The Nation Newspaper

Category: Lawal Ogienagbon

  • Beyond the minors’ release

    Beyond the minors’ release

    They populate streets across the country, mostly in the well known commercial cities of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Warri, Benin, Kano and Kaduna. Any little spark in these cities, they troop out as footsoldiers ready and willing to be used by politicians and their likes whose children can never be found in similar circumstances.

    They are young and impressionable kids who can be easily swayed to join a cause that they know little or nothing about. They are mere tools to be used. All that is needed to propel them to action is money, just a meagre sum of 2k, that is N2000, will turn their heads. When the stake is as much as 5k, you can be sure that they will kill and destroy public and private properties to make their paymasters happy.

    We have lived with the menace of these youngsters for years. To these little boys and sometimes, girls, the street is their home. They rule it with iron hand and even fight for territories among themselves. They become united around  a common cause in time of politics and protests when they are hired for a job. The hirer has an agenda, which unknown to these kids is to pursue a selfish aim which could be either political or economic.

    Unfortunately, the north has the highest number of these out-of-school kids whose ages range from 10 to 15. At times, their age could be as low as 10. Similarly, some may be above 18, but when trouble comes they quickly claim to be underage so that the law won’t take its course. It is in the aftermath of trouble in which these kids are used to maim, kill and destroy, as was witnessed in the August Protests, that their so-called vulnerability is brought to public consciousness by self-righteous crusaders.

    After such incidents, they are forgotten and abandoned to their wiles on the streets, until there is another operation to be executed for the paymaster. We are all guilty of what has become of our underage across the country. Politicians are especially liable. They use these boys to fight their opponents. They arm them and let them loose on the households of their opponents. They get them to register as voters and use them for other sundry selfish projects. Their parents look on because they do not have the means to take care of these children.

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    This is what the rich and powerful capitalise on to destroy the lives of our children. When the chips are down, they heap the blame on the government. The lives of out-of-school kids have become what it is today because of our failure as a people and a community to play the parenting role the way we should. Do many of these kids even know their parents? Or even the relations of their fathers and mothers? The life many of them know is in the street where they were abandoned at birth.

    So, why won’t they join protests or other causes that they do not understand at all? Why won’t they carry the flags of countries that they cannot even identify when called upon to do so? Why won’t they kill, maim, rape and destroy when they do not know the value of life and property? We see the pictures of these kids in newspapers and on television, queuing to vote in elections, and wielding lethal weapons during protests. Most of us say nothing until the law is applied.

    Then, we remember that these are minors who cannot be brought before the conventional court. Thus, when these minors commit heinous crimes, we turn a blind eye, believing that we can use the same law to spring them out of trouble. I am against the maltreatment of any minor, but a minor who breaks the law should be made to pay the price for his action. Age should not be an excuse for breaking the law and getting away with it.

    The law is wide enough to take care of all offenders, no matter their age. Whether a minor or not, the law is there to protect and punish, as the case may be. The arraignment of the so-called minors arrested over the August Protests in some northern states may not have been well handled by the law enforcement agencies. This is not to say that the suspects should not be made to pay the price for their actions.

    In doing so, however, we should ensure that they are well taken care of and kept in safe custody until the determination of their case, which the President has graciously terminated. The President acted like a father, who was moved by the condition in which he saw those kids. A condition that they brought upon themselves by being part of the protests that they were instigated to join. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that being part of a protest is wrong.

    It is the right of every Nigerian to protest as long as it is within the limits of the law. The kids were not arraigned for protesting. They were charged with treason and treasonable offences, which in the long run the prosecutor must prove in court to get a conviction. The charge does not mean that they are guilty; they are presumed innocent until proved guilty, according to the law. Those crying foul over the charge should hold their breath. They do not know the evidence that the prosecution has. Come to think of it, what did these people do to stop these children from becoming wayward, in the first place?

    We do not know how the case would have gone because of the President’s intervention that the charge be withdrawn. The President has played his role as the father of the nation by coming to the minors’ rescue. What should be uppermost in the minds of the governors of these kids’ states is how to keep them off the streets so that they do not remain soldiers for hire by people with evil intentions couched in national causes.

    The rehabilitation of these minors deserves urgent and immediate actions. They should not just be taken back home and dumped somewhere from where they can easily return to the streets. They can be enrolled in schools or in any trade of their choice to learn vocational skills that will be beneficial to them and the society. I saw one of them on television on Tuesday night speaking good English. There may be many more like him among the kids. They should be encouraged to go back to school to brush up their knowledge.

    The gain of what the President has done will endure if these kids turn a new leaf and become better citizens. No useful purpose will be served if their future is not properly managed by the governors, who have become their custodians, so that they do not return to their past life. I only hope that some lessons have been learnt from this. Who says these minors may not become better citizens tomorrow who will look back and thank the government for this chance to redeem themselves?

  • The return of Trump

    The return of Trump

    Donald Trump made it back yesterday as United States (U.S.,) President. He beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the election, which many around the world had prayed that he should lose. Since Americans have settled for him again, there is nothing people elsewhere can do.

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    For sure, it is going to be another interesting four years with Trump in charge. The world saw the kind of person he is in his first tenure as the 45th president of U.S., between 2017 and 2021. The world is holding its breath as he returns as the 47th president, after his swearing in, in January, 2025. Will he change his ways? Or will he remain the same truculent and turbulent Trump? Your guess is as good as mine.

  • Rivers: There’s no sentiment in law

    Rivers: There’s no sentiment in law

    Are there similarities between the case of Rivers State and that of Lagos which happened 20 years before it? The answer is no. But mischief makers have been trying to paint both cases the same. The Rivers case has to do with a minority group of four lawmakers passing a budget for the state. The Lagos case is different in every material particular. It had to do with the unilateral action of President Obasanjo, as he then was, to stop the allocations of Lagos State local governments. He took the action following the creation of 37 local council development areas (LCDAs) by the state House of Assembly, which is constitutionally empowered to do so.

    What Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Abuja Federal High Court did on Wednesday was to protect the Constitution from flagrant abuse by four lawmakers sitting in what she described as an improperly constituted assembly. They passed the N800 billion budget which Governor Siminalayi Fubara has been implementing. In the case of Lagos, the Supreme Court did the same thing by curtailing what it called the unconstitutional act of Obasanjo in unilaterally withholding the state’s councils’ funds. While noting that the President by virtue of his oath of office was bound to protect and defend the Constitution, the apex court wondered: “does such power extend to the President committing an illegality?”

    “Our attention has not been drawn to any other provision of the Constitution which empowers the President to exercise the power of withholding or suspending any payment of allocation from the Federation Account to local government councils or to state governments on behalf of the local government councils as provided by Section 162 (3) and (5) of the Constitution… In other words, the obligation of the President which is to protect and defend the Constitution can be exercised through the courts as provided by the Constitution itself”, the Supreme Court said.

    If the apex court did not keep silent in the face of Obasanjo’s affront to the Constitution, how then should Justice Abdulmalik ignore the serial breaches of the Constitution by Fubara and the four lawmakers? The leader of the group, Edison Ehie, resigned to become the governor’s chief of staff. In the Rivers case, due process was followed in stopping the state’s allocations. This was not the case in that of Lagos and the Supreme Court descended on Obasanjo for assuming the powers of the court in taking a decision he is not judicially empowered to make. Whatever may be the position of Fubara and the four now turned three lawmakers on the Martin Amaewhule-led 27 legislators can only be determined by the courts.

    It is not for them to say that the 27 have lost their seats for purportedly defecting from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It was this kind of unilateral act by Obasanjo that the Supreme Court frowned upon in 2004. What then is the crime of Justice Abdulmalik in punishing impunity? To Fubara and his loyalists, the 27 automatically lost their seats after their ‘defection’. The position of the governor and his men is contrary to the provision of the Constitution which states that a defecting lawmaker can only lose his seat, if there is no crisis in his original party.

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    This squabble polarised the assembly into the Wike and Fubara groups. The 27 are for Wike. Justice Abdulmalik was only stating the position of the law when she ordered that Rivers allocations should be withheld forthwith. She was not acting ultra vires (beyond her powers); she was delivering judgment on a case properly brought before her.  There was no legal dispute, as the Supreme Court noted in the Lagos case before Obasanjo unilaterally withheld the state’s local government funds. Should Justice Abdulmalik have shut her eyes to the acts of impunity going on in Rivers for fear of being tarred and not do the right thing?

    All those comparing the Lagos case with that of Rivers miss the point. There is no basis for such comparison. Under the Constitution, a governor can only spend funds appropriated by a House of Assembly. The question then arises: can the four members that passed the Rivers budget pass for a properly constituted assembly? Justice Abdulmalik answered the question in the negative, citing the judgments of her brother-judge, Justice James Omotosho, of the same Abuja court, and the Court of Appeal, delivered on January 22 and October 10, respectively.

    Mischief makers may have a field day, but the law will remain the law. The courts, as Justice Abdulmalik held, would not stand by and allow illegality to thrive. “Where there is a dereliction of constitutional order as in this instant case, this court will surely not shy away from its sacred constitutional responsibility to do what it considers just in the circumstances”, she declared.

  • Mr who are you?

    Mr who are you?

    Many Nigerians, whether rich or poor, like to play the big man. They like to portray themselves as what they are not in order to create false impression about themselves. The essence of their actions is to make the other party cringe in fear and kowtow to them. They derive satisfaction from so doing, especially with a crowd of onlookers around.

       As the ‘big man’ shouts and curses, the lesser mortal, in most cases, looks askance, wondering how he would get out of trouble. ‘What kind of trouble is this?’ He mutters inaudibly. His case is not helped by those who rather than side with the truth, will be asking him to beg and set himself free. ‘Beg for what?’ He thinks. All the same, he bides his time, hoping that things will sort themselves out.

      This is a common scenario which plays out on the streets virtually on a daily basis. The oppressor may be a nobody but he would have put the fear of God into the oppressed who has turned jelly. As Fela, whose title of the song: “Who are you?” we have borrowed for this piece, noted in another song many years ago, “my people fear too much. We fear to fight for freedom; we fear to fight for liberty…”

        As a result of fear, we suffer in silence in the face of oppression. Last Sunday, somewhere in Abuja this kind of ‘power show’, another one from Fela’s stable, was on display in Abuja when a member of the House of Representatives, Alex Mascot Ikwechegh, decided to dance naked. It was an unnecessary show of shame for which today he has become remorseful. All he needed to do in that situation was to calm down, but the people of his village, as they say, seemed to be after him.

      He lost all sense of reason as he descended on the e-hailing cab driver, Stephen Abuwatseya, who came to deliver an item to him in his home at the highbrow Maitama district. He believes that his stay in Maitama, the billionaires’ playground confers special status on him as a member of the National Assembly. The Bolt driver, to him, was a common taxi driver, who could be abused and tongue-lashed like a slave.

    So, Mascot felt such a man deserves no respect. If only it was really a mascot that treated Abuwatseya that way, people would have seen it as an object that was misbehaving, but this was a human being and a representative of the people, for that matter, treating a person that he should ordinarily have protected shabbily. He was disdainful of Abuwatseya, as he asked the cabman time and time again: “do you know who I am?”

    Many public officials suffer from this big man disease. They have a penchant for flaunting their influence and affluence at any given opportunity. They throw it in the face of others and before you ask: ‘Mr who are you?’, the words: ‘do you know who I am?’ would have tumbled out of their mouths. They utter the words with an air of importance, as they cast their look wide look. In all seriousness, they do not need to go to such extent, as bigmanism needs no heralding.

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    It announces itself without fuss, just as a tiger does not need to show its tigritude. As it was the case in the past, Ikwechegh would have gotten away with his verbal and physical assaults of the poor cab driver, but for the advancement in technology, which enabled his victim to record everything on phone. Despite being aware of the recording, he was not deterred. He continued to boast and declared that he could make Abuwatseya disappear without trace and no Jupiter on earth would do anything to him.

    He spoke as if he had the Inspector-General of Police in his pockets. It was all braggadocio. The lawmaker turned lawbreaker now knows better that nobody is above the law. He has publicly apologised and initiated amicable resolution of the dispute. Ikwechegh learnt his lesson the bitter way – pride goes before a fall. He fell because he did not know when to stop, not even  when the driver was cautioning him during the incident: “you have been insulting me and I have been quiet… Are you slapping me? Did you just slap me three times?”

    Now, he faces the whole country over this matter. The police have taken it up; so also are his colleagues who have begun investigating him. It is enough that he has admitted his guilt and shown remorse. If an offender admits his crime, the elders say, he does not stay long on his knees begging. He should be allowed to go and sin no more, after going out there to apologise to Abuwatseya as well as duly compensate him for the public assault. The compensation will be besides paying the driver for his services.

      Perhaps, this way, our big men, especially lawmakers, will realise that they cannot just assault commoners and go scot-free. A senator did it to an expectant mother a few years ago, now a representative has followed suit. There may be many other unreported cases that we have yet to know about. It is high time everything was done to stop these people from being law unto themselves.

  • Courts don’t act in vain

    Courts don’t act in vain

    The message in Wednesday’s verdict by Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court, Abuja, in the now famous N800 billion Rivers State budget passed by a four-man House of Assembly is that courts do not make orders in vain. Whether an order is right or wrong, it must be obeyed until set aside by a higher court. It is not for a party to, on its own, make that decision, as some states’ attorneys-general have been doing. That is contempt.

    Justice Abdulmalik stopped the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from releasing financial allocations to the state. Will Governor Siminalayi Fubara now see reason to obey the courts and stop implementing the budget? Or will he continue to allow himself to be misled by people surrounding him who claim that the “budget is a process” and as such anybody asking for its non-implementation is ‘daydreaming’.

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    In the face of the many similar court orders on the budget, those people are the “daydreamers”. The court has again spoken. It will do well for the government to obey, just as it exercises its right of appeal. As Justice Abdulmalik said: “the governor’s decision to present the budget to an improperly constituted assembly should not be allowed to stand”. That will be the day when the courts allow illegalities to stand.

  • Afe’s love for Fagbemi

    Afe’s love for Fagbemi

    To Say that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), is a son in whom the renowned Are Afe Babalola (SAN) is well pleased will be an understatement. Babalola believes in Fagbemi and their father-son relationship did not start today. It began many years ago when Fagbemi used to represent his principal in court. One of such court cases was the Transmission (where is the firm and its owner now?) matter which Fagbemi successfully handled at the Ikeja High Court, sometimes in the early 1990s.

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     After the court judgment, Fagbemi sought reporters assistance to do justice to the story so as to help his then embattled client. Fagbemi has always been a sound and persuasive advocate. Many of us covering the court then knew that it was just a matter of time before he made the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). When the title came in 1998, we were not surprised. He has now added an academic laurel to it, courtesy of his principal’s institution.

    The Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) conferred him with the honorary Doctor of Law on Monday. Congrats, Dr Lateef Fagbemi (SAN). Indeed, if a man is diligent in his work, he will stand before kings, and not mean men.

  • Who’s afraid of EFCC?

    Who’s afraid of EFCC?

    Former Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) chief and rights activist Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has an uncanny way of stirring up constitutional battles. Remember what he said about getting 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja before a candidate can win the presidential election. The Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court gave a shortshrift to his contention which the petitioners/appellants borrowed heavily from to prove their cases.The Constitution, the courts held, never envisaged such a situation where the winner must score 25 percent in Abuja in order to become president.

    The 25 percent issue has been laid to rest forever. But Agbakoba is at it again! Curiously, a few days after 16 states went to the Supreme Court over the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), as presently constituted, he thundered over the propriety of its edtablishment law. We are not here to discuss the merit or otherwise of a case that is sub judice. The apex court, which on Tuesday reserved judgment in the matter, is more than capable to do justice to the dispute. Is it really a dispute?

    There is nothing disputatious about it beyond the politics that is at play. The EFCC Act and other related legislations on the war against corrupt came at different points in our life as a nation. The EFCC, in particular, was a child of necessity. It was created to check the excesses of public officers, civil servants and others in every sphere of life. The EFCC is not restrictive in its operation. It is not about going after those in public and civil services alone. Its operation cuts across every gamut of society. This is why operatives of the agency have been seen going after those in oil and gas, banking, agriculture and other fields.

    Some oil marketers have been charged with petrol subsidy fraud running into billions of naira. Also, some bank chiefs, with a few of them losing all the way to the Supreme Court, have been tried and convicted for fraud. They were convicted on the strength of the prosecution’s case. They were not persecuted. Persecution has no place in the laws of our land. This is why an accused person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. The trial of businessmen and other non-politically exposed persons does not generate interest like that of the politically exposed. The reason for this is obvious: they hold office at the pleasure of the people.

    As such, they must be accountable to the people. Whether in the public or private sector, accountability matters. A man that is not transparent cannot be trusted. You cannot hold a position of trust and not expect to be scrutinised. It is in the enlightened interest of any leader to always explain and clarify things in the true sense of transparency. Being accountable as a leader engenders trust and confidence, leaving followers, with no choice than to follow suit. Accountability is not a liability. It becomes one when the leader refuses to embrace it. It is about explaining always to the led the reasons for every action.

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    Giving account should not be seen as a burden. It should be taken as part of the governance process. If a leader can go to the people to campaign, he should also be prepared to render account to them. A true leader, that is a servant-leader, will never ignore the people. He will at every turn, carry them along, by opening up to them. Like the other anti-graft laws, the EFCC Act is aimed at sanitising society to make it a better place to live for the leader and the led. There is nothing to fear about the EFCC law if a person is clean. The person will not go into hiding when he is asked to appear in court to answer the charge against him.

    The law protects everyone.  As Justice C hukwudifu Oputa once said, justice is a three-way traffic. It is justice for the society, the accused and the victims of his action. There can never be one-sided justice, if society must move forward. Our leaders should be mindful of the fact that one day, they will be called upon to give account. That day is around the corner. What they do today will determine how they meet that inevitable day of reckoning. Did the Bible not say that we will die and after death, judgement? So, also it is with the offices we occupy today. We will leave them one day and shall be called thereafter to give account.

    We cannot preempt that future event by seeking to quash the law under which we may be called upon to give account of our stewardship when the time comes. There is nothing personal about any law. The law is for all and it is applied justly and equitably on every person, no matter their status. The 16 states’ challenge of the EFCC Act  is good because there can never be anything wrong in going to court. The court is there to settle disputes between parties, be they individuals, organisations or states.

    Testing a law in court as the states have done is the civilised way to go. People should, therefore, not impute motives to the states’ action. Though, the suit is coming 22 years after the enactment of the EFCC Act 2002, which was amended in 2004, it should be noted that there is no statute limitation against filing the case. If the states have just woken up to the reality of filing the case, they cannot be denied their right to bring the suit simply because the law has been in existence for 22 years. Likewise, people like Agbakoba and Femi Falana cannot be stopped from dissecting  the law.

    Agbakoba shares the states’ view that EFCC is an “illegal agency”. Falana disagrees, saying EFCC was “legally created to fight the miasma of corruption in the country”. Will EFCC live or not after this case? Only the Supreme Court can say. But the point has been made that the fear of EFCC is the beginning of toeing the straight and narrow path for elected officers.

  • AGs as governors’ boys

    AGs as governors’ boys

    It Was during the military junta’s era that some senior officers gleefully described themselves as “boys” of the head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, who styled himself as ‘president’. The nation never knew then that he was in love with that title because of his hidden agenda to transmute into a civilian leader under his so-called transition programme.

    It is understandable when soldiers refer to themselves as “boys” of their superiors. It comes with the territory because of the command structure of the military. It is, however, anathema for such to happen in a democracy, where the rule of law and not of might, as the Court of Appeal said in the Amaewhule versus Fubara case, prevails. Democracy promotes equity, justice and fairness.

     No other professional should know this more than a lawyer, who should be the promoter of these virtues. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Many lawyers, particularly those holding political offices, have become the defenders of inequities and all other wrong values. It is worrisome to see these lawyers act this way. The law may be an ass, but a lawyer should not turn to that animal because he wants to please his principal.

    Incredibly, before our eyes, many attorneys-general (AGs) are becoming the “boys” of their governors, thereby jettisoning the demands of their calling to always stand for what is just, right and true. There are AGs at the federal and state levels as stipulated under Sections 150 (1) and 195 (1) of the Constitution.

    Like his counterpart at the national level, an AG is the chief law officer, and not the chief might officer, as many of them are turning into, of a state. As chief law officer, the AG’s duty is to promote law and order, justice, equity, fairness and good governance, as well as ensure that the rights of the citizenry are upheld.

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    Most importantly, he must stand for the rule of law, and compliance with court orders, rulings and judgments. The AG is not his master’s boy, he is his principal’s adviser, confidant, guide and guard. He is expected to play an effective role in governance by acting as a restraint so that things do not tip over. Sadly, the reverse is the case these days. Many AGs act contrary to the dictates of their office. They run down judges and judgments, which do not favour their principals, without any qualms. What is more, they unilaterally declare such judgments not binding, as if they are appellate courts.

    Where they should advise the governor to obey a court judgment, they encourage him to disobey it, with an assurance that nothing will happen. What manner of AGs are these? The people are wondering. Is it in this same country where we had AGs under military rule that stood up to their principals that we are now seeing senior lawyers desecrating the same office? From Edo to Kano to Rivers, their AGs have made caricatures of this revered position.

    These AGs have one or two things to learn from the late Bola Ajibola and the late Olu Onagoruwa, who were federal AGs under military juntas. Ajibola and Onagoruwa were not afraid to correct their principals – Generals Babangida and Sani Abacha, whenever they did something wrong. They upheld the positions of the Bar in everything they did. Onagoruwa, especially, publicly disowned eight decrees enacted by Abacha because they would stifle the people’s liberties. Before then, he had directed the release from detention in May 1994 of Turner Ogboru, in line with a court order. How many of today’s AGs can act likewise?

    Those were AGs in the true sense of the word. They looked military rulers in the face and did what was right. It is unfortunate that under democracy today what we have are lily-livered AGs. AGs who rather than boldly advice their governors to obey court judgments would encourage them to do otherwise because the verdicts did not favour them. The job of the AG is not to do his master’s bidding, it is to ensure that the right things are done all the time. Whether a court verdict favours a governor or not, the AG must have the courage to tell his principal to obey it and then appeal.

    It is unbecoming of any AG to unwittingly tell a governor not to obey a court order. The AG who does this is attacking the Constitution which calls him the keeper and defender of the law. The post of AG is delicate. It requires a person of integrity, gumption, high moral and ethical values, transparency and accountability to run the office. Where any of these attributes is lacking, there will be problems.

    More than any other person, AGs should know that they cannot sit on appeal over any judgment. The right thing to do is to, as lawyers would say, “go upstairs” (higher court). AGs cannot in the process of exercising their right of appeal constitute themselves into authority, and be making wild claims about the judge and the verdict. It must be said here that the AG who cannot look his principal in the face and tell him the truth, the bitter truth about a judgment, is unfit to hold office. AGs are not boys, they are expected to be men of timber and calibre, apologies to Chief K.O. Mbadiwe, of blessed memory.

  • Gowon, the General’s General, at 90

    Gowon, the General’s General, at 90

    On Saturday, which is 48 hours from now, General Yakubu Gowon will be 90. Gowon’s life is one to learn from. At the young age of 32 in 1966, he became head of state. At 41, nine years later, he was toppled and thereafter began a life in exile.

     Gowon has known what it is to be at the top of the mountain and down in the valley. In whatever position he found himself at any point in time, his spirit never wavered. He took everything stoically. At 90, an age that those lucky to attain join the elite and exclusive Club of Nonagenarians, his life and conduct remain exemplary. A life of service and dedication to the cause of One Nigeria.

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     Go-On-With-One-Nigeria, an acronym derived from the first letters of his five-letter name Gowon, was a slogan that resonated around the country during the civil war (1967-70). Some credit certainly goes to Gowon that we are still one today. His three Rs of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation, which were adopted after the war ended with the declaration of “no victor, no vanished”, in some ways helped in keeping us together.

     Since his return from exile, he has embarked on a mission of peace under the aegis of Nigeria Prays. Gowon’s and Nigeria’s fate seems intertwined. We cannot talk about Nigeria without mentioning him. Gowon has run a good race, with yet many more years to come. He remains a household name not only at home, but across the world. Happy birthday in advance, sir.

  • The council elections magic

    The council elections magic

    It Did Not start today. The domination of local government elections by the ruling party in a state has, painfully, become entrenched in the political system. It is now a given that the party in power must win the election, irrespective of how strong the other contesting parties may be.

    Since the return to democracy in 1999, no ruling party has lost any council poll held under its watch. The ruling party only loses where it decides to, by switching overnight to another party through the sitting governor’s proxies as the whole nation just witnessed in the October 5 Rivers State local government election.

    It was a no-brainer that the unknown Action Peoples Party (APP), with its elephant logo, was going to top the poll, once the governor’s men moved there en masse on the eve of the election. The circumstances surrounding the defection of the former council caretaker chiefs to APP,  while their godfather, Governor Siminilayi Fubara, remains in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for now, are well known. That APP came from political obscurity to prominence to win council election within weeks is the stuff of which electoral victory are not made.

    There is nowhere in the world that a party of no political consequence rises just like that and wins election at the grass roots, where political power flows not from the barrel of a gun, nor the deep pockets of a moneybag, but from the love and acceptance of the people. The people must believe in a candidate and his party first in order to go with them in local elections. If this is not the case, then something must have gone wrong. How did APP perform the magic of beating PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the two well known parties in the state, at their own game?

    The fact is that it was a case of he who pays the piper, calling the tune. Local government elections are the babies of the state independent electoral commissions (SIECs), which are constitutionally recognised to undertake the job. The framers of the Constitution must have meant well by giving SIECs this responsibility, instead of saddling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which handles the other elections with the additional duty. They probably thought that what is in council elections that SIECs cannot easily crack.

      The problem is not the election but its conduct by umpires that allow themselves to be led by the nose by the governors who appointed them. Go through the outcomes of the council elections held recently across the country, you will be shocked by what by you see. It was a cleansweep of the polls by the party in power from Adamawa to Yobe.

     Check: In Adamawa, PDP took all the 21 chairmanship seats at stake; Akwa Ibom, 30 out of 31 for PDP; Anambra, 21 over 21 for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA); Bauchi, 17 out of 17, with 15 returned unopposed for PDP; Benue, 27 over 27 for APC; Delta, 25 over 25 for PDP; Kebbi, 21 over 21 for APC; Sokoto, 23 out of 23 for APC, and Rivers 22 over 23 for APP. Meaning that they all got a perfect score of 100 percent! It is inexplicable. Only the SIECs can tell the public what happened.

    You ask yourself: if these parties are this popular at the grass roots, how come that they do not replicate these victories in state/national assembly, governorship and presidential elections? After all, it is said, all elections are local, no matter the names they carry. Though APP is not in power in Rivers, it has a father-figure in Fubara, who smoothened its path to victory, defeating the governor’s own party, PDP, in the process. As he said, tongue-in-cheek before the election: “I’m the greatest loser because my party is not contesting”. A loser indeed!

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    Fubara should not rejoice yet over the results of the election, which was held in defiance of the judgment of a Federal High Court in Abuja. Though he relied on the injunction of a Port Harcourt High Court to conduct the election, it waits to be seen what the appellate courts would say on the matter. In relying on that injunction, he claimed to have what he called a ‘first-in-hand’ order that protects him in conducting the election.

    Is that really true? The Rivers injunction was given on September 4, while the Abuja judgment which came after the hearing of the case was delivered on September 30. It must be noted that the matter was not heard and decided in one day. It was filed in July and a similar restraining order was made then, which Fubara and the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC), that is headed by a retired judge, chose to ignore.

    So, talking about the principle of ‘first-in-time’, which the governor seems to know a lot about, the Abuja order takes precedent over that of Rivers. The appellate courts, and not any make-believe local government election tribunal, will eventually decide whether or not the poll will stand. It must be noted that, for the first time in the nation’s political history, the police did not participate in the election. Much weather is being made out of this police action.

    While I accept that it is wrong for the police not to secure any part of the country at any point in time, I beg to disagree that they did anything wrong in this instance. They only acted in compliance with the Abuja order. What the police did was to distance themselves from the election venues and not from policing the state. Not being at polling booths on the election day is not the same as not policing the whole state. Where will Rivers be today if the police had withdrawn from all other parts of the state last Saturday?

    Fubara, his loyalists and RSIEC have had their way, it is now left for the courts to decide whether they are right or not. The earlier the courts do this, the better for the people of Rivers so that they can know whether it is a truly democratically-elected local government administration, and not a contrived one, that is now in place in their domains, in line with the July 11 Supreme Court’s judgment.