The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Sore-losers’ assault on our judiciary

    Sore-losers’ assault on our judiciary

    For those who have taken the pains to study Nigerian politics and political process, the outcome of the 2023 presidential election was predictable. With PDP fractionalized into four, it was apparent the party was doomed. Unfortunately, leading lights of the party including Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and other warring groups who out of greed for power unwittingly ceded the coveted price to a more versatile politician with a better brinkmanship on how to cope with party intrigue and ambition of party and non-party members and reconcile private affluence with public squalor, blamed everyone except themselves.

    First the target was Bola Tinubu, the winner of the election who from his party intra primary to the general election battled power and principalities to achieve what most people have come to regard as a miracle. After losing to a better prepared candidate, they embarked on sterile argument about his Chicago University certificate, his health status and his true identity. Then the battle shifted to INEC accused of not transmitting result by Irev. Obi, despite coming a distant third, claimed his victory was stolen. Atiku who ought not to have featured in the electoral contest claimed victory without proving how the victory was secured.

    And finally it was the turn of the judiciary for dutifully interpreting the electoral law and the constitution when approached by sore losers sworn to undermining the integrity of the judiciary if they could not have Tinubu’s victory over-turned on technical grounds.

    While Atiku and Obi may justified their assault on the judiciary by the fact that all is fair in war as in politics since politics is war by other means, I think both by their short-sightedness are unpatriotic. Destroying judiciary which defines humanity only takes us back to Hobbesian state of lawlessness and chaos where life is nasty, brutish and short.

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    Of course our judges are Nigerians. It can therefore be argued that a part cannot be holier than the whole. But comparing our judiciary with other institutions of state will be odious. Beyond etymology, judges are called justices because it is envisaged they will dispense justice to ensure a just society. And a just society is where a person gets what he or she deserves. For a society, it should be an article of faith that their judges will dispense justice, protect citizens human rights and a nation’s constitution.

    Unfortunately, instead of promoting faith in our judicial system, those who should know better, precisely because they are sore losers have done everything to undermine the integrity of our judiciary.

    Let us start with last week’s open letter to Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Olukayode Ariwoola by elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark asking him to reorganize the judiciary because of alleged corruption and the malpractices. Unfortunately, his intervention was ill-timed because Nigerians who are aware of where he stood in the last February election cannot but lump him together with supporters of Obi who because they see only the picture in their heads have become the greatest threat to the judiciary.

    Pa Clark’s case was not helped by the fact that except ‘conflicting judgments by same courts in different states of the country’, all the other cases he cited to support his allegation of corruption in the judiciary including the inhumane treatment meted to the former CJN, Justice Walter Onoghen; the illegal raiding of judges houses at midnight; socialization between the judiciary and some senators who are facing criminal charges;” all happened before the current CJN assumed office.

    Pa Clark who admitted he has been in the judiciary for 59 years knows Nigerian judiciary has come a long way from the First Republic when judges complained “their “hands were tied”, when the NPC/NCNC coalition partners engineered a midnight retroactive law to oust the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, the then highest judicial body in the country and during Buhari, Babangida and Abacha military misadventure when the judiciary was used to wage wars against Nigeria. He was alive and had influence on political actors of the fourth republic including President Obasanjo who without restraint freely used the judiciary to fight his political foes.  For Pa Clark to therefore insinuate just like the ‘Obidient’ that the judiciary today is the worst in our nation’s history will be a hard sell to those who live in Nigeria.

    Pa Clark also seem to have a problem with the chief justice’s declaration that judges are not moved by public opinion in the determination of cases before them but by facts’ as a response to Labour Party’s “all eyes on the judiciary” media campaign which many saw as attempt to intimidate the judiciary to see only their own truth no matter how jaundiced.  But with the outcome of the election, it has become apparent, results of polls after polls masterminded by Obi’s sympathisers which predicted his landslide victory in the February election could not have had universal applicability. And with members of Human Rights Groups accusing each other of partisanship during public presentation of what was supposed to be a joint report, the CJN’s apprehension or uneasiness with public opinion as determinant of court cases cannot be faulted.

    Attack by Atiku Abubakar on the judiciary that threw his case of alleged ‘banditry perpetrated by the APC and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on October 26, 2023 and upheld the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has remained vicious. But this was just as his party’s governors’ forum led by Bala Mohammed, and his party’s National Working Committee (NWC) including the acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum distanced themselves from his attack by declaring “As a forum, (they) believe and restate our faith and confidence in the judiciary to do justice in political and other cases before the courts” adding that “the judges should be commended for doing a good job.”

    The judiciary also came under severe criticism following the Court of Appeal’s ruling by the three-member panel led by Justice Elfrida Williams-Dawodu that sacked the Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang and declared APC candidate Muntawe Goshwe as the winner of the March 18 governorship poll in Plateau state.

      Again they ignored the precedents. In 2019, APC was unable to present candidates for the governorship, Senate, House of Representatives, and House of Assembly elections in Rivers State following bungled party primaries.

    It was the same story in Zamfara where the APC lost three senatorial seats and the seven seats in the House of Representatives they won during the February 23, 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections, the APC governorship election won with 534,541 to Bello Muhammad Mutawalle of the PDP’s 189,452 and all the 24 seats in the Zamfara State House of Assembly. APC lost all the positions to the opposition PDP because according to Centus Nweze, who spoke on behalf of a five-member panel of the apex court, “it is clear that the respondent (APC) was in grave disobedience of two lawful court orders and It is a serious matter for anyone to flout a court order”.

    Governor Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar who admitted APC breached the provisions of the law that mandates the party to conduct ward congresses, accepted the Supreme Court verdict, urged APC members to be law-abiding while directing security agencies to ensure adequate protection of lives and property of his people.

    We cannot afford to destroy our judiciary because of all the institutions of state, it is the only one that can ensure government accountability, fair resolution of dispute, uphold rights and bringing culprits to justice and sustain the democratic culture.

  • Betta Edu: Between God, Oyedepo and Tinubu

    Betta Edu: Between God, Oyedepo and Tinubu

    Betta Edu, a trailblazer is at 35, Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.  She was before then the Cross River State Commissioner for Health,  the National Women Leader  of All Progressives Congress (APC), the feat she achieved by defeating her opponent by  2,662 to 117 votes at the APC National convention of March 2022. She then became the Special Adviser, Women Affairs, the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Committee and went on to mobilise women all across the country in their millions to vote for the ticket.

    Of course by the nature of our party patronage system where politicians share spoils of war after victory, many Nigerians will readily conclude she secured her position in President Tinubu’s cabinet on account of her contributions. But such assumption is far-fetched. And it is not that Edu herself was any less confused.  While she was convinced her appointment as a minister at 35, was a miracle from God, she was not sure as to who between her pastor, Bishop Oyedepo who placed his hand on her head and President Tinubu, the freewheeling talent hunter, laid the foundation for the miracle.

    But listen to her. “On the last day of Shiloh, just as I was walking out, I saw Papa, Bishop David Oyedepo; I whispered to him, ‘Papa, I need you to pray for me. I have just one prayer request now’, ‘I want to come back to Shiloh 2023 as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’. He put his hand on my head and he said, ‘It is done’. I stood up and I left.”

    Last week, while appreciating God for what she genuinely believes was a miracle, Edu said, “I came today to return all glory to God that in spite of all odds, today I’m a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

    But we must understand where she was coming from. As a woman of faith, she has been told by her Bible that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong (Ecclesiastes 9:11) and that “except the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127 v1).

    But Betta was also smart enough to understand that this only meant one cannot work independently of God. She therefore has no illusion as to anyone trying to win a race in which she is not a participant or securing a victory without first fighting a war.  And because she instinctively knew every man/woman is the architect of his/her own fortune, she left every other thing to God who ‘does not share His glory with any man’, and chose to arm herself with intimidating credentials.

    She was born in Lagos where she was raised by a disciplinarian Cross River father who ‘would not allow her go out visiting friends’, let alone going to nightclubs or wasting all evenings watching half naked girls exhibiting bad character in search of cheap money on Big Brother Africa Reality TV show.

    For her education, she earned a first degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBBCh) from the University of Calabar, Cross River State,  a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health for Developing Countries from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom,  a Doctor of Public Health from Texila American University; Certificate in Leadership and Management in Health from the University of Washington, United States of America;  Certificate in Health in Humanitarian Crises from University of London, United Kingdom; Certificate in Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management, Daren school of Business, University of Virginia, United States of America and did a program on  Advanced course on Health Financing for universal health coverage for low- and middle-income countries by World Health Organization.

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    And for her professional developments, she was Special Adviser to the Governor of Cross River state on Community Health in 2015 to 2016; the vice chairman, Forum of all CEOs of Primary Health Care Agencies and Boards in Nigeria in 2018; the first Director General, Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (CRSPHCDA); the Commissioner for Health, Cross River State from December 2019 through to March 2022.  In 2020, she was appointed as the chairman, Cross River State COVID-19 Response Taskforce’.

    Dr. Edu, according to The Guardian “is a goal-getter who is driven by her strong belief in excellence, integrity, hard work, resilience, diligence and effective execution”. (The Guardian, April 3).

    It was for the above reason that I think, that by attributing everything to God while downplaying her own intimidating credentials, Betta has done a great disservice to some of her fellow miracle seekers who have ignored Jesus’ admonition that “faith without work is a dead faith” (James 2:17) because a dead faith produces no tangible evidence in a person’s life’.

    Unfortunately while Betta was piling up her intimidating credentials, by burning the midnight oil and engaging  in humanitarian work across the creeks of her native Cross River State,  most of her fellow miracle seekers spread within Pentecostal churches across Nigeria wasted valuable time on Sundays and on weekdays praying without forgetting their mid-week night vigils.

    If only miracle seekers understand the nature of God that decreed ‘everyone reaps what he or she sows’, they would have known that no amount of their pastor’s anointment or placing of hands on their heads will make President Tinubu who is a mere pencil in the hand of God, to settle for an unprepared miracle seeker in place of resourceful Betta  as a minister.

  • Oshiomhole and foreign criminals as labourers

    Oshiomhole and foreign criminals as labourers

    Last week, Senator Adams Oshiomhole’s heartache was about some “Foreign Prisoners Working on Nigerian Construction Sites”. He has threatened to disclose their names. I think he should save his breath. Nigerian government and the media cannot pretend to be unaware of a decade old conspiracy against Nigerian unskilled workers.

    It has long been established that we all suffer from cultural imperialism by believing everything foreign, including religion, culture, and even the foreign media, are superior. The new addition is that we are now also saying foreign criminals condemned in their country are better than our jobless Nigerians. These foreign condemned criminals are housed in decent hotels, ferried by luxurious buses to their site every day and paid in foreign currency to do digging of ground which should ordinarily be the exclusive preserve of Nigerian unskilled workers.

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    The truth is that for contracts awarded to foreign firms,  almost  80% of the cost of such contracts are repatriated back to foreign land from where funds, machineries, equipment and, experts and consultants implementing such projects originated from. The only 20% that get to us in form of daily wages for those who dig the ground is what those who issue expatriate quotas visas have now passed back to foreign condemned criminals.

    Unfortunately both our unskilled and skilled workers are not treated any better by our indigenous owners of mega banks and telecommunication companies whose annual profit will make investors in Europe and America green with envy.  It will be a big relief if Oshiomhole can bring succour to these contract staff many of whom in the absence of hope are escaping in droves to foreign land.  As for foreign criminal workers, Nigerians are aware of those involved in expatriate quota visa racketeering to bring condemned criminals from China and the beneficiaries.  Oshiomhole should just do the needful.

  • Wike’s calculated gamble on jinxed project

    Wike’s calculated gamble on jinxed project

    For what many consider his over-enthusiasm in raising N15 billion to complete the long abandoned vice presidential house, Nyesom Wike, Minister of Abuja Federal Territory has gone through great stress and strain this past week. But one thing that is going well for the minister is that you can predict his stand on most issues. That makes him less dangerous than many of his predecessors that have used their positions to inflict pain on Nigerians. It is therefore safe for one to conclude Wike’s desperate attempt to complete the N7.1billion ill-conceived ‘befitting residence for our vice President’ by May 29, 2024 was informed by any other consideration other than meeting President Tinubu’s expectation that he finishes all abandoned projects.

     But let us first situate the sources of our nation’s nightmare. Successive past ministers of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have always substituted their brain waves for state policies which they then imposed on Federal Housing Development Authority (FHDA) for implementation.

    It has also been established that the Abuja masquerades that  have used the FHDA as conduit pipes to fleece the country since 1999 are part of the military baked ‘new breed politicians’ who as creation of “Nigerian army of anything is possible” share the same mind-set with soldiers’ of fortune whose only orientation is sharing spoils of war after victory. It is therefore not a surprise that many of them have been indicted since 1999 through the courts or National Assembly probes for massive corruption executed through “privatization, monetization, unbundling of PHCN and Constituency projects policies or outright stealing by state governors.

    While 10 Downing Street, has remained the residence of the British Prime Minister since 1735 and the White House the official residence of American President since 1800 without serious structural changes, our own “Nigerian Defence House”, made up of the main residence/president’s office, Aguda House/Vice President’s office and guest houses, built by Julius Berger at a cost of N25billion in 1989, has according to FHDA gulped about N8b in the name of renovation in a little over a decade.

    It was  the Abuja minister and the  FHDA that unilaterally  declared the Aguda House  unsuitable for our vice president  and went on to secure the Federal Executive Council (FEC)’s approval for a N7.1bn contract  to put up what they describe as “a worthy edifice to house Nigeria’s Vice President’. The project according to Minister Dora Akinyili was to be completed in 20 months.

    We also got to know through FCDA’s Director of Public Building, Arch. Adebowale Ademo that it was not the vice president, the end- user that decided on the facilities needed in the building but FCDA. And their preference are: the main building, three different living rooms, the vice president private room and conveniences, the second lady private lounge as well as a “chapel, a mosque and a dormitory for the security personnel.”

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    And just as work was expected to be nearing completion in 2012, it was also the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Bala  Mohammed who  insisted N9 billion more was needed to complete the project. The request was turned down by the 7th Senate even after the N9billion was slashed to N6billion by the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP). The then Senate Committee on FCT, led by Senator Smart Adeyemi said either N13 billion or N14 billion or N16 billion for the project was “indefensible”.

    His position was supported by the then chairman of the House Committee on FCT, Herman Hembe, his counterpart at the Lower House who expressed dissatisfaction with the level of work done despite the claim that about 87 per cent of the contract sum had been paid. It is also on record that it was the minister who, feeling dissatisfied with the verdict of the two houses, took the case before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) where the case stalled following President Jonathan’s insistence that the nation could not afford 120 per cent variation.

    It was also another minister  of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) Adamu Aliero  who threw a jibe at Vice President  Osinbajo to attract his attention by claiming “The vice president is staying in a guest house (Aguda House) meant for visiting heads of state.” The vice president in 2016 decided to go and inspect the project that was up till then a monopoly of successive ministers of Federal Capital Territory. His report after the inspection was damning.  For him “the N6bn already spent on the project was a misapplication of funds”. His advice to FHDA was that the building be “considered for other use” since according to him, “there is no need for a new residence for the vice president as the current one, called Aguda House, is up to standard with enough space and well managed.”

    Osinbajo has said Aguda House is good enough for the vice president. Shettima the current occupier has also not complained. If I were to advise Minister Wike therefore, I will say he should separate himself from his predecessors who as shown above have always wept louder than the bereaved.

    I think we should also remind ourselves that it was the FHDA that   presided over the sales of Asokoro legislative quarters to the lawmakers, the sale of the Senate President’s mansion, (a national monument) to David Mark just as they did for Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the Lower House. While this macabre dance was going on, contracts for a new Senate President and Speaker’s residences were awarded. And while David Mark accused by EFCC of short changing the nation ran to court to defend his spoils of war, the proposed Senate President and Speakers mansions have also become abandoned projects.

    In view of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s verdict, I think I will align myself with Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP)’s call on the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, to use his leadership position “to promptly reject the plan by the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, to spend N15 billion for the construction of a ‘befitting residence’ for the Vice President, Mr. Kashim Shettima.”

    The body’s claim  that  spending N15 billion on ‘a befitting residence’ for the vice president at a time when the federal government is set to spend 30 per cent (that is, N8.25 trillion) of the country’s 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion on debt service costs” will be a betrayal of the people, is unassailable.

    After all, we have been told that the house with split ACs fixed was nearing completion before it was abandoned. The then FCDA Executive Secretary, Adamu Ismail, was also quoted as telling the Senate Committee on FCT that the proposed additional N9bn ( slashed to about N6bn) by the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) was meant to provide furniture, fencing, two additional protocol guest houses, a banquet hall and security gadgets.

    Since the building can be put into other use in its current state, I think Minister Wike should just ignore the above variations and turn the building into other use as suggested by Osinbajo. 

    For him it becomes a win-win situation.  He would have with one single stroke met the expectations of President Tinubu, a leader he desperately wants to please.   He would have also distanced himself from his predecessors who for reasons other than altruism were prepared to shave others’ heads in their absence.

  • Constituency projects’ corruption

    Constituency projects’ corruption

    Recent attempt by senators during a plenary session to persuade a people already suffering from persuasion fatigue with worn argument about the need to spread   development to their constituencies, as justification for appropriation of additional funds for Constituency Projects was an assault on sensibilities of Nigerians. Predictably, it has elicited angry reactions from different Nigerian stakes holders. Reacting angrily with a recent editorial where it likened our insensitive senators’ self-enrichment of members to “a state capture” amidst the poverty ravaging majority of Nigerians, The Punch called attention to the fact that “the constituency projects have always been embroiled in allegations of corruption and waste”, which makes  the intervention of President Bola Tinubu, the leadership of the National Assembly and civil society organizations imperative if we really want an end to the charade.

    Unfortunately I am not sure Tinubu can perform a miracle where  Obasanjo, who once dismissed our lawmakers as ‘pen thieves’ and Buhari, who speaking in 2015 through Babachir Lawal, his secretary  to government said he was posed “to change the practice whereby “constituency projects had been the conduit pipe through which lawmakers embezzled money” failed.

    Indeed, his VP, Professor Osinbajo while acting as president and Raji Fashola his minister for works were threatened with impeachment and sack respectively by Saraki-run 8th Senate for telling Nigerians that the delay in the reconstruction of collapsed all-important Lagos-Ibadan Express road was as a result of diversion of its budgetary allocation by lawmakers to their constituency projects.

     It is also of little consolation that successive leadership and membership of the National Assembly since 1999 have always in defiance of public opinion, needed for democracy to thrive, often behaved like an army of occupation with the sole aim of sharing spoils of war after victory.

    But first, we must remind ourselves that budget preparation is strictly a function of the executive while the legislature’s role in the budgeting process clearly spelt out by the constitution include implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting before authorizing public spending.

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    To protect the interest of their constituencies, the legislature, like all other actors such as NGOs, pressure groups and international donors, are expected to lobby the executive at the budget preparatory stage. Trading their functions as stated in the constitution for award and execution of contracts as witnessed since 1999 is an aberration in a democracy.

    In total disregard for constitutional provisions, budgeting has become a source of massive abuse by both the executive and the legislature since the birth of the fourth republic when budget padding in the name of constituency projects started with the appointment of Bukola Saraki, a medical doctor as budget adviser by President Obasanjo. 

    For a period, everything was shrouded in secrecy. In 2012 however, the Street Journal told Nigerians that each of our 360 reps was receiving N160m per year as against N240m by each of our 109 senators for constituency projects. The journal further claimed that “instead of expending the money on projects that will better the life of the people in the lawmakers’ constituencies, the bulk of it goes into equipping the lawmakers’ political war chests with only loyalists as beneficiaries”.

    In 2013, chairman, Senate Committee on Millennium Development Goals, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume was also to confirm that “a total of N900 billion has so far been appropriated for constituency projects of members of the National Assembly since 2004”. It was also from the Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs Kabiru Turaki that Nigerians got to know that “members of the National Assembly who are the originators of the constituency projects development programmes are the ones who determine, decide and choose who implement the projects”.

    With the institutionalization of budget padding for constituency projects as a source of corruption, N350billion was appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country between 2011-2016.  Those projects according to Civil Society Organisation-BudgIT never took off even after full payment had been made. In July 2016, in its survey of 436 projects across 16 states, 211 projects covering water bore-holes, rural electricity and roads projects and primary health centres designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor according to the body were abandoned.

    In the ensuing war over sharing by the legislature, in July 2016, Abdul Mumin Jibrin while reacting to his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee of the lower house following a claim he ‘unilaterally padded the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State attributed his travails to his refusal to ‘admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

    Four years after Buhari’s threat to rein in the lawmakers for their excesses, BudgIT’s Tracka Head, Ilevbaoje Uadamen told Nigerians that “constituency projects costing about N270 billion, nominated by federal lawmakers between 2015 and 2019 are lying uncompleted or poorly implemented across the country”. He also drew attention to “wasteful empowerment projects” in the 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects which according to him account for N58 billion of the N100 billion budgeted for constituency projects.

    Except we returned to where the rain started beating us, Tinubu as indicated above cannot perform any miracle under the current structure where even in the because of absence of residual list, LGAs are funded from Abuja that performs no supervisory role over their activities; where the centre corners over  60% of the nation’s resources with states going cap in hand to Abuja every month for allocation  and where about 50% of what was on the concurrent list  were transferred to the exclusive list in 1979 by Obasanjo using late Rotimi Williams and Ben Nwabueze.

    Remembering how we got here will be helpful. The pre-independence colonial administration was largely an army of occupation interested only in exploitation of our resources. This was best achieved through a unitary system.  Pa Ayo Adebanjo has repeatedly told young Nigerians the story of how our founding fathers through a battle of wits secured for us a federal system which guaranteed unity in diversity for our nation.  Unfortunately our ill-educated military frittered away the gains of 45 years’ of constitutional re-engineering struggle by our founding fathers. More tragic, the soldiers like their colonial creators seized the resources of the federating regions and declared “money is not Nigerian problem but how to spend it”.

    When the soldiers were forced out of power in 1999 by combined efforts of the press, Civil Society Groups and NADECO, they foisted on the nation a unitary constitution and military created ‘new breed politicians’ with a mind-set of an army of occupation interested only in sharing loots of conquered territories. We find eloquent evidence in their self-serving policies including PPMC, privatization, monetization, unbundling of PHCN and of course the cornering of 25% of our budget as salaries.

    The way forward is to go backwards, perhaps as far back as 1963 republican constitution or as recent as Jonathan CONFAB. The only option that is not available is continuing playing the ostrich as we have done since the collapse of the first republic.

    I know of no multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society that has survived with 70% of items on the exclusive list. This is why federating nationalities have no faith in our country.  As Senator (Prof) ) Wande Abimbola , former vice chancellor of OAU, Ife gloomily observed with a dose of sarcasm, following an open threat by his Ibadan people not to vote for people like him that failed to steal what they saw as national cake in Abuja “the people make the politicians thieves” (The Punch September 16, 2017)

  • Israel’s war on Hamas and hypocrisy of Europe and allies

    Despite admonition by their philosophers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau that “all men are born equal and free”, and Immanuel Kant who insisted human beings must be regarded as “rational beings equally worthy of dignity and respect” and their creation of a new god called democracy which presupposes  that “all people are equal and are entitled to equal respect”, man is neither free nor equal in Europe. And because they are in bondage, for them, it is the survival of the fittest where the strong survives and the weak dies (the law of the jungle).

    From their historical trajectory, not many will disagree that the west and its allies that often behave like bandits are duplicitous. We only need to cast our minds back to how, driven by hunger, they came to Africa in search of food, gold and honour. But having discovered our superior social organization, they chose to exploit our humanity by embarking on Trans-Atlantic slave trade that saw 3.5m able-bodied Nigerians shipped to their plantations in North and South America and the Caribbean. In the guise of ending the evil slave trade they started, they embarked on a war of survival of the fittest starting in Lagos through Benin to Sokoto. Their objective was continuation of exploitation through colonization.

    But if anyone is still in doubt that Europe and its cousins in America are governed by the law of the jungle, he should take another look at the ongoing Israeli’s one-sided war on Hamas and the daily massacre of women and children caged in an enclave called Gaza while the sing song of Europe and its allies is “Israel has the right to defend itself” even as the rest of the world who watched in horror called for an end to hostility.

    Even with the death of about 15,000 Palestinians half of them women and children killed through Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, refugees camps and UN and mission run schools where the victims sought refuge, neither stone-faced Netanyahu nor his western promoters remember Moses’ law of ‘an eye for an eye’ proportionality in the mission to avenge the killing of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas.

    To expose the hypocrisy of Britain and its cousins, let us now take a journey through memory.

    Israeli Arab crisis started when ‘Europeanised’ Jews, strangers to Palestine who were trying to escape pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe started to migrate back to what was then the Ottoman Empire with the help of Zionist groups in the 19th century. The Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917 in support of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine was followed by United Nations vote in 1947 to partition land in the British mandate of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab. Arab resisted the arrangement but in the ensuing violence, Israel with the help of America and Zionist movement prevailed and went on to expel about700, 000 Palestinians from their land captured by Israelis while Arabs that remained in Israel as citizens were subjected to official discrimination with their constituencies deliberately kept poor and underfunded.

     Israel has since its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip anchored on the need for self-defence against a stateless caged people without an army, air force or navy violated about 28 UN resolutions. For 56 years, Israel with the support of US and Europe denied Palestinians the right to self-determination, the control over basic aspect of daily life which left youths with only a sense of hopelessness and frustration.

     Israel violated  (Article 1 of Universal declaration of human rights (UDHR) that says “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; Article 2, that says “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration” . Article 4, which says  “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude”, Article 5 that says  “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and  Article 9 which says  “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”. 

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    Israel  breached  Article 14& 51(1945)  for  her illegal annexation and occupation of Palestinians land by force in 1948 and 1967 wars and Article 49(6)(1949) which makes it illegal for Israel to displace indigenous people by building settlement to displace indigenous people on their land.

    The United Nations has accused the US of encouraging Israel to “pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for vetoing about 40 UN resolutions against Israel”. Different UN bodies have similarly pointed out violation of human rights of Palestinians on a massive scale including ‘torture, imprisonment without charges or trial and confiscation, harassment at checkpoints, unwarranted civilian shootings, not punishing Israeli  settlers’ crime against Palestinians, unwarranted disruption of medical care, commerce, employment, free movement, destruction of public and private properties family separation etc.”,  while the US and Europe blindly supported Israel.

    But both were to express an outrage when Hamas, widely believed to be a creation of Israel that first recognised Mujama al-Islamiya as a way of undermining support for the PLO, played into the hands of Netanyahu who as opposition leader killed the Oslo Accord after the assassination of Rabin. Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel on October 7, killing women, children, elderly and the disabled”. The murderous assault was widely condemned by the whole world except China and Russia that blamed the US and Europe for the tragedy.

    However, instead of taking responsibility for their failed policies in the Middle East, the US, the European Union and other Western countries not only condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, but also promised support in terms of logistics, intelligence, additional equipment, air defence missiles, guided bombs and ammunition, all against a rag tag Hamas fighters facing massive bombing and assault by hundreds of tanks.

    With no power, water, food, communication or safe haven in Gaza as dead bodies of unknown children are buried under rubbles of bombed hospitals, refugee camps or UN schools where they sought refuge, UK and US and their allies would not call for a cease-fire as they watch full effect of visiting law of the jungle on innocent Palestinians.

    Hypocritical  UK, US and France and other allies that are today providing arms, finance and logistics for a nuclear power at war with a people caged in an enclave with no escape route and  tolerated Palestinian 56 years siege, had no problem arming Ukraine against Russian invasion, manipulating a UN resolution on disarmament to murder Saddam Hussein even when as it turned out Iraq had no weapon of mass destruction and in sponsoring Resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, the legal basis for military intervention in Libya ostensibly for protecting civilians but in fact designed to  kill Gadhafi.

    While to Britain and its allies, “all men are not born equal and free”, neither Libyan, Palestinian nor even Ukrainian civilians really matter. They are just tools in the pursuit of their national selfish interest.

  • Nwabueze and his many crusades

    Nwabueze and his many crusades

    Our educated elite, often driven either by greed for power or appetite for mischief, are the scourge of our nation. This was perhaps why Obafemi Awolowo took one look at his colleagues in the run up to independence and concluded that ‘given a choice between Nigerian educated elite, the traditional rulers and the colonial masters, Nigerians would choose in reverse order because with the latter, Nigerian are assured of justice.”

    The death of Prof Ben Nwabueze, one of our most celebrated constitutional law scholars, last week at the ripe age of 94 provides another opportunity to once again examine the travails of Nigeria and Nigerians in the hands of those who were supposed to be the nation’s pathfinders.

    From the onset, our challenge as a multinational and multicultural society was  how to fashion out a federal constitution whose essence is ‘unity in diversity’ (Preston King 1981), using ethnic groups as building block as opposed to geographical diversity. To tackle the challenge, our founding fathers and the colonial masters  embarked on various pre-independence constitutional re-engineering efforts culminating in the  1922 Clifford Constitution which introduced elective principles that encouraged formation of political parties, the 1946 Richard’s Constitution which promoted national unity by  bringing together the north and  southern Nigeria  for greater participation in the discussion of their own affairs for the very first time since  1923;  and 1951 Macpherson constitution which introduced House of Representatives with regional representatives of 68 members from the north and 34 each from the west and east.

    There was also the Oliver Lyttleton 1953 inspired London Conference that institutionalised federalism and regionalism, 1954 Lagos Conference which recommended the regionalization of public service and judiciary and resources allocation based on derivation, the 1957 London Independence constitutional conference which granted self-government to the west and east and recommended the setting up of the 1958 Willink Commission to look into the complaints of minorities’.

    Despite these giant strides in constitutional development, the first republic collapsed because of constitutional crisis initiated by a segment of the elite who in an effort to outfox each other contrived the military coup that dragged our ill-equipped and less educationally endowed soldiers into politics.

    In power, they developed a messianic complex. And limited by the nature of their training, the military command structure, and handicapped by their little knowledge of how to manage society, their antidote to what they perceived as excesses of the strong regions was a strong centre even in a multi-ethnic society. Regarding themselves as custodians of a constitution abused by the political elite, they assumed they could fashion out a vision of a new and better society. We have since been moving in circle because the closer they moved towards that vision the farther the vision receded.

    One man that could have prevented the tragedy of May 1966 was Professor Ben Nwabueze. He was one of Nigerian most accomplished students of society. He has been described as a constitutional colossus, an accomplished intellectual who according to Professor Williams “dazzled everyone by the amazing fecundity of his mind and imagination, the sheer forensic brilliance of his argument, the dialectical rigour of his submission and the rousing aplomb and finesse with which they are put together.”

    Read Also: Nwabueze: The legal Titan and his legacy

    Unfortunately the brilliance of Nwabueze, credited with the drafting of military unitary Decree 34 that in one fell swoop frittered away the gains of 44 years of constitutional engineering by our colonial masters and our founding fathers, did not reflect positively in the affairs of Nigeria or that of his Igbo people who have had to pay huge price for Ironsi’s 1966 folly.

    If the first republic collapsed because Nwabueze and his fellow Nigerian leading elite’ greed for power, their role in frustrating efforts to return to “Nigerian path to freedom” through other constitutional reforms since the seventies have not been any less treacherous.

    Gowon’s 12 state structure based on major ethnic groups aligned with Obafemi Awolowo’s concept of state creation as a philosophy for development and unity in diversity, but that changed with the 1975 take- over of power by Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo who immediately foisted a 19-state structure without rhyme on the country.

    It was to get worse with the country increasingly becoming federal  only in name but unitary in reality especially with Ibrahim Babangida’s creation of eleven states (Akwa Ibom and Katsina) on September 23, 1987, and  Abia, Enugu, Delta, Jigawa, Kebbi, Osun, Kogi, Taraba and Yobe on August 27, 1991. Abacha’s with the creation of six additional states: Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Gombe and Ekiti, in 1996, took the total number to an unwieldy and unviable 36 sates.

    A journey through memory and by his own admission shortly before his death, Nwabueze admitted he was closely linked to the nation’s self-inflicted tragedies. His intervention in 1966 led to the July 1966 revenge coup, the attendant pogrom on the streets of northern cities and the civil war in which his Igbo people paid heavy toll.

    His advice to Babangida according to Prof. Omo Omoruyi’s “The Tales of June 12” led to the annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria 1993 mandate and the foisting of interim contraption by Babangida and Obasanjo on the country as well as Abacha’s five years’ war against Nigeria and the Yoruba led NADECO opposition.

    It is also on record that with Nwabueze as Abacha’s Minister of Education, Nigerian universities were shut down for about nine months during which lecturers received no salaries. And as Abacha’s confidant, he was also said to have made some inputs into the 1989 constitution often dismissed as Abdulsalami’s Decree 24 that has made the country ungovernable since the beginning of the 4th republic.

    Nwabueze equally admitted that as a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee set up by the military government in 1978, he was not “only a member but chairman of one of the sub-committees that produced Chapter 2, the fundamental objectives and one of the cardinal flaws in the constitution is the concentration of powers in the centre.”

    With no lesson learnt from the 1966 forced unity fiasco, Nwabueze claimed he and his colleagues at the Constitution Drafting Committee were so overwhelmed with “this patriotic feeling that we needed unity and the most effective way to achieve unity of the country is by having a very strong central government”.

    For this reason, he claimed they “took away 50 per cent of the items on the concurrent list and gave it to the centre…We looked at the residual matters, these are matters exclusive to the states, we took a large part of it, close to 50 percent; we took it away from states and gave to the centre and the result is the almighty Federal Government”.

    Prof Ben Nwabueze, the nation’s most celebrated constitutional scholar, more than anyone else knew that the concept of ‘an almighty federal government’ in a federal set up was an aberration.

    He was the chairman of The Patriots, a group of eminent Nigerian citizens. He was a Nigerian elder statesman and ‘a constitutional colossus loved for the sheer forensic brilliance of his argument’. Back-tracking on some issues he once held dear did not diminish his standing among those who literarily worshipped him. Interrogating the end of his many crusades that brought only disaster to Nigeria and his Igbo people is therefore not designed to spoil the joy of those who believe he was beyond reproach but merely as record of history.

  • The real Igbo enemies

    The real Igbo enemies

    Who do we blame for the siege mentality of Igbo people at home and abroad but Igbo political and intellectual elite who label anyone critical of their politics an Igbo enemy in order to cover up their leadership failure?  Since Zik’s return to Lagos in 1934 to fill the vacuum of a spokesman greatly missed by urban immigrants in a strange land, every political misadventure by Igbo political elite has been blamed on others.

    Thus, for resisting internal colonialism in 1952 by Igbo at a period when Zik, an Onitsha Igbo was not considered a full-fledged Igbo man, Yoruba must be tribalists. For not following suit to declare the Republic of Oduduwa with just 50 foot soldiers in the army when Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra with 16 riffles, Yoruba and Awo were traitors and of course how else could Obi the messiah of Nigerian social media youths have lost the 2023 election during which Tinubu was said to have been foisted on Nigeria by “a concert of despicable forces” if not because of intense hatred for Igbo by Fulani and their Yoruba stooges?

    In my professional career and academic pursuit, I have been a great beneficiary of Igbo mentorship. But once one makes references to these historical facts that sometimes bring the past to pain, to some angry Ibo colleagues who hate the truth, you are an Igbo enemy.

    Let us start with Obi Nwakanma, Vanguard newspaper columnist who after dismissing my piece titled “Between Zik and Obi: Lessons of History, (September 22, 2022), as “revanchist drivel”, wanted me ‘to go back and take elementary courses in Nigeria’s political history”, a course I taught at the University of Lagos when he was probably in secondary school.

    Although he accepted there was a parallel between Obi’s 2023 ‘obidients’ and Zik’s 1940 supporters who believed in his infallibility, he however insisted that Zik,  who was the only non-Yoruba in the inaugural meeting of NCNC was the founder of NCNC and that  “it was not Igbo politicians who preferred the 1959 NCNC-NPC coalition”.

    I am not sure because of his above mind-set and rage, he paid any attention to my argument that: “Perhaps we again need to return to history to remind our angry youths how we got here and how the seed of today’s mutual suspicion was sown by self-serving Igbo political leaders.”

    “The trending videos of Obi’s angry supporters threatening expulsion of anyone who fails to vote for their principal from the east, mob action against Tinubu’s supporters in Alaba Market in Lagos added to shameless assault on the person of Asiwaju Tinubu through hate songs by Seadog confraternity, are all but sad reminder of the past when Lagos Igbo urban immigrants were mobilized to buy off all the cutlasses in Lagos market in readiness to battle their Yoruba hosts.

    Both Obi and Zik built their political fortunes in Lagos as leader of Igbo urban immigrants that freely deployed rhetoric to confuse their largely uninformed Igbo youths and unquestioning Nigerians.

    Like most young men of his generation, Awo used to follow Zik to his lecture venues until he discovered Zik was a fake god in spite of his rhetoric and endless railing against the imperialists.

    Unlike Awo, it was only after the formation of Egbe Omo Odudwa in 1948 which immediately came under Zik’s and his supporters’ vicious attack that the Yoruba aristocrats of the period saw Zik in his true colour, with the West African Pilot editorial September 8, 1948 declaring: “Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, uphill and down dale.. There is no going back until the fascist organization of Sir Adeyemo Alakija has been dismembered”. This was followed by physical assault on the persons and the leaders of the Egbe and damage to houses and properties of some of them”. (Awo: The Autobiography of Obafemi Awolowo page 171].

    Yoruba political elite were to later shift their support to Awo and his Action Group in 1952 thereby frustrating Zik’s attempt of becoming the premier of the West. 

    Awolowo’s answer to the North’s ‘feudal system’ was for the West and the East with some support from Middle Belt taking over power. But greed-driven Igbo political elite preferred an NPC and NCNC coalition which offered nothing to ordinary Igbo on whose back they rode to power while Igbo elite secured all important appointments in Balewa’s government from finance, to external affairs, agriculture, control of University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, etc.

    Read Also: Atiku appeals to voters in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa to vote PDP candidates

    Commenting on my piece titled Ethnic leaders as scourge of Nigeria dated October 6, 2022 Steve Osuji wrote as follows: “My Oga in two great media establishments, The Guardian and The Nation, Dr. Oluwajuyitan by his writing, poured malice and hatred on the Igbo in a way never done by a supposedly enlightened mind. He told plain, blatant lies just to drag Igbo in the mud. He says Igbo campaigned for a unitary system for Nigeria. This is a historical fallacy”.

    Again but for his mind-set, I cannot understand his anguish over the following facts that: As the battle for 2023 draws near, Igbo political leaders, the ever-flirtatious beautiful bride of Nigerian politics that often behave like “a wife with five husbands” and their chauvinistic shrewd Fulani suitors, have started to do what they do best-polluting the environment with toxic diatribes.

    This warning followed a claim by Ohaneze’s Mazi Okechukwu Isuguzoro, that “the North is the bastion of ethnic and religious politics” with warning that “Nigeria will not be secured and united unless an Igbo president emerges” and Northern Elders Forum’s Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed‘s response that ‘if any group is known to play ethnic and religion politics, it is the Igbo’.

    I reminded the warring fair-weather couple that history finds both guilty. And the facts: In the December1954 Eastern Regional Election, NCNC won 72 out of 84 seats while their NPC suitors won 84 of 92 seats in their own northern stronghold. In the 1954 November election to federal House of Representatives, NCNC won 32 of the 42 Eastern seats. Similarly, ethnicity and religion determined the outcome of the 1959 election with east and the north winning their strongholds without opposition. The warring rivals are therefore not only tarred with the same brush, both see Nigeria only as a marketable commodity thinking only of what they can get out of Nigeria.

     Awolowo’s offence was that he provided alternative view on how Nigeria should be run having realized back in 1945, that “Nigeria is not a nation; but a mere geographical expression”, and was convinced “the best constitution for such a diverse people is a federal constitution”.

    But Zik and his group wanted a unitary system which will sustain Igbo internal colonization of the minority Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Anang and other minority groups in the east. It will also allow Igbo citizens to freely carry their trading activities unhindered to any part of Nigeria. What Ahmadu Bello wanted was not different from what Zik wanted- a Nigeria the north can control. He therefore at the 1950 Ibadan conference insisted on 50% of member of the federal legislative house.

    Because of their rivalry over identical worldview, the eastern leaders were believed to have lured the military into politics in January 1966 with General Ironsi’s Decree 34 of 1966 changing the country into a unitary state.

    The north seized the initiative from their Igbo rival in July 1966 and by 1967 the bitter rivalry led to a civil war. Unfortunately, the battle for the soul of Nigeria by the two rivals only left northern and eastern states a scorched land.

    Citizenship is not the answer to ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom”, in a country where an Igbo Bishop of universal Catholic Church from Anambra was rejected by Igbo people of Imo State.

    Dear angry young colleagues, “the fault is not in our stars”. Reaffirming facts of our history does not make one an enemy of Igbo. “

  • Atiku, Obi and fellow election deniers

    Atiku, Obi and fellow election deniers

    Resorting to the judiciary for election disputes as enshrined in the 1999 constitution, section six and part VIII of the Electoral Act 2022, has become part of our electoral process. Although the ideal as many have argued is that INEC remains the final arbiter in all elections matters but as many others have also argued, any provision that offers relief to the aggrieved and prevents a loser from appealing to the mob is unarguably healthy for the democratization process.

    The problem with Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi however was that they are sore losers who having failed to win the popular votes or meet the twelve-two-third of 36 states and Abuja constitutional spread threshold, tried to use the judiciary to upturn the result of the election through technicalities.

    While that option was being half-heartedly pursued, they resorted to lies, misinformation  and propaganda using the social media, all designed to assassinate the character of the winner of the election even as they moved from one TV platform to another issuing incendiary statements aimed at undermining the integrity of the judiciary. Many believed it was all part of an elaborate sinister plan to create social dislocation through their disruptive behaviour during the eight months the nation was held hostage, if they could not have it.

    Some of the unintended consequences of their unpatriotic act of trying to undermine the legitimacy of a free and fair election won round and square by their opponent however was the unveiling of themselves as sore losers driven not by consideration for the stability of our nation but by their own naked ambitions. That it was all about them and not about us, the facts stare us all on the face.

     Atiku had contested for the presidency six times jumping from one political platform to the other until 2023 when he, in breach of PDP constitution and by appealing to ethnic sentiments, secured the party’s presidential ticket which immediately led to the fragmentation of the party into four. Similarly, Obi had jumped from APGA, the platform that gave him an opportunity to serve as a two term Anambra governor to PDP where he was rewarded with VP slot to Atiku in the 2019 election.

    With PDP constitution which zoned its presidential ticket to the south, Obi was convinced 2023 was his turn until Atiku, driven by his own inordinate ambition manipulated the outcome of PDP primaries with the help of Tambuwal. Obi resigned from PDP, joined Labour Party, the all-purpose vehicle for distressed politicians. He decided to pay Atiku back in his own coins by returning to the east to equally exploit the ethnic and religious sentiments of his marginalized Igbo people that had served PDP faithfully for 22 years. Although polls after polls conducted by his supporters among urban immigrant youths placed him ahead of other contestants, he came a distant third having lost woefully in nearly all the 19 northern states.

    And if you are still in doubt that it was all about these two sore losers with a common world view and not about Nigeria, let us interrogate their activities since they discovered from election results from their polling agents across the country by February 27, two days after the election, that the election was lost and won.

     Unlike President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, both sore losers, despite not meeting any of the constitutional requirements to become president claimed victory and headed to the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) alleging massive rigging and INEC’s failure to deploy the IREV for the simultaneous transmission of results. With a unanimous ruling of the five judges, their case was dismissed. The ruling aired live was hailed as ‘sound in law’ by leading lights of the legal profession.

    Both headed for the Supreme Court without any new evidence beyond Atiku’s attempt to hang on to a straw in form of the president’s faulty Chicago University records that has been in the public space since 1999 when he ran for governor in Lagos State.  Once again, the seven Supreme Court judges in a unanimous decision dismissed Atiku’s case and spent less than five minutes in dismissing the case of Obi whose lawyers the judges insinuated were on a safari.

    Read Also: Atiku congratulates Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan on Appeal victory

    For leaders and true democrats who care about our crisis of nation-building, that was an opportunity to end all forms of disruptive behaviours and join the winner of the election in addressing some of our self-inflicted  problems by the likes of Atiku and Obi who because of the Nigerian factor, are multi billionaires without owning any industry.

    Instead, the two sore losers and their parties once again roundly rejected a judgment hailed by legal giants including Prof Itse Sagay, Robert Clarke, Chief Mike Ahamba, Koyinsola Ajayi, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, Sylva Ogwemoh, Babatunde Fashanu and Wahab Shittu, all Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), as ‘unassailable’. PDP without proof claimed that “the majority of Nigerians are alarmed and disappointed and gravely concerned with the reasoning of the Supreme Court” while Atiku accused INEC and the judiciary of “being trapped in an evil web of political machination”.

    But they are not alone.  There are other elections deniers who, because their only reality is the picture in their heads, believe Nigeria is a zoo as long as Nigerians refuse to swallow their warped prejudices. We have Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former minister of education and solid minerals, who described the Supreme Court’s verdict affirming President Bola Tinubu’s victory as a ‘judicial enthronement of criminality’.

    We also have in the group, our New York based Adichie Chimamanda , a world acclaimed fiction writer and one of the best thinkers of the century,  who from the hearsay reports of her cousins back home, was persuaded the result of the election was “ so unacceptably and unforgivably flawed”. She went on to query US President Joe Biden for “endorsing a president-elect who according to her “has emerged from an unlawful process”. Finally, she accused The Washington Post of intellectual laziness” for accepting INEC’s “officials claim that non-simultaneous transmission of the result’ by IREV was due to technical glitches and not sabotage”.

    We also have Professor Pat Utomi, a political economist reputed for working closely with eminent Nigerian politicians since the collapse of the second republic but today says ‘democracy must be brought down because it is not working for us’. For him, “his problem is not whether the Nigerian revolution is imminent; it is knocking on the door. The burden on my soul is that it could be the dawning of Robert Kaplan’s Coming Anarchy that may be a chauffeur-driven passage on the road to Somalia.”

    We can add to the list Charles Oputa, a veteran singer and social activist, who with alleged prodding of Obasanjo took the youths out on the street of Abuja after Tinubu’s victory demanding for an inauguration of an interim national government or the take-over by the military.

    Finally since history often repeats itself, let us draw a parallel between election deniers of 1993 and 2023. In 1993, we had as key players Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Bashir Tofa, Arthur Nzeribe, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Walter Ofonagoro, Clement Apamgbo and Tom Ikimi etc. Today we have Obasanjo, Obi, Atiku, Ezeife, Utomi, Ezekwesili, Adichie and Charles Oputa among others.

    But we know it is more about them and less about us.  And that is why the Nigeria these election deniers cannot control is a Lugard’s zoo or a failed state. Atiku accused INEC and the judiciary of “being trapped in an evil web of political machination”.

  • Lawmakers’ Prado toys as symptom of our malady

    Nigerian lawmakers, because of their antipathy towards laws put in place to guide their behaviour, are often derisively dismissed as law-breakers by Nigerians who believe they are out only to serve themselves and not those they represent. We didn’t need to search far for evidence. Our lawmakers so far have not tried to invalidate the claim by well-informed Nigerian opinion leaders that lawmakers in breach of the constitution and the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission’s (RMAFC) salary ceiling for lawmakers awarded themselves outrageous monthly salaries of between N20m-N30m in a nation where many states cannot pay the N30,000 minimum wages. Nigerian lawmakers have since acquired the unsavoury reputation as the highest paid lawmakers in the world with the influential London Economist in 2013 ranking Nigeria as “the country with the most unjust and lopsided pay structure in the world”.

    Beyond humongous salaries they are allegedly paying themselves, it was obvious from  RMFAC published details of the remuneration package  for political, public and judicial office holders, that lawmakers  are not entitled to operational vehicles, but an optional car loan of between N7.9m and N8.1m for each lawmaker.  But the senate in spite of this went ahead to spend  N4.7 billion on Peugeot 508 saloon cars for themselves in 2015 and similar amount on Toyota Camry saloon cars in 2020. If Nigerians are outraged with the 10th assembly’s N160m financial frivolity on “operational vehicles” for each of its 469 members, at a period when Nigerians are experiencing economic pain, it was because the action was considered insensitive and treacherous.

    First, this was at a time the voters on whose back the lawmakers rode to power are unable to go to work daily because of increase in cost of transportation as a result of fuel subsidy removal. It was a period of an ongoing government negotiation with Labour in order to prevent a general strike and a lock-down of the economy. It was also at a time the government was desperately trying to work out palliatives in form of money transfer to some thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable in the land.

    With the naira in free fall against the dollar, many believe the  time is most inauspicious for legislators to spend our scarce foreign exchange on importation of toys when we have local brands such as Innoson, Nords, Pro-Force and others producing high-end vehicles, including SUVs currently patronized by some state governments in the country. As one local manufacturer puts it: “The National Assembly buying foreign-built vehicles at this time is dispiriting especially when you consider that we are all trying to promote buy Nigeria to grow the Naira”. “Exporting jobs by ordering from foreign brands instead of local brands” as the Centre for Social Justice also recently observed, many believe is a crime against the nation.

    But if you ask me, I will say the antics of our lawmakers; their betrayal and corruption are but symptoms of greater malaise assailing our nation. We are probably expecting too much from our lawmakers who unfortunately cannot give what they don’t have.

     The military destroyed our political socialization process and when finally forced to step aside after almost 30 years, what was bequeathed onto us was a military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians that behave like army of occupation groomed in the art of sharing loot of conquered territories.

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    It was therefore not an accident that within three months of coming to power in 1999, the new government and legislature populated by retired Generals and other ranks and their business fronts came out with petroleum importation policy through which fuel import licenses were allocated to over 100 companies fronting for them. A House probe was to later confirm the theft of about N1.7t through the fuel subsidy regime exploited by lawmakers, PDP stalwarts and their children without importing a pint of fuel.

    It was not a surprise that with Obasanjo’s privatization policy, they sold to themselves Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1,5b while with Obasanjo/Jonathan monetization policy, civil servants and lawmakers including Speaker Dimeji Bankole, Senate President David Mark and CBN Governor Chukwuma Soludo allegedly bought their official residences at a fraction of their real cost.

    It was not also a surprise that the new-breed successive leaders of the National Assembly were all discovered to be men with feet of clay. Senate presidents Evans Enwerem was removed from office on November 1999 for falsification of name, Chuba Okadigbo was removed as Senate President in August 2000 by 81-14 votes over inflation of contract costs while Anyim Pius Anyim out of office was grilled by EFCC for shortfall of about N396 billion in ecological fund deductions as well as over $1.3B Centenary City project.  Bukola Saraki sold the victory of his party to the opposition by cutting a deal which ceded the deputy senate presidency to the opposition, in what Itse Sagay described as “a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline”.

    In the Lower House, Speakers Salisu Buhari was removed for certificate and age falsification, Patricia Ette was removed in 2007 over award of about N628m for the renovation of her official residence and that of the deputy speaker,  Dimeji Bankole bought his palatial official quarters for N45m after N200m provision had been provided in 2008 budget for its renovation. There was also  Abdul Mumin Jibrin who, when  accused of ‘unilaterally padding the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State, attributed his travails to his inability “to admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker Dogara and the three other principal officers”.

    The excesses of our lawmakers did not go unnoticed by Nigerian concerned opinion leaders. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as governor of Central bank on December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin was the first to inform Nigerians that federal legislators had cornered about 25% of federal government budget. The late former Justice of Supreme Court, Justice Kayode Eso on November 21, 2010 warned that ‘for any senator including absentee senators to take home N30m every month without accountability as a foundation for revolution”.

    While ex-President Obasanjo at the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”, it was the view of Biodun Jeyifo that “if you want to know why looting and thievery became so pervasive in the 4th Republic, you must pay attention to the legalization and institutionalization of greed and sleaze in our predatory legislature”.

    Lawmakers’ infidelity, perfidy of ethnic nationalities and political intrigue and economic sabotage by those who have no faith in the country are but symptoms of our greater malaise. Our malady is our superstructure. General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s Decree 24 as Pa Ayo Adebanjo has repeatedly warned, will not take us to the Promised Land.

    President Bola Tinubu might have tried to prove that separation of power in presidential system is an illusion, the N5.7b Prado toys’ treachery is a sad reminder that even if an angel operates a unitary constitution in a multicultural society, he will fail. To guard against the fate of his predecessors therefore, the president must ensure we stop playing the ostrich and return to where the rain started to beat us.