Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

Despite the ill-will of greedy oil importers and marketers, the greatest beneficiaries of Jonathan’s six years presidency, ex-President Jonathan last week made a triumphant entry into the N7bn Otuoke church, erected on his behalf by PDP governors and government contractors, to take care of the spiritual needs of his poverty-stricken villagers who daily battle the vicissitudes of turbulent ocean with paddle canoes, for a thanksgiving. It was there Jonathan, who claimed to have been in chains in the last 16 years, made contrition for all the sins his captors committed in his name against Nigerians. Hours earlier, he had left Abuja in a blaze of glory as a proud ambassador of his Ijaw nation.

Of Jonathan six years sojourn in Aso Rock seat of power, Friday May 29 was his most glorious day. And his finest hour came with the successful handover of power to Buhari without the violence and mayhem the Niger Delta militants, their sponsors and their battle-weary Yoruba Afenifere septuagenarians sympathizers had threatened to unleash on the nation.  I am sure Jonathan’s predecessors dead or alive must be green with envy watching him receive a red carpet treatment as he was driven for the last time in a presidential limousine, shepherded to the podium by horse-riding men of the Brigade of Guards in their decorated ceremonial uniform. As he stepped into the podium, except for the few wailing chieftains of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), oil fraudsters and other economic saboteurs who wished Jonathan to remain in chains, he was hailed even by his political adversaries. Jonathan was celebrated in defeat. No Nigerian leader living or dead has ever had the good fortune of being celebrated even in victory.

Obasanjo stained his 1979 record of voluntary handover of power to Shehu Shagari by his third term fiasco in 2007. Tafawa Balewa, Aguiyi Ironsi and Murtala Mohammed were brutally murdered by those who once regarded them as benefactors. Yar’Adua succumbed to illness while in office, while Sani Abacha died eating apples. Shagari was deposed for destroying the economy. He spent time under house arrest. Buhari was betrayed in the night of many knives by those who crowned him king. He was incarcerated for three years. Shonekan’s headship of Babangida’s contraption called Interim National Government was declared illegal by the judiciary before Abacha finally eased him out of office. Abdul Salami Abubakar generally regarded as a care taker to ease out of power the remnants of Babangida’s ‘army of anything is possible’ that had by 1993 destroyed our economy and budding industries was merely tolerated.

Jonathan secured his freedom by conceding defeat to Buhari who had beaten him ‘round and square’ in the March 28 election without first consulting his captors. It was the first unilateral decision he took in six years. As a hostage, his has been a government of ‘delegation by abdication’ during which PDP dealers and wheelers, exploiting his simplicity and artlessness, ravaged and pillaged our land with impunity.   And for that one singular act, even the international community that has always treated Jonathan with disdain, hailed him for his act of sportsmanship. President Buhari equally praised him “for his display of statesmanship in setting a precedent that has now made our people proud to be Nigerians wherever they are”. And with Buhari’s declaration that henceforth, Jonathan’s “act of graciously accepting defeat will become the standard of political conduct in the country”, I am sure Jonathan will be pleased with himself that his electoral defeat in a way was a personal victory.

And by opting to do the most honourable thing instead of consulting the likes of desperate Elder Orubebe of Abuja INEC collation centre shameless theatrics, weeping and inconsolable Ifeanyi Ubas who wept louder than the bereaved, the caustic tongued Femi Fani-Kayode and his imaginary 24 states won by PDP while voting which later extended to the following day was still half-way, “PDP governors without character” who insisted 16 was greater than 19, Jonathan has besides saving our nation from avoidable turmoil and loss of lives, also saved himself from the fate that has befallen ex-Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo, now facing charges of crime against humanity in the Hague as a result of the violence  that engulfed his nation following his refusal to concede defeat.

Jonathan last minute heroism has probably thrown light on the real Jonathan or ‘the Jonathan Nigerians don’t know’. Last week, he confessed he has never been interested in politics. Speaking during a grand reception in his honour in Yenagoa, last Friday, he had said; “Without Alamieyeseigha, l wouldn’t have been here talking about being a former President. Nobody would have heard about Jonathan without him”. Jonathan never fought for anything. He never lobbied for anything. And he never won any election on his own.

Obasanjo single-handedly picked him as running mate to Yar’Adua in 2007.  In an era of ‘do or die election’, he procured victory for their joint ticket. Jonathan was not even qualified to contest the 2011 election but following 12 years of PDP massive corruption, his captors settled for  a harmless and ‘shoeless’ Jonathan. Nigerians swallowed the bait by claiming they voted Jonathan and not PDP despite Sonala Olumhense’s warning that if voted into office, Jonathan would sell the nation to PDP.

As president, Jonathan never showed any passion for the job. He was really never in charge. After publicly telling Nigerians of a cabal of economic saboteurs made up of fuel importers working against the interest of the nation, he was mandated by those who put him in chains to announce the increase of fuel pump price of fuel by 300% claiming the nation’s economy would collapse without visiting such a hardship on the people who had just given him a landslide victory.  A house probe later revealed Nigerians were paying for the sins of some of his captors and their children involved in the theft of about N1.7 trillion fuel subsidy scam.

From then on, Jonathan’s administration became a government of ‘delegation by abdication’. Okonjo-Iweala ran the economy alone. She was intolerant of any form of criticism. Not too long ago, Professor Soludo, the former CBN governor was forced to point out in the piece entitled, ‘Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the missing trillions’, that “Our public finance, under Okonjo-Iweala is haemorrhaging to the point that estimated over N30tn is missing, or stolen, or unaccounted for, or simply mismanaged”.

Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, besides presiding over massive theft in NNPC where $20b was said to be unaccounted for, and the N1.7 fuel subsidy scam, she was also alleged to have expended N10b on aircraft leasing for official duties.

Justice Minister Bello Adoke worked for Jonathan’s captors rather than for Nigerians. Only one of those accused of contributing to the collapse of the banking sector was successfully prosecuted according to Lamido Sanusi who was illegally removed for asking NNPC to be more transparent. Not much success was achieved among those involved in the fuel subsidy scam. With Bello Adoke as Attorney General and Minister of Justice, an indicted villain got a presidential amnesty while innocent justice Isa Salami was given the boot for ruling against PDP vote riggers. Adoke presided over the controversial bloc, OPL 245, and the payment of $1.1 billion meant for   Malabu Oil to Mr. Dan Etete. Abba Moro the Minister of Interior, Stella Oduah as minister for Aviation and Chinedu Nebo as minister for power and many others ran their various ministries like personal concerns.

These then were the representatives of those who put Jonathan in chains. They were the public face of those who contributed N21b  in one day in breach of the constitution to support his candidacy, those who  encouraged him to dare Obasanjo by reneging  on his undertaking to do only one term, the bank fraudsters, fuel subsidy scammers, Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria who insisted night is day, that Jonathan has fought insurgency to a halt, that the new Niger bridge yet to take off is a reality, that petrol and kerosene are available at controlled price and that power generation at less than 2000MW down from 4500MW has improved.

Jonathan’s triumph over those who held him in chains for 16 years was not just a personal victory but also a victory for our nation.

Last Sunday, at the Cathedral Church of Advent, Life Camp Gwarimpa Abuja, President Jonathan did what he does best- sharing his thoughts on all issues be it politics, economic or even security, with his congregation. My “fears are for the ministers and aides who served with me”, he told his Christian loyal supporters, adding in an effort to play the victim, “I sympathise with them; they will be persecuted, and they must be ready for that persecution.” But Lai Mohammed, APC spokesperson allayed the president fears by reassuring him Buahri will not be bogged down by endless probes. He however did not forget to add “those who have played poker with the nation’s destiny must be willing and eager to clear their conscience before man and God”.

I think this is type of exchange is one more compelling reason why we must revisit the past. It is in the interest of all. We already know what Jonathan and PDP stand for. It is only the uninformed who will be surprised that PDP, a creation of the military, an institution associated with pillaging conquered territories, produced wheelers and dealers who operated as if they have no stake in Nigeria. Military-baked PDP ‘new breed’ politicians cannot but act with impunity. The late Sunday Afolabi, internal affairs minister who went to jail for his involvement in the identity card contract scam admitted PDP is ‘come and chop’ party.  But long before that confession, John Campbell had during proceedings at a hearing on the topic: Nigeria in Turmoil, on 19 March, 2010, at Chattam house, London, dismissed PDP as a “party 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”.

And PDP has no apology. Between 1999 and 2003, 17 of its 22 elected governors were either convicted or on the run from justice for financial malfeasance. There was the Halliburton case in which PDP stalwarts took a bribe of $180m to secure the LNG Bonny plant contract. There was the bungled Turn Around Maintenance contract for the refineries by PDP stalwarts. It was PDP men who during one of their vicious ‘family quarrels’, revealed that what  Obasanjo and Atiku did in the name of privatization between 1999 and 2003  was to literarily  share Nigeria’s commonwealth among their PDP members who had access to state money. When there was nothing left to share after privatization, a fraudulent undertaking, by their own admission, they came up with self-serving monetization policy which legitimizes the sharing of a national patrimony a transient government was expected to hold in trust for our children. It did not occur to them that there would have been nothing to share if Balewa, Zik and Awo had sold their official houses to themselves.

But our deep understanding of what PDP and its leaders stand for only reinforces the need to probe aspects of their past activities that have implications for tomorrow. Let us start with the Petroleum Products Price Regulatory Agency, (PPPRA). The outfit with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, gobbling scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion per annum was touted as an answer to long queues at filling stations which greeted PDP accession to power in 1999. Its mandate was among others to “make the products available at reasonable prices”. The Bill for the establishment of PPPRA was promptly passed into law in February 2003. Sixteen years down the line, at the twilight of PDP’s exit from power, the queues are back with thousands of motorists marooned in filling stations across the country. PPPRA is a house of fraud. A Punch newspaper editorial recently brought the past to pain when it reminded us  about“the N2.53 trillion paid out in 2011 as petrol subsidies to cronies and “ghost” businessmen when the National Assembly approved only N245 billion that year”. None of the PDP stalwarts and their children indicted by the House probe has been successfully prosecuted, a development the outgoing president put on ‘slow pace of justice in our environment’.

Also needed to be revisited is the frittering away of N7billion on rural electrification project.  It will be recalled that EFCC on June 14, 2010, claimed the rural electrification exercise “were used as conduit pipes with which funds of the Rural Electrification Agency were siphoned and were awarded to companies either not pre-qualified to be awarded the contract, or were phony or non existing companies”. But once Justice M.G Umar of Abuja High Court absolved all the PDP men and their collaborators on March 24, 2012, claiming ‘he was unable to find a prima facie case or complaint disclosed in the proof of evidence against the respondent’, the government did not even bother to appeal.

We have the former Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, now a senator-elect from Anambra, whose alleged overpriced amoured car deal with Coscharis forced the nation to pay attention  to a loss of as much as N64b  to import tax waivers scam in the first half of 2013 financial year. As it has now turned out, while Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance claimed her ministry “approved only N70.73 billion worth of duty waivers and exceptions in three years, the customs the implementing agency has insisted the value of waivers processed for the same period was N1.4 trillion”.  President Jonathan who governs through delegation by abdication believes his minister of finance could do no wrong even after her 2011 television appearance fiasco where she justified payment of subsidy to those that turned out to be children of PDP stalwarts who never supplied a pint of fuel.

The incoming government’s immediate challenge will be the power sector. Unfortunately, PDP and its leaders could not even agree on how much the nation has expended on the power sector since 1999. Independent foreign experts put the figure at above $50b.  President Jonathan’s own three-year roadmap after an expenditure of about $8b pushed the power capacity to 4,517MW in December 2012 before nose-diving to the current estimated 2800MW.  Dagogo Jack, chairman of the presidential task-force on power who presided over Jonathan’s Roadmap for Power Sector Reform which gave birth to six generation companies, 11 distribution companies and a national power transmission company, recently claimed government has no control over private firms.

And finally as a way of solving some of the above riddles, there may be need to probe all those who donated a whopping sum of over N21b to support President Jonathan’s failed re-election bid. Of the N21bn, Jerry Gana, a key actor in Jonathan energy reform who was in the Abuja church last Sunday to bid Jonathan farewell as he had done to his past predecessors since 1985, donated N5 billion on behalf of his unidentified friends and “associates in the power sector.”, Tunde Ayeni, chairman of Skye Bank Plc and also a key actor in the power sector donated N2 billion on behalf of himself and his unnamed “partner” and “friends.” This type of donation raises question about the outgoing government’s plan to arrange a N213 billion bailout for government favoured private sector operators who have been confirmed to be stalwarts of PDP.

The donation of N1billion by the transport and aviation sector at a period they are indebted to the banks to the tune of N300 billion may expedite the plan of the incoming government to convert the Jonathan fleet of over eight aircrafts to form the nucleus of a new national carrier while EFCC is set after the current reckless operators of private airlines; and of course a probe will indicate if the automobile industry donors of N450 million, include beneficiaries of import duty waivers.

The Punch in its editorial of December 23, 2014 states “there is an instinctive conclusion among the Nigerian public that the Jonathan government is the most financially corrupt, fiscally irresponsible, politically insensitive and socially disconnected in Nigerian history”. Both Jonathan and Buhari need the probe for different reasons.

On October 31, 1959, Chief Obafemi Awolowo told a distinguished audience including Sir James Robertson, then Governor General of Nigeria that very few events in his life time had given him so much pleasure as opening the Western Nigerian Television Service, (WNTV),  which he  described as ‘a modern miracle’. It was the first in Africa.  The structures housing the project took less than three months to build with the help of 300 workers. Sir James Robertson in his opening remark paid glowing tribute to the ‘enterprise and determination’ of those behind the project and their overseas partners’ for achieving such a feat in such record time. The inauguration of the TV station was the icing on the cake of other achievements of the Western Region between 1952 and 1959. The regional government had not only successfully implemented its free education programme, it awarded during its first year in office, local and international scholarships  to youths of Western Region than all the colonial government awarded to the entire country in their years.

The giant strides made by the Western Region were possible because we operated a workable federal arrangement. And the credit for that goes to the British colonial masters who realized very early that most of the educated elites with eyes on becoming new inheritors of power lived in denial pretending our cultural differences had been greatly exaggerated by accident of colonial rule. The colonial regime therefore took it upon itself to tell us the obvious- that the ‘Hausas of Zaria are different from the Bantu tribes men of the valley of the Benue’ just as the Scandinavians in the Baltic are different from the Slavs of Bulgaria; that we are a ‘collection of mutually independent native states, separated by difference of history and tradition, by ethnological and racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers’.

Consequently, Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor General in an address to the Nigerian Council on December 1920 was unequivocal about a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.   This stated policy was what later influenced the constitutional changes of 1954, 1957 and the 1958 Lancashire debate at which October 1, 1960 was chosen as the date for our independence.

With the collapse of the first republic through the intervention of forces loyal to those who had earlier expressed their preference for a unitary system in a multi-ethnic society,  we have – in the absence of an impartial British arbiter –been living in denial, running a federal system only in name. Expectedly, children of the Western Region’s miracle of the first republic have been in the forefront for a struggle for a restructured Nigeria.  However, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former CBN Governor and current Emir of Kano while labeling them as advocates of a ‘return to a nihilist era of ethnic agendas and tribal warfare’ accused them of engaging in ‘rabid tribalism and provincialism’.

What was probably lost on Sanusi who not too long ago claimed he was proud of his grandfather who supervised the famous Kano groundnut pyramids’ is that Yoruba advocates of a restructured Nigeria were yesterday’s children of cocoa farmers whose taxes were creatively deployed through marketing boards by Awo and his colleagues to provide free education, build industries and GRAs for those who have today turned out to be successful entrepreneurs, businessmen, lawyers, doctors and academics. But for the British structure that allowed each region to develop at its own pace without interference from others, and the dedication of Awo and his self-made colleagues to the cause of Western Region’s youths, there was only a thin line between them and the children of the groundnut farmers who ended up as emir’s labourers, almajiris or worse still ‘maitatsine’ religious fundamentalists..

For the Yoruba, restructuring is not ‘primarily about providing a constitutional frame-work, a formula for sharing the spoils of power’ as claimed by Sanusi. The Yoruba have a template of the ‘1959 miracle’.  Restructuring  is  a vehicle for  all ethnic groups at different levels of cultural development including those Clifford in 1920 identified as ‘cannibals inhabiting some hill tops’, ‘the anti-social tribes’ and  ‘the naked warriors of the jungle’ for equal opportunity to develop at their own pace without interference from others.

Besides the Yoruba, other prominent Nigerians have in the light of our experiences in the last 16 years, identified what a restructured Nigeria should look like. For Chief Emeka Anyaoku, a former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, ‘the present ‘36 federating units and the federal capital territory, each with its full paraphernalia of administration, spending disproportionate amount of its resources on recurrent expenditure’, is responsible for the collapse of education and health sectors and infrastructural decay’. The most appropriate structure of governance for Nigeria, according to him should be a return to a ‘true federation of six federating units with each developing at its own pace, and the proceeds from “God-given” national resources’.

And as for Atiku Abubakar, a onetime vice president of the country, ‘the current federal structure arrogates too much functions and resources to the government at the centre, and thus killing the spirit of innovation and enterprise among the people’. He has therefore advocated for a political and governmental system that “empowers local authorities and gives them greater autonomy to address peculiar local issues, and enhances accountability, while contributing to the general good of the country.”

Here is where the president-elect viewed as the elixir for all our socio political and economic ailments comes in. As CPC candidate in 2011, he was the only presidential candidate who had restructuring as part of his agenda. Restructuring also featured in his current APC manifesto. The template has been made for him. We can start by devolution of power to the already identified six geo-political zones to allow them face their own demons. The federal government has no business in education, health, agriculture local government etc. Government should dismantle all the money guzzling agencies and transfer their services and the resources to the new zones or regions. The Federal Road Safety Commission, like many other government duplications have more than enough personnel to form the nucleus of state police for the new zones.

We are not being asked to invent the wheel. Europe after two brutal world wars realized part of the solution to hostility is a workable federal arrangement based on the peculiarities of their different communities.  Today the whole of Europe is working towards becoming a federation.

What will finally define the Buhari government beyond fighting corruption, turning the economy around, making us proud Nigerians  once again, all of which have been taken for granted by  millions of Nigerians who have faith in his capacity to deliver on his promises is how he tackles the forces benefitting from the current anarchy we call a federal structure which allows  politicians who by just  claiming to be a Nigerian  before being Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba or Munchi etc becomes president without representing anyone or secure oil block and made billions without work. That, as one can infer from Edmund Burke’s argument, is like climbing the palm tree from the top. No one can be a good Nigerian if he is not first a good representative of his or her people.  Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo who distinguished themselves as representative of their people are today remembered more by Nigerians than any living or dead former Nigerian head of state.

Obasanjo and Jonathan, his estranged godson, have nothing but contempt for the Ekitis and their professors. The former first inflicted a dim-witted Fayose, a student of Lamidi Adedibu, the PDP garrison commander of Ibadan politics whose idea of a governor is a public pugilist who can also swear to falsehood with the Holy Quran without qualms. Obasanjo probably did that to compensate the man who doubled as the head of Ibadan thugs for his support for the 2003 ‘do or die’ elections. And for the latter, Ekiti experiment supervised by an ambitious clowning man who knows no fear, can be used as a template for 2015. This probably failed because of a fortuitous rift between godfather and godson, the threat of the international community especially the US and Britain, and the resolve of Jega to be on the right side of history.

Except the Supreme Court with its bizarre judgment, and perhaps Fayose’s thugs, the Yoruba even without the benefit of ‘Ekiti-gate’ audios, now know Fayose is an impostor. It is all embedded in our rich culture. We know for a fact that when the slave usurps the throne, institutions of state and its people are imperiled.  Between 2003 and until his impeachment in April 16, 2006, Ekiti knew no peace. The period was marked by violence, kidnapping of a traditional ruler and assassination of his close PDP rivals such as Dr. Ayo Daramola, a World Bank consultant and Tosin Omojola. Ekiti sons for fear for their lives deserted home.

Referring to the sordid past during his inauguration on Thursday October 16, 2014, Fayose had confessed: “All my property were left in the Government House because I had to flee”, adding that during “seven and half years of my political wilderness,” I was “taken to court about 59 times aside the 45 days I spent in detention over EFCC charges”. But because of what President Jonathan has conveniently described as “the the slow pace of justice that grinds slowly in our environment”, in other to shield his thieving PDP members, Fayose like many accused PDP stalwarts ,instead of ending up behind bars  moved on to become governors, senators, minister and party leaders.

Ayo Fayose shortly after losing a senatorial election was said to have trounced his highly rated sitting rival in all the 16 LGA. Shocked by his victory he could not but describe it as “a rare miracle”, adding “having a second chance is very rare. My return to government is not common in history; I will not allow this position to go into my head or use it to oppress anybody; I don’t have anybody in mind to punish battle with or fight in any way; I won’t allow sycophants to derail me again”.

But that was short-lived. His desperation at holding on to ill-acquired throne through various acts of impunity and constitutional breaches since his second coming is enough reason to believe Fayose is a usurper. And here once again, the Yoruba culture pointedly tells us that “omo Oba ki jagun bi eru”, literarily translated the heir apparent even in the thick of a battle is conscious of is responsibility to the state and the besieged enemy’s territory in contrast to a slave who has no stake and is prepared to risk all. Fighting like a slave without grace is exactly what Ayo Fayose has been doing since his second inauguration. As governor-elect, he had led a band of thugs to assault a judge presiding over his eligibility case, tearing his robe and shredding his case files.

His next action was to ferry seven PDP lawmakers in government bus protected by 300 policemen to the state House of Assembly where they whimsically pronounced the speaker backed by 19 lawmakers impeached and hilariously proclaimed one of the seven lawmakers a speaker. Moments later, Fayose dressed like one of his thugs was telling a bemused nation that he has recognized the new speaker. He then proceeded to chase the 19 lawmakers out of town. With the help of the police, he has continued to sustain this illegality. An attempt by the lawmakers to return home was frustrated. Fayose, drunk with power sent thugs to manhandle the lawmakers at a boundary town between Osun and Ekiti.

Fearing the victory of Buhari will put an end to his acts of impunity, he became paranoid.  First it was Buhari’s certificate. Then it was his age. He even went on to conclude that because his 70-something years old mother was afflicted with a strange disease that makes her resort to the use pampers, Buhari also must be using pampers. He falsely claimed Buhari was in London hospital and in fact trailed him down spending public money. He then changed strategy. He wanted President Jonathan, to relieve Jega of his duty as INEC chairman for insisting on the use of card readers. He did not forget to remind President Jonathan that ‘heaven will not fall’, if Jega was illegally removed, just as beyond opposition noise, heaven did not fall following  Jonathan’s  illegal and immoral removal of  Justice Ayo Salami for ruling against PDP stalwarts that stole other peoples mandates.

Living in a fools’ paradise and believing there will be no consequences for his actions, Fayose who is too dim-witted to know fear (apology to Ali Mazrui) scared away most serious contestants in the last parliamentary and state assembly elections. PDP that was in opposition in Ekiti six months ago has now become the only party in Ekiti winning all available elective positions.

Fayose and his PDP supporters and okada riders in Ekiti are behaving like NNDP of the first republic who having rigged an election, dared the people counting on the false sense of security provided by the police.  As a young boy, it is difficult to forget the horror of that era.

We watched in horror as men and their children were routinely locked up in their cars and set ablaze right in front of police stations. Three months after military take-over and cessation of hostilities in other parts of the West, mud houses and cocoa farms were still being torched in Ekiti. The late Col. Adekunle Fajuyi, leveraging on his being an Ekiti man had to take a tour of Ekiti town and villages appealing to his people to stop the mindless killing.

Tragically, this is the past the Supreme Court by its last week bizarre verdict tried to encourage. In their wisdom, Fayose was not properly impeached in 2006. But since they didn’t say their verdict was retroactive, it stands to reason that Fayose was not qualified as at the time he contested the election in June 2014. The Supreme Court’s wise men were silent on Fayose’s constitutional banditry. Perhaps as a consequence, Fayose has moved on to mobilize his church congregation, touts, market women, okada riders who have by last Monday taken over the state House of Assembly. It is not clear if the Supreme Court wise men are also asking the besieged people of Ekiti to resort to self-help.

But Fayose and his thugs currently behaving like lunatics must be reminded Ekiti people hardly forget. They equally don’t forgive traitors. He had the luxury of escaping in the boot of his car last time around. The scene he probably remembered when during his inauguration he gave an undertaking to be of good behavior. But Fayose cannot give what he has not got. He is ill-equipped, ill-mannered and ill-tempered to manage society. With the criminal conspiracy of the out-going government, it is time the new inheritors of power got the police authorities to allow the lawmakers do their job and if necessary to put an end to Fayose’s buffoonery. Ekiti as the butt of expensive joke world over have suffered enough. Waiting until after Jonathan’s exit on May 29 may be too late. By then aggrieved people may forcefully attempt to demolish Fayose’s fraudulent structures.

It is on record that many Igbo urban immigrants trying to eke out a living like other urban poor had lived peacefully with their host communities on the streets of Lagos and Kano long before the return of Zik, the most influential Igbo in the 20th century in 1934, Akanu Ibiam, the first Igbo medical doctor in 1935, and Louis Mbanefo, the first Igbo lawyer, 1937 and their involvement in politics. And following the false sense of security the new spokes persons promised, the Igbo urban immigrants  started saying ‘any attack on Zik is an attack on Igbo nation’ and the radicals among them even went further  buying off all the cutlasses in Lagos market in preparation for war against their Lagos hosts. But unfortunately, to the power seeking Igbo elite, the Igbo urban immigrants are only tools for political bargaining in whose name they swear when confronted by their own demons. Whether it was a Fulter Sutton Commission of Inquiry into the activities of ACB then owned by Zik, his children and his friend Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu, or Ozumba Mbadiwe’s Ijora land deal, or in recent times, the evasion of payment for land rent on choice properties in Lagos or involvement in fuel subsidy scam, it has always been because they are Igbo leaders fighting the cause of urban immigrants.

Attempts at using Igbo urban dwellers for political leverage started back in 1938 during the crisis in Nigerian Youth Movement, a party formed  by Yoruba and Yoruba repatriates  many of whom were alumni of Kings College and  according to Richard Sclar, ‘ men of substance engaged in business, law medicine or journalism’. The crisis started with the resignation of its chairman, Dr  Kofoworola Abayomi from the Legislative Council and in line with the constitution of the party, Ernest Ikoli, supported by Awolowo, the Ibadan branch Secretary General, put himself forward . But Akinsanya, a founding member, supported by Zik also showed interest. This led to an election in which Akinsanya was roundly defeated. In 1939 Zik pulled out of NYM with Akinsanya and the Igbo members accusing Awo who had supported an Ijaw man against his Ijebu kinsman a tribalist. The Lagos Ibo state Union which had taken over NCNC since 1944 believed Zik. Richard Sclar hazarded a guess as to Zik’s motive. He narrowed it down to two self-serving possibilities:  ‘He may have resented the commercial competition of the Daily Service, the official journal of NYM, or that he discovered ‘his impetuously , dramatic, highly personalized type of leadership was not palatable to the Lagos elite group of  professionals and intellectual luminaries of Lagos’ at the period.

The intra party feuds that engulfed NCNC after the return of its delegation to London was also blamed on Yoruba by Zik and his Igbo colleagues. Prince Adeleke Adedoyin and Dr Olorun –Nimbe, members of the delegation had accused the leadership of NCNC of mismanagement of funds and Zik of being the sole author of the Memorandum and Constitutional Proposal submitted to the colonial secretary. The two were consequently expelled but the expulsion was ineffective because they constituted the soul of NCNC in Lagos. And later when attempt by the party to prevail on Dr Olorun-Nimbe who had won an election to the central legislature to step down to pave way for Zik failed, Zik claimed he was being marginalized  as an Igbo man by Yoruba tribalists .The Lagos Igbo state Union believed him. Ozumba Mbadiwe thereafter embarked on a crusade to separate Lagos from the West.

Although the pan tribal group by the Ibibio first appeared in Calabar in 1928, followed in 1930, by Igbo Unions in Lagos and Port Harcourt, it wasn’t until 1945 that a parallel movement for the unity of Yoruba  led by  Obafemi  Awolowo, Dr Oni Akerele, and others started in far away  London. And the aim among others was to reform the alien authoritarian system of government imposed on Yoruba by the British following the 1914 amalgamation. Action Group that emerged from the egbe was therefore a party anchored on Yoruba nationalism.

But Zik dismissed Awo who had by 1945, around the time he was celebrating the virtues of the Igbo as a people ordained by God to lead Africa, written his first critical book on British Administration in Nigeria where he advocated ‘federalism, the right of ethnic nationalities for self rule’ and called for the ‘barriers of tribalism, clannishness to be broken with ethnical units totally destroyed”. Zik devoted his daily column in his West African Pilot to fighting Awo, and the AG. He exploited his popularity in the major towns of the west and Lagos where he could do no wrong because the Lagos white cap chiefs and Imams saw him as the grandson of Herbert Macaulay.

But this was not enough to stop the victory of Awo and AG In the 1951 regional election, a victory that   sealed Zik’s hope of becoming the premier of the West. Once again Zik ran back to his Lagos Ibo State Union alleging he was robbed by Awo and Yoruba tribal irredentists. Turning logic on its head, Zik and his supporters insisted that AG won the 1951 western regional election by 45 to NCNC’s 35 seats because of tribal politics. But they had  had little to say about eastern region where in the same election, the dominant NCNC won by 65 to the opposition’s (United National Party) 4,   Similarly  in the 1954, federal election in the west, AG won by 23 to NCNC’s 18  while in the same federal election in the east, NCNC won by 32 to AG 3.  But ask Igbo youths who have been fed with falsehood by Igbo political elite as to the origin of tribal politics in Nigeria, they will not hesitate to point at Western House Ibadan where the late Professor Chinua Achebe falsely claimed he witnessed cross carpeting on the floor in  1952, when in truth the list of AG candidates was submitted and published by the colonial government before the election and a list of successful AG candidates  as  released by government was published by the Daily Times about two days before the sitting.

Igbo political elite will not even accept responsibility for the civil war. Many Igbo youths believe Ojukwu’s declaration of independence of Biafra and the ensuing civil war was the making of Awo who reneged on ‘if East by any act of omission or commission is forced out of the federation, the west will follow”. I am sure Ojukwu who lived among the Yoruba in Lagos and Achebe who schooled in Ibadan ought to have known the Yoruba who by their culture are at liberty to ask their leaders uncomfortable questions would not have hesitated to demand Awo, their powerful and highly respected leader first bring his children from abroad if he had insisted on fighting a war with Hausa Fulani soldiers in firm control of Abeokuta and Ibadan. (There were very few Yoruba foot soldiers in the military).

But Awo knew he was leading a highly critical followership who read meanings even to ordinary greetings. He ran down to Enugu with Professor Samuel Aluko a few days later to plead with Ojukwu to delay his declaration of independence. In spite of the assurances, Ojukwu declared the independence of the Republic of Biafra, according to him, ‘with only 19 rifles’, a day after Gowon had turned the dream republic into a landlocked enclave having carved out states for the minorities that had always wanted liberation from the Igbo hegemony. And as recently observed by Theophilus Danjuma while praising President Jonathan for conceding defeat, Ojukwu prolonged the nightmare of his people for another one year after the fall of Enugu.

Igbo political elite hardly get sanctioned for failure of leadership. They falsely proclaim Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba as Igbo haters. With the former, they have according to General Alabi jointly ruled the country since independence while the latter provides a safe haven for Igbo fortune seekers.

Many of our youths have been fed with too many falsehoods.  Part of the immediate challenges of the incoming administration must include bringing back the study of history in our schools. Our tomorrow is nothing but the sum total of our yesterday and today.