The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

The Blogger as Nemesis
As the world goes through rapid transformations, so do the professions and the old divisions of labour. There are interesting developments that make nonsense of specialization and even the old notion of the nation-state. Yet it is too early to conclude that globalization will provide the coup de grace for the post-colonial state in Africa or precipitate what will put the superannuated colonial contraption out of its terminal misery.

The omens are not very reassuring. Already gravely imperilled by its juvenile delinquency, its serial breach of the Lockean contract, its aggravating insolence, its multiple infidelities, the post-colonial state in Africa lurches from crisis to crisis, conflict to conflict and confrontation to confrontation.

Such are the internal contradictions, the antinomies between state and nation that the moment it weathers a crisis, a more terrifying disaster looms in the horizon. Disorder is the organizing order, the dysfunctional fulcrum on which national dysfunction revolves.

Yet despite its debilitating impairment, its historic infirmities, the post-colonial state, particularly its Nigerian incarnation, has shown a surprising resilience, a capacity for self-reproduction, an elegant ability to mutate at short notice that has defied all historical odds and doomsday predictions.

The obituaries have been premature. The reports of its death are grossly exaggerated. Drawing incredible resources from its very contradictions, its increasing criminalization and sheer perversities, the Nigerian state fumbles and wobbles on. As the Nigerian state mutates, wearing several masks of tyranny while its fundamental nature remains the same, adversarial journalism, its dialectical mirror image, is also constantly transformed as a response to its own internal contradictions as well as historical developments.

In the First and Second Republics, oppositional journalists were content with writing their stuff and waiting for the government to come for them. Many ended in jail. Ironically enough, because the effects of colonial rule were yet to wear out, there were still some rules to the game. The government was trusted to obey its own laws.

As the Nigerian military state naturalized and sheer lawlessness became the norm, military tactics also infiltrated the press. Obeying the dictates of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature, journalists were no longer willing to trust their fate to a state which murders its own citizens. Hence the rise of the “guerrilla journalist’, an insurgent with mobile typewriter who operated outside the laws as an intellectual sniper.

Now, the journalist as journalissimo has arrived: an insurrectionist with a laptop who has carried the battle to the state from global space. It is the age of the new kids on the blog. Just as it is said that war is too serious a business to be left to soldiers and politics is too sacred a profession to be left to politicians, journalism is too serious a business to be left to professional journalists.

Nature abhors a vacuum and as history has demonstrated, every profession which devalues itself, which desecrates its sacred obligations, invites external interventions. The generalissimo defied and demystified the general; the political practitioner disrobed the politician; the “journalissimo” has demystified journalism turning citizens’ arrest into the pre-eminent form of order-enforcement.

The age of the Internet is proving as revolutionary as the discovery of the printing press. Of all the dangers threatening the post-colonial state in Nigeria, none is more debilitating and potentially more devastating than the rise of the Nigerian blogger. Using tactics and electronics normally associated with advance espionage, taking advantage of globalization and the sheer borderlessness of the new world, the blogger threatens the very foundation of the post-colonial state in its totality and territoriality.

As explosive exposure follows explosive exposure, as revelations of spellbinding corruption and official chicanery cascade, the legitimacy and authority of the state suffer signal erosion. Thus an interview began in Benin Republic under the watchful eyes of rent-seeking immigration officials might be concluded in Lagos, Nigeria only to be edited and put on the World Wide Web in New York.

Totally paralyzed and rendered inept by the ceaseless global flow of information, the state becomes a minor, inconsequential actor within a micro-pluralism of power. Unable to police either its borders or its so-called citizens, the state forfeits its power of surveillance. In this brave new world of Internet hostilities, the surveiller becomes the surveilled.

As disaffected nationals in the Diaspora position themselves on the Internet lobbing artillery shells of disgust and disdain on the home country, the situation becomes very dire indeed. Such are the resources available; such is the intellectual firepower that village despots tremble in their liars under the sustained bombardment. The hunter has become the hunted.

What then has brought the post-colonial state in Africa to this critical impasse? And what is the implication for the colonial contraptions that go by the name of nation-states on the continent? In all the major indices of governance, the state is unable to justify its fundamental raison d’Átre. The serial defaulting on the Lockean contract between the ruled and rulers, the peevish and pathological re-offending, have led to massive alienation and one-way exits from the benighted continent.

The result has been a steady regression into the Hobbesian state of nature where everything is short, nasty and brutish. With the breakdown of law and order, with the collapse of legitimacy and authority, anarchy reigns supreme and hostage taking both at the official and unofficial level becomes the norm. In frustration and impotence, and unable to obey its own laws, the state resorts to hostage-taking while the armed insurrection replies in kind. The result is new kind of anomie unique to civilian governance in post-colonial Africa.

Yet dire as the situation is, it can get much worse. In Nigeria, for example, the crisis of governance is at the level of state and civil society. With poverty stalking the land, with the massive cooptation of many oppositionists into government, and with the exit of the best and brightest, there is struggle-fatigue. Nigeria lacks a tradition of long-distance resistance. We are all short-distance runners.

Many contemporary leading lights in civil society anchor their reputation on one-off acts of defiance against a particular tyrant which they then inflate into cosmic self-importance, or which they use as bargaining chips for entrance into the ruling caste. Any wonder then that every phase of resistance usually leaves the opposition gasping for breath and ready to accommodate any political settlement imposed by the ruling class?

Unlike the ANC which was founded in 1912 and which did not come to power until the mid-nineties, there is no such tradition of sustained and organic resistance. Every contention with the latest tyrant has to begin anew, and with fresh political formations. The result is an elite and elitist power play completely dislocated and disconnected from the real people. Realising that neither their vote nor even presence count, the people take refuge in cynical apathy as factions of the elite duel themselves unto death.

This is the political disequilibrium under which our new kids on the blog will operate. There is a clear and present danger to this. Rather than leading to a revolution or even the reformation of an ailing state, the revelations of official shenanigans in the absence of a critical mass may provoke an extreme, right-wing fundamentalist cleansing of the state which may push the nation in the direction of civil war and dismemberment or lead to the consolidation of revolutionary anarchy.

On the other hand, the abstract idealism which often underpins these interventions, the attempts by nationals in the Diaspora to view developments at home with the critical lens of developments in the west may lead to further alienation of the state without creating an enabling or conducive environment for genuine change at home. Either way, it is a play of giants with the blogger granted his fifteen minutes of fame, but marooned on the internet or stranded at the Empire State Building.

In the past twenty years, the Nigerian military state has demonstrated a surprising capacity to deal with emergencies and an impressive ability to assume different masks to deal with political exigencies. It has also shown a ruthless will to power. It found a frowning general to handle the emergency created by the profligacy and irresponsibility of civilian governance in the Second Republic.

When the political class began to chafe under the draconian inquisition, it came up with a smiling general. But when the smiling one lost command and the ruling caucus became gravely imperilled as a result of radical pressures from below, it came up with a begoggled frowning tyrant. After five years of low intensity warfare, the taciturn merchant of mayhem in turn expired in fabled circumstances just as he was about to push the nation over the precipice, thus giving way to another benign charmer who was to prepare the ground for the civilianized general who could frown by the day and smile at night.

It is not the blogger who will put an end to this elaborate charade, this sustained chicanery and macabre musical chairs. But blogging will help. The defenestration of some important sectors of the Nigerian press as a result of corporate corruption and individual greed has assured the blogger of a great historical platform. Yet if he is to fulfill this historic mission, the blogger must conduct a constant reality check and come up with a profound intellectual interrogation of his own vulnerability in a web of elite deceit and mischief. It is only after this that the blogger can reconnect with the endangered forces of genuine change in the home country.
- (This text was given as opening speech at the launch of the website Saharareporters.com at the Empire State Building, New York, Saturday, February 18th, 2006.)
December 13, 2015
In the name of arms

Those who swindled the country must not go unpunished

Nigerians may not yet know those involved in the messy $2billion arms deals that have dominated the country’s media in the last few days. But they know that a lot of money meant to purchase arms and ammunition for the Nigerian Armed Forces ended up in private pockets in the better-forgotten, yet difficult to forget Goodluck Jonathan years. Budget allocations to security/defence, especially in the Jonathan era, is enough evidence of what was sunk into these areas, sadly, without result. In 2008, we spent N444.6 billion on security; 2009: N233 billion; 2010: N264billion; these were Umaru Yar’Adua years. In 2011, after former President Jonathan had taken over, we committed N348 billion to security; 2012: N921.91 billion; 2013: N1.055 trillion. It fell to N968 billion in 2014, about 20 percent of the year’s N4.962 trillion budget.

These were budgetary allocations alone. But, going by revelations now coming up after the arrest of former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.), and others suspected of involvement in the arms scam, it is getting clearer that the Jonathan government went beyond budgetary provisions in disbursing funds to the Office of the NSA, ostensibly for security purposes. Former finance minister and coordinating minister for the economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said she also gave $322m to Col. Dasuki from the loot recovered from the Late General Sani Abacha. In her words, “the NSA made a case for using the returned funds for urgent security operations since, he noted, there cannot be any development without peace and security”.

These defence disbursements have many mindboggling dimensions. One, we did not have value for the money. And no one would have expected that a country at war with the dangerous Boko Haram sect would have been so inhumanly raped by those who were supposed to ensure its wellbeing. There is also the dangerous implication for our armed forces whose men and officers were ordered to confront the murderous Boko Haram gangsters, literally with bare fists.

Perhaps we need some statistics to drive the points vividly home. Boko Haram insurgents have killed more than 20,000 people since their insurrection began in 2009 and displaced more than 2.3 million from their homes. Indeed, the insurgents had wreaked havoc that would take decades to reverse, particularly in the north-eastern part of the country where their activities have been most pronounced. The group has carried out mass abductions, including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, in April 2014. Some of them have returned; others remain at large.

All these explain the joy across the land when officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) began to arrest suspects in connection with the $2billion arms deals. Others that are now having their day in court with the former NSA are former Governor Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto State who allegedly collected N100million cash from Dasuki; Emeritus Chairman of Africa Independent Television (AIT), Chief Raymond Dokpesi, said to have collected N2.1billion from Dasuki’s office. The EFCC has also launched a manhunt for a former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mohammed Haliru Bello, in connection with some diverted arms cash. One of the suspects in the EFCC’s custody is said to have refunded N200million and has pleaded for bail to refund about N1billion credited to him as diverted funds.

One good thing about what is happening is that hitherto untouchables are now being touched. That is the way it should be; the law should be no respecter of persons – soldiers, governors, ministers, religious leaders, lawyers, journalists, media owners, even former presidents! Although the case proper is yet to start, we are already being treated to melodious songs; some people are singing like canaries already. I can’t wait to hear more melodious tunes from the big people that would sing – treble, tenor alto, bass – from the witness box in the coming harvest of songs that would make the Apostolic Faith Church Annual Musical Concert a child’s play!

But Nigerians should rejoice that they did not allow their military to commit serial senseless murders in the name of punishing soldiers for mutiny because it would have been disastrous if we are now hearing what happened after those innocent soldiers had been killed. Yet, the then Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Sabundu Badeh, endorsed the summary trials and execution of the soldiers and officers who deserted the war front because they did not want to commit suicide that the Nigerian authorities wanted them to commit. Regrettably, Badeh was quoted to have said: “In fact, may be you will now push us to go and start doing field court-martial in the bush. We try them, in five minutes we would have finished the trial, kill them, bury them and we go on with the fight,” Badeh said in reaction to the barrage of criticisms that trailed the sentencing of 12 soldiers to death for alleged mutiny and other military offences. Now, the question is: Do you confront bandits who have superior weapons with bare hands? Only God knows how many soldiers and officers had gone the Badeh way in the military era over coups, real or phantom.

This was simply the height of man’s inhumanity to man. The same Marshal Badeh it was who testified that he headed a military that lacked equipment, when he was handing over to his successor, Major-General Abayomi Gabriel Olonishakin in Abuja, following his well deserved sack alongside other military chiefs by President Muhammadu Buhari on July 13. “The task of coordinating the military and other security agencies in the fight against the insurgents is perhaps the most complex and challenging assignment I have had in my over 38 years in service. For the first time, I was head of a military that lacked the relevant equipment and motivation to fight an enemy that was invisible and embedded with the local populace”, Badeh said at the occasion.

Now, if Badeh knew his troops did not have equipment, why approve the killing of soldiers who refused to make themselves available for suicide? Perhaps it did not occur to him and his colleagues that these soldiers are somebody’s children; somebody’s husbands; somebody’s fathers, some people’s breadwinners, etc. Again, was the former chief of defence staff not aware of the billions that had been budgeted for the same military to buy arms and ammunition? What happened to the billions and why would the military still be left without weapons and motivation, as confirmed by even the United States Director of the African Centre at Atlantic Council in Washington DC, Dr. Peter Pham?

If security is a function of huge budgetary and extra-budgetary allocations, then Nigeria should be one of the most secured countries on earth, given the stupendous amounts that security has swallowed in the country’s budgets in the last three years in particular. That this is not so is depressing enough. The matter is worsened by the ungodly manner the military authorities handled it. Indeed, I am beginning to be convinced that God would have to create special courts for Nigeria on the Day of Judgment. He would need more than the required number of angels for (the same) security reasons so that our big men who know all the tricks to evade judgment after committing crimes would not play a fast one on His angels. Those who say the furnace in hell would be reinforced seven times more than usual on that great day must have had Nigeria in mind. Very soon, some of the big suspects would start having strange ailments and they would be asking the courts to let them travel abroad for treatment. But the courts should be vigilant.

Part of the beauty of the arms deals case is that it would check impunity on the part of public officials and their collaborators. Those close to the seat of power did so many things with impunity even so that the blind would see, especially in the immediate past. President Jonathan would need all the angels swearing on his behalf that truly, he was not aware of these monumental scams because, in terms of whistle blowing, he had a surfeit of it; but, rather than do something, he was busy distinguishing between stealing and corruption.

The EFCC should cast the net even wider to get in all the others who might have partaken in the sharing of the arms funds. No one needs to remind President Buhari (as a general) that the scam is beyond fighting corruption. It has implications for loyalty, professionalism and cohesion in the military. It has implications for national security. It has gone beyond being swept under the carpet.

December 13, 2015
The kindness of a thousand ages

I can point you to many cities in Nigeria where we have edifices of ego such monies have bought sitting in the sun in waste. The owners are long since dead, the monies for the houses were stolen, the children have been too ashamed to own them and the people have been too afraid to use them.

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to believe that this ‘Fake Arms Deal’ probe will never end. It is becoming clear to me that the inquiry is gathering something like a snowball effect where one participant in the Dasuki game of err, ‘sharing’ is leading us to another one. My only hope now is that this long trail does not one day fetch up at my house, what with the way names are just popping up on account of the millions and billions they are said to have shared.

Unfortunately, the hand handcuffs, (they are called ‘bracelets’) the police are ‘inviting’ people with seem to fit all sizes. They shouldn’t. There should be special ones for the people who are said to have got millions, billions or trillions. The bracelets for those in the millions category should be sapphire encrusted; the cuffs for those who are said to have got billions should have diamonds and for those alleged to have got trillions; they should get gold-encrusted bracelets. The police should look into this possibility.

I read the other day that they are now making some fine, coloured and attractive handcuffs. I think those ones are for female suspects who get only thousands as their ‘share’. The women can get to choose the bracelets that match the colour of the dress, shoes and bags they are spotting when they are arrested. Now, that’s what I call respect.

Anyway, as I said, I hope the probists don’t fetch up at my house next when they have run out of houses to suspect. You never can tell; that five naira gift may not be as innocent as you think. As it is now, just hearing that 333bn or so was shared by participants in the Jonathan administration for spurious purposes is making me mumble everywhere I go now: why, oh why, the deuce was I not part of that ‘Government of Sharing’?

In all honesty, I was invited, I think, to take part. There I was sitting down quietly in my house one day in that era when a message came into my phone that I had been pencilled down for one government appointment or the other. I didn’t laugh; no, I didn’t. I simply forwarded the text to the knowing one around me and asked him to use his magical powers to detect its four-one-nine quotient. Being more cautious that the rest of the human race, he simply threw the name I had been asked to contact in the presidency into the net and came up with… nothing. Naturally, I withdrew my enthusiasm as I have since learnt to take life’s many lessons to heart.

Oh, life is always teaching one lessons. For instance, I have learnt that picking the pocket of the pick pocket is no small pocket picking job. What that means has not quite been revealed to me yet but please be my guest at cracking it. Also, when I am boiling eggs on the stove, it now pays for me to write a small memo to myself on the matter and include the hour I light the stove, and also the date. It is so easy to forget things these days without even trying. More importantly, I have learnt that Nigerians are placing higher and higher price tags on kindness. Nobody does anything out of kindness for anyone anymore in this country.

Have you noticed that when Nigerians do a favour for you they expect you to pay for it? You just try it out anywhere you go in the country. When you are given a special privilege, trust me, it is only because your benefactor thinks you can pay for it. It used to be that people would fly to help you change your tyre for nothing. These days, thank you will not do. First, you are assured that it is only because it is you that the deed is being done. Next, people expectantly look at your bag or purse as you say thank you. Failure to do the needful earns you the sobriquet of ‘an ingrate’. Many times, I have failed to correctly interpret the word ‘favour’ to mean ‘chargeable privilege’; I have instead interpreted it to mean ‘favour’. Who knew such a simple word could carry so many meanings?

But, I am not alone; Nigeria is with me in this misinterpretation game. Over the decades, this country has invited many of her citizens to partake in governance. I think the country has usually imposed only one interpretation on the word ‘governance’ to mean ‘service’, believing that somehow, hand joined in hand would produce the best system of public transport, the most efficient access to power, the best utility system, and so on. The idea behind it is really not too hard to guess. Generations yet unborn would benefit from the largesse of the brains that God in his infinite wisdom has given the citizens. That way, the country would be passing untold kindness down a thousand years.

It is not as if the country were asking a hard thing. It has been done in Europe, Asian countries and the Americas. It is heartening indeed to note that what is being enjoyed today in those places were put in place by people similarly invited to build their country. They went into governance, saw, and willingly donated their kindness for posterity to enjoy. For them, it was enough that they had been recognised for their potential.

Unfortunately though, many of those invited into governance since the 1960s in Nigeria have interpreted the word ‘governance’ to mean ‘ravage’. Resources meant to be employed for building public acts of kindness that should last through the ages have been plundered by its very protectors. When the house guard turns round to plunder the house, what is to be done?

No one has as yet explained to Nigerians exactly what these monies have been used for. Some have said they have been used to build houses of vanity. I don’t know but I find even that hard to believe. I mean, I can point you to many cities in Nigeria where we have such edifices of ego such monies are used for sitting in the sun in waste. The owners are long since dead, the monies for the houses were stolen, the children have been too ashamed to own them and the people have been too afraid to use them.

Some have said these monies are used to purchase houses abroad. Again, I don’t know but I can point you to many properties abroad owned by Nigerians which have become millstones round the owners’ necks. The cities where they are situated have eaten themselves fat on the taxes they attract; the children have no use for them even if they live in the same city, and sooner or later, have gone to be sold for a song.

Again, I have heard that monies ‘shared’ thus have often been stowed away in Swiss banks or Cayman Island banks for rainy days. Seriously? Who among us knows exactly where rainy days will meet him or her? I can also tell you that many such monies have gone unclaimed because the stowers have died, the children have been ignorant of the stowaway monies and the country has been the poorer. That’s why that little island is richer than many countries in the world.

Let us decide now to begin to give the gift that goes on giving. Building the country will be giving the kindness that can last through the ages. The country must prepare for tomorrow today.

December 13, 2015
Still on corruption and other matters

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.

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.

December 13, 2015
Silence and sound about corruption

Nobody needs to be extraordinarily bright to know that the Senate has become a source of noise designed to silence citizens who are enthusiastic about the war against corruption.

Vice President Osinbajo chose this year’s Anti-Corruption Day to appeal to citizens to opt for sound over silence regarding matters of corruption in particular and change in general. The appeal is to ensure that the war on corruption is won by the society at large, rather than just by President Buhari and his team and to prevent noise makers opposed to the emphasis on identifying and punishing thieves of state from seizing the nation’s political narrative from those committed to fighting corruption. Making the war on corruption a national task may require a roadmap by the government that citizens can intellectually and emotionally identify with, apart from pre-election identification of voters with the manifesto to dismantle the culture of corruption and impunity that has almost impoverished majority of the population.

Nobody needs to be extraordinarily bright to know that the Senate has become a source of noise designed to silence citizens who are enthusiastic about the war against corruption. For senators who got elected largely on account of Buhari and APC for change to suddenly become obsessed with legislating against citizens willing to carry the message of enough is enough to venal political office holders and public servants must worry lovers of good governance. As if by design, senators on a war path with advocates of freedom of speech seem to have distracted many citizens from the real job at hand. Instead of being encouraged to speak against corruption by members of the party elected to fight corruption, the country’s opinion leaders have been sucked into a struggle against senators who have sworn to kill free speech by labelling complaints against corruption as frivolous criticism. The noise by authors of anti-frivolity bill has increased what appears like silence on the part of warriors against corruption.

The Vice President’s call for citizen democracy is appropriate. Citizen journalism, facilitated globally by social media and other advances in communication technology, is a major factor in the enhancement of participatory democracy in the modern world. The impression given by the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Media and Publicity Committee, just as the myopia of senators on the side of a new law to gag citizens, seems to have no tolerance for citizen journalism. Freedom of speech does not exist just for professional journalists; it is constitutionally guaranteed for all citizens.

But to the mind of the house chairman of media and publicity, the legislature owns freedom of expression which it can give to whomsoever it wants whenever it finds it convenient to do so: As chairman House Committee on Media, I must say that we cannot close space for free speech. We would like to ensure that there is free speech. And the only thing we try to enjoin is that journalists, who are trained, who know the ethics of journalism, should also join the social media activity so that we can differentiate between the grains and the chaff. I think that is most essential, but we should not leave it for just those who think they can just post anything. Ideally, I think it is very important that we allow free speech. With time, we will get to the level that we can regulate. For now, I think Nigerians will rely on them. We came on the platter of change and it was this social media that brought us to power and we are making effective changes on that; I think we should live with that. Ideally, I think it is very important that we allow free speech. With time, we will get to the level that we can regulate.

Like Bala Ibn Na’Allah, the mind behind the bill to gag the media and citizens, Abdulrazak Namdas is a member of APC. The signals emanating from the ruling party in Abuja are enough to silence the average citizen. With two leading members of President Buhari’s party of change–Na’Allah feeling compelled to end citizen’s participation in modern democratic governance through citizen journalism via the social media and Namdas’ readiness to wait for a more appropriate time to regulate basic human rights, it should not be surprising that citizens are not as vocal as they were during the pre-election campaign for change. Conflicting signals from the ruling party are capable of confusing well-meaning citizens. If a party that rode to power on the promise of change and with the support of the social media operated largely by citizens from all professions now feels emboldened to gag those who use the media to blow whistles about bad governance, appeals from those in charge of the levers of power should be made to members of the ruling party to show consistent commitment to democracy and desist from threatening vocal citizens with primitive laws.

It is futile to set out to regulate citizens’ use of modern communication technology to make comments about how they are governed. Social media has added value to democratic spirit and culture all over the world. Indeed, social media has expanded citizens’ rights to hold and express opinions without hindrance and interference. Beyond the traditional role of the journalist as watchdog in democracies, social media has made it possible for citizens (ultimate owners of sovereignty) to also function as watchdogs. Na’Allah’s quick move to enact a law to muzzle the media and Namdas’ willingness to postpone creating a law to exclude non-journalists from exchanging ideas on the social media point to the same unease of APC lawmakers with democratisation of the process of signification. Reduction of the power of mediation between sender and receiver of messages characteristic of traditional media and increasing empowerment of citizens to contribute to political communication is an inevitable aspect of modern democracy. The research wing of the ruling party needs to re-educate lawmakers about the futility of any government opting to control or regulate the use of social media and the internet. What needs to be regulated or controlled is the propensity of rulers to use power to control citizens rather than to enrich them. With the internet and social media, there is no more hiding place for political or business leaders who operate or plan to act unethically. All politicians and citizens are already well protected by existing laws against treason, defamation, and libel.

The president himself can also help to encourage citizens who want to support the anti-corruption drive and other projects that can bring positive change to the country. Citizens need to know more about the soft war against corruption. Citizens deserve to know more than mere presidential declaration that thieves of state are already returning money to the nation’s coffers. It is salutary that President Buhari had discussed openly with Nigerians in Iran the efforts of his government to make corrupt individuals return some of their loot. But there are many concerns on the minds of citizens at home. For example, citizens are eager to know how much the government has collected from corrupt men and women; percentage of what is returned to what is stolen; who are the individuals being given the special advantage of corruption amnesty (as opposed to those bound to face open trial); and what agency is in charge of warehousing of returned loot?

There is no doubt that it is, in the final analysis, only citizens that can assist any party in power to succeed in bringing change to a polity, more so one that had been hobbled for decades by venality of people in power. But such citizens need to be convinced by those in the legislature and the executive that the party in power is ready ‘to play ball.’ APC lawmakers’ eagerness to regulate free speech and the executive’s preference to be general (rather than specific) in talking about proceeds from an informal corruption amnesty to selected persons are likely to create doubts in the minds of vocal pro-change citizens. Citizens who voted for President Buhari and his party in preference to the PDP that has been in power for sixteen years had shown that they are ready for the sacrifice needed to bring change. It is the people citizens had voted into power that have to reassure voters that they too are ready for the inconvenience that a Change Manifesto can create for lawmakers and those in other arms of government.

December 13, 2015
Upping the ante in IPOB/MASSOB crisis

After the death of nine people, five of whom were members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) demanding the release of Nnamdi Kanu, one of their leaders, the police have begun to talk tough. Most of the dead were killed by soldiers forcefully removing barricades mounted by the protesters on the Niger Bridge in Onitsha. The police in fact lost one of their own. Shooting unarmed protesters of course has its own legal implication, and the shooting itself may yet be investigated, though justice may be delayed. Yet, the language issuing from the mouths of security agents is not different from the one coming from the protesters, only that the protesters have spoken violence and so far used none. Has the country learnt any lesson from the Boko Haram insurgency? Perhaps not.

A few weeks ago, this column suggested that rather than threaten fire and brimstone, the federal government should design brilliant and ingenious way of engaging the IPOB/MASSOB protesters. But apparently no one is thinking for the government. Everyone is relying on force and talking of the need to crush the protesters. The column had warned that in the modern era, few secessionists embrace direct or conventional war. The vogue is asymmetric war. If the IPOB/MASSOB campaigners were to embrace violence, they would not opt for conventional tactics; and with an unmanageable insurgency in the Northeast, the crisis could easily become messy and bloody. The wise option for the government, as it was suggested in this place, is to find accommodation with IPOB/MASSOB on a realistic and sustainable basis.

No matter the amount of force applied, the problem will not go away. It can only get worse. Whether Southeast leaders support or deny IPOB/MASSOB is hardly the point. And whether sometime in the future an Igbo man becomes president hardly also matters. After all, Boko Haram did not regard the presidency of the late ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua, nor has it responded to that of the ascetic President Buhari. The government must therefore challenge itself to come up with a solution. As an analyst said recently, the crisis threatening to fester in the Southeast is partly due to the fact that there was no closure to the Nigerian civil war. The issues that led to the war, which issues have led to periodic eruptions all over the country, have not been addressed in any systematic or scientific fashion. There is no sense of national identity, and no lodestar around which the various ethnic and religious groups can coalesce. Nor is the country structured in such way as to eliminate or considerably attenuate political, cultural and religious frictions. Until these are done, the problem will both endure and worsen.

By shooting unarmed protesters, the first fateful step may already have been taken in aggravating the IPOB/MASSOB crisis. If the Buhari presidency is smart as his supporters say, it will pause for some deep reflections. Campaigning on the pages of newspapers or in the media against the promoters of Biafra will achieve nothing. Even if two-thirds of the Southeast should repudiate the Biafra idea, it would profit nothing. All it takes for this kind of crisis to assume apocalyptic proportions is just for a few dedicated martyrs to offer their lives and time to prosecute the cause. And all it takes for the matter to explode out of hand is for the government to falsely believe that it has the security apparatus to check the crisis. It does not have the resources, and it is already stretched thin by Boko Haram.

The Buhari presidency must act now while it still has the initiative. He has been accused of not really having an economic vision; at least he has not given indication he has any beyond his anti-corruption war and his idiosyncratic asceticism. And he has also been accused of not having a vision for a new social order, a vision that comes only from inside of him. It can’t be administered from outside, and cannot be taught. Worse, now, he is been accused of not having a political vision, just as ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not have one until in desperation he concocted one half-heartedly in the closing months of his presidency. Whether it can be taught or developed from within him, President Buhari has only a little time to enunciate a political vision for Nigeria. It is that vision that will inform how he responds to the Biafra crisis and other crises waiting in the wings to erupt like a volcano.

December 6, 2015
Betrayal of Kogi

As this column was being written, Kogi State was heading to 91 polling units in 18 local government areas to vote in the December 5 controversial supplementary election ordered by a vacillating Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The electoral body had declared the November 21 governorship poll inconclusive on the grounds that the registered voters in the disputed polling units exceeded the difference between the ballots cast for former All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Abubakar Audu, and Idris Wada, governor and Peoples Democratic Party candidate. INEC ignored the more definitive statistics that the permanent voter cards collected in all those units were less than 38,000, implying that there was no arithmetical miracle by which the APC could have lost the election. Sources in INEC, however, indicate that in declaring the election inconclusive, the electoral body was simply fulfilling the letter of the law.

No one will, however, dispute the fact that INEC fostered the stalemate and opened the doors to the controversy ravaging Kogi State. Why they did it, and whether they were externally influenced by those dead set against both Prince Audu and Hon Faleke for political and religious reasons will be hard to say at the moment. There are only indications that INEC was not surefooted, and that it appeared to have surrendered its independence to certain elements, including the Attorney General. If INEC behaved most uninspiringly, the presidency, which behaved most depressingly conspiratorial, is even worse. The presidency’s cavalier attitude towards the poll gives plenty of room to suspect its motives, especially the mala fide manner it distanced itself from the candidates and the poll. The first impression created was that the APC candidate, Prince Audu, was tainted, and as the PDP suggested and campaigned, it would be counterproductive for the president to identify with him. But not only was the corruption case yet to be proved, even the president himself was tainted with religious and ethnic fanaticism; yet a majority of Nigerians ignored the campaign and rallied to his side.

Closely leashed to this is the presidency’s appalling misconception of party politics and supremacy. Even in the best of times, the Buhari presidency never quite showed a grasp of what a party is and what it stands for. Now, with the contempt demonstrated by the president for the Prince Audu ticket, it was not surprising that he declined to campaign for him before he died. The APC on the whole did not even mourn their standard-bearer in the truest sense of mourning. Not only were they eager to move on, they were joyous in betraying the Audu/Faleke ticket and rubbishing it on flimsy grounds. Some analysts have however accused the party of being influenced by religious and ethnic considerations, inadvertently corroborating the longtime argument of politicians like Femi Fani-Kayode who suggested that the party had an underlining religious and ethnic agenda.

The betrayal has also permeated, for now, two of the state’s senatorial districts. Kogi Central, constituted mostly by the Ebira, and from among whom the APC picked Yahaya Bello as the substitute for Prince Audu, has ignored the cause of justice and rallied enthusiastically to the side of their son. Justice be damned, they seem to say; after all, they were not the ones who inspired the initial unjust manoeuvre by INEC, nor were they the ones who pushed a deliberately malevolent APC to rubbish the Audu/Faleke ticket, nor still were they the people who turned the president against the APC’s democratically chosen ticket for the November 21 poll. As far as they were concerned, they had no reason not to profit from the massive betrayal of the APC ticket and the wholesale repudiation of political ethics mindlessly engineered by certain APC bigwigs.

Kogi West, Abiodun Faleke’s senatorial district, is also believed to be desperately asking their son to take the consolatory position of running mate in the APC ticket so that they would have something to show for their efforts. It does not apparently matter to them that they would be forsaking the principles and the cause of justice they have been known to fight for over the decades. Their elders unwisely fought for and embraced the idea of Kogi State only to end up holding the short end of the stick. Now, their children are on the edge of repudiating the values their great ancestors fought for, their fortitude in the face of injustice and unfairness over the centuries, and the great and ennobling achievements they made as a people in the fields of culture, education, politics and even religion. It is expected that Mr Faleke will stand pat, even if he remains the last man standing, and that he will be prepared to lose the governorship seat rather than abjure the values and principles he has campaigned for, even if everyone around him, including his party, surrenders to infamy. He will not be part of the immorality of transferring the Audu/Faleke victory to the party’s favoured interloper.

It is not clear how Kogi East, where Prince Audu hailed from, would have responded had the entire process been voided and fresh primaries ordered, especially considering how they had over the years resisted power shift. But for now, having apparently lost to their bitterest rival, the Ebira, and are about losing everything except the courts say otherwise, it is expected they will stay the course and stick to the Faleke inheritance.

The most important lesson in the serial betrayal gnawing at the liver of Kogi State is that the APC was never really a party, and that whatever pretence it still has to being called one is only to the extent that a few people in the party, having hijacked the levers of party power, are now striving to foist certain primordial and parochial agenda on the rest. Intertwined with this is the fact that Nigeria is in crying need of true leaders, men and women who are neither beholden to religion, ethnic agenda or private and short-term political goals; men and women who take the long, expansive, larger and visionary view of politics and country; men and women who have a passion to break down the walls that divide Nigerians and forge a common purpose for the country; men and women who despite their own losses and disadvantaged positions would fight for justice whatever the cost, in the understanding that in the long run the society is hurt when leaders pursue or disguise private interests under national, altruistic interest.

It is also dismaying that while the Kogi APC candidature controversy raged, the only voices heard were social and public commentators and legal experts, nearly all of whom have argued from the general lacunae in the electoral law and the constitution. There was not one statesman from the North or South heard. It was as if the disingenuously aloof and silent President Buhari was the country’s only surviving and senior statesman. No statesman reminded the country of the consequences of past injustice, and no one warns of present injustice. There was no moral voice, no voice of caution, no warning against the creeping ethnocentrism and sectarianism of some powerful APC leaders who have taken a position that negates the cause of justice and endangers the future of the ruling party. If care is not taken, the betrayal of Kogi may yet be the archetype of Nigerian politics, a symbol of what is to come, as the country falls deeper into the clutches of ruthless mafias.

December 6, 2015
Rewriting the writer

In the ever unfolding track of history, there are times when a writer is proved right as a prophetic seer; a gifted clairvoyant. But there are also subsequent developments which make a mockery of the writer’s certitude and turn him into a big fool of history. Often and to emphasize what is known as the cunning of history, the two are an inseparable molecular unit with truth embedded in falsity and falsity containing a nucleus of the truth.

Although first published in 2009, the piece below has a gripping and peculiar resonance in our present circumstances which makes one wonder whether history is not a cruel joke. But things do change, sometimes slowly and imperceptibly and occasionally with a disruptive revolutionary flourish which changes the nature of the game completely.

Yet throughout the history of humankind, people fight for certain ideals often at prohibitive cost only to discover that what they have fought for is not what has actually prevailed. If their back is broken by the discovery, if their will is stymied by bitter disappointment, it will be left to others to continue the struggle. Even in wars, victory may turn out to be ultimate defeat, while revolutions often revolve into something totally unexpected and unanticipated.

By 2009 when this piece was published, it was clear that the ruling post-military coalition had reached the end of its wits. The historic settlement which saw to the military withdrawal to the barracks had not lived to its billing. The country was in dire economic and political straits. The 2007 presidential election was so badly rigged that even Umaru Yar’Adua, the principal beneficiary, joined in the protest.

But the ruling coalition limped on for another six years, despite the fierce buffeting by the gale of economic and political adversity. It even managed to win the general election of 2011 as political correctness trumped social justice. Thereafter, it was implosion and disintegration all the way as the Jonathan administration sank deeper into the peat bog of corruption and inefficiency.

Even then, such was the historic monstrosity the PDP had become that it was unwilling to go under lightly, despite all the atrocities. It tried everything in the book to remain in power. In the event, it took a novel pan-Nigerian coalition of political forces to dethrone it. If the current revelations are anything to go by, it may no longer be possible to contain the damage within the rubrics of regular democratic rule. This is where grave danger looms for the country and hence the acute relevance of the piece published today.

In closing, it may interest the reader to note that General Buhari ,in a sneak preview of the future, makes a brief appearance in this 2009 essay. He was said to have been the only northern Nigerian leader who was not booed by the irate crowd at the launch of the Foundation for the late northern leader, Ahmadu Bello. It was perhaps an augury of approaching developments.

Six years after, General Buhari is firmly in the saddle as the fourth executive president of a post-military Nigeria and his personal stock has never been higher among the masses. But the nation’s economic and political woes have also deepened. The omens could never be more dire. It will be a major historical irony if Mr Kum were to visit Nigeria under the watch of President Buhari. But then history is such a savage clown.

December 6, 2015
Upping the ante in IPOB/MASSOB crisis

After the death of nine people, five of whom were members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) demanding the release of Nnamdi Kanu, one of their leaders, the police have begun to talk tough. Most of the dead were killed by soldiers forcefully removing barricades mounted by the protesters on the Niger Bridge in Onitsha. The police in fact lost one of their own. Shooting unarmed protesters of course has its own legal implication, and the shooting itself may yet be investigated, though justice may be delayed. Yet, the language issuing from the mouths of security agents is not different from the one coming from the protesters, only that the protesters have spoken violence and so far used none. Has the country learnt any lesson from the Boko Haram insurgency? Perhaps not.

A few weeks ago, this column suggested that rather than threaten fire and brimstone, the federal government should design brilliant and ingenious way of engaging the IPOB/MASSOB protesters. But apparently no one is thinking for the government. Everyone is relying on force and talking of the need to crush the protesters. The column had warned that in the modern era, few secessionists embrace direct or conventional war. The vogue is asymmetric war. If the IPOB/MASSOB campaigners were to embrace violence, they would not opt for conventional tactics; and with an unmanageable insurgency in the Northeast, the crisis could easily become messy and bloody. The wise option for the government, as it was suggested in this place, is to find accommodation with IPOB/MASSOB on a realistic and sustainable basis.

No matter the amount of force applied, the problem will not go away. It can only get worse. Whether Southeast leaders support or deny IPOB/MASSOB is hardly the point. And whether sometime in the future an Igbo man becomes president hardly also matters. After all, Boko Haram did not regard the presidency of the late ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua, nor has it responded to that of the ascetic President Buhari. The government must therefore challenge itself to come up with a solution. As an analyst said recently, the crisis threatening to fester in the Southeast is partly due to the fact that there was no closure to the Nigerian civil war. The issues that led to the war, which issues have led to periodic eruptions all over the country, have not been addressed in any systematic or scientific fashion. There is no sense of national identity, and no lodestar around which the various ethnic and religious groups can coalesce. Nor is the country structured in such way as to eliminate or considerably attenuate political, cultural and religious frictions. Until these are done, the problem will both endure and worsen.

By shooting unarmed protesters, the first fateful step may already have been taken in aggravating the IPOB/MASSOB crisis. If the Buhari presidency is smart as his supporters say, it will pause for some deep reflections. Campaigning on the pages of newspapers or in the media against the promoters of Biafra will achieve nothing. Even if two-thirds of the Southeast should repudiate the Biafra idea, it would profit nothing. All it takes for this kind of crisis to assume apocalyptic proportions is just for a few dedicated martyrs to offer their lives and time to prosecute the cause. And all it takes for the matter to explode out of hand is for the government to falsely believe that it has the security apparatus to check the crisis. It does not have the resources, and it is already stretched thin by Boko Haram.

The Buhari presidency must act now while it still has the initiative. He has been accused of not really having an economic vision; at least he has not given indication he has any beyond his anti-corruption war and his idiosyncratic asceticism. And he has also been accused of not having a vision for a new social order, a vision that comes only from inside of him. It can’t be administered from outside, and cannot be taught. Worse, now, he is been accused of not having a political vision, just as ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not have one until in desperation he concocted one half-heartedly in the closing months of his presidency. Whether it can be taught or developed from within him, President Buhari has only a little time to enunciate a political vision for Nigeria. It is that vision that will inform how he responds to the Biafra crisis and other crises waiting in the wings to erupt like a volcano.

December 6, 2015
Nigeria: Corruption fights back

Knowing how mercilessly they had butchered the national treasury, they came prepared to meet President Buhari toe to toe, deliberately mis-characterising his determined anti-corruption war as nothing more than targeting PDP top shots.

No, far be it that I would ever try to be clever by half. But outsmarting one of the three distinguished Ekiti elders I speak with a minimum two or three times a week – they sometimes even, generously, initiate the calls – is about the only way to properly background this week’s article. Going by age, I refer above to Chief Oladeji Fasuan (84), a retired but by no means, tiring economist, former top civil servant, and pivot of that inimitable team that mid-wifed Ekiti State, Chief Dele Falegan (82), top economist and banker, and a former Director of Research, Central Bank of Nigeria, and the polyglot Prince, Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi (75), pharmacist, lawyer and mentor extraordinaire. You do not have these griots, and that rare privilege of reach, and be foolish. In a conversation with Chief Falegan this past week, he told me about an article he should be writing pretty soon, which article, God willing, you would read on these pages, about a general misconception many Nigerians have concerning President Muhammadu Buhari. This, according to him, is describing the president as BABA GO SLOW, whereas, he should more appropriately be branded ADAKEJA. That word, in our native Ekiti dialect, means he, who acts, very deliberately and stealthily, to inflict maximum punishment on the enemy. Chief talks here of the enemies of the Nigeria poor whose identities are now pouring out like a broken dam. Thanks to a head of state with a single-minded determination to drastically reduce, if not completely eliminate, corruption in Nigeria.

Last week’s massive ‘name and shame’ of those who must, at best, be a mere tip of the iceberg (Dasuki, after the long showboating, is believed to have started talking) of those persons Nigerians must hold responsible for the country’s continuing pauperisation and who, if found guilty by the law courts, must equally be held vicariously responsible for the thousands of deaths and the unbelievable ruination Boko Haram has continued to inflict on Nigerians by diverting funds intended to properly arm our soldiers, has copiously demonstrated the president’s determination. The president knows Nigeria better than to rush into things like appointing every Tom, Dick and Harry ministers just so to satisfy some naysayers, and like many presidents before him, further destroy the country. Rather, he decided to, first and foremost, very carefully probe into the Augean stable he inherited, using that very odious institution that has, like forever, scripted and underpinned the country’s shameful corruption history, namely, the Civil Service. For months, PMB engaged, almost solely, with the top guns of the civil service; a people now described, with considerable justification, as EVIL SERVANTS – to get to the very bottom of why Nigeria has remained perpetually rooted to the very nadir of the Human Development Index in spite of its massive human and natural resources. Everywhere President Buhari went since his inauguration, he has not hidden his single minded determination to fight corruption which, in his words, would kill Nigeria if we do not first slay it. A former military head of state, he knows only too well, how the military, like locusts, devastated the country leaving us only with massive hilltop mansions overlooking sprawling shanties that have become the lot of a clear majority of Nigerians. He has equally observed, ringside, how our ruinous politicians have not helped matters, either. He must have concluded that things are today far worse than when, as military head of state, courts sentenced people to decades long jail sentences before others from his military constituency came to completely institutionalise corruption and made it indistinguishable from our very way of life. This sorry state of affairs must be the driving force of the president’s anti-corruption war which the PDP corrupt ensemble has never ceased to describe as witch-hunting. It is the reason Nigerians are beginning to see a near-dead EFCC, suddenly resurrect, naming and shaming individuals whose names you dare not mention during the Goodluck Jonathan years. A caveat here, for the EFCC, though. As we have come to know from the former president’s one time godfather, the inimitable Chief Edwin Clark, there was very little EFCC could have done since President Jonathan hadn’t the liver for any anti-corruption war.

Long before stories of the former National Security Adviser, as cash dispenser, hit town, there had been an earful of Diezani Alison Madueke’s exploits in the NNPC, the undying Malabu scam, the serial oil thefts, and, of course, the massive oil subsidy scam over which Nigerians had to engage in the fight of their lives, to attest to President Jonathan’s complete inability to lead a serious fight against corruption in spite of all the make belief – Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah’s armoured BMW car scandal was a case in point.

However, if the PDP never thought a day would come when it would be disgraced out of office and, therefore, got witheringly slaughtered at the polls, their fight against President Buhari’s anti-corruption war is, obviously, more hard-headed. Knowing how mercilessly they had butchered the national treasury, they came prepared to meet President Buhari toe to toe, deliberately mis-characterising his determined anti-corruption war as nothing more than targeting PDP top shots. Although on the surface it looks like Metuh fighting a one-man war, there is no doubt he is the mouth piece of an apparently overworked, if not overstretched, rogue rapid response team set up by the PDP to pour scorn on the anti corruption war. And they are not relying only on his now proverbial verbal diarrhoea to counter every indication of their people having, again, been caught in the act.

And how massively they succeeded at first! Sitting on billions in every conceivable currency, they planned, together with their private sector co-conspirators, and made a mince meat of the APC in the National Assembly leadership elections. So successful were they that APC, the majority party, now plays second fiddle to the PDP, with the latter’s members holding down the chairmanship of the most critical committees in the House of Representatives. So bad is it, that a gloating Senator Ekeremadu, a minority senator but the senate’s Deputy President- a complete anathema – could announce, with a swagger, that Nigeria is the only country on the face of the earth, where such depravity exists. How true; we have since seen this minority senator preside over meetings of the senate. How long a weak APC leadership will tolerate that hanging shame remains to be seen; a National Assembly doing everything to suppress audit reports, which will not pass the Audit Bill but is speedily working towards passing laws to criminalise the social media just so they can protect all manners of corrupt acts. This, the reader should remember, is a National Assembly which, in over six months, has not passed a single meaningful bill that can positively affect the lives of Nigerians. But we assure them, that Jankara effort will fail. Nigeria belongs to us all.

Just as the president is determined to fight corruption to the hilt, so are these corrupt politicians ready, buoyed by huge funds, and a battalion of senior lawyers at the ready, hoping to make tonnes of money. It is these lawyers with sated consciences, who go out there, waging war against a cankerworm they should be out fighting with all their God-given skills but claiming to be apostles of human rights; fundamental human rights that deny Nigerians billions of naira that could have been spent to cut down on our atrocious maternal mortality ratio, ensure that more of the approximately three million Nigerians living with HIV and AIDS have access to medication and revive our moribund education. With some PDP leaders now named and shamed by their public exposure as sharing the funds meant to properly kit our soldiers, many of who were being slaughtered by a better armed Boko Haram (hundreds of them were actually sentenced to death for not standing up to the enemy until saved by the president on the advice of the military), it will be fascinating to see Olisa Metuh out again, blabbing about “exposing the hypocrisy, the double standard, and the dictatorial proclivities of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC government in its orchestrated anti-corruption fight in Nigeria.”

December 6, 2015