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Category: Tunji Adegboyega

Leading Nigeria aright

It was exactly 16 years on May 29 when Nigeria returned to civil rule, after about another 16 long and tortuous years of military interregnum. On that day in 1999, I remember some of the events at the Eagle Square in Abuja, where Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as president. I was on the editorial board of ThisDay then, and I remember how I celebrated the occasion alongside some colleagues at one of the elite restaurants in the Yinusa Street area of Ikeja in Lagos. I ate a bowl of ‘fufu’ and ‘edikaikong’ soup and assorted meat usually associated with that eatery and later ‘washed’ it down with some bottles of Stout. Those were my days in Egypt, though. I still vividly recollect some of these things because May 29, 1999 was a watershed in Nigeria’s history. I cannot say the same of any other May 29, whether in 2003, 2007 or even 2011, which only came and went like any other day.

It was a great day in that Nigerians, including myself, had looked on to Chief Obasanjo with great expectations. The new president then did not disappoint, at least in terms of speeches. One thing I keep remembering was his promise to “lead the country aright”. Could Obasanjo be said to have done just that by May 29, 2007 when he stepped down, after serving the two terms permitted by the constitution, and with his third term ambition having hit the rocks?

However, May 29, 1999 and May 29, 2015 are not exactly the same. Whereas the former was celebrated with pomp and pageantry (and understandably so because it was not easy sending the soldiers back to the barracks after they had tasted power), the latter was marked with pains in the hearts of millions of Nigerians who had dreamt big of what their lives and the country would be like 16 years after the country’s return to civil rule in 1999, only to find themselves in the unfortunate situation that bad governance has put the country in today; the fuel scarcity and all.

But, what the events of the last 16 years, particularly those of the last six years or so taught us is that it is possible for this country or any country for that matter to go under, and all it takes is for people to be silent when they should be talking. Many of what we witnessed in the period we would have sworn could never have happened in Nigeria a few years back. Yet, before our eyes, many brazen illegalities were committed by the people in power. We saw how governors had been impeached without the requisite number of legislators. We saw how generals were told to help the ruling party fix election. We saw our economy raped by rapacious politicians. We saw how about 20 percent of our oil was daily carted away and the government looked on helplessly. We saw how militants and ethnic militias were empowered, first to do the work of our navy and then to cause mayhem to scuttle or rig election. We saw how public funds were spent in a carefree manner and stolen by roguish public servants. We saw how those who were alleged to have stolen subsidy funds as well as other thieves walked in and out of the inner recesses of the seat of power. It was in our full glare that an inspector-general of police attempted to prevent National Assembly members from entering the assembly complex. Pray, what is the difference between Nigeria and some smaller African countries that we have always seen as backward, because all these are the features that make us call them backward? Indeed, what have we not seen?

The lesson in all these is that Nigerians, as a people, must be vigilant. Most of these anomalies would not have occurred, or kept repeating themselves, if we had been vigilant enough. And this is irrespective of the political party in power. That eternal vigilance is even the more desirable now that President Muhammadu Buhari has taken over. I have pondered over his inaugural address which he read on May 29 and it seemed to me to address the core issues in the country today; from Boko Haram to armed robbery and kidnapping as well as corruption. It also touched on the vexed issue of youth unemployment, power and others. The president even alluded to his being the president of all, which really intrigues me in the sense that it shows that he is learning fast. Once upon a time, it used to be ‘my people’ and ‘your people’. By and large, the president allayed fears about most of the frequently-asked questions about Buhari. Indeed, I had wanted to write on this topic even before the elections, but held back because I did not want it used against the then presidential hopeful. It is wise to first drive away the thief before telling the owner of the stolen property that he did not keep his property well enough. Now that the thieves (both in the literal and metaphorical sense) have been driven away, we can now tell President Buhari some home truths that would be useful for his administration and the country at large.

The president has given a speech that shows he has a good grasp of the country’s challenges. But it is one thing to identify problems; it is another to solve them. I do not subscribe to this idea of ‘a problem defined is a problem half-solved’. If that is always the case, Nigeria would not be in a mess today because we have always had good analyses of our problems; that is to say we have always known what the problems are. Yet, we still have not been able to solve any of them. What this implies is that it takes more than mere identification of the problem to solve it. The will to solve the problem is crucial. It is this will that has been lacking over the years, and that is why we are where we are today; that is why countries that we were together on the backbenchers’ seat before have since abandoned us there. Indeed, it is in such countries that the expression ‘move the nation forward’ has meaning. It has become a cliché in Nigeria. Every government here says it, yet, we are only moving forward in reverse.

The Buhari government sure has its job cut out for it. The Goodluck Jonathan administration has done so much damage and this explained why I told those in the then ruling party who had not even allowed Buhari to be sworn in before asking him to do magic, to shut up. Some readers mistook that for an alibi for the Buhari government not to perform. But the point was not about making excuses for the government but to say those asking him (Buhari) to perform know the havoc they had wreaked on the country’s economy and therefore lacked the moral right to ask the new president to perform. I stand by that viewpoint.

All said, President Buhari must, as I said a few weeks ago, hit the ground running. Already, people are agitated; some are saying the government ought to have made certain appointments, fired some people and taken some decisions. They are complaining that the government seems too slow. I do not necessarily buy any of these. But that is in so far as slow and steady wins the race. Within the next few weeks, one expects that the policy thrust of the new government would be crystallising. Already, nine days are gone out of the four-year tenure. That is how time flies. So, President Buhari should know that the ball is now in his court. He has talked the talk; he should now walk the talk Nigerians want to start seeing signs that they at last have a leader who can truly lead the country aright. It is not necessarily by taking populist decisions but at least by beginning to lay the foundation of an enduring legacy that would wipe away the tears in their eyes all these years.

GEJ on my mind

I had expected that President Muhammadu Buhari would have made public the part of his predecessor’s (Dr Goodluck Jonathan) hand over note bequeathing his (Jonathan’s) generator to us as he had promised. Since mum has been the word from the Buhari government on the matter more than one week after assuming office, I guess Dr Jonathan had reneged on that promise as usual. But I would not take it against him because it is impossible for him to ‘dash’ us what he himself would sorely need in his native Otuoke where he is spending his retirement. After all, even God did not tell us to love our neighbour more than ourselves. Rather, He admonished us to love our neighbour as ourselves.

June 7, 2015
Jonathan’s parting shot

The ex-president cannot dictate whether his successor should probe or not; or the period the probe should cover

One had thought Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the immediate past president of Nigeria, would give us a breather so Nigerians could pick the bits and pieces of their lives together. But try as one did, Dr Jonathan would always do or say something that would compel one to return to him. Without doubt, we would continue to talk about the Jonathan administration for some time. But then, after this piece, I intend to have a deserved break on the former president because, by last Friday, old things were supposed to have passed away and all things had become new. I hope Dr Jonathan would let me be.

One was compelled to return to the former president because of his speech last Wednesday at the valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council in Abuja, where he again expressed his morbid fear for probe. And that if the Muhammadu Buhari administration must probe his government, then, it must be ready to probe his predecessors too. “I believe that anybody calling for probe must ensure that these probes are extended beyond the Jonathan-led administration. Otherwise, to me, it will be witch-hunting … How do you allocate oil fields, marginal wells and all that? Do we follow our laws? All these should be probed …” the former president told his audience in his vintage, even if infantile fashion. Dr Jonathan also told his cabinet members that they had performed well and that those criticising them were merely doing so for political purposes. Obviously the former president must be putting performance on its head. But there is nothing wrong with this; after all, the lizard that falls from a wall too acknowledges the ‘feat’ it has performed by nodding its head!

Of course, Dr Jonathan got the usual applause from his ministers. That was the way they kept deceiving themselves until they sent themselves packing from Aso Rock Villa. They kept applauding ministers who reeled out statistics which had no bearing with what was on ground. It was the same statistics that pushed the Jonathan government into the dustbin of history on March 28.

Anyway, while the former president is entitled to his opinion on these matters, unfortunately, his opinion, especially on the vexed issue of probe does not carry any weight. It is not for him to say whether probe is necessary or unnecessary, or the period it should cover. That is the prerogative of the new government. In the first place, if he was comfy with corruption and saw nothing wrong in probing those he succeeded, that was his business. In the same vein, it is late in the day for him to start talking about “improper allocation of oil fields”. If he knew there were any such things, why did he not do something about them in his more than five years as president?

That he did not do anything about the issues he is now raising less than 48 hours to his exit from power shows the pride of place that corruption occupied in his time. And this is globally acknowledged. He did not leave anyone in doubt that he was quite comfortable with persons of questionable character who walked in and out of Aso Rock while he was the landlord there. He even crowned the infamy by referring to the massive looting of the country’s treasury as ‘stealing’. That was his position on, and predisposition to, corruption (and he is perfectly entitled to it), even though it explains why the country is in the mess he left it in. But it would be preposterous to recommend that failed paradigm to the incoming government. Dr Jonathan on his own accord made ‘transformation’ his government’s mantra; Buhari could decide to make anti-corruption (probe) his. So, there would be nothing unusual about that.

So, rather than keep blackmailing the new government not to probe his government, the former president should advise his ministers and other aides that had stolen public funds to return at least a substantial part of it. That would be much more like it, rather than this cheap popularity or victimhood that Dr Jonathan is seeking. Negotiation can only begin when what is returned is proportionate to what was stolen.

The former president may be right that corruption did not start with his government. But what he feigns ignorance of is that it assumed an unusual dimension in his time. Indeed, the Jonathan government ‘liberalised’ corruption, as it were! If I must remind him, even General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida whose regime was notorious for being highly corrupt, said they were ‘angels’ compared with what happened in the Jonathan years. For once in recent times, Babangida appeared to be talking sense. Perhaps it was even the impression in Babangida’s time that the country’s economy was resilient (as it did not collapse despite the massive assault on it) that propelled the mindboggling looting of the treasury in recent years. Unfortunately, we have now seen that it is when stealing has not reached a crescendo that an economy would not collapse.

In Dr Jonathan’s time, looters stole too much for the owners to notice. That is why we have unending fuel queues; states and even the Federal Government are leaving backlog of salaries unpaid, etc. as legacies of the Jonathan government. We are in crisis not just because oil prices fell; it is more due to the government’s cluelessness about how to husband the country’s resources, and the unprecedented looting of public funds.

So, Dr Jonathan should stop romanticising probe. Indeed, the way he had been talking about probe, one begins to wonder if it is not a question of the guilty being afraid. But, the earlier the former president realised that whatever the Buhari government decides to make its priority is its prerogative, the better. Dr Jonathan’s government behaved like the biblical rich man who throughout his lifetime did not know Christ only to get to hell to bear the consequence of his choice. If former President Jonathan was blind to issues of corruption in his time, it was not because he did not have enough warnings about its prevalence in his government; he had a surfeit of it. Indeed, in my January 12, 2014 write-up titled “2014: agenda for Jonathan, fight corruption and other things shall be added unto you”, I had admonished the government to deal squarely with corruption and every other thing would be added unto it. That admonition, like many others at the time, was like the lone voice in the wilderness. Yet, if we are not having electricity today, it is because of corruption. If people are dishonest about fuel subsidy, (for which reason the ordinary people were to be punished by removing subsidy when what they needed to remove was corruption) it is because the government condoned corruption. Indeed, that we are importing fuel at all is the product of corruption. In essence, corruption is at the root of why this country is not working today.

So, Dr Jonathan has no reason now to be crying wolf under the mere suspicion that the new government could decide to ask questions about how his government spent public funds. It is true the new government does not have to devote all its energy to probes, the truth is that we cannot make progress if we allow those who had absconded with public funds to enjoy the ill-gotten wealth. Moreover, like adults that we are, when we stumble, we have to look back to know why. Perhaps Dr Jonathan would have succeeded if he did just that.

He decided his government’s mantra; he cannot dictate his predecessor’s. If he chose to embrace corruption, it was not for lack of knowledge of its prevalence but because he did not think it necessary to fight it. As they say, anyone who caused rain to fall should not be surprised if the rain is accompanied by thunderstorm. So, if Dr Jonathan gladly and willingly embraced corruption, he should also gladly embrace its consequence (if any). His appeals to ethnic and primordial sentiments did not take him far before. It would not take him far now, either.

Nigeria is one of the few places where a president or public official, rather than say ‘I have nothing to hide, probe me’; would be saying ‘if you want to probe me, you must be ready to probe my predecessors. Otherwise, to probe me would tantamount to witch-hunt’. But President Buhari should not be deterred by that blackmail. If he wants to probe, he should go ahead, allegation of witch-hunt or wizard-hunt notwithstanding.

May 31, 2015
PDP’s warped opposition

Lamido’s statement that Buhari should not give excuses even before taking power is nonsense

It is easy to dismiss the utterances and actions of some of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts since the party’s defeat in the last presidential election as products of post-election defeat hallucination. Or, better still, the ranting of some losers. For a political party that has never known the colour of defeat at that level (whether by rigging elections or by actually winning at the polls) since the country’s return to civil rule in 1999, the temptation to think along these lines is pardonable. But that would be oversimplifying the matter.

Although personally, I am not surprised at some of these developments, including the statement credited to Alhaji Sule Lamido, Jigawa State governor, to the effect that president-elect General Muhammadu Buhari should stop fishing for excuses and deliver his electoral promises to Nigerians, irrespective of the state of the economy.

Hear Lamido:”You must fulfill your promises, because there was no condition given on how to do it when you were campaigning for election. Whether the economy is favourable or not, do not give us any excuses. We will not tolerate any excuses. Whatever the APC is, they owe it all to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), because PDP, one way or the other, brought almost all of them into politics. It is about time for them to reflect, because Nigerians will definitely hold them accountable. They must fulfill all their promises.”

The question now is: does this lie in the mouth of people whose political party just ran the country aground? General Yakubu Gowon might have been quoted as saying money was not Nigeria’s problem but how to spend it (whatever the context), it is the Goodluck Jonathan administration that lived that expression. The government spent money and bribed as if both would go out of fashion anytime soon. We are in a dire economic situation today because the PDP has thoroughly mismanaged the country’s resources and its members and their cronies have stolen a substantial part of it.

That is why a major crude oil producer is now bedevilled by acute fuel scarcity. What a valedictory emblem! The impression one gets is that the PDP is populated by people who have no conscience or sense of shame. Apparently, they were in a hurry to come into the world and therefore did not wait for their share of these virtues when they were coming.. If our leaders had conscience or sense of shame, they would not feel comfortable in the comity of civilised and focused leaders. I wonder how Diezani Alison-Madueke, our petroleum minister, felt whenever she attended the meetings of oil producing nations and saw that Nigeria, her country, is the only major crude oil producer that imports fuel. Worse still, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) elected her as its president last November! This was after she lost the bid to become secretary-general of the organisation in 2012. It is either the OPEC job was a way to humour Nigeria or we have infected the organisation with the bug of corruption that has led to an incestuous relationship between most of our fuel importers and the Nigerian government. This is the oily mess they are leaving behind for Buhari to clear.

On the general economic front, the result is as woeful, if not worse. Virtually every sector has been paralysed. Power supply continues to ebb in spite of billions, not of naira but dollars spent on it by the PDP in the last decade alone. Many of our hospitals remain the same ‘consulting clinics’ that Buhari met when he came on New Year’s Eve in 1983 in a coup d’état. Education is in a shambles. Unemployment has worsened since the Jonathan government took over.

So, just what is working in the country? Virtually nothing. It is against this ugly scenario that Lamido wants Buhari to perform magic simply because he made electoral promises. As at the last count, the incoming government had claimed that the Jonathan administration is leaving a legacy of $60 debt for Buhari to inherit. Maybe it is because Lamido did not see this as an issue that he still wants miracles. I must confess too that I did not know this is all the country lost to the Jonathan government’s squandermania and corruption. Whereas when President Jonathan took over, the economy was rosier, the exchange rate was better (around N165 to a dollar now about N200 to one US dollar); oil had sold at relatively steady high price (over $100/barrel) under the Jonathan administration for long; yet his government frittered the money away while his officials and their cronies stole the rest.

One wonders how many of the demands Lamido is making now of Buhari that is inheriting virtually an empty treasury he made from their government which enjoyed the best of times. When Lamido talked about holding the incoming government accountable, does accountability exist in the lexicon of their outgoing government? How many of the PDP’s campaign promises in 2011 had been fulfilled four years after? When Lamido said: “We will not tolerate excuses”, the question that comes into mind is: ‘who are these ‘we ‘? He just reminded one of the Elder Godsday Orubebe ‘show’ when the result of the presidential election result was being collated on March 31. “We will not take this, Nigerians will not take this”? He had said, and many people kept wondering which Nigerians Orubebe was talking about. He had since apologised, though.

Is Lamido feigning ignorance of the fact that we are having fuel crisis now because of the incestuous relationship between their government and a cabal that both enjoyed corruption together and are now afraid that the honeymoon is about to end? I said it a few weeks back that the fuel crisis would last until Buhari is sworn in and beyond because there is no way the marketers who had enjoyed a lot of free money under the decadent system would want to let go easily. They would want to prove that there is no corruption in the subsidy regime and the only way they can do that is resort to cheap blackmail to get the new government to pay them. Since when has the Jonathan government and fuel marketers ever quarrelled or disagreed over subsidy payments? So, why now?

The same principle underscores the darkness in the nation. Power firms that gave N5billion to PDP campaign, are crying of lack of funds to run their business. It is not an accident that both the oil and gas and the power sectors are in this sorry state a few days to Buhari government’s inauguration.

So, the Buhari government has its job cut out for it. The shenanigans that thieves use to delay or escape justice here must be demolished to facilitate court trials. A situation where the fate of thieves and bribe takers who committed crimes in Nigeria is still at preliminary stages in the country’s courts long after their foreign accomplices tried abroad had commenced their jail terms can no longer continue. Indiscipline is sweet and corruption even sweeter. It is true that corruption is not a peculiar Nigerian problem; it is a global problem. But the difference is that those caught in other places get their comeuppance fast while their Nigerian accomplices wine and dine with the people in power even as their case files gather dust in court shelves.

We must have seen through the kind of opposition politics the PDP wants to play. The party wants Buhari to resolve the peculiar mess that it could not solve when there was economic boom in 15 years, even before Buhari takes over, irrespective of the state of the country’s economy. So, Lamido too knows that they have sufficiently messed up the economy that they met hale and hearty?

But it is not their fault; it is because this is Nigeria. In most other places, the ruling party’s stalwarts and their collaborators in government would be behind bars by now. Those who are not would bury their heads in shame. Indeed, in a place like North Korea, as someone said online, they would not have dared what they did in Nigeria. It is because they know that here; there is no consequence for those who ‘get their stealing right’ that the country is at the mercy of thieves. That is the crux of the fuel crisis and the power conundrum that have come to represent the baptism of fire that Buhari would have.

May 24, 2015
Jonathan’s Freudian slip

I guess the president wanted to say he and his aides would be prosecuted; not persecuted

Speaking before God and man at a thanksgiving and farewell service organised in his honour at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Life Camp, Gwarinpa, Abuja, last Sunday, President Goodluck Jonathan stirred the hornet’s nest when he said that he and his ministers and other aides would face a lot of persecution after leaving office on May 29. “If you take certain decisions, it might be good for the generality of the people but it might affect people differently. So for ministers and aides who served with me, I sympathise with them, they will be persecuted. And they must be ready for that persecution.

“Quoting Tai Solarin, may your ways be rough. To my ministers, I wish you what I wish myself. They will have hard times; we will all have hard times. Our ways will be rough,” the president said at the service.

Many Nigerians have since then been wondering when the president became a prophet. But those who remember the tale of the professor and his driver would know that when leaves have stayed too long in soap, the leaves too become soap. President Jonathan, by now, we must realise has stayed too close to many prophets; so, he might have tapped the anointing for prophecy from some of his prophet-friends. But that is not where I am going today.

My point is that even if the president is now gifted with the power of prophecy, what he saw concerning himself and his aides could not have been ‘persecution’, but prosecution, after he might have stepped down from office. The last time I checked the meaning of ‘persecution’ in the dictionary, it defines it as ‘hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs; oppression”. For me, the operational words are “hostility”, “ill-treatment” and “oppression”. Do Nigerians have any cause to be hostile to President Jonathan and his team after handing over on May 29? The answer is ‘yes’. Do they have the right to ill-treat the president and his aides? Again, the answer is ‘yes’. Do they have to oppress the president and his team? I am afraid, again, the answer is ‘yes’.

If President Jonathan had said that he and his team would be prosecuted after leaving office, not many people would have expressed consternation, because that is what many of them deserve after messing up the lives of millions of Nigerians. So, the onus, as things stand, is on President Jonathan to explain why they should not be prosecuted. If not for the fact that we are in a democracy, we should have done what one of our Number Two citizens said in the military era when talking about some people involved in fraud. He said they (the government) would jail them (fraudsters). “We would jail them”, he said. When one of his aides reminded him that that was not due process and that people are first prosecuted and jailed, only if found guilty, the Number Two retorted, “yes, we would prosecute and jail them!” If the president wants to be told the truth, the fact is that in the court of public opinion, they are already guilty as (yet to be) charged. The average Nigerian would not mind if most of his officials are first persecuted before being prosecuted.

When President Jonathan won his first election ever and became president in 2011, the exchange rate was less than N170. Today, it goes for over N200 to a US dollar. Indeed, just how profligate his government can be is shown in his disbursal of funds in the Excess Crude Account (ECA). In February 2010, Dr Jonathan, then Acting President, gave the federal, states and local governments $2bn to share from an earlier balance of $6.2 billion, leaving about $4.1 billion. Again, in March 2010, he approved the disbursal of a further $1 billion from the account, leaving about $3.1. The move brought to $3 billion the total amount of Nigerian oil savings that Jonathan approved for disbursal to the country’s 36 states and government agencies in one month! When the government was accused of trying to pacify the states with the reckless disbursements, the government denied. But it would seem the states had seen the fiscal indiscipline at the federal level and therefore asked for their own share of the pie. None of these disbursements would have been painful if the government had spent the money judiciously, say on regenerative projects. Sadly, we lost a substantial amount of these earnings, aside the regular earnings that went into the Federation Account, to the government’s incompetence and massive corruption, which, rather than tackle headlong, the president regarded as ‘mere’ stealing.

Which sector of the economy is the government leaving healthier than it met it? The government keeps celebrating the fraudulent increase in the megawatts of electricity that are not producing light for Nigerians. The oil and gas sector is corruption-ridden, and that is why we cannot make refineries work here and resorted to importation of fuel, with the shameful record of the only crude oil producing nation that does that. Yet, our leaders are not ashamed. They were even at a time celebrating non-interruption in fuel supply for years.

The whole thing becomes the more nauseating when some of the people in the government begin to talk of the government’s achievements as if these are invisible as Abdul’s fabled shoes. For instance, it was in the midst of this demoralising milieu that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, went on a trip of self-glorification by telling Nigerians that the Jonathan administration would be leaving behind ‘solid economic legacies’. One wonders what the ‘solid economic legacies’ are and where they are. Do these ‘solid economic legacies’ include the 400,000 barrels of crude oil lost daily all through the Jonathan years, and before? Even at the rock bottom $50 per barrel price of crude oil in the international market, that translates to a lot daily. We can only imagine what we lost daily when oil was selling for well above $100 per barrel before the fall in prices late last year. Was there nothing the government could have done about this? Or, was it simply a case of the government looking the other way when the stealing was going on because its cronies were involved?

I guess the drastic fall in the price of crude oil when it did, and the worsening exchange rate are God’s own way of showing disapproval of the prodigality of the Jonathan government and the massive looting of the treasury that it permitted. So, God completed the mission by ensuring that the government was defeated in the presidential election because it would have been suicidal for the country to continue along the line of perdition that the government set it on. That was one of the reasons why the entire world was interested in seeing the back of the Jonathan government because we would simply overrun our neighbours should Nigeria implode; which was almost certain if the president had been reelected. The truth is, Dr Jonathan hasn’t the faintest idea of how to run a modern state, not to talk of wean a great country off its perpetually potential greatness to that actual greatness that it was destined to be.

And, instead of the people in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) burying their heads in shame for the rudderless and corrupt manner their party steered the affairs of the country thus far, they are busy fishing for excuses on how and why they lost the election, an election they should not have had any chance of doing well in in the first place, but for the new lows that they sank the country.

The point is that President Jonathan’s government is worse than that of a former military governor in the country who said he met the state treasury empty, and left it empty. Dr Jonathan cannot say that. He met the treasury with some cash and left it not only empty but also with a lot of debt for his successor. It is just that politicians are incurable optimists. I do not envy the president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari at all, knowing the gargantuan mess he is inheriting. Although President Jonathan had prayed for himself and his team, saying their roads be rough, I do not want to say ‘Amen’ to that. But our president who feels fulfilled after leaving us worse than he met us should understand that Nigerians may neither pray for him nor curse him and his team, but their mouths would not be idle either.

May 17, 2015
The baptism Buhari should expect

He has to hit the ground running

As one of my friends used to tell me, laughing with someone is not necessarily a sign of affection. So, no one should be deceived that President Goodluck Jonathan’s conceding defeat in the last presidential election necessarily translates to wishing Muhammadu Buhari well. Much as one agrees that there cannot be a vacuum in governance, some of the recent decisions and appointments made by the outgoing president give cause for concern. One of these is the removal of Mallam Habib Abubakar and his replacement with Sanusi Lamido Ado Bayero, the eldest son of the late Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, as managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). Abdullahi was fired on April 29 via a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Dr Reuben Abati. No reasons were given for the removal. He is the second major government official to be removed, after the former Inspector-General of Police, Mr Suleiman Abba, who was similarly fired last month, barely a few weeks to the end of the Jonathan administration on May 29.

We also have the appointment of the former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, as the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Obi, who was elected governor on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in 2006, was reelected governor under the same platform, with the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu pleading passionately with the people of the state to honour him (Ojukwu) by reelecting Obi for a second term in 2010. Ojukwu’s wish was granted, but about three years after Ojukwu’s death, the governor began plotting his way to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He had played prominent roles in the government and was indeed a member of the president’s campaign team. His appointment as the SEC chairman could therefore be said to be the president’s way of showing appreciation to a friend in need.

There were also new appointments at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) where its executive secretary, Olufemi Thomas, was removed as executive secretary/chief executive officer with immediate effect, and replaced with Olufemi Akingbade in acting capacity. The government was also said to be recruiting into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), when all the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, did was to accept responsibility for the deaths of about 14 applicants in the same recruitment exercise last year. Without doubt, most of these steps could rightly be described as booby traps for the incoming Buhari administration, as some observers had noted. Otherwise, why the haste in appointing these people these dying minutes of the government?

Even where the appointments were made in good faith, it is difficult not to see bad blood in some of them. Take the sack of the NPA boss for example. Those who see it in bad faith say Abdullahi was removed because he did not open the NPA treasury to the ruling party for the elections and that if the president had been serious, he would have removed him a long time ago, given the series of complaints made against him, and not wait till after he failed to cooperate with the PDP chieftains in placing the authority’s funds at their disposal It would be difficult not to believe this theory, given that this is the style of the ruling government; you can commit murder in the government’s interest and get away with it!

Again, those who think the sack and appointment at the ports authority were not done in the national interest wonder how Buhari would remove Ado Bayero without reaping enemies from Kano State in return. The NPA, we should not forget, is a money spinner. And just like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), its activities are shrouded in secrecy. Indeed, a chieftain of the PDP, Bode George, who was its chairman was in 2009 convicted for contract splitting and inflation, and sentenced to 30 months imprisonment. Also, the NPA, NNPC, and some states including Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Lagos are regarded as honey pots that the ruling party must not lose, which was why the elections in some of these states, literally dripped with blood. So, it is understandable if President Jonathan appointed one of his own as NPA boss. It is also left for the incoming president to decide what to do about the appointment and others made in the dying minutes of this administration.

But for me, the most deadly booby trap being set for the Buhari government is the fuel subsidy issue and availability of petroleum products in the country. Since most of the corruption we are complaining about are in the oil and gas sector, some of the players in the sector who are uncomfortable with the impending coming of Buhari are likely to want to play some pranks. Most of the time when we have had crises between oil marketers and the Federal Government, leading to fuel scarcity, the fuel queues began to thin the moment government released some fund to the marketers. Not so this time. One week after the government released N156billion of the N254billion it owes the marketers, normalcy is yet to return to the fuel stations. I smell a rat here.

If I am right, what we may witness is a situation where the Buhari government may come on May 29, with long queues at the filling stations heralding its advent. The government may then be forced to take panicky measures before Nigerians start murmuring like the Israelites in the wilderness.

In case we have forgotten, President Jonathan’s problems started with his removal of fuel subsidy barely seven months after assuming office. So, it won’t be a bad idea if the incoming government too starts having challenges with fuel matters on assumption of office. The only difference though is that while that of the president was self-inflicted, with his party having been in power from 1999 when we started this democratic dispensation, Buhari would be coming in as a brand new president from a different political party. The point I am making is that while the PDP had about 13 years (1999-2012 when we had the fuel subsidy riots) to do something about our refineries, it did nothing, making Nigeria the only crude oil producing nation that imports petroleum products.

It is difficult for a party that has been in power for 16 years to suddenly relinquish that power only to wish its successor well. That the PDP is now like fish out of water is evident in the acrimony that has become the lot of the party since its defeat. The persistent calls for the removal of the party chairman and the entire Central Working Committee are enough pointers to the fact that the party is still trying to find its feet in its new role of opposition-in-waiting. If there is any proof about this, then check out the number of its members that have defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) since the party’s loss in the elections.

Although one is not sure how many heads would still roll before President Jonathan leaves the stage on May 29, the fact is that Gen Buhari has to watch it, particularly his handling of fuel subsidy and fuel supply in the early days of his administration, to avoid a situation where the APC too would find itself not adequately prepared for its new role of ruling party.

It takes two to tango. So, it would have taken some of the fuel marketers and government officials to perpetrate the fraud in the oil sector. That is why the battle for sanity in the sector is not going to be between the government and its officials alone, but between the government as well as the greedy marketers. And since corruption will always fight back; no one should be deceived that it would be easy to get to the bottom of the subsidy scam. The government has to be systematic about this. More importantly, it has to be on the drawing board now, trying to ensure how there would be uninterrupted supply of petroleum products immediately after its swearing in, before the Fates with its enemies do contrive.

May 10, 2015
Ifeanyi Ubah: weeping for his sins

If only babies could talk’, that was the catchphrase of a popular advert in the country sometime ago. If only we could have access to Ifeanyi Ubah’s mind, then we would know the real reason he wept like a baby during the submission of the report of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation to President Goodluck Jonathan, at the new banquet hall of the Presidential Villa on Thursday. According to Daily Sun in its Workers’ Day (May 1 edition) , Ubah started weeping after President Jonathan’s address, which drew a thunderous applause and standing ovation from the audience.

The report added that he wept uncontrollably such that at a point, he had to excuse himself from the gathering, after some party chiefs had taken turns to console him, to no avail. Apparently, those party stalwarts must have understood the reason for his weeping. The report added that Ubah was sweating like a Christmas goat (please pardon my embellishment) at the occasion. When a billionaire weeps or sweats profusely in public, it is not a laughing matter.

Chief Ubah is the founder and chief executive officer of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), the body that was at the vanguard of the president’s reelection campaign. That organisation meant nothing to most Nigerians and if it had any meaning at all, it was to those making money from it in the PDP and deceiving President Jonathan that the whole of Nigeria was behind him. As a matter of fact Ubah and Co. claimed they had 12 million signatures of Nigerians who wanted Jonathan to continue in office, after travelling all over the 36 states of the federation. In Nigeria, cooking figures is one of the easiest things to do.

Ubah, lest we forget, is also the chief executive officer of Capital Oil. He and his firm have been in the centre of several messy deals, the most notorious being their involvement in the oil subsidy scandal. In 2012, Cosmas Maduka, President of Coscharis Group, accused him of duping him of N21bn in the course of some business transaction.

In saner climes, the First Citizen would keep people like Ubah at an arm’s length. But, in a country of anything goes, and under a man like President Jonathan, the Ubahs called the shots. They are the president’s frontline allies. This is a man that we knew little or nothing about until he turned 40 a few years ago and celebrated his birthday in almost all the newspapers in the country; some of which gave out their front page for the vainglory.

As a major player in the oil sector, Ubah must have been instrumental to the oil and gas sector’s donation of N5billion to the Jonathan campaign. Meanwhile, these are people, like the power sector owners, who are complaining that they have problems accessing funds for their operations and that banks are not granting them loans again. I wonder which responsible bank would give loans to such unserious characters who can only be successful business men in Nigeria because of our warped sense of doing business.

So, contrary to the newspaper report that Ubah wept over President Jonathan’s loss in the election, it is possible that the man was weeping over his personal loss arising from the president’s defeat at the polls, and more importantly, over the questions he may, including others like him, have to answer regarding oil subsidy, which only a complicit government like President Jonathan’s could have treated with kid gloves. Add to his long list of woes, his ambition to become Governor of Anambra State is now gone with the winds. It is possible that was one reason he was so close to the president.

Otherwise, why would he be the one to weep over the president’s loss? What is his own? Why would he weep louder than the bereaved? Even President Jonathan who lost the election is not weeping; at least not publicly. Not even our own ‘Mama Peace’, his wife. Not even those close aides of the president.

So, I must be dead right when in my piece immediately after President Jonathan conceded defeat, I wrote that he must have consulted no one or only a few persons before taking that decision. President Jonathan confirmed that much when receiving the campaign organisation’s report. “Yes, I did not consult anybody before I made that phone call (conceding defeat to Gen Buhari) but I made that phone call on behalf of all of you and on behalf of the PDP”, he said. You can imagine what would have happened if the president had sought the opinions of the likes of Ubah on the matter! So, the question again, what is Ifeanyi Ubah’s own? I won’t want to speculate far into why the emergency oil mogul wept, but I am sure President Jonathan is not deceived that he was weeping for him (Jonathan). The man must be weeping for himself. The newspaper got it wrong when it said Ubah wept because he “could not contain his emotions”.

My people will say ‘owo jona’ (money goes down the drain!) If Ubah and his fellow money-miss-road who donated more than generously to the PDP campaign made their money through a dint of hard work alone, they would have been cautious in the way they gave cheerfully, even if subversively. There are thousands of their fellow Nigerians out there who cannot boast of where the next meal would come from, their own generosity does not extend to such people. Apparently, Ubah must have been thinking of where to recoup the investment he made into the president’s failed reelection bid. He must have been weeping internally for long only for him to weep in the open when he could no longer contain it. There are many like him who are in such tears now. And they will weep for long because it is the ordinary Nigerian that they are putting in pains to have their comfort. Some of them will soon start to visit hospitals abroad to have their blood pressure examined. Some of them will, like our Andrew, check out of the country to seek asylum abroad. And there is every cause for them to worry when a new government that is not likely to condone granting them access to the kind of easy money that they stumbled on is about coming to power.

Ubah cannot imagine that he would now be an outcast at the Villa that he used to enter and exit at will because the day the incoming president is seen with people like Ubah, that is the end of Nigerians’ trust in him. And I am sure General Muhammadu Buhari knows that. “Show me your friends, and I will tell who you are”.

May 3, 2015
An unrepentant PDP

Angry party chiefs do not know the harm they did to the country

From the angry reactions of some stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the party’s defeat in the last presidential election, and in many states where it used to hold sway, it is clear that the party chieftains had not been telling themselves the home truth. And, in any human relationship where such honest truths are missing, the result is the kind of defeat that the ruling party suffered. Of course, no one expected that a party that had been dreaming of ruling the country for 60 consecutive years should not bemoan its loss in only 16 years. So, ruing over the loss of such a golden opportunity is legitimate. The good news though is that PDP’s loss is Nigeria’s gain because it would have been disastrous for Nigeria if PDP had won the last elections. The way things are, Nigeria would not forget in a hurry that a political party called PDP once held sway in the country.

Of all the people that have been blaming other persons for their defeat; everyone else but themselves, Ahmed Gulak, a former senior special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan is perhaps the most strident. Hear him: “There is no party chairman of the PDP since 1998 that has led the party to such a disastrous outing. As a result, the national chairman should consider himself one of those who have to give way for the new party to come up. In fact, he doesn’t need to be told to turn in his resignation letter.” Although Adamu Mu’azu had denied the allegation that he worked against the president during the election, saying it was an “allegation made long ago without any substance,” it is doubtful whether the explanation would be accepted.

The ‘Muazu must go’ people are even threatening to fire the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) and Central Working Committee (CWC). One imagines how many chairmen they would sack. They seemed to have forgotten that Muazu came in after the former party chair was removed.

It is instructive that none of those adducing reasons for the party’s defeat mentioned anything about corruption, the first major sin for which Nigerians said change was inevitable. Maybe like President Jonathan, the PDP leaders too do not see that as in issue. Of course, why should they worry about mere stealing which some people chose to describe as corruption so as to soil the ruling party’s image? None of those who want Muazu’s head in a platter is talking about the party’s cluelessness on the country’s economic problems. They do not remember the thousands that leave schools yearly without any hope of getting jobs. Many of them died in search of near non-existent jobs at the Immigration in March last year. As a matter of fact, many of those with jobs have been retrenched under the Jonathan administration as a result of the inclement business climate.

Power supply remains as problematic as ever, with the government giving excuses instead of light. Rather than celebrate the number of hours they give Nigerians uninterrupted power supply (if they can’t assure it 24/7), they kept referring to the privatisation of the power sector as an achievement, as if that translated into improved power supply. But their cronies that they sold the power firms to who complain of lack of funds to do their business were able to cough up N500m for the political campaign of the PDP. These were the same firms that the Federal Government has so far given a whopping N57.72bn.loan under the N213bn Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility, to boost their operations. So, we have a situation where both the government and the power firms are entertaining themselves with Nigerians’ money. Or, what do we call ‘the money they are sharing’ after the firms had been sold to private individuals?

When during the campaign Nigerians wanted the PDP to render account of what it had done to earn their reelection, the party was busy accusing the All Progressives Congress (APC) flag bearer in the election, General Muhammadu Buhari, of not having school certificate. At some point, they said he was too old; at another, they said he was brain dead. Were these PDP’s achievements? Unknown to the PDP, the party helped Nigerians to make up their minds that it was because it had nothing to say that it made fishing for excuses about Buhari its preoccupation. Even fools in the country knew that the PDP was in trouble the moment APC came up with Gen Buhari as its presidential candidate.

Moreover, the party chieftains accusing Muazu of not leading the party to victory must have been living in fool’s paradise to think that their party would still have won the election despite the losses it suffered with the defection of several of its heavyweights to the opposition party long before the election. When those people were leaving, some of us warned them of the consequences, they ignored us. Of course when we were warning, it was not because of our love for their party and whatever it represents, but more because when the chips are down and their electoral misfortunes begin to manifest, they would want to cry foul where none existed. A Yoruba adage says ‘he flogged me but it did not pain me; it can never be the same as when one was not flogged at all’. If a political party lost five governors at a go, with many others remaining in the party only in name (their hearts were somewhere else); the same party lost the country’s number four citizen to the opposition and still maintained that it had no problem, then, someone must have been deceiving someone.

Of course we cannot overlook the effect of the use of the Permanent Voter Card (PVC), the Card Reader, etc. that the PDP for long kicked against but which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) insisted on using in the election, because it made it more difficult for the party (and maybe others) to freely rig the elections as they used to do.

Only an insensitive party or one that has any other means to win the election apart from the votes of Nigerians would have expected that President Jonathan would fly in the elections. Indeed, fielding the president was an insult to the sense of judgment of Nigerians to elect a president with the capacity to meet up with their great expectations. But the party’s hierarchy stayed fixated with him and even went to the extent of conning some of their members who were allowed to pay for the party’s ticket when they knew there was no vacancy for the office, at least as far as their party was concerned. So, why blame all of this on Muazu and the CWC? Where were they all when all these anomalies were taking place, that they could not put their foot down that the party must look for someone else to contest the presidential election?

The point is, it is immaterial if the PDP sacked Muazu 10 times over; he is not the problem. What the party needs to shred is its heart and not its garment. If PDP survived this long, it is because Nigerians have become so pauperised that many of them have lost a sense of what is morally permissible and what is morally reprehensible. They have been bitten by what I call the ‘Ekiti bug’. PDP has so far made life unbearable for Nigerians that many of them would see paper on the ground and take it for money. So, when the party gave them N1,000 in exchange for their votes, they accepted happily. When the party offered N5,000 to some of them in exchange for their Permanent Voter Cards, they accepted, in some cases, with thanks. This was part of the strategies the party adopted in places where the opposition is strong. They knew people would not vote for them there but that was not their headache; their concern was to make it impossible for such people to vote for the opposition.

In countries where people are politically conscious, there is no way the PDP would have scored the millions of votes that it got in the presidential election. One must admit though, that the level of political consciousness was higher in the last elections; and that was one of the reasons for the defeat of the ruling party. I have been writing weekly columns long before the country’s return to civil rule in 1999. But, never have I been bombarded with e-mails and short messages by Nigerians who were eager for change in the political equation like I got in the last elections. That the party’s leaders could not see the handwriting on the wall speaks volumes about their disconnection with Nigerians. Anyone thinking of resurrecting the PDP in its old image must think twice because it would be dead on arrival.

Indeed, that the ‘remnants’ of the party’s leaders are thinking the way they are regarding their losing the election gives the impression that the PDP harbours a lot of unrepentant politicians; despite the damage they have done to every facet of our lives in the last 16 years. But the good news is that Nigerians are happy that finally, Papa Deceived Pikin and Pikin Deceived Papa (PDP), until they wobbled and fumbled out of Aso Rock Villa.

April 26, 2015
How far can the customer go?

Coscharis vs. client as case study

When towards the end of last year, I wrote a piece on two half-filled bottles of a particular brand of soft drink sold to a consumer in the country, someone who had lived in Germany for years called to tell me how the situation would have been handled there. The person had lived in Germany for years and even had a German wife; so he was eminently qualified to speak on the matter. He said all the manufacturer of that drink would have done was to quietly offer the customer two cartons of the product, probably with an apology, and that would have settled it. In other words, I should not make an issue over what should otherwise not be a serious matter. I was stunned because I had thought hell would be let loose because of what I then perceived as the high level of consciousness in that environment.

Of course, what prompted my interest on the matter then is this concept of the ‘customer is king’. In the last few weeks, there has been another matter between a customer and an auto firm, which I guess must have been beclouded by the general elections. It is the story of Mrs Ebele Marie Omorodion, a German married to a Nigerian. Mrs Omorodion bought a BMW X6 from Coscharis Group, the representative of BMW in Nigeria, on August 1, 2012, for N16m. Not long after, she discovered that the DVD was faulty. A new one was ordered. The new one too was faulty and a new one ordered on June 27, 2013. And, as she put it, “Just while I tried to begin to enjoy my car, six months later I was driving out of the Chevron toll gate at 100km/hr when all of a sudden the car stopped on the high way with no prior warning”. This was blamed on Mechatronic gear box failure. The car was about 15 months then. She had a similar experience of the car suddenly stopping on motion, at times in the night with her kids in the car, on another occasion. Then the reverse camera (Ultrasonic system) too started malfunctioning.

These, no doubt, are not funny experiences. Of course, the company appears to be aware that there could be issues on its products sometimes; but these apply to virtually anything mechanical or electrical. Hence, it makes provision for courtesy car for their customers having issues with their cars for the duration of the repair. The company said it made one available for Mrs Omorodion which she allegedly did not use well.

Anyway, while the example of the soft drink is not exactly the same with the BMW issue, the point running through both is that of the customer being the king. I guess that is why Coscharis Group has restrained itself from joining issues with its customer on the pages of the newspapers that she has taken her case to; a decision which makes business sense. In most relationships, personal or business, there would always be cause for disagreements. And when they occur, they are bound to be settled whether by adjudication or through the legal process.

The problem, in this instance, could jolly well be from the manufacturer. It could be from the customer. But, if the company gave out a courtesy car as is the standard practice; and if it is true that all repairs covered by warranty were carried out under warranty at no cost to the customer, but at the expense of BMW AG and Coscharis, then, it might have proved good faith. Anything could have happened down the line.

Indeed, there are a lot of issues in this matter. One, different people have different attitudes to handling and maintenance issues. Two people may buy the same brand of cars the same day and in six months’ time, if both products are put up for sale, the prices offered for them, even if they are to be bought by the same person, would differ. The prospective buyer would make his offers after examining the two, based on his assessment of how they had been used and maintained. I have seen many instances where people were given the same brand of official vehicles at the same time and in less than a year, one would not believe that the vehicles were given out the same day, seeing that some of the vehicles have become jalopies due to bad handling and maintenance. While some of those given the vehicles would treat them as eggs, some do not care, even if their children turn some of the features to toys, it is simply a case of ‘the kids are playing’. Regrettably, this kind of attitude is a luxury where some of these modern cars are concerned. They are too complex to be handled with levity. Then, there is the question of the Owner’s Manual that many people do not bother to read. They just assume that since they have been using the brand for some time, they should have been conversant with its features. This may not hold true in all cases with some of these cars whose technologies change frequently.

Now, what is the way out of this quagmire? The pragmatic thing to do, for me, is to look for a middle course that would not short-change either party. Here, the idea of trade in would be more like it. I said this because it is going to be difficult for the customer to insist on getting a 2015 model of the same car that she bought in 2012, for several reasons. Firstly, the warranty period is long over. Secondly, it is not realistic to ask for a brand new car in lieu of a car purchased three years ago; the prices must have changed. Thirdly, if cars are replaced for every customer in that manner, then it is only a matter of time before the company would close shop. Of course, the only situation which could make that possible is if it is proven that the model is defective beyond replacing, at no cost to the customer, the faulty parts; or if the car or model should have been recalled outright from the market. But if it is just one such experience among the lot, an argument for replacement with a brand new car of the current model could be a difficult argument to sustain.

Now that Mrs Omorodion has taken her case to the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), it could decide to look into whether her experience with the BMW X6 is one-off case or the issues are common with the model and proceed to offer its opinion. That is more like it; CPC is likely to give a verdict that would yield result. This the media cannot do.

Anyway, all said, if Mrs Omorodion or even Coscharis Group is still not satisfied after the CPC might have given its opinion on the matter, the only option open is for the dissatisfied party to seek redress in a court of law as against that of the public opinion (which the newspapers that she has been using represent). It is the courts that would sift the wheat from the chaff, sift sentiments from sensible business decisions and juxtapose them with the issues of safety of the customer and fairness on the side of the two parties, and deliver an incontrovertible judgment that would be binding on both parties, whichever way the judgment goes. But the judgment would be a classical one not only for jurisprudence, but also, and more fundamentally, for this notion of the customer being king. The customer is king, yes; but with what powers? Asked differently, how far can the king go?

April 19, 2015
Like father, like son

Babajide Obanikoro: like father, like son. But we have the woman who bravely confronted him at the polling unit where he was not supposed to be in the first place last Saturday. But we also have to thank God for her. If she had done that in places like Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, the least she would have escaped with were gunshot wounds. She might have died for daring to confront the son of the honourable Minister of State for Foreign Affairs 2, who happened to be working for self and his father’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party, albeit illegally.

Lest we forget, his father is also enmeshed in the Ekiti rigging video saga of last year, where he and his fellow accomplices were reportedly ordering an army general about on how to rig the election for the ruling PDP. Who can blame Obanikoro Jr. He is merely learning the ropes early so that his father’s shoes will not be too big for him by the time he is to step into them.

April 19, 2015
Fayose, for whom the bell tolls

No matter how long it takes, the governor will pay for his illegalities

Today, I will draw analogies from a drama by the popular Moses Olaiya alias Baba Sala, as well as two Yoruba proverbs which, in my view best describe the personality and the predicament of Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State in his current self-inflicted impasse. First Olaiya’s drama. Olaiya, in the drama in question, said he could slap a masquerade, slap a policeman and complete the madness by stoning a judge, all because of the godfather that he had in that drama. (Mo le gba eegun loju, mo le gba olopa leti; ma tun soko lu adajo), he had boasted. Really, with some godfathers, one can get away with anything, anything including blue murder! With President Goodluck Jonathan solidly behind Fayose, the Ekiti governor has gone away with many illegalities.

Now, the proverbs. One is that of the hangman that would never want a sword dangled over his child’s head (abenilori ki fe ki a gbe ida koja lori omo oun). And the other, is that of a person who spat on the ground only to quickly rub it with his foot; it is because that person knows the evil to which spittle could be put (eni to tuto sile to f’ese raa, o mo nkan ti won nfi ito se). But before proceeding, it is better to expatiate to vividly drive home my point concerning the first proverb, for effect. In Yorubaland, masquerades are not regarded as ordinary human beings; they are seen more as heavenly beings. So, for a Yoruba man to say he would slap a masquerade is a serious matter because he is aware of the enormous powers they are supposed to carry as heavenly beings (ara orun). Add that to the fellow slapping a policeman. Mind you, it is the policeman that would be called to arrest him after slapping the masquerade. Then to want to complete the invidious act by stoning a judge! That’s the ultimate in the series of the impunities.

These, basically, are the things Fayose has been doing since his return as Governor of Ekiti State in October last year. He had slapped a masquerade, slapped a policeman and even stoned a judge, at least metaphorically, given the many impunities he had committed since returning to the Government House in Ado-Ekiti. Governor Fayose has been uneasy since the 19 members of the state house of assembly (who fled the state due to the heat generated by their clash with the governor) indicated their intention to return, early this month. We have witnessed all kinds of shenanigans and subterfuge to keep the legislators at bay, especially since the idea of the governor’s impeachment was mooted by the 19 lawmakers of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The governor has been doing what he knows how to do best, including issuing threats as well as organising protests to prevent the legislators from sitting.

But, one big question in all these is whether the governor has committed impeachable offences. The answer, of course is, yes. Fayose instigated seven legislators in the state house of assembly to sit and remove the authentic speaker, Wale Omirin, whereas at least nine members were required constitutionally in the 26-member house. He reportedly brought in three unknown quantities that he alleged were members of the house. To date, the identities of the three remain unknown. Could he have been working on the theory that he could eventually get three of the APC legislators to his side to say they were the three unknown quantities in order to make the required constitutional quorum? If that was his plan, obviously, he has failed as the APC lawmakers have remained stronger, determined and united since their travails began last year. As a matter of fact, the state APC chapter had said only the seven Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers in the house sat to remove the speaker as well as confirmed the appointment of commissioner nominees. It was the same pattern when Fayose wanted the consent of the state assembly for the 2015 budget. What has happened is that rather than find legitimate ways of getting the APC lawmakers back to do business, Fayose resorted to strong-arm tactics, using soldiers and policemen sometimes to do his bidding.

That was why he did everything to campaign against General Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate in the run-up to the elections. Fayose could not in his wildest imagination have thought of a situation where President Jonathan could lose the reelection, not to talk of conceding defeat even before the official announcement of the final result. Although the governor is not contesting any election now, he was one of those in my mind when I wrote a few weeks back that those waiting in the wings for President Jonathan’s crutches to scale the elections or continue in office after the sins they had committed under presidential cover would be disappointed because the president himself would need crutches to get reelected. I therefore did not see how he could be of any help to such characters who could not stand on their own. The life support that they were all banking on from Abuja has been cut off. Perhaps Fayose, even in his crudity could have been a little measured in his actions and utterances if he ever realised that this was the shape things would eventually take.

The illegalities that he had committed can only be tolerated in a banana republic. Unfortunately, rather than call Fayose to order, President Jonathan preferred to look the other way, thus giving tacit approval to the governor’s impunities and encouraging him to commit even more. It is sad that this is the kind of thing Ekiti people in particular and Nigerians in general are subjected to in the twenty-first century. Nigerians must be grateful that President Jonathan has been stopped by being denied reelection; so we can be hopeful that never again would we see the kind of impunities committed by the likes of Fayose in the country. One could only have imagined what Nigeria would be like if people like Fayose are not denied oxygen from Abuja by voting out President Jonathan on March 28.

Now, seeing his job is on the line, Fayose ran to the Federal High Court in Abuja to stop the APC legislators from doing their job. So, Fayose could still believe in the judiciary, the same judiciary that his thugs insulted and assaulted? Wonderful! Mercifully, the court in its wisdom has turned down this request.

Without doubt, Ekiti people reserve the right to determine who their governor should be; but they should also understand that the state is a part of Nigeria and the country has its constitution which is the grundnorm. Whoever does anything contrary to the constitutional stipulations must be made to face the full weight of the law. That, for me, is the point we should be making. It is because Fayose himself knows the extent of the impunities he had committed that he is now afraid of the APC legislators sitting because he knows that would automatically result in his impeachment.

We must lament a situation where the once erudite Ekiti people are now living by ‘stomach infrastructure’, a term coined by Fayose to show the limits of his knowledge at a time the rest of the civilised world is breaking new grounds in science and technology. Even our colleagues in the backbenchers’ league – Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia – etc. are not living by bread or ‘stomach infrastructure’ alone. They have since abandoned us as a country when they see the kind of leaders we have been entrusting our lives to. If Governor Fayose is impeached this time around, he would make history as the first governor in the country to suffer such fate twice. This, perhaps, is not what is making Fayose nervous. More importantly, he is afraid of his shadows.

His name (I)Fayose had worked for him to become governor twice and twice has he abused the privilege. He seems to have committed too many sins even for the Ifa divinity to forgive. This time around, there appears no incantation or propitiation that can rescue him because he has literally climbed the tree beyond leaves (o ti gun igi koja ewe). In simpler terms, he has stolen too much for the owners to notice. So, I am afraid, Ifa may not be able to deliver him as things stand. Fayose must get his comeuppance. Even if it tarries, it will surely come.

April 12, 2015