The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • 2015: finally, the battle is joined

    2015: finally, the battle is joined

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had no reason to contrive the mournful convention it had in Abuja last week on the same day the All Progressives Congress (APC) held its feisty and evocative political festival to elect a standard-bearer. If the ruling party elected to have a quiet and uneventful gathering, it was not because it was naturally and virtuously quiet, nor because it thought the mood of the country and the tempo of 2015 politics demanded it. It was perhaps a manifestation of its insecurity, or the insecurity of its leaders, of its inability to appreciate the principles and practice of democracy notwithstanding its preachments to the contrary, and of its cancerous indolence in envisioning a great democratic, political and philosophical future for Nigeria. It will take a lot of research to understand why the PDP needed to stifle all efforts to present President Goodluck Jonathan a virile opposition in last Wednesday’s presidential primary, when it was abundantly clear that even with 100 opponents, the president would still have won handily.

    Contrastingly, the APC had the quintessential presidential primary Nigerians dream of, in which no one steps down or is cajoled to do so, one destined to become a watershed in Nigeria’s factious and turbulent politics. Henceforth, no party, big or small, will artificially concoct a primary. They will let the process acquire a momentum of its own; they will let the festival run on its own steam replete with variety shows; they will let party faithful converge in an atmosphere of periodic conviviality, their host cities adorned with the panoply of music, flowers, banners, buntings and flags — indeed, matchless entertainment. Remarkably, the APC last week showed how primaries should be organised. But whether it thought its way into it or was coaxed into it by its rebellious Young Turks is difficult to say at the moment. But perhaps it achieved this distinction by the very nature of its founding, anchored as it was on the ashes of about four mercurial political parties; because to have anything other than a transparent primary would have sounded the party’s death knell.

    To be sure, the APC presidential primary did not go like clockwork, but it was unprecedented, matched in methodology, if not substance, only by the Lagos governorship primary of the week before. Both primaries were indications that whether by accident or by design, Nigerians were quite capable of political behaviour that matches world standard. There were initial misgivings the APC presidential aspirants would tear themselves to pieces on account of their ambitions and irreconcilability. Surprisingly, the contestants behaved most nobly and admirably. Neither they nor their supporters vowed thunder or spoke it, again quite unlike the PDP Lagos governorship primary of two days earlier where Musiliu Obanikoro and Jimmy Agbaje, the two leading contenders, spoke daggers and used them. And when the APC primary results were announced, with Muhammadu Buhari a clear winner, the atmosphere of brotherhood was unmistakable, even with a considerably chastened Abubakar Atiku enveloped in detachment and despair.

    The speeches both before the balloting and after a winner emerged were not of the highest standard, but future contestants can be trusted to learn a thing or two from this year’s APC primary and probably perform much better next time. Contestant Rochas Okorocha, the Imo State governor, is the orator among the five, a man of florid imagination and phrasal fecundity, but he did not appeal imaginatively to the sacred longings of the delegates. Notwithstanding, he was a delight. Former Vice President Atiku speaks very well, untrammeled by short and long pauses, but he too did not reach the height of renown where he seems forever poised. But his brief remarks after he lost were very well delivered, unaffected by the gloom he felt and the humbling effect of coming third. Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso was the revelation of the primary. As this columnist noted last week, had he started the race much earlier, he would probably have caused an upset, for he ran the most sophisticated race. He speaks well, but is often distracted by the undue attention he pays to what he has to say.

    We may never know what Sam Nda Isaiah is capable of. His prefatory remarks showed a man overwhelmed by the intimidating pomp of the moment, and not being a naturally gifted speaker, he seemed to flounder badly, perhaps exhausted by the sheer intensity and convolution of a competition he was participating in for the first time. The contestant that surprised everyone most was the laconic former head of state and retired army general, Buhari. This is his fourth time of running for president, but this is his first time of really participating in a solid and demanding primary. His patience was probably tested badly, and he sometimes looked like he was being made to participate in a needless and humiliating contest. But his opening remarks were appropriately short and pungent, and his acceptance speech to wearied delegates harassed by more than 24 hours of intense jostling was also inspiringly but guardedly succinct.

    Altogether, the APC primary points to better days ahead for the party and the country. The party will go from the primary on a high, bolstered by the virtuoso performance they gave Nigerians last week, a performance underscored by the many dignitaries and governors who participated in the show, a performance that is bound to make the country give a second thought to the party’s claims to moral and ideological superiority. Coming on the same day the PDP concocted a regrettable and artificial show in Abuja, the conduct of the APC primary is bound to elicit salutary electoral responses from Nigerians. If the party manages to handle the choice of Gen Buhari’s running mate well (See Box), and given the incontestable fact that Dr Jonathan is right now at his most vulnerable, the APC would probably win the presidency irrespective of earlier projections by detractors inspired by the prejudice of a large section of the media.

    For the second time in a few years, Dr Jonathan will be squaring off for a fight with the expressionless Gen Buhari. It will be a titanic struggle, the final for both men. More, it will be a struggle that will define and shape Nigeria. It will be a contest between a straight talker and a waffler, a patriot and an opportunist, a man of steel and a man of lead, a general with distinctly Bismarckian and ambitious worldview and a civilian with unmistakably restrictive and insular perspective, the former ennobled by his patriotic glow, and the latter sullied by his provincialism. But since the capacity and capability of Dr Jonathan are very well known, none of which inspires admiration or respect, the greater onus is on Gen Buhari to prove that his party did not make a mistake electing him their champion in the coming war, that his can-do spirit and hunger for order and progress far outweigh his past foibles, impetuousness, suspect democratic credentials, and lack of policy and administrative depth.

    The PDP will make herculean efforts to centre the campaign on issues of religion, ethnicity and unsubstantiated and exaggerated achievements. The PDP had clothed the APC in religious garb, and labeled its leaders desperate power grabbers and autocrats. But having had the good fortune of a successful presidential primary, the APC will work hard to focus attention on the president’s uncoordinated and amateurish approach to governance, weaknesses, hesitations, the Chibok schoolgirls disaster, economic downturn, social decay, poor national image, unending insurgency, and a host of other clear evidence of poor performance, poor judgement and overall poor leadership tending towards apocalypse. Dr Jonathan is unlikely to dispel grave and sobering doubts about his competence between now and February.

  • Muhammadu Buhari and the paradox of a nation

    Muhammadu Buhari and the paradox of a nation

    Given his landslide victory at the just concluded APC presidential primary, Major General Mohammadu Buhari seems to be on the cusp of history once again. It is history steeped in and dripping with paradox. This needs not delay us. It has been said that thunder does not strike twice. But if the loud rumblings for change across the country and the sudden tectonic shift in favour of a sanitising presidency are anything to go by, the Daura-born general has another rendezvous with history.

    Exactly 31 years after his military colleagues chose him to be the public face of what they presented as a war against corruption and indiscipline in Nigeria, fate and the logic of aborted business seem to be conspiring to restore him to the very same pedestal. Is Buhari about to step into the same river twice? Put in another way, does history actually repeat itself?

    It is a tangled web of ironies and confounding ambiguities.  The ruins of reaction also throw up rays of revolutionary hopes. Thirty one years after riding to power on the crest of a popular military coup, General Buhari is seeking to return to the same office through free and fair elections. This will be his fourth attempt, too. As a soldier, Buhari was completely apolitical, often dripping with contempt for political generals.  But out of the army, he seems to have developed a gargantuan appetite for politics.

    On the face of it, something does not add up. Why does Nigeria appear to be going round in circles like a barber’s swivel chair without any remission or amelioration of condition?  The Buhari phenomenon is a huge paradox that requires further inquiry. We can no longer afford to play poker with the destiny of Nigeria.

    Thirty one years after the then Brigadier Sani Abacha’s historic broadcast, Nigeria roils in the quagmire of underdevelopment; a cesspit of corruption and historic malfeasance. Sullen angry crowds confront you everywhere you turn. The social fabric that binds a nation together has collapsed, leaving in its wake a state of hair-raising anomie.

    The nation has never been so ethnically, religiously and economically polarised. The north east has virtually imploded. If you factor into this the looming fiscal meltdown as a result of tumbling oil prices, it is a perfectly scary proposition. Never in its history has Nigerian been more in dire need of a redeemer or a group of redeemers.

    But there have been Nigerian redeemers and Nigerian redeemers. They have come in different sizes and shapes. Yet they have always almost without exception managed to leave the country in a worse shape than they met it. Many analysts have pointed at the structural misconfiguration of the nation right from colonial gestation which has made it impossible for Nigeria to throw up its best and brightest. Others have fingered an alien and alienating state originally designed for colonial galley slaves and which has now become an equal opportunity instrument of terror and torture. A few have chosen to blame a failure of leadership.

    Whatever may be the reason, the evidence of state failure is staggering and overwhelming. The state is in serial stasis, its comprehensive paralysis so evident that Nigeria has become a butt of continental and global jokes, its leaders treated like comic buffoons and figures of outlandish farce in a brave new world of ceaseless innovations powered by knowledge production. Even a third rate country like Chad can subject Nigeria to a cruel hoax such as we witnessed in the cleverly executed Boko Haram illusory ceasefire.

    Central to the failure and tragedy of Nigeria as a nation is the failure of military messianism such as we have witnessed in a huge chunk of post-colonial Africa. Military rule left many African countries in political and economic ruins with the military itself as an institutional bulwark of the state humbled and humiliated and a very poor shadow of its former self. In Ethiopia, Zaire, Liberia, Uganda, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burundi and Sierra Leone, the official army had to be neutralised as a precondition for the reconfiguration and reorganisation of the state and the nation.

    The Nigerian military has been lucky that its misadventure in power and partisan politics has not cost it much beyond a loss of institutional coherence and cohesiveness and a structural dislocation of its old fighting flair. It could be much worse. General Mohammadu Buhari is very much a product of this military messianism in Nigeria and the paradox of his career illustrates the tragic trajectory. It also in a curiously paradoxical manner points the way forward for a cruelly afflicted nation. It is to this trajectory that we must now return.

    In February 1976 after the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed, the then Colonel Buhari was passed over for political promotion by his military superiors. To appease the core north which was still smarting over the death of the tempestuous Kano-born Mohammed, it was decided that an officer of pristine and immaculate Fulani extraction should be named as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters and in effect Obasanjo’s political deputy.

    The choice narrowed to either Colonel Buhari or Lieutenant Colonel Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. Although he was Yar’Adua’s senior, it was felt that Buhari’s stiffness, his inflexibility and lack of political exposure might endanger and compromise a potentially distinguished professional career. Thus Lieutenant Colonel Yar’Adua suddenly became Brigadier Yar’Adua at the youthful age of thirty three.

    Although clever, dexterous and probably judicious in the light of extant political realities, the political engineering was not without its bizarre anomalies and contradictions. A livid Colonel David Medaiyese Jemibewon , as the governor of the old west, bluntly refused to submit himself to the dictates of his former subordinate and routinely bypassed the Supreme Headquarters  to reach General Obasanjo as Head of State.

    However that may be, the courteous, affable and fabulously savvy Yar’Adua went on to make economic hay as a businessman and as the master of militarised politics in modern Nigeria.  A wizard of the shock and awe school of political contention, Yar’Adua overwhelmed the old political ramparts with men, money and material and was virtually on his way to the State House before fatally succumbing to a combination of political and military ambush unfurled by his northern colleagues.

    In the case of General Buhari, he went on to serve with distinction and immaculate incorruptibility as Nigeria’s Petroleum Czar. He was also a star GOC as his exploits in the Chad Basin would attest. Ironically when it was time for a military coup to dismiss Nigeria’s dissolute and corrupt political class, it was Buhari’s old qualities of stiffness and inflexibility, his iron will and old-fashioned distaste for immorality that recommended him to his colleagues as the stern, no-nonsense face and visage of the new project to sanitise Nigeria.

    These qualities worked excellently well when it came to Nigeria’s external image and the management of the economy. But they foundered on the rocks of Nigeria’s cultural, political and regional polarities. It was felt in many quarters that the Buhari administration was grossly insensitive to the cultural and political sensitivities of other regions and religions. The arraignment and conviction of political villains was grotesquely lopsided. Many noted the preferential treatment given to Alhaji Shehu Shagari while his deputy, Alex Ekwueme, was kept in confinement where he developed a snowy beard of Nebuchadnezarean proportions.

    Very soon, malignant rumours began to circulate that the coup was part of a sinister Fulani project to retain power. Led by the illustrious Mahmoud Tukur, the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities issued a famous treatise which dismissed the Buhari government as the military wing of the NPN. The reaction of the Buhari administration to these insinuations was a combination of astonishing innocence and political obtuseness. The government provided ammunition for its own enemies who were waiting patiently in the wing and very soon the Buhari regime became history.

    Almost 30 years after, the country has arrived at a similar conjuncture with the same Buhari as a democratic exemplar and the civilian arrowhead of a nationwide clamour for democratic restitution and a restoration of national sanity in the economic and political spheres. In the interval, Nigeria has been laid low and prostrate by a succession of military despots and civilian autocrats.

    An ethnic version of the Russian roulette or tribal round robin rammed down the country’s throat by a military cabal after they were confronted by the consequences of annulling the freest and fairest election in the country has become a political albatross with the advent of the Jonathan presidency. It is a proverbial fly perched on a delicate spot in the nation’s anatomy.

    So, is General Buhari about to step into the same river all over again?  Not exactly. If 31 years ago, the economy was in the doldrums, now it is in a violent tailspin. Thirty one years ago corruption was a national malaise, now it has become a pan-Nigerian pandemic threatening to overwhelm the nation. To worsen matters, the ethnic, religious and regional fissures of the country have become gaping wounds and a large swathe of the nation has already succumbed to religious insurgency.

    All these require much more than General Buhari’s fabled incorruptibility and granite integrity. He will be asked not just to go after economic saboteurs but to create wealth without which it will be impossible to address the issue of social inequity, and with an eye to the sensitivities of a combustible multinational nation. It will require uncommon skills, political dexterity and the sagacity of a modern miracle man.

    It is a measure of the urgency and indeed the emergency of the matter at hand that the dominant political tendency in the South West whose ideological ancestors and political forebears were in the forefront of the battle against the old Buhari administration have now teamed up with nascent political forces from the north in a last ditch bid to rescue Nigeria. This is just as it should be. We cannot be fixated on old battle orders and ancient feuds when emergent realities point at pressing and immediate dangers in other directions. Those who bear grudges of the past are rendered incapable of facing the grinding necessities of the present.

    The ringing and insistent clamour out there is for a qualitative change of leadership based on competence, integrity and higher seriousness which will rescue Nigeria from its current economic rot and political disorder. The post-June 12 ethnic formatting of leadership pioneered by a military cabal and perpetuated by General Obasanjo  has now had its time and day. Otherwise like a catatonic animal in deep hibernation, Nigeria may be put permanently to sleep by adversarial climatic conditions. We have only two months to make up our mind.

  • 2015: APC and the battle to come

    2015: APC and the battle to come

    APC must insist on the use of electronic card reader as PVCs currently being hoarded are destined to be cloned by the PDP

    “The flow of handing over a mini bag of rice with cash to every voter on the queue in turn had been smooth until it got to the victim of the brutality; a staunch APC faithful I presume, well known to the distributor. I think the distributor had offered him his own with a wink of tease he did not find amusing. ‘Get out of my sight or…” the APC man was still saying when a hard slap from the civil defense man, from behind, cut him short of further words. This instantly ignited in me a pity for the miserable life these Ekiti people have just been deceived into, endorsing with these PDP’s callous bait for a deeper wretched living in their land”.  – From the diary of  a self-confessed  member of the  militarisation team  that locked down  Ekiti from 19th- 21st, June 2014.

    In a 4-part article titled “PERISCOPING APC’s IDEAL PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE” on these pages, I recently showcased why, in the interest of not only the APC but Nigeria at large, General Muhammadu Buhari should be the party’s presidential candidate.  I, indeed, opined that given Nigeria’s current circumstances, the country needed the general much more than he needs her.  I should not delay with a rehash of those self-evident realities; a situation so galling a naturally taciturn Dr Christopher Kolade could not hold back from saying that Nigeria never had it so bad. The loud mouths have since replied, lecturing the 80-year plus senior citizen.  Let me therefore quickly congratulate the party for proving us right. I must,  however, specially  thank Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Chief Retuning Officer and his  election planning team for  organising such a first- in- Nigeria congress, so transparent a blind could see.

    For the party, however, the time for backslapping is not yet here because for the very first time in its chequered history, the ‘biggest rally’ in Africa -PDP – is going to have an electoral contest, properly so called. In place of those  small, usually  feuding  political  parties,  PDP would, this time around , be facing a proper, well heeled  opposition  party.   For a party which thinks nothing of manipulating an election which it should ordinarily win, this cannot be a joking matter for PDP at all.  It will therefore stop at nothing to rig the presidential election in the vain hope that victory at that would trigger a bandwagon effect as if Nigerians are fools.

    For the APC, therefore, the words of former President Obasanjo to the effect that “In politics, just as in war, what matters is not just your plan, but knowledge of your opponent’s plan” become relevant and germane.  For it, therefore, the point of departure must be the clear understanding that for PDP, nothing, however reprehensible, is off limits. In other words, PDP would fight bare knuckles.  Fortunately, in Ekiti and Osun the APC saw, in its utmost brazenness, what the party can do.  The bestiality of the militarisation team, described in the intro to this article, is a clear manifestation of one of the problems with rulers of resource rich countries, particularly in the Third World.  They always want to be rulers for life.  APC must therefore be prepared: not for war nor for a recourse to AK47  but, it must, as a matter of urgency,  head to the courts to ask that INEC be legally compelled to conduct the 2015 elections strictly according to the Electoral Law instead of, as usual,  pandering to the ruling party and helping it to rig elections.  Two examples will suffice to show INEC as nothing more than PDP’s rigging partner.  First,  it has been shown  that the  sudden  postponement of the April 6, 2011 election long after  voting had commenced  nationwide,  on the grounds  that  voting materials did not arrive, was a ploy  to  enable the PDP ascertain where General Buhari was strongest to enable PDP ferry fake ballot papers, being  printed in a well known, local printing press in Abuja, to shore up Dr  Jonathan’s votes in those places. It was to cover this infamy that Justice Ayo Salami was rapidly suspended from office, and, ipso facto, from his chairmanship of the Presidential Election Tribunal where he had already granted General Buhari leave to inspect the ballot papers. That leave was promptly reversed at the first sitting of the reconstituted Presidential Election panel. Second, is the use of vanishing ink instead of the prescribed indelible ink as we saw in the Ekiti election. Last week in the column, I demonstrated how the vanishing ink was programmed to impregnate a  mark already affixed to the PDP column turning it to the voted party and how that accounted for their so-called victory in all of Ekiti’s 16 Local Government Areas. APC just must stop this unholy PDP/INEC mala fidi. It will be its greatest battle because on its record of performance, PDP has already failed and fallen.

    The Obasanjo regime -1999 -2007- showed conclusively that PDP is a rigging machine. However, if rigging was then analogue, and in-your face, under President Jonathan, it has become industrial and scientific. It comes in various ways. In 2011, for instance, fake ballot papers played a major part in PDP’s ‘victory’. In an affidavit before the Presidential Election Tribunal, CPC alleged that fake ballot papers printed by at a press whose name it gave the tribunal, were used in the entire north.  In confirmation, the party gave the names of two individuals who were arrested by the police in Abuja with 100,000 fake ballot papers. Similarly, there were reports of arrests for fake ballot papers in Akwa Ibom, which is already notorious for election rigging, and in Ogun State the driver of a sitting PDP senator, seeking re election, was arrested with a vehicle loaded with fake ballot papers. In all of these, mum had been the case with the complicit Nigeria police.

    Equally, some INEC staff, especially of the ICT department, are busy at work for the PDP. Their duty is to crutch data to ensure that PVC collection becomes as difficult as studying robotic science in areas of the country believed by PDP strategists to be APC-leaning. Therefore, at the mere touch of a button, they could maximally reduce the number of voters in such places. Like Governor Fashola, APC must do everything to hold INEC accountable. Where it fails to give out PVCs, it must, willy nilly, approve the use of temporary cards. The party must also insist on the use of electronic card reader as I suspect that most of the PVCs currently being hoarded are destined to be cloned for PDP use.

    However, as indicated earlier, of all these rigging methods, about the most difficult  to  guide against will be  scientific rigging which was deployed in Ekiti but  they could not use in Osun because their cover had been blown and it was too late to  use another variant. A South African intelligence outfit, NASENI, which did extensive work on the Zimbabwean 2013 presidential election believed to have been scientifically rigged, concluded that the technology involves the development and use of a special water marked ballot paper, which is designed to give majority of the votes cast to a pre-determined party. Once the ballot papers are supplied by its complicit suppliers, all that INEC does is provide vanishing ink in place of the indelible type. I am  persuaded  that  in the  2015 elections,  PDP would like to deploy this rogue technology  in some given states as boasts, reminiscent of those  we saw in Ekiti before the governorship election are  already being repeated  by PDP leaders in such states.  For example, in spite of the defection of the former Secretary to the Government of Akwa Ibom, Mr Umana Umana, with his teeming supporters which include very senior party elders who, though didn’t defect but are deeply rooting for him, the state governor continues to boast that PDP will score nothing less than 99 percent in both the presidential and governorship elections. Ditto in Rivers State where Wike keeps repeating the same boasts despite the fact that the primaries have shredded the PDP there.

    In conclusion, the APC, in particular, and Nigerians in general, must be prepared to stop PDP in its tracks.  Enough of the national decline on all fronts.

  • Michael Brown contra Eric Garner: further reflections on the twilight of the racism of impunity

    Michael Brown contra Eric Garner: further reflections on the twilight of the racism of impunity

    Racism is not a constant of the human spirit.
    Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture”

    In last week’s essay in this column, I wrote with great but cautious optimism that the racism of impunity, the racism that is violent and completely unashamed to show its face to the world, this crude and destructive racism is in the twilight of its long, historic existence. One justification that I gave for this cautious optimism is the fact of the sheer number of people of all races, black, white, brown and yellow, in cities across every region of the United States who were protesting and demonstrating against the slaying of unarmed black men and teenagers by white police officers. A week after I wrote last week’s essay the protests and demonstrations have not only continued they have grown bigger. As a matter of fact, in one of the most dramatic expressions of these protests, athletes in major American sports like basketball and football – with tens of millions of fans – have been displaying powerful, symbolic expressions of protest against the racist violence of the police, expressions like the wearing T-shirts bearing the inscription “I can’t breathe”. Indeed, as I write these words on Friday, December 12, 2014, the word is out that next weekend, a big, “Million-Man March” against racism is planned to take place in the American capital, Washington, DC.

    Now, this is all well and good but it is not the main reason why I am asserting that the racism of impunity is in its twilight days. Indeed, as important as the protests and demonstrators are, they do not constitute the real reason why I am returning to the subject in this week’s column. For this, we have to turn to an unprecedented development that is closely connected to the social media that has turned the tables decisively against the forces of violent racist impunity among white American policemen and their millions of defenders and supporters in Congress, the media and ordinary citizens. Since this development is, in my opinion, an absolutely crucial factor in the ongoing protests, demonstrations and debates pertaining to the slaying of unarmed black people by white police policemen, I would like to put it across in as concrete and dramatic a way as possible. This is why, in the title of this piece, I have hinted at this development by the contrast I am implying in the phrase, “Michael Brown contra Eric Garner”. Both men, unarmed, died at the hands of white policemen, one in Fergusson, Missouri and the other in Staten Island, New York City. What contrast am I making between the deaths of these two men and, more particularly, the role of social media in public perceptions of, and debates on their deaths?

    On the surface, the difference is quite simple and indeed may seem unremarkable: no video clip exists of the last moments of the death of Michael Brown at the hand of officer Darren Wilson in Fergusson, Missouri; by contrast, the video clip of Eric Garner’s last moments in the chokehold of officer Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, New York immediately went viral on the Internet from the moment of its release and millions of people have seen it across the length and breadth of America and the world. But the matter is not that simple. If I may put the significance, the weightiness of the difference quite sharply, I would say that while to all people of goodwill of all races the video clip of Eric Garner’s last dying moments says a lot, to the defenders and supporters of the Darren Wilsons and Daniel Pantaleos of this world that video clip means absolutely nothing. In other words, to their millions of supporters, no evidence, no proof that their black victims were unjustly and senselessly killed will make them waver in their support of killer white policemen. What this means is that black lives do not matter in the least to these white cops and their supporters. And if this is the case, they cannot be persuaded by any evidence to withhold their support for the Darren Wilsons and Daniel Pantaleos among white police officers of America.

    But, this, it is beginning to become more and more apparent, is not exactly true. No nation, no social group in the world is immune to the effects and ramifications of the social media. The supporters and defenders of racist killer policemen are no exception to this rule, this norm of the 21st century world of the pervasively mediatized interplay between reality and the images circulated and consumed through the digital appliances that dominate our lives all over the world. The “evidence” provided by the social media can no longer be either ignored or left out of the logics that structure our daily lives, personal or collective. In other words, if the social media catch you in a compromised or damning moment and then circulates that moment to the whole world, you cannot continue to act as if you are untouched by the national and global circulation of your moment of inhumanity, embarrassment or shame. This is the unexpected dilemma that has hit the defenders and supporters of the racism of impunity in the United States like a tsunami of moral and social crisis. Let me explain what I am claiming here by briefly returning to the concrete cases of the racist killers, Darren Wilson and David Pantaleo, and the difference between them that was established by the social media.

    Fortuitously, the decision not to charge Darren Wilson by the grand jury in Fergusson, Missouri came two weeks before the decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, New York. Since there was no recording, no video clip of Wilson’s slaying of Michael Brown, the grand jury hearing that case was presented with widely varying and divergent testimonies of what actually took place in the fatal encounter. Moreover, the public prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury was quite openly sympathetic to policemen and their unions in general and Darren Wilson in particular. In the absence of any recording of the fateful event, this white public prosecutor manipulated his presentation of the evidence to the grand jury in favor of Darren Wilson. At any rate, the case became one of the classic instances of “take-your-pick” between one man’s word against another man’s word, with the jurors left to choose which side of the evidentiary divide to lean toward. In a country in which, overwhelmingly, all-white or predominantly white jurors never rule against white police officers who kill unarmed black men, the die was cast and not too many people were surprised that Darren Wilson was declared free to walk away, no indictment if you please.

    Things were completely different in the case of Daniel Pantaleo and the grand jury that he faced in Staten Island, New York. The evidence against him presented in the video clip on the Internet was both unambiguous and overwhelming. The Chief Medical Examiner of New York City had proclaimed Pantaleo’s slaying of Garner a homicide. Moreover, the use of the chokehold with which he killed Garner had been banned by the New York City Police Department for more than a decade precisely because it had caused many deaths of suspects in the course of attempted arrests by police officers. Above all else, the evidence of the video clip not only showed that Garner was unarmed, it also showed that he was in fact jumped and pounded upon by five burly white policemen; since he could therefore not have escaped the grip of the arresting police officers even if he had wanted to, they did not have to apply lethal force in arresting him. For all these reasons, as people awaited the decision of the Staten Island grand jury in the wake of the disappointment of the decision of the Fergusson grand jury’s decision that had absolved Darren Wilson of any criminal indictment, the feeling was high among the general population in America that this was one case in which the police could not use the convenient argument of conflicting evidence to abort the cause of justice and let Daniel Pantaleo off the hook. But of course that is precisely what the grand jury in Staten Island did; they chose to completely ignore the damning evidence against Pantaleo and his fellow killer officers. In other words, to the impunity of the policemen who killed Garner, the grand jury members of Staten Island added their own impunity of complete disregard for the evidence provided in the video clip that showed to the whole world how Garner was killed.

    Impunity has its limits and sometimes those limits can make all the difference in the world. There have been countless cases in which all-white or predominantly white juries completely ignored clear-cut evidence of criminal wrongdoing of white policemen and consistently ruled to uphold and sustain terrible miscarriages of justice against black people, especially black men and teenagers in the inner city ghettoes of America. But those were days before the rise, rise and further rise of the age of social media in which the eyes of the whole world are turned on America and on every single nation on the planet. In the period before the advent of the social media to a place of commanding presence in the world, impunity in American race relations always relied on a cloistered, hidden and protected form of white tribalism. To most decent, progressive and fair-minded white people, this was always a cause of great shame, embarrassment and guilt, this protected and unashamed white tribalism that kept alive blatant forms of racism that belonged to the epochs of slavery and separate and unequal segregation. Now, the social media are relentlessly stripping the cover off this revanchist, murderous and racist white tribalism and things will never be the same again. In this past week alone, we have seen, read or heard about condemnations of the Staten Island grand jury by prominent groups and individuals among American whites that had always defended and supported grand juries that shielded white policemen who shot and killed unarmed black men or teenagers. Where this unprecedented departure from a long tradition and practice of defence of the racism of impunity will lead no one knows, but it is important to record this rupture, even if it is a small, inchoate one.

    At any rate, I repeat: impunity does have its limits. And I add: look for some of the most telling expressions of those limits in the effects and ramifications of the social media of the new and still unfolding digital age, with their anarchic, uncontrollable and contradictory tendencies.

    In conclusion, I ask the reader to please note that in this piece, I have limited myself to the racism of impunity. If it is the case that it is by far the worst form of racism, it is however not the only racism that the world still has to deal with. My main or underlying point in this essay – as well as in last week’s piece – has been to suggest that if this racism of impunity that is the worst of all forms of racism can find no refuge from the changing, transforming forces of 21st century experience, then we can agree with the utopian view of Frantz Fanon as stated in the epigraph to this piece: “Racism is not a constant of the human spirit”.         

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Buhari versus Jonathan: time to end mindless campaign

    Buhari versus Jonathan: time to end mindless campaign

    Merely deploying words that frame candidates negatively shows lack of political skills required of the political elite class.

    Yesterday marked the end of the search for the two political protagonists that will drive the campaign and shape the voting in next year’s presidential election. The ruling party at the centre, PDP, presented yesterday its consensus candidate, the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan. On the other hand, the opposition party, the APC, elected before camera former Head of State, General MuhammedBuhari, as the party’s flag bearer. With the choice of the two candidates by the two leading political parties, it should now be the turn of citizens to hear more from the candidates about why each of them deserves to be voted in as president in 2015 than from distractive noises from chosen or self-appointed spokespersons. It should be assumed that public relations staff of each political party has done very well the preliminary work needed to put the two leading contenders before the electorate.

    On the eve of the conventions of both parties, President Jonathan played the role of a statesman when he cautioned politicians not to act like touts during the process leading to the presidential elections. In other words, President Jonathan must have chosen to caution party men and women not to turn the campaign process into the type of mindless antagonism that characterises relations between co-wives or touts fighting with all means for the same gain in the kitchen or motor parks respectively. The president must have been trying to warn party fanatics not to act in a way that can erode public confidence in the electoral process. Given the spate of name calling of opposition parties and personalities such parties in the past few months by party functionaries in the ruling party, the president must have seen the futility and danger in failing to warn party loyalists in all parties to take the matter of presidential elections with the seriousness it should deserve.

    One thing that may not be obvious but that is equally present in the president’s caution to politicians is the imperative in a serious democracy for political elite to demonstrate political skills expected of individuals in positions of leadership and evidence of a sense of the public interest by showing at all times during the electioneering campaign that political office seekers and their professional supporters have regard for the public, the citizens whose votes they seek and whose support they need to get elected in a truly democratic ethos. Unfortunately, the PDP spokesman failed to heed President Jonathan’s advice when he couched his first response to the announcement of Buhari’s candidacy in a language that detracts attention from policy matters, while focusing on personality of the person that is to run as alternative to the incumbent.

    The publicity chief’s statement: “Buhari has nothing new to offer, except ‘tired ideas’ and provocative utterances” is not an elegant way to start a free and fair issues-based campaign. Given anecdotal reports of citizens glued to television sets and radios in the last forty-eight hours during which the two leading parties formally chose their candidates, there is no doubt that citizens are interested in hearing what the candidates hope to do to address the problems that have confronted the country since 1999. Merely deploying words that frame candidates negatively shows lack of political skills required of the political elite class. Utterances and actions of party officials during electioneering do not only contribute to shaping citizens’ decisions and final choices at the polls; they also reflect the political maturity of the elite class while having the capacity to degrade or upgrade political attitudes of citizens.

    Another statement by the PDP spokesman: “We are convinced that the PDP remains the only truly national political party in Nigeria, a platform on which all Nigerians can pursue their legitimate aspirations” is hyperbolic and has no basis in reality. Such a statement undermines the INEC that found all the parties in the contest from PDP to APC, UPP to SDP national enough to deserve being registered for national elections. Such facile denigration of rival parties is capable of eroding citizens’ trust in the political process and even of alienating floating voters from the party of the incumbent.

    Certainly, there is a sense in which the job of public relations man or woman can be perceived as doing or saying everything that is capable of enhancing the chances of the client and to damage the chances of the rival or competitor. But statecraft and a sense of deliberative democracy require that party public relations officers act and talk in a manner to sustain trust in the system, rather than paint the system as pre-cast and frozen to serve just the interest of a competitor, regardless of fairness and respect for the rights of the other competitor[s] to present other cases   to the electorate. All the political parties need to move away from the traditional notion of election as just an opportunity to smash your rival in words of assault. Elections are regular rituals that sustain democracy and socialise citizens to imbibe the tenets of democratic practice, not a war of words that cast the rival as a demon.

    Truly, electoral competition presupposes that there will be conflict between or among candidates from different political parties asking for the same thing: the mandate to govern. But if we are not to be petty about this important matter, all persons functioning as party leaders need to imbibe and display commitment to the principle of choice by the electorate. Citizens’ ability to choose correctly can be frustrated or destroyed by demonisation of candidates in a campaign that focuses more on personalities than programmes or on images than issues. Our democracy is too young (only sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship) for the political elite to organise electoral struggle only in the plot and imagery of conflict for conflict’s sake.

    Inter-party conflicts during elections in particular and at other times in a democratic ethos are for the purpose of clarifying nationally important issues for the electorate, with a view to leading them to make informed choices about the future preferred by voters for themselves and their children. Let us not degrade the process with provocative utterances such as are inherent in the latest description of the nation’s opposing party as Bola Tinubu’s APC. Such statement could have been designed to attack Tinubu as a politician who has reshaped the political party system in the country in the last sixteen years, but it also has the capacity to insult citizens and cast them as sheepish followers of an individual, rather than as believers in a multiparty system believed to be the surest way to sustain political democracy.

    Nigerians have heard a lot of slogans in the last fifteen years: “Do or die struggle for power,” “the political party that has been ordained to rule Nigeria for 65 years,” “Nigeria’s only national party that can keep the country united,” etc. Yet, our multiparty system has not disappeared, and the struggle by various political parties for the mandate to govern the country has not become redundant. In fact, the only thing that adds legitimacy to any political party’s bid for power is the existence of more than one political party. There is no better time for the political elite to act in the manner of elite, rather than as touts, to borrow President Jonathan’s phrase.

    Citizens are more likely to want to hear from all the candidates how each of them plans to address the real issues: corruption, security, an economy that appears to have been degraded by the diminishing value of petroleum, an education and health system in shambles, and a polity being broken into two by the diversionary tactics of Christian and Islamic fanatics besotted to political power at all cost. Let us all welcome the emergence of the two principal candidates for the office of the president with discipline and admiration for the democratic process by opening and sustaining the political space for unfettered presentation of policy statements to address the country’s problems. In addition, let us candidates urge for full and prompt funding of the electoral commission, to prevent watering down of the electoral process on account of under-funding while also calling on the media to restrain from reducing the political debate of the next two months to personalities, images, and packaging. Citizens need to hear (without over mediation) from each candidate about the way to peace, progress, and prosperity in the country.

  • APC, running mate and options for 2015

    APC, running mate and options for 2015

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) is about to discover that deciding on Gen Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate is much tougher than electing their standard-bearer. It is not simply because that choice, once it is made, has the potential to make or mar the ticket, it is because navigating the treacherous courses of Nigeria’s competing groups and issues has become almost an impossible task. Asked a few days before the primary whether he countenanced picking a Muslim as his running mate, Gen Buhari prevaricated. He said he preferred to defer to his party, and then went on to anchor his hesitations on historical facts confirming that Nigerians previously voted for same faith candidates and running mates. He was, however, indicating that his party was battling to make up its mind, and that one or two of the leading contenders for the running mate position are Muslims.

    The incredibly successful conduct of the APC presidential primary, and in particular the election of Gen Buhari, places a huge burden on the party to make the right choice, one that would add value to the principles and philosophy of the party, and one that would inspire and fire the country to put a definitive end to PDP’s reign in 2015. That choice must not diminish the ticket or vitiate its battle preparedness. Two hard choices stare the APC in the face. First is whether to produce a running mate from the Southwest or elsewhere. And the second is whether to gamble on a Muslim-Muslim ticket.

    The choice the party makes, in its daringness and appropriateness, will be a reflection of how desperate it wants to dethrone the PDP. Once that choice is made, it will be irreversible. If it is the right choice the dynamics of electioneering will trigger a momentum that will ferry the party into the presidency. But if it is the wrong choice, the same cruel dynamics will put the party on the defensive and wreck its chances, perhaps for a long time. No person, indeed no analyst, can claim to have the answer or see into the future. However, propelled by a primary election high, it seems much more sensible for the APC to avoid rashness and overconfidence in order to sustain the momentum, and also to ensure that the issues that will shape the February poll will not be polluted by Dr Jonathan’s desperate government.

    First, the Southwest and its leaders may reason that having inspired the formation of APC, and having as it were led it so creatively, though under the weight of accusation by anachronistic members of the Yoruba political elite that the region was being sold cheaply to the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy, they may want to ensure a south-westerner on the ticket. Given the nature of Nigerian politics, especially the enormous powers wielded by the presidency over the ruling party, it is understandable why APC leaders from the Southwest would want someone from the zone on the ticket. The problem with that reasoning however is that the impression will be created that their exertions were induced by considerations other than philosophical, and that other powerful concessions bigger and more potent than a running mate cannot be secured. They will be saying that they were not inspired by great democratic principles and nobler motives required to redirect and nurture Nigerian politics and democracy along the civilising lines which contentious Yoruba leaders led by Ayo Adebanjo and others in Afenifere have failed to understand. Unknown to many, Nigerian politics is being restructured fundamentally away from the bigotries and antagonisms of the past. That process, masterminded by the APC, must not be aborted.

    Second, because Dr Jonathan is at his most vulnerable does not mean he is already dead meat. The APC must therefore weigh the risk of presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Given how badly Dr Jonathan and his supporters have muddied Nigeria’s political waters and fouled it with ethnic and religious prejudices, the APC will find it difficult convincing itself it is prepared to sail near the wind with a Muslim-Muslim ticket. It is of course nonsensical to religionise party tickets, as if same faith tickets would ineluctably promote one religion over the other. But the APC must be capable of reading the signs of the times, and of making choices that show its perceptiveness and acuity of mind. It must be able to anticipate Dr Jonathan’s campaign tactics and not hand it ready ammunition.

    In 2011, Gen Buhari had his best chance of winning the presidency, if only he would reach accommodation with the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). He incredulously made the wrong call. Now, it is not just Gen Buhari’s best chance to win, it is in fact the best chance for his party to win. They must not make the wrong choice. Apart from choosing the right running mate, the party must take over the general’s campaign, steer it away from the insularity that hallmarked his 2011 campaign, mould him as much as they can into a modern leader with believable democratic credentials and founder’s mentality, and into a politician who envisions great things, has the capacity to relate creatively with the National Assembly, and is capable of taking the people to a height that exists only in their constructive imagination. Whatever they do, APC leaders must recognise that their first task is to win and save Nigeria from apocalypse. Nothing must interfere with those noble goals of saving democracy and rebuilding this shattered and dispirited country.

  • Buhari: The opponent PDP prefers!

    Buhari: The opponent PDP prefers!

    Even before the first vote was cast at the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was already dismissing eventual winner, General Muhammadu Buhari, as a walkover. Its spokesman boasted that President Goodluck Jonathan would trounce all the opposition party’s aspirants rolled into one.

    Early in the week, all sorts of analyses made out former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to be the man most feared by the ruling party. One such article spoke of his immense wealth, intense preparation for the job and existing contacts with a remnant of his loyalists in the PDP who could work for him under the radar. At the end we were assured he would pip Buhari at the finishing line.

    In their attempts to paint the former head of state as easy to beat many are quick to point at his three unsuccessful attempts at getting the top job. But they do so without putting those defeats in proper context.

    For instance, it is settled that no one can become president of Nigeria unless they run on a broad-based platform with firm presence across the country. The constitution requires that to be elected you must win a majority of votes cast as well as 25% in two-thirds of the 36 states.

    The two times Buhari mounted his challenge on the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) platform, the party was strong only in a handful of northern states where it had governors. Down south it was virtually non-existent.

    In 2011, after he parted ways with the ANPP, he offered himself on an even more ramshackle arrangement called the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). By the time of the elections, the party didn’t control even one miserable local government area in the country. It had very little name recognition anywhere in the country and not much money.

    Like before, his new party was virtually non-existent in the south. He tried to remedy this and deal with accusations that he was a Muslim fundamentalist by picking a well-known pastor, Tunde Bakare, as running mate. Whatever point he thought he would score with southern Christians was neutralised by the fact that the clergyman had no political structures to add heft to the ticket.

    A last minute attempt to cobble together an alliance with other opposition groups came to nothing, and the CPC plunged ahead with its ultimately futile bid. The astonishing thing is that despite the crippling shortcomings of the platform, his candidacy still managed to attract over 12 million votes.

    This time around, Buhari is running on a platform that has 14 governors and strong presence in states where it does not control government. For the first time ever, this candidate who lost thrice because he didn’t have a credible electoral route to Aso Villa, now has a realistic chance of securing a simple majority and 25% of votes cast in two-thirds of 36 states. And yet the PDP would have us believe that he would be so easy to beat!

    Beneath the bluster, however, you get a sense of unease at the emergence of the old enemy. There’s no stronger evidence of this than the desperate efforts by the ruling party’s online army to discredit Buhari by reminding Nigerians of a litany ancient sins allegedly committed by the former head of state.

    One accusation that has been levelled against the APC in the past is that there’s not much separating it from the PDP. The differences are becoming quite stark – starting with the two presidential candidates.

    Let’s begin with ability to communicate their ideas and positions. No one can accuse Buhari or Jonathan of being orators. In fact, listening to either drone on from their usually prepared speeches is guaranteed to send you to sleep faster than swallowing a pack of sleeping pills.

    But what Buhari lacks in oratory he makes up for with that X-factor which attracts fanatical following. In this sense he is akin to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo – no great speaker himself – but whose mere appearance at a public function could work his supporters into frenzied cries of Awo!

    The APC flagbearer excites his base. His followers are passionate about him: the word more commonly used to describe the connection between them is ‘fanatical.’ They will follow him for free and at the drop of a hat.

    Can we say the same about Jonathan? Take away the platform and Buhari would still attract millions of voters. If you separate him from the PDP platform, how many supporters would follow the incumbent president on a journey into the unknown?

    When you think of Buhari the adjectives that come to mind are firm, stern, strong and honest. Think of Jonathan and words like humble, amiable, deliberate come to mind. But you also think weak and indecisive.

    This may not be a totally fair assessment of the president but it is the perception out there – one that is reinforced by quotes like the one from former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s controversial new memoirs, “My Watch”, that insinuated Patience Jonathan, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Petroleum Minister, Stella Oduah, former Aviation Minister and Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, were all ‘Presidents’ of Nigeria. Jonathan, he wrote, was the weakest of them all.

    Buhari’s strongest point – one on which friends and foes largely agree – is that he is honest and that in a country where a large chunk of the elite have been besmirched by corruption, he has remained sleaze-free. The PDP recognises this as his strong suit and is challenging that image.

    We are now being reminded that when the nation’s borders were shut amidst currency reforms in the mid-80s, the then military ruler’s aide-de-camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo, pulled rank to get 53 suitcases belonging to an emir into the country. The bending of the rules to allow the privileged bring in the banned baggage with unknown content remains a sore point that dogs the General’s steps.

    This one incident is what critics point to when they raise doubts about Buhari’s saintliness. But to put things in perspective we should also note that the man has held several high profile offices – including supervising the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and yet has no house in Abuja or a foreign bank account. Most people accept that he’s an honest man with a modest lifestyle, that is why attempts to paint him otherwise always ring hollow.

    Under his watch three convicted drug pushers were executed under the retroactive laws instituted by the military junta of the day. Of all the actions of that tough regime, this is perhaps one of the most wrongheaded and troubling. It is one which he would one day need to confront and apologise for.

    But if we were to use the atrocities of former military regimes to exclude people from participating in the political process, then a large swathe of powerful figures in the land today would be disqualified – everyone from Obasanjo to Babangida, David Mark and others who participated in the annulment of the June 12 election results, or who rubberstamped death sentences arising from trumped-up coup plotting allegations.

    The ruling party supporters may be dismissive of Buhari in the belief that as they successfully did in times past they can define him again as some sort of religious nut. Against the backdrop of a polity polluted by sectarian disputes made worse by the atrocities of Boko Haram, this old trick could be used to damage the man before the undiscerning.

    True, Buhari has said in the past that he supports Sharia. But I’m yet to see a Muslim who is opposed to the legal code that is part and parcel of their religion. Indeed, knowledgeable people would tell you that it had always been in the statute books in Northern Nigeria before and after Independence. The turning point was when Sani Yerima, then Zamfara State governor, dramatised and politicised the adoption of the code by his state in 2000.

    Beyond one or two ill-thought out utterances, fair-minded people should look at Buhari’s life, actions and associates and determine for themselves whether he fits the mould of an Islamic fundamentalist. Let’s not forget that this same individual led the military push to destroy Maitatsine in the 80s. This last July, he barely survived a bomb attack carried out by extremists he is supposedly sympathetic towards.

    Those who dismiss the APC candidate as easy to beat should ask themselves whether over the last four years he has shed support like his opponent for the February 2015 polls. Most people who voted back for Buhari in 2011 are still likely to back him today. After seeing what he has done with power , Jonathan has lost many erstwhile supporters.

    What should disturb the ruling party more is that people are becoming increasingly resistant to the old propaganda. They take the position that Buhari may not be an orator, he may not be an angel or discuss economic policy like Okonjo-Iweala, still they would risk their votes on him because they are fed up with Jonathan’s Nigeria.

  • The General in his labyrinth

    Oh Jeez!!! Oh Jesus of Nazareth, has anyone else been reading the caustic and rebarbative memoirs of the one and only baba in town? As they say, an elephant skull is not a luggage for small children. It weighs in at three power-packed tomes and is a compendium of our history from Baba’s sour, surly and occasionally unreliable perspective.

    But you must give it to the crusty old contrarian any day. Unlike most of our tragic rulers, the autumnal warlord has a sense of history and an eye for history, as the cerebral General Julius Alani Ipoola Akinrinade memorably put it. Whether you like him or not or what he has to say or not, Baba made history and is stoutly determined to force his version of it down our throat. It is a compelling exercise in ironic self-immolation.

    Written in passable workmanlike prose, it is the equivalent of a literary slugfest. Baba does not take hostages, and neither is he interested in the fabled Geneva Convention for warfare. Rules of engagement, my foot, as the old man would put it. In the event, baba leaves behind a blood-splattered canvas, dripping with the grisly gore of his mortal enemies. Baba is not just content with slaying his mortal adversaries, he draws and quarters them, making sure that resurrection is beyond them.

    Umaru Yar’Adua, baba’s  political protégé, is dredged up and summarily dismissed as an ingrate. Since baba said that he acted in higher national interest in foisting the sickly fellow on an unsuspecting nation, one is left wondering what the Katsina nobleman is supposed to be grateful for. What baba has to say about Jonathan, his other protégé, is not the stuff for the fainthearted. The collateral damage is bound to affect the Ijaw man’s presidential fortunes in the coming months.

    Soyinka, Gani Fawehinmi and Yesufu Bala Usman were all singled out for full page treatments. After grudgingly acknowledging their merits and talents, the old general mercilessly put them to the sword for their lamentable foibles. In the case of Wole Soyinka, baba approvingly quotes an “old classmate” who says that “Wole” has always been like that and he will always be like that.

    In the particular case of Brigadier Alabi-Isama who so famously and memorably adduced weighty evidence against baba’s fabled generalship, the old warlord pointedly ignored the substantive allegations to indulge in wild ad hominem demolition of character and reputation. Alabi-Isama had always been clever but arrogant and unreliable. He was a soldier of fortune with an eye for mercantilist gaming. It was a good thing that it was Theophilus Danjuma, his former classmate, who eventually cashiered him. Alabi-Isama may often be found in bed with a woman while telling his commander that he was in hot pursuit of rebels. Phew!!!!!

    When he finally ran short of victims, baba rounded on his own family, like some old King Lear. Despite his warning two of his children about a plot by the Jonathan administration to use members of his family to smear him, Iyabo, his favourite daughter, succumbed to inducement and took her own father to the cleaners in a famous epistle.

    What else can one say after this? A man who is not sovereign over himself and his family cannot be sovereign over others.  It is compelling historical cameo of flawed greatness and a glimpse into the tortured and tormented labyrinth of a tarnished titan.

  • Kidnapping and the spirit of community

    ‘The game of politics has been left to ruffians, 419s, graduates of miracle centres and all forms of never-do-wells’

    Sometime in the week, I received the following letter. I have, as usual, taken the liberty to tinker a little with it to make it more readable. Please read it first.

    However, not too long ago, Alaba, an orphan of the Olatunji clan in Igogo, Ekiti state, was kidnapped in the almost silent, peace-loving community. This sent a strong message because it raised questions about the exact beginning of the tragedy of our deviation from the path of honour, integrity and all that is culturally good and normative. The orphaning of Alaba is significant here only because she is one of the unfortunate people in Nigeria (a country where peoples’ welfare is not part of governance, and citizens are on their own) who became an orphan at a very young age.

    Everyone seems persuaded of the aberration that military government is. It altered our lives and values as a people. Having said that, however, I believe the days of Shagari and his henchmen, Umaru Dikko and Adisa Akinloye, were the worst in Nigeria’s recorded history. And every year appears to be getting worse than the previous one ever since. Conscience seems to have taken flight out of here. Abacha’s days marked another peak in the history of savagery as they stood against everything that civilization stands for.

    The emergence of the new breed politicians introduced another dangerous dimension to the Nigerian dilemma. Since this new breed took over, governance has ceased to be by intellect but by brute force and sheer brigandage. The real men of honour have been scared into taking cover, within the professions and private enterprises, leaving the game of politics to ruffians, 419s, graduates of miracle centres and all forms of never-do-wells.

    Alaba, the orphan, was said to have been coming from work in Ifaki, Ekiti state, in a car in the company of three other women, only for their car to be snatched and used to convey them into a bush from where, I later learnt, a call was made by one of the captors to a man: ‘we have got some males and females o’. The evil men were said to have earlier kidnapped some men who were returning from the Ewu Ekiti day celebration. The captives were later known to have been tied, hands and legs, awaiting the arrival of another evil man who, as is now being suggested, trades in human parts!

    Through the miracle of God, one of the captives who, incidentally, knew the terrain well, escaped and went to Orin to inform the community from where a message was sent to Igogo. My home church in Igogo, the Roman Catholic Church, was said to have been on a monthly crossover-night, during which a special thanksgiving service is held in celebration of a successful transition from one month to the other. Alaba, a chorister, was conspicuously missing. Then a message from her phone into her sister’s phone abruptly stopped and anxiety rented the air until a hint came from the escapee in Orin.

    The Igogo Church immediately got a bus and filled it with the men, leaving the women to continue the vigil. Off they went to Orin for detailed information and reinforcement, if possible for a journey into the bush that was hosting the men of evil and their captives. All the efforts the evil men made to move their victims on hearing human voices failed because the voices appeared to be coming not only from behind but also in front of them. Rescue was coming from the combined force of the Roman Catholic Church, Igogo, and the good people of Orin, who had gallantly surrounded them! The kidnappers were left with no choice but to take to their heels, abandoning their catch, and an Okada, owned by someone I learnt, is now in custody.

    The lesson: The issue goes beyond Alaba or any of the other victims. As a people, we will have to desire a good society to have one. Politics, especially this Nigerian brand, has no chance whatsoever to guarantee us a good society where the citizens are assured of life devoid of fear and panic. Our traditional rulers, the custodians of our culture, might need to sit up and rescue our communities from evil men, the same way Yobe hunters are giving hope to Yobeans in the face of the evil boko haram. Politicians, in whatever form can’t and won’t!

    Ekiti state government and the federal government must rise up to celebrate these heroes. Anyone who, like Ladi, the Yobe hunter and her group, takes steps, no matter how little, to save even a single life, deserves to be celebrated as it is done in all the civilized societies we claim to be imitating. We need to encourage heroes if indeed we desire to make progress as a people and as a nation.

    In most places where democracy is properly defined as government for the people, as opposed to this government for politicians and their families, each of them would receive a presidential phone call immediately as a starting point in their celebration. Antoinette Tuff received a phone call and spoke to President Obama, who on behalf of himself and Michelle, his wife, and the entire American people, thanked her for saving the lives of school children in a De Kalb, Georgia (US) elementary school. She stood face to face with death as she, though trembling and bare-handed, confronted and disarmed a gun-toting youth! No human society, in which mediocres and charlatans, not heroes, are given prominence, can expect to make progress.

    The names of these heroes, in this kidnap case, can be obtained from the Reverend Father in the Mission House, Roman Catholic Church, Igogo. I urge Mr. President to send a bill to the national assembly today, declaring these people heroes, alongside the Yobe lady hunter (Ladi) and her group. The literary giant, Sam Omatseye made a similar call in his essay, in which he did a comparative assessment of Ladi the female hunter of Yobe and Diezeani, the female petroleum minister turned OPEC president.

    William Aborisade, 07032555486.

    A few comments are needed here. The narration above is just one of very many of such detailing the experiences of different individuals. Some have been lucky to escape while many have not been so lucky. One thing is clear. Never in the history of this country has there been such blood thirstiness as now as most politicians have now come to believe that they cannot win any election, even to the headship of their families, without making human sacrifice. That was how Niger Delta militancy and book haram began. So they prey on us economically and in the flesh. The lowest point of our national history was when a bomb blast killed hundreds of people in Abuja and some people went there to pick up human flesh to sell!

    Secondly, unemployment is doing things to us, clearly. Now, people are prepared to do anything to survive, and it does not matter if it includes catching other Nigerians for politicians to use in rituals. Callousness and indifference appear to have taken the place of respect and fear for the humanhood of others.

    Thirdly, Nigerians need to come together as a community to fight this evil practice whereby we are preyed upon by our rulers economically and socially as well. Just the other day, one entire express road was blocked to human and vehicular traffic in my city because some party was doing its primaries there. The rest of us had to squeeze through a small lane for hours to get home. I was in a western country once when a major election was going on but no one was discomfited for it. Indeed, the politicians were consigned somewhere, away from decent view. So, why do our politicians behave like jungle kings here?

  • Buhari, APC and 2015

    Buhari, APC and 2015

    Until Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, dropped out of the six-horse race to pick the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket for the presidential contest, it was hard to tell whether former military head of state, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, would have achieved runaway victory. I rooted for Hon Tambuwal for reasons I had spelt out in this place at least three times. I expected he would win or come near doing so for possessing believable democratic credentials, for being liberal and gregarious without being populist and pedestrian, and for being modern, expansive, intellectual, intuitive and full of solicitudes, as his fellow lawmakers can attest. But as I warned here last week, would the country still be ready for him some four years or more down the road? Of the five aspirants left in the race, I think that notwithstanding his weaknesses and adeptness at courting controversies, Gen Buhari is today easily the man to beat. This will be his fourth try, and the last. His 2011 effort was his best attempt ever, physically, emotionally and logistically. However, I think he will run the 2015 race virtually in a state of suspended animation, buoyed up by other people’s emotional capital, logistical deployment and physical rigour.

    The other four aspirants can’t hold the candle to Gen Buhari, notwithstanding his advanced age and sworn mendicancy. Abubakar Atiku, for reasons best known to nature, is dogged by bad press, some of it actively cultivated and insinuated by his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nothing was ever really proved against him, but Chief Obasanjo and many others seem to believe that the former vice president lives above his means, procures favours with disarming malfeasance, and dispenses them equally mala fide. Chief Obasanjo is notorious for never proving any allegation he makes, and is in fact never interested in substantiating anything were he to be deliberately and violently prodded. The country has unfortunately embraced the same notoriety, against which Alhaji Atiku will constantly come a cropper. And given the military and political exigencies of the moment, it is doubtful whether the easy-going affirmation of Alhaji Atiku, his self-assuredness, his accessibility and consensual politics, and his talent for head-hunting excellent technocrats will avail much or persuade the electorate to give him a chance.

    Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State holds a lot of promise both as a thinker and as an administrator. In Kano he has provided the state a safe pair of very steady hands, and has handled governance with the care, trust and even-handedness the constitution quintessentially envisages. He has rebuffed the xenophobia rage that lathers many parts of Nigeria, and promoted the kind of ethnic amity Nigerians have always dreamt of, and a commercial city like Kano cannot do without. But Kano has been to Governor Kwankwaso a cocoon, from which he had before his presidential race seldom ventured. His visage and inner qualities show him quite capable of ruling a complex society like Nigeria, but running a presidential race, let alone winning it, requires long preparation, venturing out to other parts of the country, and staying evocatively and munificently in public glare.

    I am afraid I am not persuaded that either of the remaining two aspirants, to wit, the intrepid publisher Sam Nda-Isaiah and Governor Rochas Okorocha, is actually serious or prepared for the race; nor is it clear they can muster enough goodwill to run a race against such an implacable foe as President Goodluck Jonathan, or whether they have the calibre to trigger excitement and emotions in Nigerians seeking romantically for knights and miracles against the unrelenting harassment by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Mr Nda-Isaiah is young, energetic and a gifted columnist. But as his columns indicate, he is also impatient, and often acerbic and cocksure of everything. Owelle Okorocha is eloquent, empathetic but sometimes grandiloquent. But either as governor or presidential aspirant, he is often detached and distracted, quite unable sometimes to match input with output, his modest talents with the lofty goals and accomplishments of his boyish dreams.

    The APC presidential primary will in my opinion revolve around the challenges Nigeria is facing. The economy is not yet in a tailspin, but it is nearly spinning out of control, its managers lacking in the requisite initiative and discipline to rein it in. Insecurity is rife in all parts of the country, with emphasis on the insurgency in the Northeast. If it persist for much longer, there is no certainty the entire country will not be engulfed. Nigeria is at the moment truly distressed, buffeted on all sides by political rancour, socio-economic paralysis and decay, deliberate attacks on the constitution and civil liberties by the government and secret service, and wearied by a terrible feeling of ennui that has lingered for more than four or five years. Few doubt the incapacity of the Jonathan presidency to grapple with these monumental problems, and no one doubts his government’s absolute lack of discipline, motivation and ambition. Whatever doubts exist concern the ability of the APC to give us a candidate able to provide effective leadership at this trying moment. The PDP has offered Dr Jonathan, and he is absolutely feckless.

    Perhaps in quieter times, the talents of Alhaji Atiku, Governor Kwankwaso, Mr Nda-Isaiah and Owelle Okocha would recommend them suitably for the presidency. But at this time of pressing danger and mortal threat to national security, the electorate and the APC would be disposed to someone with a safe pair of hands than the dreamy and distracted Dr Jonathan has offered or is ever able to offer. It seems to me that the only man in the APC able to subdue the threats of the moment is the inflexible and emotionless general from Daura. He has been head of state once, and he has had the experience of many battles from which he never flinched. He has expressed his readiness, even covets the chance, to lead once again and re-establish order in this increasingly fissiparous country. The APC will give him the ticket, for he seems both prepared to do battle, and he appears the only one among the five aspirants able to face Dr Jonathan implacability for implacability, toe-to-toe, head-to-head, and if necessary, malice for malice.

    The APC is not unduly finicky to worry that a Buhari presidency could become intractably distant from constitutional reality, a sentiment the country itself has expressed many times given the general’s antecedents. But if they desire to win the election, and if the country hankers after order and discipline without which development cannot take place, their best bet will be the retired army general. He often seems too set in his ways, surrounds himself with a coterie of often hawkish and insular officials and technocrats, and some of his ideas hark back to distant times and eras. But the party will assume the confidence to mould him and reorient him, and as a disciplined officer and leader, he will constantly remind himself of the supremacy of the constitution. These sentiments will be shared by the country, for the alternative is too grim to contemplate, an alternative replete with Jonathan induced failures, paralysis, indiscipline, mismanagement, cowardice, poor judgement, gaffes, unfathomable avarice, arrogance, nepotism and parochialism.

    I think the choice before the APC is clear. They will have a few misgivings about the stubborn general, but the know which side their bread is buttered. As for the country in February 2015, it is presumed they understand they have reached a fork in the road, where the wrong turn will unleash catastrophic consequences. Unlike the APC which is expected to choose right in their presidential primary this week, the country may still entertain the view that it has the luxuries of time and choice. I don’t think they do. Indulgent and hardhearted as they may seem, they will probably, at the last moment, step back from the brink.