The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Deploying sophistry to support PDP fraud

    If further facts beyond the House of Representatives subsidy fuel probe that indicted PDP leading lights and their siblings for defrauding the country of N1.6 trillion, the privatisation scheme described as mere sharing of our common patrimony among PDP stalwarts and their fronts, the pensions scheme scandal which took place inside the office of Head of Service, to validate John Campbell’s thesis that  ‘‘PDP is 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”, the revelations coming out of Dasukigate through which $2.1b earmarked for arms procurement for our embattled soldiers fighting an insurgency that has killed over 15,000 Nigerians and rendered about two million refuges in their own land, was shared by who is who in PDP provided just that.

    In fairness to those who have always provided intellectual support for PDP’s assault on Nigerians, they have never pretended to write out of ideological conviction. They have often given the impression they were motivated by altruism and patriotism. Unfortunately, with the sordid revelations coming out of Dasukigate, in the last three weeks, Nigerians now also know better.

    And if Nigerians were expecting some form of remorse from PDP for betraying the trust of Nigerians, that hope was dashed by the Saraki and Ekweremadu’s sardonic humour during the latter’s family thanksgiving service in Enugu last week. And similarly if critics who have always accused a segment of the press of deploying sophistry to support PDP fraud had expected to be proven wrong for once, their last week specious argument that the difference between PDP and APC when it comes to corruption is that of six and half a dozen only consolidated the unassailable position of critics.

    As if Saraki expected Nigerians to have suddenly forgotten the less than honourable way he hijacked the Senate of the Fourth Republic by trading off the victory of his party for Ekweremadu and PDP support, he was in Enugu to give a testimony before a priest that Ekweremadu is “a good example for us politicians”, and that he “will continue to work with him for the development of Nigeria”. He probably assumed Nigerians cannot make a distinction between those who work for them and those who are working for themselves.

    Ekweremadu’s own blasphemy before a priest was more unsettling. Despite his well-publicised self-confession that he, with the encouragement of his PDP family members responsible for the nation’s current nightmare, secured his current position as a trade-off from Saraki who for a pot of porridge was ready to bargain away the victory of his party, he now says his emergence was a product of ‘divine’ intervention.

    But beyond Saraki and Ekweremadu’s sardonic humour, it is now obvious that just as it was in the first and second republics, the strategy of PDP and those providing it with intellectual support is to tar everyone with brush of corruption relying on use of sophistry to blur the division between those who were out to genuinely provide public service and those who ravage the land. The crooked logic is that everyone in Nigeria is corrupt including candidate Buhari who accepted government donation of two vehicles which were his entitlement as a former Head of State. We were told last week that if sufficient light was beamed on APC, it would be discovered that its leading lights are also made up of men with feet of clay. This is similar to argument used to devastating effects by those who plundered the resources of the nation between 1954 and 1962.

    In 1956, the Foster-Sutton Tribunal found Zik guilty of channelling government funds through ACB, a bank he owned along with his children and Sir Odumegwu-Ojukwu his friend and concluded, “Were a UK minister to be involved in a series of transactions the result of which public funds were used to support an otherwise shaky institution in which he was directly interested, he would be forced to leave public life.” There was widespread corruption in federal government. The ministers, like President Jonathan’s ministers, acted with impunity. An unrepentant K O Mbadiwe, the Minister of Aviation, dismissed proceeds from Ijora shady land deals as ‘chicken feeds in the mouth of an elephant’ while Festus Okotie-Eboh, Minister for Finance, when asked by the opposition to explain the source of his wealth quoted the Bible saying ‘to those that have, more shall be given, from those that do not have, shall be taken even the little they have’.

    Then to tar Awo  and his AG supporters during the 1962 intra-party crisis hijacked by the federal government, they found a parallel in the marketing boards’ 1954 loans given to the Western Region Finance Corporation and the Western Nigeria Development Corporation and the National Investment and Properties Co. Ltd. for building projects such Western House in Lagos, the Cocoa House in Ibadan, the first television station in Africa, the Liberty Stadium  Bodija and Ikeja GRAs in Ibadan and Lagos etc. Even though there was no evidence that Awo and his colleagues personally benefitted from their efforts at encouraging an emerging middle class and building a solid economic base to absorb products of their free education programme, they found Awo guilty for failing ‘to adhere to the standards of conduct which are required for persons holding such a post’ of a premier.

    In the Second Republic, the battle was once again between those who genuinely believed in public service and those who looted the resources of the nation. Ambrose Alli of the then Bendel, Adekunle Ajasin of Ondo, Bola Ige of Oyo, Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun and Lateef Jakande of Lagos creatively deployed government funds and proceeds from government concerns to provide free education, access to university education by building state universities, free health and provision of other social services. Their NPN and NPP counterparts channelled government funds, including foreign loans which never got to Nigeria, to build private empires, including banks leading to educational and infrastructural decay of their areas. Thousands of youths from NPP and NPN-controlled states invaded Mid-west and West to benefit from free education. In 1983 when the ill-equipped and self-serving military came, the current type of sophistry was used to convince the new powers that there was no difference between those who deployed government money to the service of the people and those who squandered their state resources on self and others like Sabo Barkin Zuwo who, when caught with raw cash running into millions claimed he was keeping ‘government money in government house’. Thus sinners and saints were subjected to the same treatment with many receiving prison terms of 200 years.

    The sufferings of aging Professor Ambrose Alli, Onabanjo and Ajasin contributed to their early death while the real enemies of the people deployed the looted funds to buy off government concerns through Babangida’s fraudulent privatisation economic programme. For example, in 1991, Oodua states military governors – Bode George, Sasaenia Oresanya and Mohammed Lawal sold 60% of 24-year old Cocoa Industry Limited (CIL) valued in 1989 at N97, 958,000 to a relatively new company called Emerald Packaging Company for N9m, an amount lower than the cost of land on which the company was built.

    While it will be fool-hardy to trust all politicians, especially since our people say it is the thief who can accurately identify the footprint of another thief on a stone, those who want Nigerians to believe that there is no difference between ex- and serving APC governors such as Fashola, Fayemi, Oshiomhole, and Amaechi and PDP indicted governors such as James Ibori, Lucky Igbinedion, the late Alamieyeseigha and Odili who was shielded by the judiciary, must go beyond mere sophistry.

    They will need more than those who according to Itse Sagay ‘just cooked up a panel made up of sympathetic, pro-Wike judges parading themselves in a most dishonourable manner’ to tarnish the image of Amaechi or those writing petitions against Fashola who ‘the whole world from the United States to Australia, to the Middle East, to even the United Nations, everybody knows has the best record in governance that this country has had since Awolowo’.

  • New face of Nigerian press

    The Nigeria press played an important role in the socio-economic and political emancipation of our nation. It was not an accident that our foremost nationalists as well as our founding fathers were newspaper publishers or practising journalists. Unfortunately the press, like most state institutions the military touched, has been brought to disrepute. Its independence and vibrancy were first undermined by the takeover of the Daily Times and New Nigeria by Murtala Mohammed/Obasanjo regime in 1975. The emergence of Babangida in 1995 with his liberalisation of the ownership of broadcast media heralded new breed publishers and broadcasting media owners who depended on government support to establish their outfits or its patronage to survive in a competitive business environment. Thus the post-Babangida’s emergent press became not just friend of those in government whose activities it was constitutionally empowered to monitor, but an instrument with which the ‘chop I chop’ ideology of the ruling clique was imposed on the nation. They aggressively sold Babangida’s economic policy that allowed for the sharing of our national assets by a few privileged members of the ruling clique claiming there was no alternative to SAP and for his fraudulent eight years of ‘transition without end’,  crowned him the ‘Prince of the Lower Niger’.

    And when PDP finally  hijacked power from Babangida and Abacha’s ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ in 1999, a section of the press ceased being ‘an impartial and objective free market place of ideas’ as it was in the pre- and post-independence years to become  an instrument  for spreading PDP’s warped views to legitimize its holds on power. Sadly, in the months leading to the 2015 election, it degenerated into an instrument for the subjugation of helpless and oppressed Nigerians yearning for change.

    Long before the last haul of N2.1billion by Raymond Dokpesi purportedly for publicity and promotional services rendered to Jonathan by his AIT that is often in arrears in payment of salaries to workers, AIT had been close to all past successive governments. And long before Obaigbena’s haul of N670m (N120 reserved for NPAN), he had always been available for use by past successive governments. Shortly after the 1993 election, it was daring Nduka Obaigbena that was first sent out by Babangida to test the waters by appearing on CNN to canvass for the cancellation of the election on the ground that MKO Abiola voted wearing a dress with SDP logo. The editorial policy of his paper and his marketing strategies since 1999 seem geared towards the exploitation and promotion of the greed of the Nigerian ruling class. Towards this, he pioneered printing in colour to celebrate beauty and splendour. This influenced the consumption pattern of the masses while promoting the greed of those who control the material resources. His NPAN members soon joined him in the scramble for a share of the colour advertising media campaign appropriations.

    And to promote the views of those in power, Obaigbena did the unthinkable. He traded off the back page, a traditional major news page, with opinion write ups reflective of the prevailing ideology, first of Babangida and his Aso Rock professors and later of PDP. And in what many of his critics described as contempt for readers, he traded off pages two and three, major news pages for advertisements. And finally as if to validate  Karl Marx’s thesis that those who own material resources also control our thoughts,  Obaaigbena sold off his mast head for what he creatively called ‘wrap around’ . Thus both the front and back pages of the his paper are occasionally taken over by banks, politicians and others who are ready to part with millions in order to impose their views no matter how warped on the helpless readers. Obaigbena’s initial objectionable creative innovations soon became a fad even among serious newspapers that lay claim to setting agenda for society,

    Then business savvy Obaigbena graduated into giving of ‘awards of excellence’ to dubious bankers willing to pay for them. Obaigbena was smiling to the banks as banks chief executives were falling over each other to receive his media awards.  It was not long when other NPAN member envious of his good fortunes joined him. Two of his most decorated awardees, Erasmus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank and Cecelia Ibru’s of Oceanic soon ran into troubled waters with the banking regulatory agencies. The former was found guilty of mismanagement of depositors funds and ordered to pay about 600 pounds sterling to the new owners of his former bank while the later was similarly found guilty and jailed for similar offence by a Nigerian court.

    From the banking sector, Obaigbena carried his award crusade to   serving governors. But as it also turned out, many of the governors who received his awards were later found to be men with feet of clay with some of them serving jail terms in Nigeria and abroad for financial malfeasances.

    Then Obaigbena came up with what is at best described as the ‘father’ of all awards titled ‘Life Time Achievement Award. Covered in this category were all who  grumbled in private about being  outwitted in their business transactions with Obaigbena, bankers who accepted his ingenious business  proposal of stationing banks staff on his premises to directly collect advertisement revenue to defray ‘serviceable loans’. Even some of his respected NPAN senior colleagues who had been critical of his unorthodox approaches were listed as awardees. Also on the list were captains of industries without industries, fuel subsidy fraudsters and prosperity prophets specialising in sales of grace. Obaigbena did not forget to fly in Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Britain who has credibility deficit back home to preside over the presentation of Life Achievement awards to his chosen Nigerian achievers.

    AS NPAN president, the ‘Obaigbenisation’ of the Nigerian Press is complete. This has been reinforced by his personal negotiation of N670m of ‘Dasuikigate’s slush fund which he channelled through his Hydrocarbons energy Consulting firm. To ensure everyone is tarred with the same brush, he even collected on behalf of protesting NPAN members such as The Punch and The Guardian that insisted they never filed demand claims.

    I believe the place of Obaigbena in the development of the Nigeria press between 1995 and 2015 is assured. It is not threatened by virtue of being a recipient N670m of Dazukigate’s $2.2m slush fund. For betraying the trust of the people, it is ex President Jonathan, his Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala   and the CBN which ferried $47m cash in 11 boxes to Dasuki’s office in one night and Sambo Dasuki the ‘piggy bank’ who will face harsh judgment of history.

  • Task before Yoruba’s new leaders

    With the bitter supremacy struggle between revered Afenifere battle-fatigued fathers and their sons  operating  under ARG, acronym (Afenifere Renewal Group) finally laid to rest with the defeat in the Yoruba nation of Jonathan, the former’s choice for the last presidential election, I think it is time for rapprochement between fathers and sons. After all, what warring fathers and sons have always wanted is a government that guarantees freedom, promotes justice and fairness. With the inauguration of Buhari/Osinbajo administration in May, the sons have compensated their thoroughly-drained aggrieved fathers with a victory that had eluded them despite their 55 years in the trenches. The battle ahead will require all hands on deck after 55 years of abridged progress, eight years of Obasanjo vindictiveness against his own people, and six years of Jonathan’s politics of subterfuge that deliberately marginalized the Yoruba nation.

    Buhari will no doubt provide a level playing ground for all to thrive. His war on corruption and the battle against economic saboteurs have taken off in earnest. From there, one hopes he would move to tackle the greatest threat to nationhood- political restructuring which is what has been used for sustaining corruption by those benefiting from a unitary system fraudulently called federalism; for undermining   the security of the nation by those who reap political dividends from unimpeded infiltration of thousands of Fulani herdsmen, ranchers and cattle rustlers across north-eastern borders; for sabotaging the nation’s economy by militants sponsored and armed by Niger Delta ‘vultures’ that feed  on the blood of those who look up to them for protection; and for dumping of fake drugs and expired products on the street of Lagos by unpatriotic elements who hide under the anonymity of ‘no man’s land’ to commit heinous crimes against Nigerians.

    Since we know Buhari will not stand on the way of those who intend to fashion out a better future for themselves and  their children, I think it is time Bola Tinubu returns to Lagos to confront headlong the current political crisis facing the Yoruba nation. It was his failure and that of his ACN that a big stick was not wielded when ex-Governor Fayemi and  Opeyemi Bamidele, his friend embarked on their ego quarrel that paved the way for the emergence of an embarrassment called Ayo Fayose who was on record as thanking Bamidele for making him governor after his dubious victory. Tinubu and his colleagues will now have to find answers to Fayose who has become a national and international embarrassment.

    It is on record that he invaded courts with thugs to beat up judges presiding over his case, shredded their judgment sheets; chased out 19 opposition lawmakers and inaugurated an assembly with six PDP lawmakers; chased opposition members out of town with the help of thugs during the election that produced the current assembly members. It got more bizarre last week when Fayose invaded the state assembly with his supporters and went on to personally present and approve a budget whose contents were unknown to the hapless lawmakers who watched Fayose’s theatrics as the rest of the nation did, courtesy of Channels television.

    While the bemused lawmakers sat with folded arms, Fayose bellowed: “those who want the budget passed, say aye”! His supporters who outnumbered the lawmakers responded with a thunderous aye. Then focusing his gaze on the obviously scared lawmakers sitting down like rain-beaten chickens, he again bellowed: “those who don’t want the content of this budget passed, say nay”; the assembly hall was like a grave-yard. There upon, Fayose brought out what many have described as a carpenter’s hammer from a small bag held by one of his aides, struck  the table thrice and declared ‘budget passed’, to the thunderous applause of his supporters. Some of the lawmakers with mournful look on their faces later told reporters they ‘owed their positions to Fayose’. The South-west is sick if a part of it is sick.

    It is an irony that Fayose, to demonstrate he is a grass root man has been going to market to personally buy “pomo”, cow skin and imported iced fish in a Western Region led between 1952 and 1959 by highly educated and talented visionary leaders who among other things had a policy on agriculture that supported self sufficiency.  Over 60 years ago, Awo and his group pointedly told the Yoruba they would not eat cow meat except they domesticate their own cows. To implement the policy, Awo’s government imported cows for domestication from Argentina. Femi Alana recently reminded me that many households domesticated their own cows popularly called ‘Elila’ in the fifties and early sixties. Sixty years after the west experienced self-sufficiency in chicken and eggs production through the farm settlement programme executed by products of primary school trying to save enough for their secondary school education, Governor Fayose is still in court facing EFCC allegation of frittering away N19b of taxpayers’ money on fraudulent chicken poultry project that never produced an egg.

    Apart from Segun Oni who tried to rehabilitate a cattle ranch established in Otun Ekiti by Adekunle Ajasin in the Second Republic, no South-west governor revisited the 1952-59 laudable agriculture policy since 1999 including ex-Governor Kayode Fayemi, who admitted spending about N3billion to build a governors house in a state where there is no private house worth half a billion. That his government house was the least expensive in the country was besides the point. Two billion naira pumped into the Ajasin-initated Otun Cattle Ranch and managed by experts will make the whole of South-west less dependent on cattle from the north.

    Our new political leaders must also pay attention to Ondo. This is not because it is ruled by PDP. After all the Yoruba always say, ‘you don’t all sleep with your head turned to the same direction’. Dissent is rooted in the Yoruba culture. But what has been happening under Governor Mimiko reflects neither Yoruba culture nor the subculture of a proud Ondo people that often call a spade by its name. Mimiko was Jonathan point-man on ‘stomach infrastructure’ through which traditional rulers and various groups were allegedly bribed in dollar denominations. The variant of Mimiko politics is alien to a people who were at the forefront the ‘Agbekoya’ uprising of the 60s as well as the protest against NPN’s fraudulent ‘landslide and sea slide’ victories of 80s.

    In neighbouring Osun State, Aregbesola needs help. He is a governor who still thinks and acts as an activist. It is alleged by his political detractors that he speaks first and last at Exco meetings where his word is law. They claim his populist policies are often not backed up with rigorous intellectual debate that often accompanied policy initiatives 60 years ago. This they said accounts for why he almost ran the economy of the state aground before the federal government’s recent bail out.

    Ajimobi’s endless wars with his party men as well as his political enemies tend to deprive his government of the needed energy to focus on government policies. A focused Oyo State can serve as the food-basket of the South-west. The winners-take-all policy of Governor Amosun of Ogun State which led to the recent exit of Segun Osoba, a founding father of AD, ACN and APC in the state underscores the need for the APC party oligarchy to let governors know that  ‘democracy is a game of compromise even when the power of coercion’ is available. Without resolution of these political problems, regional integration will remain a forlorn hope even with the best of intentions and efforts of Yoruba statesmen and intellectuals.

  • Making politics less attractive

    Sadly, many young Nigerians below the age of 30 watching the macabre dance by our politicians in the last few years cannot but conclude politics is a game for scoundrels. Even High Chief Raymond Dopeksi, who only a few weeks back was trying to rehabilitate a near fatally wounded PDP was last week fingered by embattled Dasuki, as a partaker in the $2b ‘phoney’ arms contract under investigation by EFCC. The statements by AIT, his communication outfit,  and the one from his family which confirmed the receipt of N2.1b ‘for publicity and media political campaigns during the 2015 General Elections, probably explained the ignoble role his AIT medium played during the said election.

    But long before Dokpesi’s current national embarrassment, we have had some children of ex-PDP chairmen and other leading PDP politicians arraigned by EFCC for oil subsidy scam. In between, we have witnessed how Bukola Saraki, the Senate President was saved by the judiciary over the N9b financial crisis that led to the collapse of his fathers’ Societe Generale Bank. It was not much of a relief that he in June assaulted the sensibilities of Nigerians with a story of how he hid inside a small car for over three hours in order to outwit his other 51 APC members and later sneaked to the assembly hall where he was adopted Senate President by the opposition. He has also in the last few weeks, been going to court not to defend but to evade his trial over the weighty allegations brought against him by EFFC. The obscene scene of Ike Ekweremadu’s celebration of opportunism about how he and other PDP politicians usurped the deputy senate presidency seat which by convention belongs to the ruling party was no less agonizing to decent Nigerians.  The above, sadly is the picture of politician our young impressionable children harbour in their heads.

    I think we owe it as a duty to let our children know that Dokpesi, Saraki, Ekweremadu and current ‘new breed’ politicians are not the archetypal politician and that if indeed there are privileged Nigerians involved in ‘phoney’ arms contract in the face of Boko Haram’s war of attrition that has killed over 20,000 Nigerians, rendering over two million refugees in their own country, such characters, our children must be told, are sick minds and not politicians.

    They must be told that ‘politician’ is not a euphemism for a venal and an unscrupulous man; that men without character who hijack politics in the last 30 years starting with the Babangida era and use it to betray friends, political parties and  justify state murder of political rivals are not politicians; that true politicians are noble men saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the survival of  man in an organized society; that they are men and women often buffeted by fortune and misfortune in equal measure because of ephemeral nature of power; that they are gifted men and women called upon to find  a delicate balance between  private affluence and public squalor and that politics is a calling  not for the depraved, the opportunist and scoundrels but for those who are ready to sacrifice time and self for others.

    Those who hijacked politics for selfish ends did not only ban political parties, abridged our political socialization process, they also banned teaching of history in our schools. But we must defy those who want us to forget history by restating for the benefit of our children that politicians as true servants of the people once bestrode our shores.

    Let us start with Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. He confessed to his biographer, Trevor Richard that he saw flush toilet for the first time when he was given official staff quarters in Bauchi. He went on to become the Prime Minister with big mansion in Lagos. We have no evidence he ever considered converting the Prime Minister’s mansion to personal residence. He died leaving behind no string of houses in Kaduna or Lagos.

    We had Ahmadu Bello who selflessly served his people to the end.  He went round the northern villages handpicking brilliant northern youths without class or religious consideration and sent them to the best universities abroad. President Buhari not too long ago claimed he would have remained a poor Fulani herdsman had Sardauna not picked him from his Daura village for the military academy. When Sardauna was called upon to assume the leadership of Nigeria, he chose to stay back in Kaduna and serve his people. Sardauna died leaving no mansions behind in Sokoto or Kaduna where he reigned supreme. There was also Aminu Kano, the doyen of ‘talakawas”. He selflessly served Kano people to the end.

    Awo spent six years attending six different elementary schools fending for himself as a firewood seller, water seller, road mender and house boy in Abeokuta. He along with his ‘fanatically loyal colleagues’ such as Bode Thomas, S L A Akintola, Arthur Prest, Oba Akran, E A Babalola, Awokoya, Ajasin, Enahoro, Rotimi Williams Osuntokun among many others between 1952 and 1959 introduced free and compulsory primary school programme which moved primary school enrolment from 430,000 in 1952 to 1,037338 by November 1959, and secondary school enrolment from 6,775 in 1952 to 84,374 in 1959.  And as against a colonial government 20 post-secondary school annual scholarships for the whole country, the AG administration awarded 200 in one year tenable in the UK, US and University College Ibadan. Awo and his colleagues stopped the building of staff quarters, encouraged the white expatriates and Nigerian staff to look for houses on their own. But to ease their housing problems, the government acquired 350,000 acres of land in Bodija GRA Ibadan and 750,000 acres in GRA Ikeja and eased the process of securing loans to build personal houses. It is instructive that none of these GRAs will you come across mansions belonging to any of Awo’s selfless servants of the people including the late Pa Osuntokun who supervised the projects.

    We cannot climb the palm tree from the top, to paraphrase Edmund Burke philosophy. You have to first be a good representative of your people before you can be a good Nigerian as argued by Obafemi Awolowo.  Awo and his colleagues’ made personal sacrifices because they were serving their people. Even when facing grave difficulties in implementing their party programmes in the face of NCNC opposition, Awo in an emotional speech told his colleagues in the Western House that he was sure future generation of Western Region youths for whom they sacrificed their time would one day commend them for their efforts.

    The motivation of Awo and his colleagues in the west was not different form that of Ahmadu Bello who opted to remain in Kaduna to serve his people. It is not also different from Zik’s resolve to relocate to the East to take over from Eyo Itta, a minority as premier when he was prevented from becoming the premier of the West by those who rightly argued an Igbo man could not be leader of Western Region at a time a Yoruba man could not contest for a seat in the East or be allowed to mobilize voters for support in the North. (Akintola’s attempt in 1953 resulted in the Kano riot which tragically claimed more Igbo lives.

    Since we cannot decree loyalty, we are not likely going to have true politicians as servants of the people except we have a restructured Nigeria.

  • Kogi’s confusion and INEC’s complicity

    The cacophony of newspapers’ howling headlines such as ‘APC picks Bello as Audu’s replacement’, ‘Faleke picks Audu’s son as ruining mate’, Kogi’s State House of Assembly threatens to impeach any governor-elect other than Audu’s son’, ‘PDP and Wada pray court to declare Wada governor elect’, that daily hit us on the face, more than confirm the confusion going on in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.

    The confusion as many have argued is a subterfuge by PDP and its INEC sympathizers to destabilise Kogi following their loss of yet another state to APC. And still  for many others, the logjam is the price the nation is paying for the indiscretion of President Buhari who many believe did not search deep enough for an independent-minded person that can measure up to the larger than life image of Jega, the immediate past INEC chairman.

    Those who speak of conspiracy theory base their analysis on the facts as presented by INEC. There is sufficient evidence to show that the election pronounced ‘inconclusive’ had been won ‘round and square’ by APC candidate. Matters are not helped by the actions and pronouncement of defeated PDP and its candidate who is scheming to reap from the misfortune of Audu in character with PDP that massively rigged elections in 2003, 2007 and which was wrestled to the ground in 2015 by Jega who insisted on the use of card reader machines to check electoral frauds.

    Preceding the current contrived confusion, INEC’s returning officer for the Kogi governorship election, Emmanuel Kucha credited APC’s Audu with 240,867 votes to PDP Wada’s 199,514, leaving the former with a positive variance of 49,953 votes. His report also showed Audu had secured no less than one quarter of the votes cast in 16 out of the 21 local governments of Kogi state while Wada managed to secure a quarter of votes cast only in five states. Audu by that declaration had fulfilled the constitutional and electoral acts provisions to be declared winner of the contest. The outstanding 25, 000 votes will not positively change the fortune of Wada and PDP.

    But curiously even though it was obvious that only 511,000 of the 1,379,000 INEC registered voters turned up for accreditation for the election, INEC’s Kucha still went ahead to pronounce an election already won ‘inconclusive’  on the basis of 49.000 registered voters out of which only 25,000 had permanent voter cards.  ‘This figure as well as the accredited number of voters ought to have been the concern of INEC’, according to Jiti Ogunye, a clear-headed legal mind. But INEC, according to him “went overboard and started talking about registered voters that they didn’t all give PVCs.” For him, “that was a pretext by INEC to stalemate, for whatever reason, the election.”

    That ‘whatever reason’, from the point of view of those who talk of conspiracy theory is the desperate rush by PDP and its thoroughly trounced candidate to court praying “that in view of the death of the APC candidate, Abubukar Audu, Wada should be declared the winner of the November 15 governorship election, that INEC be compelled to issue a Certificate of Return to Wada and finally that INEC be restrained from conducting the supplementary election scheduled for December 5”. PDP’s Uche Secundus and Wada seem to have forgotten St. Paul’s admonition to the foolish Galatians (Galatans.6:7) that ‘a man cannot reap what he does not sow’. But no one can blame PDP for catching on APC indecisions and mutual suspicions arising from intra-party struggles among coalition groups. For instance, it is the dumped APC deputy governorship candidate that is fighting the battle that APC ought to lead.

    Before APC oligarchy could settle down to address their internal demons after the party’s victory, Buhari, detested by northern parasitic elite that had held their people down for 16 years suddenly became their hero. Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank under Soludo, Yar’Adua’s  Minister of Finance  from May 2007 to January 2009 and Jonathan’s  Minister of National Planning between January 2009 to March 2010  representing the group, first tried to create disharmony among APC oligarchy by publicly claiming Buhari won the election on his own merit without the Yoruba votes.”So what’s it that the region is bringing to blackmail Buhari into handing over the government to Tinubu who thinks controlling Lagos is same as Buhari?” he was quoted to have said. What an old man sees sitting down may be invisible to a young man standing up, as Yoruba saying goes. Pa Akande alerted the oligarchy about the new strategy of enemies of change. Strangely, the president himself started saying: ‘I belong to no one; I belong to everyone’ adding that he was indifferent as to those who preside over the National Assembly. The enemies of change started quoting him to justify the trading off of APC victory to the defeated PDP.

    Those who wanted the president to celebrate his righteousness forgot he finally won the election after repeated failed attempts not by being righteous but by playing hard politics. Oyegun, the APC chairman is a perfect gentleman who believes society like our mother earth is governed by laws. But you cannot apply Biblical and Koranic moral laws and physical science absolutes when dealing with those whose Bible is the 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, which celebrates the real nature of man over abstract ideals such as morality.

    Mistrust and lack of coherence more than absence of strategic thinkers explain why there has been hardly any decision taken with sure-footedness since Nigerians gave APC victory. It was this weakness Saraki and Dogara exploited.  Today as Senate President and Ekweremadu as his deputy and with Dogara as Speaker, and PDP’s control of half of the chairmanship of the House committees including those of all important petroleum resources (upstream and downstream, gas resources, aviation, works environment and Niger Delta Commission), APC may be in government, it is PDP that wields power. In fact Saraki and his ‘like minds senators’ have become a threat to the change Nigerians fought for.

    These intra-party feuds, many believe deprived the President the much needed support and rigour required in the appointment of an INEC chairman. Yakubu Mahmood  the new INEC chairman, a  professor of political History and International Studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy with a first class degree in History from the University of Sokoto and a PHD from Oxford,  was first appointed the executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua  in 2007. He also served as Assistant Secretary of Finance and Administration at the 2014 National Conference. There were unproved allegations by ex-President Jonathan’s political enemies  that he secured his 2010 PDP ticket  by mobilizing funds from TETF with the help of Sanusi Lamido as CBN governor.

    Even if this was untrue, from the experience of Lamido Sanusi who ably supported PDP policies but was humiliated out of office following his criticism of government; General Patrick Aziza, former National Security Adviser to Jonathan, removed for alleging PDP was behind Boko Haram; and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who tried to ‘walk the tight rope’ by covering up PDP stalwarts that were involved in fuel subsidy and import waivers scams, we know PDP can hardly keep anybody who does not share its worldview in office.

    It is for the above reasons critics believe that Mahmood, although a first class material and an eminent Nigerian was a wrong choice for the INEC chair by virtue of his association with PDP. His involvement in the on-going INEC’s contrived constitutional crisis in Kogi seems to further confirm that. As Jiti Ogunye puts it: “He failed the litmus test in his first outing”.

  • Oshiomhole vs. Niger Delta vultures

    Last week, in a rehash of ‘rent-a crowd’, an art perfected by Niger Delta wheelers and dealers as leaders when confronted with their betrayals of the poor on whose name they swear, sponsored demonstrating half-naked women who claimed to be “mothers, sisters and aunts to Chief Igbinedion”, descended on the ancient city of Benin threatening to go completely naked if Oshiomhole fails to stop ‘insulting elders from Benin Kingdom’.  Governor Oshiomhole’s offence was his announcement that his government had begun moves to recover $31million  “fraudulently taken” from the government coffers, during Igbinedion’s administration and resolved to revert the conversion ‘to private use, of government properties and funds meant for the people of the state’ by the former governor and his father, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion.

    The Niger Delta itself is a land of extremes where the masses of the people wallow in abject poverty while a small segment of their political elite, described by Saro Wiwa as ‘vultures’ feed on the blood of the vulnerable in their midst. They erect mansions in major cities of the world, and fly in private jets to visit their homes in Warri, Asaba, Port Hacourt, Uyo and Yenagoa. Saro Wiwa, a witty playwright and environmental right activist and  one of Africa’s brightest ‘sun’ killed by Africa, strongly believed  the Niger Delta vultures are responsible for the prolonged nightmare of his people.

    Adam Oshiomhole, whose life-long commitment has been the protection of the disadvantaged, shares with Saro Wiwa not only a striking physical semblance, stubborn suicidal instinct but also the passion for the impoverished people of Niger Delta. Like Saro Wiwa, Governor Oshiomhole is not afraid to confront those he believes are parasites sucking the blood of the impoverished people of the Niger Delta.

    First it was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Minister of Finance whose ministry he accused of unauthorized withdrawal of $2.1b from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and of colluding with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to withhold huge sum of money that ought to have been transferred to the federation account. He also took on Diezani Alison-Madueke, the immediate past minister of petroleum who he claimed supervised the theft of about N1.6 trillion by some PDP stalwarts and their offspring under the guise of fuel subsidy when  in reality ‘they never imported a pint of fuel’.  On November 5, he picked on Lucky Igbinedion, his predecessor in office and his father, the respected Esama of Benin, accusing them of betraying the trust of those who looked up to them for protection.

    But Igbinedion has shot back asking Oshiomhole to “tell the people about properties he allegedly acquired in the last seven years in Dubai, Cape Town in South Africa, in San Francisco, United States of America, a high rise apartment in Atlanta also in America and in London. He is calling everybody a thief but Oshiomhole is the biggest thief in Benin City today.”

    Igbinedion’s friends in the judiciary have reminded the governor, in case he has forgotten, that ‘the law empowers a sitting governor to allocate lands to people, including his own father’.  Is Oshiomhole himself not allocating lands to people as a sitting governor they sneered?  And as if to justify Lucky Igbinedion’s actions, Oshiomhole was told that by 1952, the year he was born, Chief Igbinedion had built a mansion in Benin and was wealthy enough to donate two houses to the then newly created Mid-west in 1963.

    As part of the battle for the minds of the Edo people, Igbinedion said he was revealing for the first time how much contribution his father and Tony Anenih, his godfather made to his administration.  According to him, “They borrowed the state money. It is documented and you have it there. When the banks could not trust us, I went to them. My father just felt you have got to do what you have got to do. There were days the pensioners would cry to him or block the road to Government House. We had to run to them just to keep the government run­ning.” Impetuous Governor Oshiomhole, there you have it. Pa Igbinedion and Anenih (the fixer) were jointly richer than Edo State when Lucky held sway.

    But that cannot be the end of the narrative. To ascertain if indeed Niger Delta vultures are really behind the nightmare of the impoverished masses of Niger Delta as hypothesized by Saro Wiwa, a prejudice swallowed by Oshiomhole, a quick recourse to memory is required to complete the narrative.

    Let us start with Lucky Igbinedion himself. He was after his tenure as governor dragged to court by EFCC and slammed with 191 court charges including the theft of N25b. This was reduced to one count of corruption summarized as ‘false declaration of account’, after plea bargaining. An Enugu Federal High Court presided over by Justice Abdullahi Kafarati later sentenced him to six months in prison with the option of a N3.5 million fine which many considered a slap on the wrist. With the plea bargain agreement he reached with the EFCC, he was required to return N500 million and forfeit three of the houses he acquired with stolen public funds to the Federal Government.

    Ibori who perfectly fits Saro Wiwa’s vulture characterization was first arraigned in Kaduna. But his associates in the judiciary curiously won their argument that he could only be tried in Asaba. Since there was no Federal High Court in Asaba, Dr. Ewetan Uduaghan, secretary to Ibori government,  who went on to succeed him as Delta State governor, quickly donated two government buildings for the purpose. The Asaba Federal High Court created for Ibori and presided over by Justice Marcel Awokulehin wasted no time in discharging and acquitting James Ibori of all of the 170-count charges of corruption, involving the laundering of millions of dollars, filed against him by EFCC.  But this did not stop a London court that described Ibori as ‘a criminal in government house’ from jailing him for 13 years after pleading guilty to some of the offences for which he had been acquitted by Asaba Federal High Court.

    And finally we can add Alamieyeseigha, the ‘Ijaw Governor-General’. While his influential Nigerian associates insisted the people of Niger Delta had no problem with their governor-general over his husbandry of their resources, the governments of Britain, United States, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank under the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative’ were not impressed. They went on to list his portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK and further accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, assets in the United States, and almost £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. Britain’s Metropolitan Police went on to charge him to court from where he jumped bail and escaped to Nigeria. And when Ribadu finally secured his conviction in Nigeria, ex-President Jonathan his fellow Ijaw man granted him a presidential amnesty.

    Membership of Saro Wiwa’s Niger Delta vultures is spread among the political, economic, intellectual and military classes as well as the judiciary and the press. With Igbinedion, the convict now playing the victim while casting the governor as the villain, Oshiomhole must have now realized that embarking on a crusade against Niger Delta vultures is like going on a suicide mission as Saro Wiwa discovered too late.

  • Ambode, Danfo drivers and The Economist

    First, we must observe that Lagos is a mega city with the associated mega-city problems similar to those you find in New York, Los Angeles, Cairo, Sao Paulo or Mumbai. It attracts all manners of people with deviant behaviour. In nearly all cases, most immigrants are out to eke out a living by taking advantage of the opportunities the city offers. In pursuant of their objectives, they often exhibit deviant behaviours. The immigrants despite their lack of sense of commitment to their host communities often exhibit sense of entitlement. But something positive has always come out of productive engagements between successive past Lagos State governments and the urban poor.

    As Governor, Jakande doubled the number of schools in Lagos, introduced free education and built low income houses. Former Governor Tinubu expanded the free education and free health programmes building General Hospitals in nearly all the Local Government Areas. He integrated the once notorious ‘Molue’ drivers through Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) ownership structure or as members of LASTMA. Fashola sustained this by turning the urban miscreants known as ‘area boys’ to environmentalists. There is no doubt the ongoing encounter between ‘Danfo’ drivers and their senior partners LASTMA, whose members according to Mike Akinyuli, a security consultant, own about 70% of the buses we see on the roads’, will produce identical result.

    The current encounter between Ambode’s government, ‘danfo’ drivers, LASTMA, their senior partners, and The Economist is about Lagos traffic gridlock which has become a source of nightmare to Lagos motorists.

    First, long before The Economist’s report on state of insecurity  and traffic in Lagos, Governor Ambode, a man said to be very cerebral, had during a retreat for his new team, identified ‘traffic congestion as a daily challenge with highly undesirable socio-economic and environmental effects, increasing stress and pollution levels which reduce several productivity’ for Lagosians. As a response he was also quoted to have said the state was ‘set to introduce a world-class traffic information and management system to drastically change the face of Lagos traffic’.

    But The Economist says  ‘the increased traffic gridlock was due to the governor’s new traffic policies which has encouraged a culture of impunity in Nigeria’s most populous city’, and went to aver that the policy was ‘being sabotaged by the traffic controllers banned from impounding cars’. In the opinion of the newsmagazine, that was a failure of governance.

    The government has spent the greater part of last week engaged in needless defence describing the report as “reckless”, “slanderous” and “ill-conceived.” But Joe Igbokwe, the Lagos APC spokesman admitted that the governor’s directive that the traffic managers be more humane was abused and sabotaged by the traffic officers leading to traffic snarls. He added the governor’s expression of ‘deep concern about the feedback from Lagosians whose worries range from security, traffic gridlock and environment itself’; it was obvious the new policies designed to alleviate the sufferings of Lagos residents were yet to yield dividends.

    As at the time of the report, ‘danfo’ drivers had turned the highways into bus stop and traffic officers were nowhere to be seen leaving motorists at the mercy of lawless ‘danfo’ drivers. The only thing the governor and his team can therefore quarrel with was The Economist’s conclusion that the shaky take off of the policy amounts to failure of governance. And in this regard, the magazine is entitled to its opinion despite Lagos State’s argument that such conclusion did not indicate application of sufficient intellectual rigour. That the governor said “We are repairing potholes and we are deploring more men to ensure the free flow of traffic”, or that “We have already hit the ground running’, did not preclude The Economist from expressing its cynicism or oblige it to share the governor’s optimism until those efforts bring forth dividends.

    It is as if the government expects sympathy from The Economist even after its own admission, that ‘recalcitrant traffic officers refused to carry out a directive by their employer”, or expects the defeated PDP looking for relevance not to exploit the current traffic crisis to declare triumphantly that “the worsening traffic situation in the state is a reflection of Governor Ambode’s inability to manage the state and a reflection of his unpreparedness to lead”.

    Since it is not likely that Lagosians will write off the governor they elected shortly after constituting his team based on jaundiced report of a magazine or comments of opposition looking for relevance, the government should be more concerned with finding answers to the deviant behaviour of ‘danfo’ drivers. Why for instance will a ‘danfo’ driver with full compliments of passengers take one way while oncoming vehicles scramble to avoid head on collision?

    Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who initiated the laudable LASTMA scheme back in 2000 had initially thought some of the deviant motorists especially “Molue drivers” were sick and doomed inmates of psychiatric hospitals. Not a few I was told, were forced to visit such hospitals. Fashola saw heavy unreasonable fines as deterrence. An exasperated ex-Governor Fashola once reminded the LASTMA traffic officers that their primary responsibility was to make the traffic flow and if impounding cars will derail that objective, the deviant motorist should be let off the hook. But both the ‘dreamer and the actualiser’, by applying inputs of intellectuals changed their perception at the end.

    It might be useful for the Ambode’s government to borrow a leaf from the findings of Vidal de la Blache a French Cultural Geographer and Lucien Febvre, a French Historian who in their theories of ‘environmental determinism and environmental possibilism,’ tell us that man is the master of his environment. Nature advises us of options available before us which we exploit to our own advantage or ignore at our own peril and eternal damnation. The ‘danfo’ driver is a thinking animal and not a caged goat. If he needs to make 30 runs between Ojota and Berger bus top, a distance of about five kilometres which should naturally take about 10 minutes in order to meet his obligation to the owner of the bus and gets his own extra to take care of his family as one who survives on a subsistence primitive consumption, he is not likely going to spend two hours on 10 minutes journey. As a rational being, he will look for alternative and that may include taking one-way if he can get away with it.

    If however we think he is not mad, but on a suicide mission, his passengers who held on to their breath as he manoeuvres dangerously facing an oncoming vehicle are not about to commit mass suicide. Among the passengers, we probably have a young nursing mother scheduled to pick her four months toddler from a day-care centre that has a closing time; a newscaster programmed to be on air at a scheduled time or a poor miracle-seeker rushing to meet evening service in one of the numerous churches dotting slum areas of Lagos who will fit the identity of a man apprehended by the governor driving on ‘one way’ and claimed he was rushing to church.

    ‘Danfo’ drivers, their LASTMA senior colleagues, share the same fate with peddlers of fake products on the streets of urban centres and the AK47-wielding cattle herdsmen marooned in the forest for over 10 months. It is all about the struggle for the survival of the fittest. And in this struggle, the privileged often define the state of sanity or insanity of the underprivileged.

    There is however a promise of hope in the ongoing engagement since those who worked along with Tinubu and Fashola to decree the sanity of those once regarded as mad ‘Molue’ drivers who are today part owners of BRT buses and the wasting away miscreants called area boys who are today celebrated environmental ambassadors. The team can ensure those currently proclaimed mad ‘danfo’ drivers get integrated into the Light rail system or aided to own their own commercial farms.

  • Restructuring as answer to MASSOB’s nuisance

    PDP, like NPC/NCNC and NPN/NPP, its forebears is a party embraced largely by the majority of those who share Hausa/Fulani and Igbo mainstream political tendencies. The party suffers a common affliction with her grandparents- intolerance of opposition.  In 1962, NPC/NCNC destroyed AG, sending Awo the opposition leader to prison in Calabar. Following pressure from well-meaning Nigerians, the ruling coalition gave Awo an option between renouncing politics and relocating to the UK or the US for a couple of years or being in prison while they run the country according to their world view without opposition. Awo rejected both options claiming such opportunism would amount to betrayal of his supporters in the West and among the marginalized minorities across the country. He chose to remain in prison until war over sharing of offices between the Igbo elite and northern elite who had separately approached the military for support ended in a military coup that swept the warring allies away in January and July 1966. In the Second Republic, the warring partners metamorphosed into NPN/NPP in 1979. As it was in the First Republic, the coalition was destroyed by haggling over the sharing of offices and resources. To outwit NPP, its main rival and ally, NPN massively rigged the 1983 elections awarding itself landslide and ‘seaslide’ victories even in opposition strongholds.  It is also on record that the massively rigged 2003 and 2007 elections supervised by PDP and Obasanjo were the worst conducted elections in our nation’s history. Yar’Adua the beneficiary of the 2007 massive rigging was so scandalized that he had to set up the Justice Uwais Commission to review the electoral laws.

    But Stalwarts of PDP who publicly swore their party would rule uninterrupted for 60 years, as part of their strategy, seized control of restive groups’ agitation for justice, fairness, and equitable share of the resources of the state, all of which were fallouts of the betrayal of our nation through the dumping of the 1963 republican constitution and the running of an heterogeneous society like a unitary state by the military. Thus MEND whose stated goals ‘are to localize control of Nigeria’s oil and to secure reparations from the federal government for pollution caused by the oil industry’, became an ally of PDP with its leading members cornering of mouth-watering multi-dollar contracts.  The Oodua Peoples’ Congress, formed by some Yoruba elite for the actualisation of the 1993 annulled MKO Abiola’s mandate after securing contracts to monitor oil pipelines also became an ally of PDP. Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State recently asked Chief Ralph Uwazuruike ‘to tell his audience why MASSOB went to bed throughout the period Jonathan was the President, only for MASSOB to wake up from their deep slumber now that Buhari is the President.” Echoing similar sentiment, Ohaneze has also alleged that ‘those sponsoring the latest agitation for the creation of the state of Biafra are corrupt Igbo politicians who are trying to hide under the agitation to avoid prosecution for their alleged crimes.’

    Greed, dishonesty and desperate bid to hold on to power which underlined the above action of PDP leaders also explains the motive for unleashing those ex-Governor Suswan of Benue described as ‘Fulani mercenaries going around with AK47 wreaking havoc on Benue people’ on behalf of Fulani real owners of the cattle. It is instructive that while in the last six years, Nigerians wake up daily to reports of orgy of killings of scores of innocent women and children, torching of their houses by so-called Fulani herdsmen, a situation that led to open lamentation of ex-governor Gabriel Suswan of Benue that his “people have congenially been displaced from their homes by these Fulani herders on a daily basis’ and that ‘some of our children have not been to school in the last two years’, none of these heavily armed herdsmen has been arrested , successfully prosecuted neither has their sponsors be found.

    Yet while Jonathan and his PDP pretended to be helpless, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN in February 2014 , as the election drew near argued in a letter to Jonathan that their free movement across the country with their cattle is guaranteed by Section 41, Subsection 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which states “every citizen is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereof or exit therefrom.” They also referred to Section 42, Sub-section (1) (a) which ‘forbids the imposition of any disabilities or restrictions on any citizen by any executive or administrative action against any citizen of any ‘community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion…”

    A segment of the Fulani political elite who make fortunes from the misfortunes of their less privileged compatriots as owners of the cattle heads on whose behalf the armed Fulani herdsmen operate suffer the same affliction with a segment of the Igbo elite, with whom they  jointly ruled the country since independence until Buhari’s emergence this year. This dishonest and greedy segment of the Igbo political elite also unleash poor largely uneducated Igbo youths on the streets of urban centres hawking imported substandard and sometimes banned items. The uneducated Fulani herdsmen and their Igbo street traders counterparts often serve as canon fodders for their dishonest and greedy elite who egg them on to pillage other peoples’ land in Port Harcourt or desecrate other peoples’ culture in Lagos citing section 41, subsection1 and section 42 subsection 2 which are aberrations in a federal constitution.

    The way forward is a return to ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’, with the coming together, for the first time in our nation’s history, a segment of the northern political elite represented by Buhari’s CPC and the mainstream Yoruba political tendency represented by Tinubu’s ACN who share a common view of society. They must first seek the kingdom of politics as Kwame Nkrumah would have put it. It is only after that the ongoing economic war can find meaning.

    We must restructure. There is no alternative with the failure of all the social engineering efforts of the military such as establishment of NYSC scheme, creation of unviable states and LGAs, establishment of federal government secondary schools and universities and quota systems of admission to federal institutions and civil service. Except for those benefiting from our nightmare, we have seen how a workable federal arrangement liberated people and groups from the tyranny of the state in the defunct Western Nigeria , India, Canada, Russia, former Yugoslavia, and Europe after the horrors of two world wars. Enemies of restructuring are those who instead of investing in the future of their impoverished compatriots want to live on their sweat and blood by condemning them to 12-14 months in the forest herding cattle they do not own or hawking smuggled goods whose labels they cannot read on the streets of our major cities.

  • Metuh and gains of judiciary under PDP

    As it is often said, no legitimate child deliberately sets his father’s house on fire. It is still inexplicable that those who for 16 years behaved as if they had no stakes in Nigeria are not remorseful. These men pillaged and plundered the land ‘materially and morally’ like colonial invaders. They shared our common patrimony through fraudulent privatisation and monetization policies. It made no difference to them that they were sharing what they did not build but what was built by visionary leaders. They introduced ‘political Sharia’; they unleashed Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram on Nigeria. They tamed Obasanjo who ended up squandering away with both hands, the goodwill of Nigerians and the international community he took into government in 1999. They hastened the death of ailing Yar’Adua. For about six years, they pushed naïve Jonathan around while shamelessly lying to Nigerians. The only decision Jonathan ever took as president was conceding defeat after losing the election without first consulting David Mark, Uche Secondus, Tony Anenih, Femi Fani-Kayode, the weeping Ifeanyi Ubah, errant Elder Orubebe, Pa Edwin Clark the President’s father and Olisa Metuh. Voted out of government by determined Nigerians, they still don’t think they owe Nigerians an apology.

    Last week, those who threatened Pa Bisi Akande with sedition for criticizing Jonathan’s government forgot that the law is still in our statute books.  Without remorse, they now again threaten to unleash Niger Delta militants on Nigeria because an election tribunal nullified an election described by local and international observers as ‘war’. According to Olisa Metuh and Wale Oladipo, “PDP is not willing to and will never surrender the mandate freely given to us by the people in states where we won in the last general election, neither are the people of those states willing to allow sectional invaders to exert influence on those to be in charge of their affairs”. That, after a court’s verdict, is a call for insurrection.

    After a vicious attack on the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, they accused President Buhari without proof of ‘undue interferences’ in the activities of the judiciary using the Department of States Service (DSS). This they say, threaten the 16 years ‘gains of the judiciary’ without defining what constituted ‘gains of judiciary under PDP. Fortunately, Joseph Jibueze, a very resourceful reporter, in a piece titled ‘How sabotage, blackmail, undue delays are killing the Judiciary’ listed some of the legacies of the judiciary between 1999-and 2014 to fill the gap. They include such cases as those of Ayo Fayose whose  trial for alleged financial misappropriation as a former  governor had dragged on for eight years before winning a controversial election in 2014 even while  facing eligibility case in court. In a bid to stop the case from being heard, Fayose unleashed thugs on judges, lawyers, and court officials. According to Justice Daramola, the Ekiti State Chief Judge: “The thugs invaded my court…tore the Record Books, beat the court officials…descended on Hon. Justice J. A. Adeyeye, the presiding Judge in Court No. 3, beat and dragged him on the ground”. After inauguration, Abuja kept its peace while Fayose with the help of thugs chased out 19 opposition lawmakers out of town and ruled like a garrison commander with seven PDP legislators.

    Another ‘gain’ of the judiciary Metuh probably had in mind was the Halliburton case. While the company officials indicted for bribing Nigerian officials were jailed after conviction in the US, Nigerians indicted for receiving the bribes walked away free. Although they did not mention it, but one can help PDP add as parts of ‘gains’ of the judiciary the Ibori case. Accused of stealing US$250million from the public purse, he pleaded to 10 counts of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud, and was sentenced  to 13 years on April 17, 2012, by the Southwark Crown Court in London .That was after the 171-count charge of money laundering, fraud and corruption filed against Ibori at the Federal High Court, Kaduna was discontinued in his favour by the Court  of Appeal that  held ‘his trial in Kaduna was illegal as the alleged crime was committed in Delta’ and was discharged and acquitted by Justice Marcel Awokulehin, when he was eventually arraigned in Asaba.

    While the trial of Erastus Akingbola, former owner of Intercontinental Bank has dragged on for five years due to conspiracy of judges and SANs, a civil suit instituted against him in a British court by Access Bank Plc has been disposed of by ‘a London, court which ordered Akingbola to pay the bank £654million allegedly diverted from the bank illegally’ in August 2012. Also listed as a possible ‘gain’ was the case of Bukola Saraki v. Inspector-General of Police (Unreported Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/231/2012), where Saraki  sought to restrain the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) of the Nigeria Police Force from  investigating an allegation of N9 billion fraud leveled against him. After reporting for investigation, Saraki filed a fresh suit seeking to stop the police from prosecuting him. He got the relief. The case of ex-Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State is similar. In March 2007, he secured a Federal High Court injunction restraining the EFCC from investigating his tenure.  Justice Ibrahim Buba gave an order that the EFCC had no power to “in any manner howsoever, investigate the account or financial affairs of a state government.”

    We can also add Dariye’s case whose British associates were jailed in London for laundering more than £1.4million of public funds found to have allegedly been stolen by the governor. Dariye in spite of EFCC 14-count charge for money laundering went on to win an election as a senator.

    In the Mohammed Abacha case numbered SC.40/2006 Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), simply ordered the withdrawal of the N446.3billion theft charge instituted against him to pave the way for him to contest as PDP governorship candidate for Kano.

    Again, we cannot blame Metuh and his PDP colleagues for describing all the above baleful legacies as ‘gains’. The judiciary has not changed much over the years. Because of the dishonesty and greed of its leading lights before independence, it backed the colonial masters’ grabbing of Lagos choice lands hiding under the treaty of cession of 1861 until Herbert Macaulay’s appeal on behalf of Chief Oluwa and the Eleko’s to the British Judicial Council in London was upheld in 1913. For the same reasons, S. L. Akintola’s Supreme Court 1962 victory was overturned by the British judicial council which ruled he was constitutionally removed.

    In 1966, because of dishonesty and greed, senior members of the judiciary advised Ironsi to take over the reins of power instead of swearing in Zanna Bukar Dipcharima, the next most senior minister as acting  Prime Minister as provided for in our constitution. Similarly driven by nothing but dishonesty and greed, senior members of the judiciary, who knew the implication of turning a heterogeneous society from a federal to a unitary state drafted for Ironsi Decree 34 of 1966 that sparked off rioting by ABU students that inexorably led to the mindless killing of innocent Nigerians. For the same reasons, leading lights of the judiciary helped Babangida  with his illegal interim decree after annulling the most credible election in our nation’s history.

    But how do we tame the greedy and dishonest senior members of our judiciary? I think there is something to learn from Metuh’s lamentation over the modest achievement of the DSS in the last few months following the removal of PDP infiltrators. It only shows that devoid of political interference, the DSS has the capacity to cage senior members of the judiciary who have turned it to cash and carry enterprise, turned politics to a noble profession that places emphasis on service to a game of brigands, and provider of legal cover to criminals in government houses.

  • In defence of Saraki

    Dishonesty and greed by the political class were identified as threats to nationhood in Awo’s 1947  ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ rejected by some ‘ethnic groups, their political parties and political leaders’ who believed whatever they cannot have cannot be good enough for Nigeria. Awo, who confessed spending quality time studying and proffering solutions to Nigerian problems while some of his political enemies were frolicking around had posited: “Given a choice between the white man, the traditional rulers and the educated elite, the average Nigerian would choose the white man first because with him he was sure of fairness and justice”. “The people’s angst against the traditional rulers”, he continued, “followed their acquisition of new powers without the attendant checks and balances that existed in the pre-colonial era”. Ordinary Nigerians, according to him found trusting the educated elite difficult because of their “dishonesty and greed”.

    This is true today as it was back then. The traditional institution has lost its relevance in many parts of the country. Whatever respect it had left after years of receiving five percent  of LGAs allocation to ensure they look the other way while developmental allocations were  shared by politicians was further eroded by ex-President Jonathan ‘stomach infrastructure’ policy which allowed him to move from palace to palace allegedly distributing dollars to willing traditional rulers during last March presidential election.

    Similarly, ‘dishonesty and greed’ by the political class contributed to the collapse of the First Republic, the 1967-70 civil war, Shagari’s twelve two-third presidency, Babangida’s eight years of ‘transition without end’, and his annulment of the 1993 presidential poll considered by many observers as the most credible election in our nation’s history, the betrayal of Abiola, the winner of the election and his death in detention. And closely linked to ‘dishonesty and greed of the political class’,one can add  Obasanjo’s third term fiasco, his imposition of ailing Umaru Yar’Adua and an ill-prepared ex-President Jonathan in 2007 and 2011 respectively.

    Of course, ‘dishonesty and greed’ are the only plausible explanation for Saraki’s desperation to keep digging in even after publicly admitting he hid inside a small car parked in front of the senate chambers for three hours while his 51 other elected party members were having a meeting at another venue with the president and sneaked into the senate chambers where he was adopted Senate President by 48 opposition senators and about eight of his supporters. The same goes for Ekweremadu who threw a party to celebrate dishonesty and greed and without restraint. He told reporters he and his ‘Like Mind PDP senators, under the guidance of PDP veterans like Tony Anenih, Uche Secondus and David Mark gathered in Mark’s sitting room throughout the night scheming how to usurp the deputy senate presidency which by convention belongs to the majority party, a convention he had benefitted from for eight years.

    But in an effort to obfuscate the bane of the political class, dishonesty and greed, which Awo identified back in 1947, Saraki with his ‘like mind senators’, with huge resources at their disposal to hire SANs, public opinion molders, and buy space and airtime in the media, now talk of ‘witch-hunt, independence of the legislature, separation of powers and the protection of our nascent democracy’ after undermining the democratic process.

    They in fact now play the victim. Thus when Mrs. Toyin Saraki on the strength of a petition by Kwara PDP which  publicly congratulated itself saying,  “We are particularly delighted that our painstaking efforts at chronicling the monumental heist that defined the eight years, almost uneventful rule of former Governor Bukola Saraki in Kwara, has not gone unnoticed’, was invited for questioning, what they saw was persecution. They did not only accompany her to EFCC’s office, they retired to the Senate Chambers to pass a resolution threatening the executive of the consequences of harassing wives of senators.

    Not long after, the Code of Conduct brought the following charges against Saraki himself. Making anticipatory declaration of House 15A&15B McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos; Failure to declare property on Plot 2A, Glover road, Ikoyi;  No 1, Tagus Street, Maitama, Abuja (Plot 2482, Cadastral Zone A06, Abuja; – No. 3 Tagus Street, Maitama, Abuja (plot 2481, Cadastral Properties Limited);  Property at 42 Gerald Road, Ikoyi  earning him N110,000,000,00) per annum at a time the property was under construction; Failure to declare N375m GTB loan converted to 1.5m pounds sterling and used to purchase property in London; Operating a foreign bank account; Transfer of $3.4m from GTB to foreign bank account during tenure as governor and failure to declare leasehold interest in a property in GRA Ikeja among others.

    Once again, the ‘like mind senators’ saw the only thing they wanted to see – persecution – by the executive. What followed was a vote of confidence on Saraki by 83 senators. He was later followed and mobbed like a movie star by 81 giggling merry-making senators who on entering the court tried to dissuade him from entering the witness box.

    Some concerned Nigerians have tried to draw a parallel between what they have described as shameful behavior of our unreflecting senators and last week probing of Hilary Clinton’s handling of Libya crisis as Secretary of State by the American Congress. Some have even argued that in advanced democracies, Saraki and Ekweremadu and 81 like mind senators either for admitting to dishonest behaviour or for identifying with act bordering on fraud would have signed the warrant certificate for their political death.

    But has it not be said that comparison can be odious? This after all is not America, Britain, Australia, Canada or Ghana but Nigeria where dishonesty and greed by the political class are routinely celebrated and where 81 elected senators will see nothing wrong with the amount of material wealth the Code Of Conduct Tribunal alleged Saraki amassed between 1990 when he took his first real job and 2011, the end of his tenure as governor of Kwara State.

    But all the same, I sympathise with Bukola Saraki. Dishonesty and greed were not his own creation. Awo railed against it in 1947 long before 1961 when he was born. Saraki was similarly not the only governor whose wife would secure mouth-watering contracts from government.  In recent time, the wife of a serving governor donated N5billion on behalf of herself and unidentified friends to the campaign funds of ex-President Jonathan and heaven did not fall. The alleged material wealth of Saraki, as Ozumba Mbadiwe would have described it, is like a small fry in the mouth of an elephant. They are nothing compared to properties scattered around the world listed against the names of some Niger Delta ex-governors by the British Metropolitan Police.

    And to his credit, Saraki is not like some ex-governors dragged to court along with their sons by EFCC for money laundering, or those whose fathers stole the country blind.He is an illustrious son of an illustrious father, a proud owner of Kwara fiefdom. As ‘Bukola’, his Yoruba name indicates, he met wealth at home. He became a director of his father’s bank just after NYSC, a position which conferred on him the right to borrow as much as he desired without collateral and a rare opportunity he seized with his two hands.

    If you ask me, I will say Bukola Saraki is a man much sinned against. Here is a young man who inherited dishonesty and greed from the political class, wealth and influence from his father now being persecuted by mischief makers and a poverty-complex mob for dishonesty and for amassing wealth, claiming without proof that not even Bill Gates can boast of properties listed against his name. It is however reassuring Saraki is determined to fight with all the resources at his disposal – money, influence and his 81 loyal senators who share with him a common bond as targets of arrest by EFCC either for armoured-car deals, money laundering or drug related offences.