The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Personal feelings on presidential and congressional elections

    With the final tallies of these elections largely determined, it seems the political status quo at the presidency will be maintained after May 2019 when President Muhammadu Buhari will begin his second term. I will next week share my ideas on what the president must do to run an all-inclusive government. But for now I want to share some personal moments with my readers.

    Two members of my family were involved tangentially and frontally in these elections.  These are Akin Osuntokun and Fela Durotoye respectively. I have personal aversion for politics although I have strong political views which I have often expressed as diplomatically as I can.  I also grew up in an intensely political family. Some of my readers old enough may think I am referring to the pre-independence and post-colonial politics in Nigeria. It goes beyond that because my great grandfather, Dada, was a generalissimo in the Ekitiparapo army of the 1870s to 1880s. War of course is politics by other means. When the war ended, my great grandfather, a prince of Ajase- Ipo ancestry supported BalogunIshola  Fabunmi who even though a prince too tried to use force to overthrow the then reigning king of Okemesi. When the abortive coup failed, Fabunmi and my great-grandfather had to leave Okemesi. Fabunmi later became king of Imesi-Ile, the original homestead of Okemesi people while my great-grandfather remained in exile in Igbajo. Our family houses were burnt.

    History repeated itself in 1966 when after the January coup d’état, our family houses were again burnt by enemies of Chief Oduola  Osuntokun  my brother, who was a minister in the Awolowo and Akintola governments.It was then I vowed never to be involved in politics.

    It is a long history which I do not want to inflict on my readers since this is already in my autobiography since 2005.

    Now to the current politics. FelaDurotoye is a son I am very proud of. His case is that of morning shows the day as childhood shows manhood. Fela’s father, Professor Tokunbo Durotoye was more than a cousin to me; he was my elder brother whose love for me was as total and as intense as mine for him. When he passed on prematurely after having reached the status of professor of physiology, I tried my best to support his young children of whom Fela was the youngest and most precocious and in character a chip of the old block. When he was a child, without having lived in Okemesi, he spoke the dialect to the admiration of those who had lived there all their lives. He showed how much in touch he was with the local reality of his native town. When he graduated, I went to Ife to throw a cocktail party for him and when he got his first salary he shared it to all of us saying he heard that he was expected to do this. Fela’s mother, Adeline Bisi Durotoye was a professor of Geology unfortunately she died a few years ago. She was my classmate at the University of Ibadan. She was a great and gentle soul who loved everybody with the love of Christ. She came from the ruling house of Onimole in Lagos.

    When Fela told me he was contesting for president, I tried to dissuade him and sent him to have discussions with people versed in the difficult terrain of Nigerian politics. I also spoke to my brother, Professor Olu Durotoye, Fela’s uncle who agreed with me about the whole thing being a wild goose chase. But Fela is old enough and he had my prayers. I am happy he made his mark and the future belongs to him and his generation and if people in heaven can see what goes on here, Fela’s parents will be immensely proud of him as we all are.

    Akin Osuntokun in my very eyes has become a seasoned politician. Needless to say we have our political differences arising out of our age and political experiences. Akin has a great gift of the pen which he sometimes deploys with killing effect. He is more of a scholar in politics than a real politician. He is too brutal with his opinion and language. He reminds me of Chief Awolowo who in 1979 said if he was elected president he would abolish the ministry of information and tourism because there was no infrastructure to support it and that only somebody who had enjoyed so much luxury in the west and wants to have a taste of hell would come to Nigeria as a tourist! He added he would immediately ban importation of used clothes and dried Stork fish from Norway. He argued, usually with facts, that using clothes that had been worn by others was degrading and that eating dried stork (panla or oporoko) fish which was fed to slaves being carried across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere duringthe transatlantic slave trade brought back unhappy memories of the humiliation of our black brethren. He was right on both counts but our Igbo compatriots said he deliberately targeted those two items because he hated them. Chief Awolowo must have been shocked by the interpretation of his political opponents. Akin Osuntokun writes with academic license which as a politician he should have been avoiding. I have seen some of his well-reasoned writings and interviews and I tell myself that my nephew should go back to the university to study diplomacy. Privately, I have been urging him to go for a PhD in any area of political science which he should be able to finish within three years and instead of going back to politics he should join a university anywhere in the world and he will be able to mellow his rhetoric and argue as an academic rather than as a politician.

    Akin has an uncanny understanding of Nigerian politics and he has inherited from his illustrious father the mastery of the English language even more than many of us who have spent all our lives in academia. I try to moderate his written interventions but in recent times his verbal interventions have not always been what I would have advised or wanted. I guess what now guides my political discourse is the Yoruba adage of “Eniti Sango ba toju e wole a mope oba Ko so nikoso”. I was incarcerated for months by the Abacha regime. Needless to say it was not a pleasant experience and I won’t want my enemy not to talk of my blood relation to experience such wickedness and humiliation. When Obasanjo set up the Chukwudifu Oputa panel  in 1999,  I went before it to give testimony of what the great Nnamdi Azikiwe would have called “man’s inhumanity to man”. But nothing came out of it. The whole thing was a charade signifying nothing and did not assuage our feelings and neither was any one held to account because General Abacha did not personally and directly maltreat those of us in detention in his name.

    In this election, I supported General Muhammadu Buhari just I have supported his political career and electoral contest in the last four elections for many reasons bordering on his personal integrity and my personal knowledge of him. I first met him, I think in 1980 or thereabouts. He was a student in United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, specializing in command and general strategic studies. Obasanjo had just handed over power to civilians in 1979 and Buhari was minister of petroleum resources in Obasanjo’s military government. Dr Olusola Saraki, father of Bukola Saraki was a senator in the Second Republic. He was chairman of senate committee on petroleum resources and had alleged that N2.8 billion was missing from the account of NNPC.  Buhari was so peeved that he wanted to abandon his programme to return home to defend his honour. Before returning home, he came to consult with Major General (Dr) Olufemi Adefope who was staying in my house in Potomac Maryland USA with his wife and was receiving medical attention. Mrs Dotun Adefope was my wife, Biodun’s aunt. It took all the medical persuasive effort of Adefope to prevail on Buhari and calm him down that he was not personally involved in keeping NNPC’s book in order. He was later cleared. He made a strong impression on me on that occasion. The second time was in 1983 in Professor Jibril Aminu’s house when Aminu was vice chancellor of University of Maiduguri and I was dean, faculty of arts. General Buhari had ordered the 23rd Armoured Brigade under the then Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Dogonyaro to pursue from Bagaacross Lake Chad, Chadian troops who had invaded Nigeria. Buhari was then GOC 3rd armoured corps division of the Nigerian army in Jos. He was allegedly reprimanded by civilian authority in Lagos for not getting approval for his action. The third time I met him  was when in 1984  as head of state, he and General Tunde Idiagbon, his deputy, hosted my brother, Professor Kayode Osuntokun and his family to a lunch in Dodan Baracks for my brother’s  national merit award  in medicine. The fourth time was in 1992 or thereabouts when as ambassador of Nigeria to the Federal Republic of Germany, I met him in Frankfurt and later went to pay courtesies to him in Hamburg. He opened up to me about how Babangida detained him and his patriotic wishes for the country. His simplicity in all these occasions was simply overwhelming. His greatest shortcoming is that his human and social horizons are severely limited. If he sees me today he will not be able to recognize me which is a terrible fault in any person in politics. But all put together he can be a battle axe to fix the problems of this benighted country if he opens up his circle of advisers and if he recruits the best people from across the country right away not  waiting until he is sworn in for another term. I hope somebody like Ken Nnamani will be made Secretary to the Government of the Federation to assuage the feeling of isolation of people of the Southeast.

  • Moving on

    IT IS all over. The presidential race ended early yesterday when Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu declared  Muhammadu Buhari winner of Saturday’s election. His closest rival Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had yet to congratulate him at the time of writing this. Will he do so or will he and his party challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard-bearer’s victory at the tribunal?

    Our country is the winner in the just-concluded presidential and National Assembly elections. There is no loser even though many lost their bid for offices. Better luck to them next time. The polls went smoothly in many parts of the country, though there were pockets of skirmishes here and there. The clashes were not enough to write off the exercise. If they were, the observers, who came from different parts of the world, would have said so.

    The elections may not have gone the way that some expected. Indeed, many giants fell by the way side. These are heavyweights who determine how elections go in their domains. But they lost because nothing is certain in an election until the last ballot is counted. What makes elections tick is the uncertainty about their outcome. Candidates go to the polls counting on their popularity to win.

    An astute politician knows that without a large following, winning an election is impossible because it is a contest of numbers.  Having a large following is one thing, getting this huge number to vote for you  is another. On many occasions, many  popular politicians went to the polls certain of victory, only for the results to show otherwise. Winning an election demands tact and strategy. Experts use these qualities to map out their plans on how to win votes.

    Such a plan is subject to many factors, chief of which, is the turn out of voters. We are in a society where apathy is rife. People usually register as voters, but will never turn out to vote on election day. It happened in last Saturday’s elections. We have over 84 million people on the voter register, with over 72 million said to  have collected their permanent voter cards (PVCs).  But how many of the 72,775,502 voters came out to cast their ballot last Saturday? 29,364,209 were accredited to vote; 28,614,190 cast their votes – going by the results released by INEC for the presidential poll. 27,324,583 were valid votes; 1,289,607 were rejected. Buhari scored 15,191,847 to Atiku’s 11,262,978. The 71 other contestants shared the remaining 869,758 votes among themselves..

    With the presidential election won and lost, the shape of the Ninth National Assembly is also emerging. Many popular senators who sought re-election were beaten hands down at the polls. Senate President Bukola Saraki is not returning to the Red Chamber having been defeated by Senator-elect Ibrahim Oloriegbe. Senators Godswill Akpabio and George Akume also lost in Akwa Ibom and Benue states.

    These politicians were expected to have an easy ride over their opponents, but they lost. How are the mighty fallen? If anyone had said these political juggernauts will lose before the election, that person would have been dismissed as talking nonsense. Their loss has shown that anything can happen in a political contest. In their states, these people are revered. They are treated as godfathers because of their powers to make and unmake politicians. Here they are today, battered, bloodied and bruised in a contest they were expected to show their strength in their sphere of influence.

    Their loss should make them realise that they are not god even though they are referred to as godfathers. Their loss does not mean that they are not strong. They are strong in their own right, but their loss is God’s way of humbling them. Nobody wants to be on the losing side. The PDP has been griping about the outcome of the polls. It has on several occasions rejected the results, hinting that it may go to the tribunal. The party knows in truth and in fact that the elections  met the standard of a free and fair exercise. PDP has a right to complain and it has exercised that right, but having done that it should put the country’s interest first in whatever it plans to do.

    Should it challenge the poll outcome just because it did not win? Is it complaining because it truly believes that it was cheated at the polls? Will it also contest the outcome in areas where it won? Can the elections only be credible in places where it won?  If it feels it has a case, it should go to the tribunal; if not, it should lay the matter to rest and wait for the next election. Whatever it chooses to do, it should reflect deeply before it acts. The nation cannot afford to play into the hands of those that do not wish it well. There can never be two winners in a contest. There can only be one winner.  Atiku put up a good showing, but his performance was not good enough to earn him the coveted seat.

    Nothing good will be achieved by overheating the polity over the outcome of the election. Our country is the winner in this contest because of the peaceful way the contestants conducted themselves. This is how it should be. I pray that we sustain this peaceful nature and also extend it to the March 9 governorship and House of Assembly elections.

  • Triumph of Nigerian voters

    Last Saturday, February 23, was a new day for Nigeria and Nigerian voters. It was a day of victory for ordinary Nigerian voters with faith in our electoral system, INEC the umpire and democracy that has been under assault of the political elite  who regard election as ‘a do or die affair’ and for whom democracy means only one thing – victory at the polls by all means fair or foul. The successful completion of an exercise that has allowed people to freely choose their leaders by INEC whose integrity Obasanjo and his PDP have sadly attempted to undermine, signifies the triumph of Nigerian voters.

    In the run up to last week’s election, Obasanjo had with neither restraint nor proof impulsively declared: “I personally have serious doubt about the present INEC’s integrity, impartiality and competence to conduct a fair, free and credible election”. Even with the scar of 2007 election considered the worst in our nation history, Obasanjo, projecting himself as a champion of democracy went on to add: “Democracy becomes a sham if elections are carried out by people who should be impartial and neutral umpires, but who show no integrity, acting with blatant partiality, duplicity and imbecility”.

    And writing off the current INEC even before the election took off, he without grace, appealed to “the international community to send more people to the field to observe and work out punitive measures ranging from denial and withdrawal of visas to other more stringent measures including freezing accounts of INEC and security officials especially the police and taking them to International Criminal Court ICC”.  This was coming from a leader who undermined all institutions of democracy-political parties, the legislature and the judiciary whose judges according to Audu Ogbeh, former PDP chairman, received bribes in foreign currency to sell justice to the highest bidder.

    And to demonise President Buhari, a spiteful Obasanjo offensively likened him to Abacha, the brutal dictator and his nemesis, saying “Today, another Abacha era is here. The security institutions are being misused to fight all critics and opponents of Buhari and to derail our fledgling democracy. EFCC, police and Code of Conduct Tribunal are also being equally misused to deal with those Buhari sees as enemies.” PDP was to add: “Obasanjo’s submission has also reinforced our position that President Buhari, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), having realised that there is no way he can win in a free and fair election, is now besieging all democratic institutions, including the judiciary, the legislature the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while engaging in acts that threaten the unity, peace and corporate existence of our dear nation”.

    But in what appeared a battle between  parasitic  beneficiaries of our dysfunctional system in Abuja, VGC Victoria Island and Port Harcourt – exclusive preserves of the leisured class, and impoverished Nigerians in Mushin, Ekiti, Kwara Jigawa,  and other neglected parts of our nation, where poverty strikes every visitor on the face, millions  of Nigerians undeterred by   Obasanjo’s unfounded  allegations and unwarranted assault on INEC and the president, demonstrated their faith in INEC, by coming out to elect leaders of their choice. They equally defied Obasanjo’s hypocritical western backers and their institutionsincluding the London Economist and its ‘satanic verses’.

    Neither were resolute Nigerian voters swayed by hate preaching of the jet-flying prosperity prophets who tried to exploit their religious fears at a period the Pope was in the middle-east to prove that but for the extremists, all adherents of the Abrahamic religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam are worshipping the same God.

    In Ekiti, an embarrassment called Fayose and his associates in the National Assembly with their baleful legacies of unpaid salaries, chicken farm and stomach infrastructure scam were swept away. In Oyo, the ‘constituted authority’ who regarded questions by students on his policy thrust on education as an affront was stopped from transiting from the governorship lodge to the senate chambers. Even in Kogi, the voters exercised their right to re-elect a jesting Dino Melaye as a senator. In Kwara, those that have been treated as properties of Saraki and his father, the owners of Kwara fiefdom for over 50 years, with a battle cry of “o to ge” finally liberated themselves. Godswill Akpabio, the invincible former governor of in Akwa Ibom lost his senate seat. Anambra settled for Ifeanyi Ubah who has spent the greater part of the last three years in and out of EFCC and DSS camps over oil deals. Kaduna Central Senatorial District asked fearless Senator Shehu Sani who besides exposing a well-kept secret of senators N14.5m monthly pay, also asked President Buhari to stop fighting corruption among his political foes with insecticide and his political sympathisers, with deodorant to return to his civil society advocacy engagements. The beauty of democracy is that people are allowed to make their own mistakes which they also have a chance to correct after four years.

    It was the triumph of the electorate over mischief-makers. The  ECOWAS  and Commonwealth observers, headed by former Tanzania President , Dr.JakayaKikwe, apart from observing that “Election related violence and loss of life, which occurred in a number of places, is deeply troubling and calling for those  responsible should be held accountable”, the interim report indicate the election was free, fair and transparent.  The EU interim report has also called attention to operational failures of INEC resulting in late arrival of election materials which led to delay in the commencement of voting in some areas’.

    With INEC’s successful completion of the exercise early on Wednesday morning, those who have since the birth of the fourth republic undermined the democratization process are again set to heat up the polity. Even while Prince Uche Secondus’ PDP was recording landslide victories after landslide victories in the party’s strongholds as predicted by pundits, he was preparing ground for another assault on democratisation process in the event PDP loses the election. He first issued a statement saying “all results currently being announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is incorrect thus unacceptable to our party and people.” At a time PDP was winning in opposition strongholds including Ondo and Edo, the APC chairman’s state, Secondus claimed “officials of both President Buhari’s government and the All Progressive Congress (APC), working with INEC officers, have tried to alter the course of history and disenfranchise our people through the cancellation and manipulation of figures”.

    Not done, Secondus also alleged, President Buhari “dispatched minister of the interior, to the Northwest, Secretary to the Government of the Federation to the northeast and the attorney-general to the Southeast and South-south regions, to perfect rigging of election whose results had been declared at every polling booth 12 hours earlier. He forgot to tell Nigerians that it was after the alleged dispatch that INEC announced PDP landslide victories in its strongholds of Akwa Ibom Ebonyi, Anambra and Plateau.  The inference from Secondus straight and crooked syllogism is that the election will only be seen as free and fair if PDP secures landslide and sea slide victories in opposition strong holds as NPN did in 1983.

    Such a deadly assault on democracy will not be without dire consequences. Secondus should realise Nigerians voting PDP are not all suffering from collective amnesia. Some do so because they genuinely have faith in market economy or the survival of the fittest and not necessarily because they share the views of a few rascals that ‘stealing government money is not corruption’. And there are those voting PDP because they were angry with Buhari and APC for not meeting expectations of Nigerians. Sixteen years of looting of our national resources and the documented repeated assault on our democratisation process as publicly attested to by former president, Obasanjo, former governor, Donald Duke, and former deputy senate president, Ibrahim Mantu, are not lost on Nigerian voters who now have more confidence in  their votes.

  • Beautiful boys and Buhari

    IT would be astonishing if last week’s piece attracted no flak from certain quarters. Predictably, it did, thus affirming my claim that contemporary journalism suffers the affliction of too many con men mitered like the proverbial beautiful boy.

    The latter’s claim to repute is a fanciful, militant disposition to the truth; craven masochism encroaches upon their puffed torso, leaving it a bloated sac of tissues and intumescent flesh.

    Like tree bugs, they fed on and profited off Nigeria’s dysfunctional systems, under previous regimes. Post Goodluck Jonathan era, for instance, most of them played agent provocateur, specialists at ‘damage control’ for corrupt oil magnates, and looters in public and private offices, facing litigation or scandalous expose of their corrupt acts.

    They waded and bathed in the splash of filthy lucre as their ‘clients’ let loose a dam of crud and corruptive tokens.

    During the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s locust years, such characters ‘smartly’ established, media consultancies, online media, farms and poultries, boutiques, private schools, hotels as their Plan B, in the event that they lose their jobs in the fast-dissembling media industry.

    Many, who couldn’t survive the rigours and ethical demands of mainstream journalism waited in the wings to play pall bearers of good, old journalism; like ghostly bats and owls, they are still keeping vigil, betting on traditional journalism’s death watch.

    Left to them, Muhammadu Buhari is ‘bad market.’ If he weren’t, he would understand the expediences of government as a market place, and like his predecessors, enhance tyrant transactions that favour predator nations and conglomerates over home-grown, innovative, enterprising firms.

    If he weren’t bad market, he would understand the expediency of ignoring the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and BVN policies, among others, that Nigeria’s filthy rich billionaire thieves, might continually plunder the public till in connivance with government officials, to enrich their offshore accounts.

    Like their patrons, these shady characters, masquerading as ‘journalists/media consultants,’ make unrealistic demands of Buhari; they want him to make N1 equivalent to $1, and Nigeria, agriculturally self-sufficient, all within a period of four years. They want him to eradicate corruption, except in government circuits and resolve in four years, the devastation the PDP inflicted on Nigeria in 16 years. They also want the ‘money to flow.’

    “Buhari is bad market. Who needs the TSA, of what benefit is it when boys are not smiling?” says a supposedly influential journalist/media consultant, in his acerbic outburst to last week’s piece.

    His type is to journalism, what the so-called Dying Slave is, to the uncompleted tomb of Julius II. Their epic gaffes exemplify the soul’s struggle against the body; leg flexed, desire aflame, will-succumbed and currency-activated, they serve as the proverbial beautiful boy to a predatory ruling class.

    The lyricism absent from political cult music attains musicality when fused with their greed. As the PDP era ended, so did the gaudy promiscuity of this supposedly chic set.

    Today, while the crème of their breed comprising bank chiefs, corrupt civil servants, pipeline vandals, and oil thieves, recoil from public arena in fear of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the errand boys of the crew, that is, the rogue journalist/media consultants, have emerged from the woodwork, like patrician harlots loitering on dark streets, hawking their services to passers-by.

    They have evolved from half-clad harlotry into complete nudity. These days, they wear their nakedness, like a fine garment, even as their fabricated repute engorges at full mast, like a eunuch’s limp member.

    This minute, they manifest on Nigeria’s psyche, like disgruntled Sirens, with battered hindquarters and lips rimmed with the previous night’s fleshy spoils.

    “Oh, those happy locust years,” they whine, reliving when oil thieves were feted as oil magnates; when hired assassins, political thugs and pimps were paid off with lucrative oil deals transacted in the tenor of rogue black ops.

    They lust for the ‘good old days’ when the presidency’s concubines were compensated with oil blocs, that they might answer as one of Africa’s richest magnates. They cry for the luxurious epoch when the presidency bribed terrorists to strike and withhold attack, as expediences dictated.

    Their disposition is quite wrong. But it is understandable. By their patronage of deep pockets, they are frozen in a moral void; they are mentally and emotionally stuck at age 13. But unlike medieval Greece’s beautiful boys, they aren’t society’s martyrs, nor are they victims of nature’s tyranny.

    They are victims of extreme self-love, which is yet another facet of their moral turpitude and promiscuity. Promiscuity in the beautiful boy is an illness, a leakage of ethics that often aggravates his identity crisis.

    By their lack of professional and personal ethics, they rupture the ritual integrity of press personae. Journalism, no matter how minimalist or innovative, is never simply news reporting. Like art, it is always a ritualistic reflection of reality and surgical reordering of society.

     

    Every subject honoured by journalism should be deserving of nobility. Thus this minute, I ennoble Buhari and place him far above his rivals, not because he is a perfect human being. He isn’t.

    He is inherently flawed and these past years, he has conducted himself in a manner deserving of reproach, on a few occasions. But his unsullied integrity, seeming incorruptibility and pedantry at sanitising public office, however, ‘far-fetched’ or ‘selective’ makes him worthy of praise and deserving of a second term.

    Journalism’s beautiful boys would contest this. They would claim, for instance, that PDP’s Atiku Abubakar is Nigeria’s next best messiah and that projecting his candidacy, was their most heroic act to date. I would argue otherwise.

    If journalism truly involves binding the humane to tyrant nature, to dull its tyranny, the journalist should conduct himself, like a clinical surgeon; cutting and grafting, lacerating and sewing, in moments of perceptual flurry and stillness, to rid society of its tumourous burdens.

    Surgery is at the heart of journalism. Surgery as compulsion and surgery as stasis.

    The contemporary journalist, who merely twaddles across a page, to fulfill errant lusts and shards of political correctness, is forever beholden to untameable aspects of his persona, and uncontrollable facets of reality.

    When the journalist plays beautiful boy, he suffers a reduction of self; his elocution of feigned courage turns bestial acquiescence into an ecstasy of ethical bondage.

    His predisposition to life in a moral void leads to perceptual dystopia, where decadent personae subsist, eyes open, mentally alert and compliant with the hyper-states produced by superimposition of material over mind, and elevation of filth as journalism’s altarpiece.

    Where the journalist persists in this charred crimson territory, his descent is assured. Journalists adapting to ‘market need’ make heroism out of decadence too. Such characters live to glorify errant lusts above noble ideals and deeds. They talk a good game, thus they could be mistaken as heroes.

    They would clothe Atiku Abubakar as a hero, and the PDP, as a party of saints, simply because Buhari is ‘bad market.’

     

  • Election panic in Nigeria

    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.

  • INEC and our suicidal political elite

    INEC chairman and his men have been going through severe stress and strain since last week’s postponement of the presidential election. Leading the attack on INEC are politicians, the cause of INEC failure and the source of our nation’s nightmare. In their blind fury, they ignored the fact that INEC is just a symptom of a dysfunctional system foisted on Nigeria since 1964 by dishonest, anti-democratic and self-serving governing political elite that periodically undermine the democratization process by sabotaging successive electoral bodies. There is no evidence the political class ever wanted an independent electoral empire.

    It is on record that while grandstanding, Obasanjo, the self-appointed perennial kingmaker  was using the late Tony Anenih, ‘Mr. Fixer’, to undermine the democratization process across the country, he was blaming cheated aggrieved victims and  the electorate claiming, “Nigerians would complain even if Jesus came down to conduct election”. But that was before the judiciary retrieved stolen mandates from his boys in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun and with the late Umaru Yar’Adua, the embarrassed winner of the 2007 presidential election, going on to set up the Uwais commission to prevent the repeat of the 2007 tragedy.

    INEC as a product of its environment is but a reflection of the discredited political class to which free and fair election has never been an attraction. That was why when Humphrey Nwosu successfully broke the jinx in 1993, the election was annulled even before he could announce the official result. The anti-democratic kingmakers, led by Generals Babangida and Obasanjo who have held the country to ransom since the end of the civil war jointly foisted an interim contraption headed by Ernest Shonekan on the country.

    It was Obasanjo who as president in 2003 declared election as “a do or die” affair, a euphemism for war. Sadly almost 20 years into the fourth republic, both PDP and APC have not demonstrated they see election beyond Obasanjo’s “do or die affair’. Not a few Nigerians must have come to this sad conclusion after their last week  television  appearance during which they threatened the peace of the country after blaming INEC and everyone else except themselves and their members that have done everything to undermine the integrity of INEC. They spoke not as leaders of political parties, the 17th century ingenious creation of intellectuals for deeper reflection on how to confront societal problems, but as leaders of factions working for warlords.

    Oshiomhole, accused INEC of colluding with PDP claiming “From all we have now known, I can put my hand on the Holy Koran that INEC leadership knew that they were going to postpone the elections. They shared this information with the People’s Democratic Party and advised them not to waste their resources, while pretending to us that they are on top of the situation”. On the other hand the Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign council alleged the commission’s action was ‘a vindication of its earlier position that the electoral body is working with the APC-led federal government to truncate the country’s democracy.’

    In spite of INEC’s “We promised Nigerians that we shall be open, transparent and responsive”, both PDP and APC leadership have continued to incite their supporters who look up to them for direction against INEC.Their representatives who appeared in a segment of the media owned by their principals, interested only in dragging Nigeria to their levels, pontificate about the civilized world, membership of which we have been denied since 1962. By saying they have no faith in INEC, Secondus and Oshiomhole   seem to be preparing the nation for an apocalypse since one party has to win and one has to lose.

    Yet both PDP and APC cannot wash themselves clean of INEC’s claim of possible sabotage by the politicians. In a space of two weeks, they had to deal with serious fire incidents in three of their offices in IsialaNgwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu’an Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State and Anambra State Office at Awka where fire destroyed over 4,600 Smart Card Readers which took at least six months to procure.

    Both Secondus and Oshiomhole could not admit they preside over an undisciplined political class. There are 91 registered parties with 79 presidential candidates including many who cannot even articulate our crisis of nationality. For that reason, INEC will be “printing ‘421.7 million ballot papers for six scheduled elections, as well as 13.6 million leaves of result forms for the 79 Presidentialcandidates alone” whereas in order to get on the ballot in the US, a presidential candidate must meet ballot access requirements  -”a variety of complex, state-specific filing requirements and deadlines” well in advance of primaries, caucuses, and the general election. In the US 2016 election, perhaps because of the stringent condition, only about 28 including six independent candidates were on the ballot.

    But in Nigeria, INEC has been sued or joined in over 640 court cases, while as at February 15, the eve of the postponed election, there were 40 different court orders against the commission on whether to add or drop candidates. In Rivers and Zamfarawhere APC  have no candidates because INEC was obliged to obey court orders following disputed party primaries, members of the ruling party  are now threatening to disrupt next Saturday’s election. In Imo and Ogun, elected governors who were restrained from imposing their successors by party guidelines are sponsoring opposition candidates while contesting for senate seats on the platform of APC.

    INEC has other challenges. Besides anti-democratic mischief makers as godfathers and king-makers, we also have errant elders who are in the main driven by other considerations other than love for the free and fair electoral process. In the Niger Delta where it is said votes are allocated because of the terrain, the elders and political leaders are driven more by consideration for resource control than a desire for free and fair election. The Middle Belt Forum and their elders are driven by fears of herdsmen. Ohanaeze says it is supporting Atiku/Obi ticket because Obi is their own. The confused Yoruba Afenifere elders probably on account of blurred vision  are casting their lot with Atiku/Obi in the believe that where Buhari who enjoys a cult-like followership in the north has been unable to risk  removing feeding bottle from the mouth of northern LGAs who depend on revenue from the federation account to survive, Atiku will. And more bizarre, they believe Obi will forgo the current unstructured anarchy that work for the interest of Igbo as itinerant traders all over the country especially in the north where according to a northern governor, they occupy an area larger than the five southeast states put together.

    Since Nigeria political class, the self-appointed kingmakers and chieftains of ethnic groups are not particularly interested in free and fair elections, marginalized and impoverished ordinary Nigerians whose future is at stake must help INEC succeed on Saturday. They must vote for candidates of their choice as advised by the president without fomenting trouble if only to put to shame PDP combative leaders who have taken up arms against the president for warning would-be armed ballot box snatchers who in the past killed, maimed as in Rivers and in Ekiti where they cut-of the leg of an opposition party agent.

  • The wages of rigging

    IF the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had got its act right, we would have put the presidential and National Assembly elections behind us by now. But things did not work out the way the electoral umpire envisaged. INEC had proposed that the presidential and National Assembly elections hold on February 16 and those of the governorship and House of Assembly on March 2. Man proposes, God disposes, so goes the saying. Things did not work out, according to INEC’s plan.

    Its Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, at a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja, attended by some party leaders, presidential candidates, foreign and domestic observers, among others, was hard pressed explaining why he postponed the elections around 2 a.m., on Saturday, some six hours before the polls were to open nationwide. He insinuated that the commission’s efforts were sabotaged by unknown elements. How did he arrive at his sabotage theory?

    Hear him : “In a space of two weeks, we had to deal with serious fire incidents in three of our offices in Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State; Qu’an Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State and the Anambra State headquarter in Awka”. Nobody expected the postponement of the general elections at that eleventh hour. The impression Yakubu created before his sudden volte face was that everything was going on well. He repeatedly assured the nation that INEC was on course. So, it came as a shock to his countrymen when he postponed the elections at the ungodly hour of two o’clock in the morning last Saturday. The polls will now hold on Saturday and March 9.

    The postponement was bound to happen, the only problem was that Yakubu, despite being the head of INEC, did not see the handwriting clearly on the wall as it stared him in the face. If he had moved swiftly to shift the polls when INEC’s facilities were gutted by fire, the nation may have seen reason with him. But he shot himself in the foot when he did so after he had assured the nation that neither the fires nor any other man-made disaster could stop the elections from holding as scheduled. He was resolute about holding the elections on the fixed date and time. This was why he was not ready to allow such a ‘small incident’ as fire which destroyed permanent voter cards (PVCs) and Smart Card Readers (SCRs) to stop him from going ahead with the exercise.

    No doubt, the Prof would have learnt one or two things about public administration and management from what happened. How free and fair will the elections, which he is so determined to conduct, be? Will those who see election rigging as part of the game allow the process to go smoothly? Our elections are acrimonious because of blatant rigging. Many politicians, whether in or out of office, engage in it. No matter how popular they may be, they feel that if they do not back it up with rigging, the other party may get the better of them at the polls.

    Elections are not supposed to be rigged. Candidates are expected to contest and win on the strength of their popularity. Unfortunately, popularity does not win elections in this clime, rigging does. Many would have perfected the art of rigging last Saturday’s elections before they were postponed. The postponement has given INEC a golden opportunity to tie loose ends. The commission is lucky as the postponement has borne a good seed. President Muhammadu Buhari, who is visibly angry over how INEC, “which got everything it required for the polls”, handled matters, has weighed in to warn those planning to rig.

    The President wants a free and fair election. This much, he said, at the All Progressives Congress (APC) caucus meeting in Abuja on Monday to review the polls postponement. The way he spoke showed his state of mind about the deferred polls. It was a clear cut warning to all to allow the people’s vote count. If anybody does otherwise, he will be playing with fire, the President said.

    “Anybody who decides to snatch ballot boxes or lead thugs to disturb the process, may be that will be the last unlawful action you will take…So, I want to warn anybody who thinks he has enough influence in his locality to lead a body of thugs to snatch ballot boxes or disturb the voting system, he will do it at the expense of his life”. The President’s statement has created a storm, with some people tagging it “a licence to kill”. To me, it is not. He made the statement with good intentions. Are those criticising him, saying that ballot box snatchers should be allowed free rein? The President did not ask that riggers be summarily killed. No, he merely warned them about the consequences of their action.

    Put another way, are Buhari’s critics saying the people should turn a blind eye when they see ballot box snatchers at work? For long, the system has treated riggers  with kid gloves, thereby creating room for them to thrive. Thus, they will tell you confidently that without voting, their candidate would win. Our elections should no longer be decided on the dictate of ballot box snatchers and their masters. It is time to rise against them as the President said. Perhaps, this may be the beginning of the cleansing of our electoral process.

  • INEC’s ‘force majeure’ and matters arising

    “ELECTION is no war.”

    I’m not the author of that profound statement ; the copyright belongs to the United States Consul General in Lagos, Mr John Gray, who was interviewed by the BBC. Is Mr Gray right? Yes. No.

    Democracy offers us a chance to exhibit our freedom of choice. Just get the ballot paper, thumbprint your choice and drop it in a box. The votes are counted and results announced. The winner and the loser are expected to be patriotic – the country first. That is when an election is no war. Just the ballot; no bullet. That is the ideal.

    Consider the reverse. How dare you go into an election without an army of roughnecks and a huge cash vault to buy votes, hire legal giants and procure justice,  should you have to take the battle to court. You cause some heads to be smashed here and some limbs broken there; it is all in the spirit of the game. Now tell me, isn’t this a war?

    Why is it so here? The Nigerian attitude. Put a round peg in a square hole, tell the world that it is working, refuse to play your part and blame it on others. Do everything surreptitiously to smother the system. Invite experts and charlatans – we are never short of them – to analyse why everything failed and get everybody talking at the same time. This goes on and on, until the next disaster.

    Many had the funny feeling that the February 16 elections would run into a hitch. An obviously troubled INEC trying to get by; desperate politicians talking as if we were headed for a motor park officials’ election and marauders taking advantage of the tension.

    Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai issued his “body bag” warning and international observers restated their altruistic motives. Two vehicles carrying voting materials were burnt in Akwa Ibom; two people were killed in the incident. Hundreds of thugs were seized by the police. INEC offices and materials were burnt in Anambra, Plateau and Abia states. There were stories of compromised INEC officials in some states.

    In Abeokuta, the President and the Vice- President became victims of some wild ego, stoned by some wild people at a wild rally that was to be their party’s. Nobody has been arrested for this treasonable action. Incredible.

    And then the banal remark about the weather. A plane carrying the materials for the Southeast could not land in Enugu due to poor weather. Where was the weatherman? Did he play his part? A minister actually ruled out weather as the culprit here.

    Trust Nigerians. They consoled themselves by turning it all into jokes. Such jokes flooded the ubiquitous social media. One wondered why event planners were not hired to organise the election since it was, after all, an event. Another started sending his greetings (Happy postponement o). And many replied (Same to you o).

    My plan was to suggest that a 200-man “high powered” probe panel  be set up to find out what went wrong. Were the reasons given for the postponement tenable? Was anybody negligent by his or her act or acts of omission or commission? At what point did INEC decide it should postpone the election? What led to the postponement of the announcement of the postponement until about five hours before the voting? Who and who were informed before the announcement was made? Who was not informed? What are the remote and immediate circumstances of the postponement? Is the postponement real or part of an invisible game by some key elements of the system? Is somebody a puppet here? If so, who is the puppeteer?  The panel should examine also all other factors that may help us make some sense of all this.

    To chair this all-important panel is Maurice Iwu (remember him?), a professor of pharmacognosy and a former chairman of INEC, who hopefully will want to deploy his vast experience to save the nation at this difficult time. Just then, I stumbled on a social media post that I may have been a bit late – the amiable professor was already consulting for a party in this electoral battle. I couldn’t immediately confirm this.

    Tempers are rising. Allegations – that money has changed hands, Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) are wrecking their residences and card readers are being compromised in collusion with some unscrupulous foreign powers – are flying around. The puzzles are getting more puzzling. What is to be done?

    To the barber shop I headed yesterday.  As usual, it was packed full of all manner of people– experts and expats, youngsters and gangsters, workers and wreckers. Some were watching soccer on television; others were engrossed in a game of draught as two fellows slugged it out on the board.

    Suddenly, all heads turn to the wide door as an old man stomps in, screaming: “What a hell! Damn it!” He is sweating. A young man offers his seat and the bearded man sits on it, the old furniture creaking as if it is set to break.

    “Long time, Papi D,” says the distracted barber, a rotund fellow in a white coat like a doctor’s and a blue apron that shields his dress from the strands of hair that stray off after succumbing to the sharp blade of the clippers.

    “It’s all nonsense. It’s all nonsense what we are facing in this country,” the old man replies. “I have been going up and down to tell our people to be prepared for the elections because after chasing away the military, we don’t have any other means of choosing our leaders. And now, here we are.”

    Some  young men harrumphing about the postponed elections descend on Papi D, an old lawyer who claims to have studied in England “when cocoa money was the king”, firing questions.

    “Easy, easy, young men. I am also agitated, but I have refused to be confused. No. Never. Ask your questions one after the other. I have time today.”

    “Sir, why did INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu announce  the postponement in the dead of the night?”

    “You see, I don’t know how many of you are Yoruba. What is the difference between ‘Yakubu’ and ‘abuku’? When it all seems hazy and there are questions of sincerity and character, elders will start warning that you should beware of ‘abuku’ and ‘ete’. They both mean ‘disgrace’. If your name is Yakubu, you will easily be told to be careful not to become ‘Yakubu alabuku’(the disgraced Yakubu) so that the world will not be saying ‘abuku Yakubu ni o’ (It is Yakubu’s disgrace). That is my positon; I won’t blame anybody, not even Yakubu – for now.

    “We are all Nigerians – those appointed to run the show, those who have gone round the world to seek how to compromise the system and those carrying cash around to simply buy or purchase or procure or obtain everything, believing that money can do all things.”

    Just before Papi D calls for the next question, the heavy clouds that have darkened the sky give way to a downpour. It begins to rain and more people rush into the shop. Everybody is talking at the same time. Confusion. The barber keeps shouting: “Order, order; I say order, gentlemen.” Nobody is listening.

    Papi D deeps his hand into his bag, whips out a small bottle, opens it and turns the content into his month. He frowns his face as he battles to cope with the biting effect of the drink, smiles like a baby and bites his lips. “You see, Mr barber, you should also be in the spirit; these are unusual times. I can see that the noise you are trying to stop will continue. That is what some people want. When it reaches a crescendo, they will now move in with an interim plan for peace. But I can assure you, we won’t let it pass; we have been there before.”

    The rain subsides. Papi D carries his bag on his shoulder and shouts: “See you later, everybody. And don’t forget to vote on Saturday.”

     

    That Keyamo and Dino encounter

    DINO Melaye is back – in his rambunctious best. The senator has been off the scene for a while – no thanks to a brush with the law. He was hospitalised after a botched attempt to resist arrest.  He released a video recently, thanking Nigerians for standing by him.

    There he was on Tuesday, sparring with Buhari Campaign spokesman Festus Keyamo (SAN). At issue was the presidential order that ballot box snatchers will pay dearly for their action. The Kogi West senator was as abusive and reckless as ever as he made his point that President Buhari was wrong to have spoken the way he did. Keyamo insisted Buhari was simply following the law – ballot snatching is treasonable.

    keyamo

    The force with which Dino spoke has forced some to ask: “Is Dino planning to snatch a ballot box?” Others have been asking why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been so vociferous in criticising the presidential order. Are its members planning to snatch ballot boxes?

    It was revealed during the encounter that Dino has been studying law. Keyamo advised him to spend more time in class than “clowning in hospitals”. Some viewers chipped in: “Has Dino gone to the right hospital?”

  • Of heroes and courtesans

    This minute, journalism adorns political theatre’s oaken mask. To fulfill this function, the press dissembles into a masked party, teeming of woody characters; verminous, sharp-contoured, like malformed statuettes.

    From the general elections to Walter Onnoghen-gate scandal, the corruptible journalist takes sides. But he is never on the citizenry’s side. Like the corrupt jurist, lawyer and law enforcer, he lends his services to the highest bidder.

    He constantly engages at the feet and filth attic of his corrupt principal. Sophistry and malice leaps from his forked tongue as he attacks his puppeteer’s perceived detractors.

    Masquerading as a moralist, he turns pliable and servile, a deformation of Castiglione’s courtier. He projects with slavish plasticity, his puppeteer’s whim and wile. His identity is self-evacuated as he persistently unfurls like a glove to the puppeteer’s palm.

    Like Castiglione’s male harlots, his self abasement is unmanly and amoral. He elevates bum over forelock in a flagrant rite of political sodomy. This is no worthy portrait of the Nigerian journalist. Yet it is.

    Even as we must ennoble the few, ethical natives without a dent or smudge to their repute.

    Just recently, the Head of TVC News, Babajide Kolade-Otitoju, had to re-educate a print journalist and Editor of a national newspaper on the politics of the Onnoghen-gate scandal.

    While the Editor spewed wildly and incoherently, accusing the Federal Government of bullying a supposedly virtuous judiciary, to the consternation of viewers in real time, Otitoju painstakingly schooled him, highlighting the shallowness of his thought-process.

    Dumb-founded, the Editor, eventually agreed with Otitoju’s logic. Looking vapid, he stuttered a feeble plea, urging the press to counsel Buhari to let the embattled jurist go, scot free.

    The dissembling of the Editor’s intellect was so painful to watch, particularly, as viewers mauled him via social media posts in real time. It was, however, entertaining, given his hitherto manic sentimentality.

    The newspaper editor, no doubt, personifies reprobate segments of the press. The blame for the manifestation of his ilk is attributable to a dishonest society and the Nigerian press’ ideological crookedness.

    Certain editors of powerful news platforms, reporters and online media have become prejudiced. Like Ogege, the spirit of embroidered woe, they have turned serpents, sleeping in Nigeria’s undergrowth, to merge with the hue of the prevailing wild. They forget that when Nigeria eventually submerges in the mire of bestial elements, even the press will be cannibalised.

    The journalist, whatever, his designation, should flaunt no trait of the fawning page nor should he become the smooth flatterer and intellectual thug, twisting and turning with changing circumstance.

    He shouldn’t be insanely reactive, nor should his words and deeds boom as a cloying mime of a corrupt politician, bank chief, jurist or some other puppeteer’s reprobate wile.

    He should never be a spectacle of submission and ideological sodomy. He should be a heroic shiner of light and truth, a respectable, poster icon of quintessential journalism.

    The corruptible journalist, however, becomes the fig that lets down the leaf; the memory of twigs where thickets maul seedlings into trunks of bitterness.

    This imagery discounts the essence of the sacrifices made by foremost journalists among Nigeria’s pioneer statesmen and founding fathers.

    Before they joined politics and attained the status of heroes, Anthony Enahoro was a journalist; Herbert Macaulay was an engineer, journalist and publisher; Obafemi Awolowo was a journalist, lawyer and astute entrepreneur, and Nnamdi Azikiwe was a journalist and teacher.

    Despite their foibles, these men had in common, the fighter spirit of heroes and a prideful belief in the supremacy of the collective and a higher purpose. Thus at a crucial point, they deployed journalism to serve national interest.

    Do contemporary journalists serve national interest? Today, do we have journalist-statesmen? Are Nigerian journalists worthy of the appellation, “Heroic shiners of light and truth?”

    For instance, journalists and media houses know that the Muhammadu Buhari/Yemi Osinbajo team trumps rivals by integrity, political capital, resolve and ethical bent. But like most societal segments, they are too bitter over the incumbent government’s presumed pedantry and ‘stinginess.’

    Spurred by greed, religious, ethnic bigotries, they choose to ignore the perils of re-electing the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), touting Buhari’s failure to resolve in four years, devastation inflicted on Nigeria, by the PDP during its 16-year leadership.

    Many would accuse me of supporting Buhari/Osinbajo. Yeah. Your grief is welcome, and your vitriol, highly appreciated. We are at that juncture, where we have to choose the lesser of competing evils. Were Kingsley Moghalu of a more powerful platform, he would probably pose stronger opposition than a frantic and confused PDP.

    The Nigerian press celebrates incarnations of humanity’s debris because doing otherwise could be suicidal. Politicians own the media. And tycoons determine the news. They place advertisements and pay the salaries of the men and women by whose professionalism or otherwise Nigeria accesses her news and information needs. Thus the quality of journalism you get.

    It is foolhardy, for instance, to expect a journalist who hasn’t received salary in eight months, to be objective about a news story involving a commoner and a politician. The commoner will ignite his conscience with tears but the politician will silence it with hefty ‘brown envelopes.’

    It is deceitful to anticipate fairness, honesty, integrity and accuracy from mainstream and online media, whose existence and continuity are determined by the whims of dishonest politicians and business moguls.

    But the Nigerian society demands purity and impartiality from the press all the same.

    In Nigeria, where voters are continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalises on obvious handicaps: their impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment, and overt sentimentality, it becomes increasingly difficult to nurture and enable a fair, vibrant press from among such human segment.

    Despite its faults, society conveniently picks on a scapegoat, the press. The journalist is expected to serve as the conscience and moral compass of the society, challenging the government and checking the excesses of the ruling class, selflessly and uncompromisingly.

    As utopian fantasies go, these are noble expectations of the journalist but the Nigerian society ignores its cultural shift from conventional morality to unbridled hedonism. It assumes, hypocritically, that the press will continually give it honest and developmental news even as every segment of the society strives to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s critical mob.

    The public, comprising big business, the government, and civil societies among other mob segments, vilify any journalist or news medium that seeks to truly educate and engage, rather than entertain and perpetuate their biased definitions of reality.

    Society’s decadent patronage of the press seeks to stall journalism’s satiric commentary on its failings and predatory personae.

    As bankruptcy looms, upholding integrity is akin to committing career suicide hence journalism’s submission to the leash of shady expediences, a profanation of ancestor cult.

    To the disillusioned journalist, there is no dependable relief in ‘ethical practice’ with its priestly creed and hierarchies.

    Rather they see prospects and decorum in the honouring of reprobate nature. The journalist thus turns defender of the corrupt. Like the Delphic oracle, he would not fade in ethical entrancement.

  • The die is cast

    IN 48 hours, we will go to the polls to elect our president from the large crowd of candidates seeking to occupy the exalted seat. President Muhammadu Buhari is leading the pack of candidates. The President is seeking re-election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Closely following on his heels is former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Pundits have since reduced the election to a two-horse race between Buhari and Atiku. They have written off the other candidates, who they have been referring to as also-rans, even before the election holds. To the pundits, it is a two-horse race because the duo are tested politicians, who have been in the corridors of power for long,  and also count among their associates money bags and other influential people that can swing things in their favour.

    What they lack in charisma and finesse, they have in abundance in their connections within and outside the country. Even the outside world also sees the election as a race between Buhari and Atiku. This is why external comments have always been on what relates to these leading candidates. They latch on to whatever either side says about the election, using it to implore us to conduct a free, fair and credible election. I do not like it when foreign powers try to dictate to us how to run our democracy because they have not really been shining examples when it comes to that.

    With what has been happening in the United States (US) since the election which brought President Donald Trump to power, we cannot say that his country is a perfect example of what a democracy should be. But we cannot discountenance what the US, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) are saying, no matter how imperfect their own systems may be. As bad as things may be in their countries and continents when it comes to democracy, we should credit them for their ability to manage things well without resorting to bloodshed.

    The world is afraid of our impending elections because their outcome may result in violence. Violence because of one side’s refusal not to accept defeat if it loses. It is only in Africa that elections are treated as war. A do-or-die. But should it be so? The answer, of course, is no. So, we know where the foreign powers are coming from when they don their high hat and tell us how to conduct elections. We brought it upon ourselves because of our politicians penchant for winning at all costs. They do not see elections for the contest they are. Like every contest, there must be a winner and a loser and the beauty of it is for the loser to accept defeat, congratulate the winner and life goes on thereafter.

    The February 16 presidential and National Assembly elections will kick start the general polls, which will be rounded off on March 2, with the governorship and House of Assembly contest. The focus is on the presidential race, which over 70 candidates are contesting, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Many of the candidates are unknown. This is why all the attention is on the more popular Buhari and Atiku. Are the two the best of the lot? In terms of brilliance and ability to deliver, they are not, but they have power, money, structure and connection behind them. The business community will not say it, but it will always support those in power because it is the politically correct thing to do.

    We have among the contestants young and vibrant Nigerians, who if given the chance can turn things around for good for our country, but the system may not allow them to emerge. I am talking of the Kingsley Moghalus, the Gbenga Olawepo-Hashims, the Fela Durotoyes, the Omoyele Sowores et al. These are new politicians on the block who with the right structure can win election and provide quality leadership for our country. We need leadership that can think out of the box. A president that can stand his own among his fellow presidents and not bring shame to our country. In a country of almost 200 million people, we have such people, but the obnoxious system we operate is not allowing them room to blossom.

    This is a presidential race with a difference. In the past, it would have only been the same old faces running. Today, we have the new breed also on the ballot. This is some consolation that we are growing as a nation. If the Moghalus, the Olawepo-Hashims and the Oby Ezekwesilis, before she withdrew from the race, can come out today, all  hope is not lost for our country. Very soon, the old brigade will know that their time is up and they will quietly quit the scene for the next generation. For that to happen, the technocrats too must be ready to give them a run for their money just as Moghalu and co., are doing because as APC stalwart Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is wont to say “power is not served a’la carte”. To get it, you must go for it.

    Even if the Moghalus, the Durotoyes, the Olawepo-Hashims do not get it eventually, history will be kind to them that they walked  where angels feared to tread. As it happened in 2015, we pray that at the end of the day, the election will be free and fair, with the losers having the courage to concede defeat and hug the winner to the admiration of the world. All is set for the election and may it be conducted without hitch. By this time next Thursday, it should be all over, with the winner known to the world. Who will that be?

    Those trying to play God, may yet be shocked by the outcome of the election. One thing is for sure, it will be a peaceful exercise to the chagrin of the prophets of doom.