The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • The baptism Buhari should expect

    The baptism Buhari should expect

    He has to hit the ground running

    As one of my friends used to tell me, laughing with someone is not necessarily a sign of affection. So, no one should be deceived that President Goodluck Jonathan’s conceding defeat in the last presidential election necessarily translates to wishing Muhammadu Buhari well. Much as one agrees that there cannot be a vacuum in governance, some of the recent decisions and appointments made by the outgoing president give cause for concern. One of these is the removal of Mallam Habib Abubakar and his replacement with Sanusi Lamido Ado Bayero, the eldest son of the late Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, as managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). Abdullahi was fired on April 29 via a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Dr Reuben Abati. No reasons were given for the removal. He is the second major government official to be removed, after the former Inspector-General of Police, Mr Suleiman Abba, who was similarly fired last month, barely a few weeks to the end of the Jonathan administration on May 29.

    We also have the appointment of the former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, as the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Obi, who was elected governor on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in 2006, was reelected governor under the same platform, with the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu pleading passionately with the people of the state to honour him (Ojukwu) by reelecting Obi for a second term in 2010. Ojukwu’s wish was granted, but about three years after Ojukwu’s death, the governor began plotting his way to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He had played prominent roles in the government and was indeed a member of the president’s campaign team. His appointment as the SEC chairman could therefore be said to be the president’s way of showing appreciation to a friend in need.

    There were also new appointments at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) where its executive secretary, Olufemi Thomas, was removed as executive secretary/chief executive officer with immediate effect, and replaced with Olufemi Akingbade in acting capacity. The government was also said to be recruiting into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), when all the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, did was to accept responsibility for the deaths of about 14 applicants in the same recruitment exercise last year. Without doubt, most of these steps could rightly be described as booby traps for the incoming  Buhari administration, as some observers had noted. Otherwise, why the haste in appointing these people these dying minutes of the government?

    Even where the appointments were made in good faith, it is difficult not to see bad blood in some of them. Take the sack of the NPA boss for example. Those who see it in bad faith say Abdullahi was removed because he did not open the NPA treasury to the ruling party for the elections and that if the president had been serious, he would have removed him a long time ago, given the series of complaints made against him, and not wait till after he failed to cooperate with the PDP chieftains in placing the authority’s funds at their disposal It would be difficult not to believe this theory, given that this is the style of the ruling government; you can commit murder in the government’s interest and get away with it!

    Again, those who think the sack and appointment at the ports authority were not done in the national interest wonder how Buhari would remove Ado Bayero without reaping enemies from Kano State in return.  The NPA, we should not forget, is a money spinner. And just like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), its activities are shrouded in secrecy. Indeed, a chieftain of the PDP, Bode George, who was its chairman was in 2009 convicted for contract splitting and inflation, and sentenced to 30 months imprisonment. Also, the NPA, NNPC, and some states including Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Lagos are regarded as honey pots that the ruling party must not lose, which was why the elections in some of these states, literally dripped with blood. So, it is understandable if President Jonathan appointed one of his own as NPA boss. It is also left for the incoming president to decide what to do about the appointment and others made in the dying minutes of this administration.

    But for me, the most deadly booby trap being set for the Buhari government is the fuel subsidy issue and availability of petroleum products in the country. Since most of the corruption we are complaining about are in the oil and gas sector, some of the players in the sector who are uncomfortable with the impending coming of Buhari are likely to want to play some pranks. Most of the time when we have had crises between oil marketers and the Federal Government, leading to fuel scarcity, the fuel queues began to thin the moment government released some fund to the marketers. Not so this time. One week after the government released N156billion of the N254billion it owes the marketers, normalcy is yet to return to the fuel stations. I smell a rat here.

    If I am right, what we may witness is a situation where the Buhari government may come on May 29, with long queues at the filling stations heralding its advent. The government may then be forced to take panicky measures before Nigerians start murmuring like the Israelites in the wilderness.

    In case we have forgotten, President Jonathan’s problems started with his removal of fuel subsidy barely seven months after assuming office. So, it won’t be a bad idea if the incoming government too starts having challenges with fuel matters on assumption of office. The only difference though is that while that of the president was self-inflicted, with his party having been in power from 1999 when we started this democratic dispensation, Buhari would be coming in as a brand new president from a different political party. The point I am making is that while the PDP had about 13 years (1999-2012 when we had the fuel subsidy riots) to do something about our refineries, it did nothing, making Nigeria the only crude oil producing nation that imports petroleum products.

    It is difficult for a party that has been in power for 16 years to suddenly relinquish that power only to wish its successor well. That the PDP is now like fish out of water is evident in the acrimony that has become the lot of the party since its defeat.  The persistent calls for the removal of the party chairman and the entire Central Working Committee are enough pointers to the fact that the party is still trying to find its feet in its new role of opposition-in-waiting. If there is any proof about this, then check out the number of its members that have defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) since the party’s loss in the elections.

    Although one is not sure how many heads would still roll before President Jonathan leaves the stage on May 29, the fact is that Gen Buhari has to watch it, particularly his handling of fuel subsidy and fuel supply in the early days of his administration, to avoid a situation where the APC too would find itself not adequately prepared for its new role of ruling party.

    It takes two to tango. So, it would have taken some of the fuel marketers and government officials to perpetrate the fraud in the oil sector. That is why the battle for sanity in the sector is not going to be between the government and its officials alone, but between the government as well as the greedy marketers. And since corruption will always fight back; no one should be deceived that it would be easy to get to the bottom of the subsidy scam. The government has to be systematic about this. More importantly, it has to be on the drawing board now, trying to ensure how there would be uninterrupted supply of petroleum products immediately after its swearing in, before the Fates with its enemies do contrive.

  • In an era of change, Nigerians expect to see credible, measurable changes

    In an era of change, Nigerians expect to see credible, measurable changes

    It is obviously not worth her oily concern that the Nigerian poor, who literally never get to see kerosene, are still made to part with N150 for a subsidised product expected to sell at N50 per litre

    The Nigerian economy has continued to experience declining growth, increasing unemployment, galloping inflation, high incidence of poverty, worsening balance of payments, debilitating debt burden and increasing unsustainable fiscal deficits” – Benjamin Dikki, Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, speaking on the theme, The Nigerian Reforms & Privatisation Policy, Processes, Gains, Challenges and Prospects, to members of the IBB International Golf and Country Club, Abuja.  If there should be any official of the Goodluck Jonathan administration who could tell the world a more robust view of the state of the Nigerian economy, it should be none other than Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance & Coordinating Minister of the Economy. But what do we have? Unfortunately, Okonjo-Iweala would rather tell Nigerians such platitudes as: “We now have a Nigeria, which is the largest economy on the continent. … I also feel that with this strong base that we have, if we just keep steady, we will be able to exit, and the value of the naira will strengthen, because we have got the different sectors etc.” And you ask: keep steady at what?

    With Dikki’s  down-to-earth views on the Nigerian economy, no time can be more opportune than the imminent  inauguration of the Buhari administration to blow off the lies and stunts Nigerians have been fed with these past 16 years; especially in this current regime, be it in its lodestar Ministry of  Agriculture, whether in its glamourised ‘transformation’ in the railways which was hardly anything more than repainting old wagons or whether in a promised forensic audit into the NNPC cesspit which turned out to be a none audit.

    Any keen observer of the Nigerian economy, especially in the 16 years of a now haemorrhaging PDP, must have seen that it is  nothing more than a kalokalo, generator economy, underpinned by a gripping renteer-sm  that kept  that largest ‘rally’ in Africa going.

    One such keen observer has been former U.S Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, who, in his: Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink explored the country’s post colonial history, offering a nuanced explanation of the events and conditions that have severally propelled it to the edge. Central to his analysis are oil wealth, endemic corruption, and elite competition, all of which have combined to undermine her nascent democratic institutions as well as alienated its increasingly impoverished people. That last bit, the alienation, no, pauperisation, of the Nigerian people, more than anything, accounted for the ouster of President Jonathan whose tenure had been largely corruption-ridden and effete.

    As a result of the president’s listless approach to governance, all manner of crass opportunists carved out empires from which they rummaged on the Nigerian economy. Ex-militants, who most probably browbeat the president, became proud owners of multi-billion naira oil pipeline security contracts which recently saw total illiterates in professional arms-handling, like the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) emerge one such beneficiary. The direct result of that was the unfortunate, fatal shooting of a young pregnant lawyer, Mrs Adebimpe Fajana, at Arepo, near Lagos, only this past week. However, none of these ‘empires’ would compare with the NNPC where all manner of cabals mushroomed, literally economically killing off Nigeria.  On the first day of January, 2012,  an ill-thought through removal of subsidy on petroleum products had led to  an unprecedented mass protest which on being probed further, led to the exposure of  a multi-billion dollar cabal oil subsidy fraudsters who were paid billions of dollars for petroleum products that were never delivered. Quite unsurprisingly, children of two former PDP Chairmen were named among them.

    But the mother of PDP’s inhumanity to the Nigerian poor, planned and executed under the watchful eyes of a complicit Goodluck Jonathan government, is the fleecing of poor, helpless Nigerians through the kerosene subsidy. This ungodly scam, responsibility for which must go directly to the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Madueke, is a double jeopardy because just as it defrauds the Nigerian poor, who hardly ever gets kerosene to buy even at between N120 – 150, so does it cream off a monthly $100 Million from the Federation Account. The former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, testifying at the resumed Senate Investigative Public Hearing on un-remitted oil revenue in Abuja,had told the panel that the $20 billion  spent on subsidising kerosene, belonged to the Federation Account. Relying on data from the National Bureau of Statistics which confirmed that kerosene was not a subsidised product he also produced evidence to the effect that former President Yar’Adua, indeed, issued a presidential directive eliminating subsidy on kerosene, effective from July 2009.

    Speaking on the same issue at another occasion, Dakuku Peterside, Chairman, House Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), said: “In 2010, we spent N110, 068,533,988 to subsidise kerosene. In 2011, the government spent N324, 089,961,319 and N200bn in 2012. So, in three years, we spent a total of N634bn, subsidising kerosene. This is a third of what we spend in a year on capital budget.”

    In a statement that would be extremely difficult to surpass in its outright vacuousness, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources, claimed before a Senate Committee hearing, that the Jonathan government could not implement President Yar Adua’s order to remove subsidy from kerosene because, hear the kind mum: “it would be inflicting hardship on the citizens,” as if she did anything else in all her yeas in public service. As you read this, Nigerians are buying a litre of petrol, fixed by government at N87, at more than N150. It is obviously not worth her oily concern that the Nigerian poor, who literally never get to see kerosene, are still made to part with N150 for a subsidised product expected to sell at N50 per litre. In case it could still be of any help to Mrs Madueke on her way out, let me quote her the words of Beatrice Kelvin, a restaurateur: ‘‘the last time I bought kerosene, it was as if the commodity was going to be sold for the last time in Nigeria that day. Every space in the filling station was occupied by intending buyers. It was indeed a sight. Many people buy kerosene at a rate higher than N50 and I know that it is not also available.’’

    President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, must see the above as only the tip of the ice-berg in the economic ruination President Jonathan would be handing over to him on May 29th. The entire Nigerian space is crawling with evidences of despoliation by a PDP that survived almost solely on corruption. Reacting to one of my articles recently, a reader from tel. no 080523631- – wrote: “My theory about the PDP being a criminal organisation is proven now. It is one thing for a party to harbour criminal elements, quite another for the party itself to be criminal like those mafias in Southern Europe. For better, for worse, it seems good now that that organisation has been dislodged from Abuja. In a society where nation building is taken seriously, it ought to be legally disbanded, criminalised and banned like the Nazi party.”

    That, Mr President-elect, is the picture of the ruined country you will be confronted with on May 29, 2015. Nigerians are eagerly waiting to see decisive and measurable changes from that date. And you can, the very minute President Jonathan bows out, promptly stop this scam which was put in place for the presidency’s ‘weeping boys’ and its other cronies, some of who practically owned the NNDC.

  • Building nuclear power plants in Nigeria:absurd joke and/or sublime terror?

    Building nuclear power plants in Nigeria:absurd joke and/or sublime terror?

    The announcement this week that Nigeria has signed a multi-billion dollar agreement with Rosatom, a state-owned Russian multinational corporation that specializes in building, commissioning and maintaining nuclear energy plants around the world predictably generated considerable concern in Nigeria itself and in many other countries in Africa and the world. The announcement was made by no other person than the flamboyant Chairman and CEO of the Nigerian Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC), Dr. Franklin Erepamo Osaisai. It is no secret to Nigerians themselves and perhaps other denizens of planet earth that we are not exactly an advanced scientific and technological nation. Some would indeed argue that breakthroughs in science and technology being virtually nonexistent in our country, we are not even a developing scientific and technological nation. That fact, coupled with worldwide post-Chernobyl and post-Fukushima fears of horrific calamities that could happen in advanced scientific and technological nations when man-made or natural disasters cause nuclear power plants to malfunction has caused many people to tremble at the thought of building nuclear power plants in our country. Indeed, no less than half a dozen people have written me this past week urging me to please take up this issue in this week’s column.

    The case for not building any new nuclear power plants anywhere in our world is at the present time more powerful than it has been in decades. As a matter of fact, Germany has not only decided to put a stop to all plans to build new nuclear power plants, it has set itself the task of gradually decommissioning the existing plants. In France which has the highest number of these plants in Europe, there is an intense soul-searching debate on the frightening, unspeakable risks of the country’s overdependence on nuclear-generated electricity. And in post-Fukushima Japan, the promoters of nuclear power plants are losing out in the debate between them and the rest of the country who are asking for a phased-out decommissioning of the country’s nuclear plants. This is the broad international and global context for the extremely aggressive push by Rosatom to find customers for newly built and commissioned atomic power plants in Africa and the developing world. Apparently, Rosatom has found a willing partner in our own NAEC and its nuclear-obsessed CEO, Dr. Osaisai. Dear reader, please find out as much as you can about both Rosatom and our own NAEC. I warn you in advance that you won’t find much in what they say and do to assure you that building and commissioning nuclear power plants in our country will be safe and is therefore desirable as the final answer to our perennially frustrating abiku/ogbanje generation and distribution of electricity.

    Everything about NAEC since its formation in 1976 indicates that its pursuit of nuclear-generated electricity in our country is nothing short of an absurd joke. If you visit the Commission’s website you will find that other than its CEO giving enthusiastic speeches around the world about the future of nuclear power plants in Nigeria and the African continent, there is virtually nothing on the ground to show as practical proof or demonstration of NAEC’s achievements. True enough, it has three so-called research centers, these being the Center for Energy Research and Training (CERT) Zaria; the Center for Energy Research Development (CERD), Ife; and the Nuclear Technology Center (NTC), Sheda. And it is also true that NAEC occasionally conducts what it calls 3-month Bridging Programmes (3MBP) that offer training in basic nuclear science and engineering for a few selected graduates of physical sciences and engineering from our universities. But these are all projects that are more real on paper than in real life against the background of the complete absence of nuclear technology in the economy of our country. In fact, so unreal is nuclear capacity of any appreciable scale in Nigeria that in the agreement that NAEC just signed with Rosatom, the Russian corporation will provide virtually everything in the process of building, commissioning, maintaining and possibly decommissioning nuclear power plants in our country. As a matter of fact, Rosatom will have majority shares in the ownership of the nuclear power plants that will be built under the agreement. Without wishing to stir any demagogic xenophobia in the reader, I would like to suggest that the perfect slogan for the signed agreement between NAEC and Rosatom ought to be “the Russians of Putin’s Dreams of Global Power Are Coming, They Are Coming”!

    I admit it. Apart from my total opposition to the building of any more nuclear power plants in Nigeria or any part of the African continent and the world, I also suspect that the agreement between NAEC and Rosatom is a scam and that no power plants will ever eventuate from the deal. In the first place, the first nuclear facility under the agreement will not be built until the year 2025, ten years from now. The ostensible reason for this is the fact that it takes time to plan for and build nuclear power plants. But we know also that in the course of a decade, cost estimates will be continually revised upwards. Secondly, Rosatom will be responsible for finding and generating financing for the joint venture – making the deal not so much a “joint venture” but the monopoly of a state-owned Russian multinational corporation. Thus, there are things about the whole venture that make it highly dubious, much like the absurd and astronomical wastefulness of steel production in Nigeria which, by the way, was also partnered with state-owned Russian companies.

    In ending this piece, I must also admit that I am worried, deeply worried that against all my suspicions, it might just happen that thanks to our legendary complacency, Rosatom and NAEC might eventually foist a nuclear power plant on us in Nigeria. This essay is based on the premise and the wish that this should never happen without a debate, without a struggle that involves every community, every stakeholder in our country’s economic and technological future. Perhaps the ultimate question in this debate, compatriots, is this: would you allow a nuclear power plant to be built in your part of the country? Beyond this ultimate question, there is the more rational issue of the many alternatives to nuclear-generated power that we have not exploited with adequate management acumen. And if we have been so utterly incapable of managing much safer forms of power generation and distribution, what absurd logic is driving us to try nuclear power plants?

    Could you please respond to this question Dr. Franklin Erepamo Osaisai?

    The calumny of Soyinka’s alleged diatribe against Igbos at Harvard: how lying morons are able to play on Nigerians’ worst divisive instincts 

                   First, a statement of fact: I was not only present at Soyinka’s lecture at Harvard on April 29, 2015 I was in fact the person that introduced him before his talk. Thus, I can attest to the fact that Soyinka did not say anything remotely close or similar to the vile and contemptible diatribe against Igbos that one unnamed reporter ascribed to him. Furthermore, I wish to assert the following things before I come to the more substantive section of this short piece.

    First of all, if Soyinka had said any such things about Igbos or any other ethnic group in our country, I would have walked out of the lecture and I am absolutely certain that dozens, scores of other people at the lecture would have done the same thing. Secondly, no writer or intellectual of Soyinka’s stature could and would have come to a place like Harvard to express the kind of hateful and despicable things that he was alleged to have said. True, Harvard has a past that contained a lot of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination against women and Native Americans. But from the about the mid-20th century on, the University has been a place that is extremely inhospitable to hate speeches of any kind, so much so that when Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard expressed arrogantly derogatory remarks about women in science, he lost his job. In other words, Harvard is not Ajegunle; it is not the kind of place that a writer of Soyinka’s stature and knowledge would have come to if he wanted to insult Ndigbo. And finally, as a public lecture, Soyinka’s talk was recorded and has gone into the archives of the University. It is therefore accessible to any researcher who presents valid credentials for access to the University’s archival holdings of recorded public lectures.

    I now come to the more crucial, the more disturbing part of this piece. To my mind, the unnamed person who ascribed those derisive anti-Igbo words to Soyinka – and in quotes, no less! – must him or herself be either a virulently anti-Igbo person or a moronic ethnic jingoist. Why did he or she not identify him or herself? Why hide in anonymity? Why could not this person see that the direct quotes she or he ascribed to Soyinka, in being so linguistically and grammatically crude, would not be credible to people aware that Soyinka is one of the greatest users of the English language in the world?

    This is the real issue in this carefully manufactured and orchestrated scandal: linguistic, grammatical, philosophical, moral and even simple factual veracity does not count one jot in the millennial internet. The originator of the calumny against Soyinka must have known this fundamental fact, perhaps subliminally, about the proliferation of inanities and imbecilities on the 21st century internet. For the simple fact is that unthinkingly, hordes of twitter and facebook users fell for the calumny against Soyinka, as improbable as it was and as easily disproved as it is.

    For me, perhaps the single most disturbing thing is the number of people who welcomed the diatribe ascribed to Soyinka, claiming to share the same sentiments about Igbos and defending Soyinka’s right to say openly what he presumably thinks about them in secret! The devil loves the company of good, beneficent souls! While the case of defenders of Igbo honor and dignity who rushed to condemn Soyinka was perhaps somewhat understandable, they also stand guilty of recklessness. In the face of such thoughtlessness, how are we to distinguish between genuine cases of condemnable Igbophobia like the ones expressed by the Oba of Lagos a few weeks ago during the run-up to the gubernatorial elections in Lagos from the entirely spurious and cynical case of this anonymous moron who ascribed to Soyinka palpably and demonstrably false allegations of hatred of Ndigbo?

    I end this piece on what I consider nothing short of a tragic irony. Soyinka’s lecture at Harvard on April 29, 2015 was quite easily one of the best lectures he had ever given on the political and past and future of our country. Please don’t take my word for this, those among the readers of this piece who can visit the archives at Harvard and see and hear for yourselves. Moreover as he had done in the past, Soyinka spoke with respect and barely hidden approval of MASSOB and its pursuit of the seemingly lost cause of Biafra. To a questioner, he even categorically reaffirmed the right of Biafra to have sought complete or con-federal self-determination. How ironic then that what has dominated the discussion of this superb lecture has been the inane and cynical calumny of one anonymous moron!

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • PDP must earn right to criticise Buhari

    PDP must earn right to criticise Buhari

    “Many in the ruling party still cannot reconcile themselves with what has just happened: they are handing over the reins to the man they disdained and they just can’t stop the habit of sniping at him. This is the campaign that never ended, and the attacks would continue whether or not they are reasonable or morally justified.” 

    I overheard a conversation between two men on a street that captures the magnitude of the burden inherited by President-elect Muhammadu Buhari. It went something like this:

    Mr. A: “Why e come be say now wey your man (Buhari) don win naim we dey suffer dis kain thing? No light, no petrol, no money… Na so una dey shout change, change … him don win now see wahala!”

    Mr. B: Haba! But Jonathan is still in charge, Buhari never take over now!”

    Mr. A: “Look … we no go gree o!” And their voices tapered off in the distance.

    In stunned silence I digested what I had just heard. The size of the challenge confronting the next administration is gargantuan, but it is compounded by so much ignorance on the part of a longsuffering population who now expect their newly-minted leader to brandish a wand and sweep their troubles away. If only this was wonderland!

    Buhari’s assignment is complicated by the bitterness factor. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was unprepared for the loss of the presidency. Party spokesman aptly described his organization as ‘traumatized’.

    Many in the ruling party still cannot reconcile themselves with what has just happened: they are handing over the reins to the man they disdained and they just can’t stop the habit of sniping at him. This is the campaign that never ended, and the attacks would continue whether or not they are reasonable or morally justified.

    That the PDP is in disarray after its calamitous electoral performance is to be expected. The scope of the debacle is such that the party which has been in power for an unbroken 16-year stretch would be would be psychologically damaged for a long time.

    Up North it has been virtually wiped out by Hurricane Buhari. In the South West it is standing on two shaky legs in Ondo and Ekiti. These outposts are bound to come under sustained pressure from the new governing party after May 29.

    In the South South and South East zones it faces an uncertain future. Electoral litigation and potential defections are bound to erode its holdings in these areas.

    In Abuja, national chairman Ahmadu Muazu and members of his National Working Committee (NWC) are exchanging brickbats with aides and associates of President Goodluck Jonathan over the defeat while crossing swords with governors who want them sacked.

    But no matter how bad things look for PDP at the moment, the worst is yet to come. In the next few months as the new government begins a forensic examination of the Jonathan years we should expect more embarrassing scandals to be unveiled as whistleblowers – long restrained by the fear of the outgoing government – begin to sing.

    The savage in-fighting that has already kicked off is not going to disappear just because a committee has been appointed to examine why the party did poorly at the polls. Peace will only come when one of the factions contending for the soul of the party prevails.

    Although there’s no unanimity as to the best way forward most members agree that PDP has to reinvent itself. But that isn’t going to happen until the party understands where it went wrong. The reactions of some of its leaders – from President Jonathan who’s already dreaming of PDP’s speedy return to power in 2019 to Muazu who’s been bragging about transforming into a vicious attack dog who will give the All Progressives Congress (APC) government nightmares – shows they still don’t get it.

    Their comments and those of their camp followers on the internet show that their understanding of their new opposition role ends with lobbing criticism and invective at every move of the incoming lot and their leader, Buhari. It was that sort of wooly-headed thinking that inspired the hate campaign strategy that backfired spectacularly of March 28 and April 11.

    The tactic or strategy a party in opposition adopts is usually shaped by the circumstance. There is the ‘reaction model’ involving relentless sniping and nitpicking. This means harassing your quarry over every little failing. It could be quite effective where the government in power is already unpopular, but it is very risky where certain lines are crossed.

    The other option is the ‘proactive model’ in which the opposition tries to take the initiative by proffering new and more attractive policies than those set forth by the government of the day for dealing with challenges. This is mostly adopted where the incumbent regime retains a measure of popularity and credibility. In this case frontal attack doesn’t work because there’s not much to attack.

    APC adopted the relentless attack model, now the PDP lazily wants to follow that same tack without understanding why it worked. You don’t attack for attack sake. The power of a critic’s utterances comes from his credibility. When Buhari talks about fighting corruption there’s a ring of believability to his words because of his history. The same comments coming from some of our former heads of state immediately conjures images of very black pots calling the kettle names.

    Jonathan was roundly criticized because there was so much to criticize in his government. The flak hit home because it was supported by concrete evidence. If the opposition were hitting him over the head for corruption, they could point at several running scandals at every point in time. It was so bad that by the final year of his tenure the president had lost so much credibility locally and internationally.

    In trying to savage Buhari even before he’s sworn into office, the PDP is making a big mistake. The man still enjoys tremendous goodwill and this will not dissipate overnight; it will take him stumbling from disaster to disaster for that to happen.

    If anything PDP and its leaders should stay out of the way. As the magnitude of the mess it created becomes evident they should be hiding their heads in shame and allow the new team clean up their mess. And truly Nigeria in 2015 is one massive mess.

    Every day the sheer scale of Boko Haram atrocities becomes evident. On the positive side the military has recorded successes in recent times. But it has struck me that all the efforts of the armies of Nigeria and three neighbouring countries have not been able to wipe out the sect.

    After each day’s fighting the military reports new heavy death tolls of the part of the militants. How did they manage to get this big? How did they manage to build such a mighty force of men under arms? What were the administrations in charge in the last decade doing while this monster grew? All of this occurred under PDP’s watch.

    Under the same party the nation has become bitterly polarized along ethnic and religious lines like never before in her history. The hatred between groups is frighteningly approaching the intensity of the pre-civil war period.

    That’s not all. The economy has been run aground. There is no electricity. Fuel queues have become a permanent feature of our landscape. We squander billions of naira on dubious subsidy payments every year. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that neither the Ministry of Finance nor the oil marketers can agree on what the numbers are.

    Unemployment has assumed the status of a plague. Under pressure from falling oil prices the naira now exchanges at an all-time low of well over N200 to the US dollar. The foreign reserves and Excess Crude Account are depleted. With one or two exceptions most states cannot pay monthly salaries and even the federal government had to borrow to meet its own wage obligations. This is the country that PDP would be handing to the next administration.

    The clean-up exercise that Buhari has been saddled is going to take a while to get to done. We’re not going to wake up on May 30 to discover that Nigeria has become Paradise.

    I believe that the president-elect has started going about his business in a very sound way. Some have tried to make his attempts at lowering expectations out to be an attempt to renege on campaign promises. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

    Anybody who has bothered to read between the lines of his words in the past few weeks would notice he’s been clearly setting the style and tone of his government. In his comments on the first anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok girls he said the approach of his administration to resolving the issue would be founded on honesty. That required him to declare bluntly that there were no guarantees the girls would ever be found.

    One of Jonathan’s greatest undoing is that for much of his tenure he lived in denial and never leveled with the public about how bad things were. He preferred to tell the each audience what he felt they wanted to hear instead of the bitter truth.

    He glossed over the insurgency even when bombs were going off in Abuja – preferring the narrative that it was the work of APC and sundry enemies who were bent on unseating him. He and his wife didn’t initially accept that the Chibok abductions happened. Indeed some of his aides up till today insist that the incident was a politically-motivated stunt to embarrass the government.

    After he accepted that the incident did happen, he kept reassuring the country of their imminent return. At a point one of his defence chiefs even boasted of knowing where they were being held. More than a year after they are still not home. By promising what he could not deliver Jonathan did incalculable harm to his credibility. The result is he led his party to the electoral carnage we’ve just witnessed.

    Seamlessly the party responsible for our sorry state becomes the new opposition. It expects to get going in that role by deploying criticism. But the erstwhile ruling party lost the moral right to criticise by its criminal mismanagement of Nigeria. Indeed, it would be amusing watching PDP leaders moan about the state of the nation in the next one or two years.

    PDP must now earn the right to criticize those who govern the country. Introspection and planning were never its strong suit. But that more than anything is what is required in opposition. In 1999, the party’s first Minister for Power, Bola Ige, excitedly promised to deliver 24-hour electricity within six months. He didn’t wait to understand what the problem was. Sixteen years after his successors haven’t done better.

    The party needs to prove through concrete actions that it has repented of its old, discredited ways and can now be entrusted with power.

    It will not have the federal platform to showcase anything in the coming years. It would have to prove its competence using its few remaining outposts in the South-South, South-East and Gombe. APC did this successfully – that was why during the campaigns it could point to the achievements of its governors in Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Ogun, Oyo and elsewhere as examples of good governance it intended to replicate at federal level.

    Until it has something positive to show PDP and its discredited leaders must really stay out of the way of the cleaners.

  • Myths and Masks of Mental Illness

    With the death of Thomas Adeoye Lambo, Nigeria has lost another distinguished son, a paradigmatic titan and a colossus among the colossi of modern psychiatry. When beggars die, there are no comets seen, to recall the inevitable William Shakespeare. The sullied Nigerian firmament has since blazed forth at the passing of a true prince.

    In his life time, Lambo was a profound source of inspiration for many of his compatriots. In death, he has brought out the hidden literary gifts of his country folks in a rash of brilliant obituaries, particularly a memorable one penned by his protégé , Professor Akinkugbe, another Nigerian medical Maharaja.

    Yet the outpouring of grief at the passing of the great man has also come with a price. The sober reticence has denied us an opportunity to explore the implications of one of Lambo’s most brilliant but casually thrown insights: what to do with the political psychotics eternally thrown up by Nigeria’s dysfunctional political landscape, and the colourful masks they often wear to disguise their mental illness. Why do many depraved people who are obviously in need of psychiatric attention tend to prevail in Nigeria’s power sweepstakes?

    As a mental institution, Aro itself would be a very tame metaphor for the chaotic lunacies of contemporary Nigerian politics and the deranged antics of its principals. But that being the case, what does it say about the collective mental condition of a people who allow themselves to be lorded over by such disturbed characters? After all, the power-maniacs did not descend from Mars. This is perhaps why Lambo ought to have tarried awhile. But this is not Lambo’s turf.  Nigeria awaits its preeminent psychiatrist of political disorder who will combine Lambo’s technical brilliance with the redemptive political passion of a Franz Fanon.

    An illustrious son of illustrious parents, Lambo was not only a genius among men, he was also a human among geniuses. This last point needs to be stressed because genius is often accompanied by petty and anti-social impertinences. But as pointed out by his many admirers, Lambo was a genial and deeply humane fellow.

    Yet here was a man who with one insight of genius changed forever the course and trajectory of African psychiatry. As Professor Akinkugbe has brilliantly noted, this was not the usual feat of robotic remembering, the homestead of the proliferating professorial paper in which a single insight is split into a hundred monographs. Lambo did not need to resort to such academic trickeries. As Meredith Owen has aptly put it, genius does what it must and talent does what it can.

    This was truly the birth of a new science, of rural psychiatry.  According to Lambo, the ravages of mental illness among the rural poor can be mitigated and minimized if the agrarian bliss of their rural community can be reproduced in a psychiatric establishment rather than subject them to the harsh and institutionalized cruelties of the modern psychiatric ward.  Aro became a global trope for humane psychiatry, and the very idea that mental illness may well be a ruling class myth became a theoretical possibility.

    Such moments are very rare in the history of science, a true paradigm shift. With characteristic but vehement elegance, the French call it the moment of epistemological rupture,  that is when the chain of knowledge is broken and with all the violence that accompanies birth and the arrival in the world of a new baby. And since nobody had thought like that before, it meant that technically Lambo was on his own.

    This is what Louis Althusser, the great French Marxist philosopher, meant when he observed that all true geniuses are intellectual orphans. According to him, the price of genius ranges from alienation to madness and even premature death. Althusser should know. After killing his wife and long term collaborator in a moment of insanity, Althusser was promptly committed to a mental institution. He died there.

    A cultured rebel, Lambo was spared the fate of the quintessential genius. Since he threatened no one but his own folks back on a benighted continent, his international patrons could regard him as a benign curio from the heart of darkness. And since he was spared the worst neuroses of genius, it meant he could deliver the most outlandish of insights with deadpan humour and refined restraint.

    Nevertheless, his forage into university administration ended in a comprehensive fiasco. As the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Lambo could not understand why students were demanding such privileges as exotic food and beer-drinking when majority of the people were wallowing in rural penury. In any case, who were the upstarts when he himself was the only son of the Iyalode of Egba Christians and a father who was one of the richest merchants of his era?

    It was a gross misreading of the psychology of the new post-colonial elite touching in its idyllic naivete and political innocence. The ensuing political eruption and the killing of a student, Kunle Adepeju, was to cost Lambo his post and some of his reputation. This was precisely the moment that Lambo himself moved permanently into this writer consciousness from hazy psychiatric hero to a humbled national figure.

    As a teenage journalist surveying the massive anti-Lambo demonstration from the verandah of the Nigerian Tribune, Adeoyo, Ibadan, one placard struck me with its malignant brilliance and poetic irony. It read: ARO IS THE BEST PLACE FOR LAMBO. Such was the inventive malice of Nigerian undergraduates of that generation.

    But Lambo was not to return to Aro, either as a patient, or the directing specialist. The former would have been a horrid fate. As Alexander Solshenitzyn, the great Russian writer, has observed in The Cancer Ward, there cannot be a worse fate than for a doctor to suffer an affliction in his own specialization. My next encounter with the phenomenon of Lambo was exactly a decade later in post graduate school at the University of Sheffield.

    The recently deceased and much admired Alec Jenner (1927-2014), a classmate of Lambo from medical school, had by then become the distinguished professor of psychiatry in the famous Sheffield medical school. Decades later, the professor was still so much in awe of Lambo’s feat at medical school that he thought all Nigerians must be geniuses. I benefited from this unduly generous branding, and so did a friend of mine.

    The professor cultivated us, and since Tokunbo Pearce was researching the phenomenon of madness in African literature for a doctoral thesis, we were both encouraged to participate in the professor’s community clinic in his sprawling pile in rural Yorkshire. Orgies of wine-drinking followed intense intellectual dissection of Marx, Sartre, Thomas Szasz, etc.

    One evening after the wine got into my head, I tried to engage a member of the community in an intellectual exchange, a foolishness that saw me retreating with a huge black eye. Professor Pearce, whose father was one of the first indigenous officers of the Nigerian Navy, knew the military virtues of advancing with caution.

    Perhaps Lambo would have cautioned me against intellectual hyperventilation. And we must now return to the great man. When Lambo famously cautioned that Nigeria’s prospective political leadership should be subject to rigorous psychiatric evaluation to determine their mental fitness,  the June 12 fiasco was still far away; so was Abacha; so were the infamous “elections” of 2003 and 2004.

    Every year, the absurdities in the theatre of political chaos lengthen. What will Lambo say?  It is obvious that long before he died, Lambo had given up on the political class of his beloved country. Like a grizzled Yoruba savant, he took the oath of eloquent silence.

    Yet since every Rome has its own barbarians, there was nothing extraordinary about Lambo’s insight. Every society produces its own pathologies as a direct correlation of its economic and political contradictions.  This, in combination with other variables, is what determines the type of political leadership thrown up at a particular epoch. The line between madness and genius is very thin indeed. Churchill was prone to severe and crippling depression, which he called the “black dog”.

    The same affliction dogged old Abe Lincoln. Napoleon was technically a madman. So were Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.  Lyndon Johnson was a bi-polar personality with cyclothymic mood swings. Richard Nixon was a paranoid psychotic. Ironically his successor, the sober and dour Henry Ford, ascribed his limited success in American politics to the fact that he was “disgustingly sane”.

    The interesting thing about these other societies is that they seem to have developed internal institutional mechanism for easing out political monstrosities before they cause permanent damage, or ,failing that,  for putting damage containment mechanics swiftly in place. For every Hitler, there was a Konrad Adenauer, and for every Stalin, there was a Nikita Khrushchev. When General Washington declined the invitation to become the democratic monarch of America, he was shrewd enough to recognize that there were already more lawyers in the US than soldiers and that he would be putting himself up for demystification.

    The problem with Nigeria and most African countries is that there is no such self-correcting system or institutional mechanism for dealing with a malfunctioning polity. Where there are, they are swiftly rubbished by a rampaging mob of disturbed politicians. After spending thirty years destroying every vibrant institution in the land, the military finally and logically self destructed. Now when it is needed as a patriotic countervailing institution, it is reduced to bleating incoherence and the periodic violence of the politically deranged.

    Rather than shoring up these crippled institutions or rebuilding them from scratch, the current political dispensation has chosen to despoil their remnants, particularly an already badly crippled judiciary. By the time it finishes, the political landscape will even be more awash with colourful and fanciful characters, political transvestites, Rasputins , electoral miracle workers, identity thieves, their doppelgangers and other outlandish figures  as if from outer space.

    But that also bespeaks the end of these times. Whether this is what we are currently witnessing, or we have to tarry awhile for an even more fanciful finale is a matter of conjecture. Surely, a political dispensation that destroys its own natural habitat and demolishes its vital sources of nourishment has written its own suicide note well in advance. It is a crazed serpent that has bitten its own tail. It is only a question of time before the poison heads for its vitals. Where a new Lambo with a dash of Franz Fanon would have been useful is in plotting the political pathologies behind the collective death wish of Nigeria’s postcolonial political elite.

    As a youth, Lambo was known to have worn a mask to his mother’s stall. “Mother, the dead salute you, but where is your son?” the masquerade rumbled. But the mother was not deceived, instantly recognizing her own. Now with the great masquerade departed, the dead and dying of Nigeria, from behind the mask of collective political disorientation, are asking: “Where is our country?” For our own we no longer own.

     

    (Minus some upgrade of historical data, this was first published in 2004 as an obituary tribute to Professor Lambo)

  • Unpaid salaries

    The challenges ahead of the incoming General Muhammadu Buhari’s administration are indeed enormous, considering the poor state of the economy.

    Years of inept leadership at all levels have left the country’s economy in a bad shape and a lot has to be done by the Buhari administration to meet the very high expectations of the people looking up to it for real change and not endless transformation without real development.

    One of the urgent issues that have to be addressed is the irregular payment of workers at state and the federal levels which governors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) drew attention to during a meeting with Buhari last week.

    Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, who led his counterparts to the meeting, confirmed that most states of the federation have not been able to pay salaries and even claimed that federal workers are being owed April salaries.

    Some states are owing as much as four months in a country where even those who are paid are barely able to meet their various obligations.

    The claim that federal workers are also being owed salaries have, however, been denied, though the Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, confirmed that the federal government borrowed N473bn  to pay salaries and overhead cost in four months.

    To solve the cash crunch problem and meet the expectations of voters, the APC governors urged the president- elect to consider providing a bailout out of the situation.

    Much as I am not opposed to a bailout if it is possible and can be accommodated under the federal expenditure, it is necessary to be sure of the real cause of the inability of the states to pay their workers.

    Contrary to claims by the states that poor management of the economy and dwindling federal allocations have denied them needed funds for recurrent expenditure like salaries, Okonjo- Iweala insists that the states should be blamed for their predicament.

    According to the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, “The 50 per cent drop in revenues simply means that salaries should be prioritised. The federal government should not be blamed for avoidable mistakes made at the state level.”

    The implication of Okonjo- Iweala’s refutal is that if the affected states have managed their limited resources better and prioritised payment of salaries, they would not have had backlog of unpaid salaries.

    To the extent that not all states are owing their workers’ salaries, Okonjo-Iweala’s defence cannot be totally dismissed. The dwindling federal allocation affects all states. If some states are able to pay, others should not have any excuse not to pay.

    While not all states can generate additional revenue from other sources, state governments can definitely manage their resources better.

    They need to cut down on excessive spending on projects and activities. State governors should be more concerned about the development of their states and the welfare of the people instead of funding their personal projects.

    How can some of the state governors owing their staff justify the huge amount spent on reelection campaigns and bagging of ‘worthless’ awards for the work they have not done?

    Unless state governments check corrupt practices, eliminate wasteful spending, improve on internal revenue generation and accept the reality that federal allocations may not increase soon, bailout by the federal government may not solve their problem.

    They must come up with a perfect formula for ensuring regular payment of workers, irrespective of the revenue available to them. There cannot be any acceptable reason for non-payment of workers’ salaries, majority of whom have no other sources of income. If the number of staff has become bloated over the years, there should be a gradual layoff of unproductive staff. The level of redundancy in government service is very high and should be checked with policies that promote efficiency.

  • PDP and its overgrowth of weeds

    People are sick, hungry, poor, deprived, and they are all looking to the government to keep them from dying. The government is not expected to look the other way and live in obscene opulence, which is exactly what PDP did; “just shearing monies”. Indeed, by election time, the party had finished dealing with the Naira and had started on the dollar.

    Anyone will tell you that farming is a very tedious but rewarding activity. Whenever I have bitten into a slice of bread, I have often given a thought to the farmer who started the whole process of how bread gets to my table. First, I imagine him putting his back to the soil to grow the wheat. Then he prays that the rain or snow would put their backs to their jobs and fall. Then, he applies all kinds of measures to make sure the new plant is not done in by any of those innumerable species of pests or, worse still, innumerable kinds of weeds.

    After watching the tantrums on TV of the erstwhile respected ex-Minister and PDP member, Elder Godsday Orubebe, at the recently concluded presidential elections in Nigeria, I leaned back in my chair and immediately thought, ‘Well, there goes my well worn definition of a baby’. You know a baby is that special breed of newly born two-legged creatures which has no sense or care of its whereabouts but has a keen sense of its wants. I was not surprised a few days later to find some unkind commentators on the social media had given him new names, including ‘Orubaby’. I had to readjust my definition of baby to read ‘… a special breed of two-legged creatures that may not necessarily be newborn.’

    Since the PDP lost the presidential election in March and especially lately, there has been a great deal of tear shedding, hair tearing and blame trading in public. The party obviously has taken to heart Shakespeare’s famous line, ‘The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars/ But in ourselves …’; so, it has taken to some kind of house cleaning. This means that there has been a rather large pile of mud being slung in different directions of PDP membership. In one corner is your unquiet A. Fayose and co vociferously accusing, and in another corner pants the beleaguered chairman of the party, Muazu, stoutly defending. While we are none the clearer for all these talk, talk, talk, all we are seeing are rather muddy faces. Dear reader, if you and I don’t talk now, some of that mud pie may reach yours and my corners because pies are notorious for splashing every which way.

     I think that rather than sling these mud pies in all directions, this party should borrow King Arthur’s Round Table, sheath their swords and get them some strong weed killers. That table is particularly useful because it usually has no head or tail, right way or wrong way, right person or wrong person. Everyone comes to it with an equal share of the blame, guilt, falsehood, truth, justice and blamelessness.

     Methinks the first thing these gladiators need to do is to be honest on who to apply the weed killers on; that is, if it is possible for them to be honest, because one of the stereotypes of politicians anywhere is that, like lawyers, it is difficult to get any amount of truth from them. Please note that I did not say it is impossible because I have some lawyer friends and family whose truths I am at the moment digesting.

    Anyway, I believe it is difficult to say exactly what the PDP did wrong to have lost that presidential election. Perhaps, it is one single factor – e.g. underrating the power of the card reader; perhaps it is a combination of factors – e.g. underrating the power of the card reader and the near-suffocating suffering of the Nigerian public while PDP members and families smiled to the banks and overseas, I don’t know. What is clear is that the victory of the APC candidate in the presidential election did not happen because of luck.

    Let us see some more of the things PDP needs to apply its weed killers on. I think the party members might examine carefully again their public image, especially their advertisements in the media. There is nowhere in the world where any advert or party slogan that includes ‘PDP … Power!’ will not read like a page in the Book of Insults to any people. It not only smacks of arrogance (even more arrogant than someone declaring that PDP will rule for 60 years, until God told them in March, ‘Really?’), it clearly tells the people that all they are interested in is getting power, being in control, ruling and reigning without a purpose. It lacks that necessary pretentiousness to humility. It lacks, you know, that ‘let us pretend that the real power belongs to the people and kowtow to them’ kind of attitude. In politics, as in religion, it is absolutely essential that you acknowledge yourself most unworthy.

    Then, prior to and during the elections, there just was too much frothing at the mouth from too many of PDP’s ‘young Turks’ who thought they were waging a psychological warfare without ever having seen a war. It got so bad at one point I thought, surely PDP is stricken with epilepsy and it does not even know it. From the mouth of young (surprisingly!) party members streamed forth bad, foul, irreverent, indecent, barbaric, and untoward language most unexpected in this age. Worse, they came mostly from the lips of front-line public figures: governors, ministers, senator hopefuls, and even the wife of the president, finally culminating in the public gabbling of our man mentioned above.

    The little I know about language is that even if you had no respect for your subject of discourse, you would at least consider the sensibility of your hearer, which will compel you to use a more decorous language. Believe me, it is very possible to insult someone in such elegant prose that even the victim of the abuse would be very pleased with you and give you a handshake. It is necessary for the PDP (and other parties too) to vet who interacts with the public on their behalf and learn to quickly distance themselves from the mouths of reckless speakers before that one drowns him/herself and the party. Failure to do this will only signal to the public that the run-amok individual is speaking for himself and his party, and that the party hopes to win its election by adopting the ideology of abuse.

     From what I know, it appears that the PDP adopted an ideology of winning ‘by hook or crook’, ‘at all costs’, or ‘whatever it takes.’ These are no decent ideologies but gangsters’ style of operation. For instance, APC is commonly associated with the progressive ideology. This is why I do not understand why they are allowing just anyone to decamp and join them. On the other hand, I am hard put to say exactly what PDP stands for. This is why its members can decamp so easily to anywhere power seems to swing to.

    Above all, there is just no substitute for good governance. People are sick, hungry, poor, deprived, and they are all looking to the government to keep them from dying. The government is not expected to look the other way and live in obscene opulence, which is exactly what PDP did; “just shearing monies”. Indeed, by election time, the party had finished dealing with the Naira and had started on the dollar.

    Governance is about bringing out policies that would guarantee the people’s comfortable present and bright future. A credible government needs a good opposition to keep it on its toes. This country still needs the PDP, so the party needs to apply its weed killers now, because come election time, the people are entitled to their choice.

  • Major agenda for Buhari

    Major agenda for Buhari

    After voting the All Progressives Congress (APC) into office on March 28, Nigerians will not be able to resist the urge to set agenda for the in-coming government of Muhammadu Buhari. There will indeed be dozens of items on the collective agenda, many of them argued vigorously and persuasively to make them rank high on the president-elect’s priorities. Given the mess made of the country in the past one decade and more, and especially in the past two or three years, everyone will be justified to focus on those critical areas of national life that have become a nightmare for the country. Gen Buhari himself has zeroed in on about four priorities: insecurity, economy/unemployment, corruption, and power. There is little doubt that if he accomplishes these priorities, he will be an instant hero.

    A few analysts may go ahead to proffer ways and methods by which the new government could resolve the mess, and they will be right to feel concerned that while there may be a consensus on the problems, it is unlikely there will be a consensus on how best or how less painful the agreed goals can be achieved. In fact, as a columnist with this newspaper observed, in voting Gen Buhari, it is not clear whether the electorate knew what they were doing, or what to expect from him, or how far his abrasiveness could impinge or grate on their worldview, whether political or social. The scale of the mess is truly staggering, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to see which way the Buhari cat will jump.

    The aroma of change wafts enticingly in the air, and everyone, not the least the president-elect himself and his All Progressives Congress (APC) party, is giddy with excitement over the dramatic political earthquake that occurred during the last polls. Gen Buhari knows that when he hunkers down to begin the massive work of regeneration and renewal, he will step on huge toes, and his popularity, which is sky-high at the moment, will take a tumble depending on how suavely the new ruling party and its leaders execute their goals.

    Gen Buhari’s agenda are consistent and logical spinoffs from his party’s programmes and manifesto. The general in turn also acknowledges huge public expectations, a significant part of which is simple and moderately ambitious. And should president-elect meet these simple expectations, and in ways that neither provoke the poor to irritation and irrationality nor instigate the rich to exasperation and desperation, he will reinforce his image as the man for the times, solidify his party’s change mantra, and enrich and nurture democracy in Nigeria on a truly stupendous scale. However, if he and his party have their eyes on history, if they wish to make their achievements sustainable in the long term and hope that from their efforts world-class governance and democracy would emerge and develop great tap roots, they will have to soar beyond the atmosphere of ordinariness and predictability to the ethereal world of the idealistic and the philosophical. How successfully they manage this greater and more demanding objective will determine how high they climb in public esteem and the lasting impression they will make on Nigeria and the wider world.

    Gen Buhari will be confronted with arguments on the need to moderate his ambition for the country on account of the low level of sophistication of Nigerians. They will tell him that if he accomplishes his three or four main goals, not only will the people be satisfied and reassured of a great future, he will be applauded for laying solid foundation for the growth, stability and future greatness of the country. This line of argument is sincere and plausible, and any president wary of the complexities of idealistic undertakings, such as this column is proffering, will yield to its persuasiveness. If Gen Buhari plays safe, as he seems inclined to do by limiting himself to the understandable and the uncomplicated, he will have done well, that is assuming he manages his safe goals successfully. But if he takes the deeper and more difficult road, that is, the obviously more complex, perhaps even philosophical and encompassing alternative, it will be assumed he understands its many nuances, and is capable of midwifing the dream, and summoning the courage and the discipline to stick with it against all odds.

    This column therefore offers the president-elect this complex option as a non-binding alternative, for travelling that road requires both profundity and vision. It also must come from deep, intuitive conviction, eliciting great passion and commitment. That alternative road does not preclude Gen Buhari’s priority programmes; indeed, the complex option feeds on them. The priority programmes are the ammunition needed to channel the country’s energies to a lofty and philosophical end, far beyond the commonplace existentialism that traps many nations in either ordinariness, if they are yet to achieve greatness, or decay and decline, if they are already great. This lofty alternative road must inspire the president-elect to recognise that his priorities, which are also invariably our priorities, must be seen as means to an end.

    It is not enough to achieve the set goals of fighting corruption, creating employment, and battling insecurity, among other things. These goals are laudable, but their full potentials will not be realised if they are not integrated right from the beginning into the visionary dynamics of developing a great and powerful nation, rivalling some of the best countries around sociologically, politically, technologically and economically. If that template or superstructure of a great and powerful country is not envisioned right from the beginning, it will mean that there will be no enduring and consistent frameworks for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders to apply as models for the task ahead. (Compare and contrast France and Italy after World War II). It will mean that present and future elections will be conducted merely routinely in consonance with the amorphous, conflicting and inconsequential yearnings of the electorate. It will mean tolerating rulers like former president Olusegun Obasanjo who lacked vision and depth, and others like President Jonathan to whom the ordinary art of governance proved inaccessible. It will reawaken the debate on what the purpose of government is, using the Singaporean and American models as examples. Finally, it will also mean that for a long time to come, Nigeria will be satisfied with rudimentary and existential objectives.

    The APC and Gen Buhari have done well to articulate their redemptive programmes for the country, but it is not certain how high their ambition is, which great countries or empires serve as their role model, whether their ambitions have irredentist components, if not spatially, at least ideationally, whether all they aspire to is just to copy one country or the other, with all their limiting attributes, or whether in their study and understanding of empires and empire builders, from Pax Romana to Pax Brittanica and to Pax Americana, and from Julius and Augustus Caesar to Genghis Khan, they see themselves and the country it is their turn to lead as a future role model and pacesetter to other countries and peoples. This kind of ambition is not alien to modern Africa. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt dreamt far beyond the limitations and developing economies of their countries. While war cannot be discounted as an agent of change and expansion, and will still occur on a large scale in the future, the change agents of today are economic and ideational influences.

    Gen Buhari and his party must determine where they want to locate themselves in the developmental and historical continuums. Hopefully, their ambition may be much more sublime and engaging than they have stated publicly. Let them, therefore, develop another richer position paper, other than their current blueprint, in which these deeper, inspiring goals are reconstructed as the superstructure on which the general and mundane yearnings of the people are to be realised. If the APC does not produce and execute something much deeper than they have publicly stated, and notwithstanding the fact that their opponent, the PDP, appears incapable of doing any better given their woeful 16 years performance, somebody or another party will rise and fill the yawning gap — if not now, then sometime later.

  • Regime change and its discontents

    Regime change and its discontents

    In African countries transiting from colonial rule to full political modernity, regime change involving a switch from ruling party to the opposition was until recent the exception rather than the rule. In many of these countries, transformation often takes place within the context of power changing hands between different factions of the same ruling party and between one generation of rulers and the other without the prospects of inter-party transition.

    In Nigeria’s fifty fear years of post-independence, this is the first time the nation will be witnessing an inter-party regime change. As Nigerians saw during the regime switch over from Umaru  Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan, even regime change between different factions of the same political group can be quite a tense and stressful affair, sometimes taking the nation to the edge of disaster. In the case of an inter-party change over such as we are currently witnessing, things can become very turbulent and tumultuous indeed.

    Rather than this being viewed with sorrow, despair and a generous dose of Afro-pessimism, it should be viewed from the perspective of a longer span of history and of societies in a state of traumatic transition from traditional authoritarian modes to some form of political modernity. In this respect, African countries have done quite well.

    While there have been inter-party transition in several African countries, notably South Africa, Zambia,Senagal, Botswana, Malawi, Ghana, Benin Republic, in some other African countries, particularly in the West African sub-continent, military interventions have been swiftly terminated in favour of multi-party civil rule by a combination of local and international agencies. The recent experience of Mali, Guinea and Ivory Coast comes to mind.

    As the long period of power transfer finally enters its final four weeks in Nigeria, there have been some fearful hiccups and intrigue-soaked dramas playing out even as they cast a dark shadow over the smooth and seamless transfer of power from one state party to the other. After such a bitter, hate-suffused campaign and the subsequent ouster of a ruling party long accustomed to power, only a political innocentwould expect the ruling party to depart quietly and without some rancorous fuss.

    Not unexpectedly therefore, the mood of cheery optimism which accompanied President Jonathan’s graceful concession of defeat has given way to grim and often brutal political calculations and unseemly wrangling as the reality of  drastic recomposition of state personnel and the termination of tenancy gradually sinks in. Since this is the first time this momentous and epochal transfer of power is taking place in Nigeria’s history, nobody has a road map or a  compass to navigate the turbulent waters and the rude currents.

    Yet it is imperative for the political class to find within itself the inner strength and resolve to make sure that nothing untoward happens between now and the May 29th handover date.  Perhaps the lay over or interregnum itself is too long which makes power transfer very vulnerable to anti-democratic forces which abound in the Nigerian political society. In the nearest future, we may have to take another look at the constitution and our foolish fondness for American presidential rituals which sits oddly with the imperative of an authoritarian state and society yet to naturalize and domesticate the essence of western liberal democracy.

    In parliamentary-type democracies, the winner takes over immediately. Such is the haste that in Great Britain, which is the global exemplar of this type of liberal democracy, the victor often arrives at Ten Downing Street beaming triumphant smiles while the loser sneaks out through the backdoor. On May 2nd  1997 and hours after losing the general election, John Major was sighted at his favourite Oval Cricket grounds spotting dark goggles as he lapped at a pint of warm beer. Life resurrects after political death.

    In our own case, both the president elect and the president deposed are consigned to a whopping eight weeks in political limbo; a warehouse for political mischief and incalculable villainy. It doesn’t get more disruptive and destabilizing.  With Goodluck Jonathan rightly insisting that he is in charge till the very last second even as he is busy hiring and firing left, right and centre while General Mohammadu Buhari is also busy making ex-cathedra pronouncements about a presidency yet to mature, may God help us all.

    The deck is being loaded with the administrative, economic and human debris of the old order. General  Buhari may have to spend valuable weeks and even months clearing institutional impedimenta. We must find a creative hybrid between the American and British models which fits perfectly the reality of our situation and circumstances.

    It is important for us as Nigerians to get this vital transition right. Institutions are nothing but the herculean efforts of human beings which involve repeated gestures and rituals burnt into the human consciousness. They then become invaluable pathfinders acting with impersonal rigour and abstract impartiality.

    Even though this is the first time in the history of the country that we are having a power transfer from an ousted ruling party to the opposition, all those who wish Nigeria well above partisan politics, all those who believe in the manifest destiny of this gifted country as a potential haven for the Black soul must wish that it happens ever so often so as to teach political parties who abjure their covenant with the people a memorable and unforgettable lesson. This country will never be the same again.

    Except in the post-revolutionary momentum of a popular uprising, it is rare in Africa to find a ruling party that has held power for sixteen years being so comprehensively trounced at the polls by an opposition party that is barely two years old. What this means in political seismography is that the earthquake which brought the ruling party to grand ruination is merely dormant and may yet erupt again. Beyond the surface placidity, one can almost feel the frightening tremors.

    The ouster of the PDP is not the end of a process but the beginning of a working out of national contradictions   which may eventuate in the birth of a totally new Nigeria or the dramatic dissolution of its present iron format.  As a group, the Nigerian political elite have been too preoccupied with ephemeralities to see the latent manifestation beyond the surface pathologies.  This is more than mere electoral victory or loss of power. Something else is brewing somewhere. The contents and sum total of the country in all their roiling contradictions appear to have outstripped the current form and framework.

    As it is natural in the circumstances, the PDP is in a state of denial. When its obtuse diehards talk of reorganizing the party and repositioning it for power retrieval, just what do they mean? Do they really know what has hit them?  In order to even broach the possibility of survival the party must be completely reinvented and must come up with a totally new paradigm of service to the people. As it is at the moment, the party is a political brand soiled beyond soap and water.

    As a party, the PDP was meant for another epoch. That era has given way before our very eyes.  The PDP was conceived as a party of big men and pan-Nigerian powerbrokers who exercised a veto power over their subjects in what is supposed to be a modern nation-state. But when a nation in itself is driven by power hubris to become a nation for itself, the very notion of big man enters into a fatal contradiction with people’s power. All the remaining party big wigs have to do is to take a casual or casualty roll call of its big men that fell in the last election.  The political graveyard is filled with the bones of big men.

    As for the victorious APC, it seems that it also too preoccupied with new found spoils of office to do a reality check.  What brought the APC to power is not an endorsement of its platform but a rejection of the platform of the PDP. Anything but the PDP was the national battle cry. It all boils down to what we propose as the politics of negative memory.  In order to cultivate and gain the positive affection of the Nigerian electorate, the APC must put its strategic wits to work so as to come up with a far reaching charter with the Nigerian people and a comprehensive blueprint for transforming it into an organic and cohesive organ.

    If the APC is not to suffer the same fate as the PDP, it is in the interest of the party and the nation that has given it so much to demonstrate how and why it is different from the PDP. The current unseemly and unsightly scrambling and jostling for office and position do not portray it as a party different in quality and orientation from the PDP. The APC must remember the fate of the incongruous coalition which unseated the ancien regime in Kenya and brought Mwai Kibaki to power.

    Four years in power and as election loomed, the alliance disintegrated into its component parts and ethnic particularities. The result was a brief civil war from which Kenya is yet to recover. For starters, both parties must refrain from acts capable of jeopardizing the national date with destiny on May 29th or conduct themselves in a manner that can endanger the historic victory of the Nigerian people over authoritarian misrule.

  • Jonathan embarks on phantom post-mortem

    Jonathan embarks on phantom post-mortem

    Like everything else about President Goodluck Jonathan’s approach to critical issues, his post-mortem of the general elections is as superficial as his shambolic reelection campaign. Last Thursday, while reacting to the post-election report presented to him by the head of his campaign organisation, Ahmadu Ali, a former minister and denizen of the PDP, the president attributed his defeat to anything but his failings and his party’s lack of great ideas and cohesion. “The PDP is still the dominant party,” the president boasted. “If you look at the results, the difference is just 2.5 million votes, and if you look at the areas where it is perceived that the PDP scored so low, the PDP couldn’t have got those kinds of scores. But the elections are over, so the country first.”

    By narrowing his defeat to just one area out of the many-sided beatings he took on both March 28 and April 11, he gave the impression of a politician who liked to clutch at straws. What is obvious to everyone who has taken the pains to analyse the results of the presidential and other polls is that, far beyond the about 2.5 million votes that separated the loser from the winner, and far beyond the fact that he was beaten virtually everywhere and on all fronts, the country could not wait to angrily repudiate Dr Jonathan as leader. He was no longer liked, and the electorate blamed him for all the things that had gone wrong with the country, be it insecurity, declining economy, Chibok schoolgirls abductions, bad external image, etc.

    Strangely, the president still manages to describe his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the dominant party. Dominant where? Did he take care to look at the statistics of his defeat at all? He and his party lost on all fronts, and their dominance has been taken away from them so comprehensively that no one is left in doubt which is the dominant party today. In addition, Dr Jonathan disputes the margins by which he and his party lost in many states. Yet, it is precisely in the states where he and his party won that voter turnout was implausibly high, far above the national and even world averages.

    The president was of course not done with deriving cold comfort from his quaint interpretation of the merciless beating he took. Said he while trying to encourage his demoralised party: “Our duty is to go back and identify areas of challenges so that the party will come up strong and play the role as a very strong party. The PDP is still the most organised party, is still the party that is not owned by anybody, is still the party that whatever you are, you can get to any level with your competencies and so on.” Here, the president again submits to very wild, unsubstantiated claims. There is no proof, in the face of the APC’s devastating electoral showing and tight organisation, that the PDP is the ‘most organised party.’ But the president makes the claim notwithstanding.

    Dr Jonathan follows up by describing the PDP as not owned by anybody. It is not clear what he had in mind, whether actually he thought he did not himself dominate the PDP so brutally that those who could not endure his suffocating hold had no choice but to disengage themselves from the party. He confuses dominant party philosophy, as exemplified by the APC, with personal, idiosyncratic dominance, as symbolised by what he and a few others did to the PDP. For a party that precluded many aspirants from even contesting the presidential primary, and one that enthroned a few vicious, uncouth and ruthless politicians in key positions at the federal and state levels — men and women who had become gods that could not be challenged — it is surprising that Dr Jonathan talks of his party as not having a glass ceiling.

    The president regrets his defeat, and is bitter at the manner he was humiliated and repudiated. He may not regret conceding defeat, for it saved him and his wife much trouble, local and international, but he has clearly not got over the March and April losses. His inability to reconcile himself to his new status has led him to vicious retribution against some of his appointees, including the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, whom he recently fired. If he and his party will continue to live in denial and blame others for their defeat, they will be unable to do the clinical post-mortem required to understand why they failed and how to recover lost grounds. Judging from Dr Jonathan’s reaction and his party’s uncoordinated assessment of the debacle, the PDP will need new faces untainted by defeat, hearts and minds not shattered by the terrible electoral losses, and judgement not coloured by face-saving rationalisations. None among those who lead the PDP today has shown the kind of depth, dispassion and sobriety the party requires for the politics of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.