Nigeria. We pray they go ahead (for) it will turn out to be their very nemesis.

    The link below provides an insight into the US proposal.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/technology/shut-down-internet-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html?emc=edit_ct_20151210

    &nl=personaltech&nlid=55524476&referer=

    We are getting to year end, and, just so I don’t burden my readers with all these truly depressing post- Goodluck Jonathan revelations and thereby spoil their weekend, please come with me as I serve you this wisecrack from the distinguished Professor Michael Omolewa: scholar, diplomat and education historian who served, between September 2003 and October 2005, as the 32nd President of the General Conference of the  UNESCO, Paris.

    Mike -as friends call him – regaled me with it at a marriage engagement at which we were both guests at the weekend.

    A monkey, he said, observing people dancing and spraying money at a party offered to give one of the merry makers N50, 000. She refused everybody until it was the turn of a Nigerian university professor. There was a caveat though. The would-be beneficiary would have to answer two questions and ask the monkey one.

     

    Dialogue:

    Monkey: What is your name?

    Professor: XYZ (omitting to mention Professor)

    Monkey, all smiles, agrees to give him the N50, 000.

    Everybody claps, congratulating the Professor.

    Second Round of Questions

    Monkey: What do you do?

    Professor: I am a Nigerian university Professor

    Monkey starts to weep

    Third Round of Questions and the Professor’s turn

    Professor: Would you join us in the university?

    Monkey: Weeping bucketfuls now, monkey, holding tight to her money, fled back into the bush.

    I am still laughing.

  • APC’s limited options

    APC’s limited options

    By 2019, a plebiscite will decide just how well and how far the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has interpreted and approximated the yearnings of those who voted them into office. If the party has a foreboding of what that plebiscite would reveal, it has not let out that guarded secret. Instead, it has seemed to infuse its intra-party politics with energy of a different sort. The party’s vision of 2019, especially as indicated by the intrigues over the Kogi State governorship poll, is one of positioning and jostling for prominence and dominance. In 2015, the party was swept into office on the ashes of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In the next general elections, the electorate will judge the party on its policies, on its principles, on its ability to mobilise, inspire and empower the voters, and on the morality and character of its leaders.

    The yardsticks by which the party will be judged will reflect its cohesiveness, ideology and purpose in a modern, complex, changing and challenging world. Here the party will be sorely taxed. It will have to convince the public that its basic assumptions and its inherent ability as a party are not only appropriate and well thought-out, but that its leading lights, its philosophers, and its prefects have an instinctive understanding of what the party represents and are able to translate that representation into the country’s national and geopolitical ambitions. At the time President Muhammadu Buhari made his statement of belonging to everybody and to nobody, a statement that delivered more literary effects than it spoke to logic or even rudimentary philosophy, it was worrisome that at the top echelon of the party, the connotative effect of the president’s seemingly innocuous play on words was lost on everyone.

    Thus devoid of the right foundations, the immiscible coalition that gave the country the APC has tended to work at cross-purposes, its ideology representing nothing more than a pastiche of simple and pragmatic ideas of governance and administration, and a concoction of rigid and amateurish delineation of rights and wrongs. The manner of their coming together to form the APC and the road map they presented to Nigerians were initially thought to adequately represent the party’s foundations and ambition. The decay in the PDP may have made it possible for the APC to snatch power; but it is unlikely that the process of winning the presidency will in itself be sufficient for the party to sustain its hold on power, stabilise its disparate parts and expand its influence. The dissonance in the party over the Kogi governorship debacle, for instance, showed clearly that the party’s pretence to unity, purpose and ideology was insufficient to atone for its wobbly structure and unregulated internal dynamics, or to insulate it from the danger of imploding or fragmenting sometime in the future.

    Without discipline and ideology, the party’s limitations and fault lines may become accentuated, and its hope of redemption through the social and ethical crusades embraced by its leadership may become a chimera. Rather than distill from the party’s road map a coherent and consistent progressive ideology on their assumption of office, party leaders turned on themselves in a complex and fierce struggle for the soul of the party. For a new party, this struggle may not necessarily be inimical to its journey of self-discovery; but there must be guarantees the final outcome would produce the relevant skills, ideas and methods necessary to solidify the party and sharpen its domestic and international ideologies. So far, the party has birthed more trouble than it can manage. Moreover, the president has not shown a clear understanding of the nuanced components of national greatness beyond his crusades against insurgency and corruption, and he has hidden behind these crusades to explain his lack of attention to the other urgent aspects of national life.

    In addition, the president’s tactical flaws have spawned a brood of vipers within the party, ambitious politicians obsessed with 2019 and positioning themselves bitterly to take advantage of the existing vacuum. The vacuum was created by the indefensible idea that the president belonged to everybody and to nobody despite being a product of a political party who could not have won the presidency without the compromises and consensuses on culture and religion midwifed by his party. Repudiating the foundation that produced him merely created a vacuum that is being creatively and aggressively manipulated and exploited. To worsen an already fractious and rancid state of affairs, the president’s body language may indicate he is not altogether averse to encouraging and nurturing a new and amenable elite, especially in the Southwest, as this column remarked when the president finally assembled his cabinet. Such Machiavellian tactics didn’t work in the 1960s; it stands little chance of working even now for a number of historical and cultural reasons that those outside the Southwest may find somewhat puzzling.

    One of the reasons for the failure of outsiders to nurture a countervailing Yoruba elite is the inability of non-Yoruba politicians to appreciate the content and character of the disharmony existing within Southwest politics. They fail to recognise that the very logic that produced the dominant Southwest political elite is the same creative force that sustains, protects and propels them. It often takes much more than the artificial machination of outsiders to foist a new elite on the region. The region is overly suspicious, reflective, driven by an implacable code of honour, and is much more close-knit than its destructively ambitious and fractious elite suggest. If it were not so, the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo would not have survived the gang-up engineered against him by brilliant insiders, some of them his associates, and manipulative outsiders, many of them his sworn enemies.

    As the life and times of Chief Awolowo showed, any mercurial leader the region produces may find it difficult to escape the resentment of those mentored by him, if not their covert or overt revolt. It is an attitude distinctly southwestern, perhaps rooted in their culture, educational attainments and worldview, notwithstanding the great and laudatory fundamentals of their ethos. With a history so open and unambiguous, it is surprising that Nigerian leaders, and in this instance those who control the APC in Abuja, often misread political developments in the Southwest to attempt either a reconfiguration of the ruling party (NPC/NNDP versus AG/NCNC/NEPU in 1964) or the nurturing of a new political elite in the Southwest, as some are anticipating before 2019. What is undeniable is that resentment, revolt and bitterness are festering around the APC, and party leaders are not showing the imagination and flexibility to manage the fissures. If the problem persists  for the next year or two, the party will have reached the point of no return.

    Those who would have imbued the APC with a life force, helped to fine-tune and concretise its inchoate ideology, and engineered a daring rescue of the economy as well as foist a new and futuristic social and political order, have been considerably weakened by internal suspicion, rivalry and short-term permutations. It will become increasingly costlier to rectify the problem in the APC as the party ossifies in the months ahead. The party knows what to do to reclaim lost grounds; but it is unlikely to take what it feels are a humiliating reversal of its newly adopted methods. They will believe that notwithstanding the president’s inability to define and aggregate the party’s raison d’être and ambition, the new ministers’ individual efforts would somehow coalesce into a unified and effervescent whole. Such grandiose hopes are misplaced, for the cart cannot lead the horse any more than the body can function optimally without vision.

  • INEC’s first two elections

    INEC’s first two elections

    It is not a flattering recommendation that the first two elections conducted by INEC’s new management floundered very badly, caught as they were in the morass of violence, questionable calls, and between the government’s dithering and lack of urgency. Elections in Kogi and Bayelsa States were slated for November 21 and December 5 respectively; yet the INEC board was not constituted until October 21, a mere one month to the first poll. President Muhammadu Buhari appointed an acting chairperson in July, and waited for about three months before appointing a substantive head and six other INEC commissioners for the vital electoral body. Though INEC spokesman disclosed that the electoral umpire’s functions were not impaired, he seemed to be suggesting paradoxically that the positions of six commissioners and a chairman were superfluous. The near fiasco the Kogi and Bayelsa polls became put the lie to such confident talks.

    Significantly, both polls were conducted separately, and were heavily policed. Yet, they floundered. Given how badly the electoral body performed, could they be relied upon to handle a general election in which the security agencies would be stretched wafer thin? If it took the deployment of overwhelming number of soldiers and policemen to manage just one election at a time, it staggers the mind to wonder how many would be needed all over the country at once. It is established that the Buhari presidency romanticises slowness; INEC should on its own not canonise shambolic electoral organisation, especially poor judgement and abysmal legal advice, if the country is not to come to grief in subsequent polls.

     

  • Atmosphere of tentativeness in Kogi

    Atmosphere of tentativeness in Kogi

    Unfazed by the deliberate convolution scripted into the recent Kogi governorship election, Abiodun Faleke, running mate to the deceased All Progressives Congress (APC), Abubakar Audu, has stoically returned to the House of Representatives amidst cheers and approbation. He has put the Kogi conundrum in the hands of Nigeria’s eminent judges, assured that he and the state he strove to serve would get justice. In the hands of the media, reporters and columnists have judged the APC leadership derelict in their responsibilities, lax in political morality, and superficial in their understanding of the historical import of their actions, biases and prejudices. Were the matter to end in the media, both APC and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would stand condemned.

    The public, on the other hand, is ambivalent. They will flow and ebb with the tide of opinions on the subject. If APC’s Yahaya Bello, the anti-party politician and APC member peremptorily thrust forward to collect the diadem when the election was virtually concluded, then so be it. And if Hon Faleke, as morality, logic and common sense would dictate, then why not. Indeed, irrespective of the state’s ethnic configuration and the quaint arithmetic of the poll result, should circumstances dictate that Idris Wada, the governor and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) be foisted on the state by INEC’s electoral sleight of hand, again, to the ambivalent public, why not.

    For Kogi, held in thrall by unprincipled party leaders, hesitant and scheming INEC, and ambitious and grabbing party candidates, everything is in flux, as tentative as it can be. No one typifies this tentativeness as much as the opportunistic Mr Bello, now governor-elect. He had inherited a vote of over 240,000 from the Audu/Faleke ticket on November 21 simply by the decree of APC leaders, and added a little over 6,000 of his own in the supplementary election of December 5. But asked how he intended to harmonise the fractious state and placate the aggrieved, the governor-elect suggested, “In a family, there is bound to be one misunderstanding or the other, but if I assume the responsibility as governor, I will ensure that all the aggrieved parties are brought together.”

    Mr. Bello is sensible not to speak of justice, without which peace can neither be restored nor enthroned. He spoke, matter of fact, of a mechanical and abstract effort on his part to engineer peace and reconciliation, almost as if these goals float in the atmosphere, and can be plucked insouciantly. But more importantly, plagued by doubt, his conscience pricked, Mr. Bello betrayed his appreciation of the tentativeness unnerving the state when he talked of “if I assume the responsibility as governor.” It is not just doubts that plague him, it is clear his conscience is troubled. He is rightly judged by the public as grasping and opportunistic, but at least he has a conscience, it seems. Had APC leaders and INEC itself half as much reflectiveness and conscience as Mr. Bello, it is doubtful Kogi State would be enveloped by a spirit of tentativeness or confusion.

    APC leaders have suggested they would be minded to replace Hon Faleke as deputy governor-elect, should he continue to stick to his position. The public should ignore the party’s bravado. What ails them is not the implication of the conundrum they engineered in the state, or of any abiding interest in the cause of justice or even the welfare of the state. They are troubled by their frothing conscience. After all, the matter of selecting a running mate is definitely and constitutionally not the responsibility of the party, but that of the governorship candidate. The party’s leaders are worried that if Hon Faleke sticks to his guns, and Mr. Bello embraces realpolitik to pick an Igala running mate, it would foster the anomaly and injustice of having a governor and his deputy who were really not part of the process of winning the election. It is apparent APC leaders fear this injustice will haunt them to the very end of their days and, if iconoclastic posterity is anything to go by, be interred with their bones.