The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Ondo, Edo and APC’s electoral future

    Ondo, Edo and APC’s electoral future

    Last Wednesday, the national chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Mamman Mike Osuman, declared that the group would back northern candidates in the 2027 elections. Except the media reported him unfairly and inaccurately, he was ambiguous in approximating the northern socio-cultural group’s preferences. He referenced the Bola Tinubu administration’s unpopular policies and the hardship and hunger inundating the country, but he was careful not to specify names disfavoured by the ACF nor offices they might wish to contest. Though the Forum’s Board of Trustees suspended him a day later for making unathorised statement on behalf of the group, he had given dark hints about the direction the ACF might head some two years down the line. Said Mr Osuman, a lawyer and senior advocate, with flourish: “…It is not in doubt that the North is currently under siege. Our dear region is not only being viciously attacked by bandits, terrorists and kidnappers but also by sinister devices like disproportionate considerations and inequitable treatment.”

    In the fortuitous months ahead, it is unlikely the old political North will see the Bola Tinubu presidency the same way they see it today. Apart from the president indulging the region beyond measure, it is also expected that the badly bruised and battered economy might begin to turn the corner. To that extent, the ACF’s BoT was probably sensible and more restrained in not declaring support for any aspirant or party. They may sometimes be instigative in their speeches, but they often wait to see which way the cat jumps before they cast their lot with a candidate. Nothing of course suggests they won’t eventually ditch President Tinubu, but they are unlikely to do so as spontaneously and peremptorily as Mr Osuman has ill-advisedly done. Sometimes too, the old North criticises and threatens as a form of pressure to get more concession from any presidency constituted by a southerner. Whatever their ultimate aim, the ACF chairman probably let the cat out of the bag too soon. He was unlikely to have voiced sentiments not prevalent among northern leaders, but it will still take more than a year before the old North’s definitive view on 2027 is known.

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    The All Progressives Congress (APC) is probably aware of the electoral booby traps ahead of it, whether placed by northerners, or other regions, or even by enemies within. They may in fact already be toying with various countermeasures defeat the enemy and hold on to power beyond 2027. This is where their victories in the Edo and Ondo governorship elections put them in a quandary. If they had lost either or both states in the September and November polls, it would have been seen as a perfect and karmic referendum on the Tinubu administration, particularly its hated economic measures and probably despised appointments, with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) buoyed by the ruling party’s setbacks. The conundrum, unfortunately for the APC, is that its victories in the two states have been conveniently explained away as signifying no referendum on the Tinubu administration. Analysts often take solace in the axiom that all politics is local. This may sound trite, but it adequately explains the two recent governorship elections as far as the APC is concerned.

    In the Edo poll, the APC was largely united and focused on returning to office, while the PDP was disunited, with the former governor, Godwin Obaseki, calling everybody’s bluff. The APC put the matter beyond contention by winning 11 local government areas and 291,667 votes to PDP’s seven LGs and 247,274 votes, a significant 44,000 plus margin. In Ondo, the APC victory was even more emphatic, with its candidate, the untested and sometimes flighty Lucky Aiyedatiwa, winning all 18 local governments and over 360,000 votes to the PDP’s 117,845 votes. Taking together with the November 2023 reelection of APC’s Hope Uzodinma in Imo State and APC’s Usman Ododo election in Kogi State also in November 2023, President Tinubu can boast four trophies that came seemingly against the run of play. Had those victories come with the run of play, with a great and revving economy, no one would have doubted the unassailable position of the president going into the 2027 poll. It would, however, make the administration complacent, for officials love burying their heads in the cloud rather than having them singed in the cauldron of public anger and criticism. President Tinubu’s men should, therefore, probably count themselves lucky that the administration and the public are unable to attribute the recent electoral triumphs to anything spectacular done by the administration.

    Indeed, if elections were held today, given the state of the economy (petrol price, exchange rate and inflation), the supposed skewness of the president’s appointments in favour of the Yoruba, particularly Lagosians, and the awkward reversals of certain policies and close staff appointments, the president and his APC would be hard put to eke out even a slim victory. If in addition the opposition could get their act together and rally behind a great candidate, defeating the APC would be almost certain. Fortunately for the ruling party, few voters are likely to make up their minds how to vote in 2027 until probably late next year or sometime in 2026. President Tinubu has of course not inspired too many people by his style of administration, but he has sensibly pushed the country through its worst moments early in his government in order to give himself some breathing space in the years ahead, especially close to the polls. If he is fortunate enough to have an economy well on the path of recovery in 2025, with exchange rate, fuel price, and inflation rate doing great, he will sound more plausible and convincing in pushing the APC agenda.

    The relentlessly rhetorical National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, last week pontificated on President Tinubu’s invincibility. He of course exaggerated, and indeed sounded ingratiating. But while the president is good at keeping many balls in the air, two major factors will determine the shape of 2027. One is the shape of the economy in the next 18 months and how smartly the president cleans up his controversial and mystifying appointments, and two is the shape of the political opposition, taken holistically. Should the opposition remain fragmented and bad-tempered in the next 18 months as it is today, it would head nowhere, whether with the superficial Peter Obi as a point man or the bilious Atiku Abubakar as the leprous fist. The two factors stated above were at play in the Edo and Ondo polls; they will greatly influence the course and outcomes of politics and elections in the years ahead. Even if the economy does not recover as significantly as many Nigerians hope, President Tinubu and his APC will probably still do much better than expected should the opposition remain divided and mediocre. But two years is still a long time off, enough time to dig heels in, make amends, or build new platforms and coalitions.

  • Engaging Obasanjo on his ideas, not person

    Engaging Obasanjo on his ideas, not person

    By now, nearly everyone knows that the person of former president Olusegun Obasanjo cannot be changed by abuse or by any form of unwholesome exposure of what he has done or not done, in the past, present or even future. He is set in his ways, and this old man, as they say, is not for turning. In far away United States, at a Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum lecture he delivered at Yale University in Connecticut, he was at his didactic and sermonising best. His recorded lecture, which spoke more to the Obidient worldview than anything else, was provocatively titled Leadership failure and state capture. He needed no other baiting to be at his pontifical worst. After many decades of the former president serially and periodically pontificating on the same narrow subject, Nigerians should be used to his style and methods. Whatever he says about any issue, whether diagnostic or prognostic, has absolutely nothing to do with whatever he does. Academics love to talk about praxis, the execution of ideas. Chief Obasanjo has no interest whatsoever in any such convergence; indeed he has contempt for bridging any divide. Whoever wants to take the former president to task should simply concentrate on what he says rather than the chasm between what he says and does.

    He supposedly spoke on leadership failure and state capture, but much of what he said was frustratingly platitudinous. Apart from saturating his text with authorial references, and undergirding the address with unashamedly narcissistic comments, it is not clear whether his audience did not labour to wade through his quotations to find one pearl or gem worthy of the subject matter. The topic was grand and engaging, even though distinctly Obidient; but unfortunately, Chief Obasanjo lacked the depth of understanding and rich background to explicate the subject. Forget about his person or his style as military head of state and elected president, his treatment of leadership failure was simply far too superficial to attribute to anyone who had ruled Nigeria for a cumulative period of about 11 years, the longest of any past Nigerian ruler. His ideas on leadership have not changed one jot for the better over the years; instead they have worsened, aggravated by comparisons with his successors and predecessors, and weakened by a stubborn refusal to be introspective or learn from past great leaders. Unable to really diagnose the problem, he quickly transitioned to his suggested remedies. But here too he fell on his sword.

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    Perhaps his instincts tell him what his audience wanted to hear, and he was not one loth to serve them the menu they craved. To tackle leadership failure, the first thing he recommended was strengthening democracy, without resolving the conundrum of which comes first, the chicken or the egg. His previous analyses of democracy ended in his suggestion that Nigeria should develop a homegrown democratic model, again without elucidating on both its rubric. So, how does a country strengthen a democracy it does not know? And, worse, how does a country tinker with or restructure a democracy whose model it has not settled on? And if homegrown, what are its component parts and its anchors? The French Fifth Republic, the American 1789 constitution, the Chinese reforms begun after the death of Mao Zedong and the castration of the Gang of Four? At Yale, Chief Obasanjo did not structure his ideas, but merely clamoured against the 2023 elections for being a ‘travesty by all rational measures’. He allowed his private longings and sanctimonious disregard for facts to get in the way. He equated his unfulfilled but visceral preference for Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) candidacy with the weakening of democracy.

    Quoting the Pew Research Center, The Carnegie Foundation, and the Electoral Knowledge Network, he identified three planks upon which to strengthen democracy, to wit, legal, administrative, and political. Flowing from these planks, he advocated the wholesale dismantling of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), insisting that the agency was the fulcrum of democracy. To achieve this radical goal, he offered nothing substantial or rigorous other than the trite counsel about finding men and women of integrity. Had he been consistent with his homegrown democracy idea, which he nevertheless failed to concretise, he would have achieved a little bit of profundity and contributed to knowledge. It was clear he blamed INEC for the loss of his dear candidate, Mr Obi, but offered no rational or legal basis for coming to that unguarded conclusion. How he expected a largely unphilosophical, regional and religiously divisive party to win the last presidential election is extremely difficult to understand. And for a man who had ruled Nigeria for so long, he was shockingly unable to appreciate the legal reasoning that validated the disputed February 2023 poll. Indeed, moments later in his keynote address, he was to excoriate the judiciary for his unfulfilled dreams.

    On the subhead of ‘rebuilding the judiciary’, Chief Obasanjo was withering, theoretical and even facetious. “The Judiciary in Nigeria is a very pale version of its once internationally esteemed self,” he began magisterially. “Politicians after rigging elections openly ask their rivals to ‘go to court’ in Nigeria because they are aware that they have completely compromised the Judiciary system. A number of Judges are in the pockets of wealthy politicians and individuals and make judgements – not based on the law of the land but to the highest bidder. This, my learned audience, is one of the most effective strategies of State Capture – discussed next – that must be excised from Nigeria like a surgeon cutting out a malignant cancer.” His pet LP, not to say the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his former political party which he disassembled by his undisciplined approach to politics and governance, won some cases in court. But as long as his preferred party and candidate lost the grand prize, and regardless of the logic of the justices, the judiciary was hopeless.

    He rounded up his lecture with a short dissertation on state capture, but managed paradoxically to make his analysis sound like his governing manual during his three terms in office. He could of course not resist a kick to the groin of his old nemesis, President Bola Tinubu, whom he described as the quintessential proponent of state capture; but by personalising and vulgarising his analysis, he undermined the integrity of his address, reflected the poverty of his worldview, was condescending to his audience, and ended up playing almost entirely to the gallery. Mercifully he did not travel in person to Yale. It would have been a sheer waste of money and time to have had to travel over such a huge distance to deliver an unglamorous and commonplace address.

  • Kwankwaso’s paranoia

    Kwankwaso’s paranoia

    Of all the demons gnawing at the North’s liver, New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) leader Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso‘s problem is Lagos State’s alleged effort to colonise the North. Speaking at the convocation ceremony of Skyline University in Kano last Sunday, he argued that the former federal capital had become meddlesome. He said: “Today, we can see very clearly that there are significant efforts from the Lagos axis to colonise this part of the country. Lagos wouldn’t allow us to choose even our Emir. Instead, they want to impose their own Emir on Kano. Today, we are aware that the Lagos young men are working so hard to impose taxes and take away our taxes from Kano and this part of the country to Lagos. Even the telephones that we make or register here in Kano, efforts are there to take all the taxes to Lagos. Even our sons and daughters who have bought factories, many of them here in Kano and northern Nigeria, and even banks, somehow, are forced to take their headquarters to Lagos because taxes will now have to go to Lagos. Lagos, today, feels they are the only Nigeria, interfering in other states’ affairs. We will not tolerate such actions here in Kano…”

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    It didn’t seem an easy accusation for Mr Kwankwaso to make for obvious reasons. But repeatedly using Lagos axis interchangeably with President Bola Tinubu, he argued that Lagos (or President Tinubu) was expropriating the North through taxes, imposing emirs, and generally attempting to become the centre of the universe. This would be resisted, he thundered. He was indirectly making reference to the controversial tax bills before the National Assembly, and his unhappiness over the stalemated struggle for the Kano emirship. Mr Kwankwaso tried to become president in 2023. He has the right to nurse any kind of ambition. But to make facile and superfluous arguments on the tax bills without any financial exposition, and to surmise Lagos/Tinubu’s domination politics without evidence, not to talk of ignoring the incitement his statements constitute, disgrace his ambition and question his leadership credential. Surely, there is a limit to paranoia.

  • DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

    DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

    SNAPSONG 238    

    The food which ate my dream

         Had no teeth to call its own

    Canines which sprang out of the mouth

         Like the spikes of a laughing comb

    The shoe which bit the shoemaker’s foot

         Came straight out of a leopard’s skin

    Trodden countless times without compassion

         From pebbled patches to thorny spots

    The song sang the singer

         And the hearer trembled between the lines

    The wind which came between the trees

         Laid limp between the lips

    The night’s silence shouted

         So loud the roof rattled below the sky

    The corrugated whisper above the moon

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         Relieved the stars of their soundless wait

    Those who shun the light

         Need not regret their lack of shadows

    They who plant the midnight rainbow

         Will reap a famine of eyes

    Every house we build

         Finds habitation in our inner selves

    The wardrobes therein

         Wear us like absent costumes 

  • Democracy on trial (II)

    Democracy on trial (II)

    More than a week after the US presidential election, some people are still trying to come to terms with what is for them, the wholly unexpected result of that election. It was thought in many places that the choice of who would become president between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was going to fall on Kamala Harris on account of, not just her manifest merits but on the multiple demerits of her opponent. My stand all along was that there would not be a clear winner with the votes being shared right down the middle in which case, a Trump induced chaos was going to leave an entanglement which was going to task the democratic resolve of the polity. A man who lost the last election and has cried foul without an iota of proof for all of four years and has been laying grounds for rejecting the present round even before voting began in this round cannot be expected to respect the results of an election obtained from an evenly divided electorate. Right until polling day, this was the result predicted by all those who were actively involved in the polling business. They were all wrong. Trump ran away with the election and all we are left with are the so called experts trying to wipe the egg from their bemused faces. They are not likely to recover from this debacle for a very long time.

    As expected, the post mortem has started, with people coming up with possible reasons why the Democrats were blown away in the manner they suffered at the hand of the electorate. As with most political parties especially with those on the left wing of the political spectrum, these parties can best be described as a coalition of interests. This means that parties of the left tend to have many varied interests and too often appear to be fighting too many internal battles. This is usually at the expense of their vote gathering potential. In extreme cases, these internal conflicts are so serious that some factions which are deemed to be too far to the left are expelled in the manner of cutting out a cancerous growth in order to restore the party to good health. The British Labour Party has been particularly plagued with this tendency in a way that cannot be associated with the right wing Conservative Party within which the overwhelming aim is to attain power and retain it by any means necessary. Such parties are run along military lines with a clear command structure and a ruthlessness to go along with it. The leader of the party tends to be a strong man or woman who lays down the law in such a way that the chances of any individual rising within the party are dependent on their personal relationship with the leader who wields the power to hire and fire entirely at will. The ability of parties cast in this mould depends very much, if not entirely on discipline when necessary by an allegiance to clearly defined religious principality or to a manufactured patriotism. Beware of those who stand to rigid attention, with the hint of tears in their eyes whenever the national anthem is being played or the flag in being saluted. More often than not, they are fanatics who are not averse to becoming martyrs for the cause, any cause that captures their fevered imagination.

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    One of the weaknesses associated with parties of the left is their tendency to pander too much to the perceived interests of the electorate, to the extent that they try to anticipate the wishes of the voters who are perceived as valued customers. In doing this, they cast themselves in the mould of do-gooders who unfortunately frequently misread the wishes of their constituents and in the end, have to impose policies of their own invention on the populace. They too often become wise after the election which they have lost to the other side which holds no truck with political niceties and are prepared to pull the electorate into their orbit in the wake of an identifiable leader who appears able to get things done.

    In the last US election, the Republicans had a clear leader whose every wish was a command. What Donald Trump wanted, he got, so that in the chaos of his campaign, it was apparent to his followers that there was a clearly defined path to power. In other words there was a clearly discernible method to his madness. He did not waste any time pandering to the wishes of elite component of the Republicans party which is why so many of them, Liz  Cheney and her father who, in spite of the atrocities associated with him, is surprisingly still alive;could not find it in their heart to associate themselves with what they saw as the excesses of Donald Trump, to whom everyone in that camp was required to bend the knee. As it was, the man had no defined policies to defend and so, could not be taken up on them through the process of civilised debate. You were required to toe the line or ship out into the political wilderness. Cheney and others decided to ship out in the mistaken belief that the formless nature of Trumpism was a fatal flaw but are now quietly licking their wounds in political limbo. It is unlikely that they would be welcome with open arms in the Democratic Party and there is absolutely no way back for them in the party of Trump. The only hope they can comfort themselves with is that Trump is no longer eligible to contest the next round of elections. In addition, at the age of seventy-eight, his pervasive political influence is very much dated and as things stand, there is no obvious successor to Trump within Republican ranks. Still, it will not be easy for those Republican rebels to fight their way back into the upper echelons of what used to be their party.

    Looking back now, it is apparent that the deciding issue in the US election is immigration which was also the main plank of Trump and his supporters. It is deeply ironic that this is the case since all Americans are immigrants from other parts of the world. But to be clear, Trump is not hostile to all immigrants, at least not to those of European descent who are blessed with a deficit of melanin in their skin. When he talks of immigrants eating dogs and cats, his target audience are whites who are afraid that Haitians, Mexicans, Muslims and members of other such groups have come to America with the sole intention of supplanting the white majority, taking over their jobs and privileges and mating with their daughters. One hundred years ago, the only immigration going on was of white but regrettably, mainly Southern European Catholics who have however been converted into American citizens. Before then, the Irish who also brought the Pope in their scanty luggage were the problem. Now, they have been integrated into the Republic and have even in the last sixty years produced two presidents including the incumbent. John F. Kennedy broke that glass ceiling in 1960.

    Ask any white American and he will tell you with no hint of equivocation that their country belongs to the white man and his descendants in perpetuity. All other people are interlopers who are to be tolerated for as long as they are useful to white interests. But, how strong is the claim of the European claim to any part of the Americas or what we refer to as the New World? To start with, nobody in Europe had any idea that such a large land mass existed west of any part of Europe even though a band of Vikings under the leadership of Leif Erikson had landed in North America some four hundred years before Christopher Columbus fetched up on the island of Bahamas. And, thinking that he had arrived in India, his intended destination, called indigenous people of the island, Indians. From then, the non-white people in the New World have been hunted down like vermin and their land blatantly stolen from them. This is the land that those hill billies call their own and have no wish to share with anyone. Trump has now promised a massive exportation of immigrants, the scale of which has never been seen before. These are people carrying out jobs which white American are lost to soil their hands with. These are the jobs which in the words of Trump are black jobs. The corollary being that as soon as those immigrants have been expelled, there will be an overflow of jobs for the black folk, many of whom are currently unemployed or in serious completion for them with those immigrants. There is therefore something in Trumpism for a whole lot of people. Unlike a vociferous minority of people waving blue flags, the words of Donald Trump promising to lead them to Eldorado. No wonder they came out in large numbers to support him with their votes.

    Trump was not talking only to the great unwashed millions alone. His listeners included the ultra rich who have been promised generous tax cuts so that they can become richer still even if it is at the expense of those poor saps who are hoping to step into the shoes vacated by the departed immigrants. The only people who did not appear to have a place at the Trump table are members of the middle class, those poor saps who have struggled to acquire an education worth boasting about. They have the comfort of their degrees and in any case are in a clear minority, not worth caring about in a system where no vote is more precious than the other. From this point of view, it can now be seen with the useless benefit of hindsight that Trump ran a diabolically clever campaign. What he will be able to do with his victory is anybody’s guess, including his own.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of  this saga is that Trump is not an unknown quantity. On the face of it, judging from his former presidency we should know what to expect from him this time around. I am a pharmacist even if I sometimes need to be reminded of it. From that point of view, I am not hopeful that Trump will display any sign of maturity or competence on his return to the White House. This assessment is based on his handling or rather, mishandling of the COVID crisis which he handled with incredible incompetence leading to a large number of deaths, hospitalisations and needless suffering. He had a battery of world acclaimed experts at his beck and call but chose to ignore them pointedly. Instead his ears were wide open to charlatans and conspiracy theorists who were sure that ivermectin, strong salt solutions, powerful rays of light were the cure for a viral infection which is refractive to any form of chemotherapy. In the end however, he somehow became convinced of the power of vaccines and threw his considerable weight behind the development and distribution of the vaccines which halted the virus in its tracks. That would have been cause for some hope that he has learnt a valuable experience from that episode but the hope of that has been dashed by his announcement that he was handing the responsibility for for the public health sector in the USA to a rabid vaccine denier who has expressed contempt for the efficacy of vaccines and the results of scientific research. From this point of view, I am convinced that we have exciting but mentally exhausting times ahead with the Donald at the wheel. Harold Wilson, one time British Prime Minister said with confidence that seven days is a long time in politics. From that point of view, four years is an eternity.

  • Olukoyede’s mistake

    Olukoyede’s mistake

    The EFCC boss goofed by thinking Nigerians would shed tears over his disclosure on the national grid

    Last week, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede, threw two bombshells that should really keep us thinking as a nation. One, he said one of the reasons we have been having frequent grid collapses is because contractors supplying equipment and materials for the maintenance of the grid have largely been supplying poor and substandard ones.

    Two, that in the last 15 to 20 years, we have not achieved up to 20 per cent of our capital project implementation and execution.

    Olukoyede told members of the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes, who visited him at the headquarters of the commission in Abuja, last week, that Nigerians would weep if they know the extent of the rot that is throwing them into perpetual darkness.

    Let’s hear from the horse’s mouth: “As I am talking to you now, we are grappling with electricity. If you see some of the investigation we are carrying out within the power sector, you will shed tears”.

    Olukoyede added: “people who were awarded contracts to supply electricity equipment, instead of using what they call 9.0 gauge, they will go and buy 5.0. So every time you see the thing tripping off, the thing gets burnt, and all of that. It falters, and it collapses. It’s part of our problems”, Olukoyede said.

    That is for the power sector.

    Then the second bombshell: “We discovered that in the last 15 to 20 years, we have not done up to 20% of our capital project implementation and execution. And if we don’t do that, how do you want to have infrastructural development.

    “How do you want to grow as a nation…”? “So, our mandate this year is to work with that directorate (Problem Risk Assessment and Control) and with the National Assembly to see if we can meet up to 50% of our execution of our capital project for the year.

    “If we do 50%, we will be fine as a nation. Lack of implementation of this capital project is one of our major problems in Nigeria. And if we are able to tackle that effectively, we will make progress as a nation.”

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    I need somebody to help me here because the governments in power during the period were not giving us this ridiculously low performance figures. Although Olukoyede did not mention the specific time frame he was talking about, I doubt if any of the governments that could have fallen into the 15-20 years bracket ever said that was their best. Even then, we were saying the higher percentages they claimed were too low for a country that is thirsty for development. But we still celebrated the 50 or so percent average whenever any of them said they attained such.

    So, how come we are now hearing that we did not achieve up to 20 per cent in a stretch of 15-20 years? Were we conned by those administrations? Or is it Olukoyede that is not getting his facts right?

    The matter becomes particularly pathetic when we remember that some of these years in question were years of the locust when ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in the federal public service would make sure they exhaust their budget for every year so they could get more money the following year. What they did toward the end of the year was to award emergency contracts for all imaginary items that they actually had no need of. The idea was just to make sure they returned zero balance. So, what happened to the balance of their budgets if the country in the last 15 or so years did not achieve 20 per cent of capital projects? At least the released sums?

    The EFCC boss’s disclosure that the commission has established a directorate of Problem Risk Assessment and Control that is working with the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation to look at releases against implementation of projects should have been a welcome one but for the fact that it is doubtful if the commission has the capacity for such extended responsibility.

    The truth is; in a seriously corrupt nation like ours, the EFCC has a lot on its sleeves to begin to add other responsibilities to its original mandate. Even concerning its core mandate, it is doubtful if the commission is adequately staffed or equipped.

    But, that is the problem with Nigeria. When an agency is not working, we simply shift its responsibility to others that are doing fairly well. Didn’t we have people who were supposed to certify the power sector materials and equipment as having been supplied to specification? Did we not have agencies that were supposed to monitor capital projects such that if we did not execute up to 20 per cent of them, the funds for the remaining 80 per cent (or whatever amount had been released in anticipation of a greater percentage of execution) was returned to government’s coffers? So, what is their role in all of these?

    One can only hope that this additional responsibility would not constitute an unnecessary distraction that would end up making the EFCC a jack of all trades, master of none; a thing which would not augur well for the anti-corruption war.

    As for the power sector, I want to believe that not many Nigerians would have been stunned by Olukoyede’s disclosure. After all, the power sector we have always known. Many Nigerians have had to suffer one way or the other from many of the corrupt officials in the sector, right from when it was still a government baby and, worse still, now that the sector has largely been privatised.

    Before the introduction of prepaid meters, many of the workers of the then National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) who then carried ladders about, either to connect or disconnect electricity customers, were usually bribed by some customers who either did not have the money to pay or just did not think they should pay. Such customers would thereafter continue to enjoy power supply without paying a dime. Of course, someone must pay for every such bribe taken.

    That must be one of the reasons why the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) preferred giving estimated bills to customers instead of giving them prepaid meters, apart from the companies’ insatiable appetite to reap where they did not sow. Today, the issue of estimated billing remains contentious despite successive administrations’ resolve to abolish it, even years after the sector was privatised.

    Until now, we have always thought that the main reason we have been having persistent grid collapse is because the equipment are largely obsolete and weak and are therefore too fragile to carry the kind of load that they are now putting on it. Of course this makes sense. As we were taught in ‘O’ Level Economics, continual application of a factor of production to a fixed factor would, after some time begin to yield less than proportionate returns. If you keep adding load to a grid that has not been expanded for decades, the grid would keep rejecting such load at a point. Since this is logical, not many of us avert our minds to the kind of corruption that Olukoyede talked about concerning the grid. And even if we did, we never made it a perpetual point of reference as we do the factor of obsolete and weak equipment.

     Add this to the fact that one national grid is inadequate to serve a country of over 200 million people and you think you have good enough reasons why we could tolerate the 10 grid collapses we have had this year alone. Indeed, the ‘Nigerian wonder’ would be that the collapse is not higher, given this ‘latest’ revelation that poor and substandard equipment have been supplying the oxygen that is keeping the grid alive.

    Only last week on this page, I told Africans and other migrants in the United States who are sad that Donald Trump won the presidential election not to weep for America but they should weep for their own countries. Disclosures such as the ones made by the EFCC boss are enough to make us shed tears, as he said; but we seem immune to shock. Nothing worries us as a people, especially about our own country. Many Nigerians who are out of the country would probably have remained at home if only there is reliable power supply because power is pivotal to everything we do. If we get the power sector right, plants would hum at full capacity. Many artisans would be gainfully engaged; our hospitals would run more efficiently, and so on.

    But, how can we have light in a situation where contractors who supply electrical cables and other equipment for the power sector supply poor and substandard ones? It is these same people who would be telling us sweet tales about how constant power supply is in the United States and other places. Is that the way their counterparts who render the same services to the American power companies behave to their country?

    Unfortunately, we seem not perturbed as a people to insist that things must change in our own country. Most of us are like frogs that are looking for a cool place to live. We are looking for ‘Olorunsogo’ (places made by some other people even if with the help of God) as if the ‘Olorunsogo’ was made great by some benevolent spirits. Even though many of us won’t mind to live in Surulere (here in Lagos), meaning patience has its reward, we are not ready to be patient to give whatever it would take, to take the phrase ‘move the country forward’ from the lips of pretentious politicians and put meaning into it.

    How can Nigerians who did not shed tears when, sometimes in July 2018, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), told us that it had recovered more than 693 containers of power equipment abandoned at ports due to tariff, now shed tears because of the grid? Six hundred and ninety-three CONTAINERS, with some of them stranded at the ports for about 15 years!

    So, if Olukoyede expects anyone to be moved to tears by what he said, he would have to wait for Godot. As far as many, if not most Nigerians are concerned, they have since moved on, waiting for the next bombshell from heaven or the pit of hell. Nothing shocks us again as a people. And that is why we are where we are today.

    I hate the expression: ‘where we find ourselves’ because we brought ourselves here by our complacency; we didn’t just find ourselves here. This we all know. So, why pretend?

  • On the management of mismanagement

    On the management of mismanagement

    At bay in Olduvai Gorge

    Olduvai Gorge is somewhere in East Africa, in modern Tanzania to be precise. Inside its humungous crevices, the oldest human habitations were discovered some time ago. That was until recently when what appeared to be some far more ancient dwelling caves were discovered at Iho Eleru in contemporary western Nigeria. Taken together, both human habitats confirm the scientific hunch that it was in Africa that what has come to be known as human civilization sprouted until humankind began the long trek to Asia, Europe and other parts of the globe. As the founding continent, the African DNA produced the later prototypes of humans and remains the warehouse of its original wiring. If the Iho Eleru hypothesis receives scientific validation, it can be advanced that Nigeria is home to the vestigial remains of what became the basis of modern civilization.

    This is probably why when left to their own devices or when they find themselves in more amenable and conducive circumstances, Nigerians often exhibit extraordinary mental latitude, a physical resilience and astonishing creative capacity which propel them to the top of their game anywhere they find themselves. Yet tragically enough, and despite its vast human resources, Nigeria as a nation has become a top candidate for ultimate state failure and a poster boy for poverty and underdevelopment. How does one explain the horrid mismatch between potential and actuality, and between the oceanic plenitude of natural resources and the parlous condition of the people which has reduced many to the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence reminiscent of their Iho Eleru primitive ancestors?

        When you are in a hole, you must stop digging. A propaganda blitz which hides the roots of failure and the principal cause of illness from the afflicted does not enhance the possibility of swift recovery. Truth is an antiseptic cotton wool which clears the wound of its septic rot. Without this, the wound will continue to fester and suppurate. Let us face the truth so that it can cleanse and clear our wounds for proper dressing. These are not the best of time to be a Nigerian. Our national and international stock has never fallen so low. The level of de-civilization, de-institutionalization and consequent dehumanization witnessed in contemporary Nigeria is enough to send shivers into the heart of the most civilized denizens of the troubled nation.  The consequences of decades of economic brutalization of the people and the mindless plundering of national resources are here with us.

    Read Also; Sokoto: Lamido, Wamakko in supremacy battle

    Everywhere you turn, there are dangerous signs of looming implosion, apocalyptic signals of the end of the times as we know it and the heavy rumbling of a heaving behemoth just about to topple over. The virtual administrative and economic collapse of the famous University College Hospital in Ibadan last week after the stars of the national eclipse finally pulled the plugs on the institution should be a worrisome index of the disorientation and dysfunction that have overtaken us. Before our very eyes, electricity supply in the country has become a criminal franchise in which people with stone hearts and utter lack of regard for state regulation of enterprise hold the entire populace to ransom without any consequence. Bent on squeezing the last penny from an already bitter and pauperized citizenry, they even go as far as to spurn state directives not to offload the cost of procuring new meter bands on the overburden people. So far it appears as if it is the state that is feeling the heat in this economic confrontation with non-state actors.

    Such is the criminal impunity of these people that a top Lagos State official told this writer last week that they can actually get away with murder because they are a monopoly with the capacity to blackmail even the state itself. To buttress his point, the official cited many legal cases pending in court against these power Mafiosi. Even when rulings are obtained against them, they simply refuse to comply. In some instances, it is the officials themselves who goad the consumers to commit infractions only to turn against them after they have collected gratification. In other instances, they employ rogue units within their organization in sting operations only to turn round to accuse the owners of premises of grave infractions.

    It is a colossal and gigantic scam against innocent people in which monthly targets are set and monthly targets have to be met at all cost. As it is and as the nation begins to resemble an Olduvai Gorge of cave people deprived of one of the wonders of modernity and civilization political primitivity is clearly going to meet economic primitivity head on. This is going to be far more severe in consequences than the polite and civilized manner of resorting to self- help. Perhaps we are already seeing the precursor to this final settling of scores in the attempts to torch the facilities of power-supplying consortiums. Like the struggle for oil in which oil thieves are requested by government to prevent oil theft, this one is possibly going to take an equally vicious and absurdist dimension before we arrive at Eugene Ionesco’s terminus of termites.

       The scales of decades of political, economic and spiritual decimation of the country are now falling off our eyes revealing a level of vandalization and elite delinquency probably unique in the history of class formation anywhere in the world. Even our colonial masters must now be secretly wondering about the end-product of their experimentation and the possibilities of an apocalyptic endgame in which semi-Asiatic hordes square up to Nubian mongrels. Having inherited this level of mismanagement from another elite formation within its own party, the government has come up with a rash of measures including the odd fire brigade approach aimed at stemming the rot. But it is also acutely and critically aware of how far it can go without threatening the basis of its own ascendancy.

       Not being radical or revolutionary in its original impetus or inspiration, the government knows how far it can go in a particular direction without bringing down the roof of the unstable coalition that propelled it to power. Hence the resort to what can only be described as the management of mismanagement, a temporizing and stonewalling stratagem of power pragmatism which tries not to give offence to the few that really matter  while ignoring the many that don’t. In the circumstances, anybody expecting any wholesale or holistic restructuring program from the administration is wasting his time at this point. What advocates and lobbyists should do is to raise the game and the level of discourse rather than resorting to old, shopworn rhetoric about devolution of power, fiscal federalism and all what not. Those who do management of mismanagement are not in the least interested in such a display of power virginity.

       But even then and despite all this, such is the fractious and unstable nature of power pragmatism and the management of mismanagement that they are often confronted by the echoes of their own political and economic limitations. Management of mismanagement is a skilled science of political gamesmanship which requires creative brinkmanship and the brilliance of the ultimate trapeze artist. It cannot afford to indulge in ambitious economic and political reform because failure in the project may invite more revolutionary intervention or radical anarchy.  Yet as business-friendly and as politically inoffensive as the ruling administration may be or want to appear to those that matter, there are many who believe that floating the naira and plugging the loopholes in the forex gaming known as subsidy removal have done irreparable and incalculable damage to their business. They are now poised for war.

       At the opposite side of the spectrum are enemy nationals who are engaged in a campaign of permanent economic destabilization of the nation as long as their skewered and schizoid ideal of the nation does not prevail. With their access to the media, they subject the ruling party and its leading lights to merciless excoriation on a daily basis and they in turn respond through their hirelings with commensurate firepower making it feel as if the country is on a permanent siege. It can now be seen that even the management of mismanagement has its work cut out for it to prevent Nigeria from tipping over to the Olduvai Gorge of primitive cave-people and savage hunter-gatherer. At the rate at which we are going, we are not very far from this terminal debacle of the Black race.

      Management of mismanagement, or the capacity to prevent a terrible situation from further deteriorating, is not the best option for a nation rendered economically and politically destitute by a delinquent elite formation. But it has advantages over sheer mismanagement. Although it can never and will never be able to deliver on ambitious economic and political transformation of the country or drive political equity and social justice, it can prevent the situation from tipping into anarchy or prevent the hostile factions from coming to blows by strategic appointments and skillful allocation of resources. How long this will last and how long the ruling cartel can hold forth depends on its capacity to feel its way through the minefield and deliver on the largesse.

  • The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all…

    The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all…

    A funereal pall hangs over most of New York on this bright mid-November morning. All is eerily quiet on the western front. The streets have been cleared of the electorally vanquished. The protocol of liberal grandees has disappeared into their suburban dens. But the victors are in a triumphant procession. It is a strange victory indeed. The odd, doleful and lugubrious Black vagrant could be seen occasionally punching the air in a gesture of defiance while spurting some insensate nonsense. Donald Trump, the grandson of a drafter dodger expelled from the Bavarian principality, carries all before him.

        Not even his greatest and most implacable political adversary could doubt the scale and scope of the electoral disaster the anti-democratic heathen and convicted felon has inflicted on the Democratic Party and various armchair critics—yours sincerely included— the world over. It has taken a serially and severely flawed person to bring out the worst about America and to remind us once again that democracy is about numbers and not about wishful thinking or romantic exhortations.

    The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all when it comes to modern liberal democracy. When self-interests conspire to gain ascendancy, all other interests, including national interest, must take a back seat. America has taken a look at its own inner demons and recoiled in horror and terror. The time for expansive nobility will come in the fullness of time, but not this time around. The stakes are just too high for any sentimental twaddle.  The time for the generosity of spirit which facilitates equality of outlook will soon arrive once again but not this time around. The economic outlook is just too bleak for that kind of suicidal high-mindedness. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

    And so they all voted for Trump in droves and high number while shrugging it all away in the privacy of solitude as a small price to pay for survival in a harsh environment deliberately created by Trump and other economic confederates. One bird does not have the luxury of informing the other bird about a fast approaching pellet. And so they all voted for Trump in droves and in the conspiracy of privacy which later became damning and shaming public knowledge. It is not a thing to be proud of and that it is why the jubilation has been muted in many circles. But as Catch-22 has famously taught them, one’s concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers real and immediate is the product of a rational mind.

    Read Also; Inflation still biting hard

     Black people fearing the prospects and possibility of economic  extinction above all other mortal fears; clergy people who dreaded the possibility fiscal annihilation more than the prospects of Trump’s moral infamy; women who believed more in presidential macho and machismo than in the feminized wiles and charms of a female president of the greatest military power the world has seen; Black men who simply abjured the possibility of a Black woman as commander in chief and of course the teeming mass of urban and suburban White males who simply pooh-poohed the idea of a woman, and a Black woman for that matter, as the president of the United States of America. By the time they all came together in a granite composite of contraries and contradictions, it was all too much for poor Kamila who fled from public view as the evidence of rejection and comprehensive shellacking began to mount on that historic night.

       America has once again shown the world how historical momentums are made and lost. It will take quite some time before it came together like this one once again. It has happened once, when the brilliant and magical Barack Obama broke all the barriers of race and religion and shattered the glass ceiling of colour and creed to emerge as president of the United States. Hilary Clinton almost completed the race, having won the electoral majority only to be thwarted at the Electoral College. But that is probably why they are having this implacable and ferocious backlash in America. Once bitten and twice about to be stung, no dice.

      America has taken a bad beat from its own inner demons. Democracy and its finer ideals and capacity to produce men and women who are driven by the visionary ideal of a more humane and better organized society have receded to their lowest ebb. It will take time to recoup and regroup. It will take energy, drive and superhuman will. It is too early to write off this nation of sturdy immigrants. Trump and his cohorts will make this possible. This is why there is a ring of historical inevitability about the coming of this particular fellow and the return of the shining city on the hills. Uncle Sam will be back.

    This column is on annual leave.                     

  • Now that they say another terror group Lakurawa has birthed in the North

    Now that they say another terror group Lakurawa has birthed in the North

    In the wake of the arrival of a new terror group, Lakurawa, in Northern Nigeria, a group which, funny enough, was said to have been initially invited by local leaders in the Gudu and Tangaza LGAs of Sokoto State in 2017 to address the then growing threat by bandits from Zamfara State, I think it is time Northern leadership, in all its ramification, wake up to help  the region get out of its literal strangulation.

    It is time they both in urgency, and unanimity, as they recently did tearing down the tax bill before the National Assembly,  find solutions to the myriad of insecurity and other social challenges aggressively convulsing that part of the country, rather than always misapplying – to put it nicely – funds put in care of some of them to get their out of school children into schools – reminds one of President Goodluck Jonathan’s titanic effort in that respect – or to fight terrorism, as it has just been alleged that millions of dollars appropriated for fighting Boko Haram was diverted into Luxury Real Estate in the United States by a former National Security Adviser.

    The PPLAAF report which contained that allegation  stated that tens of millions allegedly misappropriated by the Adviser ended up funding luxury properties in Los Angeles, California, and McLean, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC.

    This is not the first time the columnist is pleading with them to help the region  because, as my good friend, Tony Sani, the highly perceptive former ACF Publicity Secretary, never ceases to say, “Nigeria is a big river being fed by tributaries, and when one tributary is poisoned(as the North appears), the whole river gets contaminated.

    I urge my readers to come with me as I reproduce below, my article of 21 April , 2019 titled “The North: Militancy, Banditry And The Rest Of Us” which was published on these pages.

    Read Also; Inflation still biting hard

    Happy reading.

    “It is crunch time, indeed. This harvest of despair is the product of many years of servile bondage, repression, suppression, deliberate pauperization of the people and placing their destinies and lives at impossible angles. My late father used to warn the Northern elite. This is morning yet; the Somalization of the far North is fast becoming a reality” – Dr C.C. Nwagwu

    Completely unknown to me that this newspaper would be running an interview it had with Anthony N. Z Sani, my friend, and Secretary- General of the Arewa Consultative Forum in its edition of Sunday, 14 April 2019 in which, incidentally, my own article:’It is Crunch Time’ appeared, I had written to him a few days earlier as follows: “Tony what’s the problem with the North? Please talk to me at some length. Why has the North become a killing field? Is it that human lives mean nothing up there? I am at a complete loss; so am raising these questions in my column this Sunday.

    Without a doubt feudalism, I guess, is at the root of Northern problems. For far too long education was denied to the children of the poor. Of course, you know that more than religion, illiteracy is the problem and it is what invigorates Boko Haram. But who and who is funding BH and are our security agencies so helpless they can’t find them out all this while? Has it occurred to Northern leaders the region is becoming a massive drain on the country?What is the exact cause of the problems in Zamfara? However, the million-dollar question really is: how do we exit these North- inspired problems? Please feel free to share this within your circle so we can generate well distilled reactions”.

    Never known to disappoint, Tony wrote back as follows: “Good morning and thank you for the concern. I think there is a swarm of locust in the land and we do not seem to know the pests. Hence our inability to device the appropriate pesticides. I am happy some of you down there are also concerned. This is because Nigeria is a big river being fed by tributaries, and when one tributary is poisoned, the whole river is contaminated.

    When in 2011 there was post election problems in the North and hoodlums burnt down some traditional rulers’ houses, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi called, and warned about the consequences of destroying the only platform of effective control in the North. To him, it is not time to dismiss the vestiges of indirect rule. That is, he saw wisdom in indirect rule by the British. Then there was the problem of education whose slow pace of development in the North cannot be blamed entirely on the leadership all of who could not possibly be depicted as feckless. I told him to consider the time Western education started in the South and when it reached the North which is almost a century. There is also the factor of unbridled growth in population. I mentioned “unbridled growth in population” because, the rate is not commensurate with growth of the economy, hence the poverty that comes with unemployment. For instance, the population of Nigeria and Britain were at par at our independence but today Britain is 62M while Nigeria is about 180M. What rate of GDP can cope with such increase? Without a doubt, the challenges are far more overwhelming than  the capacity of the leaders, considering the difference between the level of education at independence and today, in the North. The difference is much.

    Somehow, I believe in what Lee Kuan Yew (of Singapore) once said that: order, justice, liberty, common decency, and prosperity are never the natural order of things, but are attained through ceaseless hard work by the leaders, and the led,  and  that there is no country or society that is perfect. What matters when challenges arise is consciously directed effort to overcome them. I believe that President Buhari has what it takes to overcome our challenges.

    Terrorism is universal, and unfolding; and Nigeria has predisposing factors that encourage it. The sponsors of BH may not even be Nigerians. During one of our interactions with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on the underlying factors of terrorism or insecurity, he traced BH to thugs used by Gov Mala Kachalla and Senator Modu Sheriff both of Borno state. The same thing with Niger- Delta militants and in Benue State where Gana, who was the leader of political thugs, turned out the  Frankenstein monster.

    Whether he is right or not, one cannot say. When the minister of finance (read Defence) accused traditional rulers in Zamfara of complicity in banditry, I had my doubts. But sad if it is true. Then it might be borne out of fear which one can liken to the Palestinian saga. When asked why they did not expose Hamas members, the Palestinians said doing so would have made Hamas kill them at night, and as they feared to expose them, the Israelis bombed them making them losers, either way.

    In the same way, our soldiers killed many village heads in the North East during the President Goodluck Jonathan administration because of the suspicion that they shielded members of the sects which they did out of fear. When PMB came in, and overwhelmed the sects, the same villagers started to give information to the security people. In the same way, some traditional rulers in Zamfara may shield the bandits out of fear for their and their peoples safety”.

    Sani and I went on, and on, in a few exchanges but let’s cut to the chase and properly distil his full-throated piece in which he identified: lack of education, uncontrolled and unbridled population growth and poor governance. It is sad that poor governance continues till today as exemplified in the 10M plus out of school children who wander about as Almajiris, whilst the governors go about in their free flowing babarigas, at best buying them okadas after which they are trucked down, in their hundreds, to every nook and cranny of the South, as Okada riders maiming themselves as well as their patrons. I am sure the governors see this as their own Youth Empowerment while they go on acquiring more wives.

    May Allah forgive them.

    So, what has been the response of the Northern elite to the debilitating factors so perspicaciously identified by the Secretary – General of the ‘numero uno’ Northern socio- political organisation which, for once, this past week, weighed in on the increasing Somalization of the region when it called on President Buhari to stop the killings? Northern political elite read politics into it when, before, and even after independence, Chief Obafemi Awolowo drew their attention to what trouble the North was breeding when it chose, deliberately, not to educate the children of the poor, but looked, askance, at both the Western and Eastern regions putting massive investment into education. Today village chiefs, even some minor Emirs, are being chased out of their palaces. And as Dr Nwagwu wrote in the intro this, unfortunately, is only the beginning as Somali, Sudan and Syria have comprehensively shown in other parts of the world.

    With regards to over population, what was the North’s take away when during the 2015 election campaigns Mrs Patience Jonathan, poked fun at the North on account of its many children, most of who are thrown into the streets from very early ages? Which one single governor made a move towards checking his state’s unproductive population growth? Or which cleric lent a hand in their tough preaching’s which (then) governor El Rufai had to warn against? The North has many, if not most, of our highly regarded monarchs. What has any of them done to mitigate the factors that continue to undermine the North  economically and socially,

    but with political privileges forever constant?

    Isn’t political, even traditional power, for a purpose? How exactly has the Northern traditional and religious elite – helped to positively impact governance at both state or local government levels,  and even at the  national level,  how are they helping a seemingly overwhelmed President Buhari?

    6Or wasn’t it only this past week we heard that Zamfara monarchs are helping bandits with intelligence? Have they taken out time to reflect on a future when the North begins to reap the whirlwind? And do they, or the North in general, ever reflect on what a drain it has become on the national treasury, even as nothing points to a remediation of current realities at a time when the country’s entire security apparatchik lies smack in the hands of Northerners who are supposed to know, and be quite familiar, with their own terrain?

    Finally, like Sani wrote, the Northern elite must reflect on the fact that: Nigeria is a big river being fed by tributaries, and when one tributary is poisoned, the whole river is contaminated”. They should, therefore, turn a new leaf, help out, and be their brothers’ keepers, as the holy books enjoin us all.

    It is time the North decides to help itself. As everybody knows, the North is more than capable of salvaging itself and, ipso facto, help this beleaguered country.

    Du Allah.

  • Nigeria’s somnolent opposition

    Nigeria’s somnolent opposition

    There is some level of consensus about the idea that Nigeria’s opposition political parties are somnolent. This condition results in listlessness, silence or speaking without coordination or even what, in common parlance, is called ‘not knowing what one is saying’. According to the 31 October, 2024 editorial of the Guardian titled, “For a resilient and disciplined political party system,” there is “the propensity for opposition parties to slip into coma and disarray once they lose an election and fail to form government, becoming weak, rudderless and unable to project alternate policy options to those offered by the government of the day.” The editorial then admonishes the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the foremost opposition party, “to wake up and put its house in order.”

    Similarly, a story tellingly titled “PDP sleep-walks as opposition goes into oblivion,” in the 18 August, 2024 issue of BusinessDay noted: “[Except] only former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who seems to be a lonely voice from the party against the APC, other leaders appear to be in a slumber or in bed with the ruling party. There is hardly any strong opposition with constructive or disruptive views. Since the end of the last elections, the opposition political parties have gone to sleep, leaving the ruling APC and the federal government to ride roughshod over Nigerians.”

    Veteran media personality, Mr. Tonnie Iredia, had also remarked, in a 30 June, 2024 article titled, “Unending weak political opposition in Nigeria,” in the Vanguard: “Only Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi who were the candidates of [PDP and Labour Party] respectively [in the 2023 presidential elections] have been the ones speaking or making any move that provides some evidence that they may contest again; thereby turning opposition politics into a personality affair. Not much is done in what should have been a daily robust evaluation and analysis of government policies item by item that can push office-holders into retracing some of their steps or be cautious of their next move.”

    Read Also; Sokoto: Lamido, Wamakko in supremacy battle

    A 28 September, 2024 story by Emmanuel Oladesu, titled “Nigerian opposition in disarray,” in The Nation posits: “[The] Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and Labour Party (LP) – are currently in disarray. Public servants elected on these platforms jump ship at will. They hide under the crisis rocking their parties to defect to the ruling party instead of building an effective opposition. … Four reasons are responsible for the escalation of crisis in the three parties. These are the absence of unifying ideas beyond the aspiration to hijack power, poor adjustment to limiting conditions of opposition platforms outside government, lack of effective leadership that commands respect and weakness of crisis resolution mechanism that has made reconciliation impossible.”

    In the absence of intellectual rigour, Nigeria’s opposition parties lapse into the less-mentally-demanding option of political insults, and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been their target of choice.  The President has been demonised so much that, ironically, heroic elements of his personality begin to shine out brightly. At the same time, the chimera they have created in their imagination about him is beginning to cast real fear into the hearts of the opposition and their associates. This fear is manifested in the ongoing obsession with the presumed Tinubu and APC schemes to create a one-party state.

    It is interesting to note, in this regard, a 4 November, 2024 interview granted by foundation PDP member and elder statesperson Sule Lamido, former Governor of Jigawa State and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Trust TV’s Manir Dan Ali. In it, Lamido said: “Do you know Tinubu at all? … God save you if you don’t know him. … I know his capacity. … I mean his capacity, sagacity, the skill. This is somebody who can manipulate anything to get what he wants. So, fear him.” Lamido went further: “He schemed and survived. … Against all institutions, historical institutions against all formations, against ACF, against Ohaneze, against Afenifere, against everything.”

    Lamido continued: “The [present] government is essentially owned by him. … With Tinubu in that place [Presidency] now, if you look at his history, no Nigerian leader has been there on his own. … They are all coming from institutions or a constituency. … But Tinubu is his own personality. There is neither constituency today nor institution that can say I made Tinubu.” With the seeming desire on the part of Sule Lamido to portray Tinubu uncomplimentarily and the seeming inadvertent portrayal of the President heroically, Manir Dan Ali asked rhetorically: “Isn’t that [set of qualities] a novelty to be celebrated rather than derided?”

    Due to the inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for their failures, some members of the opposition ascribe the problems in their parties to machinations by President Tinubu and the APC. For example, in an 18 October, 2024 Guardian story titled “APC accused of meddling ahead of 2027 polls as PDP, LP reel from internal crises,” the National Chairman, of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Ajuji Ahmed, was reported to have said: “The APC is doing everything possible to win the 2027 general election. Indeed, there is evidence everywhere that they are interfering with the other parties.” Moreover, in a 16 October, 2024 Arise News interview, Kola Ologbondiyan, former National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, alleged that “they” have “put fire” in the NNPP, LP and PDP, thereby creating “a dangerous trend” towards reducing Nigeria to a “one-party state.”

    The individual efforts at performing opposition duties, which parties have left undone, have opened the parties to bearing responsibility for the unsalutary aspects of those individuals’ antecedents. For example, Atiku Abubakar has worsened the fissures in the PDP by refusing to respect the zoning provision of the party’s constitution which required a Southerner to be fielded as presidential candidate for the 2023 elections. Rather inconsistently, he has been reported to have proposed a revision of the nation’s constitution to provide for rotational presidency. This is not reassuring about his potentials to respect the rule of law, if he becomes president.

    In addition, in what amounts to a serious level of indiscretion, Peter Obi, seemingly the most vocal opposition figure, stoked ethnic controversy by alluding to the Tinubu presidency: “It’s our turn. He’s a Yoruba man. Ask the people in Ogun here, is there any place where you people buy bread cheaper? I can follow you and buy one.” Meanwhile, Obi’s own major basis of joining the presidential race was that it was time for Igbo presidency. Ironically, some prominent Yoruba leaders such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Pa Ayo Adebanjo were among the most vociferous champions of Ibolokan (‘It’s the turn of Igbos’) during the campaigns. Doyin Okupe, a Yoruba man, who is a former Director-General of Obi’s presidential campaign committee took exception to Obi’s ethnic taunts, which surely are not an endearing course of action for an aspiring president.

    To be evenhanded, it would have been nice for Peter Obi to taunt Igbos for voting massively for his Labour Party in Abia State in 2023, within the broader context of the idea that it was time for Igbo presidency. Igbo pensioners in that state governed by Peter Obi’s party have been intimidated and manipulated into signing government-produced documents which purport inhumanely that the pensioners had agreed to forfeit their many months of unpaid pensions. The acquiescent silence of Peter Obi and indeed the opposition in general in the pension travesty in that state is not the way to earn electorate trust. Is the callousness with which Igbo pensioners are currently being treated in Abia State an indication of what awaits Igbos generally, should Obi become president?

    Peter Obi has also upset his religious base. For the 2023 elections, Obi frequented churches, and exhorted them: “Church, wake up, take back its country.” He also framed his presidential contest as a religious war. However, in a currently trending video, Obi linked the widespread presence of churches with unproductiveness, and declared: “We’re going to turn night vigil to night shift, so that people can be productive.” Some of his religion-motivated supporters have expressed anger at this seemingly hypocritical declaration. This worrisome inconsistency and ficklesomeness are not reassuring for the over 200 million Nigerians who desire a stable leader.

    Furthermore, Obi said as follows in a speech to Nursing School students, as reported in the 11 November, 2024 issue of Daily Post: “I have always told the Nursing Council not to restrict you people from travelling abroad after graduation. If it is not going to work for you here, go to where it will work for you. … If you want to seek greener pastures outside, please go. I’m sure that when we build a greater Nigeria, you will come back.” This is a pedestrian and superficial understanding of the current Nigerian condition.  It suggests that Peter Obi doesn’t believe that the students or youth have the capacity or the responsibility to contribute to making the country better, and is rather promoting escapism. This certainly is not a reassuring feature of opposition leadership promise.

    Moreover, when the Supreme Court delivered its 11 July, 2024 judgement boosting local government autonomy, there was jubilation across the nation. So far, the two governments which seem to have taken the most hostile steps against that widely-popular, constitutionally-backed and legally-sanctioned local government autonomy initiative of the ruling APC national government are the opposition PDP-controlled Oyo State government and the opposition APGA-controlled Anambra State. Their anti-local-government-autonomy moves could signal opposition parties’ disengagement with the electorate, and can scarcely be expected to endear these parties to the voters, especially, at the national level.

    Indeed, it appears as if no systematic and workable ideas on solving any of Nigeria’s sundry problems can be credited to the country’s opposition. Nigeria’s current opposition parties thus seem not to know how to get positive attention and build credibility. As the BusinessDay report referred to earlier puts it, “Many observers believe that the current opposition is weak, uncoordinated, and ineffective. Where the opposition parties are not internally polarised, fragmented and compromised, they are very ineffective and incompetent.”

    The opposition APC worked hard to defeat the ruling PDP in Nigeria in 2015; the opposition worked hard in Ghana in 2016 to unseat the ruling National Democratic Congress; the opposition worked hard in Liberia in 2023 to defeat the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change; and the opposition worked hard to earn victory over the ruling Botswana Democratic Party in 2024. So, opposition parties don’t get into office through a defeatist phobia for a one-party system, nor do they win elections through dramatising a sense of entitlement, but gain ascendance through concrete, conscientious and consistent hard work. Not recognising these facts would make Nigeria’s present somnolent or somnambulist opposition parties to continue to be unattractive options to the ruling APC.