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Category: Sunday

  • Mixed signals and ambiguities galore: scattered reflections

    Mixed signals and ambiguities galore: scattered reflections

    Ko pasi, ko faili, ko kuro lojukan! [He neither passed nor failed; he was neither promoted nor demoted!]
    Moses Olaiya, aka “Baba Sala”

    The joke that stands as the epigraph for this week’s column comes from a far more ordinary human predicament than the one on which I will be reflecting this week. In the joke which is rendered in the linguistic idiom that the late Professor Dapo Adelugba gave the term “Yorubanglish”, the comic maestro, Moses Olaiya, laments the underachieving sluggishness of his son in school. Most parents are familiar with this theme in the drama of the preparation of the young for the future through schooling: as much as we all want to succeed in life, we take great comfort if it appears that our children will have much better lives than we have had. Alas, oftentimes this does not come to pass and younger generations sometimes face much more dire circumstances than the generations of their parents and grandparents. It is the predicament that results from the thwarting of this universal desire of all parents that leads Moses Olaiya in our joke to ruefully squeeze relief from the near impossible phenomenon of an offspring that is neither passing nor failing in school.

    More than two months after being elected and some five weeks after being formally inaugurated into office, President Buhari and the new ruling party, the APC, maybe said to be in the same circumstance as the son in Baba Sala’s joke: if it is still too early to say that they are passing, it is equally too early to say that they are failing. Moreover, like the son in Moses Olaiya’s joke, we do know that Buhari and the APC have barely moved Nigeria and its teeming millions of desperately hopeful citizens one jot from the spot of very dire material impoverishment and confounding psychological insecurities in which Jonathan and the PDP left the country throughout the length and breadth of the land. The question that arises from this state of affairs is this: do the President and the new ruling party have a clear and pressing sense of the problems and dilemmas they inherited from the previous administration and ruling party? Here’s another question that arises from the analogy with the predicament of Baba Sala’s son: Buhari and the APC promised that they would hit the ground of governance running hard and strong from Day One; do they think that Nigerians and the world have either forgotten that promise or will not hold them answerable for its non-fulfillment?

    Two

    It may be useful to recall here that the inauguration of Obasanjo as President and the PDP as the ruling party in 1999 was, like the present time of the coming into power of Buhari and the APC, marked by an almost unquantifiable quotient of hope and goodwill all around, at home and abroad, in Africa and the world at large. True, the sudden and still largely unexplained death of M.K.O. Abiola in Abacha’s dungeons left millions of Nigerians at home and in the diaspora bitter, confused and almost unwilling to simply “move on”. But it is also incontestable that outside the core Southwest geopolitical zone, other parts of the country were indeed not only willing, but quite eager to “move on”. At any rate, with regard to the international community, especially the Americans and the European Union, the support, the goodwill that Obasanjo and the PDP got was almost limitless. And in this connection, it is instructive to recall now that just as the goodwill that Buhari and the APC now enjoy throughout Africa and the international community comes from relief that the 2015 elections did not lead to civil strife or worse, so was the support given to Obasanjo and the PDP in 1999 based on great relief that the annulment of Abiola’s electoral mandate and his mysterious death in prison had not led to the fragmentation of Nigeria.

    Did Obasanjo and the PDP know and fully appreciate the hopes that millions in our country and throughout Africa and the rest of the world placed on their success, their promise to unite our peoples and end the long reign of military and civilian rulers that had bled the country dry at the expense of the tens of millions of the dispossessed and the disenfranchised? I testify then that I knew then, right then at that moment, that Obasanjo and the PDP would never be equal to the hopes that the country and the rest of the world placed on their shoulders. I testify that I was not alone in this presentiment of the coming historic failures of Obasanjo and the PDP. I testify that even their Euro-American backers knew or suspected that they were pinning their hopes on people who could not – and eventually would not – perform. At any rate, we have the evidence of the annual American State Department Reports on Obasanjo and the PDP’s Nigeria in which, year after year, we read a catalogue of misuse and abuse of power and the nation’s wealth all pointing to the probable end of the country as one national entity. From having been one of the PDP’s strongest backers, the Americans, by the end, had become one of the party’s most unrelenting external foes.

    Do Buhari and the APC recognize how uncannily similar are the expressions of the goodwill and hope that they now command around the African continent and the international community to what the PDP used to command around Africa and the world when the party came to power in 1999? Do the new President and the ruling party have a sense of history of the kind that would make them avert the fate that overtook the PDP? More than a sense of history is of course the inclination and the will to truly unite our peoples and redress the terrible injustices to the millions of the poor and the looted that the PDP left in the wake of its ejection from the seat of governance and power. This point leads directly to our closing section on the mixed signals and myriad of ambiguities that are indicated in the title of this piece, all relating to the performance of Buhari and the APC in the first few months of their ascension to power.

    Three 

    Unquestionably, the most troubling expression of ambiguity is in the pace, the almost inertial rate in announcing acts and policies that would give strong and clear indications of what Nigerians and the world can expect from the new powers that be in Aso Rock and the National Assembly. On the one hand, on this point, it could be said that Buhari is taking his time both with regard to forming his cabinet and actually putting into effect policies that depart from the wasteful and thieving status quo that Jonathan and the PDP left behind. On the other hand, this same slow and over-deliberate pace may very well be an indication that Nigerians and the world will wait in vain for decisive, game-changing and life-enhancing policies from the new president and ruling party. Supporters of the APC and the President point to several things that could arguably be said to be major departures from the existing status quo: the sale of NINE planes in the presidential fleet of Jonathan; the already announced downward review of the salaries and allowances paid to our lawmakers; and the downscaling of the number of cabinet ministers in the new president’s Executive Council. On these points, it does say a lot that there seems to be broad agreement or consensus between all factions of the new ruling party.

    But could it not be equally argued that there is consensus on these particular initiatives precisely because though they are significant, they do not cut deep into the structural foundations of squandermania and economic injustice in Nigeria? During his electioneering campaign, Buhari promised that he would make expenditure on capital projects for growth and development much bigger than expenditure for recurrent aspects of federal and state budgets. Every president under the PDP also made this promise but not one ever even began serious policy discussions within the ruling party about it, let alone put it into effect. So the question that arises here is this: when will Buhari put this benchmark policy change into effect and will he be able to carry all factions within his party with him?

              How does the successful Saraki anti-party and anti-democratic “coup” that gave him the Senate Presidency figure into these reflections? On the surface, it doesn’t. That is because Saraki did what nearly politicians in all our ruling class parties does and that is fight with every weapon of deceit, treachery and cynicism that he or she can get, not for the good of the party, not for the good of the Nigerian people but in the pursuit of naked self-interest. Saraki’s great miscalculation was to have done this at a far more cynical and blatant level and at a time when possibilities for real change were/are there. But on the other hand, Saraki and his band of cynical desperados fit perfectly into these reflections. This is because as far as anyone can tell from the bitter recriminations between the factions for and against Saraki, there doesn’t seem to have been any ideological or policy implications in what Saraki did; all that was at stake was the sacrifice of party cohesion and party discipline on the altar of the naked pursuit of office and power. Since politicians everywhere in the world engage in this sort of opportunistic brinksmanship, there is nothing peculiarly Nigerian about it. What is peculiar to our political order and what will haunt the President and our new ruling party in this period when it is still too early to say whether they are passing or failing is the fact that this is the sole and exclusive axis of factionalism and internal bickering in all our political parties.

    We wait for the time when the factions within the new ruling party will be structured around policy and ideological differences, together with where the President will throw his weight when this happens. What if this development never takes place? Well, then, Baba Sala’s joke would have found its true political incarnation in a party which comes to power on the winds of change but remains rooted to one spot of neither passing nor failing, neither being promoted nor demoted. The suffering and the hardship of the majority of Nigerians would continue. Let us hope that their resolve to take their destiny in their hands will still be strong, resolute, unwavering.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • On principles and principalities (1)

    On principles and principalities (1)

    The problem with principalities of power is that they hold political principles in utter contempt, particularly in “post” colonial polities where there are no stated ideals apart from the pursuit of private pleasures. In the political maelstrom of dark desires, they often achieve what Nietzsche has called the transvaluation of values, a state of mind in which values held dear by the society are given a short shrift. Honour, humility, piety and compassion for others become an irritating and vexatious nuisance.

    The problem with principles is that without the political power to drive them, they become helpless victims and pawns of power play. The political graveyard is filled with the bones of many principled people. The prophets of selfless power must always be armed or they will find themselves in the cemetery of unsung patriots. But no matter how long it takes, the precept of public principles will eventually curtail the power of principalities.

    There is an ongoing titanic battle for the soul of Nigeria. It did not end with the last election. As history teaches us, it may end in the mutual ruination of the contending classes. Principalities never know when the balance of power has shifted against them. If they have ever do, they never become principalities in the first instance. All those who thought immediate change would come with the outcome of the last election must now be shaking their head in disbelief and anguish.

    But not so fast.  Mere elections do not guarantee change. Change is not expresso coffee, particularly in a society deeply enmeshed in millennial rot. Indeed as this column never tires of pleading, elections may actually open the floodgate to centrifugal forces besieging a structurally disfigured polity. Like a deep and festering wound that has to be opened up before it can be cauterized against more fatal infections, elections also hurt.

    To the extent that the last election blasted open the frozen dialectic of Nigeria’s post-independence history, it was a sine qua non for change. The Jonathan administration had reached the end of its historic tether and political possibilities. Except for the leeches and roaches benefitting from the misery and agony of the Nigerian people, it was a historic cul de sac with nowhere to go but hell. Those who are now singing alleluia at the teething problems of the Buhari regime are only being deeply mischievous or playing ostrich with their culpability in historic crime against the nation.

    The last election and the historic regime change that accompanied it are the iron precondition for radical changes in the Nigerian polity. But democratic elections, particularly in countries split down the line, must not be misconstrued for the agency of automatic revolutionary change. They merely create the enabling and creative condition for change. Agents of reaction and storm troopers of the ancien regime still abound even where they seem to have exchanged the garment of retrogression with the garb of progressive hay making.

    Electoral victory does not automatically translate to a total vanquishing of the old forces of disorder. To start with, the victorious party itself is still a medley and hotchpotch of conflicting and conflating tendencies.  They are many who fled the old ruling party but with their soul still mortgaged to its tyrannical thralldom.  There are a few who still carry the family genes of carpetbaggers and political rustlers. And there are many diehards of the old order, particularly ethnic revanchists hobbled by civil war trauma, permanently unleashed to profit from national disorder.

    It is the contradictions let loose by these forces that led to the coup against the wishes of electoral Nigeria on the floor of the senate in the early hours of June 9th. There are times to keep a strategic silence, and such times are these. This column has a historic feel of how these forces will play out. But this is a time to play the wily deaf and dumb.

    This morning, in response to the inquiry of many Nigerians, this column brings you an earlier piece which accurately predicted the run of play in an earlier drama in which the principal combatant in the battle of the senate trumped and trounced the forces of his own father. Welcome to Shakespearean Nigeria and the Elizabethan tragedy of fathers and ambitious sons.

     

  • Speed or efficiency of the political machine of change?

    Speed or efficiency of the political machine of change?

    If there is any urgency now, it is not announcement of ministers but providing appropriate response to the herculean task in front of the new president: finding solutions to the looming crisis of unpaid government workers at the federal, state, and local level

    It is clear by now that 1968 will go down as the year the new politics of the next decade or more began….And therefore this is the year when the old politics must be a thing of the past. But if this is true—and I profoundly believe that it is—then there is no more important question than what the new politics is. What are its components, and what does it mean to the future of the country? The most obvious element of the new politics is the politics of citizen participation, of personal involvement.—Senator Robert Kennedy, Speech at a San Francisco press gathering, May 21, 1968

    The result of the presidential election of March 28, 2015 promised the emergence of a new politics in the country. It marked the end of years of a governance system that was driven by impunity, a governance model that was older than Goodluck Jonathan but that came to its nadir under his presidency. The enragement of citizens fostered by the last four years of PDP governance in the country led to momentous civic engagement that encouraged hundreds of Nigerians to do more campaigning in the social media for Buhari’s presidential bid than was done in the traditional media. Many people are now insinuating in the social media that was one of the bulwarks of support for Presidential candidate Buhari that the new president is slow. Even some traditional media houses are insinuating that President Buhari’s failure to appoint ministers three weeks into his tenure had grounded governance, despite the President’s directives that permanent secretaries in the ministries should continue to provide leadership for the ministries.

    Given the enthusiasm with which voters went to the polls to elect Buhari in March, it is not out of place for citizens to get impatient with the president’s seeming slowness in appointing ministers. Such complaints are not out of order in an ethos in which citizens, not necessarily belonging to professional civil society organisations, have volunteered since the beginning of the year to promote more civic engagement than before. But appointing ministers is not as urgent as getting the machine to effect change properly oiled for the job. The National Assembly, to use the phrase of enthusiasts of speed in governance, ‘has hit the ground running’ without functioning in compliance with the manifesto of change. But the NASS is not the focus of today’s column. The focus is on why President Buhari needs to do his homework thoroughly before naming ministers, if the impact of such appointments is to serve the need of change.

    In his covenant with Nigerians, President Buhari had stated clearly what his objectives and activities would be in his first 100 days in office. President Buhari on behalf of his party promised an administration that will change the culture of public service in major sectors of the polity and society: Insecurity from Boko Haram in particular; providing a national strategy for fighting corruption; addressing through policy initiatives the collapse of health and education sectors; and restoring economic stability. Certainly, he would need ministers to do most of these  things but not before doing due diligence on potential candidates for jobs that call for a new mindset that is distinct from the business-as-usual mode, a code word for government as a facility for self-enrichment.

     When President Buhari made these promises, among others, the culture of secrecy and governance by bill boards in vogue until May 29 did not allow him to discover the geography or ecology of the Augean stables the new president finally inherited at the end of May. Even though the new opposition party has quickly characterised the revelation that the PDP government failed to provide handover notes until the eve of the inauguration, the facts that were unearthed after the swearing-in ceremony show that Buhari had inherited a federal government that was in the last few months borrowing money to pay federal workers while leaving many states in the lurch, all on account of sudden decline in petroleum prices. If inheriting a virtually empty treasury is not an excuse for caution in rushing to appoint ministers, citizens should wonder what other excuse for caution on the part of the new president is acceptable to those who left the seat of power broken and soiled.

    The jury may still be out on how empty the treasury inherited on May 29 is, what is clear from the recent visit of governors to President Buhari on the need for an immediate bail-out of states to enable them pay salary arrears is an indication that governance at every level was very poor by the time President Buhari took over. If there is any urgency now, it is not announcement of ministers but providing appropriate response to the herculean task in front of the new president: finding solutions to the looming crisis of unpaid government workers at the federal, state, and local level.

    While many countries have become attached to the ritual of the first 100 days of a new president or prime minister, Nigeria has a peculiar situation that calls for extreme caution before major appointments are made. The old mindset is that political office is an opportunity to enrich the individual and that politicaloffices are to be shared among political party stalwarts, with little regard to the principle of governing as a means of actually improving public service beyond the usual rhetorical assurance. Undoubtedly, Nigeria is endowed with talented people and richly credentialed individuals, but if the emphasis on change demands a search for men and women of character, the searcher may give the nation a better service by not rushing to name ministers until proper diligence has been done.

    The emphasis that may be needed after decades of poor governance should not be on speed of the new president to appoint ministers. The need to chart a new course in the way the country is governed may require the kind of caution that President Buhari has shown in the last three weeks. He has been busy enough with consultation with other West African countries that collaborate with Nigeria in fighting the menace of Boko Haram. He has also been spending time on consulting with foreign countries that can assist Nigeria in efforts to recover proceeds from looting of the country in the last few years for the purpose of bringing life back to the economy. He had ensured that a process of due diligence was adopted in selection of the Accountant-General, a post that is crucial to the work of ministers. This is the first time there is a real democratic change of regime in country and selecting ministers requires proper planning.

    Citizens who had witnessed failure in governance in the past may have reasons to expect earth-shaking policy statements from new ministers, but such statements may be meaningless without knowing exactly how strong the economy is. In a system where the buck stops at the president’s table, it is in order for a president who is as concerned about the culture of governance especially quality of public service as he is about the character of ministers to assist him to err on the side of slowness than to err on the side of rushed poor judgment.

    Given the theatrics regarding election of principal legislative officers in both houses, it is proper to expect the president to use appointment of ministers to seize some of the attention of the media, if only to show existence of order in the other branch of government. But the times are now different. There is a dire need for deep reflection on appointing ministers capable of staying the course of fundamental change in the polity and society. Just as President John Kennedy said about the relevance of the first 100 days: “All this will not be finished in the first hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.” In more recent times, President Barack Obama’s observation on the significance of the first 100 days is worth citizens’ attention: “The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference.”

    It will not be out of place if President Buhari needs the first hundred days to plan how to save Nigeria from its ugly past, in view of the state of the nation he inherited three weeks ago.

  • The unnecessary hoopla about Buhari’s non appointment of ministers

    The unnecessary hoopla about Buhari’s non appointment of ministers

    Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or,  rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government?

    “Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning!” –Ecclesiastes 10:16

    Forgetting that when an old man falls he looks backwards to reflect on  the cause of his fall, much has been the hue and cry over President Muhammadu Buhari’s non appointment of ministers, even in a mere one month. The noise has become so loud you begin to wonder if this is not a carryover of the military’s era of ‘with immediate effect and alacrity’; when appointees first heard about their appointments, as well as dismissals, on the airwaves. Little, I guess, are Nigerians aware that a man of the president’s age, experience and overall exposure, cannot be expected to be driven by undue enthusiasm to jump into those same excitements that have so poorly served Nigeria.  I recall that at his second coming,  one of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s most harrowing regrets about governance in Nigeria was the fact that literally every modicum of infrastructure and institutions he left behind to drive a  developing economy, among them, the Nigerian Airways and the National Shipping Line, had been vaporised  by his successors beginning from Alhaji Shehu Shagari, through IBB and the murderous General Abacha, terminating with Abubakar,  none of who failed to appoint ministers  with alacrity. Nor did the soporific, pitiable Jonathan government delay in appointing ministers. But what did we see of those ministers of a directionless government whose overarching concern was to maintain a policy of appeasement towards every Tom, Dick and Harry President Goodluck Jonathan believed would be useful in his re-election scheme which had commenced as soon as he was sworn in on 29, May 2011.

    These ministers were active in condoning oil thefts running into 400, 000 barrels per day even where they had gifted their cousins multi-billion dollar oil pipeline protection contracts just as they were complicit in the heist of the tiny cabal that smoked us all up through the oil subsidy scam. When finally the president and minister thought of doing anything to ameliorate the economically crippling situation, Nigerians woke up on the very first day of January, 2012, to hear that every kobo of ‘subsidy’ had been removed, in a case of blaming, and punishing the victim.

    Nor was that all with these selfsame ministers. Edo State Governor, Comrade Oshiomhole, recently alleged that the Finance Minister granted multi-billion waivers, the total of which, I know Mrs Okonjo –Iweala never really told the nation. In Oshiomhole’s words: ‘The Federal Government (obviously on the advice of the coordinating minister) illegally granted waivers to various organisations, running into hundreds of billions of naira that ought to flow to the federation account’. The governor equally informed that this was further compounded by the fact that both the Ministry of Finance and Petroleum Resources, working together, simply refused to transfer to the federation account a lot of the money that ought to have accrued. According to him “over the past four to five years, the NLNG had every year made huge payment -between $1.5 to $2 billion – which ought to go to the federation account. This money was never transferred to the federation account but was unilaterally expended by the Federal Government.”

    Now, are Nigerians, by our hoopla, eager to have President Buhari bring into positions of responsibility all manner and shape of characters to do same or worse or,  rather allow him to get a grip of the Augean stable he inherited and appoint Nigerians he believes will share his vision of a corruption-free government? I think we should ponder these things before we get consumed with the jeremiads of some people whose business projections in a continuing PDP government have been dramatically altered.

    I will be the first to concede that some who argue for early appointments are truly concerned. For instance, I saw the purity of heart in Dele Momodu’s letter to the president which, for me, was advisory, unlike the adversarial types that have emanated from some partisans, especially to respected professional bodies who are surreptitiously being encouraged to up the ante of public discontent.  For instance, after denigrating some of those working quietly with the president as  gerontocrats, some of  those who are  keen on business as usual, have  also quarrelled with his not making earthshaking  economic policy pronouncements even when they were themselves key to helping the Jonathan government pulverise the country’s economy.

    Those who quarrel with the president for preferring to see the entire picture of the akudiaya –wobbling  – economy handed over to him on May 29, 2015, in the words  of one of the key exponents contend as follows:

    a)           The way the Federal Government works is that absolutely nothing happens in any ministry in the absence of a minister.

    b)    To even consummate commercial transactions  between one company and another in the oil sector, the minister has to approve it.

     c)    It’s the minister that signs certificates of occupancy for land deals in Abuja.

    d)   It’s the minister that approves payments to vendors, contractors, etc and concludes by         saying that the system grinds to a halt when the minister is not there.

     These have largely been dismissed by those who should know.  For instance, a retired federal Permanent Secretary posited as follows, in rebuttal:

     “Statement No. 1. is false. Statement 2 may be right for some matters like filling station licence etc, which may require the approval of minister but as regards procurement, the Permanent Secretary handles the implementation. The minister is not involved except for information only. This is in accordance with the provisions of Public Procurement Act of 2007. Involvement of ministers in procurement matters is a violation of the Act. Statement No. 4 is absolutely incorrect; again, all procurement matters stop at the table of the Permanent Secretary (PS) including approval of payments

     to vendors and contractors. The Act only provides that the minister should be informed by the Permanent Secretary for information only so that the minister is aware that the aspect of the annual budget is implemented. Therefore, to say that activities in the Federal Ministries, Departments and  Agencies will be at a standstill in the absence of the minister is not correct, though, some matters that will require the minister’s approval under the law or Civil Service Procedure like Citizenship matters in the Ministry of Interior may wait for the minister’s approval.  Once the annual budget is passed into law as Appropriation Act, the implementation is that of Permanent Secretary as the minister has no approving authority on procurements.”

    In further  canvassing patience, those who argue on the side of the president’s measured pace, given that the ‘ancien regime’ was very hesitant in giving him facts and figures, have further posited as follows: “If a minister is being assigned to a ministry, he/she should know what to go there for in order to have  the promised change. Detailed problems are currently being discreetly sorted out in the various ministries and MDAs by the Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executive Officers currently functioning as Acting Heads. Ministers, they contend, are politicians who would need to be put through on their assumption of office. If hurriedly appointed, there could be the tendency for some to go there to create wrong pictures or even cry wolves where there are none.”

    For me nothing demonstrates the wrongheadedness of un-reflected appointments – appointments with immediate effect and alacrity, especially at the topmost levels of our past governments, more than the present parlous state of the economy and, indeed, the wholesale paralysis currently engulfing every aspect of our national life. As you read this, fuel scarcity has again hit the filling stations, Power Holding Company, at its various discos, are eagerly dispensing darkness just as 23 out of 36 states of the federation are grappling with unpaid workers salaries resulting largely from very powerful ministers shortchanging the federation account from where the states largely fund their sustenance.

  • King Lear comes to Agbaji

    King Lear comes to Agbaji

    A great political drama is afoot in Kwara State. Dear readers, let us leave bombers, bunglers and the ailing Nigerian state alone this week for a trip to the land of Dadakuada music. In Ilorin, a fascinating and superbly choreographed royalist soap is winging its way to a fateful climax. It is absolutely riveting, a combination of Dallas and Dynasty with the old King Lear thrown in.

    The stage is set. The firecrackers are crackling to the resounding beat of war drums in the eerie background. The sanmoris, the jamas, the onitijus, the onigogos and the fanatical hordes of Oke Suna—the quarters of the faithful—are watching with keen interest. These foot soldiers with their core of itinerant Muslim preachers, politicised clerics, jaded jihadists and other spiritual wannabes have always been the real power behind the throne since the Islamic coup of Malam Alimi , and they make the former fiefdom of Afonja such a fascinating sociological case history.

    But don’t forget that Napoleon once famously observed that a throne is only a bench covered with damask. The end of a political dynasty or its metamorphosis is here. There are echoes of fierce ambition, of filial impiety and political perfidy. There are hints of a fey and slightly unhinged king Lear about to preside over the dissolution of his own political empire.

    The main protagonists are very well known. In one corner of the royal ring prowls the aging political pugilist and much lionised avatar of Kwara politics, Abubakar Olusola Saraki, an outstanding surgeon of politics if ever there was one. A man of superhuman energy and vitality combined with extraordinary political dexterity, Saraki has grafted and sutured together a durable political dynasty which has endured all stress and storms. Like all thoroughbred feudal monarchs, Saraki does not take hostages. Behind his jovial and avuncular comportment lies steely glint and an iron will of implacable severity.

    In the other corner, Saraki’s son and heir now unapparent, Abubakar Olubukola, crouches with tigrish fortitude and in fine feline fettle, too. Bukola’s imperious airs of feudal entitlement and his occasionally fatuous and ill-judged pronouncements on national matters may not endear him to many, but there is little doubt that he has proved himself a formidable political dead ringer of his famous father. After eight years of being in charge of Kwara state, the medical doctor on permanent sabbatical has cobbled together a canny alliance which has sent his father and benefactor packing from the royal castle and now threatens his political supremacy.

    As far as political intrigues go, this is the father of all biological coups and the ultimate designer baby of political patricide. Thrown into the ring with them as hostage and hostess is the favoured daughter and latest pretender to the throne, Olugbemisola Saraki. A serving senator of the Federal Republic, the fetching and delectable Gbemisola is no Benazir Bhutto, the redoubtable daughter of the East, who had to face off her vagabond and wayward brothers to grab the ultimate laurel. It is more like a sea lioness being thrown into pool of crazed sharks.

    But complexities and contradictions do abound. A democratic throne is a violent oxymoron. Modern Nigeria itself is a land of rowdy contradictions and at this point in time there is no point in ruffling feathers about the peculiar sociological and cultural milieu of Kwara state. Suffice it to note for now that baring a violent revolution in Nigeria which abolishes its last vestiges of feudalism, it is virtually impossible to win back in peace time what you lost on the pre-colonial warfront.

    Had William Shakespeare lived around this time in post-colonial Nigeria, his extraordinarily fecund imagination would have found much grist to its ever churning mill. But even the great bard of Stratford-Upon Avon would have been forced to accommodate new pressing and urgent realities. King Lear has come to Agbaji, but the old royal baggage remains in Elizabethan England.

    In King Lear, we see a sick, tired and worn monarch in a fit of senile grandeur trying to divest himself of his royal patrimony. In other words, a king is presiding over the dissolution of his own empire among his beloved daughters. His condition is as simple as it is simple-minded: protestations of love and devotion from the daughters. While the first two, Regan and Gonerill, faithfully and opportunistically began singing sonnets of love, the third, Cordelia, promptly demurred claiming that there is indeed no art to find the mind’s construction on the face. The father promptly disinherits her inviting a calamity of unimaginable magnitude.

    Had King Lear been a modern day monarch, he would probably have been diagnosed as manifesting the onset of senile dementia clinically known as Alzheimer’s Disease. He would have been sectioned or eased from the throne. As usual with Shakespeare, while he was rhapsodizing about the nobility and stoic lack of guile of an older world represented by the old king, he was also foreshadowing the arrival of a more complex and complicated society mediated by the Industrial Revolution and its urban pathologies. The new man is epitomized by Edmund with his ubiquitous savvy and Machiavellian audacity of courage.

    As he took his case against his own son to the crowd of faithful in his Ilorin GRA redoubt with the cogency and the clinical clarity of an absconding medico, there was no sign of senile dementia in the older Saraki. Although now betraying signs of the depredations and corrugations of age, Abubakar Olusola Saraki was as nimble-footed as he was quick-witted. His beloved son has been misled by idiots, a furious democratic monarch charged. His logic is simple and compelling: if you subscribe to a royalist code of succession and benefited immensely from it, you cannot change the code in midstream. By toying with this sacred and divine order the son has joined the former henchmen of his father in the gallery of infamy and political treachery.

    This is all well good, but there is something about Saraki senior which reminds one of the medieval rulers in the epoch of classical feudalism. Like King Louis of France who famously retorted that “l’etat c’est moi!!”, Saraki elder is proclaiming: “Kwara state is me!!!.” This monarchical veto and autocratic fiat is incompatible with a democratic dispensation. Like a medieval ruler, Olusola Saraki attributes divine wisdom and absolute infallibility to his choices which jars with the idea of the citizen as a discrete sovereign in his own right.

    It is noteworthy that the camp of the son has been quite muted in its response and diplomatically coy about taking the battle frontally to the old man’s quarters. With the reins and levers of power firmly in  his hands, Bukola appears content with running rings round his old man before moving for the kill with a little help from the federal might. A plebeian intruder who was rude to the founding father was quickly slapped down and sent to political Siberia.

    Having prevailed over all his former associates turned mortal adversaries such as Adamu Attah, Shaba Lafiagi and lately Mohammed Lawal, it will amount to an epic irony if the older Saraki were to succumb to his own son in a royal battle of wits and will. That would be divine justice of punitively poetic proportions.

    Having seen the inside of government and governance for eight years, what Bukola Saraki seems to be saying is that there is time for everything. Even for a famous First Family, the patriarch’s wisdom cannot approximate to the collective wisdom of the people. The retort will be that the son was a political nobody before his father enthroned him and he is in absolutely no position to query his benefactor except he is succumbing to dark and sinister sibling rivalry and filial ingratitude masquerading as public order and morality.

    In all this, the vaster multitude are nothing but bemused spectators in a play of giants. This has always been the case with this northernmost outpost of the old Yoruba Empire. Have cavalry and Islamic charms and will travel. Afonja, its old Yoruba ruler, a courageous but feckless generalissimo with remote maternal roots to the Oyo royal lineage, was the last coup maker of empire. He demanded and eventually got the suicide of the penultimate king, Awole, after accusing the latter of plotting to eliminate him.

    After Afonja himself was sent down in a palace coup with a hundred arrows embedded in his body making him stand in stiffened erection like a crusader’s effigy, a succession of Fulani emirs were treated with absolute scorn and contempt by the warlords. One of them, Moma, was assassinated in 1895. In the case of the gifted but half-crazed Balogun Karara, he routinely marched on the capital from his Offa redoubt installing and removing emirs at will until the colonial intervention put an end to the road show.

    This is the suzerainty that Olusola Saraki inherited by default. Ilorin has not always been the political hunting ground of the Sarakis. In 1964 when Saraki, a freshly qualified doctor from Britain, attempted to run as an independent candidate for the House of Representatives, he was given an electoral black eye and forced to beat a humiliating retreat to his Lagos base. But he rallied, deploying the allure of increasing prosperity and the power of guileful generosity.

    By 1983 when he helped the UPN’s Cornelius Tunji Adebayo to trounce, Adamu Attah, the sitting governor, Saraki had become the undisputed political boss of Kwara. But queries about his ambiguous pedigree and dubious lineage persist. Till date, there has been no response to a devastating riposte from Abdul-Ganiyu Abdul-Rasaq, the notable Ilorin lawyer, that Saraki’s father was an Abeokuta indigene who only came to Agbaji for Koranic studies. But even then, the current rulers of the famous city are not indigenes themselves. In Saraki, Ilorin was merely obeying its old logic of political warlordism combined with spiritual predation.

    There are tantalising possibilities in the current face off between father and son which show that history often moves forward by lurching sideway. If the elder Saraki were to prevail against his son, would he have the courage and bloody-minded audacity to bring the full weight of treason against his adored son? If on the other hand, if the younger Saraki succeeds in vanquishing his father would the old man, now worn and exhausted by age and political misfortune, suffer the fate of cruel banishment like the old King Lear?

    Either way, something tells snooper that the bell is tolling for the Saraki dynasty in Kwara. If Bukola prevails, he would have succeeded in opening up the democratic space in Kwara in a profoundly ironic and paradoxical manner. This in spite of himself and his decidedly reactionary worldview which he ventilates with imperial arrogance.

    If on the other hand the father trumps the son, he would have succeeded in installing the first female executive governor in the history of the nation, a feat that has eluded far more progressive enclaves. If this feat were to be achieved in a harshly patriarchal bastion of feudal politics, it will show the cunning of history on spectacular display. Judging from what we have heard of her, nothing will then stop Gbemi from washing some dirty family linen in the public space if only to permanently see off her disloyal brother.

    Every success contains the germ of eventual failure. There may be not much to choose between feudalised democracy and democratised feudalism, but history is still unfolding. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a political sadist cruelly taunted his bedridden father. “This is one deal old Joe cannot fix”. It looks like this is one deal Oloye cannot fix. King Lear has finally arrived in Agbaji. But it will be noted by many generations to come that a major political physician once passed through the plains of Kwara.

     

    •First published in 2011.

      

     

  • Gaining perspective

    Gaining perspective begins when we realise that even the hottest ambitions still end on the deathbed; and many such beds are made hotter for the regrets that flow into them from lips confessing missed opportunities and wrong fisticuffs

    One foreign commentator said long ago that the sad thing about Africa is that her political leaders never seem to get the total picture: that they are expected to lift their countries up by leading the development drive. I added that the leaders apparently don’t even want to get the total picture, until they reach their deathbeds. Oh, you should visit some deathbeds — full of stories, confessions, or even fights with the Grimm Reaper – you know, that skeleton that myths say goes around with a scythe. So, like Sisyphus, people scream, ‘it is not yet my time; I have just been made a senator! It is not fair; can’t you take someone else who is poor?’ They might even attempt to bribe their way out, trust your Nigerian. So, most go protesting noisily, like Italian tenors forced to sing operas they hate. Very few go quietly or peaceably, like.

    For many, especially those who have held one position or the other, the deathbed is the time they suddenly become full of regrets about the opportunities and chances they squandered and frittered away in mundane bodily enjoyments or squabbles about trifles which do nothing for their communities, nation and the world. I say, that is when you hear them mutter with hoarse, dying lips, ‘Please, help me up so that I can write a check of restitution to the people…’

    Unfortunately, that is also the time that relatives in the form of children, nephews, nieces, friends, helpers, hangers on, strangers, etc., are many, and extra sharp. They are also especially cooperative with each other. Jointly, without any prompting, they hold the dying one down firmly on the bed and ask him to get some rest while they also hold the check as far from him as possible. Restitu ko, restiti ni, they mutter as the unearned, stolen billions fall on their strange laps. And when fortune falls indiscriminately on one’s laps, what is a man, or woman, to do?

    The reason, like you and I already know, is that more than ninety-nine per cent of Africa’s political leaders seek posts for the sake of it, and yes, to escape poverty. Who can blame anyone for wanting to escape the mercilessly grinding teeth of poverty? I can’t. The only problem now is that there is this vast field of socio-politico-economic development challenges gripping the average African, and our politicians are only stopping at helping themselves. I believe the main reason is this failure to gain the correct perspective.

    It’s easy to gain perspective. Let me illustrate. Once, this very busy motorist was stopped at a traffic point for exceeding the speed limit permitted on that road. After the policeman had told him the reason why he stopped him, the motorist was incredulous. ‘The earth is going round the sun at the velocity of 107,000 km/hr, and the solar system is moving round the galaxy at 901,000 km/hr; and you are booking me for driving at 60 km/hr in a 45 km/hr zone? Are you serious?’ Now, that is what I call perspective.

    Let me tell you what someone else did. This youngster had failed mathematics, and some other subjects. In fact, his report card appeared to be bad. Well, he took it to his dad and began the conversation. ‘Dad, what would you do if I had a life-threatening sickness?’ His father said he would have to run around getting the best medical help he could find; and that would naturally take a toll on his and the mother’s own health. ‘Would you have the money for it?’ Well, there is the insurance and the family savings, but we cannot know how far both will go. The father then became suspicious. Are you trying to tell me something? Do you have a life-threatening disease? The young one replied that what he was about to tell him should be put in its proper perspective, considering he, the son, was thankfully in good health and sound mind.

    Yes, you are right. The life of the country is hanging in the balance, grown men and famous fathers are fighting in the House of Representatives and here I am running around with my usual jokes. Never mind. The point we are making is that gaining perspective requires one to take in the entire picture. Take Nigeria and our politicians as an example. Do they have the whole picture of the place of their country in the world in their view? I would say not quite. If they did, they would know they have an enormous task before them but too many of them are too easily satisfied with obtaining and enjoying their material gains, hence the fisticuffs.

    If our politicians had a true perspective of their role as the nation’s leaders, I do not think members of the House of Representatives would have taken to using fists to settle points in the view of the entire nation. I do not also think that a politician would desperately take thugs to the courthouse to intimidate court witnesses or judges as has been happening in Ekiti State. I do not think any politician would consider the life of someone else so worthless that it can be sacrificed ritually or metaphorically to their ambition. I do not think that any politician would actively seek to promote two nations in one Nigeria: the nation of the haves who trample on the rights of others, and the nation of the have nots whose rights are trampled upon. I say, if Nigerian politicians had a true perspective of their role, the crisis precipitated by the elections in the national assembly would not exist.

    Let’s wax a little philosophical here. I have always held that there are three basic things a man would do well to remember that he can choose: to live well (in contentment), to do his best (in strength), and to die well (in peace). Don’t bring up any objections now; just accept. Thank you.

    It will not do to begin to seek to write a check of restitution on one’s deathbed to the millions of Nigerians that have been defrauded by one’s diversionary antics. Many have sought, in vain, to return such stolen opportunities (whether in funds, positions or objects) because they have caused greater losses in the end. Too late, they realised that nature is one wicked paymaster: what is taken by force or contrivance, nature will deduct by force or contrivance.

    It is important that each Nigerian, to the last man, bears the whole picture in mind. To seek the development of the entire landscape of Nigeria where everyone can have access to basic things that make life possible – affordable food, shelter and clothing – is the responsibility of everyone. It is important then that we all should seek to lift off the veils of religion, tribe or language which are hanging in front of all of us and determining our many actions. For instance, I have noticed that nearly all the appointments made so far by our president have been of people from his corner of the earth. That should not be so because the corners missed out in appointments or opportunities are only several boko haram spots waiting to happen in future. As the father of all, the president is expected to ensure that no corner of the country is left behind.

           Gaining perspective begins when we realise that even the hottest ambitions still end on the deathbed; and many such beds are made hotter for the regrets that flow into them from lips confessing missed opportunities and wrong fisticuffs. As passing ships on this benighted earth, let us all, our politicians especially, get our perspectives right on the whole picture: which is to help the country gain earthly paradise.

  • Youth-bashing

    Laide, not her real name, must have been fed up with hearing complaints from many that the youths of today are not as ‘serious’ as they should be.

    When the same complaint came up last Tuesday at a seminar, she could barely wait to grab the microphone and as politely as possible respond to the unending youth bashing which she said was not fair to her generation.

    “Someone said the youths of today don’t read newspapers, they don’t want to read any serious thing, they are glued to their phones. I don’t think you should blame us for being born in this technology age. The fact that we don’t read print editions of newspapers as much as the older people does not mean we don’t read news. We do but maybe not like you people do.

    “It is not our fault that we are different and you have to understand us for what we are,” Laide stated.

    The young lady made a point which I agree with. As much as the old generation may have reasons to complain about the youths, we need to avoid blanket condemnation which sometimes gives the wrong impression that all the youths are the same.

    While many may not meet the high standards we are used to, there are others who have proved that the new generation holds a lot of promise even when their ways of doing things are different from ours.

    Like Laide rightly stated, we need to appreciate that we live in a new world where technology and many other factors have altered what we are used to. We can no longer insist on having things done exactly the ways they were done in our days.

    What the young ones of today are exposed to is in no way comparable with ours. I grew up like most people of my generation without having access to telephones. Not many had television to watch in their homes.  We had limited or no access to computers and the Internet which are today available to even toddlers.

    While not compromising on the right principles, we need to give the youths the benefit of the doubt, instead of having a fixed mindset about how they behave and what they are capable of doing. Sometimes we need to try hard to make them understand why we want things done in a particular way and not assume they should know.

    There will always be many reasons for the old generation to complain about the youths and they must not shy away from doing so when there are good reasons to do so.

    What Laide and her generation, however, need to know is that what is regarded as youth-bashing is not new. Every generation always thinks the younger ones are not meeting up with the high standard it was subjected to. The complaints are usually borne out of love and what is required is mutual understanding by the young and old.

    If the youths know what their elders know, they will understand why they usually warn them about the consequences of their actions and inactions.

    The youths must learn to take criticisms in good faith and make necessary amends based on wise counsel of elders.

  • Our hallowed chamber

    Our hallowed chamber

    Our lawmakers should start fighting for the people and not for themselves

    It was forward march to the past on Thursday as the House of Representatives members exchanged blows on the floor of the House over the sharing of its principal positions.  The angry lawmakers tore each other’s clothes, exchanged blows, upturned tables and threw bound copies of law books, kicked chairs and shouted on top of their voices during the fracas that lasted for about 105 minutes. So, those who thought we have seen the last of fisticuffs in the hallowed chambers of our National Assembly now know how mistaken they are. Although the June 25 crisis was somewhat expected, the surprise, again, is that it has come this early. Indeed, it must have been obvious to the discerning by June 9 when the National Assembly was proclaimed that all was not likely to be well in that arm of government for some time to come.

    The bile this time was not significantly different from that of the past: sharing of positions in the House. Two main things that our lawmakers don’t joke with are their salaries and allowances, as well as political offices. In the Thursday instance, the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had written to the speaker, Yakubu Dogara, to announce Mr Femi Gbajabiamila as Majority Leader; Mr Alhassan Ado Doguwa as his deputy; Mr Mohammed Monguno as chief whip and Mr P. Iriase as his deputy. As the party with the majority members of the House, this appears within the party’s prerogative. These were the names the APC members expected the speaker to read to members with their various positions on Thursday. But, instead of doing that, the speaker called for an executive session. This did not go down well with those who felt he should have announced those names as the party’s candidates; and trouble started.

    The Senate President had earlier on June 9 rebuffed similar instructions passed to him by the party leadership. The dirty horse-trading eventually had the post of deputy senate president ceded to Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a senate dominated by APC members. Mercifully however, the kind of fracas that occurred in the House of Representatives was averted then because 51 other APC members were at the International Conference Centre in Abuja for a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari when Senator Bukola Saraki quickly conducted the election (coup) that saw him emerge as senate president.

    However, anyone who is seeing the developments in the National Assembly only in the context of intra-party squabbles over leadership positions is making a big mistake. I see it more in the context of President Buhari’s anti-corruption war.  I have often said that corruption would not fold its arms and watch being rubbished as President Buhari might want to do; it would always fight back, especially in a country like ours which it used to see as a haven. It is in the interest of corruption that the ruling party does not know peace. In all these crises, the president has his own share of the blame. As a matter of fact, the PDP said that much. Even if I so believe for different reasons, I would neither elucidate nor amplify, at least not now. Suffice it to say that it would be myopic and naïve of the president not to have so far seen the nexus between the National Assembly crises and his anti-corruption war.

    Secondly, those who thought it would take ages for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that was defeated in the last general elections to learn the ropes as opposition party must be prepared for even more shockers. The party is fast adjusting and must be savouring the developments in the National Assembly; that is if not saying outright that it serves them (APC) right! The point is, PDP might be pretending to be standing aloof, but it is working underground and it is the result of its surreptitious endeavours that is manifesting in the National Assembly. But nobody should blame the former ruling party; it is not easy to be out there in the cold just like that, after being in power for 16 unbroken years.

    So, it is the ruling party that has a lot of job to do to show that it can manage its success at the polls. Unless the APC is able to find amicable solutions to the challenges as some of its stalwarts have been promising, some of these matters may end up in the law courts, given the fact that each of the caucuses is digging deeper rather than beat a retreat. The big questions that could make it near-impossible for the dramatis personae to retreat include, for example, whether it is possible for Senator Saraki or Dogara to back down at this stage, because of the circumstances under which they emerged as senate president and speaker of the house, respectively. Where do they put their allies in the PDP who made their emergence possible if they do that? I guess at this point, the question of who is right or wrong is almost late in the day. Suffice it to say that a matter that ought to have been an internal affair of the ruling party has been exposed to external manipulation and the PDP, expectedly, is taking full advantage of the situation.

    What is happening is that, since the elections had been won and lost, the scales had since fallen from the eyes of the hitherto romantic multitude of incompatible lovers. Everyone, it seems, can see clearly now that the rain that lumped the pigeons with fowls is either gone, or at least subsiding. Whether it is to thy tent O Israel is however still in the womb of time. As a matter of fact, that is left to both sides to decide. They both hold all the aces as to whether to stay together and enjoy their wedlock, or endure it, as the case may be.

    But, if the legislators must fight in the hallowed chambers again, they are free to. As a matter of fact, they can even remove each other’s teeth with blows  but not over their obscene salaries and allowances or over political positions, but over the multifarious problems facing the country. As one of my fans once said, that (their salaries and allowances) is one point on which they are ever so united. Mum is usually the word across party lines when the issue comes to legislators’ pay. It has been like that since the lawmakers began by approving for themselves N5m each as furniture allowance in 1999.

    The point I am making is that, so far, the lawmakers have been fighting the bad fight. Let them resolve henceforth, to fight the good fight. Dogara seemed to realise this when he said on Thursday: “To be candid, we have promised so much in the course of our elections and even the very party I belong to… the APC… we have promised change and Nigerians expect us to really talk about those matters, those issues that bother them most. They want to hear us talk about unemployment, poverty, in my region they want us to address insecurity and as long as this House is divided and not united, we cannot achieve that”.

    He did not fail to mention that they have been lucky indeed to be elected. “Let me remind us of the fact that, we are a very, very fortunate people. In a nation of 170 million people, only 360 of us are selected or elected to represent the people and we should be grateful to our constituents for sending us here”, he said before adjourning the House to July 21. July 21 may seem a long time, but it is not. That is why it is important for the ruling party to get its act together and give Nigerians the promised ‘change’.

    So far, that much expected change is not yet born. It is still in the womb of time.

  • The ruling party and the president: for the sake of Nigeria and the talakawa, will the APC and Buhari be different? (2)

    The ruling party and the president: for the sake of Nigeria and the talakawa, will the APC and Buhari be different? (2)

    When this column used to appear in The Guardian under a slightly different name, I wrote something about the inauguration of Umar Musa Yar’ Adua as successor president to Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, 2011 that I recall now with an acute awareness that what I wrote then is very pertinent to what I am writing about now in this series on the established pattern of the complete subordination of the ruling party in our country to the incumbent president. In essence, what I said then was this: Yar’ Adua’s inauguration marked the first time ever that an elected civilian president was succeeding another elected ruler without the “interregnum” of a military dictatorship coming between them. I was not of course the only commentator who made this observation at the time. What may have been peculiar about what I wrote then was my emphasis on the fact that, one, the succession of one elected ruler by another was taking place within the same ruling party and, two, that the elections that brought Yar’ Adua to the presidency had been deeply flawed, so much so that Yar’ Adua himself ultimately admitted that this was the case. To those observations, I now wish to add some remarks that are more pertinent to the present discussion. What are these remarks?

    Virtually the whole world has rejoiced that in Buhari’s election and inauguration, we have the fact that for the very first time in our country, an elected president from an opposition party has replaced the incumbent president from the ruling party. There is of course not the slightest doubt that this indeed does mark an historic moment that is of far greater significance than the succession of Obasanjo by Yar’ Adua in 2011. However, there is another aspect of this historic fact that has been almost completely ignored and this is the fact that how Buhari became president through the victory of the new ruling party, the APC, is absolutely without precedent in the entire post-independent political history of our country. Indeed, so fundamental is this point that it ought to be a great teachable experience for all Nigerians at home and abroad, especially Nigerians younger than the age of forty. This is the central issue that I wish to reflect upon, if only very briefly, in this concluding piece to the series that began in last week’s column. But before I come to the point, there is a need for me to make some clarifications about where I stand in relation to the APC as the new ruling party at the centre in our country, especially with regard to the chieftains and bosses of this new ruling party. In making these clarifications, I shall be very brief but also very clear, very unambiguous.

    Since I am not a member of any political party in Nigeria or any other place in the world, it stands to reason that I am not a member of the APC. Indeed, although I do very sincerely wish the party well as our new ruling party, strictly speaking, I am not a supporter of the party. The ONLY party in Nigeria that would have had my support if it had control of any state in the country and became one of the  opposition ruling class parties would be the party founded by the late Gani Fawehinmi, this being the National Conscience Party. And even then, this would have been a highly critical support. In the entire postcolonial political history of our country, the ruling class party that has had my greatest support – not my membership – was the People’s Redemption Party (PRP), the same party to which Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka belonged for some time. In my view, the APC does not remotely come close to the egalitarian and people-oriented programmes and policies, together with the consistency of moral and ideological practice of this sadly moribund party. Our new ruling party may yet evolve gradually toward these achievements or may even surpass them, but that is yet to be seen. One decisive step that would indicate such progressive evolution of the APC would be a very clear, a very palpable move away from the widely held and not exactly incorrect view that the party is the brainchild and thus effectively in the pocket of a single political godfather, Bola Tinubu.

    One more point of clarification, and I shall resume the central issue in this piece – the precedent-setting manner in which APC became our new ruling party, together with how Buhari became an elected president whose electoral path to the presidency is also unprecedented in our country’s political history. Here is this last point of clarification. This column, the Talakawa Liberation Herald is published in a newspaper which, as everyone knows, has strong ties to both the APC and its party leader, Tinubu. It is a mark of the largeness of vision of the proprietors and editors of the newspaper that I and a few other completely independent columnists feel welcomed within the stable corps of this newspaper’s columnists that are loyal to the party and its leadership. I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity and the privilege to write for and in this newspaper, with the solid assurance that my independence is recognized and respected. Long may this last! May the relationship between columnist and newspaper never come to the sorry state that it did in The Guardian when the combination of the overthrow of independent journalism by a disproportionate concern for the profit margin with the institution of a philistine and reactionary management sent me and other columnists migrating away from that newspaper!

    And now to the big issue of the precedent-setting nature of how Buhari became president through the APC, together with the fact that I consider it a very teachable moment in our country’s political history. In last week’s opening piece in this series, I drew attention to the fact that Buhari is the only person in our country who has sought the office of president FOUR times. I also asserted that even though the elections were massively rigged by the PDP in each of the three times when he lost, he could not have won if the elections had been clean, free and fair. This is because his party, the CPC, was a regionalist party that could never have garnered the nation-wide plurality needed for election as president of the republic in our country. Please remember that Nasir el Rufai who is now in the APC and has become an ardent follower of Buhari once remarked that Buhari was “permanently unelectable”. What Rufai did not know or could not know at the time was that the APC would emerge and he and Buhari would find new political life on the platform of – the APC.

    I now wish to add that in the ACN, Tinubu and his Southwest base could also never have produced a winning candidate for the presidency for exactly the same reason that Buhari in the CPC could have stood for election as president a dozen times and he would not have won a single time. Beyond these initial remarks, I now make the most important observation of all: nobody has ever won the post of president in Nigeria on a true and not imposed or rigged nationwide plurality. In the First and Second Republics, the post of elected Head of State was won through alliances between political parties that were all regionalist, the major ones as well as the minor ones. In the Fourth Republic inaugurated in 1999, this absolutely crucial nationwide plurality was concocted by the outgoing military government of General Abubakar Abdulsalami, with significant help from former military and civilian Heads of States, the Americans, the European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations. In this respect, it might be true to say that the only election that ever credibly confirmed the then new ruling party’s imposed nationwide plurality were the 1999 elections. But it did not last, for even before the end of his first term as President, the makeshift plurality had cracked and Obasanjo was nearly impeached as a result of the fracturing of what was touted as “the biggest ruling party in Africa”. The rest, as the saying goes, is history: the 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections were all massively and violently rigged, and with maximum impunity too.

    There are important lessons for the APC and all of us to learn in this unedifying story. First, the experience of winning control of power at the centre through a genuine nationwide plurality that you then have to nurture and consolidate is very new in our country. The prevailing pattern has been that of a plurality that is imposed from above and maintained through rigged elections, the use of state violence and terror to cow both the opposition and the populace, and the massive monetization of politics. In the last days of the PDP era, monetization became more specifically dollarization of politics. Under such conditions, the ruling party is completely subordinated to the presidency and its enormous machinery of power and patronage. In such circumstances, as a politician, your fortunes or, conversely, your misfortunes, are dependent on how close or how distant you position yourself to the president. And if a sufficiently large and expanding number of politicians feel distanced from the presidency, the ruling party begins to fragment and implode, with dire consequences, not only for the ruling party but for the nation itself.

    Will APC and Buhari abjure the pattern that has so far prevailed in our country’s ruling class politics wherein, in a multiethnic and pluralistic nation in which 7 out of every 10 Nigerians live in abject poverty and/or joblessness, the ruling party has never felt that it had to work for and earn the nationwide plurality which, in theory, is absolutely necessary to win control of power at the centre? Perhaps what this question ultimately boils down to is this: in our constitutional and political order, the presidency we know much about, but what of the ruling party, what of its relationship to the presidency? In my view, so far in our country’s political history, the ruling party at the centre is to the presidency and the country what used and retreaded tyres are to hundreds of thousands of cars in our part of the developing world: without such tyres, the car will not move, but among all the parts of the car, these retreaded tyres are the cheapest and the most easily replaceable. It is time that we began to think of the ruling party and indeed all our political parties as the central engine block of the car.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Much ado about spokesmen

    Simeon Ateba, the irrepressible journalist, blogger and advocate, sure knows how to stir the Facebook community with his provocative postings. When he wrote that he was hearing speculations that I may be named as the media spokesperson for President Muhammed Buhari, I had a good laugh.

    I didn’t have to worry why he took the speculations seriously to write about it. I took the posting as his own way of stirring up a discussion on the kind of person that should be appointed to replace the former spokesperson, Dr Reuben Abati.

    I remember thanking Ateba for thinking highly of me being qualified to be named for the media aide job but noted that I am in no way close to President Buhari and his associates to be considered for the job. More so, I added that I do not desire the position for any reason.

    By then, I was myself aware of speculations that the president would either retain Malam Garba Shehu the spokesperson of his campaign organisation or name the Managing Director of Sun Newspapers and President of the Guild of Editors, Mr Femi Adesina.

    For reasons best known to the president, he decided to name the two experienced journalists and triggered off a controversy over his decision. Although they both have different designations and one is senior to the other, not many were persuaded of the need for two spokespersons. There were those who felt there was bound to be a clash between the two appointees except there is a clear delineation of duties.

    I wasn’t initially convinced myself that Adesina should quit his Sun Newspapers’ position for the Special Adviser’s post until I read his valedictory column in which he noted that he was ready to make a sacrifice to serve the nation.

    The appointment of Pastor Laolu Akande as spokesperson for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also attracted reactions over his choice, considering that he has been based in the United States for years. Why not appoint one of the many capable media hands in the country? Some have wondered.

    I am sure anyone who takes time to read Akande’s profile will have no doubt about his suitability given his local and international media experience.

    Much as the choice of who is named spokesperson is important, their ability to perform their tasks will depend on how well the presidency lives up to the expectations of the public.

    It is not enough that President Buhari has chosen one of the best journalists in the country to be the head of his media team as he stated during his meeting with State House Correspondents, it is up to him to make it easy for Adesina and others to defend the government’s policies.

    The media team should be involved in policy decision-making as much as possible and carried along at every stage of implementation instead of making them to defend policies they don’t know much about.

    I have no doubt that the spokespersons will do their best to justify their appointments, but the president and vice president should not expect that they will be able to ward off every negative publicity.

    What is important is that the spokespersons have necessary information to provide government’s reaction on any subject of interest to the media instead of having to decline to comment when they are contacted.