BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May has painted a gloomy picture of Nigeria’s poverty situation. By the way, Madam May was on whistle-stop visit to Nigeria yesterday. She spent a few hours here.
In Cape Town, South Africa, May said on Tuesday that 87 million Nigerians were living below $1.90 a day, making Nigeria home to “more very poor people than any other country”. This, according to her, is despite the fact that many Nigerians are enjoying the fruits of a resurgent economy.
The problem, in her view, is “achieving not just growth but inclusive growth”. This is a challenge faced by “governments in the UK, Europe, North America and beyond”. “And as African economies become more successful, it is an issue that is being confronted here.”
Fine. But, not so fast, Madam Prime Minister. The poverty in Nigeria is a result of many years of stealing from the common purse by a few who have found collaborators outside our shores, including Britain. Most of the cash looted by our indecent leaders are kept in British banks. A sizeable chunk of the loot is invested in mansions in London and other places.
If there is no place to hide the loot, the thief may find stealing less attractive. If the rate of stealing drops, poverty will decline. Britain should stop lending aid and comfort to looters.
Today, complaint is still often made of what we call the failure of the Nigerian dream. We lament how monstrously, forces of society accomplish and fail to fulfil their work. We lament how the ruling class functions in profligacy and chaos. Nigeria laments the insensibility of the ruling class.
But today, as usual, we fail to look inwards. Perhaps because we fear we would find in you and I, the summary of all other failures and disorganisation. A sort of heart, from which every kind of confusion and horror gravitates in our fatherland.
Complaint was often made that our problems persist because we refused to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). There is the argument that our problems worsen because President Buhari refuses to implement the recommendations of his predecessor’s shady SNC. Perhaps there is depth and a semblance of truth in such frivolous mindset even as it becomes more glaring that a trillion SNCs will not save Nigeria.
This is because any consensus or ‘practicable solution’ proffered at the conference would be the result of self-serving efforts of generations of shady characters comprising ex-convicts, hired assassins, treasury looters, armed robbers, advance fee fraudsters, decadent clerics and bloodthirsty political godfathers to mention a few. What manner of humaneness could result from a gathering of such characters?
There is a tragedy inherent in our customary lamentation every time our conscience is roused with a damning incident or report. Racist politicians and activists tirelessly suggest that we go our separate ways. They tout secession as the only solution to the country’s league of extraordinary problems.
Secession is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of ‘reason’ that we need to be wary of and I will continue to say this hoping every prospective muscle – the youth – by which the separatists hope to achieve their dreams of dissolution, would listen and let the secessionists risk their hides and children to actualize their platitudes.
The biggest misconception about ‘secession,’ ‘insurgence,’ ‘self-determination ‘or whatever the separatists choose to call it, is that it could be peaceful and that the end result would be a conscientious and citizenry-centred dispensation.
It’s all dirty, greedy politics. The separatists want the youth to fly the flags of their dream nations. They want everybody to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows: “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” They call anyone that’s anti-war and anti-secession: “pacifist,” “traitor” or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage.
Then they promise the youth a prosperous future and better fate in their dream nation. Astonishingly, youth that ought to know better, buy into their farce and they begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become.
This disillusioned youth engages in bootless pursuits at the end of which he accomplishes too little or nothing. He probably accomplishes some individualized goal – satisfaction of a sentiment or material gain – which to him is everything; but for Nigeria, he accomplishes comparatively nothing.
Eventually, he morphs into the disgruntled man on the street stereotype; who suddenly realises in his twilight, that he had squandered God’s greatest gifts to him: intellect and talent. Then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realises that his miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin – less suitable for social transaction than a contemptible kobo.
There is fundamental evil in our souls hence the vileness of our norms and culture. What evils should we set out to abolish in our modern society? To this, I bet very many well-meaning people would answer poverty.
But poverty is merely a symptom, slavery is the disease. The extremes of riches and destitution follow inevitably upon the extremes of leadership and bondage. We are not enslaved because we are poor; we are poor because we are enslaved.
Every attempt to conceive imaginatively, a better ordering of Nigerian society is by no means modern; it is at least as old as Plato, whose “Republic” set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers and self-styled revolutionaries.
The secessionists contemplate a new world in the light of an ideal. They claim to feel a great sorrow by the evils that characterise Nigeria, and they claim to be driven by an urgent desire to lead their ethnic groups or race to the realisation of the collective good. It is this desire which has been the primary force moving the pioneers of anarchism and horrid tyrannies – as it moved the creators of ideal commonwealths in the past.
In contemporary Nigeria, it is incense for suspicious revolutionaries claiming to fight for the interests of Nigeria’s ethnic divides. This has enabled cynical and anarchist political movements to grow out of the frustrations and hopes of Nigeria’s youth.
The process of re-sensitising the youth away from the establishment of chaos and genocide advocated by the secessionists will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the current political order. However, this can only be achieved by the nation’s youth – who are unfortunately enthralled by the platitudes and desperate politics of Nigeria’s ruling class.
It is no doubt the stock in trade of the latter to refer to violent uprisings across the world as worthy indicators of Nigeria’s need to follow suit.
Whenever they dazzle with such informed commentary, tell them to lead the struggle with their wives, children and closest relatives.
Many activists, youth leaders and self-acclaimed political heroes today have their wives and children tucked away in secure schools and neighbourhoods abroad even as they goad impoverished, clueless youth back home to untimely doom.
If it is true that there is appreciable number of Nigerian youth capable of powering revolts for ethnic self-determination, the end of which is dissolution of Nigeria, why can’t the same youth power the social regeneration and reclamation of the Nigerian State from the clutches of the predatory ruling class, ethnic bigots and dissolution activists?
The current political dispensation and acute racial bigotry must eventually yield to the influences of education and culture, if the youth could aspire to progressive ideals. But such transformation calls for remarkable wisdom and tolerance.
By refusing to call a spade by its proper name, Nigerians allowed evil to triumph for so long. While we play the ostrich and our former leaders are either busy praying for miracles, playing God or speaking from both sides of the mouth, comedians, fraudsters and opportunists take over the affairs of our nation. Gone were those days when Nigerians were assured no anti-Nigeria government policies will go unchallenged by the likes of Awolowo, Aminu Kano Gani Fawehinmi, Alao Aka Bashorun and many others from other geo-political zones of the country.
For embarking on a crusade starting with his party to change this narrative, Adams Oshiomhole has come under severe stress and strain in recent days. He first identified what has no other name than indolence and impunity within the presidency and among the president’s appointees. He moved on to describe the senate president as someone lacking in honour and integrity for inelegantly securing his position through subterfuge, using the office to undermine the ruling government policies for over three and half years and now refusing to step down as senate president after decamping to the party with a minority in the senate.
What he got from those who have become accustomed APC leaders playing the ostrich has been all round condemnation. Some have questioned his intellectual preparedness for managing a political party as diverse as APC. Others said his unionist background did not adequately prepare him for challenges of running a big political party. For many others who do not understand democracy is only a process for attaining power through political parties which even those who have no faith in the democratisation process such as Adolf Hitler in Germany in late 1930s and Donald Trump in today’s USA are ready to use to outwit the real owners of the weapon, Oshiomhole’s crusade to rebuild his party has become a threat to democracy.
But Oshiomhole having observed the travails of his APC before becoming its chairman appreciates the role of disciplined political party in checking social dislocations in society. This became clear during his August 14 historic meeting with only loyal APC lawmakers when he “had wondered aloud how we are going to be able to sustain a political party which ought to be built and formed on the basis of shared ideas, shared values, shared commitment, how we could have a political party in which we have the far right, the far left, the communist, the fascist”. There is no doubt he has a fair idea about the important role disciplined political parties can play in checking social dislocations in society.
Just as industrial and social revolutions in Europe were closely linked to the emergence of political parties as agents of modernization, the giant strides made by our founding fathers in areas of education, industrialization, infrastructural development were through the instrumentality of the political parties. Unfortunately these structures as well as industries established to guarantee a more egalitarian society were sold by the military under Babangida’s commercialization and Obasanjo’s privatization programmes.
Besides destroying the legacies of disciplined pre-independence political parties, they also abridged our political socialization process by banning them thereby cutting off the umbilical cord that ties the mother with the baby unlike what we have in other societies such as USA, Britain, and Germany Japan where some political parties have endured for over a century.
The fact that the parties that emerged during the second republic – NPN, NPP, UPN took their roots from NPC, NCNC and AG was not enough to convince Babangida that there cannot be today without yesterday. He arrogantly went on to decree his own two political parties SDP and NRC, according to him “to prevent those who would squander our investments from attaining power through breeding of new breed leaders that will detest the culture of deceit, election as well as culture of violence and fraud”. Unfortunately that is exactly what we have today.
Abacha was more hilarious. He decreed five parties described as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’ by late Bola Ige, all of which nominated him as their presidential candidate.
The PDP emerged from the G-34 during General Abubakar’s 11-month transition programme. But it was soon hijacked by retired soldiers and their contractors. It was described by Campbell, as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’.
Audu Ogbeh, a former PDP chairman validates Campbell’s thesis by saying, “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil.”
The view was also affirmed by Doyin Okupe, President Jonathan’s attack dog, who following Yoruba leaders’ visit to Jonathan to complain of marginalization, said “In things that are not enough, when people sit down to share and take decisions, if there is nobody to speak for you, there is problem”.
With the above baleful legacies of the military, this column in a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu January 31, 2013, “is inauguration of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies”.
Unfortunately both have failed the nation. After the election, lionized by a segment of the press, and hijacked by a kitchen cabinet who did not share his pan-Nigeria agenda, Buhari who could not manage a party he personally set up, shut out those know how to manage political parties. Now realising his vulnerability in the2019 election after naively allowing Saraki to undermine his administration and destabilise the patty for three years, he has sought the help of those who know how to manage political parties.
Oshiomhole has made it clear he is in charge of the party. He has threatened to expel minsters who are taking the advantage of fatherly disposition of the president to give the party a bad name. He has also moved over to the legislature where for over three and half years those elected on the party platform have behaved like prostitutes. His query to Saraki for anti-party activities forced him back to PDP where he naturally belongs. But Oshiomhole has however insisted he must step down honourably or be impeached because in a democracy, while the minority can have their say, the majority will ultimately have their way.
Saraki rather than do the honourable thing has shut down the senate and has been holding world press conferences to position Oshiomhole as a threat to democracy. Saraki who inelegantly took over the senate with the support of 42 opposition senators after dis-enfranchising his 52 APC senators now says the stability of our budding democracy can only be guaranteed if he and Ekweremadu, both PDP senators as part of a total of PDP 49 senators are, against the letter and spirit of the constitution, allowed to continue to sabotage the agenda of a democratically elected government with a majority of 56 senators.
Between Adams Oshiomhole and Bukola Saraki, Nigerians and the international community know who is a greater threat to democracy.
AS a law enforcement agency, the Department of State Services (DSS), which is better known by its former name of State Security Service (SSS), is saddled with the enormous responsibility of gathering intelligence so as to nip in the bud any offensive act. To do this job well, its operatives are expected to work incognito.
These agents are to go about quietly without drawing attention to themselves in order to catch would-be criminals before they strike. You may be a friend to a secret agent without even knowing the job he does.
The DSS and its agents should operate with utmost secrecy and move only when they have concrete reasons to do so. In most instances, I am sorry to say, our secret agents work in breach of their modus operandi. They go about flaunting their identities and in the process they give themselves away.
Our secret agents are too open and too loud for the job they do. By virtue of their training, they are a special breed of people and they are expected to move about with stealth. But no, they prefer to announce themselves with fanfare, as if it is by so doing that they would make their mark. They cannot be blamed for this. It is more a leadership fault than that of these agents who are the foot soldiers. These agents are merely carrying out the orders of their superiors, many of who have not done away with the military mentality of running that complex organisation.
Under the military, the DSS was a tool for oppression and suppression. It worked closely with the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) gathering intelligence, which in many cases, turned out to be false. People were picked up at will and detained without any plausible reason. Newspaper houses and other businesses, which did not support the government of the day, were termed ‘’public enemies’’ and shut down.
It is the carryover of this mentality that is the bane of today’s DSS. Just imagine holding a journalist, Jones Abiri, for two years without charging him to court before commonsense prevailed under a new dispensation. This may be a sign of the much desired change at DSS under its acting Director-General Matthew Seiyefa. It is high time the DSS charted a different path for itself in line with the practices of similar agencies around the world. What happened at the National Assembly on August 7 would not have happened at all, if the DSS had cultivated the right attitude of doing things following the return to democratic rule in 1999. It still believes in jack boot mentality almost 20 years after the exit of the military junta.
As some have rightly said, the DSS’ blockade of the National Assembly was nothing short of a coup. It was not only a coup against the legislature, but also a coup against the country. The legislature is the live wire of democracy. If you remove the legislature from a democracy, you will cripple the government because there will be no organ to make laws for the smooth running of the country.
The DSS acted beyond its mandate by invading the National Assembly, citing a vague ‘’order from above’’, the same line it usually threw in the past at individuals and organisations whose premises were invaded at will under the military. Only God knows when it will come off this ‘’order from above’’ hangover. The DSS loves to assume the powers it does not have once it identifies an individual or institution as ‘enemy’ of the government. Once it tags you as such, you are in trouble. Without the government’s prompting, it will hunt and hound you, knowing full well that the government will look the other way.
This was the tactic it used in the past. It got away with it because the government needed an organisation to do its dirty jobs for it. The DSS suited that role perfectly and its head became the ‘beloved child’. That was then; now that things have changed, the DSS has refused to change. It wants to live in the past, when it did nothing but to frame up individuals and institutions, just to please the government. The DSS is not meant to be the lap dog of the president of a country. It is there to serve the country and its people. It should remember that presidents come and go. What happens to the president whose tune it dances to today when the former number one citizen becomes an ordinary citizen from who it can no longer take orders. Will the organisation invade his house because the tide has changed, just as it did to some people while he was in office, claiming to be acting on ‘order from above’?
The August 7 fiasco showed the DSS under its sacked Director-General, Lawal Daura, in its true colour – an agency of anything goes once the boss gives the order. The people should own their security agencies, such outfits should not be organisations to be used by those in power to torment the public. The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris’ preliminary report on the invasion submitted to then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, is an indictment of the DSS. According to the IGP, ‘’the invasion was a gross violation of the Constitution’’.
The IGP said Daura was working with some senators and politicians to destabilise the country. Daura was said to have claimed responsibility for the siege to the National Assembly. The action, he claimed, became imperative based on intelligence reports that some people were trying to smuggle arms and other dangerous weapons into the complex. If that is true, is that how to go about getting those people? From the IGP’s report, Daura had no reason to have invaded the National Assembly that day. There is no reason whatsoever for that siege, which has again further lowered us in the eyes of the world.
It also showed that Daura does not have respect for constituted authority to have carried out such act without informing the then acting president. What was he trying to prove? That he was not answerable to Osinbajo, who was then holding fort for President Muhammadu Buhari? Our security chiefs should not by their actions divide the Presidency. The message Daura unwittingly sent across is that he was only loyal to the President and not the acting president, who stood in for the Commander-in-Chief, who was in London then. A top security chief like him should know better.
The DSS has all it takes to be a great security agency if its leadership does away with kowtowing to those in power. By now, those who think all power lies in the hands of the DSS boss sure know that there is a higher power that can demystify any self-styled mystical figure that sits atop the agency.
Baba Richie at 60
TODAY, Richard Akinnola, one of the best court reporters ever produced by the media, turns 60. Baba Richie, as some of us who grew under his tutelage call him is a highly-principled and a no-nonsense man. You always know where you stand with him. If you are truthful and honest, then you can count him as your friend. But if you are not, forget it Richard won’t touch you even with a long pole. I came across Richie when I was covering the court. For those of us younger than him, he was always ready to come to our aid whenever we ran into problem with those legal jargons any rookie reporter will surely run into in the early stage of his career.
Richard was and is still an authority in court reporting. If you read his celebrated legal column those days in the Vanguard, you will see the rigour he put into his work. A man, who stands by those oppressed, he wrote a book on Justice Yaya Jinadu for standing up to the authorities who wanted him to bend the law to favour a permanent secretary in the 1990s. The book titled : Salute to courage is an ode to Justice Jinadu. As Richie joins the Senior Citizens Club today, I wish him all the best. May your tribe increase.
I left Nigeria for Canada as an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fellow for a Ph.D. programme in History at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia just as the civil war broke out in Nigeria in 1967. The Killamtrusts operate in Canada like the Cecil Rhodes Trust in England that awards the Rhodes scholarships for outstanding scholars from the English-speaking world of the Commonwealth of Nations as well as the United States of America and Germany. Killamtrusts award scholarships to the same category of scholars in the commonwealth. While Rhodes scholarships are tenable at Oxford University in England, Killamtrusts awards are tenable in select Canadian universities such as Dalhousie, Toronto, Alberta and University of British Columbia.
Going to Canada was not my first time of traveling out of Nigeria to the western world. I had spent 1964 to 1965 which was to have been my second year at the University of Ibadan as an exchange student at the University of London precisely at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and at Queen Mary’s College. Going to Canada for a lengthy period and at an uncertain period in the life of my country was a challenge to say the least. It brought unhappiness and loneliness to me because I am naturally an introverted and racially sensitive person.
Nigeria became independent in 1960 and a republic within the commonwealth in 1963. Those of us who were young were supremely confident of ourselves. Coming from a well-established family of the Osuntokuns also made me unprepared for the humiliation of racism in Canada or anywhere else. But that was the reality so-called “coloured” young people faced in the western world in those days.
The 1960s were revolutionary years in the world. It was the age of the youthful and young American president, J.F Kennedy and his brothers. It was the age of the assassination of the president and his younger brother, Robert Francis Kennedy. The Kennedys shared the epoch with the civil rights leaders of Martin Luther King Jnr and Malcom X (Little) both of who were assassinated. The period witnessed the civil rights movement and the spread of communism and revolution from Cuba to southern America unsuccessfully. The 1960s witnessed the rising tide of African nationalism and the emergence of several African states and the wars of liberation in Vietnam and its beginning in Southern Africa. The world escaped global cataclysm over the Cuban crisis in 1962 when the young American president faced the inscrutable Nikita Khrushchev the Russian leader and asked him to withdraw his missiles from Cuba. These years of political and military brinkmanship were ironically the years of the production of the greatest music in an era. This was the time of Rock’n roll, pop music, and rhythm and blues. These were the years of Sam Cooke, Ottis Redding, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Keith Richards, The Beatles, the Supremes, The Jackson 5 and the inimitable Aretha Franklin to mention those who come to my memory.
As a home sick young man in the dreary and desolate winter months in Halifax, Nova Scotia, particularly during Christmas holidays and being left in our hostel with my Indian colleagues with all our Canadian colleagues at home with their families, the emotional music of Aretha Franklin ministered to me in 1967 when she sang “A change is gonna come” to be followed in 1968 when she came out with her hit song “I say a little prayer” written by Bacharach and David and first sang by Dionne Warwick another black woman. Later in 1970, I heard her song “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. The song was inspired by a single line from a gospel song written by Paul Simon of the Simon and Garfunkel – two young New Yorkers who wrote and sang several songs in the 1960s and 1970s. Other songs with emotional appeal such as “Lean on me”, “Angel”, “ United together”, “Young, gifted and black”, “Drown in my own tears”, “Do Right woman, Do right man”, “Amazing grace”, “You make me feel like a natural woman”, “Think”, “I never loved a man the way I loved you” and ”Respect”. She had many other songs that many people associated her genius with. But for me, the songs that brought tears to my eyes were those that came deep down from her soul. Nobody could have heard or hear today the song “Amazing grace” or “Bridge over troubled waters” without being emotional. Her songs were liberation songs for the Civil Rights movement as well as funeral dirges for its fallen heroes. The women movement also found solace in her songs about treating wives and women right.
Most of us who were touched by her message which to me were preaching did not know the personal history of the lady behind the songs. She came from a family of five children and a dissolute father who masqueraded as pastor but involved himself in promiscuous life but managed to present a righteous exterior to the extent that when Dr Martin Luther King junior came to Detroit where the Franklins were living after moving from Memphis Tennessee, the civil rights leader stayed in the Franklin’s home. Aretha Franklin‘s mother left her husband when Aretha was 10 years old. By the age of 12, she had had a baby and by 14 she already had two sons. She was to have two more sons rapidly in what must have looked as a hopeless life. She however continued to sing in the church and her God-given voice attracted attention from music companies such as Columbia and Atlantic Records companies. Perhaps because of her terrible experience as a sexually abused and exploited child who also went through abusive marriages and partnership with men she was never really confident and comfortable with through most of her life, her songs were a kind of liberation therapy for her. Her father led a miserable life after being shot by a deranged racist and this left him in coma for several years and was taken care of by his daughters. Aretha grew up during the meteoric rise of Detroit as music Mecca in the United States and the production of that unique sound known as “Motown sound” which made black music not too heavy to appeal to all races black and white. I think this was why Berry Gordy Jnr, the owner of Motown Records did not sign and offer a contract to Aretha Franklin but embraced Diana Ross and the Supremes and a host of other black artistes who produced some of the greatest music of the 20th century.
What the Motown group missed became the gain of the rest of mankind especially to those of us from religious roots and political background who felt insulted by the pervasive racism in the western world. That kind of feeling made us African students in my university in Canada to complain about a terrible and depressing film being shown all over Canada in 1968 titled “Africa Adieu” produced by Italians to depict black Africans as savages. Following our unhappiness, Ambassador Aminu Sanusi, our High Commissioner in Ottawa and father of the present emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi 11 saw to the withdrawal of the unfair film.
Aretha Franklin’s songs always brought solace and relief to us and this was the kind of emotional relief that made President Barack Obama to shed tears while listening to Aretha Franklin’s songs during his inaugural gala night. Aretha will live for ever in her touching and liberating songs.
NOW that the great feast has ended and the faithful have returned to their normal routine, it is fit and proper to reopen those files that were temporarily closed as more exigent matters kept tumbling in. Being human, we tend to forget some of these important matters.
Among the multitude that prayed for Nigeria’s unity and progress in far away Saudi Arabia were the very people who have been troubling Nigeria by their actions and inactions. Leading businessmen and politicians, including some senators – God is really the most merciful – who have been at the forefront of the mindless battle that has kept the nation on the boil — I saw some of them on television.
Why pray for Nigeria’s unity when you are at the centre of all that troubles our unity? Why not pray for humility and a sense of selflessness that every good leader must possess when you are so self-absorbed?
Pardon the digression, dear reader. Now to those important matters that we may have forgotten.
First, Leah Sharibu. The girl and 109 others were abducted by the terror group, Boko Haram, on February 19, 2018 from the Government Girls Technical Science College, Dapchi, Yobe State. She was 14 when she was abducted. In March, 104 of the girls were released. Left behind was Leah, who was said to have rejected freedom for the renunciation of her Christian faith.
When her mother, Rebecca, learnt that Leah was still being held, she fainted. The distraught woman said: “To the Boko Haram, I have nothing to say other than that they should have pity on my only daughter and release her. It is not her fault that she is a Christian. I know that in this world, everyone chooses the path of faith he or she has chosen in worshipping God. There is no way one could be forced to do what he or she does not know. It is not possible.”
The government says it is negotiating Leah’s release. When will she return home to the warm embrace of her traumatised parents? Are these Boko Haram elements true Moslems? If they are, as they claim, why won’t they consider the sacrifice and compassion symbolised by this season to let go of the poor girl, who has put a big stain on their banner of evil?
Before Dapchi, there was Chibok. Many of the girls, who were snatched off their dormitories at night on April 14, 2014, remain in Boko Haram’s captivity. When will they be released?
Abdulrasheed Maina (remember him?), head of the Presidential Task Team on Pensions Reforms (PTTPR), remains missing. He fled Nigeria in 2015 in the heat of allegations that N2b had been creamed off the huge pension fund. The Interpol was sent after Maina, the prime suspect. He returned to Nigeria mysteriously. He got reinstated into the civil service mysteriously by some mysterious officials. Immigration claimed his itinerary was mysterious. The Head of Service said Maina’s return to the service was mysterious. The Finance ministry said his source of income was mysterious as his salary had been stopped. He must, by many accounts, be Nigeria’s most mysterious public servant.
After his mysterious disappearance, Maina was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). From nowhere, he spoke to the media, saying he had facts about who took what from the pension till.
Maina remains missing. When will he and his collaborators be brought to justice?
It will be one year on September 14 since soldiers stormed the palace in Afaraukwu Ibeku in Umuahia, Abia State to grab a prince, Independent Peoples of Biafra (IBOP) leader Nnamdi Kanu (no relation of the former soccer star Nwankwo Kanu, I am told). His supporters pelted the soldiers with stones. The soldiers were on parade as part of Operation Python Dance, which they launched against criminals in the Southeast.
Kanu disappeared. Since then, he has not been seen or heard. Now, his community is gearing up for a legal war to retrieve their dearest prince. His ever restive supporters are accusing the military of holding him. A court is threatening to get his sureties arrested.
Kanu had threatened to teach the military a lesson. In reply to Operation Python Dance, he proclaimed Operation David’s Dance – an allusion to the biblical battle between David and Goliath. The air was thick with presentiments of war. Then, all went quiet as the IPOB chief quit the stage – no announcement and no celebration – in a manner that left many wondering about the strength of his character as a leader.
Where is Kanu? Is the military keeping him? Is he somewhere overseas living it up while his supporters are left wandering like sheep without shepherd?
He was powerful and strong, numbered among the few powers behind the throne. He had unfettered access to the seat of power and many courted his friendship. All that collapsed on the altar of greed and plain indiscretion when he allegedly issued a jumbo contract to a company in which he had interest. The N270m contract to clear weed in Adamawa State became Babachir Lawal’s Achilles heel and the biggest ever for such a job.
The former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) got the push on October 30, 2017. He insists on his innocence, but the EFCC is investigating him amid calls for his trial.
Will Lawal face trial?
For two years, he was held incommunicado by the Department of State Services (DSS), blindfolded and tortured at will. Outside the dark, damp and drab DSS underground cell, the stupid argument on his trade – is he journalist or not? – went on. Now, Jones Abiri, publisher of “The Weekly Source”, a Bayelsa State tabloid, has been freed. He was a victim of the abuse of rights that was the hallmark of the DSS under Lawal Daura (may his type never head such a sensitive agency again), who was fired on August 7.
Now, matters arising.
Are heads of security agencies not accountable for their indiscretion while in office? Can’t they be made to face the law for rights abuses they committed while being power-drunk? Shouldn’t they feel the hangover? Will Daura go in peace?
By the way, when will Sambo Dasuki be allowed home on bail? When will Shiite leader Ibrahim El-ZakZaky and his wife be allowed to enjoy their bail?
Since the shocking audio of the 2014 Ekiti State election, which then Governor Kayode Fayemi lost to then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Ayo Fayose (where in the world is His Excellency; still mending his broken neck and arms?), there has been no such a box office hit.
Until, that is, the audio of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) sex-for-marks girl Monica (pronounced as spelled same way as Monica Lewinsky of Bill Clinton’s era) Osagie’s conversation with randy Prof. Richard Akindele. The prof insisted on “doing it five times,” you remember? She felt that was not just much but too much.
Akindele is facing the future with a bold face. Monica can’t get a job. A potential employer told her that he was not looking for a whistle-blower. Are we being fair to sexual assault victims? Who is afraid of hiring Monica? Who will help her?
With the “pending” tray filled to the brim, we need to roll up our sleeves. Sadly, many in positions of trust have let down the people, even as they claim to be protecting us.
A colleague has just told me of his opinion on the Chinese President’s comment on Nigeria. “Chai shoi ting yang ten wong feng Nigeria Den Fung chooo Nigeria feng chan kin FCT Kong cho fungi choo 2019 feng chan kin Kong cho fungi chii chanchikki tirakitikata chincheng,” he said, quoting the respected leader.
I agree completely because it is all in our interest.
Multichoice and CPC
A legal battle is on between Multichoice , the cable TV giant and the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), which is contesting the company’s right to increase its subscription rate. The court has ordered the company to stay action on the new rates until the determination of the substantive suit. Fine.
In the court of public opinion, the matter has refused to go away. Everybody seems to be at peace with Multichoice’s service. The point of departure is the new rates regime. The company insists that it is pumping more cash into improving its services. Should it not reap the fruit of such investments?
I do not think Multichoice should be punished for asking for a little more. This is a free market economy. We are not forced to hook onto the cable company and its programmes. That is the hard truth. Besides, the CPC is no price control board; it can’t fix prices of services over which it has no control .
When my barber suddenly increased his price for a haircut that lasts barely 10 minutes all because he bought a new barber chair and a standing fan, I thought he had crossed the line; N1000 was too much for a balding man to pay. I moved to another barber.
We often draw comparisons with other countries in matters of this nature. When cable television prices go up as they often do overseas, there is hardly a whimper let alone the uproar we see here. Ram prices have soared in this Sallah season. Why are buyers not protesting?
CPC should not bite more than it can chew. Its job is to protect consumers against defective products and shoddy services, not to fix prices. Multichoice should not get tired of explaining why its prices should rise to shows its customers that it cares.
It will be interesting to see how the court will decide this matter.
This minute, conversation segues to Bukola Saraki’s political chess game with Muhammadu Buhari. The Senate President duels with the President and vice versa. It’s the stuff random fetishes are made of; it’s lure to a passive press and ‘lore’ to an ignorant electorate. The permutations unfurl in real time; they are dramatic, mellow, pulse-quickening.
I place no wager on the likely outcome of the beef between the state officers. Like the proverbial cat and mouse, aides to the duo go gung ho against each other. In defence of their principals and desperation to feather their nests, they urge the citizenry to immortalise the damaged and the flawed.
Through the circumstances, aides and associates to Buhari and Saraki deploy wit and random wile eerily, summoning our sympathies for their plaintiff principals. Like frantic metamorphosists, they would clothe dross as gold and mask succour as infernal terror.
The perceptive listens to their eloquent drivel, incoherent rants and wanton justifications, in amusement, cautiously seeking the villain from the hero, the victor from the vanquished.
The unperceptive are quite captivated; since reality hurts, they accept desperate sentiments as ‘truth.’ It is their daemonic aria, a flight of decadent will and imagination. No thanks to this pathetic gang of vanishing minds, Nigeria suffers the possibility of self-destruct.
The scene prefigures the transition or ‘transformation’ if you like, of citizenship from gradual decline to rapid degeneracy. Let them bicker and bite their hearts out. I would wager, however, that when the dust settles on their discord, two victors may yet emerge, Buhari and Saraki; and the loser will be the electorate, as usual.
Saraki recently defected from the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), accusing forces within the party of causing his exit. There is no gainsaying the relationship between Saraki and the ruling party was fraught by distrust at his emergence as Senate President in 2015, against the wish of the party’s leadership.
While his loyalists lament his subsequent trial, for alleged non-declaration of assets, which terminated at the Supreme Court’s ruling in his favour, as a premeditated offensive against him by political detractors; recent allegations of his connection to armed robbers, who robbed banks in Offa, Kwara State, killing over 30 people, rankles an ominous note.
The police say their investigations show that some of the armed robbers were Saraki’s political thugs and that he may have provided arms and logistics to them. Saraki has denied any link with the suspects, alleging a witch-hunt.
Thus, he quit the APC for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a move widely condemned as waddling back to gobble his vomit. Despite the spin accorded his return to the PDP, from which he hitherto defected to the APC in controversial circumstances, does it dispel his crunch politics?
Will it make him preferable to President Buhari, if eventually he achieves his ambition of vying for the presidency, come 2019, as a candidate of the PDP?
Buhari, nevertheless, restates his vision of romanticised ‘change’ to the applause of ardent, unquestioning loyalists and the outrage of his most virulent critics. Still, he relies on his epiphany of morality that the severely exploited and hapless citizenry are expected to die for. Buhari rode to power chanting change and promising a radical, progressive departure from the pilfering that characterised public office before his emergence.
Notwithstanding his shortcomings in handling the herdsmen crisis, one can’t help but admire his resolve to end Boko Haram’s terrorism and recoup the country’s looted public funds.
At his emergence as President-elect, the citizenry saw him as a saviour amid the ruling class’ primitive tribe of predators. Contemporary boondocks legend painted portraits of him as a warrior in wolf-skin vest, brandishing a shield of steeled morality and a stone-axe, forged to hack down monuments, that the corrupt ruling class built to entrench corruption.
Since the beginning of Nigeria’s democratic experiment, politics has evolved from airbrushed imagery of shady characters in newspapers, to the wild, insolent ire of an ignorant electorate, often in support of an individual or cause.
Ultimately, politicians loom imposingly as pimps and madams, treating the electorate as whores. In their estimation, the masses are meant to be dominated and abused. And once they have their way with them, they discard them like pieces of trash, until ‘re-election’ season.
As we approach 2019, the political hierarchies birthing and corrupting Nigeria’s ‘Change’ are on public display. How do we identify the hero from the villain, the upright from the corrupt? Of Buhari, Saraki, others, who is deserving of our votes?
Perhaps the one whose professed politics matches the vibrations of his soul; the candidate who validates his promises, ethics and projections by dependable philosophies of human existence.
He offers something more than “life-boat” solutions as lifelines by which we would derive satisfaction of our necessities, sow and harvest our fruits of hope and citizenship.
He is the one who successfully nullifies the insolence of our tribal mentality. We must have seen him attain and authenticate, a worthy equilibrium between, say, the expediency of wiping off our slums vis-à-vis the affordability of beautifully planned cities and suburbs.
He is the candidate who struggles to repair in wisdom and coherence, while we pick him apart, as he articulates his blueprint for providing good roads and electricity, standard health care and security, stable economy and quality education, among others.
He is the candidate without the shame of baggage and the chaos of dishonour.
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari should return from a 10-day break any moment from now, barring unforeseen circumstances. He has been in London, far away from the tumultuous atmosphere at home.
Since Your Excellency left, so much has happened at a speed that seems so incredible, even by our own unusual standards. Being human, the aides saddled with taking notes to keep the President fully apprised of all that went on while he was away, may have left out some important details. Hence the need for this memo, offered as this column’s contribution to good governance and public record keeping.
What happened on August 7 is well known. Except the architects of the shocking drama, everyone was scandalised upon waking up to the strange spectacle of hooded security operatives with exotic guns, blocking the gates at the National Assembly. They obviously took their orders from former Department of State Services (DSS) – what an innocent name – boss Lawal Daura.
To reverse the aberration, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo fired Daura. Same day. The siege was lifted and everything returned to normal.
Now, matters arising.
Whose song was Daura singing? Was he the sole architect of the power show? Did he realise the implications? Is it true that he has a penchant for going off the track? How did he acquire such powers that made even the powerful tremble before him?
The siege became a subject of hot contestation, with those on the side of the Legislature claiming that the Executive was trying to obliterate that arm of the government and bring our democracy to disrepute. Others, who obviously see it from the point of view of the Executive, swore that it was all a script written by the Legislature and directed by Daura, who they claimed is a close ally of a prominent lawmaker.
The answer is going to be a test of our security agents’ investigative ability.
The next day, August 8 to be precise, Senate President Bukola Saraki, who had earlier gone on a road show to the National Assembly just after the lifting of the siege, addressed a world press conference. It is to be noted that many, in their mindless obstinacy, dismissed it all as mere playing to the gallery. If it was a “world press conference”, said a cheeky fellow, “where was “The Washington Post”, “Wall Street Journal (WSJ)”, “New York Times”, BBC, CNN, and all the other giants?” “That is how our politicians clothe their little actions in hyperbolic robes,” he said with a sneer.
Just as the uproar was subsiding, the Senate president hit the road to visit former military president Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. It was a private visit, hence its details remain unknown to the public. As usual, there have been many speculations. Some said Dr Saraki was at the hilltop mansion to seek Babangida’s blessing for his yet unannounced presidential ambition. Others said he had gone to brief him about the events that led to the sudden shutdown of the National Assembly for a long recess. Yet, others claimed he had gone to wish Babangida, speedy recovery from a rumoured illness.
Saraki was also in Abeokuta to see former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He told reporters that he had come to see the magnificent Presidential Library, which many uninformed politicians and misguided activists have described as a gargantuan symbol of corruption. Their proof? They said Obasanjo corralled governors and captains of industry to donate the huge cash spent in erecting the edifice while in office. Is that corruption or solicitation? Obasanjo, a very hard working man, sees it as neither, but the fruit of his sweat.
The Senate president has since gone to court to shield his job from being snatched away by his colleagues, majority of whom he claims are with him. The die seems cast, with his opponents also claiming that they have the majority. How do we know who is right when reconvening the Assembly has become a subject of acrimony?
Police chief Ibrahim Idris is said to have transmitted a letter to the Acting President, seeking permission to search Daura’s home. The transmission of the said letter has sparked a huge row over the timing of the transmission, the purpose of the transmission , the idea of the transmission, the mode of the transmission and the transmitter’s transmission (sorry, mission).
Senate Minority Leader, now former, Godswill Akpabio, defected from the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) on August 8 at a packed and colourful rally in Ikot Ekpene in the heart of Akwa Ibom State. It was an uncommon crowd at an uncommon rally, in the land of uncommon transformation, for an uncommon defector, who is an uncommon leader of his uncommon people. The uncommon defection has become a major complication of the trouble that has befallen the Senate since Saraki’s defection to the PDP. Information Minister Lai Mohammed says it is 1-1. A draw.
The race for presidential tickets is getting more exciting. Ahmed Makarfi, the former Kaduna State governor and former PDP National Caretaker Committee chair, has promised to restructure (how?) the country as part of his manifesto. Besides, he has asked the party not to award the prized ticket to a moneybag. Advice taken? Who does he have in mind?
Obasanjo tried to pour cold water on former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s presidential ambition. He said God would not forgive him if he backed Atiku. Trust Atiku. He replied swiftly, asking Obasanjo to settle whatever rift he had with his God without dragging him into it. It is not yet clear if Obasanjo will accept Atiku’s admonition. Atiku, you may wish to note sir, has promised to do one term if he got the chance to run and win. Did anybody believe him? I really do not know.
Still on politics, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has just registered 23 more parties. Now we have 91 political parties, but the clamour for more keeps growing. I am sure that INEC, being Father Christmas, will grant such legitimate requests. A thousand parties won’t be a bad idea.
The Air Force has since been pounding the locations of the bandits who have visited so much havoc on some Zamfara State communities. Will Governor Abdulaziz Yari, who threw up his arms in surrender and relinquished his position of chief security officer out of frustration, now change his mind?
Those mindless gunmen posing as herdsmen, after a brief break, have struck in Benue State again. They seem to have taken advantage of the fact that Governor Samuel Ortom is still trying to settle down in his new party after accepting with so much glee what he called the red card from the APC.
In sports, our Under-20 girls advanced in their World Cup campaign after scoring a last-second goal against China on Monday. But the bigger feat is table tennis star Aruna Quadri’s victory at the ITTF Challenge Nigeria Open in Lagos last Sunday when he defeated France’s Antoine Hachard to win the cup, first time by a Nigerian.
On social media, there are pictures of His Excellency, Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose, sober and subdued, and garrulous PDP chieftain Femi Fani-Kayode, sedate , with the caption: “Where are these two Chinese phones?”
Yet another: “This Buhari government is too stiff. Even the witches who give people food in their dream have stopped doing so. They can no longer afford it.”
As if to reply them, the government announced that two million Nigerians will get collateral -free loans.
Welcome back, Your Excellency.
An attack on free speech
THE police are holding “Premium Times” reporter Samuel Ogundipe over a story published by the online medium. Reports said the police sent in their dreaded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to arrest some members of the newspaper’s staff over a story they said they found offensive.
The arrests came on a day Acting President Yemi Osinbajo ordered the overhaul of the SARS, which has been accused of brutality, torture and extrajudicial killings.
Editor -in – Chief Musikilu Mojeed and Education Correspondent Azeezat Adedigba were detained briefly, according to Publisher Dapo Olorunyomi.
It is saddening that our law enforcement agents still think every disagreement must be settled by force. Why send anti-robbery officers-guns and all- to seize journalists as if they are some violent criminals? Was there any warrant for the arrests? What damage did the police suffer because of the publication?
Ibrahim Idris
The police should not attempt to curtail free speech. It is the fundamental right of all Nigerians. Instead of dissipating energy running after journalists who are only doing their job, the police will do well to step up the fight against deadly criminals terrorising the land, killing and maiming with reckless impunity.
Only last weekend, four policemen – may their souls rest in peace – were killed after successfully rescuing a kidnap victim. Their killers remain at large.
The police took Ogundipe to court secretly yesterday. He was denied legal representation. The court ordered him to be detained by the police for the next five days.
This is unfair. The police should grow up and follow due process in doing their job.
Sadly the ongoing war of attrition among members of the political elite has nothing to do with the protection of institutions of democracy – political parties, executive, legislature, the judiciary, the press and civil society organisations, all of which have come under serious threat in recent years.
It similarly has little to do with Nigerians, 70% of who live below the poverty line. It is all about holding on to a disproportionate share of our resources by the political ruling elite. The truth is that a journey through memory shows only few Nigerian politicians are driven by noble objectives while a great many are unscrupulous egomaniacs who only think about themselves. Link the past with the ongoing drama, defections and political intrigues that have come to define the journey to 2019, one discovers it is all about social Darwinism or survival of the fittest.
In the battle over illegal sharing of our national resources back in 2013, Saraki became an unexpected whistle-blower over the theft of N1.7trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings through the fuel subsidy scam. Then his PDP family members claiming, a part cannot be holier than the whole, identified a company in which he allegedly had an interest as a beneficiary. It was that PDP family quarrel over sharing of looted resources that drove Saraki from PDP to APC.
Similarly, his current war which started with a gale of defections by his foot soldiers in the National Assembly from the ruling APC to PDP has less to do with democracy but more with getting maximum dividends on his investment in APC. His defection along with some of his like-mind senators in his own words was because “the experience of my people and associates in the past three years that have suffered alienation and have been treated as outsiders in their own party”. In a press conference that followed, he also complained that he and Dogara were left out when President Buhari presided over the sharing of over 200 juicy positions.
Oshiomhole has however accused Saraki of selling the victory of his party for a pot of porridge by trading off the deputy senate president position to consolidate his position. According to him, “Saraki did not stop at that, but went further to appoint senators to head strategic committees whose activities could affect the workings of government and the relationship between the executive and the legislature”. Oshiomhole also says his refusal to step down after decamping from APC “portrayed Saraki as a person whose personal interest always comes first before any other interest, including national interest”, adding that “Senator Saraki has demonstrated neither character nor being a man of honour.”
Itse Sagay agreed with Adams Oshiomhole saying “he should relinquish his position as a matter of honour. He got there because he was in APC even though he got there by subterfuge and in a cheeky, fraudulent manner which is typical of him”. Omo-Agege, Saraki’s political foe weighed in saying “the moment Saraki defected from the APC to the minority party, PDP, he no longer has the moral, political and legal rights to remain as the senate president”.
But for Saraki, acquiring and retaining the senate presidency seems to be a matter of life and death. Hiding under a constitutional provision that says he could only be impeached by two-third of the senate, he dared APC to mobilise the needed 73 members for such an impossible endeavour. Senator Olujimi, Fayose’s deputy during his first coming as Ekiti State governor introduced a new dimension. Since APC senators did not make Saraki senate president, why should they be talking of removing him? She queried. “Again, how many of them were party to our electing the senate president? Just a handful of them, it was majorly by PDP senators. Out of the 53 votes he got, we gave him 42 of them. So, what are they talking about? They should be rational”; she admonished. But Nigerians still remember Saraki’s confession of how he hid inside a small car in front of the senate building from about 5am to 9am to outwit his 52 APC senators at a meeting elsewhere with the president before sneaking into the senate chambers to be adopted senate president mainly by the opposition.
For fear of impeachment, Saraki who hurriedly shut down the senate for two months holiday after his defection, is not taking chances. Last week, after announcing reconvening by principal officers of the National Assembly to consider some urgent request from the executive at 12 pm, those who turned up at 7am to confront hooded DSS men were ordinary members, selected social media warriors and some thugs who Saraki and senator Bassey described as Civil Society Groups that share PDP passion for democracy.
The news of a siege on NASS spread like wild fire. Then Saraki who suddenly emerged from nowhere at about 8am for a meeting he had scheduled for 12pm was mobbed by the crowd who instantly broke in to victory songs. Addressing his media and supporters, he alleged that DSS had an advance list of APC members to be allowed into the council chambers to impeach him. Before then Senator Bruce had sold a dummy to Nigerians through Channels Television claiming APC senators already allowed in through the back door were holed-up inside the senate chambers preparing to impeach the senate president. It turned out both were wrong as APC members were nowhere near the assembly.
The sack of Lawal Daura, the DSS boss by acting president did not however stop Saraki from holding a world press conference the following day to claim: “The siege was also an act of cowardice by those seeking to carry out an illegal impeachment of the leadership of the senate in flagrant disregard of the law.” He went on to blame “People who seek control at all costs, by whatever means, never minding the injury to democratic norms”. He thanked “CSOs and socio-cultural groups who were emphatic in their statements during the crisis.” Saraki probably thinks Nigerians are fools.
But speaking for APC, its acting spokesman, Yekini Nabena, claimed, their own investigation “uncovered the sinister plot hatched by the senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to foment violence in the legislative chamber, all in a bid to stop his impeachment. Presence of only PDP lawmakers as early as 7am for a meeting scheduled for 12, was “ a pre-emptive move to frustrate federal lawmakers’ move to impeach him”, he stated.
Then Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP spokesman also announced that his party discovered a plot by the ruling APC to use the EFCC to arrest Saraki and his deputy. The detention of the duo, he said, would enable ”the APC senators to produce two of their members as senate president and deputy senate president”, as if that is a crime for the ruling party.
Senators Saraki and Basey who could not explain why it was only PDP senators, their selected media, and those many believed were thugs camouflaging as civil society groups that were at the National Assembly at 7am, had argued it was only a probe that would address those issues. The acting president acceded to their demand. But even before the body was inaugurated, they issued a statement claiming the probe was meant to ensnare Saraki and Elweremadu. Then last Tuesday, Saraki’s men went to court to restrain government from using EFCC to arrest Saraki and Ekweremadu.
Dear compatriots, there is always something new from our country. We once had a senate president, David Mark, who sought and got the court’s nod to keep senate president mansion EFCC accused him of selling to himself at an amount far below the market price. PDP press and civil society groups celebrated that as victory for democracy and rule of law. Today we have a senate president, Saraki who is celebrating a democratic absurdity where he as an opposition member runs a critical section meant for a democratically elected government while his press and civil society groups hail him as defender of separation of powers. That could not have been the intention of the framers of our constitution.
IS it possible for one man to hold a nation to ransom? Yes, a strong political actor can hold a nation to ransom and even lock down the government through his act of omission or commission. Since Senate President Bukola Saraki defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on July 31, everything concerning the country has been revolving around him.
Saraki defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and quickly announced that the Senate was going on two months break. The Senate will resume on September 25. Ahead of its resumption date, however, there are some impending pressing national matters that require the attention of not only the Senate, but also the House of Representatives.
A row has broken out over the reconvening of the National Assembly because its leadership and the ruling party are on different pages. Both parties now view each other with mutual suspicion following Saraki’s defection to PDP and House Speaker Yakubu Dogara’s ambivalence on where he stands.
The urgent national issues that require the lawmakers’ attention are the consideration of the budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the executive’s request for foreign loans to fund the 2018 budget. With the 2019 elections just a few months away, it is imperative that INEC should be empowered to enable it prepare adequately for the exercise.
Unfortunately, its budget is held up in the political quagmire that has engulfed the country since the defection of the Senate president. Saraki’s defection has led to the politicisation of issues that should naturally not be tainted with politics. As the highest law making body in the land, the National Assembly should know the urgency of the request before it and act in good conscience for the benefit of the country.
It did well by inviting the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and some of his officials to sound them out on their requirements. The National Assembly cannot stop there. It has to hold a plenary session to consider the agency’s budget and pass it as soon as possible because the elections are closer than the lawmakers may think.
It is only normal for the APC to fight Saraki over his retention of the Senate presidency after his defection to PDP. Saraki got the job in the first place because his former party, APC, is in the majority in the Senate. Having defected to the PDP, which is in the minority, APC is saying that he should vacate the Senate presidency. It is this fight between Saraki and APC or, better still, its National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, that is heating the polity.
We cannot afford to play politics with issues that have to do with the social, political and economic development of the country. This is why all the gladiators should sheathe their swords in the overall interest of the people. As politicians, whether elected or holding party posts, they are expected to work for the people. Those elected, especially, are representatives of the people, more so those in the legislature.
The budget and the forthcoming elections are dear to the people. The budget will enable the executive to get off the ground programmes beneficial to the people, while they will be able to exercise their franchise in the elections. As at today, Saraki remains the Senate president and chairman of the National Assembly and so the onerous task of reconvening that august body lies on his shoulders.
Though he is fighting a battle to keep his position, which Oshiomhole is daily making too hot for him to occupy, Saraki owes it a duty to recall his colleagues from vacation to pass the INEC budget and consider the executive’s request for foreign loans. How will the lawmakers feel if government is locked down because it cannot raise funds for key projects? How will they feel if INEC cannot carry out some of its functions because of lack of funds? They should put personal interest aside and allow the public interest to prevail in this matter.
The National Assembly will not lose anything by reconvening to take up these key national issues. It is only natural for its leadership to harbour fear of a change in the aftermath of recent developments there, but that should not stop it from discharging its constitutional duty. The nation is greater than everyone of us, no matter the position we hold today.
Redeeming SARS
ON Tuesday, the Federal Government wielded the big stick against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which has been in the news lately for mostly the bad reasons. We have heard stories of how SARS operatives kidnapped people and collected ransom from them. They were also said to have arbitrarily arrested people and extorted money from them. Many are said to be in prison today because they cannot meet the demands of some SARS operatives.
The police high command cannot say it did not hear some of these stories because they were published in the papers. But in its characteristic manner, it turned a blind eye to those reports. Mercifully, the government has stepped in. The police are an important arm of any society. Without them, there will be anarchy. Painfully, our police do not know their worth and that is why they cheapen themselves before people who should grovel at their feet. It is not too late to redeem SARS because it has its good side, which I pray will manifest after the cleansing ordered by the government.
