The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • 2019: We’ll get the government we deserve

    Struggle for power in Nigeria is a study in paradox. Awolowo who burnt the midnight candles to discover ‘the path to Nigeria’s freedom’, a path never taken, to our eternal damnation, an ill-equipped Obasanjo boasted he got on a platter of gold what Awo started struggling for while he, Obasanjo was a mere bare-footed school boy.  Zik, a foremost Nigerian nationalist who ‘eleczikfy’ the Nigerian press preaching liberation from colonial rule was sidelined when freedom came. The crown went to Tafawa Balewa of a fiercely anti-Fulani minority tribe from southern Bauchi, courtesy of Ahmadu Bello, who preferred the Northern Region premiership to Nigerian Prime Minister. MKO Abiola won a pan-Nigerian mandate; Babangida with Obasanjo’s support substituted his mandate with an illegal Interim National Government. Following his death in prison, Obasanjo was brought out of Abacha’s gulag to be crowned president. And while Obasanjo for eight years failed to acknowledge the immense contribution of Abiola to democracy, President Buhari, whose regime was toppled back in 1985 by Babangida coup bankrolled by Abiola, made justice denied him by Obasanjo, his kinsman possible.

    We must also add that Shehu Shagari wanted to be just a senator; Obasanjo admitted influencing his emergence as president after publicly stating the best candidate in the 1979 election didn’t have to win to spite Obafemi Awolowo, Shagari’s opponent. Obasanjo equally admitted aiding ailing Umaru Yar’Adua and an ill-prepared Goodluck Jonathan to power.

    As part of the paradox, the north had wanted a confederacy in 1953 but reluctantly accepted a federal arrangement they were allowed to control. The north sponsored the July 1966 coup to resist a unitary system instituted by Ironsi through decree 34 of 1966. Today as the greatest beneficiary of the current unitary system we fraudulently call federalism, they are opposed to a restructured workable federal arrangement in line with what we inherited from our founding fathers.

    And what can today be more paradoxical than Obasanjo and PDP who for 16 years destroyed the country through massive corruption, through ill-implemented self-serving privatization and monetization policies, now forming an alliance to stop Buhari’s second term for allegedly condoning corruption, among other reasons?

    Of course Buhari and his APC, many believe have not met the aspirations of Nigerians. Many feel betrayed that Buhari needed six months and over two years to constitute a cabinet and the boards of over 500 small governments that he needs to execute his party programme. They agonise over the president’s decision to surround himself with those who appear not to share his pan-Nigeria vision. It is equally no relief that due to the president’s error of omission, APC, the platform with which he secured his mandate for the greater part of the last three and half years,  displayed  instincts of factions with divergent tendencies interested only in power. The division in the party and the attendant crisis have overshadowed whatever efforts the president is making in tackling the party’s  eight-point cardinal programme viz  electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,   integrated transport network and free education, devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care.

    There are also concerned Nigerians who also believe the president has not risen to the challenges of modern government. By his opposition to restructuring, devolution of power, state policing etc., they say, is evidence of his lack of understanding of our national diversity and the reason why his approach to national divisive issues continues to fail to inspire confidence.

    But Obasanjo and PDP with his sabre-rattling Kola Ologbondiyan, its spokesman, are not prepared to allow Buhari to be haunted in the 2019 election by his personal inadequacies and his party’s failure to fulfill its electoral promises. Obasanjo, a master of political subterfuge, is fuelling intra party feuds within the APC while PDP spokesman deploys language of fear when not fabricating lies.

    Obasanjo who had on February 11, 2015, at the launch of his autobiography titled, My Watch, in Nairobi, Kenya said of Buhari “He is smart enough, he is educated enough. He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?” in January 23, wrote an open letter to Buhari, claiming his administration is “characterised by poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty and condonation of misdeed”. He followed up with the formation of a ‘Coalition for Nigeria Movement’ (CNM). The CBM has since been collapsed into the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the purpose of the 2019 election.

    But as part of the paradox, Obasanjo is not only not taking responsibility for his role as the father of PDP that has brought the nation to its knees in the last 16 years, he wants Nigerians to forget that he and Murtala Mohammed planted the seeds of today’s social dislocations back in 1975 with their destruction of the bureaucracy and the academia, two critical institutions without which a nation decays.

    It is also as if PDP wants to wish away its  baleful legacies which include wrecking of the aviation, pharmaceutical, textile industries through the importation of labour of other societies,  mad rush to build private universities with unexplained sources of fund after destroying the world class institutions they inherited, trading our refineries for fuel importation through which about 140 oil importers appointed by Ahmadu Alli, according to a house probe Stole N1.7 trillion; ill-implemented privatization programme through which they sold NITEL, a successful outfit that posted a profit of N53bn in 2002 to proxy company;   Daily Times with onshore and offshore assets including NSE House on Customs Street, for N1.2b; the entire Trade Fair Complex  for as low as N10bn; ALSCON, built with $3.2b dollars for $250m out of which only $130m was paid and, sharing 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs), among its members and sympathizers.

    The same PDP now says of Buhari: “Instead of fighting corruption, Buhari’s  administration is practically a felonious empire of corrupt individuals, certificate forgers, contract inflators, looters of treasuries and well-known liars, making it, ‘head to toe’, the biggest assemblage of plunderers in the history of our nation. Largely, due to the incompetence and corruption of the Buhari Presidency, our once robust economy has been wrecked, resulting in unbearable hardship, unemployment, hunger and starvation, strange sicknesses and untold depression with compatriots resorting to suicide missions and slavery as options”. PDP is “urging Nigerians not to despair especially as the 2019 general elections offer them the firm opportunity to vote out this inept administration and return a development-oriented and competent government on the platform of the repositioned and rebranded PDP.”

    Calling attention to the paradox of those who are now proclaiming themselves as our new redeemers is not a call for their rejection in 2019.  If frank and honest Buhari loses to slyness and deviousness, he should take solace in the fact that democracy, as Richard Geibis once observed shortly before the hand-over of Hong Kong by Great Britain to Mainland Chinese, is “the rule of the easily manipulated mob”.  A white supremacist mob recently elected a sly multi billionaire tax evader and women abuser, whose close aides claim does not know his left from his right, in America, the home of democracy. And finally as Alexis-Charles-de Tocqueville (1805-1859) a French political thinker put it in his ‘Democracy in America’, “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve”.

  • PMB vs. rule of law advocates

    President Buhari is very stiff. He is set in his ways. He believes his, is a messianic mission. He is therefore not out to please anyone including his party men, political foes or even the electorate. It is not he but others that lose sleep over his shooting of himself in the legs most of the times. Buhari doesn’t appear to give a hoot about winning or losing elections. If any proof was needed, his last week’s ‘the rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest’ provided that. A man who is thinking of an election in less than six months would have avoided such self-inflicted controversy.

    And come to think of it, the president no doubt knows that ‘rule of law’ is a department in which he is most vulnerable. He is the author of decrees two and four of 1984, through which journalists were jailed for reporting the truth. He has not been forgiven by patriots like Pa Ayo Adebanjo whose colleagues such as the late Professor Ambrose Alli, Olabisi Onabanjo and Pa Adekunle Ajasin were jailed like common criminals for deploying state resources to build universities and provide other welfare packages for their people without making a distinction between their noble objectives and those of their NPN and NPP colleagues who diverted foreign loans towards setting up private banks and marrying new wives. And worse still, back in 1984, he had a strong personality like Gani Fawehinmi who was prepared to swim against the tide by pointing out the hypocrisy within his legal profession to justify his support for Buhari’s abridgement of rule of law. Today, Buhari has few sympathisers.

    Meanwhile the constituency of his political foes has been enlarged with the coming of age of those who were neither born in 1984 nor can today articulate the battle Buhari is waging on their behalf. The enemy camp has been made more formidable with the intervention of some genuine pro-rule of law advocates who have nothing but contempt for military dictators. Of course, there are also the crooks and brigands, the target of Buhari’s anti-corruption war who are trying to use rule of law as excuse to evade prosecution for massive corruption. Added to the list  are also some institutions of state such as the legislature, the judiciary that habour not a few thieves  that have in the last three years deployed self-help tactics  to slow down his anti-corruption war.

    For President Buhari, Wole Soyinka, the conscience of the nation has a short advice. “The rule of law, he says, outlasts all ‘subverters’, however seemingly powerful”, adding that President Buhari has obviously given deep thought to his travails under a military dictatorship, and concluded that his incarceration was also in the ‘national interest’.  But for Pa Ayo Adebanjo, “For his statement that the rule of law is under the state security, it is time to tell the president that the statement is treasonable”. Like his fellow lawyers, Femi Falana insists, national security is subject to rule of law. He however admitted that “it has however  to be conceded that under a democratic dispensation the fundamental rights of individuals may be suspended in certain circumstances, citing  section 45(1) which says that “Nothing in sections 37,38,39,40 and 41 of this Constitution shall invalidate any law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society:(a) In the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health; or (b) For the purpose of protecting the rights and freedom of other persons.”

    Of course for the NBA, “Any national security concerns by the government must be managed within the perimeters and parameters of the rule of law”, while for the body’s newly elected president, Paul Uzoro, “The NBA’s significant role is “to serve as the watchdog of society and, in the process, call the government to account.”

    And finally, there is the PDP, the patron of those charged with corruption whose intention is to use the bogey of the rule of law to escape justice. The party has no restraint in making wild and unproven claims of “documented disobedience to court orders, extra-judicial and arbitrary executions, unlawful arrests and political detentions, killing of persons in custody, torture and excessive use of force by security forces on innocent citizens.”

    But I sympathise with those uncompromising rule of law idealists. As an ideal, rule of law has many advantages according to “The World Justice Project (WJP)”, an independent, multi-disciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law worldwide. It says “effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protect people from injustice large or small. It is the foundation of communities of equity, opportunity and peace-underpinning development, accountable government and respect for fundamental rights”.

    But that is only if we view rule of law as work in progress. For even in no one is above the law America where Thomas Paine as far back as 1776 boasted “in America, the law is king” and where by 1780, John Adams was already seeking for the establishment of “a government of law and not of men”; rule of law cannot be said to be a concluded enterprise. This was perhaps why the late Gani Fawehinmi who fought along Buhari in 1984 defying his professional colleagues had no illusion. For him “strengthening rule of law is a never ending process; no society ever attains let alone sustain a perfect crystallisation of rule of law”.

    Were he to be alive today, perhaps a more compelling reason why he would have pitched his tent with Buhari is our failure to meet up with “four universal principles, adopted by The World Justice Project, a body in which he played an active role when he was alive, for measuring the effectiveness of rule of law. They include: accountability of government as well as private actors under the law;  just and evenly applied laws; accessibility of the  processes by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced; and lastly,  timely deliverance of justice by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals who are accessible, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

    Unfortunately, of the four pre-conditions, all those bitten by the ‘rule of law’ bug have focused only on the sovereign and his human frailties to drive fears into our minds. They conveniently ignore the other three variables without which rule of law remains what it is, an ideal. How can we talk of rule of law within the framework of the 1999 constitution described by some eminent lawyers as Abdulsalami’s Decree 24 which arbitrarily created more LGAs to be funded from the federation account for a geographical zone at the expense of the areas that generated the revenue? How just are the new rules on revenue allocation instituted by the dominant ethnic groups that had insisted on revenue allocation based on derivation before oil became the mainstay of the nation’s economy?

    Obasanjo in office tampered with rule of law in order to confront crooks and miscreants. China and Singapore and many developed nations before them temporarily abridged rule of law to liberate their poor from those who want freedom for themselves but demand for a state cover to preside over empire of slaves. We cannot eat our cake and have it.

    That we agreed in the first place to give up our freedom and liberty for the protection of an elected sovereign presupposes he is better placed to articulate the national interest during his limited reign. Crooks and brigands are not in a position to tell us if ours is a state of lawlessness.  In less than six months we will have an option to choose between an unrepentant Buhari who strongly believes he has a date with posterity and his current political foes.

     

  • Nigeria’s priestly class and corruption

    Both the Christian Holy Bible and Islamic Holy Quran consider man as the crown of God’s creation endowed with immense powers. With great powers however come great responsibilities. But man, sociologists believe, want an unfettered freedom while at the same time wants to preside over an empire of slaves. The purpose of religion in society according to the Abrahamic faiths especially (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) therefore is to tame man, promote co-existence by guiding against corruption in order to prevent bloodshed between those who don’t have and those who have taken more their proportionate share of a nation’s resources. Those called upon to adjudicate in the deadly battle between deprivation and avarice is the priestly class.

    Men and women who belong to this special group wield enormous powers because of their ability to control the wills and strength of ordinary people whose rebelliousness could lead to social dislocations. As it happens, they don’t need an army. Their only weapon is setting the moral tone. Once this is done, even governments elected to implement various laws propounded by thinkers and philosophers over the ages to ensure man does not destroy himself, are guided by the moral tone set by the priestly class.  As The Guardian of London recently argued in an editorial, “a moral society is not created out of laws. Indeed, such laws are a sign that a society‘s morality has failed. In a society with a substantial moral foundation, such laws would not be needed.” (The Guardian of London, September 7, 1999). Once the priestly class sets the moral tone, politicians are expected to lead by example.

    Much is therefore expected from the priestly class. This was perhaps why Jesus Christ, the greatest teacher, social crusader and mankind’s saviour from Nazareth descended heavily on the priestly class of His days: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees; you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint and dill and cumin. But you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy and faith, and for serving as blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Mathew 23:23-26).

    And come to think of it. It is as if Christ was speaking to the priestly class in Nigeria and some other African societies that are currently experiencing moral decline. For instance, to ensure the priestly class is prepared and knowledgeable about the role of religion in society, Paul Kagame , the president of Rwanda recently admitted to “closing down 6000 churches and demanding a degree in theology for every religious leader to stop playing people’s faith to make business”.

    Not too long ago here in Nigeria, Vice President (pastor) Yemi Osinbajo, in a message to his fellow pastors during the recently concluded 30th National Biennial Conference of the Students Christian Movement (SCM) of Nigeria held in Enugu, reminded them that “The story of our country is about good and evil. It is about those that have left us in this condition by stealing our common resources…Very rarely do you hear our preachers talk about corruption from their pulpits. If a nation is not righteous, nothing will help it.”

    Of course we know our priestly class has been accomplices in the moral decline of our society since the collapse of the first republic. In the fourth republic, a section of the priestly class under the umbrella of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) led by prosperity prophets claiming to be holier than the Pope who they in fact said is not a Christian, joined the enemies of the nation by trading their priestly cloaks for dirty lucre. Those ordained to set moral tone for the country deployed their private jets to help government launder money to South Africa and other undisclosed areas. On their part, Muslim clerics sold grace to President Jonathan and his PDP government amount running into billions of naira.

    Governors who illegally and immorally usurped mandates freely given to their political opponents by the electorate as well as other criminal elements currently in court facing EFCC charges of fraud found accommodation in churches. Governor Jonah Jang, after losing a keenly contested Nigeria Governor’s Forum chairmanship election to Governor Rotimi Amaechi by 14 to 17 with the support of President Jonathan proclaimed himself the winner and proceeded to the church for a victory thanksgiving.

    Not much has changed under President Buhari. The clerics kept their peace when one of their own, Babachir Lawal, President Buhari’s ex-Secretary to the Government of the Federation was indicted by two probes for awarding contracts to a company in which he allegedly had an interest. Before then, all we heard from the Muslim clerics ordained to set the moral tone when Bukola Saraki told a shocked nation how he inelegantly assumed the leadership of the senate to spite his party, was a deafened silence. It was not different when Ike Ekweremadu regaled on how he spent a whole night with stalwarts of his party in David Mark’s sitting room plotting how to receive deputy senate president seat which by convention belongs to the ruling party but which Saraki was ready to sell off to consolidate his immorally acquired position. Besides throwing a party, he also had a church thanksgiving in his village. And when he was briefly detained recently by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged fraud by failing to explain how he came to own 22 properties in Nigeria, the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates as a public officer since 1999, which he failed to declare in his Asset Declaration Form at the Code of Conduct Bureau, a number of Bishops in their shining white clerical cloaks, rather than wait for him in their churches, chose to take the prayers to him in his Asokoro official residence. A picture of sober deputy senate president kneeling down with the clerics placing their hands on his head went viral on the social media.

    Even the often more restrained Catholic Bishops who justifiably recently sent a letter to President Buhari accusing government of “standing back while its security agencies deliberately turn a blind eye to the cries and wails of helpless and armless citizens who remain sitting ducks in their homes, farms, highway and now, even in their sacred places of worship” has not spoken forcefully enough against corrupt elements. If anything, from the comments of some Bishops, the church’s stand seems to be ‘let us forge ahead and forget yesterday’ as if there can be tomorrow without today’.

    It is not just that the clerics have conveniently avoided speaking against corruption, the source of the nation’s current travails, many clerics have continued to see only prophesy of doom for the nation. The other day one said “I prophesied before Yar’Adua travelled to Saudi Arabia and died, I prophesied before Jonathan became president and also said that Buhari will win. So if Buhari messes up, I will be directed by God to tell him, Buhari where is the change you promised?”

    There was another cleric who claimed, that “the Holy Ghost revealed to him before Muhammadu Buhari was voted in as president, that his reign would bring doom to Nigerians.”

    Of course we have some of their clients such as Femi Fani-Kayode who recently claimed that “Not only has the Lord rejected Buhari…he will he be disgraced out of office with shame and ignominy”, without telling us if his source is controversial Ayo Fayose who he had described as a prophet following his victory over Fayemi in 2014, a victory which according to EFCC was obtained with a N3billion war chest, funds from the then President Jonathan.

    What we need is a moral society. But the priestly class must first set the moral tone.

     

  • Oshiomhole’s crusade

    By refusing to call a spade by its proper name, Nigerians allowed evil to triumph for so long. While we play the ostrich and our former leaders are either busy praying for miracles, playing God or speaking from both sides of the mouth, comedians, fraudsters and opportunists take over the affairs of our nation.  Gone were those days when Nigerians were assured no anti-Nigeria government policies will go unchallenged by the likes of Awolowo, Aminu Kano Gani Fawehinmi, Alao Aka Bashorun and many others from other geo-political zones of the country.

    For embarking on a crusade starting with his party to change this narrative, Adams Oshiomhole has come under severe stress and strain in recent days. He first identified what has no other name than indolence and impunity within the presidency and among the president’s appointees.  He moved on to describe the senate president as someone lacking in honour and integrity for inelegantly securing his position through subterfuge, using the office to undermine the ruling government policies for over three and half years and now  refusing to step down as senate president after decamping to the party with a minority in the senate.

    What he got from those who have become accustomed APC leaders playing the ostrich has been all round condemnation. Some have questioned his intellectual preparedness for managing a political party as diverse as APC. Others said his unionist background did not adequately prepare him for challenges of running a big political party. For many others who do not understand democracy is only a process for attaining power through political parties which even those who have no faith in the democratisation process such as Adolf Hitler in Germany in late 1930s and Donald Trump in today’s USA are ready to use to outwit the real owners of the weapon, Oshiomhole’s crusade to rebuild his party has become a threat to democracy.

    But Oshiomhole having observed the travails of his APC before becoming its chairman appreciates the role of disciplined political party in checking social dislocations in society. This became clear during his August 14 historic meeting with only loyal APC lawmakers when he “had wondered aloud how we are going to be able to sustain a political party which ought to be built and formed on the basis of shared ideas, shared values, shared commitment, how we could have a political party in which we have the far right, the far left, the communist, the fascist”. There is no doubt he has a fair idea about the important role disciplined political parties can play in checking social dislocations in society.

    Just as industrial and social revolutions in Europe were closely linked to the emergence of political parties as agents of modernization, the giant strides made by our founding fathers in areas of education, industrialization, infrastructural development were through the instrumentality of the political parties. Unfortunately these structures as well as industries established to guarantee a more egalitarian society were sold by the military under Babangida’s commercialization and Obasanjo’s privatization programmes.

    Besides destroying the legacies of disciplined pre-independence political parties, they also abridged our political socialization process by banning them thereby cutting off the umbilical cord that ties the mother with the baby unlike what we have in other societies such as USA, Britain, and Germany Japan where some political parties have endured for over a century.

    The fact that the parties that emerged during the second republic –  NPN, NPP, UPN took their roots from NPC, NCNC and AG was not enough to convince Babangida that there cannot be today without yesterday. He arrogantly went on to decree his own two political parties SDP and NRC, according to him “to prevent those who would squander our investments from attaining power through breeding of new breed leaders that will detest the culture of deceit, election as well as culture of violence and fraud”. Unfortunately that is exactly what we have today.

    Abacha was more hilarious. He decreed five parties described as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’ by late Bola Ige, all of which nominated him as their presidential candidate.

    The PDP emerged from the G-34 during General Abubakar’s 11-month transition programme. But it was soon hijacked by retired soldiers and their contractors. It was described by Campbell, as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’.

    Audu Ogbeh, a former PDP chairman validates Campbell’s thesis by saying, “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil.”

    The view was also affirmed by Doyin Okupe, President Jonathan’s attack dog, who following Yoruba leaders’ visit to Jonathan to complain of marginalization, said “In things that are not enough, when people sit down to share and take decisions, if there is nobody to speak for you, there is problem”. 

     

    With the above baleful legacies of the military, this column in a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu January 31, 2013, “is inauguration of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies”.

    Unfortunately both have failed the nation. After the election, lionized by a segment of the press, and hijacked by a kitchen cabinet who did not share his pan-Nigeria agenda, Buhari who could not manage a party he personally set up, shut out those know how to manage political parties. Now realising his vulnerability in the2019 election after naively allowing Saraki to undermine his administration and destabilise the patty for three years, he has sought the help of those who know how to manage political parties.

    Oshiomhole has made it clear he is in charge of the party. He has threatened to expel minsters who are taking the advantage of fatherly disposition of the president to give the party a bad name. He has also moved over to the legislature where for over three and half years those elected on the party platform have behaved like prostitutes. His query to Saraki for anti-party activities forced him back to PDP where he naturally belongs. But Oshiomhole has however insisted he must step down honourably or be impeached because in a democracy, while the minority can have their say, the majority will ultimately have their way.

    Saraki rather than do the honourable thing has shut down the senate and has been holding world press conferences to position Oshiomhole as a threat to democracy. Saraki who inelegantly took over the senate with the support of 42 opposition senators after dis-enfranchising his 52 APC senators now says the stability of our budding democracy can only be guaranteed if he and Ekweremadu, both PDP senators as part of a total of PDP 49 senators are, against the letter and spirit of the constitution, allowed to continue to sabotage the agenda of a democratically elected government with a majority of 56 senators.

    Between Adams Oshiomhole and Bukola Saraki, Nigerians and the international community know who is a greater threat to democracy.

  • Holding the nation to ransom

    Sadly the ongoing war of attrition among members of the political elite has nothing to do with the protection of institutions of democracy – political parties, executive, legislature, the judiciary, the press and civil society organisations, all of which have come under serious threat in recent years.

    It similarly has little to do with Nigerians, 70% of who live below the poverty line. It is all about holding on to a disproportionate share of our resources by the political ruling elite. The truth is that a journey through memory shows only few Nigerian politicians are driven by noble objectives while a great many are unscrupulous egomaniacs who only think about themselves. Link the past with the ongoing drama, defections and political intrigues that have come to define the journey to 2019, one discovers it is all about social Darwinism or survival of the fittest.

    In the battle over illegal sharing of our national resources back in 2013, Saraki became an unexpected whistle-blower over the theft of N1.7trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings through the fuel subsidy scam. Then his PDP family members claiming, a part cannot be holier than the whole, identified a company in which he allegedly had an interest as a beneficiary.  It was that PDP family quarrel over sharing of looted resources that drove Saraki from PDP to APC.

    Similarly, his current war which started with a gale of defections by his foot soldiers in the National Assembly from the ruling APC to PDP has less to do with democracy but more with getting maximum dividends on his investment in APC. His defection along with some of his like-mind senators in his own words was because “the experience of my people and associates in the past three years that have suffered alienation and have been treated as outsiders in their own party”. In a press conference that followed, he also complained that he and Dogara were left out when President Buhari presided over the sharing of over 200 juicy positions.

    Oshiomhole has however accused Saraki of selling the victory of his party for a pot of porridge by trading off the deputy senate president position to consolidate his position. According to him, “Saraki did not stop at that, but went further to appoint senators to head strategic committees whose activities could affect the workings of government and the relationship between the executive and the legislature”. Oshiomhole also says his refusal to step down after decamping from APC “portrayed Saraki as a person whose personal interest always comes first before any other interest, including national interest”, adding that “Senator Saraki has demonstrated neither character nor being a man of honour.”

    Itse Sagay agreed with Adams Oshiomhole saying “he should relinquish his position as a matter of honour. He got there because he was in APC even though he got there by subterfuge and in a cheeky, fraudulent manner which is typical of him”. Omo-Agege, Saraki’s political foe weighed in saying “the moment Saraki defected from the APC to the minority party, PDP, he no longer has the moral, political and legal rights to remain as the senate president”.

    But for Saraki, acquiring and retaining the senate presidency seems to be a matter of life and death. Hiding under a constitutional provision that says he could only be impeached by two-third of the senate, he dared APC to mobilise the needed 73 members for such an impossible endeavour. Senator Olujimi, Fayose’s deputy during his first coming as Ekiti State governor introduced a new dimension. Since APC senators did not make Saraki senate president, why should they be talking of removing him? She queried. “Again, how many of them were party to our electing the senate president? Just a handful of them, it was majorly by PDP senators. Out of the 53 votes he got, we gave him 42 of them. So, what are they talking about? They should be rational”; she admonished. But Nigerians still remember Saraki’s confession of how he hid inside a small car in front of the senate building from about 5am to 9am to outwit his 52 APC senators at a meeting elsewhere with the president before sneaking into the senate chambers to be adopted senate president mainly by the opposition.

    For fear of impeachment, Saraki who hurriedly shut down the senate for two months holiday after his defection, is not taking chances. Last week, after announcing reconvening by principal officers of the National Assembly to consider some urgent request from the executive at 12 pm, those who turned up at 7am to confront hooded DSS men were ordinary members, selected social media warriors and some thugs who Saraki and senator Bassey described as Civil Society Groups that share PDP passion for democracy.

    The news of a siege on NASS spread like wild fire. Then Saraki who suddenly emerged from nowhere at about 8am for a meeting he had scheduled for 12pm was mobbed by the crowd who instantly broke in to victory songs. Addressing his media and supporters, he alleged that DSS had an advance list of APC members to be allowed into the council chambers to impeach him. Before then Senator Bruce had sold a dummy to Nigerians through Channels Television claiming APC senators already allowed in through the back door were holed-up inside the senate chambers preparing to impeach the senate president.  It turned out both were wrong as APC members were nowhere near the assembly.

    The sack of Lawal Daura, the DSS boss by acting president did not however stop Saraki from holding a world press conference the following day to claim: “The siege was also an act of cowardice by those seeking to carry out an illegal impeachment of the leadership of the senate in flagrant disregard of the law.” He went on to blame “People who seek control at all costs, by whatever means, never minding the injury to democratic norms”. He thanked “CSOs and socio-cultural groups who were emphatic in their statements during the crisis.” Saraki probably thinks Nigerians are fools.

    But speaking for APC, its acting spokesman, Yekini Nabena, claimed, their own investigation “uncovered the sinister plot hatched by the senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to foment violence in the legislative chamber, all in a bid to stop his impeachment. Presence of only PDP lawmakers as early as 7am for a meeting scheduled for 12, was “ a pre-emptive move to frustrate federal lawmakers’ move to impeach him”, he stated.

    Then Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP spokesman also announced that his party discovered a plot by the ruling APC to use the EFCC to arrest Saraki and his deputy. The detention of the duo, he said, would enable ”the APC senators to produce two of their members as senate president and deputy senate president”, as if that is a crime for the ruling party.

    Senators Saraki and Basey who could not explain why it was only PDP senators, their selected media, and those many believed were thugs camouflaging as civil society groups that were at the National Assembly at 7am, had argued it was only a probe that would address those issues. The acting president acceded to their demand. But even before the body was inaugurated, they issued a statement claiming the probe was meant to ensnare Saraki and Elweremadu. Then last Tuesday, Saraki’s men went to court to restrain government from using EFCC to arrest Saraki and Ekweremadu.

    Dear compatriots, there is always something new from our country. We once had a senate president, David Mark, who sought and got the court’s nod to keep senate president mansion EFCC accused him of selling to himself at an amount far below the market price. PDP press and civil society groups celebrated that as victory for democracy and rule of law. Today we have a senate president, Saraki who is celebrating a democratic absurdity where he as an opposition member runs a critical section meant for a democratically elected government while his press and civil society groups hail him as defender of separation of powers. That could not have been the intention of the framers of our constitution.

  • In defence of new national carrier

    After three years of planning, “the name, logo, colour scheme, structure, and types of aircraft of Nigeria’s national carrier were unveiled at Farnborough International Public Airshow on July 18, in London”. The government, according to the aviation minister, has set aside an initial $300 million and another $8.8 million for the airline’s take-off, covering aircraft acquisition and running costs for three years. Five of the projected 30 aircraft planned over five years are expected in Nigeria by December 19. The new national carrier, we are told, would operate 40 domestic, regional and sub-regional and 41 international routes. Other details include the selection of 81 routes for the commencement of operation of Nigeria Air. The minister listed some of the advantages of the new venture as job creation for pilots, aircraft engineers and other professionals; and Nigeria’s use of 78 Bilateral Air Service Agreements it had with other countries since 1970. And finally, we are assured the government had learnt a lot of lessons from the experience of the defunct Nigeria Airways, and was now determined not to repeat the mistakes.

    Of course these assurances have not stopped concerned Nigerians from expressing some anxiety about government involvement in business especially in the light of what a Punch newspaper editorial recently described as “monument of waste” covering the defunct national air carrier and national shipping line, the four public refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, of Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Company and Nigeria Railways Corporation”.

    There are also those who believe government ownership of airlines is no more in vogue citing the privatization of British Airways after almost 80 years. Others also wondered why government want to dabble into an area where even  privately run local airlines such as Albarka, Okada, Oriental, Concord, Harka, EAS, Triad, Harco, Savannah, Bellview, ADC airlines, are known not to have survived our   hostile business environment.

    Of course, playing the opposition game, the PDP has expressed doubt about the viability of the project. For Ologbondiyan, the party’s spokesperson, “the Buhari-led administration is on a fantasy trip to beguile Nigerians and pave further ways for its humongous corruption”.

    But let us first address the fears of those who are apprehensive about state involvement in business especially in airline operations where both government and the private sector are on record as having failed the nation. The failure of both in my view underscores the need for a national carrier since the nation as a matter of honour cannot be expected to put her fate in the hands of foreign airlines. Having established that, I think the challenge for us is to find explanation for the failure of public enterprises and their private investor inheritors.

    We must start by admitting state intervention in public enterprises is not new. The western societies having realised since the 1940s that market economy which is about the survival of the fittest cannot bring national development adopted the Keynesian macroeconomic model which supports government intervention in order to create an egalitarian society. Nigerian founding fathers also keyed into this by adopting adopted public enterprises as vehicles for development. Building on Nigeria Railway Corporation, National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and about 50 other public enterprises inherited at independence, Ahmadu Bello built the biggest business conglomerate in Africa just as Awolowo made giant strides in education, communication and agriculture.

    Of course back then the public enterprises performed their statutory roles because of the quality of leadership of NCNC, NPC and AG. The railways worked because the leader did not have private jets or bullet-proof cars. The hospitals worked because they would not use public fund to seek medical attention outside the country. And of course NEPA worked because they, like those they led, depended on it. They were also not patrons to importer of generators.

    The problem therefore is not government involvement in business but the character of our new inheritors of power after the civil war. Between Babangida’s self-serving commercialisation policies and Obasanjo’s ill-implemented privatization policies, Nigerian investment of over a $100b was sold off for about $1.5b. Policies and enterprises they later inaugurated or set up were designed to help themselves and members of the political class. Thus Obasanjo’s OFN only benefitted Obasanjo and some retired generals who took advantage of the Land Use Decree to confiscate other people’s land across the country.

    With Obasanjo as president in 2003, the Bill for the establishment of Petroleum Products, Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) was passed into law and assented to by Obasanjo within three months even though PIB law had been pending for five years. PPPRA with staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, earning a scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion, became a vehicle through which PDP stalwarts and their children according to House report, forged documents to defraud the nation to the tune of N1.7trillion in one year.

    Under President Jonathan, stalwarts of PDP or their fronts allegedly bought PHCN (the DISCOs and GENCOs). And as if to confirm that, Jerry Gana, a stalwart of PDP, led a delegation of beneficiaries of PHCN sale to beg government to buy equity shares in their new companies, solicit for import duty waivers as well as plead for government bailouts. The Punch newspaper editorial was to lament: “It is little wonder that the government, after selling the power sector to private operators, is still interested in arranging a N213 billion bailout for them”.

    As for the PDP and its spokesman, they probably think Nigerians have short memories. But we have all not forgotten how a PDP effort to bequeath to Nigeria a befitting national carrier was sabotaged by PDP vultures. Princess Stella Oduah, the then minister of aviation at a stakeholders meeting presented a report of how “foreign airlines swindle Nigeria of about N3.7 billion yearly, violate Nigeria’s aviation laws and how foreign airline like British Airways swindle Nigerians by charging non-competitive fare of $10,070 for a First Class return seat from Abuja to London while the same facility through Accra costs $4,943,” to support the need for a national carrier.

    But Amos Akpan, the Managing Director of Capital Airlines was to argue that “the money the airlines make is not enough to pay for the cost of their operation and service their debts”. This was followed by insistence of   the Managing Director of Jimoh Ibrahim’s defunct ‘Air Nigeria’, Kinfe Kahssaye, that ‘the key way to ensure that Nigerian airlines return to profitability is for the federal government’s support in terms of finance or tax waivers. After the arguments of these airline stakeholders who can also pass for PDP stalwarts, the minister of aviation, against the CBN advice, vowed through FAAN spokesman, Yakubu Dati, that government had ‘concluded arrangement to purchase 30 brand new aircraft for airlines to boost their operations.

    But records show as at the time PDP left government in 2015, that domestic airlines like Arik, Aero and Air Nigeria whose managing director led the crusade and got N35.5 billion government bailout, were owing AMCON over $700m debt.

    Where PDP frittered away $500m airline intervention fund on PDP stalwarts posing as airline stakeholders, Buhari has promised to give the nation a national carrier with “$300 million and another $8.8 million for the airline’s take-off, covering aircraft acquisition and running costs for three years”.

    If public enterprises and their private sector inheritors have failed in recent times, it is probably because they were designed to fail. For instance, the current 350 Nigerians who appear to be ready to forfeit their assets rather than repay AMCON for their N1trillion toxic debt seem to confirm Professor Akinyemi’s thesis that most Nigerian billionaires made their monies through the state.

  • Saraki’s wars and victories

    Modern senates modelled after the original Roman senate whose essence, besides making laws, amending budget or repealing public policy and guarantee freedom and prevent tyranny, are meant to be chambers of “sober second thought” and are often made up of men of honour. Rather than strive towards these ideals, our senate since the birth of the fourth republic seem to approximate everything that is wrong with our nation – corruption, greed, treachery impunity and vileness. Saraki’s current 8th senate regarded by many Nigerians as the worst in our nation’s history, in addition boasts of not a few comedians and men without ambition.

    Bukola Saraki, inheritor of a fiefdom called Kwara State is and cannot be a democrat. It is therefore not a surprise that while swearing in the name of democracy, this veteran of civilian coup has done everything but promote the ideals of democracy in the last three years. Like Adolph Hitler, he is however not averse to using democrat’s tools such as parties and elections to fight democrats. His latest coup could therefore only have come as a surprise to some naïve leaders of APC who ought to have used the big stick when Saraki first demonstrated his lack of discipline to be a member of a political party which like a cult group has no room for traitors. His latest coup bore the hallmark of his style – some drama and some theatrics while assaulting the very basis of democracy.

    We woke up last week to be greeted with the news of a siege by security forces on the homes of Senate President Saraki and his deputy, Senator Ike Ekweremadu. Saraki’s spokesperson, Yusuf Olaniyonu, told Premium Times: “As I am talking to you, I cannot access the street. They have barricaded the road and I cannot say his whereabouts now.” The media aide to Ekweremadu, Uche Anichukwu, also confirmed the siege. Asked whether his principal would be in the senate plenary, he said “That I cannot say. When you attack a man’s house, how is he supposed to be at plenary?”  While Ekweremadu was far away from the said besieged house, Saraki was in the senate chambers presiding over the defection of some his vociferous supporters led by Dino Melaye to the opposition PDP.

    The police statement that “The police personnel seen in pictures in the media were those in the convoy of the senate president and others attached to him and that there was no authorized deployment of police personnel to besiege the residence of the senate president or his deputy as reported in the media” did not stop Prince Uche Secondus, PDP chairman and Kola Ologbodiyan, the party’s spokesman from holding a world press conference to accuse the president of an assault on democracy.  It also did not stop PDP stalwarts including Senator Ben Bruce who AMCON alleged owes N11billion toxic loan and Olisa Metuh, erstwhile PDP spokesman who has in the last two years appeared in courts where he is facing corruption charges on wheel chair or on a stretcher to celebrate the triumph of democracy with Ekweremadu and defecting senators entertained by Dino Melaye’s new release titled “PDP is good. There is everything for everybody in PDP”.

    The same drama and theatrics preceded Saraki’s first coup against his party in June 2015. He had then told a shocked nation how he hid inside a small car parked in front of the senate chambers for about four hours to outwit his fellow APC 52 elected senators having a meeting with the president before sneaking into the Senate chambers to be adopted senate president by acclamation by 49 PDP senators and eight APC senators. Itse Sagay had back then 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 a Faculty of Law, Bayero University Kano had 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. But for him and his supporters, it was a victory for democracy.

    Hailed as a champion of democracy by a segment of the press after ceding the control of senate with 60 APC majority to PDP with 49 senators, denied his party the right to choose its leaders and traded off the deputy senate position which by convention belongs to the ruling party with a majority to Ekweremadu who had by the same convention occupied the position as David Mark’s deputy for eight years, he was ready to take on the nation.

    Since he started his political career fresh from a medical school in Britain as Obasanjo special assistant on budgeting, he decided his war for democracy must start with budget padding. The major actor in budget preparation is the executive since a government budget is the political tool with which government in power fulfils its electoral promises to the electorate.  The legislature debates, examines and authorizes spending of public revenue while areas of joint cooperation between it and the executive include implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. But Saraki who has never known failure has other ideas.

    Thus when the 2016 Budget submitted to the House in December 2015 was returned some five months later, Audu Ogbeh, the agriculture minister was the first to claim he and his team discovered 386 “strange” projects worth N12.6billion inserted by the National Assembly after reducing the ministry’s budget proposals from N40, 918 billion to N31.618 billion to accommodate their own constituency projects. The Minister of Transport raised similar alarm about the cancellation of the Lagos – Calabar rail project to accommodate N3b National Assembly constituency projects such as provision of tricycles, town halls, classrooms, solar street lights, and pedestrian bridges.

    The 2018 budget suffered the same fate. The National Assembly, according to President Buhari, had made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion. While many of the projects cut according to the president “are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation”, some of the new projects inserted by the National Assembly have not been properly conceptualised, designed and cost and will, therefore, be difficult to execute.”  But for Saraki and his supporters, it was a triumph of democracy.

    Long before the collapse of his trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, ever confident Saraki had dismissed his trial as an assault on democracy. The weighty allegations by Michael Wetkas, a detective with EFCC before a tribunal that  Saraki as governor diverted Kwara State government funds to pay loans he took to buy properties through his aides, one of whom lodged between N600,000 and N900,000 in the former governor’s account 50 times on a particular day were attributed to enemies of democracy. So was his  allegation that ‘Saraki collected salary as the governor of Kwara State for about four years after completing his second term in 2011’ . Even when it was confirmed by Secretary to the Kwara State Government, Isiaka Gold that N578, 188.00 which increased to N1, 239,493.94 monthly from October, 2014 was paid to Saraki not as salary but as pension, his supporters only hailed their champion of democracy.

    The strength of Saraki lies in the weakness of APC. This is why Saraki is thirsty for more blood. Last week after arrogantly directing his most strident supporters in the senate to decamp to PDP and ordering his Kwara APC constituency to join PDP, he gave no indication he was about to honourably vacate the senate presidency seat he has for three and half years deployed not for serving the country but to wage personal wars with eyes on personal victories.

  • Character of Ekiti voters and leaders

    Chinua Achebe’s “Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching (Things Fall Apart). It will appear Ekiti voters who decided to sell their votes during July 14 governorship elections have finally seen through the hollowness and hypocrisy of the same set of cynical leaders that have taken them for a ride these past 19 years. Voters behaviour during the election was evidence enough that those who opted to sell their votes did not see much difference between leaders who do not understand that democracy as a process is not just about self-righteousness but also requires some sense of humour, common touch and respect for the views of the governed, and those who fraudulently claim serving is a matter of life and death whether the people wanted them or not. If voters who sold their votes are prostitutes, how about the fair-weather leaders who do not seem to believe in anything?

    We can trace the collapse of our political socialization process to Babangida and Abacha’s 13 years of fraudulent transition programme that produced our current ‘new breed’ politicians that bred nothing but greed. Obasanjo’s eight years of failed ‘mainstreaming’ through which he destroyed all budding political parties finally ended a political socialization process that started back in the 1923 with the inauguration of Herbert Macaulay’s ‘People Democratic Party’, the first political party in Nigeria.

    Since the led look up to their leaders for direction, it can be argued that voters who behaved like prostitutes by opting to sell their votes to the highest bidders during the July 14 governorship election were only following the foot-steps of their   political leaders.

    Let us start with Ayo Fayose. He was rigged into power by Obasanjo’s PDP in 2003. Following his impeachment in 2006, he sought accommodation in the Labour Party under whose platform he contested for a senatorial seat which he lost to Babafemi Ojudu. He then briefly flirted with Action Congress party before ex-President Jonathan who was desperate to use Ekiti as a springboard for his 2015 doomed re-election bid, provided N4.7b, thousands of policemen, soldiers and other security personnel to rig sitting governor, Kayode Fayemi out of office in 2014. Today, besides a bridge over land, Fayose has little to show for his second coming. The return of an ill-equipped man who does not understand even the meaning of government seems to have been designed to prolong the nightmare of Ekiti people. While he owed workers about six months backlog of unpaid salary arrears, he was alleged to have wired miserable N4000 and N7000 respectively to civil servants and pensioners on the eve of the July 14 election.

    We also have Engineer Segun Oni who was in the progressive camp until Obasanjo used him to settle scores with Fayose, his estranged godson. Obasanjo rigged him to office in 2007. While on the stolen throne, the sing song of his men was “we are in government, they are in court”. And for those three years, Oni pitched towns against one another over the siting of a nebulous University of Education. Oni moved from recklessness to folly creating disorder among his people. He later returned to his natural habitat-the progressive fold where he quickly rose to the position of deputy national chairman, southwest.

    Ayo Arise was a successful businessman before joining politics. For him therefore, politics is business, Thus when he lost the AD governorship primary election in 2003 and again that of AC in 2007, he without hesitation crossed over to PDP controlled in the southwest by Obasanjo, Adedibu, Bode George and Tony Anenih. He went on to win a controversial senate seat under his new party which was nullified by an appeal court ion July 8, 2009 as a result of ‘flaws during the conduct of the election’. He later won in the re-run election.

    Again, following irreconcilable differences between him and Fayose, he ran back to APC. While Governor-elect Fayemi has denied vote-buying in his own constituency where he voted, Arise, as a chieftain of APC was on Channels Television last week saying “My people told me PDP had paid them some money.  What do you expect me to do?”

    Opeyemi Bamidele, a brilliant and talented politician was a leading light of AC and APC in Ekiti before some disagreement with his friend and political ally, Fayemi drove him to the Labour Party. He contested against Fayemi and Fayose in 2014 declaring “God sees my heart, the only reason I am involved in Ekiti politics is to serve and help the people; I do not have any reason to be desperate”.

    But from the pronouncements of his PDP backers from Abuja, it was obvious he was used as a spoiler to narrow the chances of Fayemi in 2014. In fact the first person Fayose thanked for making it possible for him to become a governor after his controversial victory over Fayemi was Bamidele. Today he is back as a chieftain of APC.

    Prince Adeyeye is a progressive who once served as the national publicity secretary of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, and also served as the national publicity secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD).He left the progressive fold in December 2006 when he contested in the defunct Action Congress (AC) governorship primary won by Fayemi alleging the exercise was marred by irregularities. He dumped his progressive credentials and joined the PDP and was made State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) chairman by former Governor Segun Oni before he was later appointed Minister of State for Works by former President Goodluck Jonathan. He also served as PDP national caretaker committee publicity secretary.

    However, following the loss of the governorship primary to Fayose’s preferred successor, Deputy Governor Kolapo Olusola, not too long ago, he went back to APC claiming opposition to Fayose’s “continuity of impunity, imposition, poverty and unprecedented looting of the people’s common patrimony.” He said he was ‘joining forces with other eminent Ekiti sons and daughters to free the state from the vulture and predator feeding fat on the state’s commonwealth.’

    Another APC catch on the eve of the July 14 governorship election was Fatimat Raji Rasaki, representing Ekiti Central Senatorial District. She is the wife of a former military governor of Lagos. Ekiti voters surely know Rasaki is one of Abuja senators smiling to their banks every month with a mouth-watering N13.5m besides her salary.

    It must be admitted Ekiti ‘new breed’ politicians are not different from their counterparts in nPDP or R-APC. Even Senate President Saraki who literally stole the senate presidency in 2015 now says moving back to PDP, a party he dumped in 2013, was informed by concerns for survival of democracy and the future of the country they have made ungovernable in the past three years and continue to impoverish through gluttonous consumption by their members.

    It is just as well that except for the nosy reporters and election monitors, none of the above Ekiti ‘new breed’ politicians is complaining. They cannot begrudge followers for following the foot-steps of their leaders.

  • Character of Ekiti voters and leaders

    Chinua Achebe’s “Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching (Things Fall Apart). It will appear Ekiti voters who decided to sell their votes during July 14 governorship elections have finally seen through the hollowness and hypocrisy of the same set of cynical leaders that have taken them for a ride these past 19 years. Voters behaviour during the election was evidence enough that those who opted to sell their votes did not see much difference between leaders who do not understand that democracy as a process is not just about self-righteousness but also requires some sense of humour, common touch and respect for the views of the governed, and those who fraudulently claim serving is a matter of life and death whether the people wanted them or not. If voters who sold their votes are prostitutes, how about the fair-weather leaders who do not seem to believe in anything?

    We can trace the collapse of our political socialization process to Babangida and Abacha’s 13 years of fraudulent transition programme that produced our current ‘new breed’ politicians that bred nothing but greed. Obasanjo’s eight years of failed ‘mainstreaming’ through which he destroyed all budding political parties finally ended a political socialization process that started back in the 1923 with the inauguration of Herbert Macaulay’s ‘People Democratic Party’, the first political party in Nigeria.

    Since the led look up to their leaders for direction, it can be argued that voters who behaved like prostitutes by opting to sell their votes to the highest bidders during the July 14 governorship election were only following the foot-steps of their   political leaders.

    Let us start with Ayo Fayose. He was rigged into power by Obasanjo’s PDP in 2003. Following his impeachment in 2006, he sought accommodation in the Labour Party under whose platform he contested for a senatorial seat which he lost to Babafemi Ojudu. He then briefly flirted with Action Congress party before ex-President Jonathan who was desperate to use Ekiti as a springboard for his 2015 doomed re-election bid, provided N4.7b, thousands of policemen, soldiers and other security personnel to rig sitting governor, Kayode Fayemi out of office in 2014. Today, besides a bridge over land, Fayose has little to show for his second coming. The return of an ill-equipped man who does not understand even the meaning of government seems to have been designed to prolong the nightmare of Ekiti people. While he owed workers about six months backlog of unpaid salary arrears, he was alleged to have wired miserable N4000 and N7000 respectively to civil servants and pensioners on the eve of the July 14 election.

    We also have Engineer Segun Oni who was in the progressive camp until Obasanjo used him to settle scores with Fayose, his estranged godson. Obasanjo rigged him to office in 2007. While on the stolen throne, the sing song of his men was “we are in government, they are in court”. And for those three years, Oni pitched towns against one another over the siting of a nebulous University of Education. Oni moved from recklessness to folly creating disorder among his people. He later returned to his natural habitat-the progressive fold where he quickly rose to the position of deputy national chairman, southwest.

    Ayo Arise was a successful businessman before joining politics. For him therefore, politics is business, Thus when he lost the AD governorship primary election in 2003 and again that of AC in 2007, he without hesitation crossed over to PDP controlled in the southwest by Obasanjo, Adedibu, Bode George and Tony Anenih. He went on to win a controversial senate seat under his new party which was nullified by an appeal court ion July 8, 2009 as a result of ‘flaws during the conduct of the election’. He later won in the re-run election.

    Again, following irreconcilable differences between him and Fayose, he ran back to APC. While Governor-elect Fayemi has denied vote-buying in his own constituency where he voted, Arise, as a chieftain of APC was on Channels Television last week saying “My people told me PDP had paid them some money.  What do you expect me to do?”

    Opeyemi Bamidele, a brilliant and talented politician was a leading light of AC and APC in Ekiti before some disagreement with his friend and political ally, Fayemi drove him to the Labour Party. He contested against Fayemi and Fayose in 2014 declaring “God sees my heart, the only reason I am involved in Ekiti politics is to serve and help the people; I do not have any reason to be desperate”.

    But from the pronouncements of his PDP backers from Abuja, it was obvious he was used as a spoiler to narrow the chances of Fayemi in 2014. In fact the first person Fayose thanked for making it possible for him to become a governor after his controversial victory over Fayemi was Bamidele. Today he is back as a chieftain of APC.

    Prince Adeyeye is a progressive who once served as the national publicity secretary of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, and also served as the national publicity secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD).He left the progressive fold in December 2006 when he contested in the defunct Action Congress (AC) governorship primary won by Fayemi alleging the exercise was marred by irregularities. He dumped his progressive credentials and joined the PDP and was made State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) chairman by former Governor Segun Oni before he was later appointed Minister of State for Works by former President Goodluck Jonathan. He also served as PDP national caretaker committee publicity secretary.

    However, following the loss of the governorship primary to Fayose’s preferred successor, Deputy Governor Kolapo Olusola, not too long ago, he went back to APC claiming opposition to Fayose’s “continuity of impunity, imposition, poverty and unprecedented looting of the people’s common patrimony.” He said he was ‘joining forces with other eminent Ekiti sons and daughters to free the state from the vulture and predator feeding fat on the state’s commonwealth.’

    Another APC catch on the eve of the July 14 governorship election was Fatimat Raji Rasaki, representing Ekiti Central Senatorial District. She is the wife of a former military governor of Lagos. Ekiti voters surely know Rasaki is one of Abuja senators smiling to their banks every month with a mouth-watering N13.5m besides her salary.

    It must be admitted Ekiti ‘new breed’ politicians are not different from their counterparts in nPDP or R-APC. Even Senate President Saraki who literally stole the senate presidency in 2015 now says moving back to PDP, a party he dumped in 2013, was informed by concerns for survival of democracy and the future of the country they have made ungovernable in the past three years and continue to impoverish through gluttonous consumption by their members.

    It is just as well that except for the nosy reporters and election monitors, none of the above Ekiti ‘new breed’ politicians is complaining. They cannot begrudge followers for following the foot-steps of their leaders.

     

  • Fayose’s legacy

    Government’s deployment of about 30,000 policemen and other security personnel to forestall any form of violence during last Saturday’s Ekiti governorship election has come under heavy criticism. With the whole of the Middle Belt region under siege and the daily harvests of deaths now spreading to north-western states of Sokoto and Zamfara while the Inspector General of Police, the Defence Minister and the DSS Director General wring their hands when not talking from both sides of the mouth, it is difficult to fault the argument of those who talk of misplaced priority by a government that has failed to adequately address security concerns of the governed. Now that the election is over, I will like to join my fellow compatriots to demand President Buhari adopts the Ekiti template to confront insecurity issues around the country.

    This however is without prejudice to President Buhari’s apprehension about violence during elections all over the country and most especially in the southwest. Those who should know better have argued the figure followed observed lapses during last year’s Anambra election conducted with 26,000 police officers. And the police represented by its spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood have also justified the figure when he appeared as a guest on Channels Television breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily early in the week. According to him “Ekiti is a flashpoint when it comes to politicking, you can remember what happened in the second republic; we don’t want a repeat of that”. Indeed, a journey through history will show election violence foisted on the west by “mainstreamers” such as NPC (1965) and NPN (1983) led to the collapse of both the first and second republics.

    Representative government in form of holding office at the behest of the people within the Obaship traditional administration system predates imported representative democracy in Yorubaland. Resisting any form of imposition of leadership through Obaship traditional system or election rigging in Yorubaland is according to Professor Akintoye, innate in Yoruba people.  This perhaps explains why Nigerian ‘mainstreamers’, such as NPC, NPN were violently resisted with Obasanjo’s  2003 ill-fated ‘mainstreaming’ finally settled by the judiciary in favour of the people of Edo, Ondo and Osun states after initial pockets of violent resistance.

    This is why with fearless and short-sighted dangerous politicians like Fayose who has all through his political career been associated with violence, putting adequate measures in place to guard against outbreak of violence during last Saturday Ekiti governorship election became imperative.

    First, Fayose was a product of the late Adedibu’s (the garrison commander of Ibadan) school of politics. It was from this highly respected Ibadan politician who started as a political thug that Fayose was picked up by Obasanjo who went on to impose him on Ekiti in 2003. Predictably, his first three years as elected governor was marked by violence and assassination of some of his party members. This plus EFCC allegation of N1, 2b theft levelled against him by EFCC led to his impeachment in 2006 (later declared illegal by Supreme Court in 2014).

    His political resurrection in 2014 according to Temitope Aluko, his alter ego and self-confessed partner in crime,  was made possible with  ex-President Jonathan “providing $37m , 1,040 recognised soldiers and another batch of 400 ‘unrecognised soldiers’ brought from Enugu in addition to  44 special strike teams brought in (with) Toyota Hilux buses from Abuja and Onitsha.’ The April 2014 assault on Ekiti  was according to him ‘led by the then Minister for Police Affairs Jelil Adesiyan, Musiliu Obanikoro, junior minister of defence, Brigadier General Aliu Momoh  with another contingent of 12,000 mobile police men, 26 sniffer dogs,15,000 NSCDC personnel’.

    As a product of violence, his first action as a governor-elect in 2014 was to visit violence on the judiciary.  It is on record that he was accompanied to court by thugs who beat up the judge presiding over his eligibility case. He also employed the services of the thugs to chase 19 elected members of the state House of Assembly out of town while he ran the state with seven PDP members. His hand-picked cronies went on to win the subsequent election into the state and national houses of assembly having driven serious contenders out of town with the help of thugs.

    And if we needed other proof to show Fayose is a man of violence that needed to be caged, his activities during and after last Saturday electoral contest in which he was not a candidate provided sufficient justification for government’s deployment of a large contingent of police to Ekiti State.

    With the conclusion of all campaign activities on  Thursday July 12, Fayose  with his army of thugs and thousands of Okada riders who the police claimed blocked the way to the government house with their bikes, without police approval decided to embark on what Adebola Akingbade of “live on Direct” TV described as ‘victory walk ’ around Ado Ekiti. I think we have the police to thank for stopping a potential descent into an orgy of violence when a hallucinating man leading charged thugs and ‘okada’ riders stage a ‘victory rally’ for an election 24 hours ahead in opposition strongholds.

    Let us be charitable by not reading meanings into Fayose’s motive. Let us accept the police was overzealous for stopping victory rally of yet-to-be held election, which he had boasted his hand-picked candidate would win in spite of the electorate. But what are we to make of the madness of announcing the result of the election in the middle of the night while INEC, a body constitutionally empowered to conduct elections was still busy collating the results? Here again we have the National Broadcasting Commission that promptly terminated Fayose’s satanic broadcast designed to plunge Ekiti he has deceived and swindled for four years into a turmoil of fighting groups.

    Back in April 2014, Fayemi in the interest of Ekiti people conceded defeat gracefully in an election he knew he couldn’t have possibly lost on account of his performance. In 2018, Fayose is goading the people towards violence after an election in which his hand-picked candidate lost in 12 of the 16 local councils of the state.

    The truth about who really sets out to serve Ekiti people can be found in the Biblical King Solomon’s story. When there was a call for a sword to divide the child into two, the true mother said “give the baby to her, just don’t kill her” (Kings 3:16-28)  Fayose  has been the custodian of this baby for four years. But EFCC records show Fayose splashed all the monies he allegedly took from ex-President Jonathan on personal properties located in Lagos and Abuja rather than on the baby. Fayose  who when not  boasting, was quoting the Bible to decree and prophesy victory for his hand-picked minion forgets “God is not mocked, for  whatever a man sows , that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7.)

    A few days to the election, Fayose was asked by Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television to identify what he did for the Ekiti people in four years.  His answer: “as a grass root politician, I was a few days back frying gari (cassava flour) with some rural women”. He conveniently forgot his greatest legacy-violence, by which he will be remembered by illustrious sons and daughters of Ekiti who fled home in the last four years.