The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Fani-Kayode Vs. self-serving Igbo elite

    Please tell Gbogungboro (the masked rambler without phone number) that the positive contributions the Igbos made to Lagos becomes obvious even when viewed from the prism of recent superficial events. How does Lagos look like when Igbos goes home for Christmas? Did your banks not collapse when Igbos withdrew their money to go home during the Abiola saga? The man must have studied perverted history at UCL. Be reminded that your Hausa masters are still around the corner, lest you forget. We are not unmindful that you will, as it is your habit, treacherously team up with them against the Igbos’ (08027188222)

    I missed this columnist’s piece of August 22 titled ‘Letter to the Igbo nation by a friend’. It was the above reaction which the reader probably expected me to forward to the ‘masked rambler’. That prompted me to search for the said article. The summary: As a people not known to have developed kingdom and cities, very little was known of Igbo history until Professor Adiele Afigbo’s major work which established Igbo had no contact with people outside their immediate neighbourhood; that the Aworis, a Yoruba sub group, established a kingdom in Lagos Peninsular in the 12th century which by the 19th century had become an important trading post for the Europeans; that the British that used force to establish dominance over Lagos in 1851 went ahead in1861 to sign a treaty of cession with a Lagos king and in 1914 made Lagos the capital of Protectorate of Nigeria. The Igbos who, like other Nigerian groups, only started coming to Lagos in the 1920s, Gbogun gboro contended couldn’t have been responsible for turning Lagos from a jungle to a city as averred by Dr Ezeife and that Lagos could not have been no man’s land as claimed by Kalu Uzor Kalu.

    I think, Gbogun gboro should have also reminded the two self-serving Igbo leaders that the Yoruba nation itself was, according to P. C. Lloyd, more culturally developed than Europe as at the time of the coming of the Europeans, if we use urbanisation as index of measurement.

    It is not as if that alone would have cured the much abused ordinary Igbos of their feeling of persecution complex of God-ordained leaders of Africa persecuted in Nigeria by the Yoruba and Hausa Fulani out of envy as their self serving leaders had repeatedly drummed into their ears. The exploitation of the fears, infirmities and weaknesses of thousands of Igbos who live and face uncertainties in strangers’ land by their more privileged elite have gone on for far too long. This dates back to Zik’s arrival in 1934 when they needed a spokesman while the emerging educated Igbo elite were also scheming for positions in the approaching independent Nigeria.

    As it was then, so it is today. Uzor Kalu, Dr Ezeife like Zik, Ozumba Mbadiwe and other self-centred Igbo leaders have only one thing in common- demonising others for the failure of Igbo leadership to mobilise their people for the development of their area. Uzor Kalu’s hypocrisy about fighting the Igbo cause, following confrontation with Lagos State government over failure to pay land charges on his palace in an exclusive haven of the rich in Lagos, is not different from Ozumba Mbadiwe who built a mansion comically christened ‘Palace of the people’ in the midst of his people’s squalor, from the proceeds of federal property he bought in Ijora, Lagos, and sublet back to the Federal Government at a scandalous higher rate. How did an inquiry into the diversion of Eastern State money to ACB, owned by Zik, his children and his friend, Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu, promote the cause of poor Igbos?

    Ozumba Mbadiwe and self-serving Igbo leaders poisoned the minds of three generation of Igbo over the false claim that Awo and Yoruba betrayed Zik and therefore Igbos, after the parliamentary election into the Western State House of Assembly in 1951. “I witnessed how Awo and Yoruba betrayed Zik in the Western House in 1952’, Chinua Achebe declared. But, what both Igbo celebrated leaders did not state was that at the end of the 1951 parliamentary election, A.M.A. Akinloye led a delegation of those elected on the platform of his Ibadan Peoples Party to Zik. They insisted they would only consider a coalition with NCNC if he gave an undertaking to appoint a prominent Yoruba NCNC member as Premier of the West. Zik, supported by prominent Igbo NCNC members, insisted on becoming the Premier of the West without satisfactorily addressing the misgivings of Akinloye group about how an Igbo man would speak for the Igbos and the Yoruba at the centre while Hausa/Fulani speak for the north.

    That we operate a federal arrangement underscores the fact that we are not one. But like the proverbial ostrich, we have paid little attention to the warning of Ahmadu Bello that we must try to understand our differences. We demonise those who say the truth by labelling them tribalists as if it is not the virtues of tribes we set out to celebrate when we adopted federalism as a system of government. We eulogise those who fraudulently claim to be Nigerians first, a strategy to acquire oil blocks, contracts and wield political power in Abuja without representing anyone.

    Fani-Kayode’s celebration of the virtues of the Yoruba is the very essence of federalism. That does not make him an Igbo hater. Neither does he become one by stating documented facts; that the January 1966 selective senseless killings of non-Igbo military officers and non-Igbo politicians led to the vengeance coup of July 1966 and the mindless reprisal killings of Igbo military officers; that the Igbo political elite led by Nwafor Orizu, the Acting president, for selfish reasons, instead of swearing in Zana Bukar Dipcharimma as the Acting Prime Minster as provided for by the constitution sided with Ironsi, a commander-in-chief who, after foiling a coup, claimed he could not guarantee the safety of the surviving ministers unless he was given full powers as Head of State. From hindsight, can we not now conclude that Ironsi’s failure only vindicated Ahmadu Bello’s admonition when Ozumba Mbadiwe and others were lobbing for him that Nigeria would regret if he was foisted on the country as Commander-in-Chief?

    The problem has always been that the Igbo elite, while eating with 10 fingers hardly take a principled position on any national issue that affects their Igbo people. In 1959, they entered into a coalition with NPC precisely because of what Igbo elite stood to gain. They did the same in 1979. On both occasions when the coalition collapsed, Igbo serving ministers refused to resign their positions as directed by their parties. They were partners-in-crime with Babangida over the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Abiola’s victory. They served as lackeys to Abacha’s despicable regime with the Ikemba himself serving as an errand boy for Abacha in Europe. In all these, it was about what was in it for the Igbo elite and not the people. In the current political dispensation, there is no difference between APGA and PDP, with the relative ease with which notable Igbos like Chukwuma Soludo, Dora Akunyili, moved from the latter to the former to contest election.

    On the issue of restructuring, the Igbo elite have remained the most ambivalent. Despite the fact that it was former Vice-President Ekwueme that recommended a six-geopolitical zone structure for Nigeria, the dominant tendency in Igbo land prefers the easier path –crumbs from the Federal Government than the more difficult task of mobilising their people towards turning their own territory to Taiwan of Nigeria.

    If we don’t understand where we are coming from, we will likely not know where we are going. I think after three generations of falsehood, today’s Igbo youths should search for the truth and raise some critical questions. For instance, would their leaders who schemed out Eyo Ita, a minority Premier of the East have accepted Prince Adeleke Adedoyin or Dr Ibiyinka Olorun-Nimbe the two NCNC members that defeated and refused to step down for Zik in the 1952 National Parliament election, as Premier of the East in 1952? What was the role of the Igbo leaders in the unjust incarceration of Awo whose only sin was his mobilisation of the oppressed minorities for self-actualisation within the greater Nigeria nation? What was the role of the Igbo elite in the dismemberment of the old Western Region while ignoring the demand for self-actualistion of Efiks, Ibibios and Ijaw that constitute about 35 percent of the population of the then East? How come their leaders knew so little about the culture and history of the Yoruba with whom they had lived to have assumed Awo had the power to declare an Oduduwa State?

  • Power without responsibility

    The on-going macabre dance in Taraba State is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our constitution and its operators. It is no more a secret that Governor Danbaba Suntai was aided by two hefty men to disembark the plane that ferried him from the US after 10 months of intensive medical treatment following serious injuries he suffered when he crashed his personal jet near Yola in October last year. It is also public knowledge that he was not strong enough to acknowledge cheers or speak to his enthusiastic supporters and well-wishers that were on hand at the airport to welcome him. Even if the scenario had been different, one will still be tempted to ask what informed Suntai’s desperate bid to take over the reins of government even before he had time to take inventory of what transpired in his absence. But since the governor has not appeared in public or address his state House of Assembly close to two weeks after his arrival, one can hazard a guess – the lure and nostalgic craving for a governor’s pervasive power without responsibility.

    This perhaps explains why the race for the governor’s seat, from nomination to election is often a fierce battle. It is a war viciously fought by desperate men. It is, as ex-President Obasanjo appropriately described it a ‘do or die battle’. It is not a race for the faint-hearted.  Besides brute force which has left us with unresolved cases of assassinated governorship aspirants, it sometimes requires a resort to perfidy and high level of intrigue accompanied with non conventional rules. For instance during ex-President Obasanjo’s failed attempt at railroading the South-west into the ‘mainstream’, an era marked by massive rigging of governorship elections, his point-man in Ibadan, Alhaji Adedibu, the man designated as ‘garrison commander’ by PDP, reportedly took a close look at a governorship aspirant and coldly asked, “Can you without hesitation remove your dress and like a hooligan engage in a public brawl? Can you swear publicly with the Holy Koran on what you know was evidently untrue”?

    And for those who want to be governors by all means, it is a zero-sum game and the end justifies the means.  In 2007 race to Ekiti governor’s lodge, Fayemi outwitted about a dozen of his highly cultured soul mates – journalists, human right activists, intellectuals all sharing the same ideological orientation. But the crave for the governorship seat drove some of them to the embrace of PDP. They blatantly rigged elections and turned the land to a battle ground for about four years. A few months to the next election, the battle line is once again drawn between the governor and Opeyemi Bamidele both of APC. An earlier attempt by PDP to pick its candidate ended in a shoot out. Ekiti state by the way is a poor state whose federal allocation is second to the last on the list of 36 states.

    In  Oyo, Uyo, and Awka as in Port Harcourt where Nyesom Wike, the minister of education (state)  has said he was ready to sacrifice his ministerial position  to fight the battle for the Rivers government lodge by ensuring  Amaechi the incumbent governor of the state does not ‘sleep with his two eyes closed’, the story is the same. The lure of the office of governor is such that all manners of men find it irresistible- those in their 60s, 70s, ex military governors and administrators, serving senators , successful professionals and business men we all describe as  ‘men of great accomplishments’.

    For instance, Chukwuma Soludo, a celebrated intellectual, former CBN governor who for five years pursued PDP monetary policies with passion, cross-carpeted to APGA following his failed attempt at entering Awka government house through PDP. Last week his new party disqualified him from its primaries. Most Nigerians, except the aspirants who understand what it means to be a governor in Nigeria, would ask what on earth Soludo is looking for in Awka after conquering Nigeria and the world.

    The same question can be asked of Dora Akunyili, who as minister of information was the most visible of Yar’Adua ministers. She pursued PDP ‘branding policy’ fraud with passion. The lure of governor’s office however drove her from PDP to APGA. The race for the Awka government house can get no more comical than with the presence of Andy Uba, a former governor for two weeks and a serving senator. He is presently locked horns with Tony Nwoye, a man said to be his protégé. Similarly, the uninitiated is bound to wonder why Senator Chris Ngige would not be discouraged by the ignominy he suffered as a governor when  he was kidnapped in a broad daylight, locked up like a common criminal and asked to write an undertaking renouncing his office as governor. Rather than get discouraged, he is now set for a battle against all comers, including his erstwhile godfather and tormentor, Chris Uba.

    At the last count, besides ministers and captains of industry jostling for government houses in the 36 states of the federation, there are about 40 senators and members of the Lower house set for the battle. They include senators Ifeanyi Okowa, Enyinnaya Abaribe, Hope Uzodinma, Chris Anyanwu, Ike Ekweremadu, Ayogu Eze, Annie Okonkwo, Ayo Arise, Gbenga Aluko, Kabiru Gaya, Olufemi Lanlehin. Others are Representatives, Abdulrahaman Kawu Sumaila,  Emeka Ihedioha, Uche Ekwunife and  Opeyemi Bamidele among many others.

    The desperate bid to be a governor is perhaps because governors have immeasurable powers. They are the lords of the manor in their states. As leaders of their parties, they alone determine who is nominated to contest election as councillors and chairmen, if and when they decide to have local council elections. In most cases they run the councils as local administrations through their appointees. Members of state

    assemblies also need their endorsement before they can contest election. Most state assemblies are therefore extensions of the governor’s office. Attempt to assert their independence will most often lead to Ogun experience under ex-Governor Gbenga Daniel who locked up his state house of assembly and chased the lawmakers out of town.

    We also know governors can through their power of patronage create millionaires overnight. They don’t account for their monthly security votes. In the Niger Delta and North-east, we have seen how governors deployed security funds to sponsor terror gangs that metamorphosed into Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram insurgency. In Oyo State, Adedibu, the garrison commander and leader of the thugs demanded and got 20% of the security vote which he said was needed to mobilize his gangs. That was after getting Abuja’s support to illegally remove a governor that turned down his request.

    The power of the governor is so pervasive. Yet it is often power without responsibility. They are accountable to none but themselves. Perhaps with the exception of Nuhu Ribadu who recently challenged the 19 northern governors to justify the over N16 trillion they collected from the federation account in the last 14 years, we have ignored the governors and LGA that spend over 30 per cent of the budget. We have failed to subject to scrutiny the activities of governors who dish out patronage and gifts to shut up the mouth of the local opinion leaders, including the Obas, the Obis and the emirs.

  • APC manifesto: Nigerians want miracles

    APC manifesto: Nigerians want miracles

    The All Progressives Congress recently unfolded an eight-point cardinal programme that covers electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,   integrated transport network and free education. Others are devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care. While the party has tried to assure Nigerian that the programme will transform Nigeria, the ruling PDP has through its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh said that the APC eight point programme, which offered nothing new was “a very poor imitation and a bland parody of PDP manifesto.” And echoing similar sentiment, Dr Doyin Okupe, says “It is a plagiarized version of the PDP manifesto and it lacks vision”.

    It is difficult to disagree with the two misinformation merchants though their claim in itself is an admission of failure by PDP that in 1999, promised through Obasanjo, its leading star, to provide stable electricity within two years, embark on agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods as well as fight corruption, some of the issues the rival ACP now says it intends to tackle. After eight years of Obasanjo roadmap, Yar’Adua’s seven-point agenda and President Jonathan’s own transformation agenda that has run for over two years, outside PDP and its leading light, the verdict today is that we are worse off than we were in 1999.

    What the APC eight-point agenda has offered the electorate therefore is only a choice between PDP’s 14 years of failed promises and APC’s hope based on the credibility and the past records of its chief promoters, Buhari and Tinubu. The party wants the electorate to be guided in 2015 by the record of Buhari who ensured during his short term in office, the nation not only stopped importation of wheat, our problem became how to store locally produced grains; the nation not only creatively ensured we did not waste billions on importation of refined fuel, but was exporting refined fuel; and of course the record of the defunct ACN governors from Lagos to Edo who have set standard of performance yet to be matched by those PDP governors who collect from the federation account in one month what some of the opposition governors collect in 12 months.

    But I think Nigerians want more. The APC eight-point programme like the PDP 14 years recycled agenda, are routine responsibilities of government that do not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents. They remain intractable because of the greed of PDP leaders who chose to serve themselves rather than fulfil their obligation to Nigerians. This is not just the views of a critique of PDP’s inept management of the nations affairs, it is also that of the various probe bodies set up by the government itself as well as that of the judiciary that at different periods indicted nearly all the past PDP chairmen, past Senate presidents, past Speakers of the Lower House, ex-governors some of whom have served jailed terms at home for financial malfeasance or abroad for money laundering.

    An army of frustrated unemployed youths driven into the embrace of Nigeria’s prosperity prophets by PDP 14 years of uninspiring leadership have grown to become miracle seekers. They therefore want nothing less than miracles from APC. Their expectations are legitimate. The challenge of what appears impossible task, which often come through dreaming dreams, is what after all make political parties relevant to their societies. Political parties in the US, Britain, Japan and China modernized their societies by dreaming dreams.

    Nearer home, we have the example of the western Nigeria under Obafemi Awolowo in the 1950s. When the AG launched its freed education programme, others that could not dream dreams dismissed it with a wave of hand. In fact NCNC went a step further to undermine it through campaign of misinformation which resulted in AG’s loss of federal election in 1952. The success of free education became a testimony that those who dared to dream often perform miracles. More miracles followed. The Awo-led AG awarded more foreign scholarships to youths of the defunct Western State in their first year in office than the total number of scholarship the departing colonial masters awarded to the whole of Nigeria in the preceding three years.

    Nigerian miracle seekers, assaulted by PDP’s celebration of generating 2500MW in 14 years after frittering away of over US$20 billion want dreamers who will generate 40,000MW in four years, repair our refineries in six months, insist we eat our own local rice in one year, stop importation of used tyres from Ghana, South Africa and Europe in three months by giving bailouts to Michelin and Dunlop to relocate from Ghana back to Nigeria.

    Beyond the yearning of Nigerians for dreamers, APC eight-point agenda whose originality is being violently contested by PDP can hardly be attained within the present system that has sustained PDP anarchy and rape of our nation for 14 years. This is why one finds it curious that restructuring is conspicuously missing in the APC agenda. This omission cannot be attributed to differences in ideological orientation of the merging political parties. Restructuring formed the major platform of Buhari’s quest for the presidency in 2011. Of course restructuring and regional integration are experiments that have started to yield dividends in the states controlled by the defunct ACN.

    They can be best achieved within a restructured Nigerian federalism. The six power blocks that emerged after the 2011 election which bear semblance to Alex Ekwueme ‘s recommended six geo-political zones as the building block for a federal arrangement that will reflect our cultural and ethnic diversity can become the platform for APC dream of a restructured Nigeria. The current 36 state structure with 774 arbitrarily created LGAs have become channels for the depletion of resources desperately needed for developmental efforts.

    For instance the current six states of the South-west do not need more than a governor and perhaps six deputy governors to coordinate the activities of LGA which should be the responsibility of the zones/regions instead of depending on father Christmas from Abuja whose interest is in patronage not for development, but for destabilization of states as it is now evident in the sponsored crisis in Rivers and Adamawa.

    And at alleged N50m monthly allocation for security to a governor, the six state governors take away N300m in a month or N3.6billion in a year, or N14.4billion in four years, enough to make the South-west self-sufficient in rice production or turn the South-west to a major exporter of ‘ofada and Igbimo’ rice. Savings from just the rationalization of governors alone can perform the same miracle with cotton in the North-east now made ungovernable by jobless religious fundamentalists, groundnut in North-west palm oil in South-south and South east.

    Of course it will be a miracle to restructure a nation where ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ created states for their wives and local government for their media assistants; where the obsession of the young and the old in their 70s who had served as ministers and senators is to become governors of their unviable states; where governors of insolvent states that cannot pay salaries of teachers fly private jets and ride in armoured vehicles; where state representatives at the centre are the highest paid lawmakers in the world; where hardly literate local government councillors are better remunerated than university professors and where ministerial appointments like oil block allocation are shared on the basis of state representation.

    But then beyond mobilization for elective political office or ensuring actual takeover of power, what political parties are in the main called upon to perform, are miracles. And only parties that dream dreams succeed in this endeavour. APC must note that traumatized Nigerians who have lost hope in all politicians, military and the current ruling class, are impatient. They don’t want more of the same. They want dreamers. They want miracles.

  • Power sector and spin-doctors

    Power sector and spin-doctors

    Nigerian power problem seems to defy solution, not because of lack of good intentions or efforts on the part of our leaders, but because such efforts have often been designed to fail. Tragically, like most intractable man-made Nigerian problems, the same leaders, the source of the sector’s woes and some victims of their greed often go spiritual, asking for divine intervention. Like typical victims of underdevelopment, some have said the sector is doomed because its headquarters was dedicated to the Yoruba god of thunder. Some have even suggested three days of national fasting and prayers. Unfortunately, the current efforts of the Jonathan administration, designed and packaged by the same set of leaders that derailed the previous efforts including the Obasanjo roadmap, is not likely to end the nightmare of Nigerian victims of PDP inept handling of the power sector in the last 14 years. The omen from the unfolding events in the last three weeks, gives no assurance of any form of solace to troubled Nigeria electricity consumers.

    For instance, last week, about 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs), owned by some PDP leaders or their sympathizers, under the aegis of (IPPAN), led by its chairman, Professor Jerry Gana, a former minister of information, current chairman of University of Lagos Governing Council and a permanent feature in every PDP administration since 1999, visited the Ministry of Power to give

    government a set of conditions before the IPPS can effectively take off.

    Chief among the body’s demand is government granting to IPPs, a waiver for the importation of gas-related machinery and equipment.  Others include government funding and supply of pre-paid meters, government provision of funds that could be readily available should the bulk trader not meet up with its commitments and finally taking cognizance of uncertainties related to operating independent electricity plants, they appealed to government not to leave them alone entirely, but to consider taking shares in their various companies. “We are craving the support of government by way of equity participation. We are open to government coming to take 5 -10 per cent equity in our companies just like it is doing for the newly acquired DISCOs.” They are probably asking for what happened in the aviation industry.

    The government through the minister has agreed that ‘on equity participation, whenever the Federal Government through the National Council on Privatization (NCP) arrives at putting in shares in the

    sector, we will be ready to assist the IPPs by owning equities in the IPP companies. We are ready to do whatever will promote or facilitate an enabling environment for IPPs to thrive,” It is obvious those who will benefit from such self serving policy of government reinvesting in private firms after divesting its interest and selling public firms held in trust for the people to private concerns at such scandalous

    amounts which has prompted probes set up by government to direct some of the firms be taken back.

    If we need further evidence that president Jonathan Roadmap for Power Sector Reform  whose focus  is ‘market reform, change of the current ownership, attracting new investment in generation into the market, expanding the transmission capacity, providing for government divestment’, like the 2005 Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSR Act), which called for ‘unbundling the national power utility company into a series of 18 successor companies: six generation companies, 11 distribution companies covering all 36 Nigerian states, and a national power transmission company, is not going to bring relief to Nigerians soon, the interview Dagogo Jack, the chairman of the presidential task-force on power as well as member of presidential Committee on Power, is all that is required.

    Asked if there is a time frame for the new licensed firms to start yielding dividends, he said since government  has no control over private firms, the best government can do is to ensure they ‘sustain the current 4500MW level, if they cannot increase it’.

    What has become apparent is that PDP inherited a little over 200MW from Abacha’s regime.  This according to Segun Agagu, minister of power under Obasanjo, was moved up to 4,200MW in 2002. There was no evidence of any further improvement until the end of Obasanjo’s tenure. But then it was PDP men themselves that alleged a rip off.

    First, President Yar Adua, Obasanjo successor alleged that over ‘$10 billion was spent on power by the Obasanjo administration with nothing to show it’. The Speaker of the House Representatives, Dimeji Bankole’s put the amount frittered away at over $16 billion, while the House power probe committee Chairman, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu’s figure was $13 billion. President Jonathan’s own three year road map after an alleged expenditure of 8 billion dollars has pushed the power capacity to 4,517MW (miserable 4% of what South Africa generate) in December 2012.

    In other words, after eleven years, and expenditure of between 18 and 24 billion dollars depending on which of the PDP leading members’ figures you want to adopt, PDP secured a marginal gain of about 2500MW.

    This was in fact wildly celebrated by the then minister for Power, Professor Bath Nnaji who announced gleefully that “With regards to generation, Nigeria is moving ahead by ‘leaps and bounds’, adding that the ‘only problem facing the sector was that of transmission.’ (His transmission firm is to be commissioned soon in Aba by President Jonathan) In fact the president was less restrained. He told CNN Christian Amanpour in far away New York that Nigerians were celebrating his unprecedented achievement in the power sector, a claim which forced the ever resourceful CNN anchor woman to ask for prove from residents of darkness enveloped Lagos.

    But one thing has remained constant. The same set of PDP men, involved in PDP ‘family war’ over the power sector  are also today actively involved in the on-going new efforts either as ministers, governors, senators or IPPs members or as wild celebrants of the absurd.

    Two weeks ago, the nation witnessed a significant drop from the peak of 4,517MW attained on December 21, 2012 to 3,443MW, a drop Prof. Chinedu Nebo, the new power minister attributed to the shutdown of the Chevron gas plant, while admonishing to Nigerians ‘to learn to cope with this type of experience each time there was to be a routine maintenance’.

    And as if we are all pupils of kindergarten, it was this period Dr Doyin Okupe, the president’S Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs chose to celebrate the report of NOI polls, carried out in July 2013 which curiously indicated that 53 percent of Nigerians sampled in the exercise were satisfied with the President’s performance, with majority of respondents attributing the high approval rating to improvement in power supply across the country.

    Okupe remains unrestrained.  According to him, “It is expected that by the time most of the hydro power dams which are currently been rehabilitated also resume operations by the end of September, (40 days from now) most Nigerian cities will have more hours of power supply from the National grid…” Dr. Okupe was not done:‘The implication of this and other reforms, “is that without any doubt, before the end of 2014, Nigerians’ long held dream of joining the worlds list of countries with uninterrupted power supply will be closer in reality than it has ever been,’ he triumphantly declared.

    And working on the theory that Nigerians have short memories, he ignored the fact that it was in June, a month before the survey that the Minister of State for Power, Zainab Kuchi, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC), publicly declared: “We have 160 million Nigerians now and we are only giving power to 40 million of that population, what it means is that there are about 120 million Nigerians that are without power and wish to buy power”.  The minister for power, Nebo, who was present at the press briefing also added “the situation where only 25 per cent of Nigerians have access to electricity is a nightmare caused by human beings used by evil forces”.

    I think it is pointless asking how Dr Okupe and his pollster arrived at 53%.

  • Akande and Jonathan’s combative aides

    Akande and Jonathan’s combative aides

    Chief Bisi Akande, the interim chairman of newly registered APC, must by now be wondering what he said about an elected president to warrant the verbal assault from President Jonathan’s combative media aides. He must be having a nostalgic craving for the old constitutional monarchy of his people where leaders earned their positions, answerable to the people and can be told to abdicate if they betray the trust of the people. Part of what may be agitating his mind could also be whether we have not made a mistake to trade the old reliable system for the current variant of PDP democracy where losers resort to self-help and where might is right.

    The old man had incurred the wrath of the angry and combative media experts when he last week stated that ‘following two meetings he had with the president since 2011 and two other long telephone conversation on two other different occasions to discuss serious challenges facing the country, he came to the conclusion that the president has reduced governance to kindergarten level and that he is not serious-minded.’ He also accused him handling national issues with levity as well as of embarking on witch-hunt of political enemies citing the cases of Asiwaju Tinubu who was dragged before the Code of Conduct Bureau, even while the president has refused to declare his own assets and Rotimi Amaechi, who was being persecuted because of what the chief described as ‘his insistence that the allocation of the country must be judiciously shared among local, state and the federal governments.’

    The above is what the president aides dismissed as “an unguarded and intemperate outburst, not only an unbecoming lack of respect for the person and office of the President of his country, but also a complete disregard for the patriotic feelings of the millions of Nigerians who voted for President Jonathan and who continue to appreciate his sincere efforts to positively transform the nation.’ He was also accused of ‘rudely and falsely describing President Jonathan as a ‘kindergarten’ leader who treats national issues with levity’. It doesn’t matter whether there is an element of truth in this claim for the president who has not found time to publicly address the ongoing ASUU strike or thought it necessary as the father of all in the on-going intra-party crisis in Rivers to call to order rascals who claimed to be fighting his family’s wars. They also did not forget to warn “Chief Akande and his fellow-travellers to remember that there are laws against libel and defamation of character in this country even if there are no legal impediments to indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations.” As a final shot, they said “It is certainly rude, ill-mannered, uncharitable and hypocritical for Chief Akande to falsely and cavalierly allege that a President who toils tirelessly every day of the week, evolving and implementing workable solutions to Nigeria’s problems, is handling national issues with levity.’ For maximum effect they cited one of the president major achievements- ‘his well acclaimed deft handling of the insurgency.’

    And for accusing Jonathan of playing ethnic and religious politics in order to divert attention from his bad governance, the media aides have also taken a swipe at El-Rufai, a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. They dismissed him as a ‘serial liar.’ They want Nigerians to note that El-Rufai ‘profaned the name of Jesus Christ on Twitter by tweeting a joke which is too indecent to mention in the presence of civilized persons’.

    And to demonstrate that President Jonathan does not play religious and ethnic politics, they called attention to the president who ‘though a Christian took part in the just-concluded Ramadan fast and broke his fast with Muslim faithful every evening.’ Besides they cited ‘the quantum of funds that Jonathan had spent on education specifically tailored for Islamic itinerant scholars known as the almajiris,’ to demonstrate his tolerance of all religions.

    The PDP through its acting secretary Okeke also descended heavily on Chief Akande claiming that ‘the main agenda of Akande and other prominent members of the APC were to liquidate the nation’s economy’. He did not say how but added that ‘Akande and El-Rufai were aggrieved because of the refusal of the President to join the APC when he was invited’. I suspect a tinge of blackmail is allowed here to justify the righteous indignation of the president’s media aides and PDP.

    President Ebele Jonathan has for over two years worked under severe strains. The thankless albeit a privileged job of paddling the affairs of our great nation has started to take its toll. Watching him closely during his last visit to his godfather, ex-President Obasanjo in Abeokuta, the scars have become very visible. He is fast aging, while some of his ministers, special advisers, and some rabble rousers who claim to be the president co-crusaders are developing rosy cheeks and rotund faces.

    The angry media aides have been called upon to assuage the president’s apparent feelings of despondency, celebrate his self-acclaimed giant strides, and insulate him from the offensive actions of some of his PDP feral party members. They are also aware the president as a toy in the hands of PDP political warlords is called upon to take responsibility for the mundane, the ludicrous and outright invidious actions of PDP unruly family members. But the media experts are equally aware that the opposition is the weakest link.

    For instance it was not the president but PDP that influenced the emergence of Ahmadu Alli as chairman of PDP as well as his chairmanship of PPRA. Yet his presidency suffered collateral damage when the later was accused of presiding over the loss of about N1.7 trillion in phantom fuel subsidy. When poor Nigerians were indirectly called upon to pay through taxation, which experts said best described the fuel pump price increase, the president took direct responsibility. When his economic advisers misinformed millions of his admirers who gave him a landslide victory that the price increase would affect only the middle class car owners and the wealthy Lagos residents, the president alone faced the outrage of commuters, petty business owners and 140 millions Nigerians that the minister for power claimed have no access to electricity.

    When overzealous police officers under the police commissioner Joseph Mbu shut down a section of Port Harcourt where the first lady has her mansion erected, making it impossible for even the governor to move, the president is called upon to check the excesses of his unelected wife. When the governor of Balyelsa appointed the president’s wife, Dr Patience Jonathan, a permanent secretary to operate from the presidency in Abuja, the president was accused of nepotism. Even when Bipi the leader of a gang of five that illegally attempted to take over Rivers State House of Assembly proclaimed the first lady a messiah for whom he was prepared to lay down his life, the president was the one accused of blasphemy by his fellow Christians. As we can see from the account of how Nyesom Wike emerged as a minister, infiltration of the president’s cabinet by leaders of the South-south militants as well as the North-east Boko Haram was the handiwork of PDP.

    But as I said on this page last week, both Doyin Okupe and Ahmed Gulak failed to protect the president from bad press because instead of focusing on improving the quality of their product, they adopted an outdated media model of leaving the substance to chase the shadows. The product and its qualities contribute to the making of a successful brand. The decision by Reuben Abati to now join and invigorate the efforts of the duo will not make the press legitimize President Jonathan’s assault on the spirit of the constitution. It is also not likely that angry verbal assault on Chief Akande by combative media aides while ignoring the important issues he had raised will suddenly lead to a change of fortune for a government that has not only failed to meet the aspirations of the people, but generally considered as very corrupt by both national and international press.

  • President Jonathan Sagamu road-show

    President Jonathan Sagamu road-show

    The image of President Jonathan behind the wheel of land-mover to mark the kick off of work on the long abandoned Lagos-Ibadan expressway was not only insensitive but equally an assault on the sensibilities of Nigerians who had been at one time or the other marooned on that road for hours, sometimes days or have lost loved ones in the harvest of deaths occasioned by PDP 14 years of misrule, of corruption and of abandoned projects spread across the nation. That the collapsed Lagos-Ibadan expressway has been the most visible is because of its impact on our overall socio-economic development. It is only in this part of the world that politicians behave as if they are doing those who elected them a favour.

    Tragically, PDP that should be apologizing to Nigerians, victims of the party’s inept leadership, has been celebrating what was nothing but a ‘Sagamu charade’, as another manifestation of President Jonathan transformation agenda. The party has now said, through Caesar Okeke, its acting secretary, that the flag-off was a demonstration of President Jonathan’s love for the people of South-west as the exercise has ‘‘put the lie’ to the insinuation of marginalization against South-west by the Jonathan administration’. But PDP forgets that the people of South-west, like their true representatives, the ACN governors that snubbed the Sagamu charade, have the capacity to interpret even the motive behind greetings. These are highly principled and proud people who at the height of intimidation and oppression by federal government backed Akintola NNDP’s ‘Ijoba Tulasi’ (government by force) loudly proclaimed ‘if you see my hand, you cannot see my heart’. They can differentiate between those who treat them with contempt and those who treat them with respect.

    Not even the Works Minister, Mike Onolememen’s statement that federal government renewed interest on the road was informed by the fact that “It is a major artery that connects Lagos, major Nigerian seaports, to other states of the federation and forms not only a part of the Trans-Saharan Highway that links Lagos on the Atlantic Ocean to Algiers on the Mediterranean Sea but also part of the Trans-African Highway”, has stopped the celebration of the absurd by PDP buccaneers who assumed the abandonment of this all important road for 14 years hurt the South-west more. But the truth of the matter is that the South-west that has many alternative inter-state roads through Agege, Ota, Ikorodu, Epe, Sagamu, Ijebu-Ode to Ibadan, Abeokuta and Ilaro; is not the greatest victim of federal government 14 years of insensitivity. Those hit most are other Nigerians from South-south, South-east, North-central and North-west that have no alternative to traversing through the road to ferry their goods from the country’s major port and the nation’s economic nerve centre.

    Governor Fashola of Lagos recently observed that ‘all manner of things happen in an election season’. But let us pretend we don’t know the president is a veteran of politics of subterfuge, politics of trade-off, that the flag off of work was motivated by politics of 2015, and that the acting PDP scribe was right about the president’s new found love for South-west. The problem however is that judging from PDP antecedents and the numerous abandoned projects all over the country; successful completion of the road in spite of the flag-off with fanfare is not assured. Indeed the only thing that appears certain in spite of PDP fraudulent celebration of yet to be implemented transformation agenda is that relief for motorists that ply Lagos-Ibadan expressway is a forlorn hope. The reasons are apparent.

    First, we have passed through this same road before. Obasanjo, Jonathan’s godfather once embarked on similar road show when he flagged off with fanfare, the Ibadan-Ilorin expressway in 2001. Last week, after 13 years of politics of ‘motion without movement’, the current PDP minister of works assured Nigerians that efforts ‘are being made to complete the Oyo-Ogbomosho portion of the road.’

    There were other road shows by successive PDP work ministers. Adeseye Ogunlewe flagged off the rehabilitation and reconstruction of this same Lagos-Ibadan expressway shortly before the 2003 election. Under Tony Anenih currently the chairman of Nigeria Ports Authority and chairman of PDP (BOT) as Minister of Works, over N300b budgetary allocation for roads construction, brought little relief to road users. There was also the road show by the current minster of petroleum that had, as minister of works, wept and sobbed like a baby while supervising the suffering of motorists on the collapsed Sagamu-Ore Benin expressway. The revered Oba of Benin who did not want his palace desecrated was said to have barred one PDP minister of works from entering his palace.

    One other reason to assume the whole flag off was a political gimmick or a publicity stunt that is not likely to end the nightmares of motorists plying the Lagos-Ibadan expressway anytime soon can be deduced from the candor of the president who has already indirectly hinted that the funds to construct the road are not readily available. The president is more cautious than his PDP riotous merchants and celebrants.

    This is understandable. He already has his cup full. The Presidential Projects Assessment Committee (PPAC) he set up in March 2011, to look into cases of abandoned federal government projects claimed that there were 11,886 abandoned projects that will cost an estimated N7.78 trillion to complete. The Institute of Project Management of Nigeria (IPMN) and the president’s Special Assistant on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Professor Sylvester Monye have given the breakdown and the spread of some of the projects to the public. They include the 400 metre long Utor bridge along Asaba-Ebu-Uromi road awarded in 2006 but abandoned in 2009, Ikorodu-Sagamu road and Lagos-Otta road project awarded in 2001 but abandoned by both Impresit Bakolori PLC and Julius Berger because of ‘inadequate funding,’; the 36 kilometres Bodo-Bonny road in Rivers awarded in 2002; the abandoned 285 NNDC projects and 1,994 rural electrification projects among many others spread around the various geo-political zones of the country.

    Experts have claimed that ‘it will take more than five years budgeting about N1.5trillion annually to complete these abandoned projects’, if government does not add new ones. But , as recently argued by Nasir El Rufai, ex minister for Abuja federal territory, “rather than these figures compelling the government to accelerate… the government would rather continue the weekly charade of awarding new contracts or re-awarding old ones at higher prices during its weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meetings.”

    To many cynics and government critics, it is only logical to assume the Lagos-Ibadan expressway flag-off perfectly fits into this charade conceived in the main to raise money for 2015 which has already taken on the character of ‘do or die election’ as evidenced by the on-going PDP’s vicious intra-party battles.

    Government’s failure to give sufficient information on the contract is further fueling this suspicion. For instance the public would like to be assured that N1.3b rate for a kilometre of road is competitive. And if according to the minister of works, “government concession agreement with Messrs Bi-Courtney to develop …, a distance of approximately 105 kilometres under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement” was at a cost of N98.5b in 2009, they want to know why 127 kilometres is now costing N167 billion. Although the money is not even there to start with, but a gloomier prospect is the project getting stagnated after the election, to be followed by an upward review of cost by a 100 percent as recently witnessed by the stagnated vice president’s official mansion and the abandoned Lagos-Otta road.

  • The public face of President Jonathan

    The public face of President Jonathan

    Political subterfuge, which has often made President Jonathan less vulnerable, is a unique asset that sets him apart from his political foes. He cannot be easily ambushed. This came in very handy as deputy governor to the convicted but now pardoned money launderer, Alamieseigha whom he replaced as governor of Bayelsa. He was an unobtrusive vice president who played deaf to all the madness around him when Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet hijacked the presidency during his stay in a Saudi hospital. Others fought the war to make him acting president and finally president. After the battle and victory, just as he was been prodded on by ex-President Obasanjo, his god father, who often wants to play god, to denounce the provisions of the PDP constitution and run for the presidency, a reticent self-effacing Jonathan publicly stated he did not want to be distracted from achieving the goal he had set for himself- completing Yar’Adua’s agenda and conducting a credible election where every vote would count. He equally kept those who had argued vigorously that he would be the man to beat in 2015 if he rejected the bait guessing.

    He has again in the last three months maintained a dignified silence even as sycophants led by men of all seasons like Ebenezer Babatope, Iwuanyawu and Jerry Gana, gathered in Abuja to canonize him as ‘the God-ordained’, the ‘best that has ever happened to Nigeria’, the ‘leader that embodies all the virtues of our past heroes,’ a selfless leader without whom there would be no Nigeria, the liberator of Ijaw nation,; etc.

    Even as members of Rivers House of Assembly converted the mace to weapon for breaking heads, as visiting northern governors were ambushed and stoned by thugs claiming to work for the president, as oil theft reached the highest height after multi-billion dollar contract to militants who now swear there would be no Nigeria except he runs in 2015, President Jonathan has continued to maintain his peace.

    But Jonathan’s weakest link is those who constituted his public face. They have failed to complement his greatest asset. Instead of adding value to his presidency, they have made him more vulnerable. The current face off between the president and Governor Amaechi of Rivers seems to have unmasked the president either as a result of sabotage, the hall mark of PDP or share incompetence as demonstrated by Nyesom Wike, Dr Doyin Okupe, Dr..Ahmed Gulak, and even a supposedly seasoned bureaucrat like the Inspector General of police. It is curious why they all chose to deploy obsolete weapons to fight modern warfare over peoples’ minds.

    Leading the league of those who claim to be fighting the president’s yet to be declared 2015 battle is the Nyesom Wike, the minister of state (education). By strange coincidence, the academic staffs of our polytechnics and the universities are on strike with millions of our youths roaming the streets due to the failure of government to honour an agreement it signed back in 2009. What has now emerged is that the minister in charge of the critical sector had in fact been mobilizing, kitting, and training youths, militants, and five members of the Rivers State House of Assembly to replicate a strategy deployed by a few federal government backed enemies of democracy in the western house of assembly in 1962, a misadventure that marked the beginning of the end of that republic. The only innovation is the ambush of visiting northern governors, who were pelted with stones.

    Here is a former local council chairman, appointed chief of staff by Amaechi who later nominated him for a ministerial position. Now he is at war with Amaechi allegedly because he wants to be the next governor of Rivers. Even if the war is being surreptitiously fought to retain the presidency within South-south zone, as claimed by Austin Opara and some Rivers State federal legislators loyal to the president, there is surely a more creative way to win the support of the people of Rivers other than turning the state into a theatre of war. Then how does the stoning of four northern governors by hoodlums wearing the minister of education T-shirts promote the cause of the president re-election? If he secures the PDP ticket for a second term, can the votes from Rivers or even the whole of South-south zone secure the presidency for Jonathan? Or has the bungling President Jonathan foot soldiers foreclosed the possibility of his having to campaign in those four northern states whose governors were viciously attacked by hoodlums at the Port Harcourt airport?

    The outing of Okupe whose appointment, critics claimed undermined the president battle against corruption, was no less disastrous. Since no man ever wins a woman’s war, we will be expecting too much to prevail on the president to curtail the alleged excesses of his wife. Neither Babangida, Yar Adua, nor a brasher Obasanjo in power was able to manage his wife. But Okupe, paid through the public purse to shield the president by balancing his narrow interest and that of his wife against the nation’s overall interest let down the president in his hours of need. As if bereft of new ideas, Okupe, adopting an obsolete strategy of repeating lies to make them appear as truth, assaulted the public with his claim about the president non involvement in the Rivers’ crisis in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The president’s wife admission that she indeed has an axe to grind with Amaechi over his treatment of her Okrika people has only confirmed critics who from onset predicted Okupe would be a liability to Jonathan’s presidency.

    I have no doubt that Okupe knew a better strategy to shield the president would have been to descend heavily on the five legislators that behaved like thugs, distance the president from their crudity and violence, proclaim loudly that irrespective of the president’s political differences with his brother, the governor of Rivers, he would not subscribe to attempt by misguided thugs to derail our democracy. He could have boomed that the president is too decent to get involved in such an amateurish and lumbering attempt at impeaching a speaker. He could have threatened that the full weight of the law would be brought to bear on all those who caused mayhem in the Rivers House of Assembly. That could have bought Jonathan government of subterfuge time to plan for a renewed assault on Amaechi, their sworn foe and threat to 2015 president’s ambition. That would have been less offensive than grandstanding ‘President Jonathan is bigger than Amaechi’.

    In the league of those who have failed to protect the president in the current Rivers crisis is the Inspector General of Police. The only thing that resonates from all the IG has said on the crisis is ‘he had not received official complaints against Joseph Mbu from River State. That was a Freudian slip. This was a man quoted on pages of newspapers and seen on television calling the governor names, boasting he was not inferior to the governor, dropping the name of the NSA. A resourceful crisis manger without prejudice to his own politics would have known the game was up the moment Mbu started to see himself as alternative governor of Rivers; he should have been summoned to Abuja, publicly scolded and reposted to Borno State where services of such commissioners of police are needed. If the objective of the IG was to sacrifice the nations’ democracy in order to protect the interest of the president, he could still have achieved the same less ennobling objective by quietly reposting a more intelligent, less abrasive but equally spiteful Abuja loyalist to keep Amaechi under surveillance in Port Harcourt

  • Jonathan, Amaechi and culture of self-help

    Jonathan, Amaechi and culture of self-help

    To properly grasp the far reaching implications of the mayhem that took place in the Rivers House of Assembly last week, we will have to situate it within the larger context of a ‘self-help culture’, a euphemism for anarchy which has come to define the fourth republic since its advent in 1999. When I suggested diarchy on this page last week as one possible way of curing those who have institutionalized a’ culture of self-help’ of their madness, many thought I was dragging the nation backwards.

    General Obasanjo, as the chief guardian of the military decreed 1999 constitution, undermined the legislature and the judiciary. Accused governors were impeached by a handful of state legislators who themselves must have compromised their positions from a hotel room hundred of miles from the scene of their crime.

    The culture of self-help became institutionalised. Serving governors rigged elections through the help of the police and directed their victims to go to court while brigands held on to their priced loot- the governor’s seat. NNPC and Nigerian Ports were unabashedly and openly used as sources of patronage. Legislators, without qualms awarded themselves scandalously indefensible salaries and allowances.

    The current crisis in Rivers is about 2015. The president and his men want 2015 without opposition and without the electorate, if resorting to self-help would achieve the same goal. Timipre Sylvia of Balyesa became the first victim. Amaechi of Rivers seems to be the next.

    But beleaguered Amaechi, who became governor in spite of PDP, is proving to be a good product of self-help culture. Trying to exploit the sentiments of his people over Rivers/Bayelsa oil well issue he had openly cried out: “They have taken our oil wells from Etche; they have taken our oil wells from Kalabari; they have taken our oil wells from Andoni and they are battling to take over those in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni. We are losing our oil wells everyday; If I speak, they will say that I am stubborn, but we have to defend our rights; Part of the problems were facing now is that we are fighting to protect our oil wells.”

    Ignoring the president body language, he seduced the opposition by sharing their sentiments on Sovereign Wealth Fund, Excess Crude Account, fuel subsidy, East-West road, Adamawa PDP case amongst others to win a Nigeria Governors Forum election by 19 to 16 votes. Humbled in its own game, the presidency scandalously embraced Jonah Jang the loser in the election. The Rivers State House of Assembly suspended the chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area allegedly for corruption. Amaechi hid under the doctrine of separation of power to ignore the presidency pressure to reverse the decision. Again, beaten in its own game, Abuja resorted to self help. Obio-Akpor LGA was taken over by the Rivers State Police Command who chased out the council officials without any legal authority and without information or consent of the state governor. Dakuku Peterside, a federal legislator from the area described the action as ‘the height of lawlessness which each day moves us closer to anarchy’.

    Amaechi lost out in Rivers PDP intra-party feuds. But he secured a moral victory because the judgment in favour of Obuah who did not participate in the Rivers PDP congress nine months earlier was thought to have been influenced by powers that be in Abuja. The Abuja FTC court judgment by Justice Ishaq Bello, was described by Professor Itse Sagay as having ‘the capacity of derailing our democracy.’

    Joseph Mbu, the Rivers State Commissioner of Police claimed he has the mandate of the National Security Adviser (NSA) in far away Abuja to chair the Rivers Internal Security Council while Amaechi, as the chief security officer of his state wanted it rotated. Mbu, publicly called the governor names, supervised a demonstration led by militants but insisted the governor would need a permit to lead his own protest against Mbu and his Abuja backers. Amaechi once again got sympathy from far away Niger State whose governor Babangida Aliyu, said, “Mbu, allegedly, with the backing of federal government, has virtually taken over the security functions of democratically elected governor”.

    In June, in a show of power, the First Lady shut down the Rivers State capital ostensibly to attend the wedding of Evans Bipialaka. In July the same man at the head of five legislators procured a fake maze and proceeded before the arrival of 23 other members, purportedly impeached the speaker and declared self the new speaker. Even while the perversity was still going on, the Obuah led faction of Rivers PDP, loyal to the presidency, congratulated Bipialaka . “The lawmakers who elected Bipialaka as their Speaker had once again demonstrated the unity and sense of purpose that characterized the hallowed chamber before the crisis”; the party’s spokesman, Monday Oyenzeowu asserted in a statement. Gulak assertion that ‘Jonathan, a man of peace’ is not behind Rivers crisis only make critical minds chuckle.

    Betrayed by Mbu and abandoned by Abuja, Governor Amaechi also resorted to self-help. He rallied round a few loyal security men ostensibly to rescue his 23 loyal lawmakers and dislodged the’ five law makers’ loyal to the president. In the ensuing melee, Okey Chindah, a member of the President’s army of self-help enforcers was battered with the fake maze he and his daring four law makers had procured. He has since been flown abroad by the federal government for treatment, on tax papers account following his injuries.

    Now, the presidency, the god father of a ‘culture of self-help’ is blaming Amaechi for resorting to self help to chase out rascals and hoodlums that took over the state House of Assembly. His political adviser, said, “I am not aware of any plan to impeach the governor …what I know is that the House of Assembly intended to change their leadership, rightly or wrongly, they have a constitutional right to do it if they have the majority.’ Ahmed Gulak conveniently forgot to say, the presidency’s five foot-soldiers tried to impeach a speaker backed by 23 lawmakers.

    The Inspector General of Police M.D. Abubakar and the Police Service Commission chairman, Mike Okiro are more interested in the professional misconduct of the governor’s security aides. But many Nigerians, because of their own antecedents, unfortunately see their emergence as arising from a ‘culture of self-help’. Okiro, critics claimed was a card carrying member of PDP and an alleged government contractor before his appointment. Very few similarly forgot his role in the humiliation of Ribadu who as chairman of EFCC was demoted before being chased out of office and the country because he stepped on the toes of corrupt PDP leaders notably the British-jailed James Ibori and other ‘South-south’ indicted governors. Abubakar, the IG on his part, was alleged to have been indicted by the Justice Niki Tobi Commission of Inquiry examining the 2001 Jos crisis as Commissioner of Police in Plateau State, for allegedly taking sides in the sectarian violence which led to the death hundreds. In other words the outcome of the probe would be taken with a pinch of the salt by cynical public.

    But perhaps as the2015 battle becomes more vicious with both Abuja and Port Harcourt relying on ‘self-help’ to outwit each other, both sides may need to weigh the observation of  Dr. Junaid Muhammad that the culture of self-help as demonstrated by the ‘current developments in the PDP and especially in Rivers State bear an uncanny resemblance to the old Western Region, which led to the collapse of the First Republic, with very serious and bloody consequences. Then and now, the popularly elected leaders of those parts of the country were prevented from exercising political power and control, and the operations of the police, the army and the rump of security services were interfered with in a brazen political manner.’

    Perhaps we should add by reminding ourselves that when decent men such as Awo, Rotimi Williams, Enahoro, Adegbenro, Soroye opted to tackle the brigands and their federal backers in court, the judicial process was manipulated. And when they appealed to the British Privy Council, the federal government overnight changed the laws. One would have thought the travails of our nation since 1966 would have been instructive to those in Abuja who think they are invincible. But do people ever learn from history?

  • 2015:  A revisit to the diarchy option

    The omen of 2015 is unsettling. As the desperation, scheming, and intrigue unfold, the fate of our nation after 2015 looks uncertain. As if it is a family title, the South-south exuberant youth and octogenarian militants are saying, it is Jonathan or there will be no Nigeria. It is difficult to know where the South-east stands. The North like the ostrich, with its head buried in the sound, while blaming her adversity on unfair sharing of oil revenue, is insisting power must return to its traditional place-the north. The South-west is wary of casting its lot with President Jonathan it helped into

    power for marginalizing and uprooting its people from the commanding heights the economy. The rest of the Middle-Belt for fear Islamisation of their area, preach ‘an eye for an eye’ like their Islamic fundamentalist counterparts.

    Yet the beneficiaries of the current anarchy have ignored a call to discuss many of our self-induced crises. In the midst of massive corruption and culture of arbitrariness, the guardian of the democratic process has become intolerant of dissent. They insist they must rule for 60 years. Last month, leading lights of the party publicly swore that members would rather die than let go of power. Many of those behind the creation of a mega party to confront the PDP evil have no ideological orientation. As if these are not enough threat to 2015 elections, we are fighting elusive religious fundamentalists that amidst state of emergency, and deployment of soldiers, strolled into secondary school boarding houses and university student living quarters, murder our children and our future in their dozens.

    That the political class has failed is perhaps an understatement. Perhaps it is time to revisit the diarchy option which apart from allowing soldiers direct participation in government also make them watchdog over the conduct of politics and public life. This call is not new.

    At the beginning of the fourth republic, in September 1998, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), after a meeting in Kaduna  in a communiqué signed by its  Secretary, Senator A. M. Gani and  chairman, Alhaji Aliko Mohammed said “more realistic civilian/military relationship should be considered in order to ensure a stable polity”. Much earlier, precisely in October 1972, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe came under virulent attack when he first mooted the idea.

    The argument of anti-diarchy group has been that the military is ill-equipped, ill-educated  and ill-tempered to manage society and that they  are in fact the cause of the decay we have in our society today. But those reasons are in fact why the military in my view should be given responsibility to contribute towards finding solution to the mess they have made of our society since they came as custodians and liberators in 1966 ostensibly to deal with those who had undermined the electoral process during the first republic.

    It was true the inheritors of power in 1959, instead of deepening democratic principles, destroyed opposition and followed up with the rigging of the 1964 election. History repeated itself in 1983. The election was massively rigged, and the sea and land slide victory of NPN brought the military in 1984. After eight years of Babangida’s ‘transition without end’, Babangida imposed Ernest Sonekan as a stop-gap for Abacha the maximum ruler. Following Abacha’s death, Abdulsalami Abubakar, the caretaker along with retired military well-heeled officers imposed Obasanjo. Beside those who operated behind the scene, the stars of Obasanjo administration include Aliyu Gusau, Theophilus Danjuma, Bode George, Ahmadu Alli, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, David Mark, Jonah Jang, Abubakar Atiku and Tony Anenih among many others.

      Obasanjo at the end of his second term imposed Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the younger brother to the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua who was the equivalent of a prime minister under him as military Head of State in the in 1979. He publicly admitted imposing President Jonathan when the search for his (Jonathan) replacement took him to Jigawa State recently.

    The truth is that the Nigerian military has since 1966 surreptitiously wielded power and influence, controlled the commanding heights of the economy either directly or by proxy. They do all this without being accountable to Nigerians. ‘It has been power without responsibility’. Diarchy will make the military accountable.

    We must also not lose sight of the enduring legacies of the military when tamed and managed by visionaries and those trained to manage society such as Obafemi Awolowo, Tony Enahoro, Aminu Kano, Ahmed Joda, Phillip Asiodu and others. We fought a 33 months civil war without borrowing money. We had a viable working federation of 12 states that had been impossible to create due to the selfishness of three dominant ethnic groups; Hausa/Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba before the

    collapse of the first republic. They bequeathed on Nigeria pillars of unity such as NYSC, Federal Government Colleges, enduring monuments like Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Third Mainland Bridge, the now collapsed Lagos/ Ibadan, Sagamu/Benin express ways and their equivalents elsewhere in the nation. They presided over a nation with a solid economic base.

    If our bureaucracy, the best in Africa , if our university system, highly regarded in the world, if our teaching hospitals that ranked very high among the Commonwealth countries collapsed, blame reckless military adventurers like Murtala Mohammed and Obasanjo who destroyed these institutions out of share ignorance. If our ‘economy started heading for the rocks’ in the early eighties, blame Obasanjo who in 1979 said the best Nigerian manager of man and resources did not necessarily have to emerge as Nigerian president. If the economy finally collapsed, and if corruption became institutionalized, blame Babangida with his ‘army of anything is possible”, who embraced IMF-inspired privatization through which they shared our national patrimony among themselves and their cronies.

    I am also aware of the argument of anti-diarchy to the effect that the cure for imperfections of democracy is more democracy. But while it is true that democracy has become the new god worshipped by all nations including those ruled by dictators, we must also define our own variant of democracy. Do we want to pattern hours after the French’s ‘Liberty, equality and fraternity, that has left France economy prostrate, or after those of communist China and Russia that have helped them to move their nations from one that could not feed its citizens a few years back to become the second biggest economy in the world and from one that was a few years back a candidate for aid but now inching back to its former position as a world power? What we have in the last 14 years is not democracy but anarchy.  If diarchy with restricted freedom guarantees “responsiveness of government to the people, justice, and civil liberties of thought, speech writing, and worship”, we will still not be too far away from the initial concept of democracy by the Greeks.

    And if the true test of democracy is election, who else but soldiers can cure those who insist Nigeria is doomed if their tribal representative loses  election, that their party must rule for 60 years or that they are ready to die rather than lose power, of their madness? Without a balance of terror, those who have consistently undermined the electoral system since 1964, and have now elevated election to ‘a do or die affair’; those responsible for widespread poverty, illiteracy, injustice, social discontent, all of  which reduce the electorate to easy tools for manipulation; those who under fund and undermined  the institutions needed for safeguarding democracy, like the police, the electoral body, judiciary, and the mass media will continued to be let loose on our nation.

  • Boko Haram: Buhari’s odious comparison

    Boko Haram: Buhari’s odious comparison

    For close to three years of Boko Haram insurgency, it has been a daily harvest of deaths. In churches, mosques, markets, motor parks, police stations, prisons and even inside fortified military barracks, it is the same terrible tales of mindless killings. This has continued unabated even with the President’s belated declaration of a state emergency in the troubled areas some three weeks back. Last weekend in Zabarmari ward of Maiduguri metropolis, the Joint Task Force (JTF) on Boko Haram claimed 50 members of the dreaded group were killed during a clash. A week earlier, we were told about 40 were killed in a similar encounter. The flow of refugees within and outside the country has continued unabated. The battle rages on even with deployment of fighter jets and attack helicopters. We have no evidence that the insurgency has been weakened, neither have they renounced their demand for the Islamisation of the country. What is no more in dispute after three weeks of hostility is that we are engaged in a civil war.

    And what this called for is that all hands must be on the deck. Of course the opposition must keep the ruling party on its toes. It must do everything short of undermining our sovereignty to discredit the ruling party so that they can take over power. In America, the self-proclaiming guardian of democracy, the Republican Party that piled up 16 trillion debts, took their country to two senseless wars are doing everything to discredit the Obama administration. But at the outset of the senseless external war, Americans along with various institutions including the media and even religious groups presented a common front.

    That is what our nation needs today. But tragically, the opposition, in the last four weeks, has been behaving as if the battle to dislodge PDP is not about Nigeria and Nigerians. I think the president who after two years of praying for miracle has now decided to confront those who declared war against the nation deserves a break. He had been accused even by leading members of his party of incompetence for failing to deal decisively with Boko Haram. Even the northern leaders who sent their children to the best schools in the world with state funds while institutionalizing a culture of almajiri at home blamed President Jonathan for the social dislocation of their society.

    The president was asked to embrace dialogue, but dialogue failed to move the religious fundamentalists. He was pressurized to grant amnesty along the lines of what obtained in Niger Delta, but this only led to the intensification of war against innocent Nigerians. Those who institutionalized poverty by misapplication of their state resources while only 27% of children of school age Borno are in school, suggested poverty alleviation and building of mobile schools for the itinerant almajiris. But Boko Haram became more emboldened as they chased pupils and teachers out before setting the schools ablaze.

    While all this was going on, there was a culture of criminal silence among northern leaders. Those who managed to speak spoke from both sides of the mouth, blaming President Jonathan for their four decades of betrayal of the people of the north. Jonathan’s sin was upstaging the northern parasites in their game of political subterfuge.

    And finally when Buhari, often a victim of selective perception spoke, he made an odious comparison. Like a leader who only listens to himself, he declared “You see in the case of the Niger Delta militants, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sent an airplane to bring them, he sat down with them and discussed with them, they were cajoled, and they were given money and granted amnesty.” They were trained in some skills and were given employment, but the ones in the north are being killed and their houses demolished. They are different issues, what brought this? It is injustice”.

    I sympathize with General Buhari, the author of ‘Nigerians have no other country but Nigeria’. He has always been passionate about Nigeria. But his greatest undoing has been the fact that he was ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-tempered to manage society. It is most unlikely that Buhari’s last three attempts at the presidency, his lamentation about travails of a well -endowed nation repeatedly raped by its incompetent and unambitious leaders, his public shedding of tears over the nation’s woes could have just been informed by a desire to protect the interest of his highly visible and powerful Fulani minority ethnic group or the current crop of Jihadists who operate only on the basis of their narrow interpretation and understanding of the Holy Koran.

    My suspicion is that, besides being ill-equipped, Buhari like most new converts of new religion, merely mouths democracy without comprehending what it entails. For instance, for him, multi-partysm and free election equal democracy. He is not bothered about the subject matter of democracy such as fundamental human rights, equality, liberty and justice and freedom from government which favours rulers and their friends just as it was during his short reign in 1995 and just as it has been under successive PDP presidents in the last 14 years. It will be ironic for a man who is so passionate about his country, if in the words of Orisetjiofor, CAN president could ‘oppose a state of emergency when some parts of Borno and Yobe states had been occupied and the Nigerian flag replaced with theirs, burnt churches, schools, government institutions, killed innocent Christians, attacked traditional rulers and others not sympathetic to their cause’.

    Nigeria is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious society. Any political party that intends to rule Nigeria cannot afford to ignore any interest group. Democracy after all is a game of number and to ensure a sense of belonging, our founding fathers designed for us a federal arrangement that guarantees a place for individual and groups. Buhari may have his own personal failings, but I think he will remain a great asset to his new party as role model for multitude of miracle seekers all over the country who like him are not democrats but passionate believers in the potentials of our nation.

    Buhari, imprisoned with his narrow Fulani ethnic culture and religious world, left unaided cannot see anything outside this prism. But he has always excelled in nearly all assignments delegated to him. He was installed as head of state by professional coupists, Babangida and Abacha with little knowledge of their agenda. As minister for petroleum for four years, we exported refined fuel along with crude oil. As Head of State for eight months, we did not import grains. In fact storage facility for excess grains became our problem. Similarly, as chairman of Abacha’s Petroleum Trust Fund, Buhari performed creditably well. As a Nigerian military commander, he drove insurgents that attacked Nigeria from northern Cameroon during Shagari era far into Cameroon territory.

    Even by his own admission, his joining partisan politics was not of his own initiative but that of others. According to him “his close associates and those who knew him very well convinced him to join partisan politics”. And as man not versed in the acts of compromise, the hallmark of democratic process, but passionate about our country and its potentials, he moved from APP to ANPP, CPC and soon to APC. In his new party, Buhari must allow for a generational change as those who manage the world today are in their 30s and 40s while he provides leadership and moral support just as Asiwaju Tinubu now does for his highly competent and well equipped ACN governors.