The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • An untainted judge

    An untainted judge

    Justice Salami retires with his head high

    Justice Ayo Salami, former President of the Court of Appeal (PCA) finally retired from service on October 15. His case is one good example to show that the judiciary should not be in the hands of politicians, particularly when you have the kind of power mongers that are ruling the country today. All right-thinking Nigerians know that the discipline of judges starts and ends with the National Judicial Council (NJC). Unfortunately, the NJC at the time of the Salami crisis took the matter to President Goodluck Jonathan, who quickly seized the opportunity to exercise powers he obviously did not have, simply because it suited his partisan interest.

    At the risk of repeating myself, I dare say, without fear or favour, and without fear of contradiction that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not win the elections that it claimed it won in 2007 in the southwest. Those of 2003 were probably understandable; the people in charge of political leadership in the region committed political hara-kiri which made them lose the states, with the exception of Lagos, to the rampaging PDP. The saving grace for Lagos then was the political sagacity of the political leaders there, particularly the then Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who saw through the shenanigans of President Obasanjo and refused to flow with him.

    However, as the leopard can never change its spot, the PDP that took over the south west after the 2003 election soon showed its true colour. To say that it did not know what to do with the power placed on its laps on a platter of gold in the election would be charitable because it knew what to do with it and in fact made a fetish of its misrule. It was not long for the politically sophisticated southwest people to realise that the PDP had no development blueprint for the region that used to be a pace setter in the country. Soon, the region began to witness the decadence for which the ruling party is notorious, a thing that made the Yoruba people swore to sack the PDP from the region. This they did with their feet and their votes in the 2007 election.

    Unfortunately, the PDP chieftains as usual, so enjoyed the government houses that they were not ready to leave the stage even after they had been voted out. That was an era when people who claimed they won governorship election lacked the courage to be sworn in in public, preferring instead, to do it in the confines of the government house. What followed the electoral heist in the region were litigations upon litigations and Justice Salami’s crime was that he was President of the Court of Appeal, the court that had the final say on governorship election petitions, going by the law at that time. Since virtually all the governorship elections in the region were rigged, save, again for Lagos, the PDP governments in the states one after the other, began to ‘capitulate’, with the election rogues in Ondo, Edo, Ekiti and Osun states sacked by the courts and the mandates reverted to the original owners.

    Although the PDP had been seething with rage over these monumental losses of a region it never won in that election, its anger was later to find expression in the crisis between the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Aloysius Katsina-Alu and Justice Salami, over the governorship election petition in far-away Sokoto State, which Justice Salami decided to look into, perhaps not knowing that the matter had deliberately been kept in the cooler by the powers-that-be who wanted it in the cooler, perhaps forever. That was the beginning of his ordeal. It was on this matter that the deep-seated hatred the ruling party had for him began to manifest, with one thing leading to the other until Justice Salami was suspended in 2011 by the NJC under the chairmanship of Justice Katsina-Alu. The man was never recalled; even after the NJC with which he had issues initially on the Sokoto matter had said he should be recalled. Thus, we had a situation whereby the government, for obviously partisan reasons, acted like an outsider that is weeping louder than the bereaved. The haste with which President Jonathan ratified the NJC’s decision to suspend Justice Salami is uncommon with his government and it left many tongues wagging.

    All these, for me, explain why we must ponder the Salami debacle, especially as the man had to retire from this unjust suspension foisted on him and the nation at large, by some infantile minds that would rather truth be put on the shelf for sale to whosoever may be willing to buy. It is a sad commentary on the way we easily allow serious matters to be swept under the carpet. I have always said that this is one of the things that successive governments in the country exploit. When the Salami matter started, many individuals and organisations, including the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) stood with the embattled PCA but the support soon waned, with time.

    This should not be so; unfortunately, it has always been so in Nigeria. It is Justice Salami today; we do not know who is next. It is particularly saddening because this is happening to the judiciary, the last hope of the common man and at this crucial time in the life of our country. If the government, particularly they type we have today, can get away with this, then, this country is in trouble. With the way things are going, the courts will be so busy after the 2015 elections; we can be sure of this given the desperation that is manifesting even when the contest is yet to start. Justice Salami’s experience is going to be at the back of the minds of many judges when electoral petitions involving the ruling party come before them after the elections. Of course, we know the likely consequences when people are denied their electoral choice. We know what to expect when the courts can no longer deliver justice.

    But the point still has to be made though, that those who ensured that Justice Salami never returned to service from his so-called suspension will always come to their own comeuppance; it is only a matter of time. There is a spiritual dimension to some of these things and when the punishment begins, people will be feeling sorry for them. Justice Salami should however, be proud of his service to the nation. He should be proud of the fact that he was able to hold his head high when many others would have lost theirs.

  • Independence and an air crash

    Independence and an air crash

    When will we be free from such disasters? Whither true Independence?

    This certainly is not the best of times for our beleaguered country. I had thought I was going to explain why I did not mention a word (in my last week’s column) about the country’s 53rd Independence anniversary held last Tuesday, today. I will still do that anyway, after which I would also say one or two things about the last air crash in the country which occurred on October 3.

    Our country is one where more often than not, bad or ugly things keep recurring. Indeed, we can count on our finger tips the positive developments we have had even in the last five years whereas we can mention a litany of problems that the country has been wallowing in for decades, without recourse to any reference material. As a matter of fact, the dilemma I had when I was thinking of whether to write on the then impending Independence anniversary in my column last week or comment on the ‘One man, one term brouhaha’ that I eventually settled for, was if there was anything new to say by way of positive developments, even since October 1, last year, when we observed the last Independence anniversary.

    I thought and thought, but could not find much to talk about. It was not as if the tenure controversy too was particularly new or refreshing; it was just a case of one having to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. I mean it was more or less a case of head or tale, you lose. It is that bad. I was not proved wrong when I saw what the media were awash with on Tuesday; it was the same sad tales, except from government officials who keep deluding themselves that the country has been making some progress. Is it about electricity supply on which we have sunk, not billions of naira but billions of dollars without much result?

    Or, is it about education, whether at the primary or tertiary level, that is comatose? Is it about healthcare that we can commend the government, when doctors are on strike as we speak, joining university teachers in their own strike which is now over three months old.

    Now, when some of the people in government want to spoil your day, they tell you the problems did not start with President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Apparently they are the only ones who understand themselves and what they are saying because, as far as the rest of us are concerned, what we know is that there has been only one ruling party in the country since our return to civil rule on May 29, 1999, and that is the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). And we do not know the difference between the present government and that of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who handed over to the late Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua. As far as we are concerned, Nigeria has been in the hands of the PDP for more than 14 years, with the changing never changing. And if it is changing at all, it is for the worst. From the ruling party it has been promises galore of El Dorado, a thing that even the greatest fool in the country knows will take eternity to materialise for as long as the country remains in the hands of the rudderless party.

    And, as if to demonstrate that the country is truly rudderless, a plane bearing the remains of former Governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Agagu lost its bearing and crashed barely a minute after take-off from the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos for Akure, the Ondo State capital, where an elaborate farewell programme had been prepared for him, barely 48 hours after our 53rd Independence anniversary.

    Many people have said Dr Agagu, was a good man. If the comments had been coming only after his death, I would have dismissed them as a product of our culture which forbids talking ill of the dead. But I have heard those comments about him long before his demise, which somewhat confounds me as to what a person like him was doing in the PDP. Some members of the party are probably realising this fact and this might explain the intractable crisis in the fold. No matter how hard a goat tries, once it has settled for a dog as its best friend, chances are the goat will also find faeces aromatic and tantalising.

    But in times like this, we are usually united by our common humanity. My heart pours out to the relatives of those who died in the crash. I pray that those who have so far survived would experience the miracle that would make their survival permanent. I particularly feel for the family of the undertakers’ undertaker, the M.I.C boss, Chief Tunji Okusanya and his son who both died in the tragedy.

    For now, we have been told the usual story, the Federal Government has ordered a probe of the incident. Of course this followed the usual dirge from the government whenever we experience a thing like this. At the risk of repeating myself, what we require are not these well-written graveside orations but practical steps to make air crash a thing of the past in the country.

    Will there ever be a time when we shall be truly independent? Our Old Citizens always recall with nostalgia the good old days of British rule. To many of them, Independence is meaningless because it has not improved our lives. It is either some people are throwing bombs on October 1 or government is spoiling the occasion by rehashing worn-out speeches of hope that end up bringing hopelessness. When will be out of all these? When? when?

    Meanwhile, I leave you, dear reader, with these words of wisdom from someone I have great regard for. There can’t be a better epitaph in a time like this. “Life often enacts warnings of calamities and tragedies as integral to our living on the stage of time. Our flimsy minds always ignore these signs! We are thus caught in the iron claws of sorrow, pain and despair. But the meaninglessness of our living is that the pretty blue tent above suddenly bears the camouflage of piercing gloom. The soil of the earth ebbs under our feet and its fresh pit swallow us all with brutal greed, one by one. What are we doing here? Life’s vain. In the end, it seems we are mere meals for the worms of the earth! Fear Allah. Do all the good that you can for all you encounter so that you may sap sorrow and blossom in God’s comfort. May Allah preserve the inescapable end of each of us with love, dignity, and His mercy and compassion”.

    I hope our leaders are listening.

  • The one man, one term brouhaha

    The one man, one term brouhaha

    A ‘shot of power’ is too little to intoxicate. Two or more will do

    It is fast becoming obvious that the wrangling in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is nowhere near solution, going by the recent declaration in the United States by President Goodluck Jonathan that he never signed any pact to the effect that he would not go for a second term. This is at the heart of the PDP crisis, with his opponents, even in the party saying he should not run because of the alleged pact.. Jonathan had, during a media chat last year, declared that he was yet to decide whether or not to contest in 2015. He said his decision on the subject would be made public next year because making a definite pronouncement on the subject then would distract his administration from delivering on its campaign promises. But, is this what is on ground?

    Be that as it may, neither the President nor those who claimed he signed a one-term pact has rested since the Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, made the allegation early this year. ”I recall that that some of us said given the circumstances of the death of President Yar’Adua, and given the PDP zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the President for a given number of years. I recall that at that discussion, it was agreed that Jonathan would serve only one term of four years and we all signed the agreement. Even when Jonathan went to Kampala, in Uganda, he also said he was going to serve a single term …” Aliyu made the revelation during a live broadcast of Guest of the Week, on Kaduna-based FM radio station, Liberty Radio (91.7).

    But one of the things that usually baffle me in this kind of situation is the way the aides of those concerned speak authoritatively as if they were party to the actions in question. Some of President Jonathan’s aides have denied categorically that the president never signed any one term pact with anybody. Unfortunately, not all of them who are now defending him, and vehemently so, as if they were there when the purported agreement was signed or not signed, are competent to speak on the matter. For instance, his spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, has no ‘locus standi’ in it. As at the time in question, Abati was not yet in government. I guess that was when he still saw the ruling PDP as Papa Deceive Pikin. Today, (since he cannot beat them he has joined them) it is either papa is no longer deceiving pikin or he has joined the party so that they can deceive pikin together.

    The same applies to the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, who has also insisted that there was no time President Jonathan entered into a single-term pact. “Rather than insisting on an agreement that does not exist – since anybody can contest for the highest office in the land, those who are so interested should declare their interest and contest”, he was once quoted to have said. I know these people have a job to do, but I would be comfortable if they had said the President said he never did this or that, instead of speaking authoritatively on a matter they were least competent to speak on. I started pitying people doing such jobs since the time former Governor James Ibori’s corruption saga began and his press secretary denied that his boss was not a thief. We now know better.

    However, the fact is, constitutionally speaking, the President as well as governors are entitled to a second term, provided that is the wish of Nigerians or the citizens of their states; that is to say if they give the incumbents their nod in the election. Therefore, if anything would stand between President Jonathan and his second term ambition; that should not be any group of governors but the collective wish of Nigerians.

    The matter is even made worse by the report that, in the characteristic Nigerian manner, the document that the President allegedly signed with the 23 PDP governors on the pact is now missing. In Nigeria, anything can be missing, without anybody being called to account for it. We were told the other day that the Okigbo report on the $12billion Gulf oil windfall feared to have been squandered by the Babangida regime was missing. That is Nigeria for you. But if the governors would leave such a vital document in the custody of a south south governor (the president’s geo-political zone), and they do not have any other copy, that is their cup of tea. It shows how naïve they were. I only hope this is another dummy they have sold to the Presidency because there is one saving grace that they still have; if they make the document public at any time and convince Nigerians about its authenticity, then, they can compound the President’s problems by claiming that he is unreliable. And who wants an unreliable President? But the G7 Governors should not make their intra-party affair a cause of mayhem in the country.

    If they truly have fallen out of the PDP, they should not behave like the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP that can neither throw the G7 Governors and their supporters away, nor fully accede to their terms for ceasefire. In other words, when Tukur and Co. were told to eat something, they say it is bone, and when told to throw it away, they still claim there is some meat in it. The G7 Governors should be resolute about their plan. Like most other concerned Nigerians, they also have a right to say the President has not done well and therefore cannot be reelected. But this is not by threatening fire and brimstone; otherwise, they would be meeting the President’s forces on the turf that the latter are familiar with; brawn where brain will do.

    My argument is that the governors know what to do legitimately if they want to stop the President from running for second term: they should team up with people with similar objective (that I am sure are in the legion, and still counting) and bring the strategy and tactics as well as the ingenuity the ruling party had been using to ‘win’ elections to the alliance. That is the only way to pull the rug off the feet of the PDP.

    But if anybody thinks the battle to wrest Nigeria from the ruling party will be easy, that person is mistaken. Nigeria’s presidency is, to many Nigerian politicians, like the kingdom of God which suffereth violence and only the violent taketh it by force. This has nothing to do with whether the aspirant had no shoes as a child or whether he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The fact is that there is so much power in the Presidency just as there is so much money in it. So, how can anyone be talking about one man, one term, when there is so much at stake? Even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who had been military head of state before he became president did not want to leave after serving the constitutionally approved two terms. The man simply played the deaf when some people asked him to adopt the ‘Mandela option’. Nigerians denied him a third shot at the office that he craved, the same way they denied General Ibrahim Babangida a chance to return to the seat of power to retrieve whatever it was that he forgot there.

    Tell me, if there is nothing in the place, why would most of the people that have ever got there, including our revered General Yakubu Gowon, be shifting handover dates over the flimsiest of excuses? When even those who are not from the part of the country where President Jonathan hails from were not satisfied with just a ‘shot of power’; (like the Eb..ra man, they always wanted more tomflers (tumblers)), how can we expect the president who comes from a place where they drink like fish to be? A shot? No. Only two or more will do, Baba ta ni’se wu? (Who is at home with poverty?) Agreement my foot! One term! One term!

  • The king’s goats

    The king’s goats

    President Jonathan on Wednesday sacked nine ministers. Good news? Bad news? Mixed bag? 

    King’s goat. That was an expression I heard, probably for the first time when I was a student of Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, Ijebu-Ode, in present day Ogun State, sometimes in the early ‘70s. Then, one of our students, Lekan Fenuyi, a table tennis star of global acclaim did the school proud in one of his outings and the principal declared him a ‘King’s goat’. The implication was that the young Lekan was to, henceforth; enjoy certain privileges that should accrue only to ‘kings’ goats’. King’s goats are untouchables. Many of us wished we could be like him. That has ever since been my idea of what should qualify anyone for that appellation.

    But, as it is with many things Nigerian, especially these days when we no longer have standards, we have turned many things upside down. Even when we lack the capacity to manufacture things, we specifically ask the manufacturers to produce less potent ones for fellow Nigerians. It is almost in this cynical context that I use the concept ‘king’s goat’ to refer to the sack of nine ministers by President Goodluck Jonathan on September 11. The ministers are  Prof.  Ruqayyatu Rufai (Education);   Okon Ewa-Bassey (Science and Techology);  Olugbenga Ashiru (Foreign Affairs);   Hadiza Mailafia (Environment);  Shamsudeen Usman, (National Planning); and  Ama  Pepple (Housing, Lands and Urban Development). The Minister of State for Defence, Olusola Obada, and her counterparts in the Agriculture Ministry, Alhaji Bukar Tijani and Power,  Zainab Kuchi, were also affected.

    There is no questioning whether the president has the right to re-jig or change his cabinet whenever he so chooses. Indeed, just as business enterprises or other bodies, presidents also rejuvenate their cabinets when the ministers are not pulling their weight or some of the aides have soiled their hands, or their actions or utterances are no longer in tandem with those of the government they are serving. The idea is to inject fresh blood into the system and make the impact of government felt better. On this score therefore, one would welcome the president’s decision to give the nine ministers the boot. Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that this was the main reason the ministers were sacked, notwithstanding the Presidency’s reasons as to why the nine had to go . Nigerians should therefore not celebrate too soon because they were the least in the calculations of the ministers’ sack.

    No doubt, some of the ministers deserve the boot; but the irony is that there are even some ministers that have been retained who ought to have been fired a long time ago. I am not sure many Nigerians are going to lose sleep because Prof Rufa’i, for instance, has been relieved of her appointment, considering the way and manner she handled the education sector, particularly the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Again, one might argue that all she did was to articulate the government’s position on the ASUU demands; the lesson in it is that her successor as well as other ministers ought to know how to be their own in dealing with matters such as this. I do not believe whatever Prof Rufa’i did as minister, including her position on the ASUU strike, was her personal decision.

    The import of what I am saying is that if she did not agree with the government’s position, she had a right to quit, citing irreconcilable differences, or even simply quitting without giving any reasons. But here, people don’t quit; they rather wait until they are sacked. Prof Rufa’i has been sacked now and may become the fall guy in the crisis. Meanwhile, she has, according to some report, indicated she would return to her job as Professor of Curriculum Studies at the Bayero University, Kano. Will she now join the strike by her (former) kith and kin, ASUU? I cannot wait to see how she would fare in her new position and whether she would get a heroine’s welcome from ASUU.

    Quite ironically again, as she is leaving, her minister-of-state, Nyesom Wike, the one that has been spearheading the crisis in Rivers State on behalf of the powers-that-be has been promoted. Wike is now to oversee the education ministry. Could that be the reward for his ‘meritorious service’ in Rivers State, because it cannot be a reward for his stellar performance in the ministry? Even Labaran Maku, the information minister, is now to oversee the defence portfolio. President Jonathan apparently has been pleased with the way the two have carried out their respective assignments. Pity Nigerians who had hitherto thought that Wike has not delivered when they did not know the brief he got from his principal. Now that his principal has promoted him, it should be clear to all that the man has done so well in the eye of he that sent him, which is the most important thing.

    It is for the same reason that we should not wonder far as to why super ministers like Diezani Alison-Madueke (petroleum), Stella Oduah (aviation), and finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a woman many Nigerians know more as an apostle of the West rather than their minister of finance, are still waxing strong in the government despite public perceptions of them.

    What this tells us is that Nigerians are least in the calculation concerning the ministers’ exit. The reasons are clear; yes, some may have to do with corruption, but I have a feeling many of those sacked got the boot because of the ongoing crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). President Jonathan is easily predictable. Without saying it, he acts as if vengeance is his and he would almost always revenge, never mind his seemingly harmless looks. Like former President Obasanjo, he appears poised to take his pound of flesh from those behind his travails. Just on Thursday, Governor Rotimi Amaechi ‘heard’ from him again, when he was stopped from passing through a particular route to the Government House in Port Harcourt. I am sure someone from the Presidency would soon issue a release to the effect that the president knew nothing about this!

    But, wait a minute! Could there be something that the generals in the PDP are seeing that the president is not seeing? When army generals, including those who received bullets with their chests and those who received them on their buttocks begin to scamper in search of solutions to a particular problem, particularly one that they are very much involved in, couldn’t it be that there is something that they know that the rest of us do not know? As I have always argued, it is only those who know what wicked things people do with spittle that quickly rub their feet on theirs whenever they spit. Are our generals being guided by that great teacher: experience? That could be food for thought!

    Without doubt, the question as to whether the ministers’ sack should not have been all-encompassing, given that the entire government itself appears colourless, is not misplaced. But, since the president has both the yam and the knife, he decides who to call to ‘come and chop’. Those who have not yet known those who may contest the presidential race in 2015 by now will forever remain in their blissful ignorance. What we may not know, for now, perhaps, are those who may not.

    But some things are already crystal clear: One, ‘We, the people’ are clearly out of the calculations. Second, the era of ‘super perm secs’ may be over but we are now in the era of ‘super ministers’ or ministers with nine lives, if you like, so super that whatever they do cannot be with blemish. The king’s goats!

  • Humpty Dumpty falls at last

    Humpty Dumpty falls at last

    ‘New PDP’: Old things have passed away? I’m afraid, not necessarily 

    Wikipedia defines an umbrella as “a canopy designed to protect against rain or sunlight”. So, when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chose an umbrella as its symbol, the expectation is that come rain, come shine, Nigerians will be covered. And, with the emergence of the party as the ruling party in 1999, there were great expectations of an all-round protection from the party. Unfortunately, what Nigerians have been reaping is a bundle of disappointments. The optimism that greeted the return to civil rule on May 29, 1999 has given way to general discontentment. Things have been that bad; and there is no doubt that it can only get worse if Nigeria is left in the hands of the PDP beyond the expiration of President Goodluck Jonathan’s term in 2015.

    That was why Nigerians leapt for joy when on August 31, the party broke into two. It was an implosion foretold. On that day at its special convention in Abuja, some prominent members of the party pulled out of the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP to form what they called ‘New PDP.’

    Alhaji Abubakar Kawo Baraje, a former acting national chairman of the party is now the national chairman of the ‘new PDP’.  Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former national secretary of the party was named as its national secretary and Dr Sam Sam Jaja as deputy national chairman.

    Other leaders of the ‘New PDP’ are former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Governors Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (Kano), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), and Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto). Others are Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Babangida Aliyu (Niger) and Abdulfatai Ahmed (Kwara). Before the break-up, many of the members had been complaining about Alhaji Tukur’s leadership style, but President Goodluck Jonathan seemed not ready to do away with him. It was therefore imminent that a division was inevitable.If, therefore, there was any surprise about the party, it was that it could trudge this long before collapsing.

    For 14 years, there is nothing the PDP can point at as its achievement. It met Nigerians in darkness; it has not taken them out of it. All we hear is about the Federal Executive Council awarding contracts for this or that project; Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of such massive award of projects. Early last week, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, cried aloud about the worsening unemployment situation in the country.

    If President Jonathan did not know before August 31 that his presidency was standing on shifting sand, and if he is yet to acknowledge that fact even now, then he must be naïve indeed. It was clear that the way he is running his presidency; it is only a matter of time for the party to implode. His handling of the Rivers State crisis, where even ‘Oga madam’ wanted to drive a democratically elected governor out of town, was a thing that could only have been any other ‘politics’ in the queer ‘family’ called the PDP.

    I may be wrong; but something tells me that the break-up became inevitable partly because those behind it have read the handwriting on the wall and have seen that more Nigerians are disenchanted with the party. The implication is that there would be less pork to share after 2015; so, why not jump ship before it is too late? Unfortunately, Alhaji Tukur, with whom the president appeared to have covenanted not to separate, has not been helping matters. He appears not to understand the gravity of what has hit the party under his chairmanship. He is still threatening the arrow-heads of the ‘new PDP’, a thing which tells me that he is in no way about shedding his village headmaster toga.

    Yes, I am opposed to zoning; but no top shot of the PDP can say the same thing because they all know (if they want to be honest with themselves) that zoning is very much alive in their party. But former President Olusegun Obasanjo unilaterally ‘killed’ zoning just to satisfy one ambition: install Jonathan as president. The PDP had engaged in such dishonesties in the past without being bothered, in so far as it was convenient for the party. To the ruling party, everything is ‘politics’. Or, to use their catchphrase, it is a ‘family affair’. So much water had passed under this bridge of ‘family affair’ that the party, and by extension, many Nigerians, no longer know the difference between good and bad.

    Even when one of the party’s elders, former President Obasanjo went to the homes of the party’s top shots and ate pounded yam and egusi soup, or when he danced with them today only to get them removed from office the next day, we all see it as ‘politics’ because our psyche has been so conditioned.

    All these actions worsen the plight of a people who only about 14 years ago were freed from the jackboots. The many lessons that they were supposed to have learnt from the transition to civil rule were never learnt; as a matter of fact, they were never taught because the ruling party that is supposed to teach those lessons itself lacked the capacity. The party cannot give what it does not have.

    But only the enemies of Nigeria would weep for the PDP. What has happened is that the party has merely paid itself back in its own coin. It was a question of what goes around, comes around. The party led the way to balkanisation of some other structures by creating parallel ones. We have the PDP Governors Forum which it encouraged to spite the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) and reduce the influence of its chairman, Gov Amaechi. When this did not achieve the desired result, the party (presidency and all) infiltrated the NGF and attempted to break its ranks by sponsoring Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State to run against Amaechi for the NGF chair. In spite of the federal might, Amaechi defeated Jang by 19 votes to 16. It was obvious the Jonah faction characteristically slept off during the election, as it eventually claimed to have won after waking up from its deep slumber. It is instructive to remind Nigerians that the Presidency gave the loser a winner’s welcome!

    Honestly, I do not know how far the party’s elders can go now, when things appear to have been damaged irredeemably. If the elders had cautioned Alhaji Tukur before and he did not listen, then, they should leave him and his boss to their fate because that is what you do to a child that is behaving like a dog that wants to get lost. But if the elders kept quiet all through, either because of the spoils they are getting from the government or for whatever reason, then, we have to question their kind of elders.

    The point however is, even if the breakaway faction reunites with the old tomorrow, it can never be the same again. The camaraderie is gone with the winds because, as we say in Yorubaland, two people can no longer be friends after taking themselves to court. What has happened in and to the PDP is worse than people going to court. An umbrella is supposed to provide cover for people in rain or sunshine. This is a big irony with the PDP because the umbrella, its symbol, has exposed Nigerians to everything that it is supposed to protect them against. This is the disconnect between dreams and deeds; the tragedy of the big-for-nothing ‘largest party in Africa’. But nothing I have said here should be misconstrued as a celebration of the ‘new PDP’, as old things may not yet have passed away. However, the way the opposition parties react to this great fall will determine, to a large extent, how much of the spoils from the PDP crash they will get in the coming elections.

  • The comic tragedy in Taraba

    The comic tragedy in Taraba

    Suntai has passed all the tests given to him, yet, the legislators say he must go!

    Nigerians who have been wondering that something must be wrong with us as a people simply because Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State returned to the country, seeking to resume his duties as governor after undergoing treatment abroad for 10 months apparently do not know what they are saying. They say the man is too frail to govern, given the impression they caught of him in the newspapers on Monday. Whatever gave them that impression? Are they doctors? Have they not heard that appearance could be deceptive? How did they expect a man that returned to the country only the day before, after about 12 hours air travel, to look? Those of us who have been to the airports at all know that it is no mean task undergoing such a long journey. Unfortunately, most of those analysing the situation have never been to the airports before; not to talk of travel by air.

    Our teenage stowaway, Daniel Ihekhina, even knows better, having travelled in the wheel compartment of Arik Air flight on August 24 for about 35 minutes without paying a dime! At least he now has an idea of how it is to fly. If he wasn’t as exasperated as His Excellency after his trip from Benin to Lagos, couldn’t that have been a function of his age and the short duration of his trip, compared to His Excellency’s. At any rate, has it ever dawned on those saying Suntai is unfit to govern that His Excellency could have been playing a stunt at the airport? How can anyone in his right senses ever suggest that the man needed ‘human crutches’ to alight from the aircraft as if he was some load carelessly placed on a bench that could easily fall off?

    Such people must have forgotten that there is nothing new under the sun; and that there is nowhere people don’t pack fowls at night. What has Suntai done that is new? He has only taken after the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. What is wrong in a man leaving a place to go treat himself and returning after he feels he is well, or when he feels his position is threatened? Those who think Suntai cannot return to his desk must have forgotten too that when Yar’Adua was confronted with the same situation, his aides told Nigerians that he could rule from Saudi Arabia; indeed from anywhere under or over the sun.

    Madam Suntai and his (Suntai’s) handlers have not taken things to such a ridiculous extent. Rather, the man is here body and soul. They say he has not talked since he returned. The constitution does not say a governor must talk after returning from such a journey; it only requests that he transmits a message to that effect to the state house of assembly. At any rate, it is not even true that the governor has not talked since he returned; newspapers reported on Tuesday that he answered ‘Amen, Amen’ even if in low tones, when Adamawa State Governor Murtala Nyako visited him last Monday. When they see that the excuse that the governor is not talking is not flying, they say they have not seen him since his return. Again, is that important? Should they not be satisfied that Madam Suntai who is licensed to see the governor inside out is giving them a blow-by-blow account of how ‘oga at the top’ in the state is faring in the bedroom of power? Anyway, which of all these is a constitutional requirement?

    Now, imagine the man they say is unfit to govern; the same man has just dissolved his cabinet! If it is true that the governor could not respond to stimuli after 10 months’ treatment abroad, how come he was able to know that the entire pack was unproductive? Even if you insist that he was briefed only after his return, it still takes some soundness of mind to comprehend such briefing. Can an infirm governor do such a thing in our kind of country? This is a thing that even governors and presidents that are thought to be fit shy away from because of the political backlash. I won’t be surprised that Suntai’s enemies will also latch on to this and say that he could only have done this less than 72 hours after returning from his medical trip because he is not of a sound mind. Now, what use is a sound mind that cannot fire an entire cabinet if that cabinet is suffering diminishing returns?

    And, in case you are still in doubt that the governor is as fit as a fiddle, it was reported that he spoke briefly on video on Wednesday, four days after returning from his medical sojourn He also reportedly met with the legislators that had insisted he must address them if truly he is still capable to govern. As a matter of fact, we were told he called their names without mixing them up! If you are one of those saying Suntai did not perform even when he had no medical challenge, what you may not understand is that there are people like that: who spring a surprise when people have written them off. Suppose Governor Suntai is one of such persons?

    Honestly, we should be fair to His Excellency. In spite of all he has done to convince especially the state legislators that the plane crash has not reduced him to a vegetable; they are not in any mood to listen. Such is life; no matter what you do to such people whose minds are made up, they don’t listen. If you like buy mansions for them, they won’t budge; if you buy exotic cars for them, they still would not yield. The only thing that can satisfy them is to yield ground to them. But Governor Suntai should forgive all those who have been wishing him evil. He is even lucky his case is not like that of the First Lady whose property some of her aides had sold off when she had a medical challenge a few months ago. Quite magnanimously, she has forgiven those who thought she would not return alive. If the First Lady could do that, why not Governor Suntai? Such detractors may know not what they are doing.

    Certainly, there are certain things the constitution never envisaged. One of them is that a governor/pilot would crash an aircraft, and thus did not make provision for how to handle such situation. But how many women in Madam Suntai’s shoes would want to let go that easily? Baba ta ni ise wu? (Who loves poverty?)If in spite of all I have said you still feel I have confused, rather than convince you about the indispensability of Gov Suntai, or you still see what is unfolding in Taraba State as shenanigans, or you are still asking the foolish question as to why we are like this, that, according to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, na your toro (that’s your business).

    What many of us do not know is that people who had been governor since they were in the womb cannot be denied that right simply on account of an ailment that has held them down for only 10 months. What is 10 months in the life of a state where the life of the state chief executive is the issue? And, who says a state cannot be grounded on account of such an insignificant occurrence?

    But Nigeria is probably the only place where a governor has to subject himself to this kind of ridicule just to remain in power. We are all living witnesses to ‘Yar’Adua Part 1’. Now, ‘Yar’Adua Part Two’ (as someone said on the internet) is unfolding before our eyes. What I know however is that when you have not seen ‘The END’ after watching a movie, then, that movie has not ended. Certainly, we have not seen the end of the show of shame in Taraba. What I dub ‘The Suntai show’.

  • Nigerians as praying mantis

    Nigerians as praying mantis

    Gen Gowon wants us to pray over our leadership deficit.
    But can prayer alone do the magic?

    We see all kinds of machetes when an elephant dies. In same vein, we hear all kinds of suggestions when a blessed nation is troubled the way ours is. Just last week on this page, I commented on former President Olusegun Obasanjo who mounted the pulpit in Ibadan, Oyo State, to sermonise on leadership. Expectedly, he did not do a good job of the sermon as many people could not connect the message with the messenger.

    About a week later, another former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, spoke on the same subject in the same city, Ibadan. It couldn’t have been fortuitous that Ibadan is the place where all these is happening because that was the city from where the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo set a good leadership template, with his many firsts that remain reference points till today. Gowon spoke during an official visit to Gethsemane Prayer Ministries Cathedral, Eleyele, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, presided over by the National Coordinator, Nigeria Prays, Rev. Moses Aransiola. Nigeria Prays is a non-denominational religious group formed by Gowon in the 1990s.

    Of course other eminent Nigerians have spoken on the country’s leadership deficit and recommended prayer as panacea. Even President Jonathan did! But the fact that two of the country’s former heads of state found it topical to speak on, within a week interval, is enough evidence that things are not the way they should be. This may not be sweet music in the ears of many members of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The way some of them talk, they give the impression that the Goodluck Jonathan presidency is about one of the best things ever in this country in recent times. That much could be seen also in the way they romanticise the administration. They are entitled to their opinion, just as the rest of us who still keep wondering whether this is the best we can get from our government are perfectly in order to so do.

    Although Chief Obasanjo and General Gowon are both former heads of state, it should be noted that they are not in the same category. The dirtiest leader in Gowon’s days was by far cleaner than the saints in the Obasanjo years. Perhaps we might have been able to put them in the same category if Chief Obasanjo had not returned as civilian president in 1999; that, return was perhaps his undoing as it gave us a better insight into who the man, Olusegun Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Obasanjo, is.

    But I am more concerned about what Gowon said in Ibadan. He recommended prayers as the way out of the country’s challenges. Hear him: “We had a series of crises in the past and if Nigerians can pray well, sooner or later this country will be free from its challenges. God has heard our cries and will surely answer…” As a Christian, I believe in the efficacy of prayers. I am also familiar with the song: ‘Jesus started with prayer and ended with prayer’ and what have you. But it is not in all circumstances that prayer alone is the answer. Sometimes, we need to take steps to support the prayer. The average Christian knows that faith without work is useless. By extension, prayer without action could sometimes amount to naught.

    An adage in Yoruba land says if only one knows his or her day of breakthrough, the person will simply go to bed and wake up on the appointed date. I beg to say, and with due respect to our elders, that the person would have passed out before that day if all he or she does is sleep, eat and wake in anticipation of the El Dorado. It is better for the person to be doing something to keep body and soul together, pending that appointed day. I know General Gowon loves prayers; his pet project reveals that much. I do too. As a matter of fact, the day a Christian relegates prayer to the background, that Christian should start a search for another god. If only for this reason, I will refuse to be tempted to say that Nigeria’s problems transcend prayer. Nothing does.

    But what I support is prayer with action. Hence my support for a colleague who suggested in one of his write-ups on Boko Haram that Christians should carry the Bible on one hand and the bazooka on the other. That wouldn’t be a bad idea to counterbalance the terror of the religious fundamentalists. If they know that they are likely to be repelled force for force by worshippers, they will think twice before going into worship houses to slaughter people who are there to offer supplications (prayers) to God.

    Gen. Gowon’s recommendation could work in places where the leaders are humane and considerate; where their Christian conscience will never fail them and where even if they must steal, they do so with human face. Not in a country like ours where leadership positions have become avenues to get rich quick and many leaders have simply lost their soul and would do anything to get their positions and retain them; anything, not giving any thought about the consequence of their actions to their fellow Nigerians. As a friend has always said, prayers will do, maybe in more civilised countries where they have only powers to contend with. But here, what we are contending with are not just powers but powers raised to power and principalities.

    Ours is a country where prayers have been prostituted and bastardised, hence you find people who rig elections in broad daylight go for thanksgiving in the church with supposed men of God extolling the ‘virtues’ of such bandits, and, to crown it all, praying for them. Our churches are filled with such pollutions that will make it easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for the prayer to climb beyond a few metres before returning to sender. Mind you, this is not the Prince of Persia at work; it is the handiwork of some of our pastors. In these circumstances, even if we all become praying mantis, we still have to help our prayer with some definitive actions.

    For instance, could prayer alone have stopped the Jonathan government from removing the so-called fuel subsidy last year? This was despite the fact that those who wanted to force the ‘subsidy’ withdrawal down our throats knew too well that what they were about doing was ask Nigerians to subsidise some people’s pockets.

    Obviously, from Gowon’s statements, he too is aware that there are some of our so-called leaders who must give way for things to take shape. “God will uproot all the leaders who have evil intentions against this country”, he said. I join in saying ‘Amen’ to that. But we have to do more than pray. We have to fast, do vigil and all that. In addition, we have to protest where we must; sit in when we must. The only thing I won’t suggest is that we go on hunger strike because that would be prayer answered for those who in the first place see us as irritants and pollutants whose existence is disturbing their peace.

    Above all, I want to see General Gowon talk like a general. As an elder, he should eat kola nut ‘gbwa gbwa’. He should not shield bad leaders the way he did in Ibadan. If he is bold enough to admit that they exist, and if he is bold enough to ask God to “uproot” them, then, he should be bold enough to mention their names. What I wouldn’t want him do is do that frivolously. The intervention of people like him at critical junctures in our nation could make a whole world of difference. For sure, it was not prayer alone that built all the fantastic infrastructure that the Gowon regime bequeathed to us. Rather, prayer and hard work did.

  • The sermon, by Saint Obasanjo

    The sermon, by Saint Obasanjo

    The former president mounts the pulpit on leadership crisis!

    There must be a mix-up somewhere. In 1984, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka dismissed his generation as a ‘wasted generation’. Soyinka, in a scathing essay in The Punch entitled ‘The Wasted Generation’ examined Nigeria’s historical travails and concluded, in a damning sentence: “After a quarter of a century of witnessing and occasionally participating in varied aspects of social struggle in all their shifting tempi, dimensions, pragmatic and sometimes even ideologically oriented goals, I feel at this moment that I can only describe my generation as the wasted generation, frustrated by forces which are readily recognisable, which can be understood and analysed but which nevertheless have succeeded in defying whatever weapons such ‘understanding’ has been able to muster towards their defeat.”

    Another eminent Nigerian, Prof Chinua Achebe, had said Nigeria’s problem was basically leadership. Achebe declared, in The Trouble with Nigeria, published in 1983, that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a problem of leadership” and of the inability or unwillingness of leaders to rise to “the challenge of personal example.”

    Both Achebe and Soyinka had refused national honours in protest against the decadence in the country and the caricature of a nation that Nigeria had become under various despotic regimes. These are the hallmarks of great men. In Nigeria, all kinds of characters usually end up on the national honours lists. So, many men of honour and proven integrity must be weary of wearing the same emblems as the unworthy characters who sometimes populate the lists.

    However, more than 30 years after Achebe and Soyinka had narrowed down the country’s problem to a dearth of leadership, former President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with his idea of the younger generation as the cause of the country’s leadership crisis. The former president spoke at the 4th Annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit organised by the Centre for Sustainable Development (CESDEV), University of Ibadan (UI), in collaboration with African Sustainable Development Network (ASUDNET).

    Obasanjo listed former Bayelsa State governor, Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha; former Edo State Governor Lucky Igbinedion, former Delta State Governor James Ibori; his counterpart in Abia State during the last dispensation, Orji Uzor Kalu, former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as some of the young leaders who have failed the nation.

    “It is sad that after 53 years of independence, we have no leader that we can commend. The problem in Africa is that when one person takes over, he would not see any good thing that his predecessor did. Let us condemn but with caution,” the former president was quoted as saying by the online news medium, Premium Times.

    Trust the former president; he also seized the opportunity to sing his usual song of self-glorification: “In 1979, we had 20 new ships specially built for Nigeria. When I came back 20 years after, the national shipping line had liquidated”. He was talking about his first time as military head of state and 1999 when he returned as civilian president. Has he forgotten too that the government he handed over to in 1979 was as inept and corrupt as it could be and in less than four years, that government had done sufficient damage to the economy and other sectors of the economy. That begot the dictatorship of General Muhammadu Buhari, then Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha before General Abdulsalami Abubakar came and organised elections that threw up the Obasanjo government in May, 1999. So, what did Obasanjo expect the scenario to look like in the circumstance?

    Characteristically, the former president was economical with the truth when he said he did not want to hand over to his former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar because he (Atiku) was a betrayer. “I wanted someone who would succeed me, so I took Atiku. Within a year, I started seeing the type of man Atiku is. And you want me to get him there?” Does Chief Obasanjo think we have forgotten that Abubakar was content with being governor in his Adamawa State when Obasanjo approached him to be his deputy? Has Obasanjo forgotten too how he reportedly cringed before this same Abubakar to get his party nomination for second term? Worse still, if Obasanjo, despite his experience in government (at least he had been head of state in the ’70s) could have a faulty sense of judgement in choosing his deputy, what right has he to lampoon the so-called younger generation for incompetence in leadership positions?

    But can we really blame Chief Obasanjo for giving us these homilies? I do not think so; rather, it is his colleagues and others who have been running Africa aground that are still honouring him with invitations to deliver lectures, oversee elections and stuff like that who are still giving him a false sense of importance. Even at the summit on leadership failure in Africa in question where the former President gave the keynote address, he was the least competent to speak on the issue. We remember the many illegalities that were committed during his regime. We saw how governors were impeached without quorum; a thing his political godson experimented in Rivers State with the speaker of the state house of assembly; we saw how he (Obasanjo) used the anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to haunt his enemies. There are too many buts about his administration that we can’t go on counting. Yet, his colleagues keep calling him to deliver lectures and monitor elections, a question of birds of the same feather flocking together?

    If there is any leadership lacuna in Nigeria, it is to Obasanjo’s wasted generation that we should turn for explanation. If Nigeria is jinxed with leadership crisis, then that must have been due to the activities of the Obasanjos in leadership positions. It is not even sweet in the former president’s mouth to say the country is jinxed. The country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo was head of state from 1976 to 1979; the country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo made himself available for the presidency in 1999 and was president for eight years. The country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo wanted a third term, a thing alien to our constitution and Jagunlabi would have gladly become a sit-tight president but for Nigerians’ resistance to the satanic plot.

    But it is one slave that makes one abuse many other slaves. The truth is that there is no correlation between age and leadership. Obasanjo, at least officially, was born on March 5, 1937. He is therefore 76 years old. Achebe was born November 16, 1930. He died March 21, aged 82. Soyinka on his part was born July 13, 1934, which means he is 79 this year. Officially, therefore, Obasanjo is the youngest of the trio. Much as we can say that Obasanjo cannot be said to have given Nigerians good leadership, both Soyinka and Achebe are renowned worldwide. How it is only the wrong people that get into leadership positions in Nigeria is what one cannot fathom.

    Chief Obasanjo should not be deceived that because he owns a leadership forum, then he is eminently qualified to mount the pulpit to pontificate on leadership, whether in Nigeria, worse still, in Africa. It is just one of the many contradictions of the man, Olusegun Obasanjo. In better run societies, no one would touch his forum, not even with a long spoon. His sermons can only make sense if he tells us to do as he says and not necessarily as he does- born again only above, but steep in the world down below! Another contradiction?

  • Impeachment without quorum

    Impeachment without quorum

    Legislators involved in the Rivers Assembly fracas should face sanctions too

    Many journalists readily agree, in defining the concept ‘news’, that when dog bites man, it is no news; but when man bites dog, then that is news. Of course, this makes sense because, what they are trying to say in essence is that ‘news’ properly so-called is usually about the bad and the ugly. Bad news is therefore good news. It is common to see dogs bite man but it is unusual for man to bite dog. Here, we are not talking about the Ondo people who see ‘lokili’ (dog) as a delicacy and the Calabar people who also enjoy its meat that they fondly call ‘404’. To eat something is not necessarily the same as biting it.

    This analogy came about in view of what is happening in Rivers State. That state has not known peace in the last few months and it is not likely to know it anytime soon. One of the major actors in the crisis has only recently boasted that he would make the governor uncomfortable, and perhaps the state, ungovernable. That tells us the extent that people can go when seeking political power in the country. In sane environments, the man would have been invited by the security agencies because his statement is self-explanatory. I have said it often, and it bears repeating, that this country would have been a far better place if those seeking public offices put in half of the energy they put into the struggle for the offices into governance when they eventually get into those offices.

    Imagine all the resources that have been wasted in the efforts to ‘overthrow’ the Rivers State governor just because of the personal ambitions of a few persons. A serving minister of state for education, Nyesom Wike, who should be overseeing the crucial sector is rather busy doing unimaginable things while thousands of our youths in the universities are on the streets when they should be in the lecture rooms, due to strike by their lecturers. Their colleagues in the polytechnics went on strike for weeks while Mr. Wike was in the forefront of the battle to remove the state governor by hook or crook. I wonder why it has not occurred to those who appointed Wike that something is bound to suffer when a man in such a crucial sector abandons his beat to lead a campaign just because he wants to become governor. In saner climes, it is only people who performed creditably in lower capacities that get promoted in government. This is a minister without any clear achievements already eyeing a higher office, putting his hopes on some benevolent cleavages. Again, in countries where the government is serious, it would have seen such a person as a liability rather than an asset and promptly shown him the door.

    But this is not where I am going today, it is nonetheless useful though in bringing into perspective the unfortunate developments in Rivers State.

    Chinua Achebe says in his celebrated Things Fall Apart that “if a man comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do? Shut my eyes and pretend not to see him?” He says that cannot be; he will rather carry a stick and break his head! Well, I may not necessarily be talking about physical retaliation. But, Achebe’s novels, as is the Igbo culture generally, are replete with proverbs which are like oil with which yam is eaten (again, apologies to Achebe).

    What happened in the Rivers State House of Assembly on Tuesday July 9 falls into the category of the defecation that I have in mind. But I must stress that I am also not talking about someone in whose house another man has defecated carrying a physical stick (as it were) to break the intruder’s head. But the man who has been wronged deserves some pacification. Now, when only five of a 32-member House of Assembly attempted to impeach the speaker, Otelemaba Amachree, whereas the constitution stipulates that at least two-thirds of the members is required for such to be legal, what did they expect? Did they expect to be pecked or kissed and warmly embraced by their colleagues who are in the majority?

    Certainly not. But the five must have been that audacious because of the ubiquitous ‘federal might’ that they thought they had behind them. With the police merely playing the role of observers, they had thought they would just carry out their illegality while Nigerians would make the usual noise over a period and the result of the illegality of impeachment without the requisite two-thirds majority would have stood, until a time when the courts will declare the action illegal and order a return to status quo ante. And, in Nigeria, that could take as long as the usurpers want and that is understandable; they have nothing to lose; it is only the person that has been cheated out of the office that has everything to lose. And, as we all know, justice travels at a snail speed in the country. Injustice travels faster!

    However, the miscalculation of the misguided five legislators led to (probably) unanticipated violence and now, we are talking about one of those involved in the illegal impeachment saga, Michael Chinda, lying critically injured in hospital. Interestingly, the same police that have been partial since the crisis started promptly ensured that the majority leader in the state house of assembly, Mr. Chidi Lloyd, was promptly arraigned for attempted murder.

    This is the kind of thing that happens in a country where might determines right. If legislators who did what the ‘Rivers Five’ attempted in the past had been made to face the full wrath of the law, it would have served as a deterrent to others. Unfortunately, they did not pay for it because the then President Olusegun Obasanjo was solidly behind them. This was despite the fact that fortunately, the judiciary in that era reversed almost all the illegalities, in Oyo, Anambra, Plateau where the governors were said to have been impeached without the required quorum in the houses of assembly.

    Perhaps it was because the ‘Rivers 27’ in the house of assembly did not want to take any chances that things went awry on July 9. This underscores the need for people to respect the sanctity of the law and due process. I am not opposed to justice for the injured legislator but I am also strongly of the view that something triggered the violence in the house. In my view, this too should be of concern to us. In the light of this, someone should also test the judicial waters to see if any case can be established; that is, if under any circumstance people can try what the ‘Rivers Five’ did without facing judicial sanctions. If we saw such in the Obasanjo era, it does not make it right.

    Whoever goes to equity must go with clean hands, remains the usual refrain. When someone causes rain to fall, it doesn’t seem right to me for that person to complain if the rain is eventually accompanied with thunderstorm. If sustaining of injury during an illegal legislative process is newsy, then, getting justice for those cheated by the illegality should be newsier. If five legislators decided to impeach a governor when between 20 and 21 members are legally required, they should know that whoever their godfather is, that action is illegal. I therefore see nothing wrong in their paying for it through the judicial process. It is high time Nigerians challenged such illegalities in court.

  • From the ‘Dikko affair’ to the Dikko committee

    From the ‘Dikko affair’ to the Dikko committee

    Nigeria’s younger generation may not know who the man, Alhaji Umaru Dikko is. Therefore, asking if they know what he represents (or at least used to represent) is superfluous. That is the tragedy of a nation whose many pupils do not know who the great sage, the late Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo was. A report, a few years back, indicated that right in Chief Awolowo’s hometown, Ikenne, in Ogun State, the only Obafemi that pupils in a school know is Obafemi Martins! They claimed not to have heard anything about Chief Awolowo. But that is Nigeria’s dysfunctional educational system for you; it is that bad. “A prophet”, they say, “is not without honour but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”.

    Anyway, this write-up is not about Chief Awolowo; it is about Alhaji Dikko, who came into prominence in the Second Republic during the tenure of President Shehu Shagari, his brother-in-law. Ordinarily, many of us had since forgotten about Alhaji Dikko and would have preferred never to be reminded of that dark era that the man represented, but for reports last week to the effect that the 77 year-old man of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) infamy has been exhumed from wherever he has been hibernating all these years, to head the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) national disciplinary committee! Did I hear you say ‘disciplinary committee’? Yes, you heard me right; disciplinary committee. Other members of the seven- member committee are; Obanema of Opume Kingdom, Bayelsa State and King A.J Turner as deputy chairman, publisher of Champion Newspaper and member, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, former deputy national chairman and BoT member, Alhaji Shuaibu Oyedokun, Hajiya Nana Aishat Kadiri, Barrister Hussaini Diraki and Senator Emmanuel Agboti.

    Those conversant with the story of Alhaji Dikko that we knew would readily say that with a man like him heading the ruling party’s disciplinary committee, then, the result is known even before the committee begins sitting. Unless of course the things the man used to do, he does them no more. I mean unless he has turned a new leaf, as they say.

    Just last week, I said something about the dearth of good people in the country. Well, some people will disagree with me and rather say that it is the failure of those in positions of authority to search for such people, or the reluctance of good people to make themselves available for public service because of the quality of people at the very top. What else could have made five governors run to Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, in search of solutions to democratic challenges if not for any of these aforementioned reasons? What our people versed in Pidgin English would dismiss simply as no more person. What I am saying is that there must be a dearth of people to enforce discipline in the ruling party for the mantle of chairman of a crucial committee as the disciplinary committee to fall on Alhaji Dikko. At least not the Alhaji Dikko that we knew.

    It is sad that the Jonathan government, apart from doing business as usual, is also suffocating us with the same spent forces that have had their time in leadership positions but made a mess of it. Alhaji Dikko belonged in that school.

    His role in governance in the country dates back to 1967 when he was appointed commissioner in the then North Central State (now Kaduna State). He was later to be secretary of a committee set up by General Hassan Katsina to unite the northerners after a coup in 1966. In 1979, Alhaji Dikko was made Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s campaign manager for the NPN. He was Minister of Transport from 1979-1983; a position he held simultaneously with that of the head of the presidential task force on rice. Interestingly, it was in the latter, rather than the former, that he became a national issue. That rice had to attract presidential attention in that republic showed how terribly bad the country was run because the rice that Alhaji Dikko headed its task force was imported. Again, that is a matter for another day.

    Such was the diligence with which he served Nigeria then that General Muhammadu Buhari who became head of state after overthrowing the Shagari government on December 31, 1983, issued a list of former government officials accused of a variety of crimes on his second day in power. Alhaji Dikko, who topped the list, was accused of embezzling several million dollars in oil profits from the national treasury. Despite strenuous efforts to locate him, he simply vanished, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. He was eventually trailed to the United Kingdom where the Buhari government attempted to bring him back home in a crate with 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.5 meters dimension, in what was famously referred to as the ‘Dikko affair’. Thank God the mission failed; otherwise, Alhaji Dikko would have been brought back to Nigeria in a crate like some imported cargo! One had to go this far for our ill-fated younger generation to know that their beloved country has not just started to wobble and fumble; it has been like that for decades. The sad thing is that while many fellow backbenchers like us are finding their way out of the woods, we are getting more and more entrenched in it. Anyhow, fellow Nigerians, this is the man that our ruling party has thrust forward as chair of its national disciplinary committee!

    Without doubt, the PDP as it is is highly undisciplined. It therefore needs someone, a strict disciplinarian to knock some discipline into its members’ skulls. But one wonders where to start the discipline from, or what form of discipline the party is thinking of, especially when one considers the action of some of its leading lights, including President Goodluck Jonathan. Or, how else do you capture a president who hosted as winner, someone who lost an election conducted among only 35 people? How many good persons would want to serve in a government in which such illegality thrives? Maybe it is only the PDP that understands its concept of discipline that it wants instilled into its members, because there is discipline and there is discipline. The NPN that Alhaji Dikko was a prominent member of was everything but disciplined. A party that is disciplined would not claim to have landslide victory in an election which was visible even to the blind that it lost. Little wonder that the Shagari government’s ‘landslide’ victory eventually became what someone referrred to as ‘gunslide’, to the delight of millions of Nigerians who had watched with disbelief as the then NPN stole votes in broad daylight, the same way the PDP has done in some places.

    The multi-million naira question now is: can Alhaji Umaru Dikko give what he does not have? Unless the aphorism that one cannot give what one does not have is about to be proved wrong, or unless the kind of discipline the PDP envisages is the one associated with the NPN (for which the present ruling party itself has become notorious), then, the ruling party may be on the way to defining discipline in its own image, a thing that eventually led to the collapse of our inglorious Second Republic and ultimately, the ‘Dikko Affair’.

    All said, for good or for ill, my dear reader, join me in congratulating Alhaji Dikko over his new appointment and at the same time welcome him, once again, to national limelight, after many years in the cooler. I wish him and their PDP whatever they wish themselves.