The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • The war that never was

    The war that never was

    The world had expected a bitter presidential poll but Jonathan saved the day by conceding defeat early 

    As a journalist, I should be one of the last persons to want a Buhari presidency. I was a few months to my graduation in the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, when the then Buhari/Idiagbon junta promulgated Decree 4 in 1984, under which even truth was inconsequential. But, if 31 years down the line I now find myself making a strong case for a Buhari presidency, then something must be gravely wrong with the existing order. If millions of Nigerians today find Buhari alluring, President Goodluck Jonathan is to blame. It simply tells of the rot that his government represents which, unfortunately, those in the government and their friends do not want to accept. Many people in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who say things are not bad under the Jonathan administration are only fooling themselves. But Nigerians who are feeling the effects of the ineptitude and massive looting in government know better.

    How can any sane person say that a government that could not do much when the naira was strong will do better now that the national currency is weak? How can any sane person say that a president who until his defeat at the polls still did not believe corruption has reached a crisis dimension in the country despite the global concerns about it, will tackle corruption? How can a president who came into power partly because of people’s feeling that being once upon a time a shoeless boy, he would empathise with the poor, say there is no poverty in the country simply because a few Nigerians own private jets?  Obviously, President Jonathan became disconnected with the people on getting to Aso Rock. His cause was not helped by the sycophants who surround him and are giving him the impression that all is well.

    The full story of what led to the president conceding defeat to General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not yet out; but I suspect he did not consult widely before taking that decision. Otherwise, the Edwin Clarks, the  Elder Godsday Orubebes, the Femi Fani-Kayodes, the Doyin Okupes,  the Ayo Fayoses, the Segun Mimikos, not to forget the Akpabio Akpabios, the Tompolos, the Gani Adams, the Frederick Fasheuns, etc. would have told him not to surrender because of what they will eat. Orubebe had to mess himself up in the full glare of the world because he could not imagine that the honey pot from where they have been making money was about to be taken away just like that. So, how could such people want the president to concede defeat?

    But personally, I was not surprised that President Jonathan lost. I had always told those who cared to listen that he would lose and that was obvious even in my write-ups. It could not have been otherwise for a president with the record that I have painted. Moreover, as at the time of the election, virtually all the party’s founding fathers had abandoned it. Many of its leading lights, including governors, had decamped to the opposition APC, yet, the remaining people kept deluding themselves that those who left had little or no value to add to the party’s fortune at the polls. The only surprise element for me in the defeat therefore was conceding defeat by the president, even before the result was officially announced. And that is where the spiritual dimension comes in.

    Even atheists among us must be seeking explanations as to why an election that we all thought was going to be  won or lost at the ‘war front’ and not at the polling booths ended on the peaceful note that it did. Many people had besieged the banks days before the election to get enough money that could last them for some time; many had done the same for foodstuffs. As a matter of fact, many of those with the means had left our shores, hoping to return after the ‘Jonathanian Wars’.

    Our gratitude should go to those behind the postponement of the elections who must have thought they had done an unimpeachable job that would allow the government to rush what it had left undone for years in six weeks. But God, as usual, caught the wise in their craftiness by making them push the elections into the Lenten season. Take it or leave it, a lot of spiritual fireworks went into the elections. Even Muslim clerics did a lot of prayers in the mosques whilst the Christians did theirs alongside their annual fasting. By now, President Jonathan must have known the difference between Father Ejike Mbaka of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, and the other men of God who might have kept telling him that he had any chance in the election. The president must have known the difference between a man of God properly so-called and people who were not called by God but who called themselves, or those who were called but derailed along the line for pecuniary gains.

    One major factor President Jonathan did not reckon with is the fact that he is from a minority region. I guess that reality dawned on him when the votes from the north started coming in and most of them went to Gen Buhari. I had told my friends who had believed that the president would get so so number of votes from the north central, so so number from the north west, etc., that they would be roundly disappointed; in other words, that the average northerner would not abandon Buhari at the critical moment to vote for President Jonathan. Thrice that Gen Buhari ran a solo presidential race, he polled about 12 million votes on each occasion. With the ‘coalition forces’ now with him, it would not make sense for an average northerner to abandon him because they could never tell when another northerner would have the kind of support that Buhari had from  a critical region like the south west. Performance was the other thing that could have made the average northerner prefer Jonathan to Buhari but this was missing in the Jonathan administration. Not only was the government incompetent; it was also monumentally corrupt.

    It would therefore have been a disaster of equally monumental proportions if President Jonathan had won because that would have told us that the values that he and his ruling party have been inculcating in Nigerians over the years have gained ascendancy. That would have meant a general approval of impunity, of corruption, of lawlessness and what have you. That would have set Nigeria many decades back. You can imagine a Nigeria where the likes of the people I earlier mentioned would be the ones calling the shots!

    Then, consider what was spent by the president on the election, especially during the six weeks. It is doubtful if President Jonathan himself can recollect how much of hard earned foreign currencies he wasted on ‘the polls. In the end, he lost. Although, in a sense, this gladdens my heart because it tells us that more Nigerians are wiser. I have always urged people whose conscience can take it to take bribes from politicians that choose to bribe rather than perform, and still vote according to their conscience. No one with good intentions would do such a thing the president did. If the president had won with the bribes, it is good governance and ultimately Nigerians that would suffer. There would not be any incentive for politicians to work hard in power if they know that everyone has a price and that once the price is right, they would always win elections.

    Then, the president’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan! She was simply an irritant and a pollutant to many Nigerians. She threw caution to the winds; and was speaking as someone campaigning for her husband in the race for the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) chairmanship. That was how low she dragged the exalted office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Indeed, if the president lost in Aso Rock Villa polling units, we may have to situate that within the context of the failure of the woman of the house to worm her way into the hearts of her immediate constituency. Regrettably, President Jonathan’s friends too only showed him as a shade better than his wife during the electioneering. Obviously, neither of them realised that the PDP that they went into election with had been so mortally wounded that it could no longer perform the ‘feats’ it used to perform in elections.

    All said, the good thing is that President Jonathan knew when to beat a retreat and he did. It is good that he realised that should anything go wrong, he would be the main culprit. All the others are mere footnotes. The beauty of the presidential election, for me, is the fact that an incumbent president can be defeated in an election. This is the way it should be and that, as a matter of fact, is the sermon many of us have been preaching; that Nigerians should be able to fire any elected officer that is not doing well. In other words, votes must count. Gen Buhari too and the APC must be guided by this fact.

  • The long wait

    The long wait

    At last, the election, despite attempts to scuttle it

    By the time you are reading this piece, the first set of the 2015 elections would have been over, other things being equal. But we have the second leg in less than two weeks, precisely on April 11. Ordinarily, the elections ought to have come and gone on February 14 (Presidential and National Assembly) and February 28 (governorship and state houses of assembly), but were postponed to March 28 and April 11, respectively, essentially by the military chiefs who said they could not guarantee security if the elections were held as earlier scheduled. The thinking in government then was that, among others, the Chibok girls abducted in April last year would have been found within the six weeks and the Boko Haram war would have been contained. Then, most importantly, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would have had enough time to perfect rigging plans, splash dollars on willing and unwilling Nigerians, to boost its chances at the polls.

    While the government has been celebrating the defeat of the insurgents with the assistance of troops from Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic, mum has been the word on the Chibok girls. Apparently, there does not seem to be any hope in sight about their whereabouts yet, and, in their stead, the government decided to renovate their school as if that is of any meaning to the girls’ parents. Anyway, the Goodluck Jonathan administration is a master when it comes to ‘promise and fail’. It would again promise that the search for the girls continues when indeed nobody is talking about them again, if we know this administration as we should by now. Then, his government would go to sleep again only to wake up two months to the 2019 elections (if it finds itself in the saddle once again) to start frantic attempts to right the wrongs it could not address in the last nine or 10 years.

    But one thing that had been agitating the minds of many Nigerians is the issue of the card readers that the ruling party does not want used for the elections. As it were, it seemed the last joker the ruling party wanted to use in its bid to have a field day in the election. Mercifully, last week, the courts, including the Court of Appeal and the Federal High Court said INEC should go ahead with the card readers.  Indeed, the Federal High Court which ruled on the matter on Friday asked both the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke, to appear before it on April 24, to look at the illegality or otherwise of the use of the card readers for a general election. Even baby lawyers know the meaning of that. So, those who might have been hinging their hope on the court stopping INEC from using the card readers have to return to the drawing board for the next item in their inexhaustible bag of mischief. By the time they begin to perfect that, the election would have been over.  But it is gratifying that our courts have not allowed themselves to be used by politicians who are ready to bribe God if He would be available for bribing, or bring the roof down on everybody where that fails, just to satisfy their selfish urge for political power which, unfortunately, they do not know how to use.  One must especially commend the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, who had earlier warned judges against any hanky-panky, especially in political cases. This is by far different from some of the previous general elections which produced billionaire judges but which messed up our judiciary and the electoral process.

    One terrible thing about the PDP is its futile attempts to hide behind one finger in its opposition to some of the processes and procedures guiding the 2015 general elections. Take the postponement of the elections for example. The ruling party had tried surreptitiously and severally to make it look as if the decision was that of INEC. But when it was clear the electoral commission was not going to play that kind of ball that would have meant an indictment of itself, thereby strengthening the hands of those who had been fishing for excuses to remove the commission’s boss, the National Security Adviser took the responsibility of announcing the government’s position that the country was not safe enough for the election.

    There is also the case of the Young Democratic Party (YDP) that was threatening to hold its party primaries on March 26 and 27, a day to the general elections, on the strength of a court judgment that ordered INEC to register it. Again, even a baby lawyer knows that the judge never issued any order to the effect that it should participate in this year’s elections because the courts are aware that issuing such an order was futile, given that ballot papers for the elections had been printed and it is late in the day to disrupt the process simply because of an unknown party that is probably serving some masters in power who have suddenly developed a phobia for elections. Even if YDP was right, what is to be done is to weigh its interest against that of the nation. Obviously, national interest would prevail. And that was what the court did by clarifying that it never said the party should be included in the ballot papers for this year’s elections. Imagine, a party that probably cannot muster 250,000 votes now wanting to be an issue in a general election? Who does not know that something beneath the river is beating the drums for the whirligigs that are ‘dancing’ on it? But that is how they had been using inconsequential matters to cheat Nigerians.

    When we take a trip down memory lane, we would see how the PDP Governors Forum itself came into being. When you have people who cannot do a simple arithmetic in an election involving only 35 people because they wanted to be fraudulent, then you can understand their frustration with card readers. As a matter of fact, not a few people felt part of the reasons they fought for postponement of the elections was to see if they could make INEC adopt both the Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) and Temporary Voter’s Cards (TVCs) simultaneously for the elections so they could reenact their usual rigging at the polls. When that campaign failed, they also sponsored some people to raise questions with card readers. But the meeting of the PDP governors in Lagos a few weeks back clearly exposed the party as the brain behind the scathing opposition to the use of the card readers. That is their style. The government even toyed with the idea of Interim Government, can you imagine!

    The primitive manner the Jonathan government has been running Nigeria is even reflected in the way and manner some of its officials are stealing from the country’s coffers. Indeed, to refer to what is happening under this administration as stealing is putting it mildly; it is also primitive as in primitive accumulation. Unfortunately, the president still believes the rate of corruption is exaggerated in the country. He is asking for four years to address the corruption in the oil sector! A leader who calls the gargantuan corruption in this country mere stealing is not fit to continue in office because by the time he wakes up to the reality, it would have been too late. Just as the country is now sweating to bring back the Chibok girls when it should have done so with ease had the president believed early enough that the girls were truly kidnapped.

    The world must have been shocked about how Nigeria degenerated to the extent that some of these developments have come to be our lot in the twenty-first century. But a country cannot rise beyond the level of those governing it. Even some of the people that we thought were coming from places where best practices reign supreme, where transparency and accountability are their creed suddenly sink the moment they join the Jonathan presidency. They see their critics as irritants and pollutants that are only out to discredit them. Take Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for example, how can she see anyone who says she has not managed the economy well in bad light when all the indices point to that, from the exchange rate to unemployment, etc? All she offers are statistics that do not have any bearing with reality. The good thing though is that many Nigerians are now prepared to take their destiny in their hands, in spite of the rural and primitive devices of the Jonathan government to keep the country in perpetual bondage and darkness.  Whether all their satanic plots added to or subtracted from their once upon the biggest party in Africa would be known in a few hours from now.

  • Patience’s fears

    Patience’s fears

    Are the guilty afraid?

    Except for the fact that her jokes are sometimes dry and insensitive, Dame Patience Jonathan’s interventions in her husband’s campaign have been as intriguing as they could be. But, when I say intriguing, I mean intriguing in reverse, because, virtually everything she said recently on the podium could be used, as they say in the police station, against her. Take for example her speech at the rally of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) women wing in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital on Monday. She said “What did they forget in Aso Rock? If you vote the PDP and Jonathan, it would be better for you. If you vote the APC, you will go to prison. How can you jail somebody for 300 years? I’m not ready to carry food to my husband inside prison oh!”

    Now, if Mrs Jonathan is wondering what someone forgot in Aso Rock, does she not feel we should also ask what is it that is making them this desperate not to want to leave the place? I know she had said everybody who goes there does two terms; so, they too should be allowed to do theirs. No one is saying they cannot do two terms but the thing is not automatic. What Mrs Jonathan wants is for us to return her husband unopposed. Unfortunately, there is no such provision in the constitution. They have to work for the presidency. It is difficult for one to blame the First Family though; this is the first real election they would be having in their lives. So, one can understand their desperation and frustration with the turn of events. Perhaps if Nigerians had been as perceptive as they are today in 2011, the Jonathan administration would not have taken them for granted as it has done.

    The point I am making is that Mrs Jonathan does not have the moral right to ask what anybody forgot in Aso Rock. They know how many churches they had attended to pray to retain their hold on power in recent months. That is for the ones we can see or know about. Some Senegalese Islamic clerics were in Aso Rock in May last year to pray for peace and an end to the insecurity challenges in the country. A few days ago, it was also reported that the Witches Association of Nigeria has thrown its weight behind the president’s reelection bid. As I said, there is no way we can verify some of these other connections, like that between the seat of power and the witches. We do not know too whether the wizards would go with their female counterparts. So, for someone whose husband has traversed the places the president has traversed, the question of asking what anybody forgot in Aso rock does not arise.

    Then in Lagos on Thursday, the president’s wife said at another rally where she addressed PDP Lagos women at the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, among others, that “I want you to know that a lion cannot give birth to a goat, a lion can only give birth to a lion, and Dr Goodluck Jonathan has delivered Jimi Agbaje to deliver Lagos. What Goodluck Jonathan is doing at the federal level is what he has asked Agbaje to reenact in Lagos State, if he wins the election. Nigerian women your messiah has come, so vote freedom for yourself in Lagos.” Some comic relief?

    But I could hear Lagosians’ thunderous “we reject this in Jesus’ name”. How can any serious person say Lagos should witness the kind of paralysis that is at the centre? Could it be that those who do not know that the Jonathan presidency is a monumental failure are doing so genuinely? Or many of them are being mischievous and are only supporting the government because of ‘stomach infrastructure’. And I hear a lot of that has been going round in dollars as the campaign enters injury time.

    But there is good news for Mrs Jonathan that is afraid of a Muhammadu Buhari presidency because she might have to be taking food to her husband in prison if the retired general wins the forthcoming presidential election; that fear should have evaporated with the assurance by General Buhari’s wife, Aishat, that they are unfounded. Mrs Buhari said the job to be done would not leave time for the kind of witch-hunting that Mrs Jonathan is afraid of. “For those that are campaigning, saying that he (Buhari) is coming to jail Nigerians, I don’t know what their fear is. But they shouldn’t be afraid because we are all yearning for change”, Mrs Buhari told some women in Benin, Edo State, on Thursday.

    But tobe frank with ourselves, Mrs Jonathan said some home truth. The few corrupt elements who are milking the country dry are afraid of Buhari presidency because their hands are too dirty not to imagine where their next destination would be, particularly if the ‘crutches’ that have been supporting them, that is the Jonathan presidency, are suddenly sacked from power. Indeed, former President Obasanjo said that much sometime ago, that the main reason President Jonathan himself is afraid of Buhari is because of fears the retired general might send him to prison on account of corruption. But there is reasonable ground to be afraid. This is one of the few backward countries where someone would enter either State House or Aso Rock shoeless and in the next few weeks, he is into some sudden, inexplicable opulence. Buhari had been so many things in this country, yet, when he told us what he is worth, many people who had not been anything near what he had been are wondering how come someone could be that stupid not to have made so much money for himself and for his generations unborn.

    For sure, with Nigerians’ experience with President Jonathan, any contender for elective posts in the country who thinks he can gain cheap sympathy by saying he was shoeless as a boy can never smell the office, because experience is the best teacher.

    Again, we should understand the fear of people who are afraid of going to prison in Nigeria; the point is, they have left the prisons to degenerate and they are afraid of having a taste of what they have been serving many Nigerians who have the misfortune of being in the jailhouses. But, I want to believe that Nigerians, in their usual magnanimity would not mind conceding to our very important citizens who may be jail-bound for the atrocities they committed against the country that they should apply to serve their terms in the International Criminal Court (ICC) prison. That is a much better place, where they would have almost all their comfort except probably their freedom of movement. Their ilk there would gladly receive them. And, per chance the president ends up there, his lovely wife does not have to entertain any fear as she would not be saddled with the responsibility of taking food to him in the ICC facility.

    In this wise, the ICC should begin to expand its prison because, for the first time in our country’s political history, the court may have some very important guests from Nigeria after these elections. The desperation for power has become so unusually intense as even the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, observed during President Jonathan’s visit to his palace on March 12.

    Perhaps some lessons would have been learnt if General Ibrahim Babangida and his colleagues who annulled the June 12 1993 presidential election which Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was set to win, had been punished. We have to insist that some people cannot impose leaders on us. The idea that some of those in power today would hand over to anybody but Buhari is arrant nonsense. If that is the choice at the polls, anyone who attempts to stop him from being sworn in as they did June 12 must be severely punished.

    Happy voting.

  • Thank you, Awujale

    Thank you, Awujale

    Oba Adetona has done what is expected of a traditional ruler of repute

    Oba Sikiru Adetona, The Awujale of Ijebuland, deserves commendation for the candid remark he made during President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to his palace on Thursday. It is not all the time that we have traditional rulers speak truth to power. I met the Oba for the first time at Ijebu-Ode Grammar School in the early ‘70s. I cannot remember what exactly he came for then, but I remember he told the story of how he became Oba and also mentioned something about appreciating whatever gift his children gave him, despite the fact that he is blessed himself. When you deduct about 40 years from the Oba’s age, you would know he must have been extremely young then. And he was extremely handsome, too. Even at his age, he is still any lady’s man, no pun intended. But these are not matters for today.

    The Awujale deserves commendation not just for the frank speech but because of his consistency in such matters. The president had gone to the palace in continuation of his tours to traditional rulers in the southwest. I said it about three weeks ago when the president was in Lagos to meet some traditional rulers, that none of the Obas would dare tell their subjects to vote for the president or any other person for that matter because it is wrong to do that. One is even at a loss as to why the south west has suddenly become a tourism centre for the president at this point in time. President Jonathan seems to have made a fetish of such tours as if the Obas would, at the snap of a finger, order their subjects to vote for him. In Yorubaland, gone were those days.

    The Yorubas respect their monarchs; but the respect is reciprocal. Any Oba that makes the mistake of asking his subjects to vote in a particular way, and especially for President Jonathan, knows he is courting trouble. A prominent traditional ruler in Yorubaland, who only said something suggestive of supporting General Ibrahim Babangida after his annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, knows what he went through in the hands of the Yoruba people. As the Awujale noted, the Yorubas are too sophisticated to be led in the nose on who to vote for during election by any Oba. “In Ijebu here, it is not possible for any Oba, not even in Yorubaland, to go out and say vote for this, vote for that; that person is looking for trouble. But give them the opportunity to present their programmes so that people can make up their minds on what to do. I think this is a very sound democratic principle and that is what I have decided to do, to give you the opportunity of meeting with the people”.  It couldn’t have been better said.

    Then President Jonathan did what he knows how to do best: gave himself pass mark on road infrastructure. He said railway is back; but didn’t say what type of railway. He also said his administration has tried “both in the tertiary level, or what we call health tourism”, etc. Then he assured that if reelected, he would implement the report of the National Conference.  Earlier, when responding to a demand by the Dagburewe of Idowa, Oba Yinusa  Adekoya, who spoke on behalf of the Ijebu Traditional Council, President Jonathan said he would take the appointment of an Ijebu in his cabinet “very, very seriously” if reelected.

    If the president went to 30 palaces in the southwest and all of them made a similar request, he would promise to do something for them all yet, we all know that the constitution is clear on how ministerial appointments should be made. In several other places, President Jonathan had promised heaven on earth things that he could not do in the best of times when crude oil was selling at good prices.

    Perhaps the icing on the cake as far as President Jonathan’s visit to the Awujale’s palace is concerned was the monarch’s admonition to his subjects to vote in only people with the genuine interest of the people at heart; honest people with integrity and the fear of God. “Each time I have cause to talk to our people, I have always told them, in the churches and mosques that when you’re going to vote, make sure you back your sons and daughters who will give something back to you; not the ojelus (looters). Those who will be honest with you, who know the way of God; those are the people you should vote for; not those who will give you two, three spoons and mortgage your future. It is not right”. This is what, in Yorubaland, is called oro sunnukun (food for thought). I wonder how the president and his entourage would have felt at the point the Awujale was making. Clearly, they must have been disappointed if their visit was to get his royal endorsement.

    Oba Adetona’s speech reminds one of the visit of President Jonathan to the revered Oba of Benin,  Omo N’Oba Erediauwa, during the Edo State governorship election in July 2012. The Benin monarch was as candid as he could be when he was reported to have told the president to allow the wish of the people prevail in the election. As the Awujale rightly noted, the coming elections are about the most tension-soaked we are having in about 55 years. Although no one has used the expression ‘do-or-die battle’ as former President Olusegun Obasanjo did in his time, the point is, this is the real do-or-die battle. But why? Why?

    Even the Moroccan king, HM King Mohammed V1, was not left out of our dirty political tricks. That country’s authorities had to say the monarch declined a telephone conversation with President Jonathan because the monarch too realised the implications of such conversation at this point in time. “The king has actually declined the request of the Nigerian government because it is part of the internal electioneering” (in Nigeria), a statement from the Moroccan authorities said. Yet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja last Monday denied that the Moroccan monarch turned down such a request. It insisted that the president spoke with the Moroccan monarch. “This information is absolutely not correct as the president did in fact speak to the Moroccan monarch … both leaders spoke extensively over the phone on matters of mutual interest and concern”, the ministry said despite the Moroccan authorities’ denial that any such conversation took place. The ministry said it would respond after getting a directive from “higher authorities to do so”. But it was President Jonathan himself who responded, days after, that he never had any such conversation with the Moroccan monarch!

    So, what happened? An investigation had been ordered and we await, as usual, its findings. But to show their disgust about the whole thing, the Moroccan authorities issued two statements within 24 hours and crowned what it called “unethical practices” (diplomatically avoiding to say that the Nigerian government lied) with the recall of its ambassador in Abuja for consultations. Although the same Ministry of External Affairs said the conversation (that the president said never was) was not to confer any political advantage on the president and his party, Nigerians know better. What else could it have been all about, especially given the Moroccans’ claim that “there has never been a telephone conversation” between the two leaders?

    Does this not show to what extent we are prepared to ridicule the country just for the sake of elections? If we must wash our dirty linen, should we do that in public? So, there is none of our institutions that would not be rubbished all for these elections? Now, it is the turn of the foreign affairs ministry, the most unexpected quarters.

    However, by now, it ought to be clear to President Jonathan that no monarch can get him more than his (monarch’s) own vote, that is if the monarch is so pleased to. But hold it, what could have been responsible for the president’s newfound love for Yoruba monarchs? Could it be because they are believed to have ‘authority’ on their tongues or in their staff of office?  All said, the Awujale deserves praise for living to the high standards expected of monarchs of repute like him. Little wonder he is one Oba that receives the prostration of countless other Obas. Oba Adetona has done what many spiritual fathers would not do.  Kaabiyesi o!

     

  • ‘Born-again’ President Jonathan

    ‘Born-again’ President Jonathan

    Nigerians should pray that all days should be Election Day because that is the only time they see result

    President Goodluck Jonathan is ‘born-again’ indeed. In need, everyone becomes born-again. Suddenly, he has begun to give a damn to those little things he hitherto did not give a damn about. But, unlike one of our former presidents who was ‘born-again’ only from his head to his stomach, President Jonathan appears ‘born-again’ (or transformed) from head to toe. We should not expect anything less from the initiator of ‘Transformation’ as a government slogan and the patron of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN). Again, we should not expect anything less from a president who has traversed many churches in the land. That is the essence of those spiritual voyages to Lagos while his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, took care of the eastern flank which, unfortunately, ended in a fiasco, with Father Ejike Mbaka’s outburst against the First Family’s reelection campaign. By the way, what has happened to that magic wand of the president – the Neighbour to Neighbour outfit which was a major plank of his campaign for the 2011 election when his good luck shone unchallenged? That good luck appears to be in trouble these days.

    Anyway, while we await answer to that, it is good to mention some of the areas the president has suddenly ‘repented’ and become ‘born-again’. For the better part of last week, there was fuel scarcity all over the country. This was attributed to so many things, but it was apparent the fuel marketers did not want to be caught in a situation where their subsidy claims would not be paid in the event that President Jonathan is retired on March 28. They know it is only under the incumbent that spurious claims could be made and paid and that once a serious government takes over, that is the end of that satanic honeymoon. So, they decided to hoard fuel or stop placing orders for it.

    The thing worked. President Jonathan’s ears must be full with the numerous allegations of incompetence levelled against his government and so would never allow the scarcity to linger for long because he would not want fuel scarcity added to his long list of failures. Promptly, the government rose to the occasion and the marketers are happy once again. Fuel queues are gradually disappearing.

    Then, look at the case of the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) outstanding corps members that the president honoured last Monday; 164 in all. They belonged to the 2012, 2013 and 2014 service years. The presidential honours for youth corps members is an annual event but the president who had not deemed it fit (sorry who had been too busy to hold the event in the last two years) suddenly discovered that it could now be accommodated despite his tight schedule for the elections.

    Then the Chibok girls. President Jonathan on Thursday sent the Minister of State (Power), Mr. Mohammed Wakil, to meet with the parents of the girls abducted from school by Boko Haram insurgents last April. “Mr. President is pursuing multi-faceted strategies which address the pains, anger and frustrations of victims.

    “Our President directed me to tell you that his government is committed to doing everything possible for the safe return of your daughters”, Wakil told the distraught parents. He did not forget to add that their children would return safely and thanked them, even if unsolicited, for not aligning with those who are politicising the issue, as if we have forgotten that it was the government that began the politicisation by saying no girls were abducted, at a critical time that it was still possible to rescue them from their spineless abductors with relative ease.

    On the same Thursday (last week), President Jonathan sent the woman with whom he is well pleased such that he has abandoned everything about our economy to her care, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to the same Chibok to lay the foundation of rebuilding the Government Secondary School  where the girls were abducted. Would you still call the president a coward when he had sent two eminent cabinet members to Chibok in a week to appease the people? And, if you are still thinking the president is doing all these for the sake of elusive votes, I pray that God would forgive you because I know he is doing them now because he is no longer of the world.  He abandoned Chibok when he was still in the world. Now, old things are passed away and all things have become new. That, indeed, must have informed his decision to send an emissary to the parents, as well as commence rebuilding of the school damaged during the Boko Haram invasion last April, three weeks to elections.

    With all these, I must have convinced, rather than confused those still harbouring the impression that our president is incompetent that the reverse is indeed the case. See what the man has done in just one week. This is aside the numerous claims of victory our soldiers are claiming in the war against Boko Haram, but the glory of which many Nigerians are giving to the Chadian, Cameroonian and allied forces that are helping us out with the war against the insurgents. That was how they accused a military governor of not being able to speak impeccable Queens English years ago whereas the man was working. What has Queens English got to do with performance? Soon, the whispers got to the governor who fired back: won la a gbeebo, a gbeebo, arson si nlo (they say we cannot speak good English, but arson (action) is going on!) If the man did not ‘have action’, he would not have seen the shoddy job done by the contractor that his government awarded a bridge project. ‘Who built dis gada’, it is shaking?’ (Who constructed this bridge that is shaking?) he asked when ‘bouncing’ on the bridge to test if its integrity had not been compromised.

    Now, simply because some critics do not like the president’s face, instead of praising him for the feat so far achieved, they are busy lamenting that it was the same Chad that General Buhari pursued several kilometres into their territory (their tails between their legs, in 1983, when that country tried to insult Nigeria) that is now warning the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, to surrender or be smoked out and killed! Apparently many Nigerians who are displeased with this role reversal are now asking: how did things get this progressively bad? Indeed, I remember when in one of those lacklustre advertisements put up by a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) agent castigating Buhari, the advertiser had alleged that our military in such a bad state is Buhari’s doing! Trust Buhari’s acolytes, they would never allow such fallacy go unchallenged. So, they replied that Buhari left the stage since 1985; and many other governments had come and gone after him. Even the PDP that has ruled for 16 long and tortuous years, what has it done to improve the lot of the military beyond making it an annex of the ruling party, with ‘bloody civilians’ allegedly ordering generals about for electoral malfeasance? This is despite the fact that those who are supposed to probe the allegation are yet to admit that the said event occurred.

    For those who see Chad’s role in the Boko Haram saga today as an irony, I ask: what is ironical about that? What is wrong in Nigeria seeing Boko Haram and Chad killing it? Are we not all familiar with the saying that there is nothing wrong with a man seeing a snake and a woman killing it; that what is important is for the snake not to escape? Or, as our people versed in Pidgin English would say, whether we tie wrapper around the waist or we tie the waist around the wrapper, what matters is that one is not naked! Are we not to be celebrating the fact that it is a fellow African country that is doing for us what the United States of America, Britain and other world giants could not do?

    Honestly, my advice to those who thought not much could be done within six weeks’ postponement of the elections is to have a rethink, seeing the grounds our new, improved and ‘born again’ (to boot) President Jonathan has covered in so short a time. One, two, three and still counting! My own fear , however, is of a different kind. My worry for the president  is that if he rushes all that he has to do now, what then would he do if he is reelected? Honestly, this is my fear. Otherwise, we should be happy that our prayers for him are being answered.

  • Where is the fire?

    Where is the fire?

    If it is true that pastors got bribe from govt, then we don’t have to look far for why the altars are cold

    Although some things are done or accepted differently in different parts of the world, others are universally permissible, irrespective of people’s religious persuasion or colour. I learnt that among some tribes, for instance, the best way they appreciate their male guest is for the host to occasionally dedicate his wife to the male guest for the number of nights he would be with them. But if a guest messes up with his host’s wife in Yoruba land, southwest Nigeria, that guest may crow like cock thrice, after which he falls down and dies, like someone under the spell of the ‘fall down and die’ people. Well, some people have argued that there is nothing like that, and that people who die in many such circumstances die of exhaustion or overexcitement.

     I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in finding out whether this is true or not because, apart from the fact that society frowns at such in this part of the world, it is too risky to do a thing one may never live to regret.  Yet, in Igboland, machetes may have to come to the rescue of the host whose guest decides to sleep with his (host’s) wife. So, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. But then, there are some things that are universally adjudged bad and they cannot be given any other name, irrespective of creed, colour or time. Stealing or corruption, for instance, is frowned at by any religion that I know or has heard of.

    It is in this context of universal badness that I see the allegation, first by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, to the effect that some Christian leaders in the country were given N6billion by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to campaign against the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari. Amaechi, who spoke at the party’s governorship rally in Emohua Local Government Area of the state early last month, said: “Some pastors collected N6bn and they are circulating document and telling you not to vote for an Hausa man; not to vote for a Muslim; that they want to Islamise Nigeria. Tell them to return our N6bn”.

    When Governor Amaechi initially made the allegation, I deliberately refused to be dragged into the matter. It is not that I believed or disbelieved him, or that it was not weighty enough; it is just that I wanted to avoid it, if possible. In the first place, some of the pastors linked with the alleged bribe are too rich to fall for such temptation; at least so I thought. I was somehow tempted to join the fray when Borno State-based pastor, Kallamu Musa-Dikwa, more or less confirmed that the allegation was true. Again, somehow, the allegation was overtaken by events. This is a season when things are happening in the country at an alarming rapidity. Before you make up your mind on what to comment on, many other things have reared their heads, (usually ugly heads) begging for attention. Of course, both the PDP and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) through which the bribe was allegedly disbursed have denied the allegation, no one expected them to do otherwise.

    However, with the insistence by Pastor Musa-Dikwa last week that what the PDP gave was N7billion and not N6billion as alleged by Gov. Amaechi, it dawned on me that I could not run away from the matter perpetually.  Moreover, from the pastor’s account, he said he fell out with the national body of the CAN when in 2013, some clerics from the United States (Christian Association of Nigeria-Americans) visited Nigeria and donated $50,000 to the victims of the Boko Haram in Borno State. He said rather than the CAN to disburse the money to serve the purpose it was meant for, the victims were only given a paltry N100,000. If he is correct, what happened to the balance? Indeed, one other thing that made it compelling for me to intervene now is the one billion Naira difference in the two claims.

    First, this probably shows that there cannot be smoke without fire. In other words, money probably changed hands. Second, the possibility of the common thing in government whereby people given money to share to others suddenly become ‘editors’ who also ensure that what is delivered is less than what was allocated, is high in this instance, too.  So, it is possible that while editors are at their various desks editing stories, some government officials are ‘editing’ millions, perhaps billions, into their pockets. Recall the different claims over what was given to the Chibok mothers when they visited Aso Rock last year.

    But, to be fair to the Jonathan presidency, this ‘editing’ did not begin with it. Indeed, the matter reminds me of a story of something that allegedly happened in the military era when the then head of state was said to have sent a senior public official to give some money to some traditional rulers in one part of the country. The man left and returned to tell the head of state that he had delivered as instructed. Somehow, the head of state got to know that he ‘edited’ the money so drastically for the owners to notice. I think one of the beneficiaries called or wrote the head of state to thank him, stating the amount given to him. That was how the head of state got to know that what was delivered was far less than what he asked the executive messenger to deliver. So, he called another senior government official and gave him some amount to give to the same people. That one went and delivered only half the amount and pocketed the remaining. But when he returned, he reported himself to the head of state who only smiled broadly and remarked that at least he was honest enough to deliver ‘a whole’ 50 percent of what was given to him to deliver, and to also report himself!

    It is true that the Bible says we should touch not God’s anointed and harm not His prophets. I do not intend to do either. But I do not think pastors can hide under this canopy to escape criticism when they deserve to be criticised. After all, they are human beings, too. As a matter of fact, that is the point I always stress whenever some people want us to see the men of God as some super humans. The point is, the way and manner some of them have exalted prosperity over and above salvation makes them susceptible to corrupt tendencies and practices. It is not beyond people who do this to take the kind of bribe that Governor Amaechi and Pastor Musa-Dikwa have alleged because such people are not likely to see any money as ‘haram’. To them, such money, even if it comes from Satan, is manna from heaven and whatever is impure or unholy about it disappears the moment it is sanctified! Perhaps the cleansing process is complete as soon as they take tithe out of it and pay it to the tithe account.

    The truth of the matter is that there is hardly any difference between the secular and the spiritual in many churches today. Indeed, most of these churches are spiritually “poorly lit”, as a friend of mine said in a book that I reviewed for him about a decade ago. Virtually everything has been ‘funkified’ in many churches today, from gospel music to the mode of praying and even mode of dressing. A message posted on Facebook by one of my readers says it all: “Those who subverted the wish, aspirations, and desires of millions of people by rigging elections later went to the church for thanksgiving, stood in front of the congregation, raised their hands and shouted “Halleluyah”. HA!!! The Church in Nigeria has become too cold; the fire has gone out! Thieves, rogues, fraudsters, election riggers, treasury looters, murderers, and all manner of criminals are comfortable in the church. In fact, they are given special reception, recognition, and special seats, what a pity…what a shame.”

    It is because the pulpits and altars are too cold that many of these politicians go there for thanksgiving. I doubt if they would ever go before the gods of Iron and Thunder (Ogun and Sango, respectively) and feel comfortable the way they do in the churches. Yet many of our pastors cannot see that something is wrong. As a matter of fact, when I see such politicians sitting comfortably in the church or dancing towards the altar, I feel sorry for the church because the men of God in some of the cases know the truth but the truth has always failed to set them free because of the fat envelopes that such politicians drop at the end of the service.

    Now, if such a huge amount was said to have been given to the Christian leaders and only about N3million was given to each state chairman of CAN, as claimed by Pastor Musa-Dikwa, isn’t it obvious that another serious ‘editing’ has occurred? I doubt if all the angels can exonerate CAN from this peculiar mess. But that is what happens when neither the taker nor the giver is anxious about receipt for ‘transactions’! There is God o!

  • Our good man

    Our good man

    Nigeria’s President  who sees no evil, hears no evil

    By now, psychologists should be busy studying who the man, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is. That is if they have not already concluded their findings on him. The man, who is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has denied being Pharaoh or Herod. He said he is not even Nebuchadnezzar. No matter what anybody says, he is entitled to his opinion.

    But one of the issues I have with the president is the dissonance between some of his words and his actions, or the actions of his ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which he cannot, unfortunately, say he is not aware of. I was in the third service at the Winners Chapel on January 25 when President Jonathan visited the church. When Bishop David Oyedepo asked the congregation to pray for him, and even when he (Jonathan) made his brief remark at the service, one saw a meek President; one who could possibly not hurt a fly.

    However, I always find it difficult to reconcile this mien with some of the developments in the country, like in the Ekiti show of shame, and to some extent, the Osun governorship election of last year; or in his handling of corruption matters. Even his involvement in the sequence of events that led to the postponement of the general elections that should have started on February 14 is suspect. Would President Jonathan say, in his true Christian conscience, that what Captain Koli Sagir alleged concerning the disgraceful way very senior soldiers – Generals and all – were used to intimidate the opposition during the Ekiti governorship election last year was false? Or that he was not aware of it? Even if he was not, ignorance is no excuse in law, especially at his level. Then, now that a participant has spilled the bean, what has he done? Or is he still holding on to his earlier position that it never happened? Does playing the ostrich make President Jonathan a good man?

    Sometime last week, I watched the video where former President Attah Mills of Ghana was speaking on a ‘sting operation’ conducted at a Ghanaian airport, to see the extent of the rot in the place, and perhaps, by extension, the country. The way the president spoke you could feel the palpable anger and a strong determination to exterminate corruption in Ghana in him. It was the same Ghana that got deputy minister of communications, Victoria Hammah, sacked for merely contemplating stealing in November 2013, at a time when our own president was still dilly-dallying over what to do with Stella Oduah, then Minister of Aviation, over the scandalous purchase of two bullet-proof cars for N255million.

    Not for John Mahama, Ghana’s current president any attempt to make any distinction between stealing and corruption. Not for him any dilly-dally; he went straight for Hammah’s job.  That is how you know a leader who is serious about fighting corruption. Corruption is not a Nigerian; I mean it is everywhere that fowls are stolen at night. The difference is that chances of getting away with corruption are very high in this country and that is because instead of calling those involved the thieves that they are, the Jonathan administration, and to some extent others before it, cultivate them.  Again, between President Mahama and President Jonathan, who is a good man?

    In recent times, I have received numerous text messages that a particular political party has been giving fertiliser, for instance, with the president’s picture on the bags. And my position on this is simple: those whose Christian conscience or Moslem conscience, or even pagan conscience can stomach it should not hesitate to take whatever money, fertiliser or rice, etc. that the ruling party or any party for that matter offers them now for the sake of the election. It is our common wealth. No genuine investor or person who made legitimate income would be throwing money or Greek gifts to voters on the eve of elections. What is important is that after taking such unsolicited gifts, you still vote according to your conscience, realising that those giving such gifts are themselves no fools. Not only will they recoup their ‘investment’ after winning election, what they will take would be several times more than what they gave. Offering Greek gifts is not a way to be a good man.

    Then, one of the poisoned chalices the president is dangling for reelection. He said he would create Ibadan State if reelected. Those clamouring for it are probably politicians who themselves know that even the present 36 states are not viable. Will Ibadan State too be going to Abuja for handouts at the end of every month? A devout president who goes to churches to seek God’s face ought not be doing such a thing because he knows it is not one of the things Nigeria needs now. You cannot mix politics with God.

    In essence, President Jonathan must decide which he wants to serve: wars and chariots or the power of the Most High. I say this because the president cannot be moving from church to church in search of whatever, only for soldiers to be deployed at the slightest opportunity to intimidate innocent citizens. Our hope that the president and his ruling party would reckon with court judgments forbidding the use of soldiers for elections in the coming elections was dashed on Thursday by the Two Brigade Commander/Sector 2 Joint Task Force, Operation Pulo Shield, Brigadier-General Koko Essien, who insisted that soldiers “will be involved in the election to the extent that is allowed by law”. We have been having elections long before the Jonathan administration and we know our soldiers had not been as visible in previous elections as they have been under this administration. Yet, the law has never changed. We all know the circumstances under which soldiers can be drafted for election purposes and the process to do that. So, that cannot be an issue.

    But we have never had a situation where politicians would be giving orders to military officers on how to intimidate the opposition during election as they allegedly did in the Ekiti State governorship polls and which the military authorities have not responded to, even though they were swift in replying General Olusegun Obasanjo for saying the president wants to use the service chiefs for his tenure elongation agenda. What the military authorities did not know or pretend not to know is that the military brought this kind of suspicion to itself. Obasanjo merely said what is in the minds of many Nigerians. Our laws could not have envisaged a situation where more than 1,000 soldiers would be drafted to a place like Ekiti just to conduct governorship election when there were no sufficient troops to send to confront the Boko Haram insurgents in the troubled northeast. It is such abuse of the military that we are talking about; and that, I suppose, is what the courts too have outlawed.

    Now, we are hearing a lot of speculations, some of which ordinarily are easy to dismiss because they are just unthinkable in 21st century Nigeria. Obasanjo had even warned against (?). But we cannot wish these speculations away because that was how the speculation about postponement of elections started and the government tried all the tricks in the world to no avail. It eventually had to force its way through. Anything is possible when you have a good man who is also the leader of a democratic party that is afraid of elections, as president. The latest now is that the president is visiting some ‘Yoruba leaders’, whatever that meant! The point is that only a fool would not know that those who met in Akure last week and are parading themselves as Yoruba leaders cannot even speak for their own immediate families, not to talk of the Yoruba race. That race is too sophisticated for any wool to be pulled over its face. President Jonathan has been in office for more than five years, if he had any intention to restructure Nigeria, he should have done that. It is the kind of ‘divide and rule’ that his administration has been doing; going to the north to assure of one thing and coming down south to assure the exact opposite. I also do not know of any traditional ruler in the southwest zone who would openly canvass support for President Jonathan, knowing the groundswell of opposition to his government and reelection in the region. Any of them who makes the mistake of saying the president is a good man would be reminded they said so of the Babangidas and the Abachas of this world, etc. Yet, see where they landed us. The Yoruba race is one that neither forgives nor forgets when people commit political sacrilege. Such people remain renegades for life!

    Yet, no one can blame the government for whatever shenanigans it might be planning to stay put or avoid elections perpetually. That is what happens when people are not punished for crimes against the State. If General Ibrahim Babangida and his co-travellers who annulled the popular wish of Nigerians in 1993 had been severely punished, today’s leaders would not see those shenanigans as an option.

    We should be on red alert over this our man who is so good that he hardly can make mistake that could attract criticism. When the other time, The Economist said it would not endorse President Jonathan because he has not done well, he said he did not need the magazine’s endorsement for reelection. Reports only last week said he had sent some people abroad to launder his government’s image. I don’t know of any other country in the world that launders its image several times like Nigeria; yet the image remains as dirty as ever.

    When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said both the president and General Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential hopeful of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have some sort of k-leg, the former as a result of his current performance, and the latter as a result of his antecedents, the president’s men took offence. Such is the goodness of their boss that everybody must eulogise him like they have deceived him over the years to the point that he is now struggling (or is it desperate) to have what should be on his laps just for the asking.

  • Six weeks

    Six weeks

    Whatever happens, our eyes should be on May 29

    Make no mistake about it; strange things, some perhaps stranger than fiction, would be happening in the country in the next six weeks. Ordinarily, there is nothing unusual in an electoral body postponing elections, at least in our kind of environment; so, there should not have been any issue in the announcement on February 7 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it had postponed the general elections initially billed for February 14 and 28. But it became an issue when the postponement was not directly from INEC that is statutorily charged with the conduct of elections in the country, but was engineered outside of it in a blackmail that was far from subtle.

    The debate over what is the actual cause of the postponement is not likely to abate anytime soon, even though it is absolutely unnecessary. On the part of the electoral commission, it had only succeeded in distributing 66 percent of PVCs as at Monday February 2, some 12 days to the day of election. Distribution was supposed to end officially on February 8. But shortly before then, the commission had taken some steps to facilitate the collection of the cards, including decentralisation of collection points. In fairness to INEC, more people had been trooping out to collect the cards under that arrangement and there was nothing to suggest that the situation would not have improved if the process had not been truncated because many Nigerians like to wait till the last minute to do such civic duty, especially if they had encountered some challenges initially as they did with the collection of the PVCs. At any rate, the electoral commission could still have allowed an extension of collection period to make sure more people collect the cards. Some state governments even declared public holidays to enable their workers who had not collected their cards do so. In all, INEC could have achieved some measure of success in this regard, or it could have not.

    But then, the Federal Government itself apparently over-panicked over the growing influence of General Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate and took over the commission’s duty. The military authorities wrote INEC that they would not be able to guarantee security if it went ahead to conduct the elections as scheduled. That was after the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, had gone abroad to say the elections would be postponed for security reasons, and not because PVCs had not been substantially distributed. Again, part of the reason the Council of State meeting was convened on February 5 was to see if it could be used to postpone the election as a result of the security reason adduced by government. If not, the question as to how many local governments are involved in the Boko Haram insurgency to warrant poll shift would not have arisen at the meeting.

    Obviously, it was when all else failed (as even the council members disappointed Nigerians who had expected they would be used by the government to rubber stamp its intention of shifting the poll, ostensibly on security grounds, failed to make themselves available for the purpose) that government now made its hidden intention open by saying the polls had to be shifted because INEC was not ready. May be they (council members) also saw some things that some of those who may be harbouring any satanic intentions by the decision to postpone the election did not see, because their stance on the matter really shocked the average Nigerian just as it must have jolted the presidency; even if for different reasons.

    Quite naturally, many people saw the postponement as part of the options in the long list of diabolical options by the presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), perhaps in cahoots with the military, to buy time for the government as well as halt the tempo of the growing popularity of the opposition candidate, nationwide. This is one reason why many Nigerians cried foul and even the international community appears worried. But whether the postponement would be of any advantage to the ruling party or even worsen its plight is in the womb of time because, again, many people see the government’s hands in the matter as an abuse of the power of incumbency. If they react eventually in that light, then the government must have succeeded in further damaging its image.

    As many people have observed, we have always known of the insurgency in the north east of Nigeria, at least in the last five years, why then would that be an issue barely two weeks to general elections that we had known would hold for more than a year? Some say the presidency hopes to get the Chibok girls within the six-week postponement, with the Chadian, Cameroonian and other troops and mercenaries now helping us in the insurgency war. We would definitely rejoice if the girls are brought back home alive; but is that possible in the natural state that they were abducted, save for the demand of change that might have been occasioned by their age and sudden severance from their parents? Anyway, even if the girls are all brought back home as they were abducted, it remains to be seen whether that can atone for the mismanagement of the economy, large-scale corruption and the lack of direction that the country had suffered over the years.

    Without doubt, this year’s presidential election is the first true presidential election we are having since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. Even the PDP knows that for a fact; it is not one of those tea parties that they had been having and calling elections for want of what to call them. When a democratically elected government makes the military its crutches, you know that government has lost credibility because the military played absolutely no role in its election in the first place. Apparently too, those who had been expecting to use the presidency as crutches to ‘capture’ some states, particularly in the south west, must have supported postponement of election, seeing that the presidency itself was in dire need of crutches to survive the polls. In other words, it is not necessarily the fear of losing power that is the issue for incumbents, not even the fear of consequences of the illegalities and impunities they committed in power, but more of pressure by their hangers-on.

    You know that a ruling party is losing its courage when it begins to mumble some mumbo-jumbo like the PDP is now doing by calling for the use of Temporary Voter Cards for the elections. Isn’t that late in the day? Even that did not make sense before postponement. With the postponement, there is more time to collect the cards. So, what is PDP afraid of? Why the phobia for PVCs?

    If all manner of speculations and rumours have been making the rounds over the postponement, including the possibility of the government or PDP orchestrating the removal of the INEC chair, Prof Attahiru Jega, via terminal leave so that he won’t be in charge of the elections ultimately, it is as a result of Nigerians’ experience with their governments, including the present one. Indeed, when our politicians say good morning, first check through your window to be sure it is not good night. It is that bad.

    However, it is good that President Goodluck Jonathan has denied any ambition of elongating his tenure. I doubt if really he has any choice though; but then, the mere fact that he said so is not enough reason for us to believe. But it is important to take him down the memory lane for a clearer picture of why tenure elongation can never be an option, no matter the support he gets from the military or the circumstances. Tenure elongation was the nemesis of General Yakubu Gowon; his serial postponement of handover dates was a major reason for his ouster in 1976. Anyone thinking of tenure elongation should ask General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Babangida had boasted severally that he would not be stampeded out of office, following the heat his government was subjected to after its unconscionable annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election; but it was obvious he was stampeded out, barely two months after. Which is to say that it is not only children that fret when they get to a place of fright; even adults do, too. That was why the same Babangida who was bouncing like a football a few days later, when justifying the annulment of the election result, became gentle when he was stepping aside on August 27, 1993.

    General Sani Abacha whom we had thought only came in to facilitate the process of handing over to a democratically elected president died suddenly under mysterious circumstances in the process of transmuting from military leader to his dream ‘democratically elected’ president. What all these tell us is that Nigeria is too sophisticated for any self-perpetuation agenda by any leader, no matter the extent of sophistry or shenanigans employed by him or his hangers-on.

    My point, which is the consolation for Nigerians, is that nothing would happen in the next six weeks that has not happened before in the country. In other words, Nigerians would be travelling on a familiar terrain. Our rulers have successively taught us how to handle such situations. We handled them in the military era, whatever is coming now cannot be worse than what we experienced then; whether by way of over-militarisation of the polity (especially with our present military), intimidation of political opponents,  or what have you!

    But whatever happens, on May 29 we stand.

  • Jonathan’s many sins

    Jonathan’s many sins

    His government now wants to provide security within six weeks, where it had failed in five years! 

    It baffles me that some people still cannot see that voting out President Goodluck Jonathan is soft-landing, sort of, for the country’s ruling elite. Just as it baffles me that the government and its acolytes have not been able to see the general resentment against them for the way they have monumentally mismanaged the country’s resources.

    But it gladdens the heart that the Council of State members that met on Thursday realised, even if in their enlightened self- interest, that the best thing was to dissociate themselves from the government’s pet agenda to postpone this month’s election, by making it clear that the responsibility of conducting elections in the country is that of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). So, the hope of the Jonathan presidency to use that forum to legitimise its much-sought-after postponement of the election has been dashed again.

    Suffice it to say that this is what desperation can do. The government has now become like a drowning man that would not mind clinging to a serpent for help. Its latest excuse now is that it cannot guarantee security in a few places where insurgents are fighting with our soldiers in the northeast. May be it does not know that by admitting this, it has shot itself in the foot because that is the essence of any government properly so-called! Here is a government that has been unable to provide security in the last five years now seeking postponement of election by six weeks to do same. Definitely, this government has something up its sleeves but whatever it is, it should be better guided by the country’s political history.

    The election postponement agenda can be likened to a student who whiled away his time at school, attending ‘owanbe’ parties, drinking cognac (pronounced ‘koinyan’ here), sleeping with all manner of girls and not giving a damn about his purpose in school until two weeks to the examinations when he now begins to look for a way to make the school authorities postpone scheduled examinations just to enable him cover lost ground. It is important to point out that a major sin of the Jonathan government is that the thieves in government have stolen too much for the owner to notice. And as Sonola Olumhense pointed out in one of his write-ups in 1983, that the Shagari government had to change its style or itself be changed, so it is with the country’s ruling elite: it must ensure that President Jonathan is not reelected or itself be changed.

    Louis XV1might not have been the worst of all the kings France had before the 1789 Revolution, but it was apparent that the ancien regime that the country had known for years must give way at some point because it was not sustainable forever; it only happened that it collapsed in Louis XV1’s time. In the same vein, Nigeria might have been badly and corruptly run for decades; that is not to say it would be like that forever. Certain things must give at some point. It has nothing to do with where the president comes from; after all, it was the same people who welcomed him with hosanna in 2011 that are not too receptive of him now. It is left for President Jonathan to find the missing link; find the disconnect between him and Nigerians that he is supposed to be leading, if it is not too late.

    Under the Obasanjo administration, we had instances where governors were impeached illegally. The Jonathan regime seemed to have ‘perfected’ that as we can see in Ayo Fayose’s Ekiti State where seven members of the state house of assembly and two unknown quantities ‘imported’ into the house (making nine in a 26-member house), ‘impeached’ the legitimate speaker, as well as passed the 2015 budget. It is only in Nigeria where values have sunk that much that such a thing can stand. Months after, President Jonathan obviously has not heard of this illegality. As a matter of fact, under his watch, the police took the impunity many steps further by attempting to block Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives and other National Assembly members from entering the assembly complex simply because they do not agree with the president. Seeing our National Assembly members jump over the assembly complex gate to gain entrance into their offices to beat the barricade put in place by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Suleiman Abba, immediately reminded one of political events in some backwater African countries. If those lawmakers had not jumped the fence, a tiny minority of the lawmakers loyal to the president would have gone in to ‘impeach’ the speaker. As far as the president is concerned, it is all politics provided it is done in his interest or that of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Thus, the IGP would have helped the president to deepen impunity and illegality and today, we all would be asking, ‘when did we descend this low’, just as we are now asking where we were when things were going this bad in the country.

    These are some of the sins of President Jonathan, apart from the incompetent manner the economy is being run and the large-scale corruption (that the president sees as mere stealing) in the system. Now, we have been reminded that the government has not been able to add a kobo to the foreign reserve despite raking in the highest revenue from the sale of crude oil in recent years. Where has all the money gone to, considering that nothing seems to be working in the country? If Nigerians have improved power supply now, the likelihood is that what they are having is ‘election light’. In other words, they are breaking their fast now; to resume fasting when the election is over. That is one of the things I see in President Jonathan’s reelection.

    If General Buhari’s popularity is soaring today, these are some of the reasons. If the president must hop from church to church for prayers when he had the opportunity of having reelection on a platter of gold but frittered it away, these are some of the reasons. Unfortunately, President Jonathan is only rending his garments when what he needs to rend is his heart. It would appear that the president has forgotten the legal maxim: those who seek equity must do so with clean hands. If man could demand this much, how much more God? God does not see all the things that the president and his party regard as ‘politics’ in that light. To Him, it is sin and sin is sin. If it is true that some pastors had been given N6billion by the government, I do not see how that can translate to vote for the president because none of those pastors can stand before their members and ask them to vote for President Jonathan. Even if they do, will they follow their members to the polling booths on Election Day to confirm whether they voted for the president or not? Now, the people in government are afraid of losing power. As I have always said, it is only those who know what saliva is used for that quickly rubs theirs with their foot whenever they spit. They know the illegalities and impunities they have used power to commit and are afraid of their shadows.

    Obviously too, those in power and their cronies had been enjoying these illegalities because there was no one to sanction them, and they had hoped the honey moon would last forever. This is natural because, like the child that abuses the Iroko tree and looks back expecting immediate consequences, without any, the president and his supporters too must have been living under the illusion that they would always get away with their iniquities since there has been no consequence all this while, without knowing that all Nigerians were waiting for was the day of reckoning, which those in power are desperately trying to postpone.

    The point is, President Jonathan has not governed as one looking for second term. Otherwise, public officials would not be stealing the way they are in his time as if stealing is going out of fashion. A president that had so much money and could do so little in more than five years, now promising to do better if reelected? He himself should know he is deceiving Nigerians even if the people being deceived do not know. Where is he going to get the money now that the price of crude oil has been plummeting, and without anyone doing any strategic thinking concerning government’s finances? Ordinarily, there should be no controversy over whether President Jonathan deserves reelection or not. For incumbent governments, their achievements during their tenure are the parameters to decide whether they merit reelection or not.

    All said, President Jonathan might have tried his best, but his best has not been good enough for the country. It is late in the day for him to be promising heaven on earth, if reelected; how much faith has he kept with his earlier promise to give the country good leadership? Four more years under this government, Nigeria would completely go to the dogs.

    Show me a government more prodigal. Show me a government more corrupt.

  • The militants’ threats

    The militants’ threats

    They missed it all when they threatened to plunge the country into war should the president lose the election

    THREATS by some Niger Delta militants to shut down the country by taking their (the Niger Delta) oil back should President Goodluck Jonathan lose reelection on February 14 have deservedly attracted angry reactions from many Nigerians. Perhaps the latest was from General Theophilus Danjuma, a former chief of defence staff who hardly comments on national issues. Danjuma is of the opinion that the said militants, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, leader, Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force; Victor Ben Ebikabowei, aka, Boyloaf and Government Ekpudomenowei, aka Tompolo went overboard and ought to have been arrested by now.

    Dokubo was quoted as saying: “For every Goliath, God created a David. For every Pharaoh, there is a Moses. We are going to war. Every one of you should go and fortify yourself,” Premium Times quoted him as saying. You may be wondering how Dokubo came about such knowledge of the Holy Bible! Holy Moses! I am, too. Then, Boyloaf: “Keep grudges and sentiments apart. We are ready to match them bumper to bumper”, whatever this means.

    These, no doubt are weighty statements for which the militant warlords ought to be sanctioned. But then, President Jonathan has hardly caused to be arrested people who make combustible statements that could tear the country apart. For instance, when in 2011 Alhaji Lawal Kaita said the north would make Nigeria ungovernable if President Jonathan became president in 2011, hell was not let loose. If the president did not arrest him and others then despite the security challenges the country has been witnessing in the last five years or so, then it is going to be difficult to expect him to crucify his own in the Niger Delta for similar provocative statement now that elections are around the corner. At least not with the waves the opposition has been making all over the country in the kind of ‘hurricane’ that would have seemed unimaginable only a few months ago.

    A shocking aspect of the tragedy is that the meeting where the provocative statements were reportedly made was the Bayelsa State House, with the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs and chairman of Amnesty Implementation Committee, Kingsley Kuku, and Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, among others, in attendance. One can understand where Governor Dickson is coming from, though. He has been having running battles with Dame Patience Jonathan, the president’s wife and, since he is seeking reelection, he probably felt he had to do something to impress the president who actually used him (Dickson) to unseat the former governor, Timipre Silva, in spite of indication the president’s wife might have made up her mind not to reconcile with him. Perhaps some underground fence-mending was done seeing the way things are going for the president, to ensure that he does not have a major challenge in his home state, hence, Dickson’s volte-face because he appeared set for broke only a few days back.

    It is possible the governor was not aware that such threats were going to be made since he might not have had an idea of what the militants would say prior to the time the meeting took place. In that case, a public apology from him after the unfortunate incident would have ameliorated the damage done to his person, his office and the State House in Bayelsa. He never did. Rather, he appeared to give his imprimatur to what the militants said in his remark at the occasion by thanking the former militant leaders for deciding to back President Jonathan, and promised to convey same to the president.

    Apparently, the feeling by the militant warlords (I don’t necessarily want to equate that to be the thinking of all Ijaw) is that it is the Ijaw that has been dethroned if the president loses the reelection and they would not accept such an intimidation by other Nigerians. One wonders where they got this impression from. The way the militant leaders are talking, it is as if they were the ones that put President Jonathan in office. They know that even the entire votes in the south-south could not have done that. So, why would anyone be threatening fire and brimstone if the president is not reelected? If that is the way to go, then Nigerians should have had no business having election this year; we should not have wasted the billions that we have committed to the polls. We simply should have been told that the president is the sole candidate for the office as is done in many backward African countries so that militants won’t shut down the economy or plunge the country into war, as restated by Tompolo on Thursday, despite denial from the Ijaw Youth Council. But the militants need to tread cautiously.

    Perhaps what they call dethronement is the fact that unlike Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President Jonathan may not be able to enjoy a second term in office going by the political trend in the country.  But this cannot be automatic. Even the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that has zoning in its constitution never said a candidate must do two terms. Again, even if that is the rule in the ruling party, it is unknown to the grundnorm, the Nigerian Constitution. The implication is that there is an opportunity to replace a non-performing leader at any level after four years, or reward him with reelection if he has done well. And, in a democratic setting, only the people can make such decision.

    The way things are going, it is as if even the militant leaders themselves are not confident the president could scale the reelection hurdle, hence the resort to threats now.  The point is, if an incumbent president who has stayed more than five years in office is having difficulties at seeking reelection the way President Jonathan is, then, something must have been amiss. And, indeed, a lot is amiss. Apart from the fact that the president has not performed well, his kinsmen have not helped his cause. They keep talking as if it was their votes alone that brought the president into office in the first place. Whereas when Chief Obasanjo was president, his kith and kin in Yoruba land were about his most vociferous critics. Even when President Jonathan was about being denied his right to succeed former President Umaru Yar’Adua after the latter’s death, Nigerians, not the Ijaw, rose in unison to ensure that the constitution was protected.

    If today, Nigerians are looking back with nostalgia at the days of General Muhammadu Buhari (the All Progressives Congress’ presidential candidate in the February election) in power and the high-handedness, perceived or real, with which he ruled the country alongside his second-in-command, the late General Tunde Idiagbon, President Jonathan is to blame. Even as civilian president ruling the country 32 years after Buhari took over, one would easily forgive Buhari’s sins because we are supposed to have advanced in every particular material by now; regrettably, we have not. Rather, we are retrogressing, or at best marching forward to the past. If the people benefitting from the present government do not know that things have progressively gone from bad to worse, especially in the last half decade, then their patriotism is suspect because that alone explains the huge support that General Buhari has been having all over the country, that is now making people with whom he contested thrice before to suddenly remember now that he does not have school certificate. It means he is now an issue; and, indeed, Buhari has always been an issue at the polls because, for anyone to have more than 12 million votes in elections twice (2003 and 2011), coming second to the ruling party in all elections he had contested against it, you can only write off such a person at your own risk. Mind you, in all those elections, Buhari was, so to say, on his own. It certainly must be source for worry now that his political tentacles have widened, such that the ruling party that had been under the euphoria of ruling for 60 straight years now feel sufficiently threatened and has realised, almost too late, that it could only ignore him now at its peril.

    When an incumbent government is campaigning as if it is just seeking a fresh mandate or lists such esoteric things as Nigeria attaining the status of the largest economy in Africa as its achievements, it is saying nothing. Indeed, that is akin to what the Austrian chancellor, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, referred to as ‘high sounding nothing’. It does not appeal to the man on the street whose son left school five, six years ago and is still roaming the streets. It makes no sense to the millions that go hungry daily, in spite of the country’s resources. I looked at a particular advert on the president’s achievements, nothing was said on corruption; nothing was said on power. Nothing on security; the raison detre of any government properly so-called. Although this is charitable enough because it is better to be silent on such when there is nothing to report, than assault our sensibilities with provocative lies as achievements.

    I agree with Dokubo and his colleagues that those stoning the president’s campaign in the north or anywhere in the country should be arrested and punished, irrespective of whether they are from the opposition or they are aggrieved members of the ruling party. That is barbaric. Anyone that is unhappy with what is happening in the country now has an opportunity: ‘stone’ the president with his or her vote on February 14. That is why many people have been clamouring for the sanctity of the vote. There won’t be problem if people who lose election admit and quit honourably, after all there is always another time. That is what election is all about. That is what democracy is all about. There is nothing unusual in people losing election; it is like that all over the world. You rejuvenate government when those there are beginning to show signs of fatigue. In our own case, it is not just inertia but one worsened by massive corruption. So, unless Tompolo et al already have a different agenda which they only want to use the result of the election to achieve, there is no basis for their threats of fire and brimstone.

    It is a sad commentary that in our country, it is militants or warlords, whether in the north or in the south, that are calling the shots now. It is part of the tragedies of how far sunk we are as a nation that we are returning to the Hobbessian state of nature. In democracies all over the world, the majority always have their way; the minority only their say.