The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • ‘The triumph of hope over experience’

    This administration can avoid being the object of nature’s derision, and let its word be its bond

    The triumph of hope over experience’, was the comment of our erudite Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) about a man who was said to have remarried immediately after the death of a wife with whom he had been very unhappy. Obviously, some people learn from experience; and some, from experience, never learn. But, whether we learn or not, nature continues to teach us. Take the simple matter of time: it ticks on, no matter how you literally hold back the hands of the clock. Take also the seasons: they change no matter how much you want to hold them back. Seasons come, seasons go; governments come, governments go; only the universe remains.

    Enough of our philosophising, dear reader; we are talking today about the sudden, some would say even unnecessary, postponement of Nigeria’s general elections. I am having trouble understanding it; but then I generally have trouble understanding anything because the people around me have all agreed that I am somewhat slow to comprehend things. I think they had to hold a meeting on the subject or something. I am still scratching my head on why it took them so long to come to that realisation. Anyway, I am so slow it took me a long time to know my left from my right, my friend in my enemy, and that what I took to be a creeping plant giving off hisses into the air in my garden was really a green snake looking for sunshine.

    I must confess though that the postponement took many of us by surprise. There I had been, believing that the word of the government was its bond. There is an unwritten code that says that your word is your bond. That code has guided many for centuries. I remember growing up in a community where this word-bond agreement ruled the farms. If a farmer needed extra hands on his field, he did not go to hire. No sir, he simply asked his fellow-farmers to leave off farming their own field and attend to his own needs for the two or three days he might need them. And they often did, barring sickness. The unwritten law was that should any of his friends ever require his services, he would willingly abandon his own needs and meet that one at his point of need.

    Thus when the government gave the word that the elections would hold as scheduled, we took it to be its bond also. Alas, not so! We had no way of knowing that the word belonged to the government while the bond might belong to us. Imagine a farmer being left holding a bond in that fashion, after having given his own time and energy to develop his fellow-farmer’s farm, only to be told that the time chosen was no longer convenient, particularly in view of the fact that the weather is not under any man’s control. Like that farmer, I am still holding the election bond in my hand, much to my chagrin and definitely not to my pleasing, or even Jega’s. Indeed, the postponement has made nonsense of all our personal programmes which we all, to a man across the nation, strenuously strained to postpone just to make sure that, should movements be restricted, no important thing would suffer during the elections.

    I do not want to go into the reasons for the postponement, contrived or not. I’m only interested in what effects it has on me. The first thing that struck me was the question: don’t the rest of us count? Is it possible for all of us who constitute the electorate to be as negligible as all that and maybe more? The story is told that someone remarked to his father, at his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, that the said parents never seemed to fight. His father replied that they sure had their many battles, like any other couple; it was just that sooner or later in the fight, one of them would realise that he, the man, was wrong. That is one version.

    Another version has it that the man replied that early in the marriage, they had decided that in order to avoid all conflicts, he, the man of the house, would take all the big decisions while the wife, the woman of the house, would take all the small ones. In the fifty years of being together though, the man found out that there had not been one big decision to take. That was why the union had lasted for so long.

    The reason that we the electorate don’t count much in electoral matters should be the subject of a treatise for a political scientist, but not for us here. You and I must nevertheless be struck by the deep, deep irony and amusement in the situation. If you possess this knowledge, my friend, you possess a great thing indeed – that the land belongs to the people; the instruments of governance belong to the people; the power deriving thereof belongs to the people; therefore the state belongs to the people. My friend, I congratulate you for knowing this; not all of us do. You see, at critical and crucial moments, most government functionaries think it nothing to yield to the temptation to use the same state against the people, or to forget them altogether. Now, say news reports, there are soldiers circling people’s houses. When will we learn?!

    Naturally, it never works, mostly because the protection of the people against such misuse is writ large in nature. Take the example at hand. Postponing these elections is not really to the people’s liking: the people did not ask for it; the people did not want it; the people still do not understand it. The thing just went right over the people’s heads. That just gives one the feeling of déjà vu, does it not, and makes one rather tired.

    Let’s take one or two government functionaries who have gone over the people’s heads like this and have rued the action. At the height of his power in France, Louis XIV was said to have claimed, ‘L’Etat c’est moi (I am the state)’, and as he was dying in 1715, he was claimed to have said, “Je m’en vais, mais l’Etat demeurera toujours (I depart, but the state shall always remain)”, while Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, also absolute monarchs, departed via the guillotine. The June 12 saga in Nigeria is still fresh in the collective mind. The then president singlehandedly cancelled an election that was said to have been the freest and fairest to date in this country. I believe that president is still smarting from some of the consequences of not respecting the owners of that election, the people. The State remains, always.

    Experience, they say, is the best teacher. Of course, no one can singly go through every experience that he needs to learn from. That is why we have history and literature books. That is why we have others. That is why we have visions. That is why we have our religions. History, literature, visions and religions tell us what nature has always made clear: the land belongs to its maker. This in effect translates to the fact that nature has ways of correcting the errors of mankind when he attempts to play God. Nature does so because it knows that sometimes in the heart of some unknowing ones among us, hope triumphs over experience.

    We tend to think that the people before us were unlucky or they got it wrong somewhere. It must be different with us, just like motorists who come on the scene of an accident and then speed off. Tch, tch, feed in the same data, use same method and expect different results? This administration can avoid being the object of nature’s derision, and let its word be its bond.

  • Waiting for March 28

    But for the postponement of the general election by six weeks, Nigerians would have trooped out yesterday to elect who will govern the country for the next four years. By now, there would have been indications of who is winning and losing in the battle for the presidency between incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari.

    As it is, we have to wait till March 28 to get over the tension that has gripped the country over the decisive election. I really wish the election was not postponed. I can’t wait to know if Nigerians will get the opportunity of change of government after 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party’s  (PDP)  rule or have to endure another four years.

    For the first time, the opposition group in the country seems to have got their act together and more than ever before has the opportunity to defeat the ruling PDP. If the campaign across the country is anything to go by, Jonathan’s chance of winning the election is not as bright as in 2011.

    As much as Jonathan and the PDP members are calling for continuity, the echo of change is too loud to be ignored.

    So much is at stake in the election concerning the future of the country that everything necessary must be done to ensure that it is as free and fair as possible.

    The sudden excuse of insecurity by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) based on the request of the military authorities is worrisome, but if that is what is required to have an election in which all Nigerians, including those in areas occupied Boko Haram insurgents, would participate, so be it.

    Since the six weeks’ extension can still be accommodated within the time allowed by the Constitution to hold election before the inauguration of a new government, the military should be given the benefit of doubt that it will substantially recover the captured territories.

    The collaboration with the regional forces from Chad, Niger and Cameroun should hopefully boost the onslaught against the insurgents and pave way for a general election that will not exclude any part of the country.

    While, despite protests from some quarters, Nigerians are ready to wait till March 28 to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice, what will not be acceptable is another extension for any reason.

    Though the six weeks’ extension is supposed to be in the first instance, no excuse will be good enough for another extension. The military must do everything possible not to confirm fears that it has any secret agenda to truncate democracy in the country.

    I salute the efforts of the Nigerian military in combating the insurgents over the years and my heart goes out to families whose loved ones have died or got wounded in the battle. The military must, however,   continue to perform its constitutional role of protecting the security of the country at all times and get all the needed support it needs.

    The INEC must also utilise the period of the postponement to perfect its arrangements for the election. If the election had been held as originally scheduled, many Nigerians would have been denied the opportunity of voting due to their inability to get their Permanent Voters Card.

    INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, must prove his critics wrong by conducting an election that will be devoid of unnecessary controversy.

  • Towards our date with destiny 2

    Those who lead and those who aspire to lead us need to know that the magnitude of lawlessness in our governance system and political culture embarrasses and demeans most citizens

    Last week, I was so optimistic that I started a series under the title overleaf. I seek the indulgence of my readers to continue today under last week’s title, despite the fact that the hope raised last week had been diminished by the sudden decision of the military under the inspiration of the president and the ruling party to postpone the election by six weeks. Within Nigeria and the international community, the postponement has done a lot of damage to the cause of democracy but it has not succeeded in destroying the possibility of a date (other than February 14) with our destiny as a nation-state.  This is despite the fact that the postponement and other  uses of federal power by the ruling party in the last four weeks and the disjunction between official rhetoric and actual deployment of power smacks of besieging democracy in the fashion of the violation of citizens’ right to choose their leader 22 years ago.

    How many of the individuals who sacrificed themselves or loved ones or had to go into exile in order to fight General Ibrahim Babangida’s annulment of  the June 12, 1993 presidential election ever thought that after  the exit of the military in1999 they would experience another military-style abrogation (more accurately, suspension) of citizens’ right to choose their leaders at the appointed time at the hands of an elected government? So much water had passed under the bridge of Nigeria’s democracy in the last four weeks and to the extent of reminding citizens that the annulment of 1993 was not an aberration that many patriots thought it was and thus chose to fight to the hilt.

    Just before our eyes again, a civilian government had raised and dashed the hopes of Nigerians by approving an electoral calendar and altering that calendar just one week before an election scheduled to give citizens a once-in-four-years opportunity to choose their leaders. Several years after the military had  publicly pledged to work under military supervision, as is the case in all democracies, the military (now answering the name of security forces) ordered an independent electoral agency to postpone a properly scheduled election on account of the decision of the military to engage Boko Haram  insurgents. Instead of the civilian government reading the riot act to such military officers, it has preferred at the instance of the president to urge citizens to take the postponement of election in good faith.

    While the president chooses to plead with citizens to accept what looks like a military fiat with equanimity and without questioning the reasons given by his security chiefs, the ruling party, PDP, on the other hand, chooses to further hoodwink citizens by changing the narrative of the postponement.  While the INEC Chair was clear in his message to the nation about how INEC was given a strong advice about the need to postpone the election because the military would not be available to provide security for the elections, the Presidential Campaign Organisation chose to tell citizens that the election was postponed because of problems of logistics.

    As if it was not bad enough to treat Nigerian voters as subjects instead of as citizens, soldiers were deployed to harass and intimidate citizens shortly after the announcement of the postponement, in a way to suggest that the military was available to silence citizens the way General Abacha did in 1993. Even leaders of the other party contesting for the presidency also had their houses surrounded on and off by military men in Imo, Lagos, and Abuja since the change of the electoral calendar.  Using soldiers to surround the houses of leaders like Tinubu, Okorocha, Shehu  Garba, the spokesman for Buhari Campaign Organisation (and who is next?)  is tantamount to warning ordinary citizens that their rights to free movement can be curtailed at the whims of those in charge of the levers of federal power.

    Those who are blaming the National Security Adviser for inducing the postponement with his speech in London about INEC’s failure to supply permanent voter cards to all registered voters appear to be deliberately playing the ostrich. There is no doubt that the military had done a lot of damage to the country’s politics, economy, and culture in the  past and up to the last elections in Ekiti and Osun, but no Security Adviser can act in any way that the person who appointed him does not favour.  In all political systems, an adviser does not have the power to order any action, only to advise his boss. It is the civilian regime in place that has brought the nation to the embarrassment of postponing an already scheduled election on account of the need for the military to fight Boko Haram insurgency.  Moving from the issue of inadequate supply of PVCs to the imperative of fighting Boko Haram full-time after several years of the existence of the terrorist sec shows a puerile or pedestrian thinking that cannot but make intelligent persons chuckle or hiss.

    All over the world, elections had been held in many countries that were at war. Abraham Lincoln won his re-election during the American Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt got re-elected for the fourth time during the Second World War. George W. Bush also got re-elected during the Iraqi war, just as Barack Obama got re-elected during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  What is puerile about the argument for postponing the election in Nigeria is the thinking that the country is planning to go to war with Boko Haram insurgents, not that the country is already at war, and thus needs the stability to finish the war in order to bring peace and stability to the country. Now that President Jonathan has assured  the nation during his recent radio chat that most of the things being done and said by his advisers and even his campaign organisations are done without his knowledge, Nigerians need to rest assured that the latest call by the ruling party that INEC should revert to temporary voter cards and forget about PVCs, the basis for asking for postponement in London in the first place,  is null and void, just the ranting of political aides more interested in embarrassing the president.

    With respect to psychological assault of citizens, the postponement has already done the damage it is capable of producing. Citizens who are genuinely interested in democratic governance just need to take note of the fact that sixteen years after the end of military dictatorship, Nigeria is still being run by politicians with a primitive military mindset. Federal roads are being used as roads belonging to the ruling party. There is no better way to demonstrate intolerance of the other than the monopoly of the third mainland bridge by posters of the incumbent as if he is the only candidate for that office. Whatever belongs to the federal government, such as federal roads, does not automatically belong to the individuals in government and not by any stretch of imagination to members of the ruling party at every level of government.  Those who lead and those who aspire to lead us need to know that the magnitude of lawlessness in our governance system and political culture embarrasses and demeans most citizens.

    Responding vicariously to the Suggestion Box erected in Ajegunle by the APC vice-presidential candidate, the Change manifesto has to include a commitment by General Buhari’s government to consolidation of democracy in the country. Any ruling party that is besotted to the impunity that power bestows in a nascent democracy cannot but lack the culture of tolerance, debate, and compromise that sustains democracy. Even below average individuals should have no problem identifying the magnitude of democratic deficit in our polity. Reducing the power at the centre is one area that can reduce the culture of impunity, such as we have witnessed at the hands of a party cobbled together by departing military dictators and given to hirelings that are ready to turn the political landscape into a stage for the play of brigands. Another thing that needs to be added to the platform of change is the commitment to plant and cultivate democratic culture at every level of governance with effect from May 29. A situation in which advisors and political aides do things that affect the president and citizens without the president’s knowledge is not democratic and not sustainable.

    The postponement of the election originally scheduled for yesterday is not capable of dashing voter’s hopes; it has only delayed the country’s date with destiny.

    To be continued.

     

  • Six weeks

    Six weeks

    Whatever happens, our eyes should be on May 29

    Make no mistake about it; strange things, some perhaps stranger than fiction, would be happening in the country in the next six weeks. Ordinarily, there is nothing unusual in an electoral body postponing elections, at least in our kind of environment; so, there should not have been any issue in the announcement on February 7 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it had postponed the general elections initially billed for February 14 and 28. But it became an issue when the postponement was not directly from INEC that is statutorily charged with the conduct of elections in the country, but was engineered outside of it in a blackmail that was far from subtle.

    The debate over what is the actual cause of the postponement is not likely to abate anytime soon, even though it is absolutely unnecessary. On the part of the electoral commission, it had only succeeded in distributing 66 percent of PVCs as at Monday February 2, some 12 days to the day of election. Distribution was supposed to end officially on February 8. But shortly before then, the commission had taken some steps to facilitate the collection of the cards, including decentralisation of collection points. In fairness to INEC, more people had been trooping out to collect the cards under that arrangement and there was nothing to suggest that the situation would not have improved if the process had not been truncated because many Nigerians like to wait till the last minute to do such civic duty, especially if they had encountered some challenges initially as they did with the collection of the PVCs. At any rate, the electoral commission could still have allowed an extension of collection period to make sure more people collect the cards. Some state governments even declared public holidays to enable their workers who had not collected their cards do so. In all, INEC could have achieved some measure of success in this regard, or it could have not.

    But then, the Federal Government itself apparently over-panicked over the growing influence of General Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate and took over the commission’s duty. The military authorities wrote INEC that they would not be able to guarantee security if it went ahead to conduct the elections as scheduled. That was after the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, had gone abroad to say the elections would be postponed for security reasons, and not because PVCs had not been substantially distributed. Again, part of the reason the Council of State meeting was convened on February 5 was to see if it could be used to postpone the election as a result of the security reason adduced by government. If not, the question as to how many local governments are involved in the Boko Haram insurgency to warrant poll shift would not have arisen at the meeting.

    Obviously, it was when all else failed (as even the council members disappointed Nigerians who had expected they would be used by the government to rubber stamp its intention of shifting the poll, ostensibly on security grounds, failed to make themselves available for the purpose) that government now made its hidden intention open by saying the polls had to be shifted because INEC was not ready. May be they (council members) also saw some things that some of those who may be harbouring any satanic intentions by the decision to postpone the election did not see, because their stance on the matter really shocked the average Nigerian just as it must have jolted the presidency; even if for different reasons.

    Quite naturally, many people saw the postponement as part of the options in the long list of diabolical options by the presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), perhaps in cahoots with the military, to buy time for the government as well as halt the tempo of the growing popularity of the opposition candidate, nationwide. This is one reason why many Nigerians cried foul and even the international community appears worried. But whether the postponement would be of any advantage to the ruling party or even worsen its plight is in the womb of time because, again, many people see the government’s hands in the matter as an abuse of the power of incumbency. If they react eventually in that light, then the government must have succeeded in further damaging its image.

    As many people have observed, we have always known of the insurgency in the north east of Nigeria, at least in the last five years, why then would that be an issue barely two weeks to general elections that we had known would hold for more than a year? Some say the presidency hopes to get the Chibok girls within the six-week postponement, with the Chadian, Cameroonian and other troops and mercenaries now helping us in the insurgency war. We would definitely rejoice if the girls are brought back home alive; but is that possible in the natural state that they were abducted, save for the demand of change that might have been occasioned by their age and sudden severance from their parents? Anyway, even if the girls are all brought back home as they were abducted, it remains to be seen whether that can atone for the mismanagement of the economy, large-scale corruption and the lack of direction that the country had suffered over the years.

    Without doubt, this year’s presidential election is the first true presidential election we are having since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. Even the PDP knows that for a fact; it is not one of those tea parties that they had been having and calling elections for want of what to call them. When a democratically elected government makes the military its crutches, you know that government has lost credibility because the military played absolutely no role in its election in the first place. Apparently too, those who had been expecting to use the presidency as crutches to ‘capture’ some states, particularly in the south west, must have supported postponement of election, seeing that the presidency itself was in dire need of crutches to survive the polls. In other words, it is not necessarily the fear of losing power that is the issue for incumbents, not even the fear of consequences of the illegalities and impunities they committed in power, but more of pressure by their hangers-on.

    You know that a ruling party is losing its courage when it begins to mumble some mumbo-jumbo like the PDP is now doing by calling for the use of Temporary Voter Cards for the elections. Isn’t that late in the day? Even that did not make sense before postponement. With the postponement, there is more time to collect the cards. So, what is PDP afraid of? Why the phobia for PVCs?

    If all manner of speculations and rumours have been making the rounds over the postponement, including the possibility of the government or PDP orchestrating the removal of the INEC chair, Prof Attahiru Jega, via terminal leave so that he won’t be in charge of the elections ultimately, it is as a result of Nigerians’ experience with their governments, including the present one. Indeed, when our politicians say good morning, first check through your window to be sure it is not good night. It is that bad.

    However, it is good that President Goodluck Jonathan has denied any ambition of elongating his tenure. I doubt if really he has any choice though; but then, the mere fact that he said so is not enough reason for us to believe. But it is important to take him down the memory lane for a clearer picture of why tenure elongation can never be an option, no matter the support he gets from the military or the circumstances. Tenure elongation was the nemesis of General Yakubu Gowon; his serial postponement of handover dates was a major reason for his ouster in 1976. Anyone thinking of tenure elongation should ask General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Babangida had boasted severally that he would not be stampeded out of office, following the heat his government was subjected to after its unconscionable annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election; but it was obvious he was stampeded out, barely two months after. Which is to say that it is not only children that fret when they get to a place of fright; even adults do, too. That was why the same Babangida who was bouncing like a football a few days later, when justifying the annulment of the election result, became gentle when he was stepping aside on August 27, 1993.

    General Sani Abacha whom we had thought only came in to facilitate the process of handing over to a democratically elected president died suddenly under mysterious circumstances in the process of transmuting from military leader to his dream ‘democratically elected’ president. What all these tell us is that Nigeria is too sophisticated for any self-perpetuation agenda by any leader, no matter the extent of sophistry or shenanigans employed by him or his hangers-on.

    My point, which is the consolation for Nigerians, is that nothing would happen in the next six weeks that has not happened before in the country. In other words, Nigerians would be travelling on a familiar terrain. Our rulers have successively taught us how to handle such situations. We handled them in the military era, whatever is coming now cannot be worse than what we experienced then; whether by way of over-militarisation of the polity (especially with our present military), intimidation of political opponents,  or what have you!

    But whatever happens, on May 29 we stand.

  • Truth shreds a lie of twenty years in one day (a Yoruba proverb)

    Truth shreds a lie of twenty years in one day (a Yoruba proverb)

    For me, Dr Ayo Fayose can now be Ekiti governor for the next century; it will mean nothing to me because I have been vindicated beyond my wildest dreams on photocromism

    For seven straight months – 22 June, 2014 until news of Ekitigate broke, I almost shouted myself hoarse saying, repeating and re- emphasising, the fact that there was no way Ayo Fayose could ever have defeated Governor Kayode Fayemi in a free and fair election, talk less of defeating him in all the 16 Local Government Areas of Ekiti.

    But if falsehood takes off a thousand years, truth will overcome it in a single day. So has it been with what the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, described as the mystery of the Ekiti governorship election.

    Departing the Ekiti state house and heading back to Lagos the day after, having listened to the experiences of several party members during the election , I knew I have heard enough of similarities with how Nikuv International Projects Ltd, allegedly rigged the 2013 Zimbabwean presidential election for President Mugabe. Nikuv prides itself as experts which “time and time again, gets chosen for strategic national projects due to its expertise, professionalism …”

    Nikuv’s rigging allegations were worsened by reports by a private South African-based intelligence outfit, Nasini Projects, to the effect that the Israeli firm supplied a special water marked ballot paper used to give Mugabe a resounding victory. “From our findings so far, we are 99.9% convinced the election was rigged via a ballot paper; a special watermarked ballot paper was used to give President Mugabe a resounding victory,” Nasini CEO Lucia Mordi said. “The ballot paper had a water x against Mugabe’s name such that if any ink is placed on the paper the substance on the paper will react and remove the ink and activate the water marked x into print.” I must hasten to say, however, that there has been no evidence linking Nikuv to Ekitigate.

    What tallied the most with the Zimbabwean electoral heist  was the unimpeachable testimony of the highly regarded wife of a former Central Bank Director who, after thumb printing thrice, still did not leave any mark on the ballot paper upon which she sought help from the electoral assistants who then poured water on the ink pad. This happened because it was a photocromic ballot paper and the ink supplied by INEC was disappearing ink rather than the indelible ink prescribed by the Electoral Law thus proving INEC collusion. The ballot papers, according to the Ekitigate tape, were ferried into Ekiti by Chris Uba who then had the audacity to come to Yoruba land to arrest APC leaders, giving orders to soldiers who had been turned by army higher authorities, to playthings of this bloody civilian. It cannot get more insulting to the Yoruba nation but mute has been the word from those “defenders of Yoruba interest” who have, instead, become endorsers, aggressively spreading the cocktail of lies concocted by that ‘son of his father;’ demanding that Professor Jega be sacked and arrested.

    As I wrote on these pages on Sunday, 9 June, 2014, I believe, without the slightest doubt, that the Zimbabwean model is what played out in the Ekiti election. The PDP must have been specially watermarked to give a man, who was recently trounced in a senatorial election, a totally undeserved victory.

    This, for me, is the only rational way to explain the abracadabra of the Ekiti governorship election. Therefore, every lover of this country must insist on this electoral coup being exhaustively investigated and whoever funded this manipulation of our electoral system must be run out of town. Whoever has a hand in this electoral heist certainly does not deserve to live among decent human beings.

    Interestingly, Ekitigate has now led to totally unexpected collateral damage to sundry individuals and institutions of state. The allegations in the tape have tarnished, not only the presidency which was copiously mentioned as the very fountain of this grievous moral depravity, the Nigerian Army, the National Assembly, and some Yoruba ministers who obviously know next to nothing about the Yoruba concept of Omoluabi, must be made to say all they know about this national shame. In the tape which is still trending on the World Wide Web, both Fayose and Obanikoro severally referred to the president as the one whose assignment they were executing and therefore cannot afford to fail. Fayose actually threatened to call the president during his condescending put down of the Brigadier-General -‘ I was governor here 12 years ago when you were probably only a captain’, he thundered at a point and the general indicated his willingness to weep if that would assuage his traducers and convince them about his fidelity to an assignment personally entrusted to him by the Chief of Army staff.

    This government must convince Nigerians that a worse PDP/Army arrangement -Fela lives on – is not already in the works again to rig the coming elections. I could remember the president once promising some ambassadors that the 2015 elections would be the easiest, ever, of Nigerian elections and, by the way, I have heard about synthetic digital ballot papers just as the First Lady’s manipulations in Rivers and Bayelsa speak to what they could do to have their way in opposition states. Nigerians beware; eternal vigilance is the price of freedom!

    Just as Obanikoro was threatening non promotion for the beleaguered officer, a whole Brigadier -General, if he flunks the presidential assignment, so was Fayose sabre rattling, repeatedly saying he would report the officer to both the president and the Army Chief of Staff. If only the Army would realise that Captain Koli went to all this length just to save the Army from its compromised top echelon.

    According to the national hero, operation CAPTURE EKITI had a total of 1006 soldiers who could have been better deployed to Sambisa forest. They also had about 500 operational vehicles. It certainly would not be good for the image of the Nigerian Army to wait until it is summoned before the National Assembly. The Army just must speak up now. As for President Jonathan, he has no option than to respect Nigerians and say all he knows if we are not to take his current promises of a free and fair 2015 elections as mere hollow rituals. References to him are too many to be happenstance. He it is who must personally speak up, not his voluble and loquacious spokespersons for whom he remains the object of their obsequious adulation. President Clinton made a personal deposition in the Monica Lewinsky case so Jonathan is not being asked to re-invent the wheel. And talk he must because most Nigerians see the election postponement as only a ruse to enable their rogue scientists devise another rigging method.

    Nor can Chris Uba, the Uga Secondary School alumnus, who is fingered as the man who supplied the smoking gun, aka, pre- programmed ballot papers, remain incommunicado. If he has any integrity left after the Ngige affair, and does not want to tarnish the prodigious Uba dynasty, he must, tell Nigerians all he knows. The National Assembly has already been besmirched by a certain Abdul Kareem who was uproariously flaunting his membership of the House of Representatives. If, after these disclosures Obanikoro still successfully gets cleared by the senate to be re-appointed minister, it will mean we have nothing but a senate of anything goes. He is reported to have rushed to court hoping that

    would prevent any reference to this matter of urgent national interest. Nigerians are waiting to see the senate in its true colours. To continue to retain Jelili Adesiyan as minister can only be an additional blight on the federal executive council.

    Happily, however, the tape has, for all time, successfully bailed out Ekiti people from being described as the stomach worshippers of the universe. For these many months, we have been the butt of cruel jokes. Nobody can any longer correctly brandish stomach infrastructure as his victory’s ‘deu ex machina’ when we know he stole our mandate. And for us Ekiti, Fayose’s sated conscience is enough punishment; one he is bound to carry to his last days. And that is, if APC refuses to head to court. For me, Dr Ayo Fayose can now be Ekiti governor for the next century; it will mean nothing to me because I have been vindicated beyond my wildest dreams on photocromism.

  • Where are they now?

    Abi, dem transformer don kaput like dem trasformat ambassadors, as Okon once asked? Snooper is worried by the continuous absence on the internet version of this column of some of the cyber-coolies who raised the tempo of fiery exchanges in the early days. They can be an absolute pain in the neck but as the Yoruba will say,  bad boys have their own good day.  Many of these roughed up Snooper before descending on each other in the combustion of meta-commentary.

    One of the boys went as far as Snooper’s hometown trying to rake some muck about one’s paternity until he was bitten by a man-eating crab which fastened on his wretched trousers. Another who went by the history-suffused name of Afonja never saw anything good in Snooper until somebody drew his attention to the perfidious pedigree of his patronymic and he promptly declaimed true ownership. Another metamorphosed from Tata to Iska Countryman and then to something inelegantly unmentionable before folding up altogether.

    Snooper is worried that having joined Jonathan’s transformation gravy train, some of these boys might have perished in intellectual battles with state adversaries, or they might have been slain in feckless offensives against the ferocious Boko Haram. Even more worrisome is the possibility that they fell to friendly fire from other Transformation Troops on mutiny due to lack of pay. Or may be they simply went AWOL after fierce intellectual bombardment which exposed the shallowness and the superficial canard of their posturing.

    Let them get in touch if they have survived the war they foolishly started. In any case, Snooper knows of someone in Ibadan running a charity organisation for political destitutes. It is located in Adeoyo in an old warehouse belonging to an ancient newspaper. Let them ask for Baba Agbadagbudu, a.k.a  Asenibanidaro.

  • Dasuki, poll date stability and overbearing military

    Dasuki, poll date stability and overbearing military

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo warned in far away Kenya that the military should not contemplate a coup d’etat on account of the crises hamstringing Nigeria. He is not the only one to warn against military adventurism. All the watchmen are right to warn against the truncation of democracy; but they assume that democracy is really in place in the first instance. Everything at the moment, indeed, indicates that democracy is already in abeyance, and military rule has been enthroned, if not in law, at least in fact. It was the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, that first talked of a six-week extension to the original February 14 poll date. After a lot of meandering instigated and supervised by the military, which said they could not provide security for polling officials and voters, the Jonathan government got the six weeks it schemed for. The president, who has apparently ceded presidential powers to the military, was ecstatic.

    In an unprecedented constitutional affront last year, the military also targeted critical newspapers for a week or so, detained their distribution vans on the pretext of national security interest, barred them from selling their papers, and refused to compensate them for huge losses. The same military that found the Boko Haram insurgency a tough nut to crack, and hates been criticised for their ineffectiveness, however, poured tens of thousands of troops into Ekiti and Osun States last year to ‘police’ elections. Meanwhile, they needed only about eight thousand troops to man the Multinational Joint Task Force to fight Boko Haram, with all the derogatory connotations of cowardice levelled against Nigerian troops by Niger Republic officers. Apart from needing help from lowly Chad and Cameroon, the Nigerian military has unadvisedly depended on civilians (Civilian JTF) to procure intelligence for them on Boko Haram, though they have in their ranks troops and officers native to the Northeast.

    Importantly too, without recourse to state authorities or the beneficiaries of their benevolence, soldiers have laid siege to the homes of opposition politicians on the pretext of giving them unsolicited security. While the federal government and all manner of small and ad hoc agencies such as the Sure-P are assaulting and upturning the little federalism left in the country, the president carries on indifferently, and indeed, no one seems to care how to halt the madness overtaking the nation.

    It is in the midst of these that Col Dasuki (retd) has promised there would be no more poll date shift. How can he tell? Is it not obvious that the Jonathan government, contrary to what their supporters say, simply wanted a break to restrategise against what they perceived as humiliating defeat?

  • 2015: Buhari, Yoruba and the burden of history

    I sincerely apologise for the absence of this column last Sunday. It was due to an unfortunate mix up which is deeply regretted. The column, the last before the presidential election, is today being turned over to Adewale Adeoye, a CNN African journalist award winner and alumnus of the United Nations (UN) Institute of Training and
    Research (UNITAR).

    A nation becomes a dungeon, when the people’s history no longer matters.  But history is not static. The South West, (SW), with 14 million voters, is a sexy bride in the coming elections.  What determines electoral victory varies in each region.  Yoruba land is unique. Politicians have failed to bring into sharp focus, critical issues that matter most. They deploy bitter campaigns, insults and abuses. President Goodluck Jonathan fired salvos during his visit to Lagos. He did not promise any single project for Yoruba nation in all his campaigns in the SW so far. He spoke as if jittery. He was fidgety, wobbly, edgy and squirmy. In war, as in politics, those are signs of weakness, a pointer to camp disarray and retreat. Gen Mohammadu Buhari hinges his campaign on three planks: Jobs, Security and Anti-corruption. But there is the need to take the edge off primordial fears which, to a large extent, will determine the attitude of many voters, at least in the South West.

    Politicians often bask in the rapture of illusion, expressed mostly in the media, in rallies and walk-outs. Often, they confuse public enthusiasm with deep-rooted blood-bound alliances. It is a big farce to think that the February 14 elections will not be determined by history and ethnicity, that will be dealing with appearances, leaving behind the timeless reality of a country acutely divided, and which history is dotted by deadly clashes of civilisations. Buhari is Fulani. Two centuries ago, architects of the thriving Yoruba Empire would not have contemplated Yoruba would be asked to vote for a Fulani candidate in an election, no matter how dignified.  The Fulani and the Yoruba, in truth, have been arch rivals in the contest for land, values, power and state resources. We neglect this to our own peril.

    The rivalry is agelong. In the spring of 1804, Uthman Dan Fodio had led a revolution that cut across today’s Northern hemisphere. The revolt led to millions of deaths, including women and children. The Yoruba nation painfully lost some ancestral territories. The last scuffle being the 1842 combat to reclaim most of the lost grounds, until Britain came, leaving bitter memories in the sub consciousness of generations that followed. In the elections of 1950s and 1960s, the echoes of the acrimony did not abate. These reflect in all Yoruba voting patterns.

    To many Yoruba, given my interactions at a recent Pan-Yoruba meeting held in Ibadan which I chaired, the Hausa-Fulani is still seen as millstone. Many recollect that the late Premier of Northern Region, the late Ahmadu Bello, taunted the region that he would dip the Holy Quaran into the sea, the euphemism for atrocious conquest. In the 60s, about 29 Yoruba leaders, including Chief Obafemi Awolowo, were hauled into detention at the instance of the Hausa-Fulani-dominated political class. In subsequent years, the rivalry of times past defined the political momentum. In 1993, a different pattern was etched only because Afenifere, the Yoruba traditional political institution, was prevented by the military from leading the Yoruba political processes, leaving Yoruba with restricted two-party choice. However, the annulment of the 1993 election, the assassinations of Yoruba icons, deliberate plots that scuttled the economic mainstay of the Yoruba people only rekindled the primordial sentiments against the Hausa-Fulani. The June 12 1993 annulment led to the birth of several self determination groups, which, today, and I am in a vantage position to know, remain the most potent political force in Yorubaland. These groups, like most Yoruba people, are anxious to know the content and form of the negotiation with Buhari by the APC leadership, which they think, hold them in contempt. Contrary to assumptions, the fact is that many Yoruba, especially at the lower ranks, are conscious of the history of rivalry with the Hausa-Fulani.

    The emergence of Boko Haram, irrespective of its vagaries, has further deepened the Yoruba suspicion against the Hausa-Fulani. It is even more dangerous for anyone to hinge on ‘power must return to the north,’ as a campaign grundnorm. For the average Yoruba person, true federalism and self determination are key issues. The Hausa-Fulani stood against these pillars, until now that Buhari has brought some rays of hope. It is important that the Hausa-Fulani should see this new alliance as a rare spirit of reconciliation on the part of the Yoruba people. It shows Yoruba liberal sense of fairness and adherence to the tradition of decent politics. It is also important to dissuade the assumption in the South East and among ethnic minorities that it represents a realignment of the same forces that prosecuted the civil war, a gang-up of the big nationalities against ethnic minorities. An inroad into the South-South will be difficult, unless campaigns build confidence among a people that have suffered marginalisation and misery for too long especially as it regards what happens to their oil resources. It is reasonable for APC to enter into constructive assurance of fear-driven Ijaw and oil-producing communities.

    Certainly, President Jonathan offers no succour to the Yoruba demand. He has failed in all ramifications. He, in fact, has no solutions to the pile of harms, meaning that for many Yoruba, the choice still remains tough.  But the average Yoruba is not lost to the ruinous policies of the PDP and its impact on the emasculation of the Yoruba heritage, and the fact that the APC has brought hope to a despairing population.

    Yet, for reasons of grief memories gone by, it is easier for the APC state governors to win the South West than to ensure the overwhelming victory of Buhari. But as it is,  Buhari’s victory has become a necessary uplift from the squelching mud. The new equation has proven the maxim that solutions to a people’s aspirations could come from unlikely quarters. It has asserted the dialectics in Yoruba philosophy that “ninu ikoko dudu l’eko funfun ti n jade – The snow-white maize porridge is, nevertheless, a product of the burnt, gritty black pot.

    Will Buhari save the Yoruba nation? For one, PDP has proved that it cannot allay the fears neither can it meet the aspiration of the Yoruba. For six years, Yoruba have been so kind to a president that has paid back with vicious neglect. So, for me, hacking down the PDP remains an historical task for every Yoruba person. The party has brought disgrace and shame to the values and traditions held dear. The PDP has created a crestfallen nation in its own image. The party has ruined the potential of the SW. The party is led by an uninspiring president, who has neither produced a book nor an epic statesmanship on his understanding of how to build a great country. The PDP candidate lacks the capacity, the will and the knowledge to uplift Nigeria from her current state of trance, depression and hopelessness.

    The Yoruba believes in federalism, it is inspiring that the APC has brought this up as a critical campaign element. The content and form must be broadly defined and popularized in the South West. It is on this note that one would expect a shift in the paradigm of the APC campaign in the SW. Campaigns should have national appeal, but must also be subjective, being region-specific. The major challenge facing Nigeria is how to create a new foundation; it is whether we want to stay together as one and on what terms. It is whether Lagos will take control of revenue from her sea port and if Ijaw nation will control her oil or not. It is obvious that President Jonathan will not address these issues, having used the national conference he ordered as a mere electoral gimmick. The APC seems likely to be trusted with the will to take the lid off a boiling saucepan. Before February 14, APC needs to deconstruct the mindset of the Yoruba people, assuage old fears with a new tonic that offers to put an end to affliction, mourning and gnashing of teeth.

     

  • Elections as endgame

    Elections as endgame

    The odds lengthen dramatically against the Jonathan administration. With several critical pillars of political society demurring  and many major stakeholders deserting the ramparts of the faithful, the end may well be near for the biggest political rally in Africa. It is usually the case that it is the person most important to a pressing matter that is also particularly deaf to the warning rumblings.

    Yet as the PDP unravels before our eyes, it is important to keep a sense of perspective about how we got to this perilous pass where Nigeria has become an international joke and a national scandal. Even the conservative but highly respected London-based The Economist magazine has now dismissed the Jonathan administration as belonging to a “discredited party” likely to be swept off by the irresistible momentum of the opposition.

    Such has been the scale of the looting of the national patrimony, the brazenness of state larceny and the bizarre nature of in your face impunity, that the canopy of economic reform along neoliberal lines which made the Jonathan administration and its much hyped hustler economists very attractive to their metropolitan patrons has now collapsed. Like devils on the cross, these Breton Wood attack traders have now started noisily quarrelling among themselves.

    When elite consensus breaks down this irretrievably and in so fundamental a manner that it questions the political, intellectual and spiritual competence of the ruling class all at once, it means that there is a fundamental disagreement about the sitting arrangement in the dining hall and about who gets what and at what time. Fortunately or unfortunately, the rupture of elite relations gives the rumbling multitude a window of opportunity to forcibly disrupt the entire proceedings. From that point on, the resolution of the crisis is no longer an entirely elite driven affair.

    Goodluck Jonathan may have a point. Allowing the Niger-Delta militants to dip their hands into the national trough is a crude but telling means of pressing for immediate relief and righting a historic wrong. But by so doing, he externalizes an internal elite conflict in such a way that the elite become structurally impotent to deal with the crisis. Wise rulers always weigh both the long term and short term consequences of their action.

    At three critical intersections in Nigeria’s post-independence existence, the masses have risen in a way that has threatened the fundamental structure of the nation. Between 1962 and 1965, the Yoruba underlings rose with such violence and mayhem that the multiplier effects eventually overwhelmed the entire Republic. So was the case in the Second and Third Republics when perceived injustice snowballed into a national conflagration.

    But no two situations can be completely similar. In the First Republic, the absence of a potent civil society led to a direct collision of forces between an irate populace and the civil authorities in what is memorably remembered as “operation weti e”. In the Second Republic, the presence of a powerful military caste prevented a slide into anarchy and descent into ungovernable chaos.

    In The Third Republic, an emergent and virile civil society cadre acted as a powerful countervailing force which prevented an enraged populace from coming into direct collision with the military authorities. In the Fourth Republic, this modulating civil society has largely disappeared having been compromised into historical oblivion as a result of its own shenanigans.

    In a sense, then, the Third Republic can be regarded as the golden age of age of Nigerian generals, both serving as well as retired and the last snapshot of a military plutocracy just as it began its inevitable descent into decline and historic irrelevance. It acted with considerable professional concert in eventually arresting the political chicaneries of General Babangida. But by then it had already shot itself in the foot.

    With the Fourth Republic, we are witnessing the whirlwind with the rise of an irregular army which threatens and humiliates the regular army such as we have seen with the Boko Haram insurgents as well as the empowerment of an outlaw band of ruffians and riffraff from the fringes of the society who now cock a snook at the old general caste.

    Witness for example, General Theophilus Danjuma’s recent fulminations and the swift countermand by a whole gaggle of  Niger Delta  “generals”. If this was unthinkable in the eighties and nineties, then we must come to terms with the fact that we have arrived at an interesting conjuncture. A throne, as Napoleon once acidly noted, is only a bench covered with damask.

    As things stand in the Fourth Republic, we might as well be witnessing the passing of an elephant. In Africa, it is said that the death of an elephant is an occasion to witness all manner of knives in action. By this time next week, or the next few weeks as may be contrived by the shifting of polling posts, the political landscape of the nation would have altered perhaps forever.  Having received an electoral shellacking in the hands of an angry and bitter populace, Jonathan could have become a lame duck ruler critically hobbled by loss and lack of popular acceptance for the remaining part of his tenure.

    But if President Jonathan wins against the run of play, the upset victory is likely to upset the entire applecart, triggering off in the process a chain of reactions which is likely to end the Fourth Republic. In a polity dominated by the centrifugal forces of religion, region and tribe, no Head of state can survive for long without substantial elite approval. If on the other hand, the APC wins, the ascendancy of opposition elements may serve as an elixir prolonging the lifespan of the Fourth Republic. For the nation to survive, the PDP will have to die and be reinvented in a manner of speaking.

    The critical choice before Nigerians could not have been starker and more profoundly paradoxical. It is either regime change and the survival of the Fourth Republic or regime survival in a short run and the ultimate destruction of republic and the democratic process. Under the PDP, the shrine of Baal has exhausted its deadly propitiatory cocktail of bribery, blackmail, assassinations, electoral witchcraft, kleptocracy and other brazen crimes against humanity. Only a party that truly believes it would rule forever could have committed such heists without batting an eye. Now the chicks have come home to roost.

    Never in the history of Nigeria has a federal election occasioned such rancor, nastiness and bitterness as we are currently witnessing. The stakes must be very high indeed. Yet there is not much difference in ideology and political outlook between the two major parties. The two are right of centre political machines poised and primed to capture power in civil contests which are wars by any other means. The hierarchy of both parties is brimming with political transvestites and other humongous hybrids who would be at home even in hell as long as opportunities abound. Asking for the ideology of such people is like asking for the driving license of an international smuggler.

    Although the APC is more creative and pro-people, both parties tend to build from the top down to the bottom in a startling reversal of the normal order of human association. If the Nigerian people eventually decide to cast their vote overwhelmingly for APC, it is not because they hold it in special affection or regard but because they have come to the conclusion that a vote for APC is the most rational and expeditious way of seeing off the much hated and much contemned PDP.

    But as if we have stated so often in this column, elite consensus cannot be built on election day or by some vainglorious pacts of friendship and fraternity publicly enacted as a pay as you go spectacle just before elections. Successful elections are products and outcomes of a priori elite consensus and pacted negotiations. Such consensus involves a play of social signifiers across rigid binary divisions; a political gamesmanship which does not recognize Maginot and Siegfried lines in politics.

    As we have seen so often in post-colonial politics, elections are won and lost before actual elections. More often than not, the electoral winner is not the political victor. In 1993, Abiola won a presidential election but was prevented from claiming his political laurel and done to death to the bargain. But 2015 is not 1993. In 1993, despite the heroic stirring of civil and political society, the balance of force remained with the military oligarchy. Despite being historically exhausted, they were still able to dictate the pace and the eventual pact.

    In 2015, 1993 looks so distant and remote. The power equation has changed. There are new kids in the coliseum. Having lost its old vitality and institutional charisma, the military has become a poor shadow of its former self. But something else has happened in the intervening sixteen years between the end of formal military rule and the reenactment of civil rule. It is the rise and decline of the PDP.

    The PDP is a victim of its own success and excesses. Conceived by its military and civilian progenitors as a pan-Nigerian mega-party, the PDP at the height of its power and grandeur was arguably the most formidable political cartel in the history of Africa, with its machine greased and oiled by billions of petro-dollars. So successful and all-conquering was this post-amalgamation amalgam that the fear of many was that Nigeria has become a virtual one-party state.

    But in a moment of hubris and power disorientation, the PDP handed the reins of its ascendancy to a political and power neophyte who in turn swiftly surrendered himself to the political and power neophytes who have seized the reins of dominancy in his ethnic formation but are visually incapable of seeing the bigger picture in a multi-national nation roiling with momentous contradictions. The result is the catastrophe that faces the nation.

    How anybody could have made the elementary political miscalculation of handing over such vast powers to an untested and untutored Goodluck Jonathan remains one of the mysteries of collective political suicide in African history. But it speaks to the limits and limitations of power pragmatism, particularly the fact that organized conspiracies to capture power are also vulnerable to the power of other conspiracies.

    For now, the PDP is down and out for the full count. If Nigeria’s legendary luck permits, it will disappear quietly in other to live and fight another day. If not things will turn nasty and scary. But if the APC does not want to be seen as just another more glamorous and attractive version of the PDP, it will have to look for ways of infusing its ethos with an emancipatory project meant for the amelioration of the terrible condition of Nigeria’s toiling people, irrespective of religion, region and ethnic classification.

    Second, if it comes to power, the APC must profit from the tragedy of the PDP. Despite the razzmatazz of being a big umbrella for all Nigerians, the largest party in Africa had a very narrow social base for the recruitment of leadership cadre, hence its startling inability to appropriate the vast range of vibrant and visionary expertise available in Nigeria.

    Under Jonathan’s insular provincialism,  the base shrunk further until it began to look like a narrow ethnic or  creek camarilla. To make a dent, the APC must move to broaden its leadership recruitment base. Luckily for the parties, there are some of its leaders who have demonstrated in the past a capacity to look for leadership materials beyond the narrow base of party affiliations. But such idiosyncratic hunches must now be structured and finessed into a Strategic Intervention Pool.

    Nigeria is on the cusp of momentous events and it is good to be a witness to a year when decades may happen. Over to you then, Attahiru Jega—and that is whenever.

  • Jonathan’s many sins

    Jonathan’s many sins

    His government now wants to provide security within six weeks, where it had failed in five years! 

    It baffles me that some people still cannot see that voting out President Goodluck Jonathan is soft-landing, sort of, for the country’s ruling elite. Just as it baffles me that the government and its acolytes have not been able to see the general resentment against them for the way they have monumentally mismanaged the country’s resources.

    But it gladdens the heart that the Council of State members that met on Thursday realised, even if in their enlightened self- interest, that the best thing was to dissociate themselves from the government’s pet agenda to postpone this month’s election, by making it clear that the responsibility of conducting elections in the country is that of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). So, the hope of the Jonathan presidency to use that forum to legitimise its much-sought-after postponement of the election has been dashed again.

    Suffice it to say that this is what desperation can do. The government has now become like a drowning man that would not mind clinging to a serpent for help. Its latest excuse now is that it cannot guarantee security in a few places where insurgents are fighting with our soldiers in the northeast. May be it does not know that by admitting this, it has shot itself in the foot because that is the essence of any government properly so-called! Here is a government that has been unable to provide security in the last five years now seeking postponement of election by six weeks to do same. Definitely, this government has something up its sleeves but whatever it is, it should be better guided by the country’s political history.

    The election postponement agenda can be likened to a student who whiled away his time at school, attending ‘owanbe’ parties, drinking cognac (pronounced ‘koinyan’ here), sleeping with all manner of girls and not giving a damn about his purpose in school until two weeks to the examinations when he now begins to look for a way to make the school authorities postpone scheduled examinations just to enable him cover lost ground. It is important to point out that a major sin of the Jonathan government is that the thieves in government have stolen too much for the owner to notice. And as Sonola Olumhense pointed out in one of his write-ups in 1983, that the Shagari government had to change its style or itself be changed, so it is with the country’s ruling elite: it must ensure that President Jonathan is not reelected or itself be changed.

    Louis XV1might not have been the worst of all the kings France had before the 1789 Revolution, but it was apparent that the ancien regime that the country had known for years must give way at some point because it was not sustainable forever; it only happened that it collapsed in Louis XV1’s time. In the same vein, Nigeria might have been badly and corruptly run for decades; that is not to say it would be like that forever. Certain things must give at some point. It has nothing to do with where the president comes from; after all, it was the same people who welcomed him with hosanna in 2011 that are not too receptive of him now. It is left for President Jonathan to find the missing link; find the disconnect between him and Nigerians that he is supposed to be leading, if it is not too late.

    Under the Obasanjo administration, we had instances where governors were impeached illegally. The Jonathan regime seemed to have ‘perfected’ that as we can see in Ayo Fayose’s Ekiti State where seven members of the state house of assembly and two unknown quantities ‘imported’ into the house (making nine in a 26-member house), ‘impeached’ the legitimate speaker, as well as passed the 2015 budget. It is only in Nigeria where values have sunk that much that such a thing can stand. Months after, President Jonathan obviously has not heard of this illegality. As a matter of fact, under his watch, the police took the impunity many steps further by attempting to block Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives and other National Assembly members from entering the assembly complex simply because they do not agree with the president. Seeing our National Assembly members jump over the assembly complex gate to gain entrance into their offices to beat the barricade put in place by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Suleiman Abba, immediately reminded one of political events in some backwater African countries. If those lawmakers had not jumped the fence, a tiny minority of the lawmakers loyal to the president would have gone in to ‘impeach’ the speaker. As far as the president is concerned, it is all politics provided it is done in his interest or that of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Thus, the IGP would have helped the president to deepen impunity and illegality and today, we all would be asking, ‘when did we descend this low’, just as we are now asking where we were when things were going this bad in the country.

    These are some of the sins of President Jonathan, apart from the incompetent manner the economy is being run and the large-scale corruption (that the president sees as mere stealing) in the system. Now, we have been reminded that the government has not been able to add a kobo to the foreign reserve despite raking in the highest revenue from the sale of crude oil in recent years. Where has all the money gone to, considering that nothing seems to be working in the country? If Nigerians have improved power supply now, the likelihood is that what they are having is ‘election light’. In other words, they are breaking their fast now; to resume fasting when the election is over. That is one of the things I see in President Jonathan’s reelection.

    If General Buhari’s popularity is soaring today, these are some of the reasons. If the president must hop from church to church for prayers when he had the opportunity of having reelection on a platter of gold but frittered it away, these are some of the reasons. Unfortunately, President Jonathan is only rending his garments when what he needs to rend is his heart. It would appear that the president has forgotten the legal maxim: those who seek equity must do so with clean hands. If man could demand this much, how much more God? God does not see all the things that the president and his party regard as ‘politics’ in that light. To Him, it is sin and sin is sin. If it is true that some pastors had been given N6billion by the government, I do not see how that can translate to vote for the president because none of those pastors can stand before their members and ask them to vote for President Jonathan. Even if they do, will they follow their members to the polling booths on Election Day to confirm whether they voted for the president or not? Now, the people in government are afraid of losing power. As I have always said, it is only those who know what saliva is used for that quickly rubs theirs with their foot whenever they spit. They know the illegalities and impunities they have used power to commit and are afraid of their shadows.

    Obviously too, those in power and their cronies had been enjoying these illegalities because there was no one to sanction them, and they had hoped the honey moon would last forever. This is natural because, like the child that abuses the Iroko tree and looks back expecting immediate consequences, without any, the president and his supporters too must have been living under the illusion that they would always get away with their iniquities since there has been no consequence all this while, without knowing that all Nigerians were waiting for was the day of reckoning, which those in power are desperately trying to postpone.

    The point is, President Jonathan has not governed as one looking for second term. Otherwise, public officials would not be stealing the way they are in his time as if stealing is going out of fashion. A president that had so much money and could do so little in more than five years, now promising to do better if reelected? He himself should know he is deceiving Nigerians even if the people being deceived do not know. Where is he going to get the money now that the price of crude oil has been plummeting, and without anyone doing any strategic thinking concerning government’s finances? Ordinarily, there should be no controversy over whether President Jonathan deserves reelection or not. For incumbent governments, their achievements during their tenure are the parameters to decide whether they merit reelection or not.

    All said, President Jonathan might have tried his best, but his best has not been good enough for the country. It is late in the day for him to be promising heaven on earth, if reelected; how much faith has he kept with his earlier promise to give the country good leadership? Four more years under this government, Nigeria would completely go to the dogs.

    Show me a government more prodigal. Show me a government more corrupt.