The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Bode George takes on Atiku

    Bode George takes on Atiku

    Apart from being eloquent and scholarly, Bode George, former Ondo State military governor and Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member, also has the courage of his convictions. Before the last elections, he took on candidate Bola Tinubu with caustic pleasure, advising him to disqualify himself from the 2023 presidential race. Convinced that the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate couldn’t possibly win, Chief George swore he would go on exile should the president take the crown. So, the PDP chieftain never shirks a battle. Now, he has taken on former vice president Atiku Abubakar for being the spoilsport who denied southern aspirants from the presidential race last year when it was obvious he could not win as a northerner. Trust the Lagos-based politician, he will go at Alhaji Atiku hammer and tongs in the coming years, and the former vice president will not have an answer.

    Chief George’s argument is simple. He says: “…In 2027, Atiku will be 81 years, and this is the time for him to embrace the President Joe Biden option of allowing the younger generation to run for the highest office in the land. I have nothing personal against Alhaji Abubakar. He is my friend. But the truth must be told. By 2027, by God’s Grace, I will also be in my 80s. So, what am I looking for in public office as an octogenarian? The same principle should apply to Alhaji Abubakar. We all saw what American President Joe Biden did recently when he stepped down for Kamala Harris to contest the November presidential election…Alhaji Abubakar should do same so that in 2027, the PDP will field a Southerner as presidential candidate.” Chief George needn’t worry. Alhaji Atiku, should he choose to run, will contend with herculean obstacles to take the PDP ticket in 2027. The chances of doing that are very remote, not just because of the formidable array of forces against him in the party, but because of both his age and the inescapable lethargy that goes with it as well as his lack of ideational depth and relevance.

    Almost sarcastically, Chief George dismisses the former vice president’s ambition. He says: “But if Alhaji Abubakar is desperate to contest again, I will advise him as a friend, a party man and brother to wait till 2031. By then, he will be 85 years. As loyal party members, we must continue to respect the PDP constitution. Fair is fair. I joined the PDP in 1998 and I have remained in this party since…The two of us know the principles guiding this party. We should not do anything that will destroy our party and the country. In 2027, the concept of Turn-by-Turn Nigeria Limited must be strictly followed by our party. The PDP must look for a southerner to wrest power from the All Progressives Congress (APC)…So, Nigerians are waiting for us to rescue them in 2027, but a southerner must lead the battle.” Clearly, Alhaji Atiku will not only contend with obdurate insiders, some of them governors interested in the presidency, he will also find himself bruising with insiders uninterested in the hot seat. And they are plenty, some of whom, like Chief George, never migrated from the party but have sustained it out of office since 2015. On the contrary, Alhaji Atiku had twice migrated, demonstrating both his fickleness and obsession. Even now, he is merely waiting in the wings waiting for the opportunity to fight for the ticket and take it by all means, perhaps in a future alliance with the other opportunist in the Labour Party (LP), his soulmate Peter Obi.

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    Chief George is a political pugilist of the first rank. Alhaji Atiku’s spokesmen will, therefore, be wary of taking him on directly. Paul Ibe, the former vice president’s aide, was even warier in his response to the suggestion that his principal should rest his ambition and find a younger, more electable aspirant to back. “It is about 2025 and 2026 and beyond,” Mr Ibe said tersely. “His (Atiku) concern is about the plight of Nigerians who are literarily going through hell because of the failed trial-and-error policies of this administration. The average citizen, and indeed all Nigerians, need to survive… It is insensitive to talk about 2027 now, when the 2023 mandate has not yielded any tangible benefits to Nigerians.” Mr Ibe is preaching to the converted. Chief George never doubted the circumstances of the people, nor how the economy had pulverised them. All he says is that the PDP will need a southerner as their champion in the next election cycle. And it is precisely the southern candidate issue that Alhaji Atiku and his aides and supporters seem inured to and unwilling to discuss. For him, and unlike Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi, the last election is history, with a winner emerging in fact and in law. His main concern is the next poll for which he is not willing in any circumstance to contemplate a northern candidate. In other words, in 2023, the dispute was about the PDP’s rotational presidency formula; and in 2027, according to him, it will still be about the same issue. Given the patronising view of Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed not to contest the presidency if ex-president Goddluck Jonathan showed interest, it seems certain that many PDP leaders are alarmingly not indisposed to another northern candidate. The war in the PDP is just beginning, and it will be marked by many battles, some of them spilling over to the LP also riven by conflict over suspicions of infernal and unpopular merger plans.

    Happily for Chief George, and despite his trenchant views, no one in the PDP has yet accused him of supporting President Tinubu, either directly or indirectly. They know where he stands on the president. More, the vice president’s aides are tongue-tied because they also know where the PDP chieftain stands on the PDP imbroglio. He has been consistent in both his opposition to the president and support for a southern PDP candidate for the presidency. He has not been quite as sympathetic to the president on the issues confronting the administration, but he acknowledges that before the last administration left office the country teetered on the brink as a result of economic mismanagement. And while in his estimation President Tinubu’s policies and measures have been in some respect suspect and even conflicting, he appears convinced that Nigeria would have fared worse under an Atiku presidency. He told a television channel: “If Atiku had won, I would have stayed in my house because I know for real that in future he would collapse. This country would never accept. If he had won that election you think this country would have been stable? Because somebody from the north had just finished eight years, and our own norm is that after the eight years, the presidential candidate must come to the south…”

    While the PDP may be shaping up for a titanic battle, and the LP is mired in the mediocrity of its ambitions and internal dissensions, it would be a mistake for the APC to think it could not be punished for the economic hardship it has brought upon the people. At the moment, President Tinubu is unpopular. Even after the economy has turned the corner as he hopes, the aftershocks of his economic reset agenda and the inconsistencies of some of his policies will leave a lingering and bitter taste in the mouths of many. He has stepped on toes, powerful toes, and has shown he is not beholden to anyone. These attributes may yet prove consequential to his ambition. In his first term, ex-president Muhammadu Buhari ignored powerful voices in the Republic in an admittedly perverse and heedless manner. Had he not rallied late in his first term and grovelled before many of the leading politicians he had initially alienated or humiliated, and had he not resisted the desperate but sensible urge to reform and recalibrate the economy, he would have lost reelection. Chief George may refuse to take issue with the current administration, but it is cold comfort for President Tinubu that in the months ahead his opponents will remain in disarray, and highly-placed critics are a little restrained. However, for now, he can sit back and enjoy Chief George skewering Alhaji Atiku.

  • Atiku, Obi and Opposition Politics 101

    Atiku, Obi and Opposition Politics 101

    Apart from their make-believe struggle to determine who is the preeminent opposition politician or political party, both ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar and ex-Anambra governor Peter Obi are at bottom playing the script they cleverly, or perhaps telepathically, set out to play weeks after they lost their cases at the Supreme Court against the election of President Bola Tinubu. Since then, and sometimes on the same issues, they have synergised probably the most toxic brand of political opposition uncommon to Nigeria. Both opposition leaders are instinctively and exaggeratedly against nearly every policy enacted and every measure taken by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Between December 2023 and January 2024, the two opposition politicians insisted that the outcome of the presidential election settled the matter of who should be the leading opposition leader in Nigeria. In losing the election to President Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku had 6.98 million votes while Peter Obi had 6.1 million votes. The gap between the two candidates was less than a million votes, perhaps not enough to say conclusively that the former trumped the latter. The overall voter turnout was less than 27 percent, with the former vice president taking about 29.1 percent and Mr Obi taking 25.4 percent. Neither the struggle for preeminence nor the legitimacy of the election is affected by the low voter turnout because all the candidates in that election contributed to the abysmal figures. Both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi, not to say their supporters and statisticians, had at first insinuated that the election winner’s legitimacy was compromised by the low turnout. Since the candidates could not manufacture votes, despite unfounded accusations of vote rigging, the final tally mirrored the state of Nigerian politics and the inability of the candidates to fire the imagination of the people on a scale that would lead to higher voter figures. Had the poll been cancelled due to low voter turnout, any repeat election would have attracted an even lower turnout. 

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    However, Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have gone to great lengths to avoid provoking or antagonising each other. They have trained their guns on the ‘enemy’, and while giving the impression that they were at odds with each other, they have in fact managed to synergise their opposition style, sometimes secretively and bizarrely, and at other times a little flagrantly and nonchalantly. What is more, neither politician has shown a clear and systematic understanding of what opposition politics should look and sound like. Instead of identifying where they were coming from and where they are located in the political scheme of things, they have focused almost exclusively on the federal government, thereby indicating that the only thing important to them is how to gain the presidency. Whatever they say from now on will be geared towards seeking the best way to enhance their prospects at the next election or how to outrightly gain the presidency at first try.

    Their misdirected focus has precluded them from reforming or repositioning their parties in preparation for that great next election. Consequently, instead of applauding any good national policy, they focus on and excoriate policies that distort the system or inflict pain, even if temporary. They see creeping intolerance and fascism in government’s firmness, or perhaps conjure them; instinctively defend anyone or group which defy the rule of law, as organised labour’s Mr Ajaero has done; dredge up stories about abuses that in some cases embarrassingly turn out to be untrue, without offering any retraction; and select issues to address, not in order of importance, but often in order of emotional appeal.

    But what they really need is to address the dysfunctionality in their parties, their inability to manage or inspire subordinate party leaders, remake their ideological platforms to achieve clarity of purpose, structure or restructure their opposition to policies and methods of the ruling party, and put the interest of country above party interest or personal ambition. So far, in their understanding of opposition politics, they have both given the impression that their positions in the society and the kind of opposition they project against the administration would be justified if the country crashed. Without country, however, there would be no opposition but enemies, a distinct feature of civil war. Opposition leaders should put up a great show in 2027 rather than poison relationships on social media and through propaganda. They need to unite when the republic is threatened, such as during the last protests, rather than catalyse its collapse for partisan advantage. If the opposition does not redefine and refine their understanding of the concept of opposition, they will continue to focus inordinately on just attacking everything the government does without offering an alternative.

    So far, the two leading opposition leaders have strategically refrained from attacking each other because they trace their antecedents to the same roots, indicating that had either of them assumed power, neither would have pilloried the other with the same severity and regularity mustered today. But, contrary to their expectation, it is hard to see them translating the kind of opposition they are practising today into delivering a successful electoral outcome in 2027. If they have the time and the capacity, both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi need to relearn Opposition Politics 101.

  • Gov Ododo’s men go berserk

    Gov Ododo’s men go berserk

    Moments after the Supreme Court affirmed Kogi State governor Usman Ododo‘s election two Fridays ago, his supporters began attacking Social Democratic Party’s Murtala Ajaka, his challenger during the election, outside the court. Kogi’s nearness to Abuja where the verdict was delivered enables the state and its politicians to easily and cheaply mobilise their supporters for sundry purposes, including muscling opponents. Former governor Yahaya Bello, now a fugitive, deployed this art of strong-arm politics with dexterity. There was no reason on August 23 to believe that the ascension of Mr Ododo had suddenly purged the state of such nefarious tendencies. So, the law enforcement agencies should have anticipated the ugly display.

    It is unlikely Mr Ododo himself engineered the attack on Mr Ajaka, but he bears vicarious responsibility for the actions of the thugs. The miscreants had leaders. The governor should have, therefore, ensured his travelling supporters were well tethered. The governor’s visage exudes geniality, but he must by now have realised that he inherited a political culture from Mr Bello that is distinctly and horrendously anti-democratic. His predecessor believed in using strong-arm tactics in pacifying opponents, and Abuja and pliant law enforcement agencies had for years looked the other way. That disconcerting style, nurtured for decades it seems, nearly turned tragic two Fridays ago had security agents not regained their composure and shuffled Mr Ajaka out of harm’s way.

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    The challenger did nothing untoward in questioning Mr Ododo’s victory. It was the right thing to do, especially given the appalling circumstances of last November’s Kogi governorship election. That he lost in the courts was not necessarily an indication of the political and electoral realities of the last election; it was more an indication of his inability, and indeed the inability of any challenger in Nigeria, to prove electoral victory. In his heart, whether he acknowledges it or not, Mr Ododo knows that his victories, both at the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary and the election itself, were suspect. His Supreme Court victory, in all likelihood, reflects the controversial mechanics of Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence than it mirrored the integrity of the November poll. He doubtless expected the Ajaka challenge, and barely escaped defeat by the skin of his teeth. That his hysterical supporters failed to understand that should inspire the governor to find ways of civilising the state and its electorate.

  • Headwinds against democracy

    Headwinds against democracy

    The Wages of Elite Dysfunction

    If it were to be a Nigerian, democracy will also play victimhood. Despite persistent efforts to undermine and even destroy it from within by rival gangs of the political elite, democracy hardly complains. When countervailing actions are taken against them to maintain a balance of terror in the consuming game of chess that politics is, it is democracy that gets the blame. They do grumble and whine a lot, this lot. It is as if that alone will alter the balance of forces.

    To the naïve and unsuspecting observer, democracy has brought no joy to the nation; neither has it enhanced its economic growth or political development. Nothing has changed in the template of governance or in the conduct of political office holders since independence. If anything, the auguries are more troubling. The same draconian malice, mutual intolerance and ethnic baiting that characterized the First Republic have continued till date at an even more alarming rate. It is as if the civil war and millions of life wasted, mutinies, civil uprisings and ongoing religious insurrections never took place. Yet the truth is that without the promise of democracy or the phony equivalent we often resort to, the nation would have disappeared a long time ago. 

    In the First Republic, the Balewa administration, despite its veneer of respectability and restraint, unleashed a reign of terror on the opposition which stretched the fragile fabric of democratic rule until it snapped. Beginning with the engineered fracturing of the Action Group, the decimation of its leadership, the controversial restructuring of the country, the political subjugation of a vital federating unit, it ended in conflagration  and the destruction of civil rule. It is instructive that one of the reasons advanced by the military mutineers of January 1966 was the deployment of military personnel to quell civil uprising.  

    In the Second Republic as if operating the ancient manual of the First Republic and despite projecting the image of  dovish amiability and  reticence, the NPN and its allies struck at opposition stronghold and held the nation to electoral ransom until the military struck again at the tail end of 1983. General Babangida’s controversial and insalubrious Third Republic ended in vitrio as a result of the authoritarian intemperance and ethnic baiting of its promulgators. In the post-military Fourth Republic, General Olusegun Obasanjo, (1999-2007) had tried to revive the famous feudal template of smashing party formations and abrogating the electorate. 

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    After decimating the opposition parties, he abolished the electorate in the infamous 2003 federal elections. He was within an inch of smelling victory in an attempt to elongate his tenure when he was steamrolled by an alert and purposeful senate lead by Ken Nnamani. Nevertheless, he succeeded in imposing the next two leaders on a hapless and prostrate country completely demoralized and disoriented by its leadership crisis.  

    In the case of the general from Daura, after ruling Nigeria for eight tumultuous years, he attempted to revive the old feudal template of hegemonic domination on the floor of his party’s convention in a rather inept and maladroit manner but was immediately beaten back by more pragmatic forces mainly from his faction of the turbulent coalition. Judging from the meek and mild manner with which he accepted reality, it could have been a moment of tragic self-delusion brought on by fatigue and sheer disorientation. But had he succeeded, it would have brought the nation to certain disintegration. It was as if some Nigerian leaders are working for the American prediction of terminal dissolution with the deadline merely extended.

    In the light of all this and judging from the precarious background elaborated above, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the very structure, conglomeration and mode of leadership contention in Nigeria both pre-military and post-military dispensation insinuate a tendency to authoritarian despotism which is hard to get rid of and which has made it virtually impossible to domesticate and naturalize the western ideal of liberal democracy in Nigeria and possibly sub-Saharan Africa. This is why Nigeria is often at the gate of peril and perdition before more pragmatic forces step forward to redeem the nation.

    It is a curious irony that General Obasanjo who is unarguably the greatest exemplar of this Equatorial despotism in postcolonial Nigeria is also currently at the rooftop among those shouting about the unsuitability of the western model of liberal democracy for Nigeria and the Black race. The owl of Owu truly begins its flight at dusk and after the event indeed. If Obasanjo had been that visionary, he ought to have initiated a truly ground-ripping reform of the system when he had all the power, the authority of personal suffering and the prestige at the beginning of his tenure.  But he confused regime-protection in the guise of de-militarization which insulated him against resurgent military distemper with a project of de-feudalization of the whole country. It is instructive that once the clause recommending tenure elongation was expunged, the old man lost appetite in the remaining over two hundred recommendations of his own initiated conference .A particular structure is made up of certain variables which change over time even where the core structure remains unchanging and superficially unchangeable. This means that the more things do not appear to change, the more some aspects do not remain the same.

    While the inner structure of authoritarian despotism in Nigeria has largely remained the same either during military rule or beyond it, some of the features associated with the phenomenon appear to have mutated in response to historical stimuli. For example, having misconceived its role as the driving agent of accelerated development, the Nigerian military has recuperated and regained its sense of perspective as a loyal servant of the state baring any catastrophic meltdown. 

    Unlike in the past when the armed forces were eager to seize power at the slightest pretext, nowadays it is the military themselves who call out those baiting them and asking them to seize power as disloyal citizens and treasonous elements. In November 1993 after warning the political authorities to put their house in order, General Sani Abacha did not waste any further time before kicking them out. Given this background, it is a most sobering irony of Nigeria’s postcolonial history that the military has emerged as the most fanatical agent of democracy in the post-military Fourth Republic.  Something new always happens in Nigeria, and the most potent agent of destabilization of democracy has transformed into its most powerful pillar of stabilization.

    The reality of having the military leadership on its side redounds greatly to the advantage of the Tinubu administration. This is perhaps the greatest dividend of the prodemocracy struggle of which the current Nigerian president is a stirring exemplar. The leader of the greatest conglomeration  of Black people anywhere in the world  must however jealously guard against the lure of authoritarian despotism which we have shown to be the proverbial nemesis of Nigeria’s—and tropical Africa’s– post-independence leadership however personally benign and charitable a particular leader may appear. 

    It may well be the unwieldy and chaotic nature of these artificial countries, their fractious, divisive and polarizing elite groups and their mutually unintelligible nationalities at various, dissimilar and countervailing stages of economic, political and spiritual development that make this option of wielding the big stick sorely tempting indeed. It may also be that an instinctual autocracy is already wired into the DNA of a traditional African big chief trying to become modern leader. 

    Whatever it is, there is something quite distressing about the possibility of a prodemocracy avatar transforming into an antidemocratic leviathan. Having been in the political trenches with him in a period of grave personal peril, this columnist can attest to the fact that the Nigerian leader is a person of unusual courage and indomitable will. God help the country if these qualities, out of frustration and exasperation, are to be leashed to an autocratic charter.

    The auguries are very dire indeed.  Within a spate of fifteen months, the administration has been rocked by two major national upheavals engineered by restive youths and their shadowy national and international sponsors. A third is cooking up. The east has become a virtual war zone. The north is imploding on several fronts as a result of various insurgencies and industrial banditry. Labour has been on strike on several occasions and is threatening another should its leader be impounded by police after casual interrogation.   Last Thursday, the labour strike force actually made it to the police station where it encamped chanting war songs as Ajaero was being grilled for possible infractions against the state. It doesn’t get more bizarre.

    It is obvious that the Tinubu administration is reaping the whirlwind of the mismanagement of the ethnic, religious and cultural diversities of the nation as well as the economic incontinence of the Buhari administration. Never in the history of a modern country has state larceny occurred with such impunity and impudence. Never has there been a more determined attempt to take down a nation by such brazen and barefaced theft of the national patrimony.

    It must be noted for the sake of fairness and objectivity that the government has added its own incendiary mix to the already socially inflammable and politically inhospitable situation by its economic policies. If Mr President was banking on the traditional meekness of the average Nigerian and his fatalistic acceptance of harsh government measures, the swiftness and scale of the reaction ought to have been worrisome to him. It did not take long for normally praise-singing crowd to welcome him to his own Lagos with rude and disrespectful cries of hunger.  

    Being a minority government in a country seething with ethnic rivalry and unceasing mutual hostility, one had always expected a level of political discontent at the outcome of federal elections conducted without substantial elite compliance and pacting. But this time around, the scope, intensity and duration of post-election rancour suggest a worsening of certain aspects of the National Question which can only be exacerbated by electoral competition. The insistence in certain quarters that no matter how the dice is thrown it is not the turn of Tinubu’s ethnic group to rule the nation has merely intensified the smouldering resentment. That insistence is itself a reflection of the collapse of elite consensus. As a government elected without overwhelming popular support, it is not the wisest and smartest thing to adapt the mode and mood of an imperial presidency.

    The upsurge in well-reasoned and well-articulated demands for a repeal of the 1999 Constitution, the demands for a total restructuring or reconfiguration of the country emanating from traditional quarters including Tinubu’s own restive and voluble Yoruba nation and the demand for a wholesale renegotiation of the terms of the incorporation of the country suggests a stirring of the old sullen bear of centrifugal forces from its slumber.  

    As a platform position for darkroom elite renegotiation in the perpetual struggle for the allocation of resources, they normally surface at the tail end of an administration when it is tired, perplexed and consumed by its own contradictions. But coming so early in the life of the current administration suggests that the old wizards of regime incapacitation have sniffed blood or are ready to draw a pint of the stuff. 

    With the military and security forces solidly behind him, the president’s gamble can be gleamed from his response to The Patriots’ group. It is to hope that the benefits of his economic regimen would have manifested in a way that unites the entire country behind him thus putting his political adversaries to shame. This cannot be an overnight miracle. And it cannot extirpate the political tempest. As a well-tested political operative and a master of the manual of political gaming himself, Tinubu is not likely to give in to political blackmail and what he may consider as mere scaremongering by defeated and demoralized hegemons. His instinct will be to fight rather than flee. If this stiffens into a resolve to wield the authoritarian stick, the stage is set for an explosive confrontation which may end in the mutual ruination of all the contending classes and a tipping into chaos and anarchy. This is likely to put paid to liberal democracy. We surely live in interesting times.

  • An encounter at Murtala Mohammed Airport

    An encounter at Murtala Mohammed Airport

    As Nigerians experienced during military rule, nothing brings a country faster to its knees than impunity compounded by impudence and a rude sense of entitlement. The military left a long time ago but it appears that a sense of entitlement is wired into the African DNA. As readers will attest, this column rarely draws attention to its minder, except when it is to give vent to a matter of public importance. We regret to announce that despite the departure of the military, impunity still reigns supreme in some official circles in Nigeria.

      Penultimate Friday evening, yours sincerely arrived at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja on the British Airways flight (BA74) after a short trip abroad. As passengers disembarked and trooped towards the Arrival Hall to fulfill all immigration formalities and righteousness, the sense of order and discipline which had pervaded the aircraft and the departure gate earlier at Heathrow Terminal 5 began to give way. Many were being led by uniformed and ununiformed people towards some dank alleys of privilege and unmerited priorities. Immigration officials were openly collecting multiple passports and yanking people off the queues. The rest of us queued meekly and perseveringly.

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      That was until yours sincerely could no longer put up with the shenanigans. In quiet tempest, one had briskly decoupled himself from the queue and headed straight to the exit and unto the luggage section. On our way, one was accosted by an immigration official who wanted to know whether our passport had been stamped. One simply ignored him. After a few minutes in the hall, one decided that this was not enough and headed straight back to the queue, demanding to see the highest official. They brought the same official who had earlier accosted him but one told him to go and bring his boss. That was when they produced Mr Luka.

       One had narrated his experience to the gentleman and complained about the racketeering and influence peddling going on. In fairness to Mr Luka, he was as polite and courteous as he was professional. He apologized but appeared nonplussed that one was complaining about what has become routine practice. One decided to address him directly. “ Mr Luka, listen to me and listen to me very well. Some of us fought for this democracy and we are not going to sit back and allow it to be destroyed from within”. Thereupon the gentleman apologized once again and personally proceeded to have our passport stamped.    

  • Amnesty International’s contempt for Nigeria

    Amnesty International’s contempt for Nigeria

    Nigeria’s August 1-10 hunger protests coincidentally occurred at the same time with the United Kingdom’s violent anti-immigrant protests. The violence in both countries was not exactly a tale of two cities, especially considering the reasons for the violence. But the coincidence probably showed why the world’s attention was diverted away from the messy protests the #EndBadGovernance street action degenerated into. And with the Russo-Ukrainian war still raging in another corner of the globe, not much attention was paid to Nigeria, despite many top Nigerians reporting their country to the international community and asking them to step in. How? Well, in the view of Amnesty International (AI), and barely a week after the Nigerian protests, arrested Nigerian protesters should be released immediately.

    Amnesty’s condescension is befuddling. In a post on X (Twitter), the human rights organisation said: “The Nigerian authorities are escalating crackdown on peaceful protesters against hunger and corruption. Over 1,000 people have been remanded nationwide. Today (August 16) 441 people were arraigned in Kano, in what is set out to be an unfair trial based on trumped-up charges. Amnesty International again calls for an immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. Nigeria’s government is obligated to uphold the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.” Every word in that post is riddled with contempt for Nigeria, indicating the biases many international human rights bodies are noted for, of course with the collusion of their Nigerian chapters.

    Firstly, the post made no distinction between the protesters. It said they were all peaceful protesters. Really? Of course peaceful protest is enshrined in the constitution as a right no one, let alone the government, can abridge or abrogate. But to say what happened in some of the states where the protests took place was peaceful would be straining credulity. Secondly, that Amnesty was instantaneously able to determine that about 441 protesters who were arraigned in some courts in Kano would be liable to “what is set out to be an unfair trial based on trumped-up charges” should leave every Nigerian patriot dismayed. What made Amnesty to determine ab initio that the trials would be ‘unfair’ and the charges ‘trumped-up’? Because the arrests, remand, and arraignment are happening in Nigeria? And even before the trial got underway, Amnesty was able to conclude that the exercise would be unfair. Incredible!

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    Thirdly, Amnesty called for the ‘immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The human rights body belaboured the term peaceful, insisting that the protesters did nothing wrong unconstitutionally. Now, no report by even the most sympathetic online and traditional media suggested that the protesters were in all cases peaceful. Many states witnessed violent protests, including calling for insurrection and inviting foreign military interventions. It is strange that in the August 1-10 protests Amnesty was unable to discriminate between violent and peaceful protesters, while it also lightly esteemed Nigeria and its courts.

    Conversely, Amnesty said nothing about the equally violent and racist and religious attacks against immigrants and people of colour in the UK. Perhaps the human rights body had more confidence in the UK police. It also said nothing about the rapid trial of suspects, with some of the judges barely able to restrain themselves from exhibiting their anger against the protesters in the UK. If Nigeria had been expeditious in dealing with its violent protesters, and some of the guilty were already in jail, Amnesty would have been less likely to engage in condescending pontifications. But Nigeria has approached the violent protesters nervously and cautiously, incapable of activating quick dispensation of justice and unable to ensure that as many violent protesters as possible were arrested and remanded. Protest videos and posts present damning evidence of looters, burglars and riotous individuals and inciters online. Some of them are even right now still actively calling for a sequel in October. In the UK, after the swift dispensation of justice, protesters and hoodlums will not be in a hurry to incite anyone on social media or to cause street havoc.

    It is untrue that Amnesty cannot tell the difference between violent protests and peaceful protests. They know the difference. But because Nigerians relish and even curry foreign interventions in their domestic affairs, including embracing foreign social and political values, Amnesty has latched on to that neocolonial orientation to hurl abuse at Nigeria. The UK protests and attacks were racist, sectarian and anti-immigration, and were inspired by far-right activists. The Nigerian protests were ostensibly inspired by a desire to end hunger and hardship, but managed in the same noisy breath to call for regime change. In the first case, Amnesty was silent, despite the firmness and the crushing speed with which the British justice system dealt with the vagrants. In the second case, despite Nigeria’s slowness and reluctance to bring the whole weight of the law against the inspirers of insurrection and their foot soldiers, Amnesty was loud, insufferable and contemptuous. The double standard will not change until Nigeria resolves its identity crisis.

  • Federalism Reimagined

    Federalism Reimagined

    Further clarifications, elaborations and amplifications

    Last week’s piece brought a gale of reactions from alert readers which has necessitated some immediate clarifications, elaborations and amplifications on the vexed issue of federalism in postcolonial Africa, particularly in Nigeria. All federating nations, to the extent that they seek a more equitable and egalitarian society, are permanent works in progress. Sometimes the end-products of these federalist experimentations are so dissimilar that some nations stand as a permanent rebuke to the whole notion of federalism.

    There is no point in comparing the functioning federalism in America despite all its glaring defects and in Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirate with its grotesque travesties in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia and several African countries. There are also times when a federating experiment goes awry, allowing an authoritarian despot to steal in through the backdoor.

    Nigerians must thank God for small mercies that the structural disequilibrium which has induced the virtual collapse and disappearance of the state in Sudan, its complete emasculation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, its dismemberment in Somalia, its bizarre state bifurcation in Libya and its forlorn disorientation in South Sudan even after Caesarean operation, has largely eluded the heaving and seething West African behemoth. Nigeria seems to owe its staying power more to some mysterious element of luck rather than to the power and paradox of structural disaggregation. But a loosely cobbled together conglomeration cannot stay like that forever. Some conscious efforts would have to be made to keep it together.

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     Ever since the amalgamation of the two protectorates, no issue has exercised the mind of indigenes and colonial rulers more than the kind of structure that would accommodate the diverse nationalities brought together by imperialist fiat and guarantee peace and prosperity among the various constituents who were in different stages of civilization when they were interdicted under a colonial rubric which simply collapsed all of them under one heading. The reactions to last week’s piece evoked the plight of colonized people in its peculiar and paradoxical poignancy.

     The reaction to the failure of federalism in the country has led many to a withdrawal from the central place to the outer fringes of their community where they think they can enjoy greater state dividends or exert more direct influence over those who control their destiny. It does not seem to occur to them that by so doing, they may be strengthening the hands of one of the federating units, in this case central authority against all the sub-national units. Yet the central canon of federalism advances that no single federating entity must loom so large in size and strength as to constitute a direct existential threat to other federating units. This was what led to the fall of the First Republic.

        But it does seem as if being proud products of lapsed empires, abbreviated kingdoms, defunct fiefdoms and other feudal suzerainties, most Nigerians of a particular age group as well as many other Africans, by instinct or by inclination, hold the state and central authority in such reverence and acclamation which is just a shade short of deity-worshipping. To them it is either order, whatever its inconveniences, or anarchy and chaos. This is why recent revolts and upheavals against state corruption and ethical disorder in many African countries follow a certain demographic pattern which holds interest for the immediate future.

     If some proactive state engineering is not put in place as a precautionary measure, then as the efficacy of the ideological potency of the old pre-colonial African state wears off among restive Nigerian youth and their rapidly evolving global consciousness, we are going to witness certain political inclemency which may subsume and then consume the battle for genuine federalism itself.

       While this column last week identifies the resentment and bitterness that the failure of federalism has caused in the country, it completely underestimated the power of scapegoating and the symbolic capacity of the popular imagination for collective stigmatization. While the national revulsion against the failure of federalism is palpable, the ruling of the Supreme Court which grants fiscal autonomy to local councils seems to have galvanized and canalized the national ire against the mismanagement of federalism into an uproar against state governments. If this was part of the original objective of the federal authorities, they seem to have succeeded beyond the remit.

      A response by an elder statesman captures the problem:  “Ariwo Symphony, an intriguing exposition… you moved deftly to the Supreme Court judgment on the allocation of funds to the 774 local government areas. Apparently the provisions of the Constitution did not specifically include local government areas as part of the federating units!

     Evidence of disenchantment can be seen in the imposed agreement between the President and all the 36 governors to defer commencement to October 2024. Whatever they do, the direct allocation of funds to Local governments will become a reality in a couple of months from now. The Local Governments are closer to the people and they know and feel their every need. It is our hope that the State Governors will act fully in the spirit of this decision without any attempt at teleguiding”. Very well said sir, but doesn’t that now bring up the vexed issue of party formation, party ideological guidance, leadership recruitment, patronage and preferment, departure from the Lincolnian ideal of promoting national cohesion through judicious search for personal excellence and the homogenization of the post-military political class in Nigeria?

      Any fiscal reform of Local Government which fails to address its comorbidities is dead on arrival. You cannot address critical aspects of National Question by mere cherry picking. This thing requires a holistic and totalizing approach in all its dialectical density. Awolowo would be wearing a sardonic smirk in his grave. This morning we bring you an address by the columnist to a gathering of local government officials in Lagos twelve years ago.

  • Abducted medical students and aftermath

    Abducted medical students and aftermath

    The abduction two Thursdays ago of 20 medical students in Otukpo, Benue State, once again brings to the fore Nigeria’s unresolved security crisis. The students spent nine agonising days in captivity before their release. By now, most Nigerians have realised that every trip is fraught with danger, and that the response by the security and law enforcement agencies to the dire security situation of the country is not as proactive as desired. This is why kidnapping reoccurs, and why all efforts to curb it have been ineffectual.

    The police, National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Department of State Service (DSS) joined forces to bring the Benue abduction drama to a safe and fairly quick resolution. Parents and students, not to talk of the federal government, will hope that all future abductions will end as safely and quickly. A few Kogi State Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH) students out of the 32 abducted on May 9, 2024 were not so lucky. They were killed while the rest were released. Thankfully, the case of the 20 medical students was different.

    But the case of the medical students should draw attention to the role state and local governments also need to play in securing their states and councils, notwithstanding the federal monopoly of the instruments of coercion. Whether Benue liked it or not, the abduction was on its soil, at a spot said to be notorious for such crimes; and while it lasted, it placed the drama squarely on their turf, indeed on the desk of the governor. The states may not have the final say on how the Police Force is run, but they can determine to some extent how states security agencies are deployed, and how the borders of the states are policed and locked down when the need arises. The states also have under their total control some paramilitary agencies and vigilance groups; they should deploy them tightly and deprive kidnappers and attackers of oxygen. It will be difficult and fairly expensive, but it is not impossible.

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    Relying almost exclusively on federal forces to police the states is to court trouble and disaster. Everything is not about money. There is a place for intelligence gathering, and a place for rapid deployment of local vigilance groups. States, therefore, have an urgent responsibility to rethink their security architecture. Importantly too, the federal government is constantly and almost consistently shown to be flatfooted when kidnapping challenges and other killings occur, as the Emir of Gobir case showed last week. Clearly the current security paradigm is stuttering and incapable of curbing the menace soon enough for grieving families. And with state policing agenda stalled in the labyrinth of bureaucracy and constitutional amendment, it is time the federal authorities engaged in soul-searching and reorganisation.

  • Local Government and its Possibilities

    Local Government and its Possibilities

    Protocols!} It is with great pleasure and a sense of occasion that I welcome you all to this workshop  taking place in this iconic building. The Lagos City Hall tells its own story as a symbol of the struggle to deliver service to the people at the grassroots level. This hall is a tribute and monument to the power of the people to forge ahead, and to grab their own destiny in their hands. In the heydays of colonial municipalities, the Lagos City Council was one of the best run municipalities in the world, approximating to the western standards of efficiency and integrity. As a state, Lagos is easily and unarguably the revelation of the Fourth Republic.

        So, whether as a protectorate, colony or later state, Lagos has always taken the lead for the rest to follow when it comes to service delivery. This is probably due to the cosmopolitan nature of the state, the high level of political consciousness and the above average level of education of its citizenry. From Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola through his illustrious predecessor, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu and stretching all the way back to Alhaji Lateef Jakande and Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson, it can also be said that this state has been particularly blessed with a steady succession of visionary and outstanding leadership. Needless to add that the local council in various parts of the nation has also served as incubator and nursery for some of our most famous politicians.

         For this glorious legacy to be sustained, it is important that we take another look at the issue of local government and adequate service delivery to the people. As it has been famously observed, all politics is local. Local government may be the third tier of governance but it is the first realm of the people. The local government is the first line of assault whenever there is a breakdown of the sacred covenant between the governed and the governing. It is the first port of call for an enraged citizenry.

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       In certain societies, city councilors are often deemed to be more important than parliamentarians. The election of the Mayor of London often generates more excitement and political tension than the national elections. To the average New Yorker, the mayor is more important than the state governor or even the president. But for Rudy Giuliani’s energetic and hands-on approach things could have turned out much worse in New York on September 11th, 2001.

          Let me quickly state that this is not a fault-finding workshop.  It is a fact-finding mission meant to rub mind among those who have been in the field with a view to probing the problem from source and finding the way forward. The workshop itself is coming up against the backdrop of the proposed National Conference.  That conference itself presupposes that something is structurally amiss with the country. The structure of local government in Nigeria is a crucial link in the chain of structural disorder that has hobbled Nigeria and stalled its march to authentic nationhood. Once again, this frontline state and home to the first real megalopolis in Africa has taken the lead and liberty to begin the dialogue ahead of the gathering of the nation.

         It has been argued by many that the crisis of local government and service delivery to the grassroots is itself merely a symptom of a more fundamental crisis: the structural crisis of the nation itself and the absence of genuine political and fiscal federalism. In the misbegotten unitarist logjam, the federal government even bypasses state governments to reach the local governments which are their sub-autonomous structures thus insinuating a subtle rivalry and unhealthy tension into what is supposed to be complementary structures of the state. This is an anti-federalist absurdity writ large by lack of organic vision and conceptual rigour about the true nature of federating units.

        In this same state, it has taken the daring and ingenuity of a Bola Tinubu to create the technical equivalent of local Government Councils in order to bring service faster and closer to the people. The ensuing battle with the federal authorities has already entered the folklore of a nation and its maladaptive institutions. Although everybody seems to have acquiesced with the status quo and the Lagos model is being copied in some other states, the judgment of the Supreme Court dismissing the nascent local councils as “inchoate” subsists.

         Yet all of this would not even have been necessary had everybody understood the fundamental tenets of federalism as a bottom -up process rather than a top-down state injunction. Rather than being chosen for them by government, people choose their own local governments in functioning federations. In the United States, once people agree to tax themselves and are willing to provide themselves with a specified list of deliverable services, they can legitimately be regarded as local governments. At a point, the number of such local governments in the United States stood at over forty thousands. By 1974, Britain with half of Nigeria’s population had over 14,000 of such councils. 

        Perhaps the key to unlocking the crisis of local government and federalism in Nigeria lies in the issue of taxation. Once people truly pay for certain services, they are more willing to see them delivered and on time. But once it is not really being funded by them, they can afford to relax and be indifferent. Taxing heightens civic consciousness and awareness. It is a natural law of nature for people to take a dim and dark view of the imprudent management of the proceeds of their sweat and toil.

       The fear of popular reprisal and jungle justice breeds a sense of responsibility and decorum in officials. The present system of providing local governments with largesse from some bogus Federation Account without any inbuilt mechanism for accountability and transparency in the management of funds breeds corruption and incompetence. The quietude of the civic populace and of civil society in Nigeria can be directly linked to the fact and awareness that it is oil revenues that provide the feeding bottle for all. Nobody is outraged anymore when outlandish sums are said to have disappeared from the treasury.

       We can see the logic of hardy self-reliance play itself out in the old community structure and draw appropriate and strategic lessons for the present. When they established community grammar schools through arduous self-taxation, the old communities always saw to it that they set the rules and procedures through which the institutions operate and usually mount a round the clock surveillance to see that laid down rules and regulations were being adhered to. Any infringement was swiftly and expeditiously punished either physically or through a resort to metaphysical hell-raising.

         It worked. By 1904, the old Egba city-state had been able to solve the problem of official corruption and sanitation. This was because it combined the efficacy of old communal ties with the harsh formality of modern state structure. The later allowed it to impose and raise tax with the efficiency of a modern bureaucracy while the former allowed it to tap into the old primordial consciousness of the populace for punitive deterrent.

         Although there has always been a measure of corruption even in our traditional societies, the advent of oil and massive revenues accruing from this has led to the swift collapse of values and unprecedented corruption in Nigeria.  The problem with oil production in Nigeria is that it is merely extractive, with not much labour invested and no value added whatsoever. Its revenues can then be seen as mere manna from heavens.

         The result is the complete pollution of the moral reservoir of the nation. Since oil revenues do not arise directly from taxation and indirectly from the sweat and tears of the citizenry, it can be frittered away at will. Since the retention of the proceeds are not tied to any test of performance or ability to internally generate revenues at local, state or even federal levels, it leads to the most egregious forms of embezzlement and fiscal recklessness.

        This fiscal recklessness and monumental corruption have their multiplier effects which then become mutually reinforcing. Since they feel that nobody has actually paid for them, urban denizens do not feel any pang of conscience when they steal the street lamps meant to illuminate their movements when it is dark. Neither do they bat an eyelid when they cut off railings or dig up concrete slabs meant to safeguard their very lives in traffic chaos. Since oil is available, they evade taxes and rates as conscientious objectors. And since the revenues they misappropriate are not traceable to the labour or direct exertions of the people, government officials at all levels can get away with murder. The result is the anarchy and social anomie that stare us in the face.

         Just as Inca gold brought ruinous inflation and eventual destruction to old metropolitan Spain, oil has become the modern curse of Nigeria. It has brought about the complete negation of political and fiscal federalism. It will be too much of a shock therapy to ask for the imposition of a moratorium on oil extraction in Nigeria. The patient may die from the radical surgery. But unless we find a way back to the fundament of effective taxation compelling a more effective service delivery, we will continue to joggle in the jungle of mismanagement and ineffective service delivery. I thank you all.

    • Opening remarks at the workshop on reforming Local Government for effective service delivery on Tuesday, 25th February, 2012.

  • Drafting Goodluck Jonathan for 2027

    Drafting Goodluck Jonathan for 2027

    One of the stories that dominated the media last week was the noisy whisper about drafting ex-president Goodluck Jonathan for the 2027 presidential race on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed spoke in Abuja about his speculated interest in the race, but sighfully suggested he would step down if Dr Jonathan declared interest. Mr Mohammed, PDP governors’ forum chairman, is one of the leading lights of the PDP. Since he flew the Jonathan kite, a number of PDP top hats have lent their voices to the call to draft the former one-term president. In their calculations, Dr Jonathan would fit the northern bill of finding a southerner to take the South’s second term in place of the disfavoured President Bola Tinubu. The self-appointed PDP spokespersons assume naturally that they speak for the entire North, despite the insurmountable presence of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the region. They also flagrantly discountenanced the 2018 constitutional amendment on term limit or the legal interpretation of Section 137 (3) of the 1999 Constitution. Even if he likes to run, it is hard to determine how he can. But the nation can indulge the political romantics who think that in Nigeria everything is possible.

    In 2022, despite constitutional provisions and months before the PDP and APC primaries, Dr Jonathan was rumoured to be interested in contesting the presidency on the platform of the APC, a rumour engendered and nurtured by his dithering over the race. The prospect tantalised the former PDP president, and he gave audience to a few APC/northern delegations bent on drafting him. But he also waffled over whether he would run or not run, hinting obliquely that he could embrace a draft only if he was made the consensus candidate. He said nothing about the constitution. Perhaps he and his supporters know something Nigerians don’t know. In the end, despite a group of northerners buying the N100m expression of interest form for him, and despite his brutal sense of caution, he allowed the process to dissipate itself. Today again, he is embroiled in a cynical presidential draft game by another group of PDP big wigs. It would be out of character for him to dismiss the speculation out of hand, especially this time because the speculation comes from his natural watering hole, the PDP. And why would he not want to be the cynosure of all eyes even when he knows his ignorant drafters are engaged in a fool’s errand?

    Dr Jonathan has matured into statesmanship. He may, therefore, be wiser today than when he presided over Nigeria. He remembers quite well that in 2015, the North repudiated him in favour of their son, Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to win the presidential election. Indeed, he probably watched as they nearly repudiated Candidate Bola Tinubu in favour of their son, Alhaji Atiku, who flattered their northernness and baited their primordial instinct. And in 2022, Dr Jonathan also probably recognised that fearful northerners chary of being out of the presidency for eight years plotted to use him to hold the reins for only four years. He vacillated in 2022, briefly succumbing to the blandishments of APC mandarins who thought to use him to thwart the wider objective of rotational presidency and a fundamental change of direction after ex-president Buhari had run the country aground. If Dr Jonathan feels humiliated to be seen only as a tool for thwarting noble goals and putting political leaders’ noses out of joint, he has been careful and cautious not to say anything so far. In 1998, when northern and military schemers thought to offer ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo the presidency, he was pretentious enough to ask how many presidents they wanted to make out of him. His question was rhetorical. Soon, as events later proved, he eagerly seized the opportunity, won the election, and even sought to outfox God by scheming for a third term.

    There is nothing in Dr Jonathan’s rule book that shows him up as a hypocrite like Chief Obasanjo. But he won’t run for the presidency if he is not certain he would win the nomination, get the backing of the law, and of course go on to win the main election. Unlike Chief Obasanjo, he is averse to risk-taking. To run for the coveted post, he would have to take the nomination consensually after the constitutional conundrum is resolved, and be sure that the APC had become so discredited nationally that a freshman politician from any party could win by a landslide. And of course, finally, he would have to be sure that his conscience does not trouble him to be seen as a tool in the hands of northerners disenchanted with President Tinubu. The drafter engineers may flatter him to no end, but he will have to be certain that their rhapsodies hold a ring of truth beyond deploying him as a political battering ram. Indeed, the northern PDP big wigs have begun to compose dulcet hymns about him and the generally uneventful time he spent in office. But he can never be sure how inelastic their sweet tongues are when they strain the truth and veer into flattery and lies. So, for now, he will watch the composers and drafters with quivering amusement, waiting to see which way the cats jump.

    Moreover, the former president is not an idiot to think that former vice president Atiku Abubakar would in a year or two suddenly become a non-factor. When Alhaji Atiku engages in political fights, he bites ears, scratches faces, thumb noses, and gives headbutts. To the former vice president, truth is a mistress to be ravaged, as his continuing fight with President Tinubu has revealed, and he does his battles with undiluted ferocity and bitterness. An aspirant, particularly of the dovish kind like Dr Jonathan, must wear armour designed by archangels to fight the battles the entrenched party behemoths will bring against him. Unfortunately for him, since losing the 2015 presidential election, he has played little or no role in the survival of the party to this day. Alhaji Atiku himself has of course been opportunistic and Machiavellian, completely undeserving of the attention the PDP still gives him, but Dr Jonathan has been nothing more than a cipher in the existence of the opposition party. For a party orphaned since 2015 and suckled by surrogates like Nyesom Wike, former Rivers State governor and current FCT minister, it is deeply ironical that estranged ‘fathers’ are fighting for the baby’s attention as another election beckons in the distance.

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    The truth about the PDP is, however, more disconcerting than the attention being paid to the speculated interests of Dr Jonathan and Alhaji Atiku. As it stands, the opposition party does not stand any chance of winning the presidency if elections were held today or tomorrow. The reasons are clear. The party lost in 2015 because of the cumulative damage done to the party by all three PDP presidents, starting with Chief Obasanjo who introduced so much instability into the running of the former ruling party. After the PDP lost the presidency that watershed year, no one of enough intellectual heft or character has been able to conduct a proper laparotomy on the party to diagnose why it lost power, not to talk of repairing the breaches. Instead of remaking the party’s platform and positioning it ideologically or even emotionally to appeal to Nigerians, party apparatchiks have focused on the personalities of their political suitors, men with money but no principles, men capable of raising a storm but impatient to take the wind when they see or feel it.

    Secondly, and more sobering for the party, neither the embittered and immensely self-centered Alhaji Atiku nor the dour and humourless Dr Jonathan is capable of swinging victory for the PDP. It is not even clear that either of them will be in a position to campaign in 2026, let alone run for the post. The APC administration is despised and blamed for the hardship and hunger pervading the country by a people long accustomed to gorging on national surplus, but the economy will very likely yield to medications soon, and by the end of 2025 probably roar back to life. All the indications are there, despite the string of unforced errors committed by the Tinubu administration. The PDP will not only have to redesign their platform and imbue it with strength and character, they will also have to find credible and committed leaders to fly their tattered flag. The party is already shaping up for a bruising battle for its soul. Whatever the outcome of that internecine battle, it is unlikely the wounds will heal on time for the next election, regardless of the North’s speculated loss of confidence in the Tinubu administration.