The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

APC, al-Mustapha and the politics of inclusiveness

More than six months after the Court of Appeal in Lagos acquitted the former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State Gen Sani Abacha of the murder of Kudirat Abiola, the Lagos State Government has decided to challenge the judgement. According to a THISDAY newspaper report, however, that decision is raising ripples. Not only is the decision to appeal coming after the statutory time allowed for appeal, it is also happening at a time of major political realignments considered still too brittle to withstanding significant jolts. The governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, it will be recalled, recently defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the same party ruling Lagos. And al-Mustapha, who hails from Kano, was welcomed back home as a hero by the governor.

Quoting sources, the paper revealed that some leading members of the party fear that the decision to appeal a judgement celebrated in Kano a few months ago could dampen the acceptability of the APC in the state and perhaps weaken its chances in future polls. Both Lagos and Kano have not officially reacted to the decision to appeal and the suppositions woven around it. They are unlikely to do so directly, for the matter is a double-edged sword.

If Lagos had decided not to appeal, and it emerged sometime in the future that the consideration behind it was political, it could damage both the state and the party in the estimation of the state’s sensitive and discriminating electorate. For the public would naturally presume that both the party and the state habitually and whimsically subordinate issues of justice to matters of politics. But it is also true that pursuing the case against al-Mustapha, who was received back home a hero, could send signals to the people of the state that their new party was either intrinsically inquisitorial or had just become so in reflection and reinforcement of the country’s ethnic and political dichotomies.

However, the three parties to the al-Mustapha case – Lagos, Kano and APC – must determine by what standards they hope to be judged. Would they like to be seen as flexible, and therefore unprincipled, when pertinent issues of justice are being considered? Could they hope that such malleability would not endanger the principles their party stands for, and the values by which it hopes posterity would judge it? I think it is dangerous for the party to begin to entertain such expedient considerations. True, the case could cause a lot of problems for the party, and even create huge dissonance within the ranks. But at the risk of undermining its popularity in key states, whether those with huge or small electoral votes, it is more rewarding for the party to build its foundations on sound and incontestable principles and values.

The danger of following expediencies is how to determine when to embrace it and when not to. No party worth its salt would want to be associated with reprehensible political mores and tactics. If the APC hopes to be respected and be seen as a viable alternative to the highly protean Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it must be prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to establish an enduring foundation for its future. The time to make those sacrifices is now, at its infancy, when the stakes are still very high. If it loses the opportunity now, it may never regain it. Lagos wants to appeal the al-Mustapha case; let it do so resolutely, and let the Supreme Court finally determine the suspect’s guilt or innocence. Major al-Mustapha himself should relish that final vindication, should it come. Meanwhile, neither Lagos nor Kano must give the impression that al-Mustapha’s freedom is more important to his admirers and sympathisers than the catharsis, justice and closure Alhaja Kudirat’s family demand from Nigeria.

January 19, 2014
Tukur is not the endgame

A man afflicted with leprosy is often uncomfortable when it comes to the counting of fingers. While we are still on the slow-motion unravelling of the biggest party in Africa, it is meet to report on the gangland political elimination of its former party chairman, Bamanga Tukur. It has been a week of high octane drama in the PDP (Hereafter referred to as the People Decapitation Party) It was an elaborate game of bluff and counter bluff in which rumours and planted stories alternated with resignations and denials of resignation.

Unlike its more famous French precursor, the PDP guillotine is not a mercy killer at all. It is a crude and blunt instrument of political decapitation, the ultimate tribute to African political savagery. It will be recalled that Idi Amin Dada of Uganda once stocked the freshly decapitated scalps of his political opponents in a deep freezer in his sitting room. Every morning, the deranged Nubian cyclops would walk up to the freezer to hurl insults at the departed. For him, death was not enough. There ought to be something more terminal.

It is so sad to watch an accomplished administrator and distinguished industrial magnate like Bamanga Tukur reduced to a whimpering nonentity while begging for a job that had long disappeared. As the old octogenarian minus one year ran from pillar to post begging for a stay of execution, the hounds appeared to have sniffed blood. It was all reminiscent of watching morbid hyenas carving up their victim alive.

They were not even going to allow the old man a decent lying in state. For sheer drama, the end would have made Al Capone and the old Chicago Mafiosi look like callow apprentices. A poker-faced Jonathan pulled out Tukur’s resignation letter indicating that the Fulani aristocrat has consented to execution. From the way the old man winced and grimaced, his face contorted in pains like a badly mauled boxer, it was all clear that we were witnessing the equivalent of a low tech political lynching. When the selfsame Jonathan announced that he was giving Tukur a higher and bigger assignment, one could almost hear the old man cursing under his breath in Fulfude.

It would appear that in the twilight of an illustrious public career, the Fulani Brahmin made a grave political miscalculation. No matter his stout defence of Jonathan and his presidency, the man from Otueke would sacrifice just about anybody when his all-consuming presidential ambition is threatened. At almost eighty, age is no longer on Bamanga Tukur’s side. Having lost face with the larger party for what is considered his autocratic testiness, and having become a pariah among the northern power cohorts for his support for the unsupportable, a comeback into political reckoning is hard to envisage. So long then, Papa Bamanga.

But let it be noted that Bamanga Tukur is not the endgame. There will be more games before the end. And there will be more chilling political executions of big games. The head hunter is surely about and abroad. The guillotine is not a grass cutter.

January 19, 2014
National conference: what if a minority report exists?

What is left for the presidency to resolve now is the conflicting claims propagated in the media about a minority report by Chief Solomon Asemota

Last week, we argued for immediate release of the report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on national conference, invoking principally the citizens’ right to know what a committee funded from the common purse recommended on a matter of obvious importance to lovers of national unity. From the release of the first installment of the report in The Guardian last Wednesday, it is now clear that the presidency must have been thinking about the need to let the public know what report has been derived from the various memoranda sent to the Conference Committee. What is left for the presidency to resolve now is the conflicting claims propagated in the media about a minority report by Chief Solomon Asemota.

Ordinarily, there should have been no confusing statements about the existence of a minority report. Unfortunately, there has been. Senator Okurounmu said at the presentation of the committee’s report that there was no minority report. To support this, he reminded his audience that all members of the committee were present at the presentation of the report. Chief Asemota, who was present, did not indicate that he had a minority report. Yet, newspaper reports abound on the existence of a minority report submitted to the presidency. Given letters from readers of this column to the writer, it is obvious that the public is still largely confused about this simple but important matter.

First, let us address the philosophy behind writing of minority reports. For too long, the concept of minority report has been an abiding aspect of the culture of democracy and democratic governance. Even in very sensitive cases of judicial adjudications, judges are allowed to submit minority report if they have good reasons to hold opinions that differ from those held by majority of members of a judicial panel. Once a committee, regardless of the subject of contemplation, includes more than two members, it is in most democracies not unusual if some committee members to choose to do a minority report, particularly if such members feel strongly about issues of divergence between them and the majority of committee members. Doing this does not diminish the main report or recommendations submitted by majority of committee members. If anything, a minority report is capable of enriching the report of the main report, as it is likely to show the sources of disagreement and their implications for proper handling of the matter at hand.

No president or leader constitutes a committee in which individual members have no right to hold opinions that are different from those held by most members. As democracy represents a model that respects and formalises plurality of perspective, minority report on the bench or on the street underscores the freedom of individuals to hold opinion of their own on matters of significance to all. The axiom that the majority must have their way while the minority must have their say captures this aspect of democratic culture. The current confusion regarding minority report on the interactions between conference advisory committee members and citizens across the country is unnecessary. Majority members of the committee have the right to present a report that captures the views of most members while minority members also have the right to express their views.

Given the size of the doubt about Chief Asemota’s minority report, it is only the presidency that can shed light on the matter at this point. It is important to pay attention to the intellectual as well as the political implications of such report. Intellectually, giving the public an opportunity to know the basis and degree of disagreements between the Asemota side of the committee and the Okurounmu side is a significant part of the form and method of argumentation. Secondly, constructing distinct arguments on the interpretation of the data submitted by citizens can assist the President and even citizens to choose which argument is more cogent. Kicking off from a clear understanding of what citizens prefer in terms of form, process, and content of the national conference is the best way to gain the confidence of the public on the important matter of turning Nigeria into a union of affection, rather than one of coercion constructed largely by military dictators before the advent of civilian regimes. Furthermore on the intellectual side, there are two related questions that the presidency can answer at this point: Is there a minority report? Has it been submitted or presented to the president? If the answer to these questions is no, then newspapers will become better informed on what to pass to the public on this issue. Should the answer be yes, then the presidency ought to share the recommendations of the Asemota report with the public. Not to do so will be tantamount to repressing views of a section of the conference advisory committee.

There is a political dimension to the Asemota report, if it does exist. And the presidency ought to realize that citizens need to be assured that what they took to the conference committee is what formed the basis of both the committee’s main and minority reports. It is the citizens and various organizations that submitted memoranda to the committee that are in the best of positions to assess the degree of congruence or divergence between the preferred modalities they gave to the committee and the recommendations derived from these in each of the two reports. Keeping the minority report out of view has more negative political implication than letting citizens know the contents of the report.

For a conference that is promised to give citizens opportunity to talk frankly about how they want to create structures to sustain the country’s unity and progress, there is no better way to start the process than to be forthcoming and upfront with citizens on the two sets of recommendations from the committee. There are already many pieces of rumour regarding what kind of conference citizens want. For example, the main report argues that there is no constitution that can be brand new, given the fact that materials from preceding constitutions are often carried over into the new one. But the main report is not sufficiently clear on the preferences expressed by citizens when committee members interacted with them. What is the percentage of the memoranda that calls for amending the existing constitution and for creating a new constitution? Retaining materials in a new constitution does not automatically justify handing recommendations from the conference to the national assembly for approval or ratification.

In addition, what does the minority report say about creating an enabling legislation to set the conference in motion and including in the motion the use of referendum to determine citizens’ view of the recommendations? Should the minority report have a different view on this aspect of the conference, it will be necessary for citizens to know which committee report says what in respect of pre-conference or post-conference legislation by the federal legislature. While the president is not obliged to accept any of the two reports from a committee set up to advise him, it is important for the presidency to assist citizens, through full disclosure on the number and details of reports, to add their voices to the debate on how best to create a constitution that is acceptable to the majority of Nigerians.

January 19, 2014
How not to be a lady and my other (un)social etiquettes

There are things ladies just do not do; they do not let money, position or politics make them lose their sense of propriety

Perhaps, we may regard this age as the ruffian’s age, the rogue’s age, the thug’s age, but certainly not the lady’s age. Good example: just look at our politicians. Can you imagine a good man surviving in their midst? Now then, are you surprised that our female politicians cannot afford to be ‘ladies’ in their midst either? They would not survive. So, our female politicians have learnt to dine with their male counterparts using long spoons. Just ask our First Lady; just look at the terribly loooong spoon she is using to dine all the way from Abuja to Rivers State. Do you then wonder that we have been getting some teeeeeerribly funny results in that region?

They say it takes seven generations to make a lady; and I say it may take seven countries to make one. The reason is that this is the age of THE COOOOOL; the age when bad is good, mean is beautiful, ugly is handsome, wicked is admirable and the unpredictable attracts worse than honey does bees. In this age, ladies have become men of brawn, and gentlemen have given way to laughter. They are splitting their sides watching the women painfully swing all kinds of doors open with fake manly gusto.

Many people think that being a lady only means wearing ruffles, silks and diamonds. In truth, there are many ladies in AJEGUNLE and there are also many JANKARA women in IKOYI. Actually, it is not when one is dressed up to the nines that one can claim to be a lady. Clothes, they say, doth not a man make, nor a woman. Most times, dressing up in the fineries only succeeds in making one look gaudy, untidy and a bad advertisement for the diamond cutter. But you and I know better. We know how to tell a lady apart, don’t we?

We know that a lady is someone who does everything in a calculated, unhurried way. Even when it is raining, a lady may hasten her footsteps, but she will not run giddy-gadding for shelter no matter how wet she may be. She will also not swear at the blasted weather. Her habits must be neat. Now, that’s a tough one. It means that a lady will not bend down to retrieve her keys like a fish seller laying down her fish-load from her head, her bottoms up. Rather, she will stoop, her knees bent, to retrieve her object from the gutter, no matter how dirty. She will not even walk in any which way, flinging legs and thighs around as if she is trying to determine how much they weigh. Indeed, to be a lady, one is encouraged to walk as if the entire body is in a POP cast, like a broken leg or arm.

More importantly, a lady watches what she says. Now, there you have us all Nigerian women. I am told that there are certain words that must not ensue from a lady’s mouth; for example, words heavily laden with abuses, insults, curses, and such shrew-like epithets are not ladylike. I think Nigerian husbands wrote that rule, but never mind, the important thing is that her speech, to the weather and every other unruly element, must always be pleasing. Anger at erring husbands and children must be expressed in an inoffensive way, not with pestle and mortar, but with well-chosen words such as ‘Oh, but you are a funny one, are you not?’ to someone who has stolen a goat; and ‘Oh my, what a lovely rascal you are to be sure’ to someone who has stolen someone else’s house. And to someone who has embezzled billions of Naira, a lady would rather say, ‘Consider yourself slapped!’

When I ponder on why it is that men no longer want to do things for women – you know, like opening doors, drawing out chairs, giving up their seats for them, waiting attentively on the words dropping out of their sagacious mouths, making sure women eat first before the men – I find it is because the women have sold themselves out to the enemy. No, no, the enemy is not the group called men; the enemy is the weakness in women that makes them succumb to the rush of the moment and the rush for the gold of the workplace, which has sometimes been erroneously interpreted as self-realisation. In the process, self-assertion has taken the centre stage and squeezed out the very soul of politeness women are known for.

Worse, in this age of nuclear technology, the preoccupation of most people is directed more at the nuclear bombs they are sitting on and the nuke-heads pointing at their throats. That leaves issues such as good comportment and social manners scraping the forgotten bottom of the barrel of important items to worry about. To cap everything else, I find that there is a deep, deep level of ignorance which is most astounding. ‘Lady?’, my respondents shot back at me when I vouchsafed to ask some women for their opinions on the matter. ‘Wetin be lady? Abeg comot jo; na lady we go chop?’ In this age, I say, the stomach rules, ok. But I say nevertheless.

Now, in many homes, the man eats his fill of the dinner first before the woman, if she is lucky to get any. Perhaps, that accounts for why women no longer care about themselves when they are outside the home, e.g. say in traffic. Oh my, have you seen the way women drive cars these days? It is enough to make Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti turn in her grave. I tell you, if she had driven that way when she became Nigeria’s first female-driver, there would have been a parliamentary move against female-drivers then and we would today be in the same boat as women in one Arab country where they are not allowed to drive, and from what I see now, I can’t blame them much. These days, its women who overtake with all kinds of swoosh from any direction, weaving in and out of traffic and breaking every rule, like the Arabian genie coming in and going out of a bottle. When a woman cuts in and out of traffic like that, please, reader, be kind to her for you never can tell if she is not using the road as the only means she has to assert herself.

Someone commented the other day that Nigerian women carry themselves generally with the most careless abandon in their talk, shape and gait. I agreed and decided to watch myself from then on. However, it was hard going not to fling abuses at taxi-drivers and Okada riders who cut into traffic without any care, children who crossed the roads without checking first, chickens that scurried to and fro without any care. It was tough not to pounce on my food like a famished tiger after a hard day’s work. It was tougher to remember to walk or drive like a human being when I found I was late for something.

It pains me each time I see women straddling Okada with all their dignity packed up with their skirts, or when I watch their waistlines jiggling up and down as the road contours. Clearly, the women in this country need to get their ladylike acts back together. There are things ladies just do not do; they do not let money, position or politics make them lose their sense of propriety. They also do not ride Okada astride in skirts. More importantly, they must retain a good temper and be trustworthy. And they must guard the sanctity of whatever has been entrusted to them (children, power or wealth) with every sense of responsibility for the sake of everyone.

January 19, 2014
Bamanga taku

The PDP chair might have been kicked out; his ‘resignation’ now won’t amount to much

Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the erstwhile Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took the rug off my feet when, after behaving like a drowning man that would not hesitate to cling, even to a serpent for help, for months, finally bowed to pressures to resign on January 15. Alhaji Tukur had been in search of a saviour for months. But genuine saviours don’t come cheap. And when they do, they come to the rescue of people in genuine need of help. At some point, the PDP chair leaned on President Goodluck Jonathan; at some other time, he found succour on the shoulders of his wife, Patience Jonathan. That he was still forced out of office showed that he was all the while building (his salvation) on shifting sand. Those he looked forward to for help might themselves be in need of help.

I am pained though that Alhaji Tukur beat me to it. I had already concluded, as early as the beginning of last week, to write on him because I was baffled that in spite of the fact that the PDP had been crumbling on his head, he never deemed it fit to resign, at least as honourable men would have done. The headline that I initially chose: Tukur taku! (Tukur adamant!) was provided by a colleague. That is why, despite the fact that Alhaji Tukur has resigned, I still found the headline (which I later modified to ‘Bamanga taku’) irresistible and appropriate, if only to stress the fact that his resignation came far too late.

People should be able to read the handwriting on the wall. Alhaji Tukur was humiliated out of office; he only did not wait for the formalisation of the humiliation process. So, what has all his stone-walling and filibustering amounted to, after all? At his age, Alhaji Tukur ought to know when it is time to go; he ought to have known that it is best to leave when the ovation is loudest. It was because he failed to know this that he stayed longer than necessary in the toilet, and eventually ended up being assailed by all manner of maggots. The shame and disgrace that he was running away from in the twilight of his life and political career, which made him to stay put as party chair, even when it was obvious that he was no longer wanted, eventually became his lot just because he refused to face realities.

Rumours had started making the rounds the day before he finally threw in the towel that he had resigned, but this was refuted with everything within Tukur’s arsenal. He said the purported resignation was a ruse and that it was the handiwork of his political detractors. I don’t know why people like deceiving themselves like this. A woman who has only one child was told that her child was misbehaving somewhere, and she asked: which of them? Was it not clear, even to the blind, that Alhaji Tukur had lost the battle to retain his job a long time ago? He was probably the only one that did not see that his end as PDP chair was nigh. The crisis in Rivers State is enough to finish him as party chairman.

And, at a time he should be asking Allah for forgiveness of sins, he, in desperation to keep his job, even lied in faraway London when he told a gathering that for every five members who left the PDP, the party records about 500 new entrants. “The PDP remains a party with the largest spread and tested strength to win elections any day any time …” Tukur told the visiting Nigerian professionals. He added: “The good thing is that if five people move out of PDP into the other party, even by a dint of propaganda, the party takes in more than 500 at a time as replacement. The electorate in Nigeria trusts the PDP more than many people are aware,” a boastful Tukur further stated. He was trying to impress his audience that the defection of five of the party’s governors to the All Progressives Congress (APC) was inconsequential. He had forgotten that in this era of internet, such lies cannot endure. The greatest fool knows this is a lie. But that is how they have been running the country. In the PDP, lying is politics.

It is shocking, however, that, at 78, Alhaji Tukur made himself available to be used as a virtual puppet. What did he want again? It is not that he is poor. Anyway, since he was not man enough to do what he should have done when it was most honourable, he should at least return home to do what he originally should be doing now that it is all over: tend to his grandchildren and great grandchildren (if any).

Let no one shed tears for him. He was not born a party chair; he was not the first PDP chair. Has he forgotten that that is the way things are in the ruling party? Has he forgotten how former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited the then chairman of the PDP, Chief Audu Ogbeh, ate pounded yam with him at his family house and, a few hours later, backed Ogbeh’s removal from office? Has Alhaji Tukur forgotten that the PDP chair seat is a musical chair? He ought to have been more circumspect knowing that people who were by far better party chairmen than him had gone. If people who were able to keep the party together and elevate the status of party chair could lose their job so ignominiously, what gave Alhaji Tukur the confidence that he would be able to keep his, even as the party was crumbling under his watch?

It is sad that a septuagenarian who should be thinking more about celestial matters is still hankering after terrestrial things. But just a rhetorical question: Will Alhaji Tukur, in all conscience, be proud to hand this kind of job over to his children?

With speculation that the President’s wife was already scheming to install his successor, after delicately backing him through his long, troubled moments, Nigerians should pray that the First Lady should continue to bring her influence to bear in the PDP because we need more of such negative influence from her to completely tear the party apart.

But no one should harbour the illusion that Alhaji Tukur is alone in this stay-put syndrome. He is only emblematic of the disease afflicting them in the PDP, nay, Africa generally. And that is one of the dangers of keeping the party in power for longer than necessary; its men will never go without a fight. A friend of mine has always warned that we need to be wary of people who eat stockfish without picking their teeth because such people will never pay their debt. I do not know how Alhaji Tukur’s resignation at this point in time will amount to much in the course of events. As a commentator said online, his resignation is ‘probably too little and too late!’ Not only that, Alhaji Tukur is only but a puppet, he is not the issue in the PDP. The real issue is the puppeteer himself. Is he seeking reelection in 2015, or is he not? This is the bone of contention in the ruling party. And it will remain so until the ruling party wobbles and fumbles out of the 2015 election.

January 19, 2014
“BJ, what is it that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood films?” (1)

[For Madam Juliana Mogbonjubade Osiberu]

This piece owes its origin to the daughter of the person to whom it is dedicated. She is Mrs. Sade Ogunbiyi. She never tires of asking me the question that serves as the title of this essay: “BJ, what it is that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood films?” Sade’s mother is of course the august person to whom this piece is dedicated, Mrs. Juliana Mogbonjubade Osiberu, affectionately called “Mama Sagamu” by all her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and family friends. She has lived a long and for the most part fortunate and blessed life, a life not without its own share of pain and tragedies, but a life all the same deeply cherished by all who know her. At 93 years of age, she looks and generally feels about twenty years younger than her real age. Last year, I teased her that the woman that I saw in a picture of her that was circulated to Sade’s circle of friends to mark her 93rd birthday was an “a-young-e beauty”. She replied that suitors were still bothering her day in day out with marriage proposals! Well, Nollywood producers and marketers, know that in this “young” 93 year-old heartthrob you have one of your most avid and dedicated fans!

Her daughter’s question – “BJ, what is it that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood” – goes completely ignored by Mama. Unlike me, she has never felt that she owes anyone any explanations regarding her passion for Nollywood films. Knowing this and because Sade’s question is almost always posed to me in Mama’s presence, I too have never really responded to the question. At best, I make a nearly inaudible and generally incoherent response to the question, thereby more or less implying that an interest, perhaps even a passion for Nollywood films is its own “explanation”, its own justification. This essay is a reflection on that non-response. But before coming to the issue, a word or two is necessary concerning the social and psychological circumstances of Mama Sagamu’s great and avid interest in Nollywood films.

For at least a couple of decades now, the home of the Ogunbiyis on Victoria Island in Lagos has of course been a sort of home away from home to me and innumerable other friends of the family. In the long evolutionary movement of human sociality away from fear of any space or community beyond the primal horde of the hunter-gatherer clan or the family, the notion and reality of “home away from home” is one of the great humanizing inventions of our species. Hotels, motels, inns and other edifices of the modern hospitality industry are latter-day, commercialized versions of this tradition of “home away from home”. But even the best of them cannot remotely match the sustaining warmth and assurance of the home of a close family friend that serves one as a deeply cherished “home away from home”. This is the general context for my reflections on Mama Sagamu and her Nollywood interest: for different but also related reasons, she and I watch Nollywood films at the Ogunbiyis at Victoria Island just as if we are at our own homes, that is to say with completely free and unselfconscious abandon. Let me give a brief account of the actualities of this sort of spectatorship.

Just as I do in my own house at Oke-Bola in Ibadan, I hardly ever go out when I am at the Ogunbiyis in V.I. For the most part and as I do in my own home, at the Ogunbiyis I read and write for much of the day and night in my room and then come downstairs to watch the DSTV channels for recreation. “Recreation” in this case involves watching channels for news, soccer – and of course Nollywood films, especially as broadcast twenty-four hours round the clock on the MNET-Africa Magic channels. Invariably, when Mama Sagamu and I are visiting in the same period, we end up being the only two watchers left when everyone else has either gone out or gone to bed. As we watch, Mama Sagamu runs a lively commentary on the film in question. Well, “commentary” is not the right word; more properly speaking, it is a dialogue, an interactive though one-sided conversation that she conducts with the characters and the action and on the screen. “Ha, eleyi o tile mo baye seri”. Ha, awon omo araye ma buru o! Olorun ma je kari ogun ota o! Kini arakunrin yi tile n ro, to n fi ara e we Olorun? [Ha, this one has no clue about the nature of life and existence. Ha, the world is full of wicked, evil people! May God protect us from the malevolent machinations of wicked people! What exactly is this young man thinking acting as if he is God?]

Dear reader, these are only the shorter varieties of Mama Sagamu’s dialogue with Nollywood films. She is convinced that the films in general raise vital and timely issues of morality, conscience and public good. It is of course true that I have heard similar running commentary made on Nollywood films in restaurants, bars and the waiting rooms of local hospitals and clinics. What is different between these other contexts and spaces is the fact that they lack the intimacy and the complete ease and relaxation of either the home itself or, as in the present case, the home away from home. In other words, the full impact of Nollywood films on millions of viewers in our country and across the African continent is to be properly gauged in the responses, the passions that they elicit at the home, especially with their commanding dominance of available leisure or recreation time at home.

I should at this point perhaps inform the reader that I have written several times before on Nollywood in the popular press. I have also given lectures in universities and colleges and participated in academic conferences on the Nigerian video film industry. Indeed, sometime in the second quarter of last year, I gave a very well received public lecture at Redeemer’s University titled, “What Is Right and What Is Wrong About Nollywood”. I now confess that as much as that question from Sade – “BJ, what is it that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood films?” – has stayed at the back of my mind in all my writings and lectures on Nollywood, I have never actually addressed it. It is only now in the very act of writing out these reflections that I can understand why I have never addressed Sade’s question. Simply stated, I realize now that while I have been very intrigued by my experience of watching Nollywood films with Mama Sagamu, I have never really thought much of the full significance of the nature and form of Mama’s interest in Nollywood. This maybe because I have been unconsciously reluctant to speak for her, but I suspect that deep down, the real reason is that I do not yet know what to make of it in terms of both my set and evolving ideas on the great social and cultural currents of the country and the world in which we live.

I confess that with regard to spectators’ attitudes, I am the extreme opposite or antithesis of Mama’s robust and lively exchange with the characters and melodramas of good and evil of Nollywood films. I absolutely never utter a word, either to the actors on the screen or to fellow watchers. As a matter of fact, this total taciturnity extends to nearly everything I watch, whether live performances on stage or scripted and filmed dramas transmitted by television and other electronic media. Indeed, let me now make a last confession here: I am silent, I am taciturn because the films and the stage dramas themselves, as well as the audiences’ responses to them, constitute a composite enactment to which I pay attention. In other words, as much at my own home or home away from home at the Ogunbiyis, also at restaurants, bars and the waiting rooms of local hospital clinics, I watch the screen and simultaneously watch people watching and reacting to the films. If this seems a little creepy, in mitigation I enter the plea of a scholar’s and cultural critic’s curiosity as well as the not insignificant fact that I make sure that nobody is ever made aware of the fact that I include them in what I am watching!

Inevitably, I come back to that question posed by Sade. And now I respond to the question by saying that Mama Sagamu, without really knowing it, has taught me to approach Nollywood films with humility but also with a critical attentiveness to its impact on millions of people in our country and our continent, especially in the most intimate of our private spaces, this being the home. For behind Sade’s question is the presupposition that Nollywood is, for the most part, artistic trash and cultural garbage. This view of our cultural elites concerning the value of the Nigerian video film industry is not without considerable merit and I have said as much in many of my writings and lectures on Nollywood. But we must not ignore the import of perhaps the single greatest historical and cultural fact about Nollywood. This is the fact that for good or ill, it has not only completely displaced both Hollywood and Bollywood as the dominant forces in the films that our peoples watch in their hundreds of millions, but it has done so by carrying the “struggle” far beyond public spaces into the intimacies of our homes.

Barely more than twenty years ago, if I and Mama Sagamu were watching any films at all at the Ogunbiyi’s home in Victoria Island, we would in all likelihood have been watching Bollywood films. I cannot imagine that Mama would have had much to say to the characters and dramas of Indian films! What portents can we discern in this vastly consequential transformation? This will be the starting point in next week’s concluding essay in the series in which I intend to let Mama’s dialogue with Nollywood films be my critical guide.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 19, 2014
Hold Buruji Kashamu accountable for whatever mayhem in Ekiti, Osun

Buruji has shown clearly that he would not mind committing any horrendous act in his quest for an unimaginable PDP victory in Ekiti

I am ready to go if you will stand by me. If you are ready, let us start with EKITI governorship election and make it a sample to them” – Kashamu speaking at the southwest meeting of what Prof Wole Soyinka once dubbed a ‘nest of killers’

Former President Obasanjo called his own, ‘do or die’, and we know what we went through in Ekiti; Mama Iyabo came with her ‘conscienceless conscience’ and we would later have amputated legs, shown live at election tribunals.

Now, it is Buruji Kasamu requesting his PDP compatriots’ support so they can show us, again in Ekiti, what disdain these Ogun State elements have for Ekiti which they would like to turn to their hunting ground at every election cycle. I plead with Nigerians to help the good and humble people of Ekiti ask this total stranger what sample he intends to make of us this time around. The last I know, he is not a registered voter in Ekiti and so is not eligible to vote there for whichever of Labour or PDP contestant emerges their gubernatorial candidate, he is not a police officer so he could not, like Rivers’ State Police Commissioner, Mbu, turn Ekiti to a lawless state; nor is this man of the Electoral Commission, so he could scientifically rig the election as is their wont.

So how exactly is this man going to ‘make a sample of us?

My mind could only go to the snipers which their own ex- Chairman, Board of Trustees, and former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, alleged are being trained at the instance of no less a personality than the president. Seeing how vociferously both the president and the PDP Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, have defended Kashamu, heartily disparaging Obasanjo, it is not unreasonable to believe that Kashamu must be so strategic to their evil plans in Yoruba land, not to allocate to him a phalange of those snipers. Nor would the two powerful politicians be bothered whatever when Obasanjo told them how serially world leaders embarrass him on account of Buruji.

That the man is so important to Jonathan’s 2015 plans, and Ekiti and Osun especially, can also be seen in the ease with which they made him supersede not only Obasanjo himself, but the likes of Bode George, my friend, Seye Ogunlewe, Obanikoro and all those who were the PDP poster boys in the region when Kasamu was still going round his circuit of courts.

It is for his central role in Jonathan’s evil designs for the Southwest that Kashamu must bear full responsibility for the safety of all Ekiti citizens that can be regarded as being in opposition to the PDP, which will translate to no less than 70 per cent of our people.

Needless to say then that from this very moment, I must reckon as number one on his list but only God can save and enemies of the good people of Ekiti will certainly work in vain. Their evil counsel, like Ahitophel’s, will come to naught in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This is the reason why every mother, every wife, even child in Ekiti must hold the controversial Ogun state politician, Buruji Kasamu, responsible for whatever befalls their bread winners in the run down to the 2014 election in the state as he has promised to completely over run the state.

It was my uncle, the highly regarded Chief Deji Fasuan, who first drew my attention to the inimical politics some persons of Ogun State extraction have historically played in Yoruba politics. I have searched in vain on my computer system for his exact quotes, in which he pointedly mentioned names and narrated what negative roles each surreptitiously played in the affairs of other Yoruba ethnic groups. Fortunately, I do not need to have those exact words since in the past few years, dating back to the 8-year strangle-hold of the PDP on our geo-political zone, some Ogun State elements have famously put their animus against Ekiti people at play, the latest being this new friend of Mr. President.

It had all begun with Obasanjo who, as president, spared no scurrilous word in describing Ekiti people. Beginning from how he mercilessly shredded Chief S.K Babalola, one of Ekiti’s most distinguished elders, on his way to inflicting a governor on the state in 2003, he later callously dismissed the entire Ekiti people as educated fools. He would later conjure an inchoate impeachment of his once’ darling son’, just so he could inflict an Ogun State retired general on the state in declaring a totally reckless emergency administration whose sole aim was to prepare the ground for a PDP victory in the following election. Obasanjo would then go on to show his complete disdain for Ekiti when he disregarded the results of his party’s governorship primary election and opted for the candidate who placed third as his anointed candidate.

For the next three years, Ekiti knew no peace.

Next was the conscienceless INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner who, against all expectations, abandoned her avowed Christian conscience, first went underground , surfaced in the presidency in Abuja only to come back to Ado-Ekiti to eat her words and throatily declare what she had previously adjured a rigged result.

Were Ekiti vicissitudes in the hands of Ogun State elements limited to these, we probably would have shouted Halleluiah. But then that would not satisfy our traducers who must not stop until they have seen the last of a people they proudly regard as inferior to them.

So here comes this money man who once claimed he would spend a billion on the Ekiti gubernatorial election. Nigerians must ask him how this is his business. Must Ekiti be roughened up to have an oil block? Anyway, if he likes he could quintuple that amount; we won’t be bothered in the least since in the first place, half that amount would be stolen by his party people and as to the rest, Ekiti will show him money is not our god. He, it is, who knows how he made his money and can therefore choose to burn it. Kashamu should go and ask how much those who preceded him have spent futilely in Lagos State these past 14 years but the wishes of the people have always prevailed. If some people worship money, we in Ekiti do not. He will therefore, equally profit nothing in Ekiti, no matter what nebulous billions he sank into their evil plans against the wishes of the people.

By declaring at their Ibadan meeting that if his historically unscrupulous party men will stand by him, he was ready to start with Ekiti and make an otherwise peaceful state ‘a sample’, (and this happens to be a man who had declared the APC leader, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu an enemy, not a political opponent) Buruji has shown clearly that he would not mind committing any horrendous act in his quest for an unimaginable PDP victory in Ekiti.

Kashamu should know, that with this his threats, the onus is squarely on him to prove that he does not pose a danger to the good people of Ekiti, come the next election.

Nigerians are waiting to hear from him.

January 19, 2014
Alien-Nation (11)

(The hood does not make a nation)

Around midnight on October1st 1960, the Union Jack was lowered in Nigeria. It was a remarkable moment indeed, a ceremony of departure and the consecration of the birth and arrival of a new nation. But just as it is said that the hood does not make a monk, the hood in nationhood does not convey or confer automatic authenticity on any nation. By a remarkable irony of language, hood may actually mean a mask, or the badge of false identity.

Yet in another sense, the lowering of the flag was also a powerful tribute to the departing colonial masters, their ability to create something anew and their power to territorrialise and re-territorialise a whole continent at will. What the departing imperialists were handing over to the new political elite were not the old kingdoms and territories forcibly seized from their ancestors but something radically new and novel. The old territories had been reworked, recast and sown together again with the thread of western modernity.

Just as a new religion requires its own priests, a new nation also requires a new national elite. Advertently and inadvertently, the structure thrown up by the new colonial order, with its western literacy, its new educational system, the spiritual re-engineering of the populace and above all the imposition of western political and economic order, was bound to throw up its own elite. It is no use moaning that Nigeria did not produce a Mandela, or an ANC for that matter.

At independence in Nigeria, the apparatus and personnel of the old colonial state were merely indigenized or Africanized leaving its raison d’etre substantially intact. Although the state was in transition from its colonial origin to its post-colonial destiny, to its designers and inheritors alike, what was needed and required was continuity with the promise and possibility of change rather than a radical rupture. A radical rupture would have involved a revolutionary challenge to the colonialists by the emergent elite and almost certainly a war of liberation.

To emphasize the seamless continuity of colonial and post-colonial rule, certain key colonial personnel were left in vital positions after independence. Among these were the Army Chief, top officers of the judiciary, the police and many security kingpins. The Queen of England also remained in place as ultimate sovereign until Nigeria was said to have achieved full republican status in 1963.

Despite the occasional political hiccups and journalistic hell-raising about the arrogance and racist assumptions of the colonial masters, the ascendant Nigerian coastal elite were not uncomfortable with colonial rule as long as it eventuated in Home Rule. They were, in any case, too westernized in their ways, too implicated and complicit in the colonial civilizing mission, to view things from a different prism. The tussle and tiffs between them and the Lugard brothers eventually boiled down to an ironic confrontation about who was more civilized and westernized. They were dandified and dignified “negro-saxons”, to echo Edward Blyden’s withering dismissal.

Their successors were not much different. In the case of Zik despite an early intellectual militancy, a pragmatic accommodation with colonialism soon crystallized in the face of the pragmatic difficulties faced by a global Black intellectual rooted in a specific and exacting colonial nation-space. There ensued a memorable parting of ways with his younger and more militant admirers who were to be harshly abandoned to their fate.

Obafemi Awolowo , who had studied Law in England, was content with an initial project of intellectually and conceptually re-defining and refining the paradigm and parameters of western governance in all its political, economic and philosophical foundation. It was a project that would consume his prodigious analytical capability and capacity for hard work. Rather than a local guerrilla leader, Awolowo was cut in the mould of the nineteenth century British parliamentary grandees. But even this was to earn him the ire of the colonial masters who saw him as a dangerous ideologue and political heretic who must never smell power..

Ahmadu Bello was very much a prince and scion of the old Fulani Empire. On the eve of the departure of the colonial masters, the Sokoto prince had remarked that Nigeria was merely the empire of his Caliphate forefathers. To him, nothing had changed. Colonial rule was merely a rude interlude; a vexatious intercession in the drive to subdue and subjugate the territorial space named Nigeria and make it amenable to Islamic rule. This was his cultural conditioning which must be granted. However, being exposed very early in life to the inner workings and dynamics of feudal hegemony would make the late Sardauna the most ruthless and sophisticated power player among his colleagues.

But if the remarkable Sokoto prince can be forgiven for his faux pas, the British colonial masters did not help matters. Or rather they resorted to loading the political, military and demographic dice in favour of the master-nationality around which they thought the nation could cohere and congeal. This was very much in consonance with their own national experience.

The problem with this, apart from its sheer historical fatuity and miscognition of the practical realities on ground, is that the colonial masters did not walk their talk until very late in the day. For almost half a century, they kept the north in quarantine and isolation from the rest of the country. The amalgamated territories were ruled very much like a dual-state nation. It was not until the early fifties that the elites of the territories sat together for the first time. Needless to add that it was a dialogue of aliens with the Sardauna famously dismissing the farcical -and soon to be fratricidal- communion as “the mistake of 1914”.

If the two territories had been kept apart the way they were, it would have been possible at independence to work out a loose federation of amalgamated territories with power completely devolved to the federating units. But it was at this very moment that the old British demon of harsh centralizing and compulsory unitarism took hold of the colonial imagination. Through a series of frantic maneuvers, power and privileges became concentrated at the centre with dire consequences for the new nation.

With the equipoise of contending regional titans and their perfectly weighed prejudices and preferences, it was impossible to unify and homogenize the emergent national elite. By the same token and logic, it was impossible for a supreme Nigerian leader to emerge and prevail. The stage was then set for a prolonged and protracted siege on the state by the major nationalities.

The modern Nigerian state thus became an open coliseum; a theatre of war and warfare rather than a platform for the aggregation and reconciliation of competing elite claims. This is a situation that subsists till date. With Awolowo moving to the centre in 1959, the dominant faction of the Yoruba elite tried to overwhelm the alien state. This gambit provoked such a direct and severe response from the feudal north with dire consequences for both nation and Yoruba nationality.

The Igbo people moved next on the chessboard. Again, this resulted in a repercussion of such severity that they rue till date. But the Hausa/ Fulani faction that managed to maintain a hegemonic stranglehold on the state, thanks to their military proxies, has also suffered a catastrophic backlash with the north today virtually in political and economic ruins not to talk of religious turmoil. The protracted intellectual and psychological siege has unsettled them to the bargain and for the first time the old north is looking very helpless and forlorn indeed. It may well be the turn of the clueless Ijaw hegemons to suffer the misfortunes of political fortunes.

It has been a killing field on an industrial scale. This medieval torture wrack, this orrery of horrors, is not the Nigeria of our dream. But as it has been said, a man may make himself a throne of bayonets but he cannot sit on it. Old grievances and resentments cannot be set aside, but they must be understood within the context of a multi-national nation comprising of strong ethnic formations and the consequent narcissism and solipsism.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo , arguably the most gifted and administratively capable of them, identified the major problem of the nation as feudalism in the north. But ignoring the political realities and contending cultural milieu, he chose to attack the problem frontally by attempting to bypass the northern feudal lords to reach the people directly. This panicked the old north. It was said that once on a campaign trail, the Sardauna coughed up dust and phlegm and then exploded that Awolowo would have to pay dearly for this grave insult of forcing a prince to campaign to his own subjects.

Zik who was unarguably the most cosmopolitan and liberal of them all, having been outwitted by Awolowo in the west and finding the north impenetrable with the emirs barely tolerating him retreated to the ethnic fortress and eventually the great man was to be fingered as having authored the Biafran National Anthem. But even before then, it was rumoured that at the time of the 1964 constitutional crisis an affronted Zik was already being serenaded by irate military officers of Igbo origins on the need for a drastic change.

With the west on fire and the entire nation roiling in a political cauldron, was a coup inevitable? Virtually so. It was also in keeping with the norms of the time. Unlike now, it was the time when the men on horseback were viewed as an alternative modernizing elite. Ahmadu Bello’s error of judgment arose from his equating a feudal fiefdom with a nation-state that was not of his making and the attempt to impose the norms on people of radically divergent worldviews.

There was bound to be a collision of altars and a national tragedy when this worldview came into fatal contradiction with a fiercely republican ethos that had no truck with a feudal pecking order. Yet by virtue of the same cultural logic the mutiny by mid-ranking officers of mainly Igbo origins was so politically clueless, so motivated by bloodthirsty and irrational vengeance that it became part of the national problem.

A return match was inevitable, more so since God marches on the side of the bigger battalion. The Igbo not only needed to be put in their place but out of place, after all men are hanged not because horses are stolen but so that horses may not be stolen, as they say. Needless to add that the revenge coup of July 1966 put the earlier one in the shade in terms of its savage ferocity. For three days, Nigeria was effectively defunct and without a central administration. When the smoke cleared, Brigadier Olufemi Ogundipe had been militarily browbeaten into precipitate flight and the earlier cries of Araba or secession had died down.

With that historic triumph, the prospects of Nigeria’s rapid political and economic development in the hands of visionary modernizers rapidly and dramatically diminished. Thus was set the template of permanent political instability and economic underdevelopment in which even military transition programmes came to mirror the colonial transition itself with emphasis on continuity rather than change and a change of personnel rather than a change in the personality of the state and the structure of the nation.

When Chinua Achebe famously put the failure of the Nigerian state and nation squarely at the doorstep of a failure of leadership, he was not completely wrong, except that he ignored the structural and configurative constraints which have hobbled the emergence of a nationalist political elite and stalled our march to genuine nationhood. As it is at the moment, Nigeria is a telling rebuff to the Blackman’s ability to manage human complexity and the contradictions of a vast modern nation-state.

As we slouch towards another epic political gridlock chillingly reminiscent of fifty years ago, it is clear that what Nigeria needs is a new national elite that will draw up a fresh charter for the nation. A National Conference, sovereign or otherwise, might remove the constraints if it addresses genuine fears and grievances, but it will not give us a new elite, except in circumstances of tumult and turmoil. But unless we find the will and the willpower to create Nigeria anew, the fat lady will soon come on stage.

January 12, 2014
2014: Agenda for Jonathan

‘Fight corruption and other things shall be added unto you’

President Goodluck Jonathan does not need any long list of what to do this year. For me, that will only make him the usual Jack of all trades, master of none. And that is not the expectation of Nigerians from their President at this ‘injury time’ of his administration. Moreover, there is little dividend from the items on his Transformation Agenda. So far, it has been all motion and no movement. The President should be familiar with the saying that you cannot have a different result when you keep doing something the same way. With only about 17 months for President Jonathan to go, it is time to change tack. Time is not on his side.

Therefore, as far as I am concerned, there is only one commandment for the President: ‘fight corruption, and other things shall be added unto you’. As I have always said, if the only problem of a government is incompetence, it is probably a shade better provided public funds are not stolen or lost in addition to the incompetence. But when money is being stolen as if stealing is going out of fashion, such money cannot be retrieved again. What we have lost to corruption in the last 14 years of our return to democracy in 1999, and especially since 2011, is mindboggling. This is excluding the years of the locust when soldiers held sway.

Corruption is at the root of all the ills plaguing Nigeria. It is responsible for pensioners slumping on verification queues. Corruption is responsible for the incessant power problem we are facing. If people who never imported fuel get subsidy payments, it is corruption. When contract costs are inflated, corruption is responsible. When a judge sells his judgment, it is corruption. When lecturers teach what they are not paid to teach or demand what they are not supposed to demand from their students in exchange for marks, it is corruption. When a journalist demands money in order to kill or use a story, it is corruption.

And when we talk about corruption, it is not just about money. There are other forms of corruption that have the same terrible effects as that involving money. For instance, the last Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election in which the President’s governors lost. Yet, President Jonathan hosted the 16 losers who ‘represented’ him at the election, even when the world knew that he and his men lost in that election. Now, who would believe such a President if he denies rigging election sometime in the future? The point is that President Jonathan does not realise the effect of some of his actions on the Presidency. That is why I don’t pity those who feel the Presidency is being debased. The office can only be as exalted as the occupier wants it to be.

The world’s mirror on corruption matters; Transparency International’s (TI) rating of Nigeria in the last seven years is instructive. In 2006, Nigeria ranked 153 out of 180 countries; in 2007 it ranked 147 out of 180; in 2008, 121 of 180 and 2009, 130 out of 180. In 2010, the country ranked 134 of 178 countries; in 2011 it was 143 of 183 and 2012, 139 out of 177. These are clearly poor ranks. But they reflect the country’s realities. At the last count, we are the 35th most corrupt nation in the world, according to TI’s statistics. As BusinessDay rightly observed, “Management of public funds and resources in this country has been bedevilled by massive fraud and embezzlement which largely goes on with outright impunity. Nigeria’s rank on the corruption perception index reaffirms government indifference to corruption, particularly in the public sector”. And, to show how unserious we are, the government said in its reaction to the 2012 ranking that the marginal improvement recorded in that year was an indication that the Jonathan presidency had taken on corruption headlong. This is fallacious.

While democracy is not entrenched as it should be in the country, with all kinds of anti-democratic behaviours in high places, corruption appears democratised under the Jonathan presidency. It is so bad that Nigerians are wondering if any other country could be more corrupt than their own. Unfortunately, while the cankerworm stares us all in the face, the President says it is not as serious as it is portrayed; and that it is only a question of perception. Maybe the rest of us would need binoculars or microscopes to see what the President is seeing that we are not seeing, or vice versa.

Perhaps it is this ‘perception problem’ that is responsible for the President’s dilly-dally on the Stella Oduah bullet-proof cars scandal. When our own President was still thinking about how to handle the scandal, Providence provided an example which he should have followed, with the Ghanaian President firing that country’s deputy minister for communication, Victoria Hammah, for merely contemplating corruption. The Ghanaian leader did not need to travel to Israel to receive divine direction before sacking the minister. Our own President went to Israel at about that time. They even flew a kite then that he kept a reasonable distance from the embattled aviation minister in the holy land. Yet, months after returning, Minister Oduah still sits pretty in her office. And the President keeps talking to himself that he is fighting corruption. Unlike Governor Rotimi Amaechi who is not versed in reading body language, the rest of us who can have seen, even if only from the Oduah case, Nigeria’s official position on corruption. Someday, we will find out what is so special about this minister that makes the President prefer to receive harsh criticisms on her case rather than show her the door.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo might have caught thieves selectively. No doubt this is not the best, but if he was catching thieves that did not belong to his camp, it was still better. At least those thieves caught would reduce the number of thieves in the country. I think our only concern should be that he was not catching innocent persons for thieves simply because he did not like their faces. The thieves that Obasanjo refused to catch would be caught by another king that would not know those ‘Obasanjo boys’. Jonathan too should have been catching his own thieves by now. Even the ones we strongly suspected and handed over to him, he is not doing anything about them. I do not know of anywhere in the world where they wait until they catch all the thieves before moving against them.

Of course Nigeria is not the only country where we have people with an insatiable appetite for primitive accumulation. There are thieves even in high places all over the world. The difference is that Nigeria appears to be a haven for corrupt persons. In other places, they are dealt with once caught. Imagine the Halliburton and Siemens cases in which those involved had been punished abroad. Nigeria’s punishment problem has made it impossible for us to do same to our own officials involved in the scandals. James Ibori would still have been walking the streets a free man if he had been tried in Nigeria. At worst, he might have received a light sentence and consequently granted presidential pardon. Just about two weeks ago, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told us that it would need over N200million to prosecute 17 former governors suspected to have enriched themselves illegally. That is how we have to spend unnecessarily when we don’t tackle corruption early enough.

With the high rate of corruption in the country, even a hardworking President would only be pouring water inside a basket. Corruption, when not checked, is like an untrained child; he will end up selling the house that his parents built. If President Jonathan thinks he can go far with this high rate of corruption, he is wasting his time. He should act fast now that Omoye has not yet entered the market naked. Indeed, I don’t want to say the President should do something about corruption before it is too late because I don’t want whatever I say to be used against me in the court of the human rights commission.

January 12, 2014
Mark, Tambuwal and the defectors

When lawmakers in the House of Representatives began to defect to the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), it was widely expected, or perhaps speculated, that the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, would soon enact his own spectacular crossing. He has not burnt his bridges yet. In view of the fact that the opposition now controls the lower chamber, and the ruling PDP has lost control of that chamber, the speculations have continued to rage. Fearful that the PDP could lose control of the Senate, thereby compounding the political tragedy gnawing at the soul of the ruling party, the Jonathan presidency and forces favourable to Senate president David Mark have advanced stories indicating that the seats of defecting senators would be declared vacant. It is not quite certain that those stories are official.

But it is at least clear that the takeover of the Senate, as is being plotted by the opposition, would not be as easy as that of the House of Representatives. And, apparently, it would not matter whether Senator Mark and his forces are on the right side of the constitution. They will defend their turf as brutally as President Jonathan defends his presidency – with single-minded unconstitutionality, if necessary. The resolve of the ruling party in the Senate is, therefore, likely to dampen the enthusiasm of the APC senators. In the House of Representatives, any attempt to declare any seat vacant in a legislature already fallen into the hands of the ‘enemy,’ will flounder very badly. In view of the political dynamics in the Senate, and the foul mood of the Jonathan presidency, it is important for the opposition to modify tactics by getting potential defectors to act like defectors without actually defecting – at least until the time is right.

Given the mood in the Senate and the predilection of the Jonathan presidency, it is expected that Alhaji Tambuwal might want to re-examine his options, if indeed he ever meant the story of his defection to be taken at more than face value. It is already known his heart and soul belong to the APC. Would it be necessary to defect before he could advance and protect the interests of the opposition? With him standing pat in the PDP and keeping the office of Speaker, defectors would not only have a fair deal, they would even flourish. In addition, it would not only be unwise for an APC majority to move against him, should he choose to stay in the PDP, it would be unnecessary and counter-productive. An APC move against the Speaker is unlikely to ever happen. The Speaker may allow the speculations about his intentions to continue, but neither he nor the APC should think anything of it; for the Speaker is as sure of his constituency’s support as he is sure of securing a majority anytime a vote is forced on the floor of the legislature.

The problem, therefore, is the Senate, where top legislators are speaking at cross-purposes, and many of us are unsure whether the stories and threats they issue are real or contrived. Since this column is in favour of all legitimate moves to whittle down the power and influence of the PDP and also ensure Dr Jonathan is unelectable in 2015, it will offer unsolicited advice to the opposition. The opposition must recognise that they can only second-guess the reactions of the PDP Senate and the Jonathan presidency with a limited amount of certainty. Nothing is sure, especially in the light of the desperation of the ruling party and its fear that it could go into the 2015 general elections greatly hobbled. Even with its control of the Senate and the security agencies, its chances of retaining power is less than sure. Knowing full well that it would be a nightmare for the party to go into the next polls with the Senate in the hands of the opposition, especially after the House of Representatives had been lost irretrievably, the ruling party would fight tooth and nail to ensure that that should never happen.

The best option for the APC is to assume that the Senate’s top leaders and the presidency would fight rough in order to maintain control of the upper house. If a fight ensues, as every statistician knows, the chances of winning and losing are even. If an already crippled ruling party enters the fight disadvantaged, a 50 percent chance is a good outcome for them. On the other hand, a 50 percent chance for the APC, which is on a high at the moment and is even feeling triumphant already, is not good enough. And what is the use of a frontal attack on the ruling party in the Senate when the opposition can engage in feints and intrigues whose outcomes can be salutary? Since the intended defectors are known, the APC should let them stay in the PDP, in body of course, while their hearts and souls are claimed by the opposition. This tactic will work because in every vote called on the floor of the Senate, the potential defectors will frustrate the PDP and short-circuit the ruling party’s plans.

I admit that if the defections are carried through it would be a morale booster for the opposition and a dampener for the PDP. But the APC need not be carried away by the aesthetics of politics. Every move it makes, and every scheme it engages in, must serve the purpose of winning the next polls, rather than painting the party in a boisterous and effervescent mould. The party already has seemingly insurmountable problems of forging a fit, united, fairly ideological and victorious army out of the disparate and cantankerous defectors it had welcomed into its fold. That task will not be easy, for long-standing party members will resent the presence of more aggressive and opportunistic newcomers. Such a daunting problem should therefore not be allowed to be compounded by a distracting war in the Senate over defectors whose seats the forceful chicaneries of the Senate leadership and a vindictive presidency could make untenable.

This is why I also suggest that Speaker Tambuwal should, in cognizance of political realism over political aesthetics, remain for now in the PDP and offer defectors in the lower chamber genuine cover. The run-up to Poll 2015 will see bitter and sanguinary battles for the control of the physical and spiritual manifestations of the levers of power. The APC should avoid being entangled in needless controversies and displays. It must unite its warring groups, new and old, forge a credible and winnable platform, avoid the Machiavelian entrapment the ruling party will weave along its path, for they are no pushovers themselves, and ensure that even if it kills them they manage to give the country a presidential ticket that is indisputably a winner.

The next one year or so will be the most stressful and harrowing for the opposition; it should rise to the occasion with purpose and determination. But that time will also be the most nightmarish for the ruling party, and the country must hope it cannot rise to the occasion. For, as all of us know, and as I indicated in this place last week, only change can save the country. Continuity is definitely not an option, not with the despicable and divisive use of sectarian politics now embarked upon by the PDP.

January 12, 2014