The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Pa Adebanjo’s fury

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo is passionate about Nigeria. The struggle for a better and more prosperous nation is his life. For him, the shortest route to greatness is a return to our derailed 1958 independence constitution which granted autonomy to the federating units.

    On this broad objective, I am not sure there is much disagreement between him, some of his Afenifere colleagues and his children he is currently at war with. I believe the only point of departure is that while he believes he can do the same thing over and over again and get a different result, his children seem to be saying there are other ways of killing a chicken other than cutting its throat.

    For this dissimilarity, Pa Adebanjo has become an oligarch within his Afenifere larger family and a terror to his Afenifere children. Unlike the way Awo, the sage, treated the younger generation of his time, he simply ordered those of his children who disagreed with him to leave Afenifere which they happily did to form their own Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG). As the national leader of AD, he directed those who did not subscribe to the principles of party supremacy which from the examples he cited will include elected governors consulting the Afenifere elders before appointing commissioners and board members, to leave his AD. They obliged him and formed AC. Under the umbrella of ARG and AC platform, they first retrieved the five southwest states lost to Obasanjo and PDP as a result of Afenifere’s rigidity in 2003. They later joined other parties to form the APC which won the 2015 and 2019 elections. But Pa Adebanjo has continued to live in denial. He says Afenifere has not lost touch with the Yoruba nation which it claims to advocate for. He insists that there is nothing like Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG).

    Pa Adebanjo forgot so many things: that his Yoruba people who are always led from behind never had leaders – no matter how powerful – they could not handle; that they don’t forgive errant leaders who make wrong decisions and that they know what they want. As Awo his revered leader put it “The Yoruba will not vote for you because you are Yoruba if you have no programme that will impact positively in their lives”.

    IN 2003, he misled Yoruba to support Obasanjo who claimed he was about to be denied a second term by the Fulani, Nigeria’s hegemonic class led by Atiku Abubakar, his deputy. He secured the support of the elders who bought his dummy with the understanding he would convene a sovereign national conference to address Nigeria’s national question. Unfortunately, Yoruba paid dearly for that folly. Not only was there no sovereign national conference, Obasanjo exploited the elder’s miscalculation to marginalize Yoruba for disgracing him in 1999 when he could not even win his ward in Abeokuta. He illegally held on to Lagos State LGA funds. And Yorubaland lost the giant steps made in areas of education in the first and second republic resulting in massive unemployment of unemployable secondary school drop-outs who ended up as political thugs.

    Then after publicly acknowledging, that “Obasanjo has no interest in, or sympathy for the Yoruba cause, but has only his own interest for everything he does”, Pa Adebanjo staked his honour swearing the Yoruba would vote Atiku Abubakar, demonized for years by Obasanjo who later decided to canonize him few months to the 2019 elections to settle scores with President Buhari and Bola Tinubu, his nemesis in Yorubaland. Of course, the Yoruba who often read meanings to everything including ordinary greetings roundly rejected Atiku.

    Recently, Pa Adebanjo in a newspaper interview demonized all those who disagreed with his methods including Tinubu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, his two most successful children in politics since the end of the civil war. He swore not to support their candidacy for president or that of any other Yoruba in 2023. And as if Nigerian presidency can be acquired just by a sense of entitlement, he said it was the turn of Igbo to produce the president in 2023.

    Pa Adebanjo seems to have forgotten that with little or no presence in the Southeast, APC is not likely going to pick its presidential candidate from among the Igbos in 2023. And securing the PDP ticket will be only the first step as the party has to be able to win the support of APC states in the north, an uphill task. The implication of Pa Adebanjo’s position therefore is that he would rather have the north hold on to the presidency for another eight years than sheathe the sword and put his house in order.

    Pa Adebanjo also tried to present all those who disagreed with him as enemies of Yoruba race. He alleged that Bola Ige undermined the collegiate leadership of Yoruba nation with the support of Obasanjo, but he did not see anything wrong in seeking the support of the same Obasanjo in his current war against Tinubu and Buhari. He says: ‘Tinubu has sold the Yoruba nation’;  ‘Osinbajo has sold out’; ‘Ayo Fasanmi is using his name to sell the Yoruba interest’;  Wale Oshun as head of primary committee for election in Lagos was a ‘fantastic  member’  and a “fantastic member of Afenifere” but ‘lost his integrity’  the moment he decided to be his own man; Pa BisiAkande has been settled by Tinubu and the former governors who do not share Adebanjo’s views ‘have also been compromised’. None of his children has a fraction of some of the virtues he thinks he and he alone has. They are all trying to “sell the entire Nigeria to the north”.

    He was miffed by Kayode Fayemi’s caution that “Yoruba cannot do restructuring alone”. But Fayemi, Adebanjo’s grandson has only called his attention to the facts of our history. The truth is that the Yoruba nation is the only one out of Nigeria’s three dominant ethnic groups that has always struggled for true federalism.

    The northern political elite’s choice is between a federation they could control and confederacy. Awolowo had series of meetings with Ahmadu Bello in Kaduna, Lagos and in Ikorodu along with Alfred Rewane. Bello resisted any idea of creating states from the north. The Time magazine of November 10, 1958 in a piece titled “Independence without difficulties is a dream of Utopia” reporting the proceedings of the 1958 Lancaster constitutional conference wrote “In western eyes, Obafemi Awolowo of the Western Region seemed the most statesmanlike of the three premiers. When the conference took up the ticklish problem of how to protect the rights of minorities among Nigeria’s 250 tribes, Awolowo suggested creating three states. The north’s Sardauna not wishing to relinquish any of his territories vetoed the idea.” The military dominated by northern offices was to later midwife the current constitution which is only federal in name but unitary in reality.

    The Igbo never wanted a federal arrangement. NCNC until 1959 canvassed for a unitary system. Between 1959 and the collapse of the first republic in 1966, they were satisfied with the federal arrangement that allowed them to control key positions and institutions such the titular presidency, the senate presidency, ministries of education, finance , internal affairs and external affairs and  Nigeria Airways, Nigeria Railways, University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, Yaba College of Technology etc. And when the power equation changed in January 1966 with General Aguiyi-Ironsi as Head of State, he was ill-advised by Igbo political and intellectual elite to turn the country into a unitary state with Unification Decree 34 of 1966. In 1979, Igbo NPP formed a coalition with northern-dominated NPN. OdumegwuOjukwu, the Igbo civil war hero returned from exile after the brutal war to consolidate the relationship without making restructuring a pre-condition.

    These are historical facts, Fayemi, Adebanjo’s grandson was trying to present before him in case he has forgotten

  • Absence of governance and Zamfara misery

    Last week, Professor AngoAbdullahi, the convener of Northern Elders Forum and former vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria while calling on President Buhari to ‘demonstrate a higher level of concern and sensitivity to the plight of traumatised citizens, especially in Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Plateau and Taraba states, alerted the nation to what he described as ‘serious irresponsibility of governance in the country’.

    He probably spoke the minds of many Nigerians who have been wondering whether there has ever been real governance in the country since the exit of Obasanjo in 2007 when bandits took over the country deciding who was to be secretary to government, attorney general and new leadership of the various anti-corruption agencies probing them for financial malfeasances.

    The much that has changed under President Buhari’s ‘government of change’ is that while criminals are no more deciding who get what, when and how in the country, they are using the resources they illegally and immorally acquired to hold the nation to ransom in spite of a democratically elected sovereign who is allowed to exploit the lacuna in our laws to end people’s misery and pursue the greatest happiness for the greatest number of Nigerians.

    Before AngoAbdullahi’s intervention, there were two other recent developments which appeared to confirm absence of governance in the country. First was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s  scapegoating of immigrants while on the campaign trail for his re-election bid coming up in May, a development which has sparked fresh xenophobic attacks on African migrants especially Nigerians. He was quoted as saying: “Everybody just arrives in our townships and rural areas and set up businesses without licenses and permits. We are going to bring this to an end”. The above campaign rhetoric which has since gone viral on social media is also said to be responsible for renewed police clampdown in the guise of ‘saving their communities from the harmful effects of imported substandard goods and ridding their street and alleys of criminal elements’.

    But for the fact that we often like to play the ostrich, we know who the cap fits. Nigeria tops the list of unscrupulous drug manufacturers and importers of fake and substandard goods. This was an unwinnable war for the late Professor Dora Akunyili and her Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).Thisday newspaper recently quoted an importer of electrical materials in Onitsha, Chief Ethelbert Uzodinma who lamented, “We Nigerians are our own problems. These people take genuine products to manufacturers and ask them to water them down in quality”. The paper also quoted another trader in Onitsha, Mr. CallistusEzeuba who admitted that fake products are even more with eatables which are dangerous to health. And in recent times, many criminal-minded Nigerians involved in manufacturing of fake drugs and eatables have been arrested from various locations in Lagos, Aba and Onitsha.

    It is on record that, the former Director-General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr. Joseph Odumodu, not too long ago alerted Nigerians about the incidence of “cutting corners” by local manufacturers of iron and steel products who put out products  which were supposed to measure 16 millimetres (mm) in diameter, but turned out to be 12mm. The utilisation of such sub-standard steel components was said to be partly responsible for the incidence of collapsed buildings resulting in the death of over 400 people across the country in the last few years.

    The minister of agriculture, AuduOgbeh on Channel Television programme a few weeks back also spoke of some Nigerians with criminal tendencies who imported substandard goods to sabotage our nation’s effort at self-sufficiency. If we cannot put our own house in order by bringing these criminal elements to book, South Africa is not obliged to allow us export lawlessness and anarchy into their country.

    The second event was the federal government’s belated banning of all illegal gold mining in Zamfara State. This was said to be responsible for the death of over 5,000 people including the 45 illegal gold miners from Bindim Village, in Maru Local Government Area killed on November 8, 2016 in Zamfara bloody gold miners’ war of ex-generals and politicians. Part of the fall-out of the illegal mining, was also the reported case of major outbreak of lead poisoning in children related to the processing of lead-rich ore for the extraction of gold since March 2010. Then Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) alerted Nigeria of an increasing number of childhood deaths and illness in villages in the two local government areas (LGAs) of Bukkuyum and Anka. There was also the United States’ Centers for Disease Control (US CDC) that assisted in the investigations confirming severe lead poisoning in more than 100 children in the villages of Dareta and Yargalma.

    And as if to prolong the misery of the people of  Zamfara, there  were also bandits who left  sorrow, tears and blood in such areas as  Ajia and Wonaka in BirninMagaji local government,  Kayayi village in Shinkafi local government and Yan TaskuwaKucheri, TungarKolo following rustling of hundreds of  livestock, goats and birds.

    Unfortunately, just like the herdsmen’s mindless killings of innocent farmers and their families especially in the Middle Belt region of the country that went on unchallenged in the last eight years, it was only unfavourable public opinion that forced President Buhari’s ‘government of change’ to belatedly ban illegal mining, some two weeks ago, citing police intelligence reports which “clearly established a strong and glaring nexus between the activities of armed bandits and illicit miners”. Many will argue, if there had been any form of governance both at the state and federal levels, there would have been no illegal mining going on unchallenged for several years in the first place.

    Our major problem since Babangida hearkened to the false prophecies emanating from Breton Woods institutions and turned our nation to the dumping ground for various kinds of sub-standard goods and products in the mid-eighties has been lack of political will by our successive leaders to act on behalf of Nigerians. Just as they look the other way as fortune seekers as retired military officers and powerful politicians subject ordinary people and children of Zamfara State to untold hardship in the last few years, President Buhari and his APC government even while in possession of dossiers on unpatriotic elements who want our nation to remain importer of labour of other societies seem to want to be politically correct to avoid being accused of stereotyping.

    We will continue to move in circles until we are ready to confront our own demons. Since no one deliberately sets out to destroy his father’s house, it is obvious those who are doing everything to destroy the country to satisfy their greed have no faith in the nation. An elected sovereign with a fixed term must therefore be prepared to govern, sometimes by taking unpopular decision in the overall interest of a nation and awaits the judgment of history.

     

  • APC’s dirty politics of identity

    There are over 350 ethnic groups at different levels of cultural development in Nigeria. The country was described by Oliver Stanley, British Secretary of State in 1920 as “a collection of self-contained and mutually independent native state separated by difference of history and tradition and by ethnological, racial, tribal political social and religious barriers”.Awo in 1947 declared that “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression; there is no Nigeria in the same sense as there are English, Welsh, or French.”

    Neither the Fulani that is today regarded as the hegemonic classnor any of the warring dominant ethnic groupsfighting to impose their cultural values on the rest of country can be said to be indigenous to Nigeria as they all traced their roots to the middle east and elsewhere in Africa. For instance the Fulani was described by Lord Lugard, the then High Commissioner for Northern Nigeria as “the alien conquerors” in his 1902 Annual Report on Northern Nigeria to both Houses of Parliament through the Colonial Office”.And of them, Olaniwun Ajayi, lawyer and Nigeria elder statesman, in his Nigeria: Political Power Imbalance, wrote, “With the growing power of the Hausa, immigration into the country of a people called Fulani took place. Where they came from, nobody knew”. The Igbo claimed they are Jews. The Igalas traced their home to Egyptwhile the Yoruba through Ifa, their god of wisdomclaimed they migrated from Northern Egypt through Sudan to Ife. For Femi Fani Kayode, the ‘’Yorubas’’ are the descendants of Ham who was the third son of Noah.

    What is missing in all these narratives is the place of the real indigenous Nigerians governed by their chiefs for long centuries past and their today’s descendants. But since the representatives of warring dominant groups – Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba,  Ijaw Tiv  that always insist no other person  gets what they cannot get, have nothing in common with happy, contented free-spirited Nigerians one comes across in Kano Central Market, Lagos Mile 12 yam market,Ladipo spare-parts market,as well asthousands of Igbo youths who are quietly making a living retailing beans and  millet produced in the north across the nation and thousands of young Hausa boys who survive on retail sales of yam produced in the middle belt  in Lagos and across Nigeria’s big cities, it is not difficult to make a distinction between  real Nigerians who have no other place to go and scheming politicians who think only of how to exploit the riches of Nigeria for their private use through politics of identity.

    A journey through memory shows Nigerian political eliteresort to politics of identity not necessarily to protect the unique culture or the political and economic interests of their ethnic groups but the political and economic needs of individuals. During the nationalist struggle for independence, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe took over the leadership of NCNC, apredominantly Yoruba party (there was only one non-Yoruba in its inaugural meeting) without opposition. Heenjoyed massive support across the Yoruba nation where he also presided over a thriving newspaper chain. But following a petition written by Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and Dr.Olorunnibe over Zik’salleged mismanagement of funds during their trip London, Zik rallied Igbo who had for long yearned for a spokesman in a stranger’s land to see his trouble with members of his party as an attack on Igbo race.

    Obasanjo literarily climbed the palm tree from the top by winning the 1999 presidential election without a political base but with the support of other ethnic groups. He even lost his ward in Abeokuta. And conscious of the immense contributions of non-Yoruba ethnic groups to his victory, Obasabjo relied mainly onIgbo advisers such as Dr.Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Dr.Obi Ezekwesili,Professor Charles Soludo, and Andy Uba. He also had no problem ceding the running of the economy to Atiku Abubakar, his vice president. They bothdid not see anything wrong in running our once acclaimedworld class universities aground before allocating themselves licences to establish private fees-paying universities. It was not until Atiku threatened Obasanjo’s secondterm bidthat he raised questions about his nationality.

    Similarly, Atiku was a former vice president and a successful businessman considered an asset by APC. All that changed with his decamping back to PDP for the purpose of contesting last March presidential election against the APC candidate. And for threatening President Buhari by challenging the outcome of the election in court, APC now sayssince Atiku was born in 1946, and  it wasn’t  until 1961, a plebiscite turned northern Cameroon to Nigeria” , he is not a Nigerian ad therefore not qualified to contest the election.

    Unfortunately for the APC, Nigerians now know from experience that those who resort to identity politics or denounce membershipof their ethnic group claiming they are Nigeriansfirst are not necessarily driven by altruism. For their pains Obasanjo got appointed first, as military Head of State and later, an elected two-term president. Theophilus Danjuma got a lucrative oil block.

    Nigerians also now know that those politicians who often resort to identity politics when their interests are threatened owe no allegiance to Nigeria. They often behave like an army of occupation.  As far as they are concerned, they “are strangers in the land. If good comes to it, may we have our fair share.But if bad comes, let it go to the owners of the land who know what gods should be appeased”. Chinua Achebe capturedthe very essence of those politicians who proclaim themselves Nigerians first as if it is possible to be a good Nigerian without first being a good representative of one’s ethnic group.

    By strange coincidence, nearly all those who resort to identity politics to prove they can swim against the tide seem to have come to one form of grief or the other. AguiyiIronsi who wanted to be more Nigerian than our founding fathers who bequeathed to the country a legacy of a workablefederal arrangement, had an identity crisis as a product of a Sierra Leonean father and an Igbo mother. Ibrahim Babangida, the so-called “prince of the lower Niger’, who annulled the most credible and freest election in our nation’s history claiming he was trying to meet the demand of the Fulani hegemonic class, is widely believed to have an Ogbomoso root. Obasanjo who tried to prove he can be a good Nigerian without first being a good representative of his Yoruba people faces identity crisis at home. For exhibiting none of well-known Yoruba traits, his political enemies alleged he has his root in Onitsha! Abacha, the maximum ruler who waged a five year war against Nigerians before his mysterious death inside the presidential palace was said to have his root in neighbouring Niger.

    Instead of resorting to dirty politics of identity, Nigerians expect APC to start planning how to put square pegs in square holes in the National Assembly to prevent a reoccurrence of the 8th senate’s disastrous outing when it was difficult to make a distinction between senators elected on APC platform of change and those of the totally discredited PDP who jointly constituted themselves into ‘like minds senators’ working against the interest of Nigerians.

  • PDP and energy sector reforms

    In August 2013, 15 companies made up of 10 Distribution Companies (DISCOs) and five Generation Companies (GENCOs)  paid $2.238billion to  take over 60% of unbundled PHCN after federal government’s injection of between $8.2b-$15b of taxpayers money. President Jonathan on the occasion assured Nigerians that his administration will ensure that “Nigerians enjoy a minimum of 18 hours of electricity supply a day”, while Prof. Chinedu Nebo, the minister of power, described the development as “a great milestone in the power sector reform roadmap that should give hope to all Nigerians, and inspire confidence in government’s power reform programme and President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda”.

    But as against 10,000-15,000MW promised in the roadmap which Jonathan had earlier launched with fanfare in Lagos on August 26, 2010, Buhari inherited less than 4000MW when he was sworn in as president  in May 2015.

    The privatisation of the power sector was meant to ensure adequate, regular and stable supply of electricity to the consumer at a reasonable cost. It however failed because of our environment. First, privatisation itself according to the World Bank, its architect, was designed for high and middle-income countries ‘with a competitive market, a market-friendly environment with a good capacity to regulate’. Besides it has been established we are a ‘fantastically corrupt’ nation. The new investors were for instance, mainly PDP stalwarts doubling as Disco owners. Jerry Gana headed the delegation of Disco owners to government where the former minister of petroleum promised a facility of N213billion. As it later turned out, the biggest donors, (N2b – N5b) to President Jonathan’s failed re-election bid in 2015 were Disco owners.

    Even with the best efforts of the current government, the nation today faces serious energy crisis with factories either closing down or relocating out of the country. The result is the massive unemployment of our youths and impoverishment of craftsmen and other Nigerians who depend on cheap Chines generators to run their businesses and power their houses. To change the narrative, many concerned Nigerians have called on stakeholders in the energy sector and government to address issues of appropriate tariff, inefficiency of the Discos and the need for the Discos to give up part of its equity for new investors to come in with fresh capital to make the industry more efficient.

    In this regard, the Director General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Alex Okoh, was recently quoted as saying “If the Discos currently in place, because of the way their balance sheet is compromised, are not able to raise sufficient investment capital, to recoup the distribution network and improve the provision of meters, then we have to look at the possibility of admitting other investors who may have the capacity, financially and in terms of the technical expertise, to improve the distribution infrastructure. We cannot continue to have a situation where the general populace is at the wrong end of the stick all the time. What the public wants is power supply delivered at a reasonable cost”.

    Bola Tinubu, APC national leader and former governor of Lagos State added his own voice during   the 11th Bola Tinubu Colloquium that took place in Abuja recently. According to him, “The PDP administration shared our generation, distribution and transmission to their friends and cronies without very deep and thoughtful research and evaluation. It has now become pork chops”; he therefore  suggested  that “for a more constructive reform to improve generation, transmission and distribution, this privatisation must be reviewed by putting experts together at all costs”, without prejudice to the legal implications of the privatization of the sector.

    Unfortunately, while others are trying to find a way forward, those who as a result of massive fraud wrecked the energy sector privatisation initiative are refusing to be part of the solution. Speaking for PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan has said his party is opposed to the review of the current position because President Jonathan, according to him, ensured due diligence in the privatization sector’ while in office. “In as much as the nation deserves improvement in our power sector, whatever we must do must be guided by the law if we do not want to cause confusion and crisis”, he says.

    Ologbondiyan is speaking of laws as if it is not on record that PDP bungled the whole privatization effort between 1999-2014 by breaching the laws. It was on account of this the 7th Senate report of November 30,  2011 directed the National Council on Privatization to “rescind the sale of Abuja International Hotels Limited (Nicon Luxury Hotel) as well as Sheraton Hotel and Towers;  that the sales of assets of Daily Times Nigeria PLC  by Folio Communications Limited and its directors  be investigated by anti-graft agencies and the sold assets recovered; that the Share Purchase Agreement of Volkswagen Nigeria Limited now (VON)  be rescinded and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate the economic crimes being perpetrated against the nation at VON Automobile Nigeria Limited premises in Lagos by Barbedos Ventures Limited; that NICON Insurance PLC  should immediately refund with interest ,the sum of N900 million to the federal government being money paid by BPE in February 2007 as contribution for recapitalization with accrued interest; that Nigeria Re-insurance Plc should immediately refund the sum of one billion naira paid by BPE in February 2007 as contribution of the federal government for recapitalization with accrued interest and that  the former Directors-General, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, Dr. Julius Bala and Mrs. Irene Nkechi Chigbue be reprimanded by the National Council on Privatization; and the then Director-General, BPE, Ms. Bolanle Onagoruwa be relieved of her appointment for “gross incompetence in the management of the Bureau of Public Enterprises and for illegal and fraudulent sale of the 5 % FGN residual shares in Eleme Petrochemicals Company Limited (EPCL)”.

    When PDP was not breaking laws as they did above to impoverish Nigerians, they were passing self-serving laws such as the PPPRA bill or the monetization bill to short-change Nigerians. Under the former, PDP leaders and their children defrauded the nation to the tune of about N1.7 trillion under the fuel subsidy scandal. With the latter, Dimeji Bankole, former speaker of the House of representative was accused of immorally purchasing  his official house  while David Mark, former senate president is currently in court in a suit Okoi Obono-Obla, the chairman, Special Presidential Investigation Panel for Recovery of Public Property (SPIPRPP), described as a “a disguise to scuttle criminal investigation”, trying to prevent EFCC from questioning him on the “2011 purchase of the official residence of the senate president,  built on 1.6 hectares of land, a national monument that was not meant to be acquired by an individual and was never reflected in the federal government’s gazette as required”.

    Ologbondiyan and PDP understand that that while many Nigerians have short memories, a great many others cannot articulate our problems. It is obvious many of the 11 million Nigerians who voted for PDP in the March presidential election were unable to link the massive unemployment and impoverishment of our people to the bungled privatisation programmes that ceded ownership of our budding industries to those who were only interested in asset-stripping which eventually reduced the nation to a net importer of the labour of other societies while our qualified university graduates roam the streets. Ologbondiyan and his PDP exploited the lacuna in our laws to short-change Nigerians and are now trying to use same to hold on to their disproportionate share of the nation’s resources they immorally confiscated.

  • The race for the 9th assembly

    In advanced democracies governed by rational-legal authorities, leadership of national assembly is often a routine affair within a ruling party with a majority in parliament. Model builders from John Calvin (1509-1564) to Baron de Montesquieu (1748) and others that came up with the idea of separation of powers in their wisdomrealized that was the only way to guarantee stability of government and prevent it from being held hostage by a hostile opposition without prejudice to the supervisory functions of the parliament. It is therefore unimaginable in the US whose constitution we copied, that the GOP will embark on a surreptitious move to take over the congress with a democrat majority. Such was equally inconceivable during the first and second republics and in the first 16 years of the fourth republic. Of course there were conflicts within the national assembly with Obasanjo changing senate presidents at will, but it was all intra-party affairs.

    But all that changed with the takeover of our National Assembly in 2015 by ruffians, in the guise of protecting the independence of the legislature. And predictably, what the model builders and framers of our constitution sought to avoid was what happened with the ruling government with a majority held hostage by PDP and APC ruffians who stalled government projects through budget passage delays, budget padding and cornering a big chunk of the annual budget for themselves. At the end, the 8th assembly which will probably enter the Guinness Book of Records as the highest paid parliament in the world served no one but their members.

    Because we allowed evil to thrive in 2015,the desperate struggle for the leadership of the 9th assembly has againstarted in earnest with top aspirants for the position of presiding officers within the ruling party reported to have converted some suites in the Transcorp Hilton Hotels to a mini secretariat. Newly elected and returning federal legislators have also been sighted sneaking in and out of the emergency secretariat’. Going by our experiences in recent years with outcome of presidential primaries determined by the contestant’s weight in dollars and voters openly hawking their votes, it is most unlikely those going in and out of the emergency secretariat will leave empty handed. The stakes have become higher with PDP’s reported “launching of an audacious move to win to its side 13 All Progressives Congress (APC) senators-elect as part of a grand design to hijack the leadership of the 9th Senate”.

    “The fact that it has been a convention for the majority party to produce presiding officers does not make it legal or the norm” –PDP, a beneficiary of the same convention for an unbroken 16 years, now insists. The party now says “it is not mandatory for the principal officers of the senate and the House to come from the party with a simple majority in the two chambers”.Just like the ‘like-mind’ senators claimed in 2015, they say they are worried about a possible emergence of “a possible rubber stamp legislature” if the ruling party is allowed to foist leaders on the two chambers. They did not only fail to identify any democracy where their model works, they were silent on the fact that theirunique model in 2015 ended up creating a parallel government with the National Assembly preparing their own budgets,paying themselves outrageous salaries and allowances and frittering away billions of naira on over 500 abandoned constituency projects that were doomed to fail since feasibility studies were never carried out.

    But why would a party that was given free hand to run the country for 16 years and made a mess of it be reluctant to perform the role of an opposition which is to keep the ruling party on its toes? It is precisely because PDP is not a party.Itis according to John Campbell, a former US Ambassador to Nigeria, “a club of elites who come together for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”. As military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians,they merely  set out to complete Babangida’s uncompleted mission – the destruction of the economy through ill-conceived  Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that turned our nation to net importer of other nations’ labour, with its own ill-implemented privatization programme that shared out Nigeria’s budding industries after injection of public funds, to its members. PDP and its leaders set out to serve none but themselves and their members.

    Let us start with Obasanjo, the father of PDP. In an attempt to consolidate his hold on power after winning in 1999 election without a political base, he did everything to undermine the country’s democratization process by presiding over massively rigged elections in 2003, 2007, impositionof ailing Yar’Adua following his third term fiasco, and in 2011, Goodluck Jonathan.His continuation with Babangida’s adopted Bretton Woods’ international monetary arrangement that set up a system of fixed exchange rates with the US dollar as the international reserve currency,which Lamido Sanusi, (Emir of Kano) in a widely circulated socialmedia video said he regretted embracing as CBN governor, only brought ruin to our nation and impoverishment of our people. The only beneficiaries are private jet-owningPDPimporters of wine,champagne, rice,textile, fake drugs and tooth pick among others.

    Like Obasanjo, Atiku Abubakar’s struggle is for Atiku.His decision to collude with South-south’s self-serving governors led by James Ibori, in an attempt to deny Obasanjo, his boss a second term in2003 could not have possibly been on behalf of poor Nigerian victims of the duo’s war over the privatisation and sharing of our common resources. And Atiku’s 12 years of motion without movement between PDP, ACN, PDP, APC and back to PDP,in search of platform many believe,had little to do with serving the people but more to do with fulfilling his ambition.

    We similarly have evidence to supportBukola Saraki’s claim that he was driven by noble objectives to inelegantly seize the leadership of the senate in 2015. Andrefusing to relinquish the senate presidency after decamping back toa party, with minority, in the words of Oshiomhole,APC chairman, only”portrayed Saraki for who he was – a person, whose personal interest always comes first before any other interest, including national interest.”And as if to confirm PDP is not averse to unscrupulous means to political ends, Senator Olujimi, Fayose’s former deputy reminded Nigerians that it was the PDP that gave Saraki 42 of the 53 votes with which he emerged senate president in 2015.

    The story is the same with PDP elected assembly members who in 2002, publicly made it clear they were in a hurry to recoup their expenses having sold houses to fund the 1999 elections.They went on to pass the PPPRA bill which was to become the instrument with which they and their siblings defrauded the country to the tune of about N1.7trillion.

    Democracy is never sustained by immoral behaviours of politicians like Ayo Fayose who ruled his state with six lawmakers after chasing 22 lawmakers out of town with thugs or a Saraki who took over the red chambers with 42 opposition senators after outwitting 52 of his party senators. There is noknown democracy where a party with 37 elected lawmakers would be scheming to take over a parliament with a majority of 63 senators.

    And no constitution, including the American constitution that we copied which according to John Adams, the second American president (1797-1801), was ‘made only for a moral and religious people”, can survive greed, recklessness, licentiousnessas we today witness among PDP and APC politicians. Those promoting immoralityand lack of character as ‘real-politik’ must realize that nothing threatens democracy and freedom as immorality.

  • Eighth assembly’s baleful legacies

    As the eighth assembly winds down and feverish fever for agenda-setting for the ninth senate becomes infectious, I think it is important to examine where we are coming from. Although history has the final verdict, the eighth assembly is considered by many Nigerians as a disaster. And to them, there can be no greater heart-rending dirge than the fact that only about a third of the ‘like minds’ senators who yesterday behaved as if there would be no tomorrow would be returning  to the red chambers.

    The eighth assembly is a symptom of all that is wrong with Nigeria. To the greed-driven PDP and APC lawmakers, it is a house for deal-makers. To ex-President Obasanjo, it is a house of ‘unarmed robbers”. To Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), “for its refusal to pass the 2018 budget almost halfway into the year, the 8th senate is probably the worst we have ever had since the return to civilian rule”.

    To our own Biodun Jeyifo, the 8th assembly is a ‘predatory legislature’ for paying its members the highest salaries in the history of modern parliaments’. To the influential ‘The Economist’, it is responsible for ‘the most unjust and lopsided pay structure in the world’.

    It’s inauguration on July 9, 2015 was preceded by a monumental scandal unknown to democracy elsewhere in the democratic world. Bukola Saraki, after cutting a deal which ceded the deputy senate presidency to the opposition, capitalized on the absence of 51 of his elected APC colleagues to be adopted senate president by 49 PDP senators and eight APC senators. Itse Sagay described Saraki’s coup as ‘a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline’, while Auwalu Yadudu, former Dean of Faculty of Law, Bayero University Kano dismissed it as ‘lies in the face of democratic ideals’ since Saraki’s emergence stemmed from ‘a flawed election by a fraction of yet-to-be-constituted senate.

    For consolidation of power, the lawmakers must remain lawbreakers having started by substituting the existing Senate Rule 3 (3) (k) of the 2011-(All senators-elect shall participate in the nomination and voting for president and deputy president of the senate) which makes it mandatory for all members to participate in the process with a strange Senate  Rule 3 (3) (i) in the 2015 Orders-(All senators-elect are entitled to participate in the voting for senate president and deputy senate president) used for the election. Police interim report confirmed fraud and dragged the Saraki and Ekweremadu to court.

    Then following Dino Melaye’s specious argument that since the same rule was used in screening the ministers including the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, service chiefs and in passing the budget, “If the rule is fake, then the budget we have received is also fake and illegal”. The government developed cold feet. The law-breakers thereafter went ahead to pass another senate resolution saying the senate rules were not forged and directed their members in court to withdraw their case or risk sanctions.

    With that victory, the senators started to behave like ruffians.  On January 11, 2017,  the Nigerian Customs “intercepted and impounded a Range Rover SUV which carried documents that claimed its chassis number was “SALGV3TF3EA190243”, valued  at  N298 million, with an alleged fake documents presented by the driver showing payment of N8m as against expected customs duty of N74 million. It belonged to the senate president. Resorting to self-help, Hameed Ali, the Comptroller General of Customs, was ordered to appear in the upper house. Dino Melaye insisted he must appear wearing customs-general uniform despite Femi Falana’s argument that “neither the constitution not the rules of procedure of the senate has conferred on it the power to compel the CGC to wear customs uniform when he is not a serving customs officer”. The nation was told a few days later that the senate internal probe exonerated the senate president but found an un-named importer guilty.

    More rough tactics were soon brought to bear on the running of the senate. Kangiwa Umar, a highly principled former administrator of Kaduna State spoke of an influential senator, who used his company to import 1,200 metric tons of rice in 30 40-foot containers, fraudulently declared as yeast to evade payment of appropriate duties. And when Ali, the Customs Comptroller-General refused to release the seized items based on the dubious alibi provided by “the leader of the Senate Committee on Customs, Excise & Tariff” to the effect that “his findings shows it was the clearing agent not the importer that called the goods ‘yeast’ instead of ‘rice’, he was harassed, intimidated and accused of corruption.

    Umar was not done. He went on to also allege that the same senator involved in the rice importation scandal also owns a company that secured a contract to dredge the Calabar Channel which the Bureau of Public Procurement has condemned as violating all due processes. Despite that there was no evidence the contract was ever executed, the senator “demanded and got a whopping $12.5million upfront payment from the NPA and even asked for a purported balance of $22million”.

    The eighth assembly, like others since 1999 when Dr. Bukola Saraki, fresh from a medical school, was appointed budget adviser by President Obasanjo is notorious for budget padding. The senate response to the critics of this illegal diversion of resources from critical projects such as Lagos- Ibadan expressway or the Second Niger Bridge to ill-implemented constituency projects has always been a threat to discipline a minister or impeach a vice president.

    The public didn’t need to wait for long to discover the constituency projects scheme was nothing but a rip-off. First, Abdul Mumin Jibrin, reacting to his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee of the 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 inability “to admit into the budget, almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

    Not long after, a Civic Technology Organisation-BudgIT claimed that about N350billion appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country in the last five years never took off even after full payment had been made. On July 17, 2016, The Nation in a report titled “Constituency Projects – a ritual of monumental waste” summarized the result of a survey of 436 projects including water bore-holes, rural electricity and roads projects and primary health centres designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor but abandoned across 16 states of the federation.

    The 8th assembly is also a house of greed. Following a newspaper report that governors-turned senators were collecting two salaries, the senate claimed its internal probe confirmed their esteemed members only collected their pensions. This was at a time about 26 of the 36 states could not pay minimum wage of N18, 000 with some in arrears of 8-12 months and at a time pensioners who had served the country with distinction were dying on the queue waiting for their unpaid pensions.

    The 8th assembly finally lost all by derailing the constitutional amendment project because Saraki and Dogara wanted to be members of the Council of State, enjoy immunity along with speakers of state legislatures who must also enjoy financial autonomy. They rejected devolution of power, preferring the current situation where we have about 88 items in the exclusive list and 33 in the concurrent list without a residual list, an arrangement that has rendered the states impotent while a dysfunctional centre makes a mess of functions such as roads, agriculture, health, education, and security that are best handled by states.

  • Mindsets, stereotypes and delusions of grandeur

    The 2019 presidential election was considered by many local and international observers as a referendum on integrity. Located at both ends of the spectrum are President Buhari, promoted by his admirers as a man of character leading an anti- corruption crusade against parasites that feed on the blood of the poor, and, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and a multi billionaire business man committed to the protection and defence of the interest of his friends in politics and in business.

    The mind-set of Atiku promoters during and after the Port Harcourt PDP presidential primaries described by some newspapers as dollar bazaar through which privileged delegates allegedly smiled home with as much as $10,000, was that the poor, uneducated, jobless and unemployable northern youths concerned more with their daily survival will be easy prey to money bags and promoters of stomach infrastructure. And for the middle-belt region voters, the mindless killings of innocent farmers and their family members by herdsmen while the president’s security men accused of nurturing a Fulani agenda talked from both sides of the mouth, the choice between candidate Atiku and President Buhari, a former herds boy accused by political opponents of having sympathy for herders that turned the middle belt region and elsewhere in the country into a killing field, was very clear.

    But mind-sets sometimes can be nothing but pictures in our heads. The 2019 elections as shown by INEC declared results, is a study in failure of mind-sets, stereotypes and indiscretion of self-delusion. Many of the uneducated jobless poor in search of a messiah, a potential threat to the democratization process, voted their conscience and made informed choices. Thus the haven of millions of unschooled jobless                                                                                                                     angry youths and other centres of poverty in the north voted as follows: Kano: Buhari secured 1,464,768 to Atiku’s 391,593 votes; Kebbi,581,552, to 154,282), Yobe,(497,914 to 50,763),Borno, (836,496 to 71,788), Jigawa, (794,738 to 289,898), Katsina, (1,232,133 to 308,056) and Zamfara, (438,682 to 125,423)

    Similarly in the middle belt regions where it appears voters were driven more by  preference for integrity above other considerations including herdsmen’s mindless killing and fear of islamisation, Buhari and Atiku ran neck to neck in Adamawa  with Buhari securing  378,078 to Atiku’s 410,226;Taraba: 324,906  to 374,743; Benue 347,668 to 356,817 and Plateau 468,555 to 548,665. Buhari also secured a landslide victory in historical anti-Fulani Bauchi with 798,424 to 209,313 and besieged Kaduna with 993,445 to 649,612. That the poor chose integrity over other considerations during the presidential election is evidenced by the current ‘inconclusive’ gubernatorial elections in some six states including Sokoto (490,333 to 361 604) that had earlier given Buhari massive support.

    In contrast to the poor, uneducated and deprived youths who take refuge in some declared centres of poverty in Nigeria, the southern youths are better educated, informed and articulate social media activists.  But unlike  the poverty centres in the north where jobless, hungry and angry youths have nothing but disdain for those accused of corruption (barawo), the privileged, educated and better informed  affluent southern youths, the promise  of democracy, taking a cue from ex-President Jonathan, never see stealing government funds meant for developmental projects as corruption. It is a common feature in the south to see politicians indicted for corruption by house probes or the courts and some others who have been moving in and out of EFCC detention camps over fuel subsidy scam in the last four years elected into the National Assembly as senators, members of the House of Representatives or even governors.

    Except among the underprivileged poor northern youths where Abubakar, on account of his past records as public servant was considered unfit to rule, integrity and honour play little or no role among many Nigerian voters during election. Just as ex-President Obasanjo back in 1979 said the best candidate in an election didn’t necessarily have to win, he in the run up to the 2019 election also asked Nigerians to overlook his well-documented alleged Atiku’s sins against the country. It is instructive that the bulk of Jonathan 12million votes in the 2019 election came from the south-east, south- south and the north-central.

    In the southwest, Atiku discovered just as Jonathan did in 2015, that traditional and political leaders are only leaders to the extent that they represent the aspirations of the people and that the Yoruba as Awo once warned would not vote for you because you are Yoruba, if you have no programme that will impact positively on his life.  And since the people freely make their choices, even within the traditional Obaship system, it is not likely the Ifa will reject the choice of the people for someone who has a character deficit. It was not an accident that self-deluding leaders who staked everything to promote Atiku Abubakar were humiliated in their polling booths.

    Atiku’s victory in Oyo where he polled 385,229 to Buhari’s 366,690 cannot be separated from the mishandling of herdsmen ‘killings, kidnappings and attack on farmlands in Yoruba land” which  Emeritus Professor of History and Second Republic Senator, BanjiAkintoye alleged “are being sponsored by the Fulani oligarchy with the sole aim to capture Nigeria”, and his passionate appeal  to” Southwest governors and those of Kwara, Kogi and Edo states to set party interest aside and join hands together and decide on how to protect Yoruba land for history and posterity in the face of the herdsmen aggression against the peace, security, and prosperity of our people”.

    Other victims of grandeur of illusion in the southwest include outgoing governor, AbiolaAjimobi of Oyo State who had his ambition of transiting from governor’s lodge to the senate chambers checkmated by victims of his caustic tongue and IbikunleAmosun, who having surrounded himself with thugs and sycophants thought he was no more answerable to those who recruited him from APP, packaged him and campaigned for his election.

    Ajimobi is perhaps the first Oyo governor to win a second term – an appreciation of his unprecedented achievements in areas of infrastructural development, reduction level of violence and bringing sanity to chaotic flash points in Ibadan during his first term. By his second term, he had grown wings daring the Olubadan and constituting himself into a ‘constituted authority’ totally out of touch with students who looked up to him for support after spending several months at home due to teachers strike over unpaid salaries.

    As for Amosun, he momentarily forgot himself and dared the people. Surrounded by thugs and promoted by sycophants, he had thought he was invincible. The people of Ogun State humoured him on until he was humiliated by the defeat of his candidate during the February 23 governorship election.

    The paradox of the 2019 election is that while the so called uneducated, poor northern youths, the ‘almajiris’ in search of messiah, often portrayed as threat to the democratization process came out as the greatest assets to democracy, their educated, better informed and more affluent southern counterparts and social media warriors, have turned out to be the greatest threat to the democratization process in Nigeria.

  • Beyond agenda setting

    By vowing “to root out corruption, revive the economy and defeat the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency” in the run up to the 2015 presidential elections, candidate Buhari did what most veteran politicians do – promising miracles. He nearly got away with his ambitious agenda along with other successes in the areas of agriculture, infrastructural developments and taking the country out of recession but for the massive unemployment of our youths and his mishandling of the herdsmen-farmers crisis. Even at that, he defended his performance by reminding his critics that “judging by the prior depth of decay, deterioration and disrepair that Nigeria had sunken into, foundational work which is not often visible, is vital to achieving the kind of country we desire”. He insisted his administration has “laid the foundations for a strong, stable and prosperous country for the majority of our people.” Not many objective Nigerians including those who solidly voted against him in 2019 will disagree with his claim except that such achievements have no effect on our crisis of nationality.

    For the 2019 election, a more confident President Buhari   promised even more miracles with his five point agenda designed ‘to take the people to the next level’. To solve the country’s unemployment crisis put at 18.8 per cent, he had said N-Power would engage one million graduates and will also “skill up 10 million people under a voucher system in partnership with private sector.” He also promised an “Anchor Borrowers’ programme to support input and jobs to one million farmers; Livestock Transformation Plan to create 1.5 million jobs along dairy, beef, hide and skin, blood meal, crops; and agriculture mechanisation policy with tractors and processors to create 5 million jobs.” He gave an undertaking to provide $500 million in funding for the tech and creative industry to create 500,000 jobs and train 200,000 youths for outsourcing market in technology, services and entertainment; ‘300,000 extra jobs’ for vendors and farmers by increasing the number of children fed under the school feeding programme from 9.2 million to 15 million.”

    The President promised more.  Roads, rail, power, and the Internet, marked to be treated as ‘a critical infrastructure’.  He would complete the Lagos – Ibadan-Kano Rail, Eastern Rail (Port-Harcourt-Maiduguri) taking the network through Aba, all Southeast state capitals, Makurdi, Jos, Bauchi and Gombe, and the Coastal Rail (Lagos-Calabar).

    He will create regional industrial parks and special economic zones, and “Next Level of 109 Special Production and Processing Centres (SPPCs) to spur production and value additive processing (as well as) tractors and processors plan in each senatorial district.

    To facilitate business and entrepreneurship among market women, there would be ‘people moni bank’, ‘entrepreneurship bank’, easing business process, and MSMEs clinics”.

    And still promises of more miracles: “Through renewable, clean energy sources such as solar, he wants to ‘energise’ universities and up to 300 markets across the country to have an uninterrupted power supply. “A minimum of 1,000 MW new generation incremental power capacity per annum on the grid; distribution to get to 7,000 MW under distribution expansion programme”.

    “Every child counts will make our students digitally literate in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics,” and “all teachers will be retrained to deliver digital literacy”. The president further vows 10,000 schools per year will be remodeled and equipped.

    The season of agenda-setting is a season of blind faith by a nation of miracle seekers. How can we be anything else with the number of prosperity prophets in our midst, exceeding those recorded in both the old and new testaments, according to Robert Mugabe? Instead of interrogating how these miracles will be achieved within such a short period, even the president’s yesterday political foes are now trying to outdo the president supporters as to who sets for him the most ambitious agenda. Halting its five years hostility, Raymond Dokpesi’s African Independent Television (AIT) wants him to “address the unholy act of kidnapping, assassination, robbery and political thuggery” all of which according to it, ‘have negative effects on national growth’.  Battle-weary Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), wants him to fulfill promises because “undertakings represent social contracts that must be kept and delivered for the improvement of lives and well-being of the down-trodden”. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), wants the president to commit his administration .to “policies and programmes that would accelerate economic growth and ensure that the growth rate surpass the rate of population growth.”

    The Centre for Petroleum, Energy, Economics and Law (CPEEL), wants him “to look at the privatisation agreement especially the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005, if we must ensure the energy sector supports growth in the Nigerian economy”. The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) wants him to find solution to the labeling of Nigeria as “the poverty capital of the world” by tackling our economic challenges”. Guild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria (GPAAN), wants him to focus “on the imperative of restructuring of the polity away from the bloated centre” as well as ensuring his appointment to reflect federal character. The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) wants the president commitment on “judicial corruption, the establishment of special anti-corruption courts and removal of immunity for president, vice president, state governors and deputy governors.

    And finally, Ahmed Raji, (SAN), wants the president to ‘have a rethinking on the contentious issue of restructuring’ because according to him, the major problems of corruption and terrorism confronting Nigeria today are products of bad structure and model of government wondering how any leader can effectively fight corruption in a society where a contestant to the office of governor spends an average of N5 billion on the election”.

    Unfortunately, President Buhari’s ‘next level’ miracles and those of the agenda setters will not save us from ourselves. Our problem is more of politics than economics. Those who truly have faith in Nigeria know 80 percent of our self-inflicted crises will disappear if President Buhari and other stakeholders in the Nigerian project have the political will to address our crisis of nationality.

    After 30 years of failed military social engineering efforts and 20 years of failed ‘mainstreaming attempt by military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians, we are as divided today as we were before the civil war. The pattern of voting, violence and the acrimonies in the ongoing elections are manifestations of our crisis of nationality. The Ijaw nation is as resilient in their quest for self-actualisation today as they were when Isaac Boro first led an armed insurrection against the state in the early days of independence. The Bantus of Benue valley are as determined for self-actualization as their forbearers who refused to be treated as slaves by Fulani empire builders before and after independence. The lost secession war by the Igbo nation has only intensified their struggle for self-actualization within the greater Nigerian nation.

    Liberation of groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state cannot be achieved through miracles, deceit or attempt to take advantage of others but through genuine commitment to nation-building. President Buhari is a very lucky Nigerian. His re-election in spite of the conspiracy of all the elements – age, failing health, mischievous  Generals, errant elders; Christians without the spirit of Christ, cannot now be about miracles and battles he was prevented from waging even when he had the energy in the 1980s. I think the re-election provides him an historic opportunity to write his name in gold by serving as an honest arbiter in the resolution of the national question, just as the British did during our 1957 London Constitutional Conference.

  • Atiku’s burden and Buhari’s challenge

    President Buhari by INEC returns defeated Atiku Abubakar, his PDP opponent round and square in the February 23 presidential election. He scored 15,191,847 (55.6o %) to Atiku’s 11,191,847 (41.22%) leading with a margin of 3,918,870. The election was  adjudged free and fair across the nation by local and international observers save for  Rivers where unruly armed militants met their match in a well-equipped security personnel including the military whose conduct international observers also adjudged as ‘highly professional’.

    However, perhaps arising from his false sense of entitlement, Atiku, having  been in search of the plum job since 1992 when he first took part in SDP primaries which he lost to MKO Abiola; 2003 when he, with the aid of South-south governors led by James Ibori, attempted to deny Obasanjo a second term and as he changed party at every approach of election,( 2007 AC  2011, PDP  2014 APC, and 2019 PDP) rejected the result claiming he has never “in his democratic struggles for the past three decade, seen  our democracy so debased as it was on Saturday, February 23, 2019”. He has opted to challenge what he described as “result of the February 23, 2019 sham election” in court.

    It is perhaps only Atiku Abubakar, whose every action in office as vice president(1999-2007)was according to  Obasanjo, dictated by his reliance on marabouts and sorcerers who would downplay Buhari’s cult-like support among the poor in the north and his above average performance in the last four years to assume he would be a push-over. And it must have been the height of arrogance for Atiku who was bringing nothing beyond the scars of his 13 years duel with Obasanjo over who of the duo was more corrupt to assume he could defeat President Buhari known only for his integrity.

    Except  for the sane voice of Olisa Agbakoba who has counselled Atiku to “to move into the position of a statesman”  others, including some elders as ethnic irredentists who from the outcome of the election are unarguably out of tune with those they claim to speak for are urging him on.  They include Chief John Nwodo and his Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ango Abdullahi and his Northern Elders Forum, Ayo Adebanjo and his Afenifere as well as Chief Edwin Clark and his Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) who had while endorsing him before the election, told Nigerians Atiku was “the only candidate among many good candidates we interacted with who can retool Nigeria to move on the path of development as a true federal entity”. Urging Atiku to go to court, ‘they claimed without proof, that “The outcome of the elections was clearly premeditated in the refusal of the president to sign the Electoral Act and the orchestrated suspension of Justice Walter Onnoghen as the CJN shortly before the composition of electoral tribunals.”

    Other prominent leaders who urged Atiku to go to court  include former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar,  Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Winners Chapel’s Bishop David Oyedepo  and, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, all members of  Abubakar peace committee. We can add, Prophet Udoka Daniel Okechukwu, an Anambra-based pastor who had predicted Atiku’s victory.  He has urged Atiku to reject the result because “the outcome was not the will of God”.

    I share the sentiments of those who are urging Atiku to also take the battle to the next level. Such a move will provide a healing balm for injured egos of mischievous elders, prosperity prophets, Christians without the spirit of Christ, IPOB that had a last minute change of mind to allow voting in southeast allegedly on the promise of referendum, Atiku’s western sympathisers and business friends waiting to buy NNPC and Iran who allegedly chipped in some support for Atiku candidacy in the hope that Atiku presidency would grant amnesty to embattled Ibrahim Yaqoub El Zakzaky, leader of Shi’a Muslim Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN.

    But while Atiku is weighed down by the burden of taking the battle to the next level to please his disappointed supporters and betrayed sponsors at home and abroad, President Buhari by far faces a greater challenge by the nature of the clear message contained in the voting pattern of Nigerians in the February 23 election.

    Atiku might have lost the election but his outing was no less remarkable. Here was a man damaged beyond repairs through PDP intra-party struggle over the sharing of our confiscated assets, flying the flag of  a totally discredited PDP that pillaged the country for 16 years, going on to secure over 11 million votes in “an election that was in many ways a referendum on honesty” according  to New York Times editorial.

    The bulk of the 11million votes came from south-south and southeast where the impact of Buhari’s administration has been felt more in four years than during the previous 16 years of PDP. The only plausible explanation for this voting behaviour therefore can only be attributed to the nation’s unresolved national question or our crisis of nationality. It is instructive to note that what the two restive geo-political zones share in common is quest and struggle for self-actualisation. IPOB which has continued to hold the five south-eastern states and their governors’ hostage is agitating for independent state of Biafra. The south-south has since independence starting with Isaac Boro’s insurrection taken up arms against the state over the control of oil resources in their region. Poverty and lack of opportunity arising from destruction of rivers and land by multinational oil companies has led to renewed intensification of the struggle since the beginning of the fourth republic.

    The middle belt region notably Taraba, Plateau Benue and Adamawa that equally supported PDP and Atiku have long before the current mindless killing and confiscation of their land by migrating herdsmen, fought for self-actualization within the greater Nigerian nation state. The Tiv uprising was suppressed by the military power shortly after independence.

    The demands of the two northern geopolitical zones that massively voted Buhari are not necessary antithetical to those of the aforesaid three geopolitical zones. As the poorest areas of the country with the greatest number of unemployed youths and children out of school, they need development which cannot come from the current feeding-bottle federal arrangement but by organizing the area into viable geopolitical-zones with regional and local police to protect themselves and their territories from migrating herdsmen across the borders.

    Of course, the southwest is by nature federalists and has engaged in the struggle for restructuring of Nigeria along viable federal states since the collapse of the first republic.

    If President Buhari in his first term failed to take a cue from other heterogeneous and multicultural societies that adopted the federal arrangement to liberate individuals and groups in their societies from the tyranny of the state, the voting pattern during his second coming last week compels him to do so in order to end military imposed ‘mainstreaming” experiment consolidated by Obasanjo who embarked on forceful take-over of regional institutions including universities that are todays shadows of what they used to be.

  • Triumph of Nigerian voters

    Last Saturday, February 23, was a new day for Nigeria and Nigerian voters. It was a day of victory for ordinary Nigerian voters with faith in our electoral system, INEC the umpire and democracy that has been under assault of the political elite  who regard election as ‘a do or die affair’ and for whom democracy means only one thing – victory at the polls by all means fair or foul. The successful completion of an exercise that has allowed people to freely choose their leaders by INEC whose integrity Obasanjo and his PDP have sadly attempted to undermine, signifies the triumph of Nigerian voters.

    In the run up to last week’s election, Obasanjo had with neither restraint nor proof impulsively declared: “I personally have serious doubt about the present INEC’s integrity, impartiality and competence to conduct a fair, free and credible election”. Even with the scar of 2007 election considered the worst in our nation history, Obasanjo, projecting himself as a champion of democracy went on to add: “Democracy becomes a sham if elections are carried out by people who should be impartial and neutral umpires, but who show no integrity, acting with blatant partiality, duplicity and imbecility”.

    And writing off the current INEC even before the election took off, he without grace, appealed to “the international community to send more people to the field to observe and work out punitive measures ranging from denial and withdrawal of visas to other more stringent measures including freezing accounts of INEC and security officials especially the police and taking them to International Criminal Court ICC”.  This was coming from a leader who undermined all institutions of democracy-political parties, the legislature and the judiciary whose judges according to Audu Ogbeh, former PDP chairman, received bribes in foreign currency to sell justice to the highest bidder.

    And to demonise President Buhari, a spiteful Obasanjo offensively likened him to Abacha, the brutal dictator and his nemesis, saying “Today, another Abacha era is here. The security institutions are being misused to fight all critics and opponents of Buhari and to derail our fledgling democracy. EFCC, police and Code of Conduct Tribunal are also being equally misused to deal with those Buhari sees as enemies.” PDP was to add: “Obasanjo’s submission has also reinforced our position that President Buhari, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), having realised that there is no way he can win in a free and fair election, is now besieging all democratic institutions, including the judiciary, the legislature the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while engaging in acts that threaten the unity, peace and corporate existence of our dear nation”.

    But in what appeared a battle between  parasitic  beneficiaries of our dysfunctional system in Abuja, VGC Victoria Island and Port Harcourt – exclusive preserves of the leisured class, and impoverished Nigerians in Mushin, Ekiti, Kwara Jigawa,  and other neglected parts of our nation, where poverty strikes every visitor on the face, millions  of Nigerians undeterred by   Obasanjo’s unfounded  allegations and unwarranted assault on INEC and the president, demonstrated their faith in INEC, by coming out to elect leaders of their choice. They equally defied Obasanjo’s hypocritical western backers and their institutionsincluding the London Economist and its ‘satanic verses’.

    Neither were resolute Nigerian voters swayed by hate preaching of the jet-flying prosperity prophets who tried to exploit their religious fears at a period the Pope was in the middle-east to prove that but for the extremists, all adherents of the Abrahamic religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam are worshipping the same God.

    In Ekiti, an embarrassment called Fayose and his associates in the National Assembly with their baleful legacies of unpaid salaries, chicken farm and stomach infrastructure scam were swept away. In Oyo, the ‘constituted authority’ who regarded questions by students on his policy thrust on education as an affront was stopped from transiting from the governorship lodge to the senate chambers. Even in Kogi, the voters exercised their right to re-elect a jesting Dino Melaye as a senator. In Kwara, those that have been treated as properties of Saraki and his father, the owners of Kwara fiefdom for over 50 years, with a battle cry of “o to ge” finally liberated themselves. Godswill Akpabio, the invincible former governor of in Akwa Ibom lost his senate seat. Anambra settled for Ifeanyi Ubah who has spent the greater part of the last three years in and out of EFCC and DSS camps over oil deals. Kaduna Central Senatorial District asked fearless Senator Shehu Sani who besides exposing a well-kept secret of senators N14.5m monthly pay, also asked President Buhari to stop fighting corruption among his political foes with insecticide and his political sympathisers, with deodorant to return to his civil society advocacy engagements. The beauty of democracy is that people are allowed to make their own mistakes which they also have a chance to correct after four years.

    It was the triumph of the electorate over mischief-makers. The  ECOWAS  and Commonwealth observers, headed by former Tanzania President , Dr.JakayaKikwe, apart from observing that “Election related violence and loss of life, which occurred in a number of places, is deeply troubling and calling for those  responsible should be held accountable”, the interim report indicate the election was free, fair and transparent.  The EU interim report has also called attention to operational failures of INEC resulting in late arrival of election materials which led to delay in the commencement of voting in some areas’.

    With INEC’s successful completion of the exercise early on Wednesday morning, those who have since the birth of the fourth republic undermined the democratization process are again set to heat up the polity. Even while Prince Uche Secondus’ PDP was recording landslide victories after landslide victories in the party’s strongholds as predicted by pundits, he was preparing ground for another assault on democratisation process in the event PDP loses the election. He first issued a statement saying “all results currently being announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is incorrect thus unacceptable to our party and people.” At a time PDP was winning in opposition strongholds including Ondo and Edo, the APC chairman’s state, Secondus claimed “officials of both President Buhari’s government and the All Progressive Congress (APC), working with INEC officers, have tried to alter the course of history and disenfranchise our people through the cancellation and manipulation of figures”.

    Not done, Secondus also alleged, President Buhari “dispatched minister of the interior, to the Northwest, Secretary to the Government of the Federation to the northeast and the attorney-general to the Southeast and South-south regions, to perfect rigging of election whose results had been declared at every polling booth 12 hours earlier. He forgot to tell Nigerians that it was after the alleged dispatch that INEC announced PDP landslide victories in its strongholds of Akwa Ibom Ebonyi, Anambra and Plateau.  The inference from Secondus straight and crooked syllogism is that the election will only be seen as free and fair if PDP secures landslide and sea slide victories in opposition strong holds as NPN did in 1983.

    Such a deadly assault on democracy will not be without dire consequences. Secondus should realise Nigerians voting PDP are not all suffering from collective amnesia. Some do so because they genuinely have faith in market economy or the survival of the fittest and not necessarily because they share the views of a few rascals that ‘stealing government money is not corruption’. And there are those voting PDP because they were angry with Buhari and APC for not meeting expectations of Nigerians. Sixteen years of looting of our national resources and the documented repeated assault on our democratisation process as publicly attested to by former president, Obasanjo, former governor, Donald Duke, and former deputy senate president, Ibrahim Mantu, are not lost on Nigerian voters who now have more confidence in  their votes.