Category: Gbenga Omotoso

A NOSTALGIC feeling pervades the land.

President Goodluck Jonathan has set up a transition committee to ensure a smooth transfer of power to the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which will take office on May 29. His team will be remembered as a damn good one that failed to perform. Even then, we will miss some key actors in the cabinet.

I disagree with those who claim that Dr Jonathan never delivered a profound speech in all of his six years. Those off-the-cuff remarks – “I am not a Pharaoh; neither am I a Nebuchadnezzar” – reverberated all over. They won’t be forgotten so soon. Definitely not by those who forced His Excellency to define who a statesman is, those who claim to be statesmen but “talk like motor park touts”.

There have been speculations about his future. Will Dr Jonathan return to the classroom? Can he still prepare lesson notes and get his slushy presidential palms messed up with chalk? What becomes of those bowler hats and long dresses with glittering golden chains and buttons? They surely won’t be fit for the classroom. Will His Excellency stay in Abuja and retire to his 94.04 hectares Abuja farm, the one with a helipad, a hilltop farm house and crocodiles, among other livestock? Will he just go quietly to Otuoke, the small town he put on the map, and set up a presidential library or a fishing company or a canoe–making company (to promote the family’s age-old trade)? Lucky man; the possibilities are limitless.

Now that Dr Jonathan is free from it all, one thing seems sure – he will have time for his memoirs. I would like to suggest a title for the work,” Caged – for 16 years.”

My brother Reuben Abati should, naturally, get the job of editing the manuscript. Being a journalist, lawyer and writer of no mean repute, he will ensure that it is as compelling as any other in its class and free of libel so that nobody will need a court to stop the publication, denying us of the lurid details of how our president was captured and caged for all of 16 years. Who are his abductors? Men? Women? Why did they choose to cage him? How did they cage him? A cage in the lap of luxury? A sure best-seller is on the way. I bet.

We will miss the First Lady. You may disagree with her style, her brusqueness and her couture, but give it to Dame Patience Jonathan – she surely knows how to wow the crowd. To many, there would have been little or nothing to enliven the polity and trigger a laughter in the Jonathan administration, but for Mrs Jonathan.

As a dazed world struggled to recover from the shock of the Chibok girls’ abduction, she summoned a meeting that turned into an inquisition at the Villa, scolding everybody, including the principal of the school from which the over 200 girls were abducted.

“Princepa, is there anybody dat can tell us dey coducted dat ezam; do u come with any? Princepa, na only you waka come? First Lady is calling you now… No…u wia not eform too eh? Ohkay. Kotinew! No ploblem. God will see us. Dia ris God. Dia ris God in everything we ah doin!! Dose blood that are shiarin in Boronu will answer! What of two teachers? WAEC.  Now the first lady is kolli you, kwom, ah wan to hep you! Kom to fine ya child, ya missing child… will you keep quiet? Chai..eh …chai-eh…Dia  ris God o!! Dia ris God, Dia ris God, Dia ris God oh! The blors wia sharing. Dia ris God ohhh … Dia ris God ooooooo.”

But a colleague said last night that we may not miss Mama Peace for long – if the authorities decide to probe why the rivers of blood in the March 28 and April 11 elections in Rivers State. Mrs Jonathan’s incendiary directive to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members to stone their opponents, in his view, deserves some insight.

Dr Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala was one of the stars of the Obasanjo administration . She is credited with securing the Paris Club debt relief that raked up so much controversy concerning who got what commission. To date, the matter remains unresolved. In fact, the popular view is that in her sudden movement to the Foreign ministry – Obasanjo eased her out of Finance – lies the answer. We really don’t know.

Jonathan brought Okonjo-Iweala back and added to her portfolio the nebulous title of Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy. Under her watch, fuel price went up as she insisted on cutting a non-existent subsidy. Prices went up. Cost of doing business rose exponentially just as cost of living headed for the roof. Companies closed shop as diesel turned gold. Job cuts came in thousands. Due process became “dupe” process.

The government replied with SURE-P – a dubious programme that consumed so much and delivered so little. Nobody really can tell how much went down the drain in this strange venture under which youths were dressed up in black polo shirts and trousers, drilled like soldiers and sent onto the streets to cause traffic chaos in Lagos.

The pains became unbearable. But trust the ever inventive minister; she dug into her bag of tricks and whipped out a new formula. Rebasing. Just overnight, the Nigerian economy became Africa’s number one. The criteria were as esoteric as its purveyors, but Nigerians were told to jump for joy. The giant of Africa has risen at last, Abuja said.

Okonjo wahala will soon leave. She told CNN yesterday that she would like to go on holiday; “no telephone”. I’m happy to report that Nigerians have given her a long, long holiday. We shall miss her modest fashion sense – the conservative headgear, the Ankara fabric and beads – a trait that many have sworn is a camouflage of sort.

Where is Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke? She has not been seen in town since the PDP lost the election. A little bird told me she is somewhere in the Bahamas where she is gradually recovering from the hangover of the dizzying loss.

The more she tried to cut the fuel subsidy, the more the scheme became a huge canvass of fraud that attracted all manner of fraudsters, tricksters and gangsters who got paid billions for fuel they never delivered.

When former Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi raised the alarm that some $20b oil money was missing, he was dismissed as an incorrigible alarmist. In fact, he was surreptitiously given the push and derided as a busybody. But fate – that unseen hand in human affairs – supervened. Sanusi is now Emir of Kano.

A committee set up by Okonjo-Iweala said $10b was actually missing. Accountants who were drafted in to untie the knot claimed that only $1b was missing. The other day we learnt that Mrs Alison-Madueke asked the behemoth, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to pay the $1b into the treasury, perhaps to close the matter. Just like that?

Mrs Alison-Madueke will be remembered as our most powerful Oil minister ever. The more her critics cried out that she should be fired, the more entrenched in the system she got, confounding those who doubt the power of women.

Urbane, suave and ever dandy, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina is  not your run- of- the- mill Agric Minister. Who will forget his sartorial taste, his tokunbo accent and his retentive power. We always wonder whether he is talking about Nigeria whenever he rolls out those figures – the 750,000 metric tons of home grown rice, as of last year, that has not just made us sufficient but has actually become a revolution. So successful was the rice revolution that some companies got waivers to import several tons of the stuff, perhaps to augment the shortfall occasioned by the “stomach infrastructure” policy in many PDP states.

Adesina will be remembered also for giving us the cassava bread. Will the stuff now be accessed by ordinary Nigerians, many months after it made its debut at the Federal Executive Council and became the favourite on the presidential breakfast table?

The duo of Doyin Okupe and Femi Fani – Kayode seem to be out of job now.       Does anybody need a character assassin? Nigerians will find it difficult to forget the way they did their jobs as spokesmen for the President and the PDP, jobs that were created ad hominem for them.

They manufactured a fake medical report for Gen. Buhari. When that failed to stick, they threw up the matter of his education, vowing that the man never went to school. The army- oh, our dearest army – was drafted in to strengthen the doomed scheme.

Now that Fani-Kayode has enough time on his hands, he will surely drown his sorrows and return to the court where he is fighting the battle of his life against money laundering charges. Now, Okupe will have time to execute that juicy contract in Benue for which he reportedly collected a fortune as mobilisation fee. Fani-Kayode and Okupe will no doubt be missed for being so dramatic, eccentric and shameless while on the beat.

Only a thin line was left between Musiliu Obanikoro’s ministerial arrogance and gangsterism. If some will forget the disruption of work at Ilubinrin, Lagos, many will surely remember that voice ordering an army general around in the Ekiti poll rigging plot tape.

Now that Jelili Adesiyan will soon leave office as Police Affairs minister, Senator Isiaka Adeleke should watch it. The honourable minister, you will recall, once promised to beat him up upon leaving office.

There are so many others who will be sorely missed.

Who will complete the Centenary City, the one conceived by the committee headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim?  He and the others will surely be remembered for such grandiosity.

So much for a good team.

WHEN some community leaders connive to sell a piece of land belonging to the local deity, they set off a chain of morbid reactions. One after the other, all the conspirators die, but the ring leader, a chief and the King’s second-in-command,  Otun, fights a desperate battle to stave off death. He tells the community’s monarch that no dead should be buried in the town, otherwise a prominent indigene will die. “Who is prominent in this town if not  you, kabiyesi?” he tells the king, who,  apparently not prepared to die, decrees that nobody should bury his dead.

A man dies – from the curse of the deity. His children take the body to a neighbouring town for burial. The chief, who doesn’t want to die – he is the next in line to go after the body is interred – stormed the funeral, grabs the coffin and sits on it, screaming that it will not be buried.

Strange. So strange. Scared out of his wits, Otun confesses to being one of those who sold the land. The community is alarmed. The king’s right hand man  becomes a subject of shame and scorn, roundly derided for his ignoble role in the despicable act  that shocks the community.

That is the story of Tunde Kelani’s 1993 classic, T’Oluwa Ni’le (God owns the land), featuring the talented Alhaji Kareem Adepoju, alias Baba Wande, as the lead actor.

A little exercise, dear reader. Substitute the land deal for the just-concluded presidential election. In place of the character Otun (Baba Wande) who led the conspirators, throw in Elder Godsday Orubebe, the former Niger Delta Affairs minister. Orubebe, apparently in a fit of seizure, battled on Tuesday to halt the announcement of the presidential election results.

He raised a point of observation. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Attahiru Jega obliged. Orubebe – a dandy in a multi-striped ash blazer, a white shirt, a pair of black trousers, black shoes and a black hat – hurled expletives at Jega. He was screaming, swearing, shouting, yelling, huffing and puffing in a desperate bid to halt the process. He was foaming from the mouth as he threw up his hands. His eyes were red like a piece of coal from the blacksmith’s fire.

“Nigeria will not accept this!”, he yelled and railed endlessly, charging like a  Rottweiler and warning: “Don’t come near me.” Orubebe claimed that Jega rejected PDP’s petition, but set up a panel to examine what the All Progressives Congress (APC) claimed went wrong in Rivers State.

Watching it all on television, many were asking: When did Orubebe become Nigerians’ spokesman? Haven’t Nigerians spoken so loudly that even the deaf heard? What kind of elder is this Elder? Won’t his family be watching this on television?

Why did Orubebe choose to do the job? Why not Femi “Amebo” Fani-Kayode, who hours before then was saying on television, with the braggadocio of a Lagos pickpocket, that the PDP had won 22 states and would not be robbed of its gains? Or Ayo Fayose, the rambunctious governor of Ekiti, who is more experienced in such matters? Or Dr Doyin  Okupe, who had earlier threatened that Buhari would not be president?

But, if Orubebe had not seized upon the moment, nobody would have known that PDP harboured another talent with the ability to pull off a star performance that will draw great applause  any time.

Jega was calm and confident. After Orubebe had exhausted himself, he sank into his seat. The theatrics over, the INEC chief explained all he knew about the matter that got Orubebe spinning out of control into a rage.

The session continued. Before it ended, President Goodluck Jonathan shocked us all. He called Gen. Buhari at 5.15 p.m.  to concede defeat.  The Nation broke the story on its website. The tension that had gripped the land crashed and gave way to revelries. Many were screaming Sai Baba in jubilation.

Some women were singing: Ojut’owo, oju ti’resi, oju t’owo (shame to money, shame to rice).

Others were shouting: “PDP…dollar!” –a clever corruption of  the party’s slogan and a punchy allusion to the way it painted the town red before the election.

Now, the joke in town is that no woman would like to marry Jega because “if you shout at him, he won’t just talk”.

Besides, a new word has been added to the political lexicon, “Orubebe”. The meaning: To attempt to disrupt a peaceful process. “Orubebed” (past tense). “Orubebebing”  (present continuous tense). Example : An elder is trying to orubebe the parliament’s plan to pass the Electoral Act, which will criminalise threats to a Returning Officer.

But, talking seriously, shouldn’t Orubebe face the law for holding the nation to ransom? Where is police chief Suleiman Abba who threatened to deal with anybody who attempts to disrupt the process?

Even before INEC began to roll out the results, there had been tension in major cities. Schools closed. Banks rolled back their closing time and left many customers stranded. Other businesses also called it a day. Everybody went home to wait for the announcement of a winner, but that was not to be until some 16 hours after. Our longest 16 hours ever, perhaps.

Apparently excited that the apocalypse that we all dreaded didn’t come, after all, Nigerians have reduced it all to jokes. It is amazing the fecundity of the  Nigerian’s mind.

Consider this which a friend sent me. It is an invitation card, titled “Otuoke Reunion”. “Doors open at 4.30pm. May 29, 2015. Location: 1, Otuoke Main Road, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, near Mujahid Dokubo’s house. You are invited. MC: Femi Fani-Kayode.DJ: Koro in the house. Sound Track: Money can’t buy love. Bouncer: Doyin Okupe. Gals: Diezani, Ngozi, Patience and Stella. RSVP: www. ENDS.ng. Card admits one.”

Another said: “While APC was busy campaigning, PDP was looking for Buhari’s certificate.”

The long night ended at 3.46am when Jega declared Buhari winner of the election. He scored 15,424,921 votes as against Jonathan’s 12,853,162 votes. The President then made a broadcast in which he promised to co-operate with Buhari for a smooth transfer of power.

In his view, the PDP should be celebrating and not mourning. “We created a pan-Nigerian political party and brought home to our people the realities of economic development and social transformation.” Really?

Buhari collected his certificate of return yesterday. He said he bore no grudge against anyone and would not discriminate against any Nigerian. Good. But, as somebody said last night, it is okay to forgive all but history will surely reconstruct the road to Change – the crippling of the economy that has weakened the naira so badly –ah!  if only a currency could cry – , unemployment, abuse of the security forces,who often got deployed to rig elections for the ruining – sorry, a slip there – the ruling party, even when there are challenges, such as the need to bring back home the over 200 abducted Chibok girls,  harassment of judges and those hate campaigns.

–Can we ever forget?

STEP aside stock market. You are no longer the darling of investors. Move over, fuel merchants; years of amazing subsidy windfall are coming to an end. Generator dealers and proprietors of other cash machines must now watch it. A new money spinner is in town.

Even for the most inattentive of citizens, the ones who usually do not give a damn about new trends in business and social life, the new bonanza seems so real. Why not? The President is the one personally driving it–with strange passion and energy.

Dr Goodluck Jonathan has visited the Southwest several times since the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was coerced into postponing the presidential election from February 14 to March 28. With every visit have come stories of bountiful rewards for his hosts and guests who visit the State House, Marina.

To be candid, such stories were not common when the sorties into Lagos and the other parts of the Southwest began. No. But, I recall that Governor Babatunde Fashola alleged that huge funds were being shipped into town to induce various groups to line up behind the President in the coming elections.

Jonathan met with various ethnic groups. Some of the meetings were never publicised. But we saw on television the interactive session he had with youths, some of who were dressed as if they were heading for the night club down the road, the one in which he danced Shoki. There was also the one with Nollywood stars and other entertainers where we were let into the secret of His Excellency’s musical taste. He loves reggae, we were told. Dr Jonathan didn’t disappoint those who let the cat out of the bag. Smiling like a seductive Lagos girl, His Excellency jumped up and down to the rendition by three veterans of the genre, who, by the way, seemed to have been hauled out of hibernation to join the new bonanza. A source told me they were not disappointed.

None of these sessions generated so much argument as the President’s visits to traditional rulers. He was said to have unleashed a dollar rain that caused commotion in some palaces. Some of these custodians of our culture are said to have got as much as $250,000. It all depends on the grade, I am told. A grade one king got $250,000. Others got between $100,000 and $200,000. Ah! The fruits of royalty.

Some are said to have ordered new cars to boost the royal fleet. Others, I am told, are  getting set to take on new oloris to add some colour to the royal harem.

So excited are the royal fathers over the new bonanza, which is mind-boggling in comparison to what they get settling endless land squabbles in which they eventually become parties rather than fair adjudicators, that they have allowed themselves – crowns, beads, horsetails and all – to be suborned into committees to campaign for Jonathan. But this is the rather unfair view of some idle fellows, who hide under the nomenclature of social critic to slander respectable people.

Among such idlers are those who do not wish our revered kings well, those who believe that obas should have no role in this democracy, those who insist that palaces should remain symbols of what some people define as our primitivism and all those who advocate that royalty should not move with the times. They are lashing the kabiyesis for being part of the bonanza. I disagree.

Haven’t their royal and imperial majesties been grumbling that what they get from the local governments can no longer match their huge responsibilities? If Jonathan is trying to – in the true spirit of the Transformation Agenda (TA) – correct this, what is wrong with that?

But, again, to be candid, the royal fathers are not the only exciting beneficiaries of the presidential bonanza. Just on Monday, crowds of youths – bloodshot eyes, foaming mouths, guns, knives and cutlasses – rampaged through Lagos streets, calling for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Attahiru Jega’s sack and rooting for Jonathan.

They were led by Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) Coordinator Gani Adams and some Nollywood stars, who abandoned their locations for the pirates they so much dread, to join the rush for the bonanza. A colleague said he was not surprised at the protest. “How many people will get that kind of money and still remain sane?” he asked me. By the way, he was reminding me that Adams got a slice of the cake, the contentious N9b pipelines surveillance contracts, the one that OPC founder Frederick Fasehun confessed to bidding for alongside some former Niger Delta militants.

To be fair to some of those lampooning the presidential bonanza as a vote harvesting gimmick, they don’t detest the idea; what irks them is the irony of it all. An idea that is supposed to bridge the inequality gap, an ingenious wealth redistribution initiative, is sectional and divisive. In other words, many are exempted from the bazaar.

Their argument is that even in the renewed onslaught against the Boko Haram, the new bonanza has been pressed into service – effectively. Some South African mercenaries are fighting on our side for $400 a day. The government has dismissed this as a rumour (why won’t it? Aren’t these security matters that should be highly confidential, never to be revealed in beer parlour and pepper soup joint banters?), which has no place in military operations. The foreigners, said a report quoting government sources, are mere technical advisers as we have them in our soccer teams.

Besides, said the critics – I’m sure by now you know them very well: those who never see the transforming powers of the administration’s TA- even fuel subsidy tricksters who are believed to have had their fill are to be paid N30bn for the cash they lost because of the sudden crash of the naira against the dollar – in the spirit of the bonanza that we are talking about.

Not left out of the jackpot, said the grumblers, are mushroom rent-a-crowd companies, the type that got some loafers to carry anti-Buhari placards in front of Chatham House in London. They were handsomely rewarded in hard currency, the angry critics said.

The other day in Abuja, a group of people posing as politicians called the media to announce that they were kicking against INEC’s plan to use the card reader in the elections. The plan, they insisted, was inconceivable because, according to them, they were not conversant with the workings of the machine. I do not remember what they called their party – nobody seems to – but the popular belief, which they never disputed, was that they were being bankrolled by the Villa to scupper the process and portray INEC as an inept body. It was all part of the bonanza, I learnt.

Just last Friday, the families of the youths who died in the unprecedented Immigration death-for-jobs tragedy got a N75m payout. Even before the cheques could be cashed or deposited at the nearest bank, the critics, those unrepentant and ever disgruntled people of whom I had earlier spoken, had gone to town to scorn the gesture. Must one die for his family to get money? Must the government wait for somebody to die before awarding his family member a job? Why this now on the eve of a major election, which the government seems to be set to lose? What manner of justice is this? Where are the organisers of the bloody scam? The questions were many.

But, a perceptive fellow saw it all as part of the bonanza.

I was driving on Ahmadu Bello Way on Victoria Island, Lagos last weekend when a strange noise hit my ears. It was as if the ocean had angrily torn through the multi-billion naira barriers that had kept it in check or that a huge market was in session. It was neither of the situations. The noise, I learnt later from an “area boy” offering me a parking space a few metres away from the beach, was coming from a meeting of the army of necromancers and wild-bearded veteran prophets who dwell on the beach. They were planning a march on the State House on Jonathan’s next visit. Reason: what they have described as their unconscionable exemption from the bonanza and interactive sessions.

Poor Jonathan. See how a scheme his hard working strategists have projected to be a vote hauling machine is being turned into an acrimonious object by some indolent  officials to whom every simple assignment is like breaking a rock. Now there is disquiet in the land as many feel either neglected or cheated in the bonanza.

Ajegunle DJs Association. Oko-Oba butchers. Ebute-Metta Beggars League. Area Boys Forum. Ex-Yaba Psychiatric Hospitals Patients Union. Ex-Kirikiri Inmates Club. Bus Conductors Association. Nigerian Drivers Welfare Association. And many more are now threatening to tear their voter cards, unless they are enrolled in the new Amnesty Programme –  Ah! An error there –  in the current bonanza.

At the Villa, however, it is eureka. In fact, a source told me last night of how the World Bank has been begging to be allowed a few weeks to understudy Dr Jonathan’s efficacious anti-poverty weapon, the bonanza or the new wealth distribution system, to free the Bank from many years of fighting poverty with little result.

But, trust the idle critics, who have nothing but disdain for research and scholarship; they have been sneering at the ingenuity of the presidential bonanza as a vote harvesting machine. Let’s wait till March 28, they keep saying derisively. Yes; the countdown is on. March 28.

I STILL remember the old man with a husky voice. He was blind, but he always knew whenever a prominent client arrived at Links Bar on Lagos Street in Ebute-Metta, Lagos Mainland. He knew every family and had a special song for all. May his soul continue to rest in peace.

What kind of song would Baba Osa have sung for Femi Fani-Kayode, the voluble spokesman for the Jonathan Campaign Organisation, son of the famous Chief Remi ‘Fani-Power’ Kayode, the deputy premier in the defunct Western Region? I can take a bet. Baba would have crooned:

Omo o le jo baba, ka maa binu omo  (You don’t begrudge a son for resembling his dad)

     Omo o le jo baba, ka maa binu omo  (You don’t begrudge a son for resembling his dad)

    Femi yi jo baba e ju                                 (This Femi resembles his dad so much)

   Omo o le jo baba ka maa binu omo.    (You don’t begrudge a son for resembling his dad.)

They just don’t have a clue. So they often said of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Not anymore.

The opposition party – sorry, the ruling party, Africa’s biggest and the one that has sworn to rule Nigeria for 60 years, in the first instance – has been derided as a gang of clueless politicians and expired tricksters, fraudsters and  pranksters by some idle commentators who don’t see any redeeming feature in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration’sTransformation Agenda (TA).

With just a few days to the general elections, the party has regained its form. The President was in Lagos the other day to listen to some youths with whom he danced Shoki – the erotic dance in which the dancer covers his right eye with his right palm, bends his or her legs and throws his or her left arm across the body, which is twisted seductively. Dr Jonathan, polo shirt, designer fez cap and all, made a good job of it. He was all smiles. The young men and women were struggling for selfies with His Excellency.

Soon, those who say he has no clue will see how the new vote harvesting formula will be pressed into service. Never mind that some of the President’s guests were actually decked out in dresses that left so much to the imagination. A friend of mine who saw it all on television praised the President’s endurance as one girl, almost topless, laps exposed and face beaming, sat next to His Excellency, holding his hand and screaming excitedly into the mic.

But the season of clues, apparently occasioned by the dubious – that’s what the critics call it – six-week postponement of the general elections is not all about wooing would-be voters or devising new baits for votes.  Gone are the days when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), confronted by the myriads of ailments that trouble Nigeria, simply wrung its hands in utter cluelessness. Not anymore.

Consider the long petrol queues at our filling stations. Just before now, it used to be rows and rows of jerry cans that went on as far as our eyes could see, waiting to be filled with kerosene. Now the days of fisticuffs at petrol pumps are back. Fares have gone up and many man-hours have been lost. After a rigorous research – a source told me that no fewer than 10 professors of no mean reputation joined forces in the mental exertion – PDP Chairman Adamu Muazu broke the news: the All Progressives Congress (APC) is behind the fuel crisis.

Even before he finished announcing this remarkable breakthrough, those critics of whom I had earlier spoken, the ones who are so blind to the marvel of TA, started grumbling. Does APC own the filling stations? Is APC behind the multi-billion dollar fuel subsidy fraud? Are those named in the massive fraud not the ones leading Jonathan’s campaign? Who has been frustrating Jonathan’s attempts to fix the refineries? The questions were many.

Instead of hailing Muazu for this discovery, the critics pilloried him to no end. The soft ones said his announcement was an unparalleled exhibition of buffoonery. Others, the harsh critics, called Muazu a misfit. Haba! Just for announcing the result of a painstaking exercise? Yet, some demanded an apology, saying since Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has confirmed that marketers were being owed N185b, the honourable thing is to apologise to the PDP. Apology? Won’t that show cluelessness?

Even the recent crash of the naira against the dollar has been seen in the ruling party as a device of the opposition to weaken the local currency, make it worthless and, by so doing, incite the unsuspecting citizenry against the government. But, those who do not understand the politics of the policy have explained that the tumbling oil prices have affected the strength of the naira against the dollar. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), after many battles to prop up the naira, eventually devalued the currency, they said.

After a sober reflection on the matter and due consultations with its team of financial experts, the PDP, I am told by a source, is set to announce its discovery of how the APC caused the naira to slip before pushing it to fall, a devastating fall from which it is struggling to recover – all because it wants to take power from PDP. It takes a party of intellectuals to get such a clue. Kudos to PDP.

Boko Haram has been around for some time. Its leader Mohammed Yusuf was murdered in police custody in 2009. The incident changed the group dramatically, sending it on a violent mission from which it has refused to return. Thousands are dead, hundreds, among them the pitiable Chibok schoolgirls, are being held hostage and several others are conscripted into the sect’s forces, forced to fight for nothing.

Now, the PDP has a clue. Boko Haram’s sponsors are in the APC. Like every other discovery, this has infuriated the critics, who have been querying the assertion. At what point did APC start sponsoring Boko Haram? Are the states worst-hit by the insurgency not APC’s? Why was Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate, attacked by bombers suspected to be on errand for the sect in Kaduna? Are some of those accused of being the godfathers of the deadly sect not found around the President? Don’t they go about with soldiers as if they are some war commanders?

The critics, who obviously still doubt that the PDP has a clue to the ocean of problems in which we are immersed, went on: “Is it the business of the opposition party to fund and equip the armed forces? Where is our soldiers’ newfound fire power coming from? Why did it take the Commander-in-Chief so long to go near the trouble spot? Why won’t he go to Chibok to comfort the parents of the abducted girls and assure them that their kids will never be forgotten?”

Trust the PDP. It would not be moved by such sanctimonious talks of showing leadership and empathy. No. Only recently it found a clue to the dwindling power supply. From about 4,000 MW at its peak, power generation has dipped to 2,886.87MW.

Those who claim to be familiar with the industry have said that the power situation has gone this bad because a major gas supplier has shut down its facility for routine repairs. The PDP and its followers would have accepted such an explanation, had things been normal, but this is a season of politics. I am sure by now you should know those behind the poor power supply. And no prize for guessing right.

Until recently, there has been so much outcry about a missing $20b oil money. Amid the din, the President cautioned us all to draw the line between stealing and corruption. “If you look at the perception of corruption or perception index, people talk about corruption now because it has become a political issue. And when you promote something to a level of politics, of course, it will blow out of proportion,” he said on Monday in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Dr Jonathan went on: “Yes, we have corruption cases…we have cases of people stealing; no doubt about that. I always say that, call a thief a thief. I am not saying that we don’t have this element of corruption or stealing. If you start from the former Central Bank governor, who initially said that $49.8 billion was missing; $49.8 billion is a lot of money. What is the budget of this country for God’s sake?

“Our budget has been a little over N3 trillion. Federal Government’s budget is about $18-20 billion a year and you are saying we lost $49.8 billion. If today we lose $49.8 billion, federal and state governments will not pay salaries. I don’t know how he came about that figure. The next moment he changed from $49.8 billion to $12 billion. The next day, it was $20 billion. Up to this time, I don’t know which is the correct accusation. The Senate set up a committee and they used consultants; they looked into it and said over $2 billion that could not be properly balanced. They did not say that somebody stole it. No evidence to say it was stolen but that it was not properly balanced.”

Sir, before concluding that no money is missing or stolen, wouldn’t you rather check with the APC?

We have been celebrating our narrow escape from the Ebola disease, which American-Liberian Patrick Sawyer imported to Lagos. Nobody knew why and how the late Sawyer chose to come to Nigeria. A source has just told me that as part of its campaign scheme, the PDP is set to reveal, after a presidential panel’s prognosis of the disease, those who not just advised the man to come here, but physically helped him to land in Lagos. I guess you have a clue to the answer. Again, no prize for guessing right. APC.

Another source has told me of a massive investigation that will unravel the secret of how our over $60b foreign reserve (2008) went down to $32b. The money, said the source, is likely to reduce further if the authorities do not move fast to smash the politics that has led to this significant depletion. Even as we await the result of this venture, isn’t it easy to guess who is behind this? Go ahead and guess, but again don’t expect a handshake for guessing right.

Now, who says our President and his party are clueless?

AS the Abuja Accord still alive?

When the 11 presidential candidates signed a pact to ensure that next month’s elections are peaceful, we all clapped for them, hailing their patriotism. Now we know we have been deceived. The accord has been shredded.

There has been so much anxiety in the land, fuelled by politicians whose language drips violence. But do we need to be told that such conduct paves the way for the manifestation of the savagery we are all so eager to avoid? In other words, it is not initially all baton, bullets and blood. No. These are merely the corollary of a brutish thought process that evokes the foul language that precedes trouble.

Almost everybody is guilty, but the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gets the trophy. Instead of leading a solid fight against the fundamentalist Boko Haram, a group that keeps assaulting Nigeria’s military might and the quality of its political leadership, the PDP has laid the blame at the doorstep of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and its leaders.

Some Christians have been bamboozled with wild tales of how APC and its leaders have been backing Boko Haram – all in a desperate battle to win votes. At what point did APC begin to romance Boko Haram? Are those politicians accused of starting it all not in the President’s company? Are they not members of his party?  If APC is backing the sect, why did it attempt to kill its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, in Kaduna? Borno, an APC state, continues to be troubled by the sect, which has killed and kidnapped thousands of its citizens, including the over 200 Chibok girls whose whereabouts remain unknown since April 14, last year when they were snatched off their dormitories and hussled off to nowhere.

Apparently frustrated that the Boko Haram smear campaign has fallen flat on its face, the PDP reached into its bag of old, dirty tricks. From nowhere the news came that the report of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), the intervention agency Gen. Buhari once chaired, which its purveyors claimed indicted him, would be made public.

Just before the report was splashed on newspaper pages, former President Olusegun Obasanjo knocked the bottom off its bucket, dismissing it as a document that was of no importance. Gen Buhari, he said, passed the test of integrity that the probe was all about. Obasanjo, it should be noted, set up the panel that conducted  the probe.

But the hatchet men were not done. They soon devised other forms of mudslinging, saying Buhari had no certificates. Haba! This is the first time the former Head of State’s academic qualifications are being challenged. To the idlers and jokers, it was no point that the man had contested elections three times on the same rules set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Constitution. In their warped view, it is no use visiting the schools Gen. Buhari claimed to have attended to confirm whether he was actually there or not and then, armed with iron-cast evidence – if the General lied – challenge his eligibility to run.

Enter the military. Army spokesman Brig.-Gen. Olajide Laleye, at an elaborate press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, said the NA Form 199 A, which Gen. Buhari filled after his commission as an officer, shows that he got the West African School Certificate in 1961. “However, neither the original copy or the Certified True Copy (CTC) nor statement of result is in his personal file,” Gen. Olaleye said.

The army, he said, will not be party to any controversy surrounding Gen. Buhari’s eligibility for any political office. Really? Hasn’t the PDP and its henchmen railroaded the army into this season of bile and vile that is nothing but politics to them? If the papers are not with the army, where are they?

Why is PDP bringing up this matter now? Does the law say a candidate must tender his papers on the eve of the election?

Thankfully, Government College, Katsina released its copy of Gen. Buhari’s certificate yesterday––to the dismay of the PDP and its itinerant drummers.

Perhaps unknown to the PDP, many see this as part of the desperation to keep alive its dream of ruling Nigeria for 60 years- in the first instance –  a dream that is collapsing so fast, like a structure erected on sand. In fact, to Gen. Buhari’s growing army of fans, the certificate matter is no issue. “Let Buhari present a NEPA bill as his certificate, I will still vote for him,” a former soccer star is quoted as saying.

That is the level of the emotional attachment that many have to the wind of change that Gen. Buhari symbolises. Isn’t it too late to stop him?

No, the PDP and its errand boys think. It was obvious the certificate issue would not fly. So, off to town they went to procure an “Oluwole” – oh! that home of master forgers on Lagos Island- health report that states that Gen. Buhari is ill, proclaiming the piece of paper as a bulletin issued by the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, which they actually misnamed. Femi Fani-Kayode, who before getting the job of spokesman of Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s Campaign was busy – broke, some insist – answering money laundering charges in court, broke the false news of Gen. Buhari’s “illness” .

The General’s handlers said he was fit as a fiddle and stressed that he would not fiddle with government cash if voted into office. Gen. Buhari defended his fitness, challenging a reporter to a session of jogging.

Apparently buoyed by the fake health report, a governor – governor indeed – assaulted the public’s sensibility by issuing an advertorial suggesting that if voted into power, Gen. Buhari would die in office. It was a classic case of adult delinquency and buffoonery taken too far, even by the awful standard of the advertiser and his masters, who disowned the document as an exclusive device of his.

Now, many are recalling the curse of the Great Zik of Africa on “those  who make a mockery of old age” when in 1981 the former Senate President, the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo,  pilloried the old man – all in the name of politics. Okadigbo said his complaints were “the rantings of an ant”.

Zik replied in a moving dirge. He wrote:

“My boy, may you live to your full potential, ascend to a dizzy height as is possible for anyone of your political description in your era to rise. May you be acknowledged world-wide as you rise as an eagle atop trees, float among the clouds, preside over the affairs of fellow men…. as leaders of all countries pour into Nigeria to breathe into her ear.But then, Chuba, if it is not the tradition of our people that elders are roundly insulted by young men of the world, as you have unjustly done to me, may your reign come to an abrupt and x close. As you look ahead, Chuba, as you see the horizon,  dedicating a great marble palace that is the envy of the world, toasted by the most powerful men in the land, may the great big hand snatch it away from you. Just as you look forward to hosting the world’s most powerful leader and shaking his hands, as you begin to smell the recognition and leadership of the Igbo people, may the crown fall off your head and your political head fall off your shoulders.None of my words will come to pass, Chuba, until you have risen to the very height of your power and glory and health, but then you will be hounded and humiliated and disgraced out of office, your credibility and your name in tatters forever…”

When, many are asking, will PDP begin to discuss issues? Will Dr Goodluck Jonathan stop theorising  about “stealing” and “corruption” and go after all those who have robbed the treasury, some of them part of those  running his campaign? How will he convince Nigerians that he has done all that is humanly possible against Boko Haram? Will there be jobs for all? How? Will he restore the dignity of the Judiciary? Can we ever get power right and save industrialists the fortune they pour into diesel drain?

The song about debasing – sorry, an error there –  rebasing of the economy, petrol queues, railway, rice and cassava bread and all that sounds like an old lullaby that can no longer lull us all to sleep. Let’s sing a new song, Your Excellency.

To many Nigerians, this season of vile and bile has provided a massive canvass for the exhibition of their amazing creativity. Since the government suddenly reduced fuel price from N97 to N87 last Sunday, the action has become a subject of jokes on the Internet. There is a caricature of the President – bowler hat, a short sleeve shirt and a pair of shorts – filling a motorist’s car at a petrol station.

In another posting, Dr Jonathan is pictured in a pensive mood, his left hand on his chin. Behind him is former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his tongue sticking out mockingly, saying to the President: “Even if you reduce fuel price to N10, they won’t vote for you. Huuuu!”

There is also the portrait of a man laughing hysterically and saying: “So, because we said we need change, GEJ has given us N10 change”.

What do you say of the onomatopoeic contraption of Buhari’s name to FeBuhari to push his choice for the February 14 election? In Yoruba, fe means love. You are simply being urged to love Buhari and show this on February 14, the all-lovers day that is also the election day. What a coincidence!

See you at the polls.

Bonjour Mbu Joseph Mbu

It is only fit and proper to welcome Assistant Inspector-General of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu to Lagos where he is to take charge of Zone 2, which comprises Lagos and Ogun states.

Mbu’s belligerence is well known. So, for Lagosians who may want to be familiar with the new helmsman’s style, a word of caution. Mbu dislikes rallies and protests without police permit, although the courts have said you don’t need a permit for such gatherings. If in doubt, ask the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners. He, being a peaceful and cultured officer, does not like being described as “controversial”. If in doubt, ask Amaechi Anakwe of AIT, who spent time in detention for describing the gentleman as controversial. With Mbu, no office is sacred. If in doubt, ask Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi or simply recall the officer’s lion and leopard allegory, which he told with remarkable relish. When Mbu is at work, never accuse him of partisanship, of singing Abuja’s song. Never. He is a thoroughbred professional.

So, fellow Lagosians, there you have it. Before I am charged with tardiness, may I quickly say bonjour officer.

The sermon was hot. It was no pedagogical exertion to keep the congregation on the path of righteousness. Neither was it totally a rain of blessings from the altar. It was more than that; a blistering attack on the Jonathan presidency and an exhortation for change. The congregation, a sea of heads, was screaming: “Amen!”.

Abuja was shaken by it all. It became a subject of acrimonious arguments all over town, with many asking: where is Doyin Okupe, the rambunctious one who in a fit of blasphemous arrogance compared his boss to Jesus Christ?

I guess you already know what we are talking about. Enugu Catholic priest Rev. Camillus Ejike Mbaka’s New Year Day message delivered at the Adoration Prayer Ground was like a thousand bombs set off at the same time. It was a typical example of the scriptures as a vehicle for political communication.

The controversial priest lashed the government for failing to tackle the infrastructure challenge and embracing corruption. He was angry that the government could not fight “ordinary” insurgency, the Boko Haram menace, which in his view is a corollary of unemployment, just like kidnapping.

Rev. Father Mbaka also had harsh words for some pastors who he said had become “hawks” around the President, “eating the porridge of Jacob and selling their prophetic rights”.

He revealed that what seems like a desperation to hang on to power may have begun a long time ago, with some details of First Lady Patience Jonathan’s peregrinations. She had come on consultation to the church. Rev. Mbaka spoke of a spiritual drama in which four birds “were lifted to fly up”.  “The main one that should fly up refused to go. I did everything possible and that one is the healthiest of them all but refused to fly and the spirit of God said, ‘don’t disturb him’.”

The priest did not expatiate on what many have taken to mean that Dr Jonathan’s bid for another term may have collapsed in the extraterrestrial realm, with its physical manifestation expected on February 14. But the man of God called for change and alluded to the biblical rejection of Saul and how David took over.

Now Rev Mbaka says his life is being threatened. When are we going to learn to take the message and let go of the messenger? The man has said nothing new; he has only amplified from his vantage position the thinking of many Nigerians who have no such voice. But will Abuja listen?

What is the moral justification for the government to stay on when it seems to have no answer to the bloodshed that has overwhelmed the land? Will the Chibok girls ever return? Didn’t the government tell us it knew where they were being held?

Nigerians will go to the polls on February 14 to deliver their verdict on the Jonathan presidency. They seem to have made up their minds. Nobody will tell the blind that the market has closed. When he ceases to hear the noise, he will pack and go home, said the late Chief Moshood Abiola, the winner of the June 12, 1993 election who was not allowed to take the office.

Just a few days after the sermon from Adoration Ground came another – a strange one – from a Lagos preacher and activist. Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly joined the call for a transition government, which its advocates swear will pull Nigeria back from the brink. Jonathan, they say, should head the government, which will run for two years and organise an election in which he will not participate.

Now, many are asking: “Is Pastor Bakare not a lawyer?” Who will explain what is obviously an attempt to torpedo the Constitution and set it on its head for anarchy to take over? What do we call this; a mawkish ode to peace? Prophetic naivety?  Why shift the goal post in the middle of the match? Wouldn’t that amount to taking too far what is seen as a growing culture of impunity and arbitrariness? Is this how to build a good society?

Those analysts who have predicted that 2015 will be action-packed seem to be damn right. Things are moving so fast – at a pace that keeps us all panting as we attempt to catch up. Just when you sit down to analyse a big event, another of gargantuan stature hits you right in the face.

And so it has been in the first week of this year of momentous decisions. The political parties are getting set for the elections. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has raised some N21b, mostly from anonymous donors, to fight its battle. After a public outcry, it has said the cash is not all for its campaign; part of it will go to its building of a secretariat.

Even a simple matter of raising money has turned into a scandal for the PDP, a party that has lost many of its leading lights to crass impunity and injustice – going by the admission of its Chairman, Dr Adamu Muazu.

Now, there are attempts to correct all that. Consider the composition of the party’s campaign organisation. Among its ranks is Femi Fani-Kayode, the former Aviation minister, who will be the spokesman. Many have hailed his appointment as a master stroke, but some are asking: “Will this not distract him from the legal battle in which he is joined with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which levelled an allegation of theft against him?”

In case you have been wondering what fate befell former Information Minister Labaran Maku, who resigned to pursue his ambition to govern Nasarawa State, there is an answer for you. Maku has joined – wait for this – the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). His bid for the PDP ticket collapsed and he, apparently in desperation, headed for APGA. He swears that he remains loyal to President Jonathan. Isn’t this strange?

In Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, former President Olusegun Obasanjo unleashed another tirade against the Jonathan administration. He told a group of women leaders how the economy had been brought to its knees by the government that was expected to protect it. He spoke of the depletion of the Excess Crude Account and accused the government of blowing $67b excess oil cash.

Obasanjo spoke also of his relationship with Jonathan, saying he had no problem with the president. “I have no grudges against Jonathan and I think Jonathan equally has no grudges against me. I am not quarrelling with Jonathan but all I know is that whatever is good for Nigeria, I am ready to die for.” He then advised the women not to throw away their votes. Besides, he said, they should check out the records of the candidates before voting.

Do we still need a psychologist to tell us the depth of Baba‘s anger? I see Obasanjo summoning a meeting of artisans and drivers’ union chiefs who he will advise to vote wisely.

But Jonathan has refused to turn the other cheek. Only yesterday in Abuja, he lashed out at “some people who call themselves statesmen”. They are not statesmen, he said, but “ordinary politicians.”

In fact, His Excellency attempted to describe a statesman. He said: “For you to be a statesman is not because you have occupied a big office before, but the question is, what are you bringing to bear? Are you building this country? Or are you part of people who tell lies to destroy this country?”

Dr Jonathan, who was hosting the Northern Elders Council (NEC) at the Villa, did not name anybody. In what seemed like a moment of presidential anger, he said: “Making provocative statements…statements that will set this country ablaze and you tell me you are a senior citizen. You are not a senior citizen. You can never be; you’re an ordinary motor park tout.” Ah! But then, free speech is a right that even the President deserves to enjoy, even as he can do with some finesse.

Despite the hard times, Nigerians have refused to surrender their sense of humour. On  the Internet, there are various pictures of some prominent people, such as United States President Barack Obama, holding a placard with the inscription, “Vote for change. Vote Buhari”. President Jonathan is pictured sitting on a motorcycle, which the maverick entertainer, Charly Boy, is riding. The inscription: “Going back to Bayelsa.”

As we rounded off production on December 31, this one hit my mobile: “Before people begin to circulate pirated, cheap and unauthorised Happy New Year greetings, I wish you and your entire family the original Happy New Year in advance with NAFDAC registration number 01-01-2015.”

So, dear reader, here’s to you the original Happy New Year. Best.