Category: Jide Osuntokun

I came to Ibadan on Thursday, February 14 to vote in the presidential election scheduled for Saturday, February 16. As I got to Ibadan I noticed that for the two days preceding the election, there was pandemonium in every market and shopping mall with hundreds of thousands of people furiously buying up all available food stuffs as if they were preparing for Christmas or Id-el Adhaor what we generally call in Nigeria Id -el Kabir (Ileya). But why people were stocking food in their homes was the fear that chaos and violence were going to accompany the elections. This was in spite of all the assurances by the authorities that all will be well. I was told the same rush on the markets and shops for the same reason of fear took place in Lagos. From this scenario, it is easy to extrapolate the fact that the people would rather be spared this awesome event associated with electoral democracy if possible. Yet democracy as defined by Abraham Lincoln is government of the people for the people by the people. But from the fear people have for this every four-year ordeal, it is doubtful if the ordinary people in Nigeria welcome this so-called democratic right to choose their representatives. Ordinary people associate elections with thuggery, violence and death. They do not see those elected as their representatives. In a country where the bill to pay workers minimum wage of N30,000 per month is being kicked around  in parliament while their  so-called representatives in the National Assembly spirit home N23 million in wages and allowances every month, it is indeed very difficult for the people to look forward to these periodic elections.

If they are positively excited about them, why the demonstrable and manifest fear?How wonderful it would have been if we have an educated citizenry that could vote from secured computer outlets without the prying eyes of security forces, party agents, thugs, foreign and local busybodies or so-called observers who have too much leisure and money in their hands and want to come to benighted Africa to carry, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, the “white man’s burden”.

There are people who look forward to the seasons of elections. Naturally politicians are most happy to find something doing and to make tons of money and to stock their bank accounts at home and abroad until the next elections. I must say however that foreign banks are a little bit more discriminating these days in accepting monies from people they describe as “politically exposed individuals”. But I am sure our smart politicians can always find ways around this little difficulty. Election season is also a fertile season of monetary harvests for muscle men, bouncers and thugs who are for hire for the highest bidder. These are generally unemployed or underemployed young men with little education. They have no loyalty to any one and their courage to fight is further fortified by intake of drugs, the commonest of which is marijuana, hashish and cocaine. The foot soldiers of the security organizations are also on the take from politicians while their supervisors and superior officers expect to benefit from huge and humongous budgets at the control of the parties hierarchy. Others benefiting from these periodic elections are the electoral officers who run the elections. Some years ago, an Assistant Director in INEC was indicted for having billions of Naira in cash and properties scattered all over Abuja and Lagos. Sad still are young men and women who are recruited as ad hoc staff from the National Youth Service Corps and pressed into the electoral process and exposed to the bribing spree that goes on in the process of conducting elections in Nigeria. But perhaps the saddest thing is the horde of religious charlatans and various marabouts predicting the winners and offering prayers for sale. University vice chancellors are now in recent years, being co-opted into the process by asking them to announce election results which they cannot vouch for. They cannot refuse because the state is their employer. In the entire process the ordinary people’s role is that of cannon fodder.

I was still asking myself whether people will come out of their self-imposed fortresses to vote on Saturday, February 16 when I was stopped on my way to where to vote and told the presidential election had been postponed. I was told that an announcement had been made in the night to that effect. I am not in a position to say whether the reasons given were sufficient enough to lead to postponement of the election and there is no point in second-guessing the electoral commission.  The onus is on them to deliver the rescheduled elections and other elections as efficiently and effortlessly as possible. Nigeria is a large country with several logistical challenges. In the best of times, things go wrong in Nigeria. One can only pray that the elections will go well. Politicians of all parties have jumped into the fray blaming and accusing INEC of being in cahoots with the government to favour one party or the other. The Internet is replete with all kinds of tales of how some countries are dictating to our government and INEC what to do or not to do. People have very short memories. Is this the first time dates of elections have been shifted inNigeria? Why the desperation this time? What is a week in the life of a nation?

What if by postponing the elections INEC delivers a near perfect election? Some of us who have global perspective know that it took months for the final tallies of the 2016 and 2018 Congressional elections in the United States to be resolved. Just as in Nigeria there were insinuations of tampering with the results but the heavens did not fall. These foreign observers should first pull out the beams in their eyes before attempting to pull out the specs in our eyes. There is no reason for foreigners and opposition parties to cry about electoral malpractices even before the commencement of the electoral process. Some of those who have been caught after the postponement of the elections of having already thumb-printed electoral materials have surprisingly come from the party shouting about rigging. There seems to be attemptsto paint everybody with electoral malpractice so that the real culprit will apparently go scot free or there is an attempt to give a perception of everybody is involved in rigging so that the equation will somehow be balanced.

The challenge before government and INEC is that the coming elections must be so well conducted that there will be no doubt about its authenticity and fairness. No effort and no amount must be spared to deliver a transparently honest election that will reflect the wishes of the people. The work of government can only be done if the winner’s legitimacy is without doubt. Even though people say the choice between the two leading presidential candidates in the persons of the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari and former vice president,Abubakar Atiku is between a tweedle dee and a tweedledum, I say we cannot have a starker choice between Buhari and Atiku. The difference is between light and darkness, between day and night, between going forward to the next level and going back to the years of yore. I am clear in my mind that Nigeria would not go back to Egypt but go on to Canaan as we say in my church and as the inimitable Kenneth Ozumba  Mbadiwe would have said “forward ever backward never”.

One of the most important things that have come out of this presidential election is the minimal use of money to try and buy votes. The government has not sent trailers to the Central Bank to bring out billions of dollars and Naira to share to its supporters and has also made it difficult for the opposition to buy people with its huge war chest.If this is the only thing that has been achieved in this regime, the people of Nigeria and those coming after us will be grateful to President Buhari, a man who has been so much pilloried because he has made it difficult for people to have huge unearned income. A lot of people were waiting for the open Sesame of the easy money thrown around during the elections. Many people, including apparently “respectable” people are not happy that they have been denied the opportunity to share the “National cake”. This group unfortunately include the common people who argue perhaps logically that the only time they share in the country’s wealth is the “empowerment money” they get during electoral campaign and while queuing to vote. This is why I have argued that our democracy would not mean much until we have a blueprint for rapid economic development and implement it so as to leapfrog this country from its present state of underdevelopment to a state where our counsel and weight will count in the comity of developed nations. In such a state, who wins or loses an election will not be a matter of life or death. In this election, for me and my house, we are voting for Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo.

The first election I was conscious of was the electoral college of 1951 through which members of regional houses of assembly were elected in Nigeria into the regional parliaments in Ibadan, Enugu, and Kaduna. It was from these regional assemblies that representatives were sent to the central parliament in Lagos. I would not have been conscious of what was happening but for the fact that one of my older brothers was one of those elected or perhaps it will be more correct to say “selected”. I was too young to know what the hullabaloo was all about at the age of nine. Even my brother, Oduola who was elected was a foreigner to me because up till that time, I had never met him. While I was growing up, he was in Fourah Bay College (a constituent college of University of Durham) and I only heard stories of him from my mother. I only knew my other brothers in Government College Ibadan and Christ School Ado Ekiti whenever they made quick visits to my mother.

The evolution of elections in Nigeria from 1923 elections in Lagos and Calabar into Sir Hugh Clifford’s Legislative Council of Nigeria is fairly well known to deserve repetition here but it will suffice to say periodic elections which are part of democratic system has never solved our problem in Nigeria but rather they have always exacerbated our problems and have always exposed the ethnic fault lines of our country. A day after such elections involving the expenditure of huge amounts of government and personal monies, the problems always remain until another election.The question is why do the same thing over and over expecting different results? Is that not the definition of madness? Suppose there is another way of politics without the ruinous periodic elections?

What is the purpose of these periodic elections? The purpose presumably is renewal of leadership and possibly of political and economic direction. Are there countries where this is being done without the attending ruinous violence and ethnic mayhem characteristic of elections in Nigeria? Is electoral democracy the last paradigm on political governance? Which should come first between economic development and political development?

Are there lessons from history both past and contemporary that can help in elucidating the problems of today and foreshadowing the future? I had this kind of discussion with an academic colleague who simply dismissed me as a frustrated man who because of poor development in his country was consequently being led into the path of fascism and illiberality. My friend is probably right but I will first want to put some of my ideas forth before my readers who may find them not too crazy after all.

The question to ask is what is the purpose of government? Is it not to guarantee peace, law and order? How does government do this except through provision of good living conditions, good jobs, domestication of the environment through good infrastructure, provision of electricity, transportation grid, health and education facilities that should be able to regenerate and replicate themselves. In short, governments exist for the humanization of society in a sustainable way. In an ideal situation, all these can be done through careers open to talents of finding the right people to run things. The yardstick of success or failure will be the efficiency and performance of the system. The problem is how to find the right people in a multi-ethnic society? This can be done through wholesale decentralization with representatives chosen by acclamation, from the local communities and sent to regional assemblies or national parliament not on party basis but on the basis of their peoples’ confidence in them as well as their expertise. The unit of this representation will be the villages and towns small enough for people to be able to vouch for one another.The time they spend representing their communities will be fixed and they would be remunerated by the communities that send them so that there will be no disconnect between them and the people they represent. The rural communities will be linked to one another by mutual pact of defence which will be defended by all able men and women in some kind of a citizen army. There will be no standing army like in Costa Rica, but in time of danger, every citizen will be called upon to defend the community. There will of course be police force based on community policing.  These community police forces would be linked together city by city, region by region and the central police will merely coordinate the overall policing efforts. Essentially the unit of administration will be small like cities and a coalition of villages. The central core of my proposals will be a lean civil service at local, state, regional and central levels recruited based on transparent competition and meritocracy. Civil servants will enjoy tenure based on efficiency, performance and success of the enterprise. The purpose of the system will be economic development while politics will be totally irrelevant. My belief is that if everybody is gainfully employed there will be little time of politicking. People will be working so hard and enjoying the fruits of their labour that they would have little time for the gossips which are the core ingredients of the Nigerian type of politics where debate is only about sharing and which ethnic coalition is in and which is out and little attention is paid to technological innovations or things that would benefit society at large.

It has been proved in countries like Italy and Belgium and even in Germany which for months and in some cases are so politically divided that they can’t form coalition governments, yet the work of development continues through their enlightened and focused bureaucracy. From my experience in Germany, the work of development and governance are done at local, city and villages levels rather than at the leviathan centre.

There is a global trend nowadays in which people prefer governments closer to home than governments in distant regional or federal capitals.T his centre to periphery has been embraced in Europe as an administrative attempt to encourage the feeling of patriotism in areas that feel forgotten by the forces of centralization and globalization. This idea of subsidiarity has been widely embraced in the European Union where transfer of administration to the periphery is encouraged and practiced.

In China leaders emerge through a carefully planned recruiting system albeit through the Communist Party. But somehow this system seems to throw up good material for leadership without which the great economic strides the Chinese have made in recent times would probably have been impossible. I am not advocating wholesale adoption of the Chinese system but we should take a close look at it instead  of our regular waste of resources time and lives on the western model of electoral democracy for which we have little temperament and resources and even time if we are to leapfrog several developmental stages of economic developments.

In economically advanced countries, people do not waste their time on where people come from. This is because of their developed economies. Who wins or loses elections is not as life-threatening or nation-shaking as they are in a country like our own. As imperfect as the USA is, Barack Obama, a black man, still became president. In Canada within living memory, French Canadians like Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and now Justin Trudeau have become prime ministers in spite of being members of the minority French Canadians. What matters is what one is bringing to the table. This is because the state is already economically developed and winning elections are not matters of life or death. What is now generally referred to as the “deep state’ will take care of an errant parvenu coming to power and trying to upset the applecart. The point to make is “the economy stupid!” as president Bill Clinton said to underscore the fact that economic well-being takes precedence over politics. The devil will usually use jobless hands for evil deeds. Any system that does not guarantee fair economic well-being of the people will fail. This was why in the 19th century, emphasis in universities in Europe was placed on political economy rather than the separate studies of economics and politics. Politics is meaningless if it is not rooted in economics. We will not make it as long as we keep the wheel before the horse. No matter how many elections we have no matter the permutations and the ethnic alliances we form or forge, we will not build a nation until we build an economy that can sustain the politics of jobs and jobs for everyone so as to make sense of our constitutional preamble of building an egalitarian society.The stupendous strides the Chinese have made in recent years was not due to their politics, and not even on the totalitarian control of all levers of power by the Communist party of China but on discipline rooted in ancient Confucius ethics and national pride, determination and self-sacrifice. If we can somehow achieve national consensus about the future based on massive economic development based on exploitation of our God-given agricultural lands, abundant sunshine, mineral and water resources, homegrown innovation,then we can come up with our own unique ‘democracy’ that may or may not be based on periodic electoral process. But if it works judged on economic development, then that is what we need and we should stop monkeying around any western democratic paradigm.

Some weeks ago, Abubakar Atiku in a clandestine fashion visited the United States Of America for the first time since  he was denied a visa after leaving office as vice president under former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007. He had been denied a visa following the jailing for 13 years of his business associate, a certain Congressman, by the name of William Jefferson representing New Orleans in the US Congress for corruption. Atiku was implicated in the charges of corruption and money laundering. He has however not been convicted  yet for any offences even though he was indicted. The Congressman had hidden $500,000 in his freezer allegedly to be given to Atiku to facilitate an award of a contract in Nigeria. The burden of visa denial weighed heavily on  Atiku who wants to be president. His opponents in the ruling APC made a song and dance issue about it. It was implied that he was guilty even though he had neither been charged nor tried. This was why Atiku put so much effort and money into securing a visa to the USA. Finally after getting the visa, his party, the PDP made it look as if America was supporting their man.  Some have claimed that Atiku went under the cover of Bukola Saraki, the controversial senate president. If true, that would have been a humiliation. But whatever the case might have been, Atiku went to the USA without the threat of Nigeria’s former vice president and a presidential candidate of the most important African country being dragged before an American judge and possibly detained. But Atiku must have gotten clearance that such a scenario would not happen. It would not have surprised many people if Donald Trump’s America said it was supporting him.  Donald Trump could possibly find a soul mate in Atiku just as he praised Malaysia’s Najib Razak who with his wife,  Rosmah Manssor embezzled  $4.5 billion belonging to his country. When Najib visited him in the White House, he played the music Trump was eager to hear when during the visit, he placed orders for millions of dollars worth of goods from American companies. Donald Trump’s celebration of Najib Razak has now become an embarrassment. But this did not stop the Malaysian people  from throwing out Najib Razak  in their recent elections and bringing back to power 93-year old  Mahathir Mohammed and  Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister who had been disgraced out of office accused of sodomy.

I am making this point just to say America will not determine who wins in our  elections. Trump’s America has ceased being the standard by which countries are judged on morality and integrity in global politics. In fact, no country has a moral monopoly of what is right in politics and as president, Trump has said each country should defend its own national interest.

Never mind that those who should know better are shouting at their rooftops that the USA and Europe and the United Nations should intervene in our domestic affairs whenever they feel threatened. This constant call for outside intervention has emboldened the embassies of western nations to meddle in our domestic affairs. Recently, I read in the newspapers that the European Union ambassadors and the ambassador of the United States either called in or visited the  new Inspector-General of Police to remonstrate with him to promise them  that the police will be impartial  during the coming elections. They have done the same with the Independent National Electoral Commission. Presumably they will do the same with the leadership of our armed forces!

By so doing they have judged our institutions as unworthy and unreliable and are only going to do the right thing when prodded by western nations. What an arrogant and a manifestation of penny pinching piece of racism. In all my life, I have never seen this kind of outright and outrageous undermining of our sovereignty. It is not their fault. It seems some of our politicians are so desperate for office that they would sell our sovereignty just to get elected. The minister of foreign affairs should call these people in and read the contents of the Vienna Act governing diplomatic relations among all countries of the world.

How will any of these countries react if we also start meddling in their affairs? We can take public positions on Brexit and the Mueller investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election in America. There is so much we can do to retaliate by getting involved in the politics of their nations. We are not as weak and supine as they think. We can shift our commercial and political relations from Europe and America to China, India, and Southeast Asia and Japan. As for those who usually clamour for foreign intervention, they had better be careful so that they don’t get what they wish for. They should ask themselves which country has come out better after western or American interventions in recent times. Is it Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya or Somalia.

I sometimes wonder whether the people urging Europe and America to interfere in our internal affairs know anything about our history and the sacrifices of our nationalist leaders from the 1930s to the 1960s. The humiliation of colonial domination and what our parents went through to get independence should not just be ignored for some temporary political advantage. Some of the actions of our politicians calling for intervention are simply treasonable.

We should be grateful to God that in spite of provocation we have a level headed president who seems to give everyone incredible latitude to enjoy the fundamental right of freedom of speech but it is in our interest that this right should not be a license to be calling on foreign governments and the United Nations to interfere in our domestic affairs in peace time and whenever there is disagreement between government and the opposition.

Respect begets respect. We should at the highest level of government call the heads of governments of some  of these countries involved in eternal meddling in the domestic affairs of African countries and tell them that we would not tolerate it again. Do they want to plunge us into civil war and political disequilibrium so that they can from their racist psychology point out to the world how people in Africa always run to them to get political direction and support whenever they have elections in their countries?

These are the same countries that bellyache about illegal immigration into their countries. Some of their leaders like Donald Trump even publicly say the USA made mistakes by removing Saddam Hussein and Mummer Gaddafi. Nigerians want to be left alone to determine our political future. We all know that this is not the best we can have as a country but rather than plunging precipitously into an uncertain political future, we want to make haste slowly.

I and others were responsible for the present  zonal approach to rotational presidency. Our committee headed by Professor Joseph Inikori, currently of Rochester University but then at Ahmadu Bello University recommended this to President Ibrahim Babangida. Some politicians who claim to originate it must have gotten copies of the secret report from the presidency. The report has not been properly presented or applied. It went beyond the presidency and included ministerial distribution. I will write about this report sometime later to put in historical perspective how we arrived at the zonal rotational presidency as a stop-gap measure before finally arriving at the proper destination of careers open to talent. What I want to say is that everybody knows our present structure is not too functional but we can rejig and pad it where necessary without bringing down the entire superstructure on our heads. This is my advice to all desperate politicians outside there.

The year 2018 has not been too great for Nigeria. Too many people died needlessly. Too much blood has been shed in the land. The souls of these people are crying to those of us who are still alive and they are saying “Never again”.The carnage in Zamfara State has gone almost unreported because the print media do not have reporters there. The tragedy in Zamfara is almost inexplicable and inexcusable. It began as a conflict of farmers versus herders but has now morphed into total breakdown of law and order almost on Hobbesian state of brutish violence.The Boko Haram insurgency seems to dominate the media and to capture all our attention. The war against Boko Haram is not only consuming our children, it is also eating into our national treasury. Killings on the Jos plateau, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue and Nassarawa states are also occasionally brought to our notice. The killings in other parts of the country by cattle herders, kidnappers, highway robbers and small time brigands are reported with embellishments and these are the ones that strike terror into the hearts of the people in the south. The tendency all over the country is to look at these problems as not our own until they strike nearer home. The fact however remains that we have never been faced with this countrywide general insecurity and pervasive fear of evil and violence lurking in the corner. There is evil in the land but this does not mean Nigeria is a failed state. There is no country in the world today that is absolutely safe. But we just cannot afford the sobriquet of Nigeria being a failed state.

I am not surprised that the EU, Great Britain and the USA are issuing travel warnings to their people to boycott Nigeria for now. Even those of us marooned here are trying to avoid traveling unless it is absolutely necessary. Many people did not go home to their towns and villages as they would normally have done during Christmas. The reason for this is because of the general insecurity in the country. People who are over 60 years old remember with nostalgia spending Christmas holidays in the places of their birth when they were young.  I remember people liked to travel at night because of the generally low temperature in the absence of air conditioning in those days .We can only remember those days and not relive them today. Even people traveling between towns on business are nowadays unsure if they will see their loved ones again. If they are not killed by all types of criminals, the potholed roads may swallow them. These brigands always waylay people at the bad portions of our roads with our people suffering the double jeopardy of having accidents on the bad roads and being captured on these bad portions by kidnappers.

What went wrong and where did we go wrong? One young man asked me this question at Christmas. I tried to tell him that our problem began after the civil war in 1970. Many soldiers on both sides of the war had to be demobilized and left to fend for themselves. The weapons purchased to prosecute the war also fell into the hands of wrong people. The upsurge of violence in our country after the civil war was therefore understandable. But that was several years ago. We had the opportunity and fortune of stupendous oil wealth to solve the problem of post-war violence but we took the wrong steps of indulging in rampant corruption and unnecessary expansion in administrativeinstitutions and expansion and duplication of agencies and parastatals while neglecting the infrastructure that would have provided us the foundation of a modern economy to absorb our population whichgrew in geometrical proportion. Our porous borders have also been exploited by our poorer neighbours, the Cameroons, Chad, Niger and Benin to infiltrate our country and empty their surplus population into our country thus spreading poverty in Nigeria. Many of the problems of insecurity in our northern states are traceable to the influx of people from across western and central Africa. The result of all this is that our resources are grossly inadequate to cope with this ballooning demographic burden. Even the hydrocarbons on which we have unfortunately depended in the past have become unreliable commodities to depend upon. First, oil and gas are finite assets. Secondly, they are becoming environmentally unsustainable in this era of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.

What is to be done? We must build or rebuild our security architecture. This will include not only the armed forces but all armed parastatals of the customs, immigration, police and national guard. There is also a need to revamp our intelligence organizations for both internal and external surveillance. Emphasis must be placed on brilliant people because intelligence operations go beyond carrying arms. All this require spending a lot of money. We must reduce the cost of running the country by cutting the salaries and allowances of legislators and government officials. Do we really need full time legislators at federal and state levels? We have to raise the money through indirect and direct taxation. It is scandalous that out of a doubtful population of around 180 million people, less than 10 million people pay taxes compared to other countries where payment of taxes is a civil obligation.Federal allocation should be made on the basis of the number of people paying taxes in a state. This will force each state to collect internal revenue and also stop states forging their population figures.

We must move away from over dependence on oil and gas revenues. This is because it is dangerous to depend on a single product for national revenue. On top of this, hydrocarbons are going to become superfluous in a world rapidly moving away from carbon pollution if we are going to save the global environment and reverse global warming.

It is not only the armed forces and intelligence agencies that need reforms. The police and the national guard will need additional resources to have highway patrol vehicles to stop all those killing and kidnapping people. Anybody caught must be dealt with promptly. Those who deserve to leave civilized society for prison must be made to do so and those who have committed murder must be made to leave this world.

China has a population six times our own they are not faced with this problem. India is also six times our size and both countries have more poor people than us and do not have this kind of crazy problems. In China, corruption attracts capital punishment. Even if we don’t go that far, we need to shake up the judiciary and our interminable legal adjudication to make it responsive to quick dispensation of justice. Even if we cannot restructure the country, we can restructure the police and have regional police in case some states cannot afford to fund state police but states that can fund state police should be allowed to establish theirs.

We also need some kind of moral rearmament. We need to teach our young people that corruption does not pay. We must enlist the support of our religious people, Muslims, Christians and traditional religious practitioners. In order to be effective, our leaders must not equivocate on the issue of corruption and corrupt people must not be celebrated but rather disgraced. This is a matter of life or death. The country is slipping away from our hands and our country is gradually becoming ungovernable. We must have a sense of urgency because we are honestly faced with existential insecurity.

Finally, the 2019 elections must be approached as if our lives depend on them. In actual fact they do. It is not only the presidential election that is important. All of them are important. The quality of those who go into the local councils, state assemblies, House of Representatives and the Senate and those who become governors are fundamental to good governance and development. The president is merely the apex of the political pyramid. Of course it is important to elect a man of integrity and discipline and I have no doubt that Nigerians would vote wisely.  The issue of trust is fundamental to good governance. Our leaders must again build the kind of trust people had in the leadership of Awolowo, AhmaduBello, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. There is no trust in the leaders of today. People generally feel unrepresented. This is why senators are ferrying home monthly humongous amount of Naira while we debate if we can afford to pay workers N30,000 a month . Times are hard for everybody but it could be worse. We must have a country, a peaceful and secure country before we can have progress. No president will deliberately impose hardship on his people and nobody has accused President Buhari of deliberate wickedness and at his age he knows history will judge him critically so it is in his own interest to leave a legacy of fairness, equity and transparency. If there are people in his government or in his inner circle who will deny him his rightful place in history, this is the time to remove them. 2019 cannot be government as usual. To me, the choice is clear between an ex-Customs man and a retired General when our country is faced with armed rebellion and insurgency.