The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Tax Reforms Bills: In defence of opponents

    Tax Reforms Bills: In defence of opponents

    The rejection of President Tinubu’s tax reform package of four main bills: the Nigeria Tax Bill, the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill, and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Tax Reform Bill” by predominantly northern political leaders, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the Northern Governors Forum and some 73 members of the National Assembly, has once again brought the past to pain by reminding us of our intractable crisis of nation-building.

    Predictably, while the bill received the blessing of Ohanaeze, the Igbo socio-cultural group, Afenifere, its Yoruba counterpart and N/Central geopolitical zones who believe the bills represent a transformative opportunity for the rejuvenation of SMES, it was roundly rejected by its northern opponents in spite of the capacity of the bills to “simplify the tax landscape, reduce the burden on small businesses, and streamline tax collection processes”.

    But as we say in this business, the medium is the news. Precisely because attack on the opponents of the four bills are coming from southern politicians and social media assailants who hardly understand the issues at stake, I cannot but sympathise with those opponents of the bills who have come under intense stress and strain these past two weeks. They are, in my opinion, the only set of politicians who know what they want out of Nigeria and how to fight for it. They have an unwavering commitment to their demand no matter how sectional or parochial since “Nigerian nationalism became fractured by the dynamics of power politics, or the struggle for the so-called national cake”. (Mogwugo Okoye, African Guardian, Dec 27, 1993).

    Many have long concluded that the problem of Nigeria politics is the problem of the dominant ethnic groups, who insist that no one gets what they cannot get, their hypocritical educated elites and their political parties. Of the three competing dominant groups, the confused Yoruba who seem not to know what they want out of Nigeria, is most guilty. It is on record that while the more conservative elements among their celebrated leaders such as Bode Thomas, SLA Akintola and Rotimi Williams, wanted regionalism to protect their Yoruba nation from the reign of one-eyed king, their leader, Obafemi Awolowo, was an unrepentant federalist. This many have argued was because the Yoruba are by nature federalist. Others have also argued that it was because federalism guarantees unity in diversity in deeply divided societies following “the purgatory of two world wars in the 20th century” when federal revolution was regarded “as the only safeguard for peace and stability in a rapidly changing world.” (Daniel Elazer). The less charitable have argued that Awolowo was a victim of his ambition to rule Nigeria having blamed Awolowo for developing  a messianic complex believing he could replicate the giant strides he made in the West. The question northern hegemonic powers who detested Yoruba arrogance, according to Professor Banji Akintoye who recently narrated his encounter with a northern colleague, has always been “who told Awolowo, northern youths wanted free education?”

    Of course Awo paid for his audacity. Shortly after Sardauna, Tafawa Balewa and Michael Okpara had mooted the idea of a preventive detention system in the country, Balewa declared state of emergency in the West on May 29, 1962 while Isaac Boro’s Ijaw uprising and Benue/Jos uprising that were suppressed by the military by force of arms did not attract declaration of state of emergency.

    Balewa went on to illegally inaugurate Coker Commission of Inquiry to look into the operations of Western Region’s corporations. In case that failed, Balewa also inaugurated treasonable felony probe which later jailed Awo and his supporters. Ahamdu Bello, according to Trevor Clark, “saw an opportunity to do in Awolowo, while the NCNC saw an opportunity to destroy AG and Western Region”. (Trevor Clark: Balewa the Right Honorable Man,  pages (550-554).

    The Igbo of the east are perhaps the best at the game of ostrich playing – hiding their heads in the sand believing no one sees them. Their goal, like that of the hegemonic power in the north, is the control of Nigeria. Zik as an Ibo jingoist gave this away in his presidential address to the Ibo Federal Union in 1949 when he declared: “It would appear that God of Africa has specially created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages…” In 1948, another Ibo leader and member of the legislature had said the domination of Nigeria by the Ibo is a question of time.

    The game plan was promotion of a unitary system in a multi-ethnic society, or in the alternative, splitting the country into unwieldy 17 states that could not sustain themselves and where federating states have no power to eject criminals who import fake drugs into their states or armed immigrant herdsmen who illegally occupy federating states’ reserved forests.

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    Zik like Awo was also humbled. He allowed northern elite to root for the status quo because it has given them so much in addition to entrenching their hegemony in the nation in spite of creation of smaller state out of the huge former northern region. The north and its political elite have demonstrated that they are by far more astute politicians and more shrewd bargainers. Unlike the Yoruba and Ibo adept at playing the ostrich, they have never pretended about their goal which is Nigeria that would serve as home to stateless Fulani across West Africa.

    The north could not have asked for a better supporter than the British colonial masters who in an effort to protect her neo-colonial interest in Nigeria, encouraged and actively aided our northern ruling elite to betray Nigeria. Britain easily acceded to the 1951 northern three points demand: i.e. 50% of membership of the Legislative Council as against 25 for each of the regions,  revenue allocation based on per capita and retaining the boundaries especially between the north and west. (The 1951 census exercise was based largely on assumptions. With the rejection of the 1962 figures by northern leaders, a new census held in 1963 discovered additional 8.5 million people in the north bringing the northern population to 31m).

    And just as the 1951 allocation of 50 percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives to the Northern Region meant that only laws acceptable to the region would be passed by the house, today’s opponent of Tinubu’s tax bill are counting on their numerical strength to decide the fate of the bill.

    Another demonstration of British support for the north was James Robertson’s decision to call on Balewa to form government on December 15, 1959 with voting returns showing  that NPC was trailing the two other parties by 116  to 150, a decision that rendered the final result of NPC 150 seats  to  the other two parties 162 seats and independent 8, that came later on the December 19 just ‘a force majeure’.

    Ahmadu Bello rather than deny that Britain aided the north to hold the nation hostage, explained on page 33 of his book, My Life: The Sardauna of Sokoto that “The British were the instrument of destiny and were fulfilling the will of God in the way they did it all”.

    While Zik and Awo kept on playing the ostrich long after the death of nationalism, Prime Minster Balewa who had earlier described Nigeria as a British intention” insisted revenue must be based on need rather than derivation of resources”.

    In an answer to those who challenged him to act as a patriot, he had said ‘we are trying to build a mighty house on a foundation of straw … the question I have always asked: do we want Nigeria to be a happy place for everybody or a hell to the masses and a paradise for the few? North would very much like to march with the rest of Nigeria just at a reasonable speed, not at an impossible speed for the north”.

    Like their forbears, this is the same message northern critics of Tinubu’s tax bills are passing. The joke is on southern politicians including  Zik, the foremost Nigerian nationalist and celebrated intellectual who told reporters in London in 1957 that he and Ahmadu Bello’s position on the minority issue was taken in the interest of Nigerian unity. Sixty four years after, Nigerians are haunted by the echoes of Zik’s October 1, 1960’s “we are today no more a geographical expression” to deride Awo, his more discerning opponent.

    For all his pains, the celebrated Zik of Africa became a titular president, an onlooker while Balewa exercised all powers by virtue of the September 19, 1963 Republican Constitution which abolished the Judicial Service Commission, replaced the Privy Council in London with the Supreme Court as the highest court of appeal, and  the  enactment of  a Preventive Detention Act to restrain personal liberty.

    Today, the consolation for Nigerians who love our country is that President Tinubu by his ongoing efforts at walking the tight rope understands the imperative of addressing the national question.

  • Lessons from Prime Minister Modi’s visit

    Lessons from Prime Minister Modi’s visit

    Indian Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi‘s state visit to Nigeria from 17-18 November 17 – 18 to “strengthen the current India-Nigeria Strategic Partnership” was but a renewal of over six decades of bilateral relationship between India and Nigeria dating back to 1958 – two years before Nigeria secured her independence from Britain. While the two leaders spoke of the immense potential for collaboration in the fields of trade, investment, education, energy, health, culture, Prime Minister Modi also offered India’s experience in agriculture, transportation, affordable medicine, renewable energy, and digital transformation to Nigeria.

    Nigeria has always benefitted from her close relationship with India. For instance, besides the support of India teachers and doctors which Nigeria enjoyed immediately after independence, it is on record that it was India that established the National Defence Academy in Kaduna and the Naval War College, Port Harcourt. Today there are about 60,000-strong Indian expatriate community in Nigeria and over 200 Indian companies with investment portfolio of over $27 billion.

    As post-colonial nation-states created by Britain to satisfy her greed for continued exploitation of resources of conquered and colonized territories, India and Nigeria share some parallels. Both are heterogeneous and multicultural societies where groups at different levels of cultural development were forcibly merged together without consultation. While Nigeria with a population of over 200m has about 350 ethnic groups, India with a population of about 1.4 billion has over 2000 ethnic groups. Sowing the seeds of future instability by Britain was not by accident. British officials, after all, had earlier boasted that it was their presence alone that had prevented the newly created states of Africa and Asia ‘from disastrous descent into turmoil of warring sects’. Institutionalising a federal arrangement for strange bed-fellows as a strategy for exploiting ethnic consciousness of federating ethnic nationalities was not out of place.

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     India is ethnically diverse with significant diversity within regions; almost every state and several districts have its own distinct mixture of ethnicities, traditions, and culture. But India, unlike Nigeria has been able to manage her diversity because India’s political elite saw their pluralism as strength and accepted the challenge of living together. They saw nothing wrong with tribes and made conscious effort to create states on basis of languages spoken by citizens such as Maharashtra, Punjab and West Bengal.

    The federal system of India provides equality to all the citizens as well as freedom of expression and freedom to practice their religion, etc. In terms of financial relations, India follows a system of fiscal federalism, where financial resources are distributed between the central and state governments. The constitution provides for the sharing of taxes and grants-in-aid to ensure financial autonomy for the states.

    Like India, our own 1957 constitution also laid down the framework for a federal system of government clearly defining the powers and responsibilities of the central and regional governments. The regional list includes subjects of local or regional importance, such as police, public health, and agriculture. The concurrent list includes subjects on which both the central and state governments can legislate. Fiscal federalism ensures or guarantees financial autonomy of federating regions.

    Sadly,  unlike India’s elite, our deceitful political elite undermined our own federal arrangement by unconstitutionally interfering in the affairs of the regions, and assaulting the tribes, the building block for African societies, claiming, albeit falsely, that it is possible to love Nigeria more than your family or your tribe which will be like climbing the palm tree from the top.

     Despite the provision of the 1957 constitution, the feudal lords in the north did not allow freedom of religion. The 1963 republican constitution, the first to be wholly midwifed by Nigerian elite provided the coalition partners an opportunity to insert a clause that would allow them to arrest and detain people without court order for expressing their opinion. The first victim was Obafemi Awolowo who was detained for criticizing Anglo-Nigerian defence pact.

    However, while India was busy setting up technology special schools (India Institute of Technology (IITS), the India Institute of Science (IISc) and National Institute of Technology (NITS) that attracted the best brains among India’s youths which has today resulted in Indian engineers heading most of the leading tech companies in the world, we were busy replicating federal government unity schools across Nigeria.

    India started the arduous task by first taming the feudal lords, who had to be replaced by the capitalist class who know how to mobilise the people to secure power. India did this without underestimating the intrigues of the metropolitan powers. As President Bola Tinubu moves from France to Britain and to Germany, he must not forget the duplicitous role of Britain as foremost promoter of ethnic consciousness, secret supporter of Fulani claim of ownership of Nigeria, and betrayer of  Biafra that had expected her support  as chief promoter of ethnic consciousness.

    India therefore emerged as a union of nationalist groups that respect the culture and values of federating members. Apart from Hindi, the official language spoken by about 40 percent, there are about 20 other recognized languages. They understand their challenges include taming the feudal lords who have to be replaced by the capitalist class. They did not underestimate the intrigues of the metropolitan powers in the guise of promoting ethnic consciousness. Or preventing the disintegration of areas amalgamated without consideration for their level of cultural development and favoured one group above the other.

    Patriotism for Indians is not about loving India. That comes naturally from the union of nationalities. They don’t have to set up unity schools, institutionalize quota system of admission to tertiary institutions or into bureaucracy, discriminatory admission marks for JAMB or decree a National Youth Service in pursuit of elusive unity.

    Instead, they set up competitive tech schools that attract the best of their youths. The result today is that most of the best tech companies in the world are headed by Indians.  Indian leaders don’t need to decree patriotism. The billions of dollars repatriated back to India yearly by their tech experts in high demand in Europe and North America speak louder than the voices of those turned their brainwaves to state policies.

    India’s visionary leaders didn’t have to mouth unity or patriotism. All they did was to invest in the education of their youths. The product of such schools are today in charge of India’s economy, ranked fifth in the world by GDP and in fact projected to become the third largest economy by the end of the decade.

    We institutionalized quota system of admission into the unity schools to accommodate those who as a result of lower scores could not compete with their counterparts. In the name of unity, we set up JAMB to accommodate those who have no business in the universities, and quota system of recruiting third class graduates at the expense of first class graduates into the bureaucracy.

    We don’t need to search far as to why India has become choice destination for Nigeria’s medical tourism, why our best graduates are moving in droves to seek greener pastures in Europe, Canada and USA and why India’s elite has been able to stabilize their democracy, their economy, sent satellite to the moon and became a nuclear power while our own elite remain the scourge of our nation.

  • Obasanjo’s unending crusade for Igbo president

    Obasanjo’s unending crusade for Igbo president

    Olusegun Obasanjo, described as “a world statesman and a gift to humanity” who has demonstrated his “selflessness toward causes in Africa as well as global issues” is a prophet without honour in his own Yoruba country where he is regarded by his detractors as an Igbo man. Insisting he is not a Yoruba leader but a Nigerian leader only provided additional ammunition for his political enemies. He has no apologies favouring Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekwueme, in the 1979 at the expense of Obafemi Awolowo regarded a sage by the Yoruba but disparaged by Obasanjo as a failed politician.

    Not even MKO Abiola, his fellow Egba who won a pan-Nigeria mandate fared better. For him, Abiola was “not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for”. He therefore did not see anything wrong in joining Babangida in trading Abiola’s mandate for an Interim National Government. Finally, when in 1999 Obasanjo was made president by the owners of Nigeria to assuage the raw feeling of Yoruba that had fought and made the country ungovernable for five years, Obasanjo danced on Abiola’s grave for eight years without acknowledging his supreme sacrifice.

    The goodwill he did not enjoy among the Yoruba who refused voting for him in 1999 or his candidates since he left office, he savours among the Igbo who massively supported him against Olu Falae, the Yoruba candidate for the 1999 election. In appreciation, Obasanjo went round the world to recruit into his cabinet the best of Igbo including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obiageli Ezekwesili and Chukwuma Soludo. Even the worst of Igbo, including those who smuggled dollars to the US in his presidential jet, or kidnapped and locked up an elected governor like common criminal were not left out.

    It is therefore easy to understand why Igbo presidency has become an obsession for Obasanjo since leaving office. During the 2023 election, he carried Peter Obi on his back around the country. And since the election was lost and won, Obasanjo has continued to live in denial claiming Obi was rigged out by INEC and the Supreme Court.

    Those who know that Obasanjo has no generosity of heart to forgive anyone that crosses his way would understand while his appearance at Yale University to present a paper in honour of Chinua Achebe, the late Nigeria icon was for him  another opportunity to de-market Tinubu’s administration and present Obi as a viable alternative.

    His crusade for Igbo presidency also took the centre-stage during last week’s visit by the League of Northern Democrats to his library. He started by trying to mislead Nigerians by drawing a parallel between the collapse of the first republic to regionalism. The problem with Obasanjo however is that when he is not playing the ostrich, he tries to twist historical facts. There is no evidence to support his claim that “people say because the Igbo had carried out secession and so an Igbo man cannot be the President of Nigeria” or link the collapse of the first republic to regionalism.

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    In fact, Bode Thomas who introduced regionalism as against his party’s preferred federal arrangement, modelled after linguistic groups as done in India said his objective was to prevent one-eyed king from presiding over the affairs of his Yoruba nation. It was therefore ironic that the assault on regionalism by Igbo unitarists became the harbinger of the reign of blind kings over the country beginning with Ironsi, Murtala Mohammed, Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Buhari. And precisely because these soldiers were ill-trained in the management of society, they destroyed our political parties, our socialization process, our university and bureaucracy, our budding economy and centralised our institutions, while they unwittingly claimed they were sacrificing their present for our future”.

    Obasanjo’s misinterpretation of history during his encounter with League of Northern Democrats has only provided additional incentive to consolidate the position of those who believe Obasanjo is an Igbo man. It is on record that NCNC and Igbo preferred unitary system to regionalism or any other form of federal arrangement. They carried the battle to the London 1957 Independence Constitutional Conference where against Nigerian governors pre-conference agreement on creation of Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR), Midwest, Middle Belt states, “the northern and eastern regions were unyielding and unconditionally opposed to the carving out of new states from their respective jurisdictions”. “The NCNC went a step further to “adopt a more devious approach by demanding that right there in the conference room, the country should be divided into seventeen states” saying the smaller the states, the better for the federal unity of Nigeria”.  This of course was rejected by Awolowo who said it “would make nonsense of federalism and indeed would amount to a backdoor reversion to a unitary system”. (The Autobiography of Obafemi Awolowo. (Pgs. 190-191).

    Awolowo who predicted what we today have has been vindicated. The unworkable and unwieldy 36 states structure foisted on the nation by Obasanjo and fellow blind men, never trained in the art managing human society, is not markedly different from the demand by the unitarists who many will agree are the greatest beneficiary of the ongoing anarchy where states have no record of those who live within their states or control over their borders.

    Igbo adage says ‘it is only your true friend that tells you your mouth is smelling’, If Obasanjo is sincere, he would have started crusade for Igbo presidency by first asking Igbo political elite to change their  brand of politics that uses Igbo poor and urban dwellers for political leverage.

     Unfortunately, Obasanjo who has never admitted making a mistake, seems to share the same mind-set with Igbo political elite who never take responsibilities for wrong decision but instead feed those that look up to them for direction with falsehood and propaganda. The result is that Igbo youths always end up believing they are victims hated by other tribes especially Hausa Fulani, Yoruba and Edo.

    Let us take a journey through memory to see how Igbo elite often blame others instead of taking responsibility for their error of judgment.

    The January 1966 coup was masterminded by Igbo NCNC political leaders who lost out following the collapse of NPC/NCNC coalition where Igbo controlled over 70% of political offices. Ironsi was, according to Richard Akinjide who was present at the meeting of surviving ministers, encouraged to take over power by the Igbo acting Senate President who refused to swear in the most senior surviving minister. Nwabueze drafted Decree 34 that turned the country into a unitary state. Unfortunately Ironsi was too handicapped to know the implications of his actions. Students of ABU who knew the implication of centralization of the bureaucracy started the rioting. Sadly, today Igbo youths blame not their leaders but outsiders for that avoidable tragic phase of our history.

    Driven more by passion than reason, Igbo leaders railroaded Ojukwu who later admitted Biafra had 16 riffles to declare independence for Biafra. The response to the wise counsel of Awolowo and Prof Aluko was the battle cry of “no power in Africa can defeat us” or that ‘the grass in Igbo land will rise and fight”. Not even Gowon’s creation of COR state for eastern minorities on the eve of the declaration called for reflection. Awolowo who however said starvation is a weapon of war after three years of war, the failure of leadership, alone carried the blame. This was despite the fact that many Igbo writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie admitted soldiers and members of the elite class were hijacking relief materials meant for starving children.

    Between 1999 and 2015, Igbo southeast constituted a solid PDP block. In 2013, Peter Obi moved from APGA to PDP where he rose rapidly to become VP candidate in 2015. In 2023, fearing Atiku Abubakar the recurrent PDP presidential candidate was going to deny him the PDP ticket stabbed PDP in the back by joining Labour with Igbo PDP block. Then, Obasanjo and Igbo leaders who were eating with their 10 fingers while Tinubu remained in opposition for close to 20 years building alliance, wanted him to step down “to allow for an Igbo presidency in the interest of justice and equity”.

    Tinubu, for dismissing Obi as “container economist” and his promoters as opportunists who needed some lessons on consensus-building became a target of Obi’s  Obidient mobs while elder statesman and ex-Governor Ezeife  publicly swore that  Tinubu, after winning the election round and square would not be sworn in. Today as his government battle crisis of legitimacy arising from lack of recognition by aggrieved Igbo leaders, there is no evidence any of them have apologized for exhibiting herd mentality in and out of PDP. It was perhaps only Obasanjo and Igbo leaders who believed Obi could win the 2023 election.

    And finally, since a part of a whole cannot be holier than the whole, Obasanjo in spite of his theatrics cannot be part of the solution to lack of strategic planning by Igbo political elite that often behave like prostitutes with five husbands (apology to TOS Benson).

  • Misguided war against Niger Delta leaders

    Misguided war against Niger Delta leaders

    Last week, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, the former governor of Delta State was arrested by EFCC over an alleged N1.3tn fraud. If you asked me, I will say this, once again, is another evidence of war of attrition by Nigerian state against Niger Delta whose leadership has come under intense scrutiny since the birth of the 4th republic. EFCC’s periodic attempt at dragging leaders of the region to court over corruption charges, when we, the assumed victims, never asked outsiders for help, is seen as an attempt to cause disaffection between the people and their leaders.

    A people, as it is often said deserve the leadership they get. I am sure the leaders of the Niger Delta who are about the most educated, most sophisticated, professionally accomplished, leaders in the banking, entrepreneurship and the media where they maintain a complete monopoly cannot be said not to know what is best for their impoverished people. In any case, the poor but proud people of the Niger Delta whose leaders often say “Warri no dey carry last’ have not sought for help.

    The problem with our successive leaders who are ill-trained in the art of governance since the collapse of the first republic has been their failure to appreciate the fact that as a multi-cultural society with groups at different level of cultural development, no one group can impose its own value system on the other. It was for this reason, Sir Ahmadu Belo in the run-up to independence warned Zik that rather than forget our differences for the sake of independence, they, the founding fathers  must first try to understand them.

    Awolowo unfortunately learnt this lesson too late.

    He had gone to the Middle Belt and north-eastern regions of Nigeria to preach egalitarianism and free education. Ahmadu Bello at their last meeting held in the house of a common friend in Ikorodu insisted those Awo wanted to liberate were his great grandfather’s slaves. And this became very clear after Tarka’s death when successive leadership of the Middle Belt chose to align with northern conservative parties from NPN to PDP rather than Awo’s progressive UPN.

    And as if to prove Ahmadu Bello right, the Middle Belt that had always provided soldiers of fortune for the northern jihadists, had Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma and other Middle Belt officers. leading  the war which at the beginning was essentially between the north and the east until it became ‘war to keep Nigeria one”’ when the attack on the West and Midwest by the secessionist convinced the two regions that sitting on the fence would only turn their regions to theatre of war.

    It is the same story with the Ibibio, Efiks and the minorities in the East whose battle Awo carried on his head to the London Constitutional Conference. The people of the area after independence probably realized their best safeguard against their more aggressive Igbo neighbours was an alignment with the north and that has been the trend till today.

    Nearer home, except for the Benins that are culturally related to the Yoruba, the Urhobos, Ijaws and the Isokos have since independence aligned with the northern conservatives. In fact Pa Edwin Clark while trying to play politics of identity not too long ago, was reminded by a prominent northern leader that, he, Clark must remember he was always at the head of Ijaw group seeking coalition with the north.

    What history has taught us therefore is that no individual or groups can impose their values on others who are not ready for change. Change can only be effected from inside when the people are ready for it. This universal truth is no less true of the people of Niger Delta, a microcosm of Nigeria. And this explains why EFCC’s periodic indictment of Niger Delta leaders for corruption has led to no uprising or even condemnation of their leaders.

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    Instead, the people remain unequivocal on their demand for a revenue sharing formula, based on derivation as was the case in the first republic and in the worst scenario, a sharing formula that provides succour for farmers, fishermen and youths who no more have access to land, rivers and employment opportunities.

    In any case, corruption, for the people of Niger Delta according to President Jonathan is not a big deal. “What many Nigerians refer to as corruption is actually stealing.  Stealing is not the same thing as corruption”. And even if you ignore Jonathan’s Freudian, slip, the impoverished people of Niger Delta have demonstrated to our anti-corruption crusaders from Obasanjo to Buhari who like the proverbial undertakers cry louder than the bereaved, that the more the billions of their monies converted to personal use, the more the honours such vilified leaders get.

    Let us start with Alfred Diette-Spiff. He was at 25, the first governor of Rivers under the administration of Gowon. Following Murtala Mohammed’s coup against Gowon, the governor was missing for three days. When he was eventually located, it was on the high seas where he was cruising with his friends in his private ship. Although he was demoted by Murtala Mohammed regime and a number of houses seized from him in Port Harcourt, Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff has gone on to become the Amayanabo (king) Twon Brass and remains one of the most powerful voices from Balyelsa.

    The case of Chief Diepreye Alameyeseigha, Governor- General of the Ijaws and the brain behind rampaging Niger Delta militants in the Creeks was more intriguing. In fact, he was being groomed by his people as Obasanjo’s potential successor. But that was before his successful contest for the PDP presidential primaries after which Obasanjo declared him morally bankrupt to aspire to lead Nigeria. He was chased from Germany to France and to Britain from where he escaped to Nigeria dressed like a woman.

    Following mobilization of Britain, USA, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes and the World Bank under the stolen Assets Recovery by President Obasanjo, we were told of his accumulated properties , bank accounts, investments in cash of up to 10 million pounds in five banks in the UK, Cyprus, Denmark and the US;  his four London properties acquired for a total of four million pounds; a Cape town Harbour penthouse acquired for one million pounds, houses in the US and  about one million pounds stored in one of his London properties.

    Living a lavish ostentatious life style at the expense the people, as it turned out, only endeared the Ijaw governor general to his impoverished people. Then Ribadu committed an affront by securing his conviction. An attempt was not only made on Ribadu’s life, he was demoted and forced to flee the country. And his judicial victory was a pyrrhic one as President Jonathan who declared “when God gives us power, we must use it for the glory of his name” wasted no time in granting his ‘Ijaw Governor General and former boss, presidential amnesty.

    James Ibori was another Niger Delta governor widely celebrated by his impoverished people for converting their commonwealth to private use. He was dragged before an Asaba High Court over financial malfeasance against his people by EFCC. The case was thrown out for lack of substance. But the same case, with the same evidence, the Metropolitan Police in London secured James Ibori indictment and jailed him for 13 years.

    But the ancient Asaba town and its environs were literally paralyzed in jubilation, when the news of his release from London prison where he had served 10-year jail term for money laundering and other offences filtered into Asaba and its environs.  The event was described by one newspapers as follows: “Thousands of supporters, admirers and friends of the ex-convict, James Onanefe Ibori, converged Sunday morning for the thanksgiving service at First Baptist Church”. “Various Quarters’ residents, especially Asaba youths, rolled out their drums to celebrate the man they described as “Odidigborigbo.”

    The youths sang Asaba-Ibo songs along Nnebisi Road, Summit Junction; they danced freely to drumbeats, causing serious traffic gridlock. Popular Ogbeogonogo Market Women were not left out in the jubilation. Chief Ibori who wore Urhobo traditional attire, a gold-coloured lace top with blue wrapper to match, arrived at the church in an unmarked Lexus SUV at exactly 10.20 am, amidst cheers from his admirers”.

    Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta who many believed was single-handedly installed by Ibori, as “a way to show gratitude to Chief Ibori” allegedly bankrolled the elaborate church thanksgiving service and reception to the tune of N350m.

    Uche Secondus, the then national chairman of PDP confirmed Okowa’s indebtedness to Ibori when he spoke in March 2018 at a thanksgiving and grand reception organised by Olorogun John Oguma, in honour of Ibori at the Ibru Unity Square, Ovwor-Olomu, Ughelli South Local Government According to him, “Before the 2015 elections, I received a call from our leader (Ibori), and I asked him the direction. He (Ibori) told me Okowa should be supported.”

    We don’t need a soothsayer to know that with the support of his impoverished but proud people who detest outsiders reminding them of the inhumanity of their leaders, Okowa corruption case will end like those of his predecessors.

    Let us all hail Niger Delta leaders for keeping faith with their people.

  • The media and Rivers crisis

    The media and Rivers crisis

    Most Nigerians identify with the plight of the people of Niger Delta precisely because their land remains a scotched land as a result of pollution arising from oil exploration and exploitation. The conspiracy against the people is not just from the dysfunctional centre that has consistently undermined the principle of federalism, but also the local leadership that often fraudulently swears in the name of the people while diverting some of the resources that would have impacted positively on the lives of impoverished people for personal use. Display of a sense of entitlement and occasional resort culture of self-help, a euphemism for anarchy, is tolerated by Nigerians who identify with their battle against distributive injustice.

    This perhaps explains why little attention has been paid to the quality of leadership of local leaders who many believe are behind fuel theft, illegal refineries or the resort to brute force such as when Governor Rotimi Amaechi supervised the pummelling of the five lawmakers that had behaved like thugs with Okey Chindah, one of the five having to be flown abroad by PDP for medical treatment, or when Sim Fubara’s first reaction  to impeachment threat was the torching of the assembly complex by his supporters  before visiting the complex with a mob and ordering its demolition.

    The battle cry from Pa Edwin Clark of Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) to Government Ekpemupolo, leader of Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), to Alhaji Asari Dokubo of Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), is a threat to return to the creeks to sabotage oil production.

    Unfortunately, this is going to continue  until the nation stops playing the ostrich and faces its demons by addressing its crisis of nation-building; the Niger Delta leaders, will continue to impose their own view of society no matter how warped on the rest of the country.

    For instance, the ongoing disagreement between Wike and Fubara that has paralysed governance in Rivers since December last year has nothing to do with the people of Rivers but everything to do with taking ownership of the resources of the oil rich state as has been the practice with all south-south governors.

    Wike says his battle is over the control the PDP party structure in the state. Fubara insists as the new inheritor of power, the structure belongs to him. Following an impeachment notice by 27 lawmakers loyal to Wike, Fubara’s reaction was predictable. His supporters resorted to self-help by burning down the state House of Assembly.

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    President Tinubu’s intervention led to the drawing up of eight point agreement which included withdrawal of impeachment notice and representation of the budget to legally constituted state assembly as against Fubara’s four loyal members. The governor promised to implement the agreement claiming no price was too high for peace in his state.

    But four days after the  peace agreement was brokered between Governor  Fubara and FCT Minister Wike, by President Bola Tinubu to end the political imbroglio Rivers State, former Commissioner for Water Resources, Chief David Briggs, who attended the peace meeting alleged that President Tinubu intimidated Fubara into signing the eight-point peace resolution with Wike.

    Just few days ago, November 1,  Chidi Lloyd a former member of Rivers State House of Assembly who  pleaded “with the National Assembly to kindly consider a legislation that criminalizes aspersions on judicial officers because they must be protected” gave his own version of what transpired at the meeting. According to him, Peter Odili, a former governor of Rivers and Fubara’s supporter read the eight point agreement; Fubara was given a chance to react to each of the eight point programme after which everyone signed.

    The National Working Committee, (NWC), of the PDP, later warned leaders and members of the party against making unguarded statements capable of bringing the party to disrepute. National Publicity Secretary of the party, Debo Ologunagba, in a statement, in Abuja said the decision to issue the warning was taken at an emergency meeting.

    But PDP media owners who set up their platform for no nobler reason beyond making money especially through news commercialization would have none of that. Long after Fubara had said he would implement terms of agreement, PDP media stalwarts lionized the governor. They wanted him to stand up to his godfather’s bully. Lionized Fubara, who now thinks just anyone, can be a politician, thought the answers to various judicial pronouncements that declared his action as unconstitutional was going around Port Harcourt with a mob and to churches claiming God’s support, forgetting God only helps those who help themselves. Tragically, his media promoters are publicly encouraging him to disobey court orders by questioning the right of his opponents to seek relief from Abuja court.

    It has been established that PDP is “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”. Even as a party in power at the beginning of the 4th republic, it was involved in massive corruption and election rigging, activities that were injurious to the health of party system. It is on record that Wike was the creation of PDP media stalwarts.

    Let us start with Dele Momodu, the publisher of Ovation, a magazine that celebrates vainglory or ostentatious pride in one’s achievements. Speaking last week on the crisis in Rivers State, beyond accusing President Tinubu of bias in his efforts to broker a truce, Momodu who did not show interest in the way forward declared: “I used to do some media thing for Wike. Anyone that knows Fubara will know he is the most perfect gentleman you would ever know”. He was silent on how much Wike paid him for his media work but since it has been established PDP stalwarts set up their outfits to make money and we saw this play out with the Jonathan administration having to dip into borrowed $2b arms and welfare fund of soldiers fighting Boko Haram, to pay Raymond Dokpesi N2billion for the media work he claimed to have carried out for the president, Momodu’s media work for Wike couldn’t have been free.

    Wike was a creation of PDP media owners.  He was winning award after award. Wike who, with his firm control of militants made Rivers State ungovernable for Rotimi Amaechi, his godfather before riding to power, was nominated for the Silverbird Television star award. For both The SUN and Daily Independent, Wike was the Sun Man of the Year 2016 and The Independent Best Nigerian Governor in 2016, Leadership Newspaper Governor of the Year 2017 and Independent Newspaper Political Icon of the Year 2017 awards respectively”.

    Wike’s friend, Ayo Fayose, accused by EFCC of receiving N3b from President Jonathan to prosecute his re-election bid after mobilizing thugs to chase out of town 19 elected members of his state House of Assembly and ruled with five loyal members was honoured and proclaimed “the role model for our youths by Ben Bruce’s Silverbird organization. Bukola Saraki who publicly narrated how he literarily ‘stole’ the 8th senate presidency got an award for ‘“bracing all to emerge president of the 8th Senate in June 2015”.

    And finally, since ‘the medium is the message’, a critical look at the forces behind the award-spinning PDP media stalwarts  will show that awards are nothing but articles of trade. It is therefore left to us to decide what weight to attach to  award given by The Daily Independent, owned  by chief James Ibori, former Delta State governor who served jail terms in Britain for financial malfeasance against his own people, The Sun and New Telegraph owned by Kalu Uzor Kalu, former Abia State governor who was serving jail term for allegedly short-changing his people to the tune of N3.2b until his recent freedom through technicalities, Ben Murray Bruce, the owner of Silverbird Television  who while churning out award after award to PDP politician was indebted to AMCON to the tune of N11b  which according to Muiz Banire, the debt recovery manager appointed by AMCON said  were “innocent depositors money which the common sense propagator and his brothers have been living large and feeding fat upon without the recourse to the interest of the real labourers who own the money”.

    Sadly, the media have become a captive of those who have illegally taken more than their proportionate share of the national resources and temporary power holders who want to humour themselves with both daily assaulting sensibilities of Nigerians.

  • Weep not for PDP

    Weep not for PDP

    But for the injurious effect of unipartysm on our democratization process, I am not sure many would weep for the impending death of PDP, aided in the main by its ignoble media enablers. We all remember its dubious beginning, its real and undeclared goal and  how for 16 years the country was swindled as Obasanjo’s eight years roadmap failed to ‘provide stable electricity, attain agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods and end  corruption”, just as both Umaru Yar’Adua’s  “seven-point agenda” and Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ failed.

    And but for fear of putting our faith in the hand of APC whose difference between it and PDP is that of six and half a dozen, I am not sure many Nigerians would also lose sleep over the death of any of the 18 officially registered  Nigerian political parties susceptible to use for state capture by gangsters.

    For instance, not in any of them can we find a consensus of members on identified values and principles, under a party label (Jinadu).  None of them seems to understand modern political parties as modernizing agents and tried to take a cue from our 100 years history of party formation dating back to 1923, the year Herbert Macaulay’s Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) took off with defined objectives of seeking a “municipal status for Lagos, local self-government, compulsory primary education, non-discriminatory private economic enterprise and Africanisation of the civil service”.

    Both the NPC and AG that followed had defined objectives.  For the former, it was about  ‘fighting ignorance, idleness and injustice’ in the Northern Region’ and for the latter,  besides its unstated purpose of reducing the influence of Zik in the West,  had a well-articulated manifesto which promised free education, free health, and full employment among many others.

    Sadly, what we today have in the name of parties are  factions of military-groomed new breed politicians with military mind-set of sharing spoils of war or spoils of office, supervised by an oligarchy of garrison commanders who routinely take elected governors hostages. 

    But PDP itself is anything but a political party. For John Campbell, former US envoy to Nigeria, it is “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’’. And empirically, the party validated Campbell’s thesis.

    Let us start with documented facts about the fraud called the unbundling of PHCN, on which PDP’s leading lights including President Yar’Adua, who upon being rigged into office claimed “$10b was spent on the power sector by President Obasanjo, with little to show for it”, agreed on how much it cost them to foist darkness on the nation.

    For former House Speaker Dimeji Bankole, it ‘was over $16 billion’; for the House power probe committee chairman, Ndudi Elumelu, it ‘was  $13b’, while for Gabriel Suswan’s Presidential Review Panel on the NIPP, “the total project allocations/ estimates to NIPP was $10.231 billion inclusive of the $2 billion federal government counterpart funding for Mambilla Hydro Power project”.

    On the fraud called privatization through which Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b was sold for about $1.5b, PDP’s aggrieved members provided all the facts. NITEL, a successful outfit that posted a profit of N53bn in 2002, recorded a loss of N19bn in 2003 shortly before BPE sold it to unqualified Pentascope, an alleged proxy company hurriedly registered only three months earlier with staff strength of six.

    Folio Communications, buyer of the Daily Times had to sell Daily Times assets on Customs Street and in London before it could pay BPE N1.2bn,   the entire Trade Fair Complex was sold to a company for as low as N10bn. ALSCON, built with $3.2b was sold to a Russian firm for $250m out of which it paid only $130m, and that NICON and Nigerian Reinsurance were allegedly bought through questionable deals by Global Fleet Oils and Gas Limited.

    Officers of Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, provided level of culpability with revelation that sales proceeds were first kept in commercial banks before transfer to the CBN. Charles Osuji alleging ‘OBJ and Atiku killed the privatization dream’ and Ms Bola Onagoruwa, former DG of BPE alleging ‘Obasanjo concessioned the Ajaokuta Steel Company to Global Infrastructure without recourse to BPE’.

    And to show fraud was a PDP family affair, government that claimed Professor Barth Nnaji was pushed out as a minister because of divided interest said little when Geography professor, Jerry Gana, a PDP stalwart, led a delegation of registered Independent Power Producers (IPPs), to plead with government for import waivers and government participation in their newly acquired private companies.

    And there was no sense of shame among PDP big masquerades:  Senator Bukola Saraki was both fuel subsidy scam whistle-blower and alleged beneficiary, VP Atiku Abubakar was accused by President Obasanjo, himself during the privatization policy; Obasanjo himself corralled  governors and contractors to donating N7b towards building his private library and President Jonathan, following in his  footstep , also collected N7b from the same set of people to build church and recreation centre in his rural Bayelsa.

    Nigerians finally decided to vote PDP out in 2015 when ex-President Jonathan turned himself into an ATM without password word to share money to Obas, religious houses, ethnic militias, and even media houses.

    Except those living in collective amnesia, Nigerians know PDP is responsible for today’s nightmares. Ten years after Nigerians stopped their planned 60 years of brigandage, they have not shown any form of remorse. Out of power, they have continued the war of attrition over sharing of our national assets.

    Unfortunately as it has turned out, APC, another  shade of PDP has failed to make a success of its own eight-point cardinal programme- viz devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care, electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,  integrated transport network and free education.”

     And when APC controlled 65 seats in the 109 seat Senate, 190 of the 360 lower house seats and about 21 of the 36 state governors, it lacked the political will to address the nation’s crisis of nationality.

    Read Also: PDP crisis: Emergency NEC meeting needed to prevent implosion – Ex-officio members

    President Tinubu, from the lesson he learnt from his fathers is probably trying to use APC as a tool for elite mobilisation and consensus-building. But today he has three demons to conquer. The response to those who confiscated and mismanaged our national assets throwing millions of our youth out of work, many of his compatriots have argued, is Russia’s Putin’s approach.

    Why are poor Nigerians being collectively punished for the sins of few AMCON debtors including those the body’s lawyers claim ‘live like princes while refusing to repay AMCON debts’? There is also the non-resolution of ‘the national question’. Nigerians want a return to fiscal federalism, the instrument exploited by current gangsters to engage achieve state capture.

    As for the Labour Party, it is an all-purpose vehicle for fickle- minded pretenders to democracy without democratic ethos, shopping for political platform at every electoral season. Its current promoters are the unquestioning angry ‘obidients’, borne out of a hatred which by its nature destructive and unable to make positive contribution to society. 

    But back to PDP’s impending death. If PDP finally implodes, a section of the Nigeria media owned or controlled by PDP stalwarts who set up their platforms for less noble agenda should be held responsible.

     Besides its constitutional duty of keeping the parties under surveillance to prevent their seizure of public policies, the media as agent of socialization has a duty to promote constitutional justice by drumming up support for institutions like INEC and the Supreme Court.

    Besides setting political parties against constitutional justice, these self-serving segment of the media started back in 1999 by giving award after award to PDP and ANPP governors, 17 of whom EFCC found to be men with feet of clay by 2007; most of the bankers they celebrated have been indicted for deploying depositor’s funds to procure properties in and outside the country.

    And their approach is often through ‘News commercialisation’, a strategy that allows information often determined by ability to pay’ is presented to the audience as a social public service news.

    In the 2023 election, they tried to cover up PDP’s depraved past by diverting attention of the public to ‘Muslim-Muslim ticket. After the election had been won and lost, they tried to undermine the integrity of the Supreme Court. And when there was no more common foe to fight, PDP descended on PDP through PDP intraparty feud with an Ikenga Ugochinyere, a minor PDP shareholder, taking on Nyeson Wike, a major PDP investor, both calling for anarchy.

    Of course the media is not an independent arbiter in the struggle for control over our minds. But as Ray Ekpu, veteran journalist once argued, “there must be a way to regulate the practice of journalism to earn the respect of the public”, while PDP and its media undertakers become history through their war of attrition.

  • The answer to LGA third-tier fraud

    The answer to LGA third-tier fraud

    Again we are back to square one. While the celebration over July 11 Supreme Court judgment that granted financial autonomy to the 774 Local Government Areas across the country lasted, not a few had wondered if the Supreme Court was not putting the cart before the horse by embarking on a judicial misadventure over what was unarguably a political issue. And now, the National Assembly, which but for its hypocrisy has the power to confront the nation’s demon, is bellyaching about sections 13, 14 and 16 of Anambra LGA new bill which seek to compel the local governments to pay their federal allocation into an account to be established by the state government, a bill it claims runs afoul of the Supreme Court judgment.

    Perhaps our National Assembly that that often treat Nigerian with less dignity than even the colonial masters, think Nigerians are suffering from collective amnesia since neither the said Supreme Court judgment nor the National Assembly has removed the constitutional power of the state Houses of Assembly to make laws for local government.

     One was however not surprised  that this was coming from Governor Chukwuma Soludo who, as CBN governor, called attention to the chicanery of our leaders with his “Nigeria is the only known federation in the world where the centre allocates funds to third tier of government it does not supervise”.

    The truth is that military arbitrarily created local government as third tier of government like the 36 states also created without logic or rhyme are a fraud by those driven by command and control military mind-set. If the fervour was about rural development, we did not see that play out during Babangida’s regime when most of the badly executed or abandoned DFFRI projects were cornered by retired military officers.

    And If it was to deepen democracy as Obasanjo wanted us to believe, very few will be persuaded that deepening democracy at grassroots level was by providing money, cars and logistics to feuding intra-party members to destroy their party or destabilise their state as he was reported to have done in Ekiti by ferrying a few members of state House of Assembly out of their states to Abuja to impeach their governors for opposing his third term bid has a familiar ring of fascism.

    It was not a surprise most of the professors Obasanjo dragged to his LGA’s ‘third tier crusade’, parted way with him when they discovered they had been used. Both Professor Ben Nwabueze and Chief Rotimi Williams who helped Obasanjo to destroy whatever was left of our federalism in 1979 by ceding almost 70% of the items in the constitution to the exclusive list with nothing in residual list publicly regretted betraying the country before their passage to the great beyond.

    The tragedy of our nation is that unlike the unambitious set of leaders we have had since 1999, Nigeria once had selfless and visionary leaders for whom the nation came first. Ex-president Jonathan acknowledged this during his 51st independence anniversary by “thanking our founding fathers  who brought  joy and hope to the hearts of our people  after six decades of colonial rule  by working together to  restore dignity and honour  to a multicultural and multilingual nation of diverse people with more than 250 distinct languages and ethnic groups”.

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    This they achieved in spite of the initial lack of consensus on the national question with Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and his group canvassing for unitary system, Obafemi Awolowo and his Yoruba group insisting on federalism while Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who believed “Nigerian unity is a British invention” and Ahmadu Bello who expressed grief over “the mistake of 1914” settled for confederacy.  But at the end, realizing their responsibility to those that look up to them for direction, these illustrious Nigerian pathfinders settled for a federal arrangement that allowed groups to develop at their own pace.

    Unfortunately, nearly all northern governors have since 1999 been opposed to returning the country to a federal arrangement, a social system that promises ‘unity in diversity’, justice and fairness. The reasoning behind the northern governors short-sightedness is that the north because of its numerical advantage in the number of states and LGAs, not only collect more free monies from the federation account, but gives it a veto power over any form of constitutional amendment.

    But for refusing to confront our demon, everyone is a loser. Nuhu Ribadu some two years back had challenged these northern leaders to show how billions of naira collected from the federation account since 1999 have impacted on the lives of the poor in the north. It is in this regard, one can also ask the Niger Delta’s self-serving leaders who many believe are behind oil bunkering, if lives of ordinary people of the Niger Delta are better today than in 1999 when they first embarked on economic sabotage of the country. And what has been the fate of ordinary people in the Southwest and Southeast where governors surreptitiously worked against restructuring of the country for fear of losing easy money coming from Abuja which they often deploy towards ‘building bridges over land?

    Again, for the sake of our uninformed youths, we must go through history our leaders want to supplant with revisionism which celebrates criminals as heroes.

    Between 1962 and 1963, the constitution bequeathed onto us by our founding fathers was breached by NPC/NCNC coalition partners of Prime Minister Balewa, President Nnamdi Azikiwe and Premiers Ahmadu Bello and Okpara, who jointly refused to recognise Dauda Soroye Adegbenro, the duly elected and Privy Council recognized Premier of Western Region. That paved the way for the incarceration of Obafemi Awolowo, the setting back of the giant strides made by the West and the installation of Ladoke Akintola as premier by the coalition partners without election. Anarchy was let loose on the west when those denied the right to determine their own fate decided to make sure those who sowed the wind reaped the whirlwind through ‘operation wet e’.

    While the west was burning, the north buried its fangs on the neck of the east after the disputed 1962/63 census exercises and the massively rigged 1964 election. Zik as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces had approached the military for support but was reminded that operationally, the military reports to the prime minister. Zik while pretending to be going for medical check-up but in reality embarked on ship cruise to South America, after  handing power over to Dr Nwafor Orizu, the Senate President.

    In January 1966, Igbo young military adventurers sympathetic to Zik, in breach of the military espirit de corps, selectively murdered  their friends, about eight northern senior military officers and their political leaders, two western senior military leaders and their premier while conveniently sparing their over 30 Igbo military officers and Igbo political leaders.

    Aguiyi Ironsi after quashing the insurrection took over power with the help of the Senate President who according to Richard Akinjide, refused to swear in the next available minister in the absence of the prime minister as stipulated by the constitution.

    Ironsi’s greatest undoing was the promulgation of Decree 34 which turned the country from a federal into a unitary state. That was quickly interpreted as an Igbo agenda having canvassed for a unitary system during the various constitutional debate from 1954 up to the 1957 London Constitutional Conference where NCNC leaders insisted Nigeria should be divided into a federation of 17 provinces which Awolowo claimed would amount to bringing unitary system through the back door.

    In July 1966, another set of adventurers led by Murtala Mohammed, Danjuma, Babangida,  and others initiated their vengeance coup called Araba (secession) during which all Ibo military officers on sight were brutally murdered.

    At the end the civil war that followed, successive northern military leaders created more states and LGAs for the north thus making northern leaders the 1950 Nigeria they could control a fait accompli.

    The way forward is not through a third tier fraud or unviable states created without rhyme. The cheapest and tested option before us is to confront our demons by embracing a federation of six geo-political zones as canvassed by Nigerian stakeholders including leaders of ethnic nationalities, the true owners of Nigeria.

    This is the answer to distributive injustice in the South-south, tribal war over control of political power and resources on the in the Northwest, Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast and  the apparent ethnic cleansing in the North-central where majority of our compatriots live in IDP camps in their own country.

    And as for our embattled President Tinubu who voluntarily offered himself a sacrificial lamb after 58 years of crisis of nation-building, he has a choice as to whether he wants to be remembered as a Nigerian statesman or like his predecessors including Buhari, the best statesman we never had.

  • Nigeria at 64: Haunted by identity politics and toxic elections

    Nigeria at 64: Haunted by identity politics and toxic elections

    At 64, Nigeria a product of our visionary leaders and intellectuals mainly in the profession of journalism, medicine, law and teaching, committed to the emergence of a nation where the wellbeing of the privileged is the well-being of others, has come of age. I cannot find a more befitting tribute to our founding fathers than the following trending social media message.

    “My father was a refuse collector, I went to FGC Warri. Government gave us uniforms, books; we ate chicken, we were paid transport fare to go back home. I could enter medical school in Ibadan without knowing anyone. I schooled with Odutola’s grandchild. Can anyone enter Ekpoma to read medicine today without knowing anyone?”

    Many of those who promoted the idea of a more egalitarian society rose through their boot strings. Many of them never enjoyed the privileges and opportunities they gave others to become somebody in life. They loved and served their people. They planned for the survival of their nation. It was in this regard that Bode Thomas, who was to later die at 33, proposed regionalism “to prevent the country from the reign of one-eyed kings.”

    Tragically, what we have had since the collapse of the first republic starting with Aguiyi Ironsi who decreed a unitary system for a heterogeneous society, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo, who destroyed academy and bureaucracy without which society decays, through to Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari who destroyed the legacies of our founding fathers in desperate search for their blurred vision of society, was at best reign of half blind men. It could have not been any less distressing they insisted they knew what was good for us without asking us.

    When we express nostalgic feeling for our once thriving world class universities, they reminded us of their Bells, Babangida or Atiku Abubakar universities. When our self-proclaiming messiahs are reminded UCH Ibadan was one of the best three Teaching Hospitals in the Commonwealth of Nations, they have many alternatives including India. If they are reminded of our national airline with 33 aircraft flown by Nigerian pilots, they push down our throat, Okada, Sosoliso and other funny names. Our old shipping lines have substitutes in Raymond Dokpesi and Musa Yar’Adua Shipping lines; when we reminded of pipe-borne water in our city centres, they direct us to Coca-Cola and their other agents to buy water.

    Unfortunately, for the greater part of our 64 years, their deadly tools for bringing us to our knees include politics of identity and toxic elections. With propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, outright lies, reality becomes picture in our heads. In terms of diatribes, disparaging propaganda, ethnic baiting, exploitation of  the innermost fears of those who look up to us for direction, the 2023 presidential election was by the far the worst in our nation’s history.

    But how did we get here?

    Identity politics and toxic elections did not start until the 1931 Nigerian Youth Movement’s keenly and fiercely fought election. In that election, truth and principles became victim. Lagos youths that once saw themselves as Nigerians at war against a common enemy – the British imperialists – lost their innocence.

    In that historic battle, Obafemi Awolowo had on the principle that the acting president had the right of first refusal, supported Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw from the East against Akinsanya, his fellow Ijebu man sponsored by Dr Azikiwe. After a fierce battle, Ikoli won the election.  But with Zik and his West African Pilot propaganda, Awolowo was declared a tribalist. That sounded a huge joke. But for Zik’s Igbo and Ijebu supporters, the most educated African of his era cannot be wrong. They all followed him out of NYM and the first major platform for Nigerian youths collapsed.

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    Between August and December 1951, ethnic nationalism and religion sentiments had mounted with NPC winning the north, NCNC winning the east and AG the west. In the 1952, elections into the Federal House of Representatives, members of the central House were to be elected by the regional houses from among its members. The constitution recognized Lagos as part of West. The five seats meant for Lagos were therefore to come from the western-dominated house.

    But Zik insisted on contesting in Lagos because as he rightly claimed, he was based in Lagos.  But conscious of the western house’s unwillingness to have him as their representative to the federal legislature, he cut a deal with the five Lagos elected representatives so that three of them could step down for him. Unfortunately, two of them, Prince Adeleke Adedoyin and Dr Olorunnibe refused to step down, thereby preventing Zik from going to the central legislature. The response to the new development was to seek refuge under politics of identity.

    In1951, after the regional election, of the five members elected on the platform of Ibadan Progressive Union, Adegoke Adelabu remained loyal to Zik and NCNC, while Adisa Akinloye and others joined Awolowo’s Action Group. This followed a stalemate as Zik and Mbadiwe and Zik’s other supporters insisted he should become the premier of the west while leading members of NCNC like Olu Akinfosile and TOS Benson who regarded NCNC as a Yoruba party as there was only one non-Yoruba in its inaugural meeting, insisted one of them be chosen to be premier.

    The decision of the Yoruba in NCNC to be masters of their own fate at a period the north was administered by a northerner and the east by easterners became a subject of intense propaganda and blackmail and misinformation to the generation of Igbo youths.  Of course, Obafemi Awolowo, who emerged leader of government, was crowned king of tribal politics.  Even our world-celebrated Chinua Achebe could not restrain himself from dishing out disinformation when he wrote in his last major work There Was a Country that he witnessed carpet crossing of Zik supporters on the floor of Western House in 1952.

    It is all about character and adherence to principles. Sadly our politics, has since become politics without principles. If Zik cannot manipulate the constitution to represent the west through the back door, Lagos must be separated from the west.  If Awo would not give up on creation of states for minorities, the coalition partners can create just the Midwest to teach Awo a lesson (Balewa). If the constitution provided for non-interference of the centre in the affairs of the regions, the coalition could pass a retroactive law to undermine the constitution. If the Privy Council ‘s judgment was not favourable, , we may on the basis of our 1963 republican constitution replace it as the highest judicial body with our Chief Justice appointed by our president after dissolution of the judicial council.

    NCNC’s 1959 coalition with NPC, a party with which it shared no ideological orientation, was probably driven by opportunism than any form of principles. NPP/NPN 1979 coalition after 33 months of war of attrition was not different. Opposition to MKO Abiola’s1993 landslide victory and Bola Tinubu’s 2023 travails fit the same narrative. What was not in doubt was the groundswell of opposition to MKO Abiola’s victory with Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu serving as Abacha’s envoy to de-market Abiola in Europe. There was a smear campaign against Tinubu with intent to hurt. He was vilified and abused by children of anger who would rather have military dictatorship to Tinubu presidency. The common denominator between these tormentors is lack of principle.

    Identity politics thrives because nationalism is sometimes not without altruism. And as we have now seen from electoral records dating back to 1964, identity politics cannot guarantee electoral success. At some point, the coalition game has to be played. And periodic spoiler game has its limit.  Since politics is a game where trust is perhaps the most important variable, spoiler game only keeps other groups on their guard.

    Finally, it is just as well the president has invited the youths for a CONFAB where they can organize themselves for challenges of nation-building. Their future is in their hands. And that future is not going to be built on the street by an unthinking mob, trading lies in place of principles .Today’s reining god is democracy. And democracy has its ethos.

  • The media and Edo election

    The media and Edo election

    The media as the fourth estate of the realm, more than  any institutions of state today, poses greater danger to the democratization process  The prevailing opinion here as elsewhere in the world is that the media has been fractionalized along ethnic, religious and ownership divides – (Olufemi Onabajo, Jide Oluwajuyitan, Bello Olaide Wasiu: The Interplay of Media Theories, Media Ethics and the Objectivity Question in Media Performance in 2023 elections in Nigeria (Annals of the Constatin Brancusi University of Targu Jiu Letters and Social Science Series(1/2024).

    For those who have taken the pains to study Nigerian politics and political process, the outcome of the 2023 presidential election was predictable. With PDP fractionalized into four, it was apparent the party was doomed. Unfortunately, leading lights of the party including Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and other warring groups who, out of greed for power, unwittingly ceded the coveted prize to a more versatile politician with a better brinkmanship on how to cope with party intrigues and ambitions of party and non-party members. Sadly, these are variables ignored by some openly partisan Nigerian TV platforms in the coverage and analysis of the 2023 election.

    The recently concluded Edo State gubernatorial election suffers from the same affliction. I think reproach by Reno Omokri, a chieftain of PDP and former special adviser to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan to gassy gang who wail more than the bereaved perhaps captures this better. “Let us learn to accept the results of elections in Nigeria. The PDP won this same election in 2020 when the APC controlled the federal government because we were united. This time around, Philip Shuaibu and Orbih were with our opponents.” He then interrogate the wisdom of a subject questioning the right of godlike authority of Oba of Benin over the abode of his ancestors’ returned British stolen Benin artefacts. 

    Unarguably, Nigerian journalists,  starring Herbert Macaulay, through Ernest Ikoli, Azikiwe, who came to ‘elezikify’ the Nigerian press in 1937, with, in Awolowo’s words, his “fire eating and aggressive nationalist paper of the highest order”, H O  Davies, Tony Enahoro  and others were the fathers of Nigeria.

    But Zik’s erudition and famous lectures at Methodist Boys High School, Faji and Anssar-ru-Deen Alakoro on his economic and political philosophy for Africa under main headings of “Political risorginmento, economic determinism and social resurgence and spiritual balance he delivered in charming and disarming manners and received to the uproar and applause of youths”, did not fetch him votes.  He won votes because he was the adopted son of Lagos white cap chiefs.

    Read Also: Edo poll: the morning after

     As a victim of discrimination as an Onitsha Igbo, he stood no chance of winning election in his Eastern Region with his erudition. The premiership of the east he later secured after Zik of Africa and foremost Nigerian nationalists had been told charity should start from home was through a coup against Eyo Ita, the leader of Eastern government from Creek Town in today’s Cross Rivers State.

    Of course the success of Awo in spite of being a great deep thinker “among the Yoruba, a fastidious, critical and discerning people who will not do anything in politics merely to oblige a fellow Yoruba if he is not satisfied your policy is good and will serve his self-interest” (Awo page 261), was because of  grassroots  mobilization. In fact, he admitted NCNC would have won the1951 western regional election “if it had been as organized as AG in the Yoruba rural areas”.

    Unfortunately, these are facts of history lost on some of our today’s new set of journalists trying to break a new ground who think election can be won through erudition. This fallacy was laid to rest with last week’s Monday Okpebholo victory over Asue Akintunde Igbodalo and Olumide Akpata, the preferred candidates of ARISE TV and its crew anchored by Reuben Abati, President Jonathan’s ex Media Adviser, a persuasive Guardian columnist and chairman of Guardian editorial board, and a distinguished colleague with whom I often throw banter at our Monday editorial content review meetings. Although, he alone of all his sometimes irritable and belligerent opinionated colleagues pretending to be journalist possesses the attributes of a news anchor, but he could not helping becoming irascible that Monday Okpebholo could not match ARISE’s  preferred candidates in erudition.

    His former principal, ex-President Jonathan, once observed that it was easy for journalists to be critical. Reuben’s first attempt in competitive election was a disaster. With all his erudition, many have questioned his choice of PDP as a platform in a progressive state, where ex-President Obasanjo according to local and international election reports had to rig–out grass root Aremo Olusegun Osoba by manipulating electoral vote returns which produced move voters than registered electorate. It was not any less bewildering that he had hoped to become deputy governor of Ogun State by pairing up with late Buruji Kashamu, who for Britain, Obasanjo had wanted repatriated to the US to face drug charges.

     ARISE did everything to de-market candidate Okpebholo including veiled appeal to Edo voters not to vote for candidate who refused to be tutored by the know-all, ill-humoured teachers. And the sarcasm in “we pray for Edo people” after Okpabolo’s decisive victory was not lost on discerning Edo people they tried to demean.

    Crusaders for democracy pretended not to be aware that democracy cannot survive without adherence to its ethics. Besides remaining silent on Obaseki’s betrayal of all his former benefactors, they failed to remind their audience that he failed to swear in 16 elected members of Edo House of Assembly for four years while he reigned with 10 lawmakers sworn in the middle of the night.

    They enthusiastically gave adequate coverage to the irresponsible and illegal declaration of Ighodalo as duly elected governor of Edo by Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, amidst INEC’s ongoing collation of results, an act described “as a severe violation of Sections 178 and 179 of the 1999 Constitution, with a potential to erode public trust in our democratic processes”.

    They celebrated Yiaga Africa, their favourite analyst’s claim of widespread manipulation of result, while less attention was paid to the verdict of the Centre for Credible Leadership and Citizens Awareness (CCLCA) that declared “We as 51 INEC Accredited observer organizations hereby unequivocally declare that this election was transparent, free, fair, and credible”.

    They made their platform available to losers trying to incite violence. Hear drowning Ighodalo: “APC party has taken over all institutions that governed this electoral process. I am disappointed. It will appear we are having the worst in the history of election being conducted in the history of our country. If INEC does not turn a new leaf, we cannot accept injustice…We see the crass manipulation, this subversion of the will of Edo State is untenable and unacceptable…”

    About to be buried by his “do or die” prediction, Obaseki’s promoters gave him a platform to gas: “The people of Edo State are sad, they feel pained, they are worried their true intentions and desires are about to be subverted. I know the people of Edo State are strong willed people. I think the people of Edo will stand up and speak for themselves as things unfold but I am hoping very seriously that INEC will retrace itself and it will understand it cannot be used”.

    Olumide Akpata acknowledged the unwavering support of ARISE TV  by declaring himself the winner quoting Rufai Oseni’s TV-conducted poll which gave him 71% of Edo votes. As a perceptive observer puts it: “When you see a man that relies on Rufai Oseni’s online poll, you already see a man that is not ready to win the election.  Rufai himself is a joke.”

    Owners of platforms set them up for a purpose, Major General IBM Haruna (rtd), (Nigeria’s one-time Federal Commissioner for Information and Culture (1975-1977), once reminded ill-tempered Oseni on his ARISE platform. But there was before this, another timely warning from Alhaji Babatunde Jose, the doyen of Nigerian Press, who admonished the media to “learn to walk the tight rope”.

  • Haunted by Nkrumah’s ‘politics’

    Haunted by Nkrumah’s ‘politics’

    “When I was in the private sector, I used to say if only we can get the economy right, everything will be alright; but now with my benefit of working in the public service, I say if we do not get the politics right, nothing will be alright”. – Shamsuddeen Usman.

    Dr Usman is a respected Nigerian economist, banker, technocrat and an accomplished public servant. He has played a leading role in every government’s economic crusade since the Babangida era. As the pioneer Director General of the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, now the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) (1989-1991), he supervised the sale of about 88 public enterprises in slavish obedience to the IMF and the World Bank that claimed such self-destructive act would ‘free government of financial burden of financing public enterprises’.

    Usman, the man with the Midas touch was at different times  the chairman of Citibank Nigeria Limited, executive director , United Bank for Africa, Managing Director of NAL Merchant Bank, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Finance Minister(2007-2009,)  and Minister of National Planning from (January 2009 to September 2013). He played a critical role in the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth fund. As the alternate chairman of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company Limited (NSPMC), he oversaw the introduction of N500 and N1000 notes. 

    Charmed by his allure, like his predecessors, when President Tinubu wanted “consistent attainment of the highest returns possible on all investments made in trust of the Nigerian people”, Usman, who started the sales of public enterprises, became his best choice as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI).

    Surveying his string of achievements not too long ago, Usman, blowing his own trumpet, declared triumphantly:  “I had taken on so many mafias; I had taken on the customs mafia, I had taken on the tax concession mafia who are draining this country out of its revenues. …I took on the oil importation mafia; I took on the ports system mafia”.

    Reminiscing on  his over 30 years of economic wars and periodic pyrrhic recently, Usman  came to the sad conclusion that engaging in economic crusade before addressing our political problem is like putting the cart before the horse. He has, as a committed intellectual therefore decided to share his discovery to the wider audience through the book titled, Public Policy and Agent Interests: Perspectives from the Emerging World, a unique publication on both the impetus for, and impediments to growth and development in emerging economies he co-authored with “carefully selected, technocrats based on their impressive records in the public and private sectors.

    The book which is also ‘an account of the interactions between the government, its agencies and the private sector will, according to Sadiq Usman, chairman of the launching committee provide “a fascinating and penetrating insight into the workings of government and the boardroom, in terms of policy formulation and implementation…economic management as well as the overall growth paradigm in the developing world, with Nigeria as a case study”.

    Read Also: Senate, House opt for joint probe of oil sector

    It is just as well that it is Usman in whom President Tinubu has so much confidence that is now confirming what many, including Kwame Nkrumah, the late President of Ghana and foremost African nationalist and the author of “Neo-colonialism – The Last Stage of Imperialism had pointed out when he admonished African leaders to first seek the kingdom of politics after which every other thing would follow. Nkrumah was largely ignored.by less endowed African leaders.

    Back home, Nigerians opinion leaders as well as leaders of ethnic nationalities have been agitating since the collapse of the first republic for peaceful resolution of the national question. The latest push came from The Patriots, who a few weeks back took the battle to President Tinubu in the presidential villa.

    Unfortunately we have passed through this sorry path before. Ibrahim Babangida even after a national debate and consensus, insisted on driving he nation through his structural adjustment disaster and this was not until he had compounded our crisis of nation-building through creation of states and local councils without rhyme, that he in the name of IMF inspired “Structural Adjustment Programme’ sold Nigerian thriving public enterprises to politically exposed individuals that ran them aground.  Obasanjo on his part sold in the name of ill-implemented privatisation programme, Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.5b to party stalwarts. And of course eight years of Buhari’s own economic crusade has been described not by a few as a period of economic suicide when the nation was servicing its external and domestic debt by as much as 95% of her earnings.

    The first scourge of African leaders and by extension African nations, are the western trained economists who as victims of cultural imperialism, do not believe African nations whose societies’ social system was more organised than those of atomised Europe ruled by bandits who came to carry them as slaves, can become masters of their own fate by rejecting western orthodoxy such as capitalism or their new god, globalisation which defines their society even today as that of masters and serfs.

    Yet at the time of first contact with Africans, Yoruba nation, using urbanisation as index of measurement according to PC Lloyd, and Benin, with her walled cities and paved roads adorned with street light were more developed than Europe.

    Our recent history has shown that by looking inward, we can become masters of our own fate.  Our golden era of 1954 to 1964 was made possible by the leaders who built their development paradigms around the culture of their people. Awolowo and his group having realised that there were no capitalists in Nigeria as in Europe where bandits raised capitals from slavery and theft of African resources, the state assumed the role of capitalists setting up companies and banks whose profits were then deployed to prosecute free health services, free and compulsory education which then provided a level playing ground for children of the rich and the poor.

     In the east, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in line with Igbo culture, encouraged communities to contribute to the education of their youths while Dr Okpara’s pragmatic socialism rather than oppose capitalism reinforced the competitive nature of Igbo society with the Igbo nation becoming the fastest growing economy in the world. Ahmadu Bello exploited the feudal system in the north to build the famous ‘groundnut pyramids’ which provided the funds with which he built the biggest economic conglomerate in Africa south of the Sahara.

    We also listed as scourge of our African nations, top bureaucrats who pretended not to understand the policy thrust of the colonial administration whose staff as birds of passage, moved from one Commonwealth country to the other, and were therefore given furnished houses in reservation areas.

    Unfortunately, our new inheritors of power see this as status symbol and so they cut themselves off from those they are employed to serve. This explains why not many ministers or lawmakers fully understand what ordinary Nigerians are currently going through. That Usman is today actively involved in providing education and health services to the people of Kano through his foundation is evidence of failure of governments’ 30 years of economic crusade.

    The fourth enemies of our people are the lawmakers.  For instance, if there is one state institution whose support President Tinubu needs for successful prosecution of political crusade, it is the National Assembly. Who else can amend the constitution or reverse the aberration where about 60 items in the concurrent list were whimsically transferred to the exclusive list or where a federal constitution has no residual list, but the legislature?

    It has been widely acknowledged by stakeholders including the 36 state governors that the answer to cattle rustling, banditry, terrorism and kidnapping for ransom and illegal mining in the rural communities is state/local policing.  One and half years into President Tinubu’s administration, the National Assembly has continued to play the ostrich.

    Like most other African nations, we are greatly endowed. Our problem as Usman the celebrated economist with Midas touch want us, including President Tinubu, his principal to know, is politics and not economics.