The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Chilcot report on Tony Blair’s role in Iraqi war

    Chilcot report on Tony Blair’s role in Iraqi war

    In 2003, US President George Bush, and Tony Blair, the British Labour Prime Minister, led their two countries into a military invasion of Iraq. It was an unholy alliance that stirred things up in the Arab world. Although long expected after months of tension and inconclusive diplomatic engagements at the UN, the invasion of Iraq by the US and the UK took the world by surprise. It was sudden, massive, and had taken place when the Iraqi crisis was still the subject of intense debate and negotiations at the UN Security Council. Bush and Blair claimed jointly they invaded Iraq because they had received credible intelligence report that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs. In a matter of weeks, the war was over. Saddam Hussein was toppled from power and a joint interim local government, under the aegis and control of the US-led coalition partners, was set up in Baghdad. But it lacked legitimacy and, despite military and political support from the US/UK occupation forces, soon fell apart from sectarian violence and conflicts all over Iraq. The official British Chilcot report on the war released last week in London confirms the perfidious and despicable role of Tony Blair, the British Labour Prime Minister, in the war.

    The war was unpopular globally, even in countries, including the Arab world, that would normally support the US. Many critics considered the invasion of Iraq illegal and illegitimate under international law. The UN did not authorise it. It evoked deep global divisions and controversy on the credibility of the intelligence report on which the decision by the US and the UK to invade Iraq was based. Many considered it an unjust and unjustified war based on false and faulty intelligence reports. Specifically, President Chirac of France, which did not participate in the invasion of Iraq, declared publicly that the decision to go to war in Iraq was hasty and premature and that the ongoing negotiations at the UN Security Council had not been concluded when Bush and Blair decided to wage war on Saddam Hussein. All peaceful options had not been fully exploited and exhausted before the joint US/UK invasion. In fact, while the US and the UK had made up their minds to go to war in Iraq at all costs, a UN weapons inspection team that had just returned from Baghdad reported to the UN Security Council, in New York, that it had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If there were any, it added, they had probably been destroyed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein so as to avoid a war against his country, a war that he did not want. But this report no longer made any difference to Bush or Blair. A decision to go to war had already been taken and they would not be deterred even in the face of credible evidence that the intelligence reports they claimed to have on the WMDs lacked any credibility globally.

    For years after the war, the British Labour Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, continued to defend his decision to go to war on the grounds that the evidence he had was that Saddam Hussein did have the WMDs. He even lied to the House of Commons in the UK that Saddam Hussein could trigger his weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, and that he had to act in the interest and defence of the UK by taking his country into war with Iraq alongside the US. But even at the time his claims about the WMDs were hotly disputed in Britain. The war was unpopular in Britain and there were strong public protests and demonstrations against it. Many condemned Blair as Bush’s ‘poodle,’ arguing that, despite Britain’s self-acclaimed ‘special relationship’ with the US, which is not often requited by the US, there was no real political, security, or moral obligation on the part of Blair to support Bush’s senseless war in Iraq. They could point out that under Harold Wilson, a former British Labour Prime Minister, the UK had stayed out of the American war in Vietnam. Some of the harsh critics of Tony Blair’s toadying to the US were able to recall that when Anthony Eden, the British Conservative Prime Minister, invaded Egypt in 1956, in concert with France and Israel, over Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal, the US denounced the invasion as an unjust war and forced Eden to withdraw his forces from Egypt. Such was the weight of US and local criticism of the war that Anthony Eden was forced to resign from office as prime minister. He had resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1934 in protest against the policy of appeasement by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. But his misguided invasion of Egypt in 1956 effectively ended his brilliant political career.

    Now, from the report of the Chilcot official enquiry into the despicable role of the UK in the joint invasion of Iraq we are now able to confirm what had been suspected all along, that Blair did not have credible and incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. There was little or no consensus in the British intelligence agencies, particularly the MI6, on this, although the head of the British M16 was reported as tending on the whole to present to Tony Blair only intelligence reports that were favourable to the claim that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMDS. So, in effect, the British Government and Parliament were conned by the Prime Minister into supporting an unpopular and unjust war in Iraq based on false intelligence. The report also revealed that the two cabinet Ministers, Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister, and his Defence colleague, Hume, whose views should count, were not fully briefed by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, on why Britain had to go to war in Iraq. They were swindled into accepting his perfunctory and unsatisfactory briefs on which basis they decided to go along with Tony Blair on the Iraqi war. This reinforces the view of a steady increase in the powers of the British Prime Minister. From being first among equals, he is now more presidential and, like the US president, will normally have his way on any major Cabinet decision. In the Iraqi war Blair had his way despite reservations from some of his Cabinet colleagues.

    Now, as reported by the Chilcot enquiry set up in 2009, what was even more galling about the decision of the British government to go to war in Iraq is the manner Tony Blair toadied to Bush on this grave issue of war and peace in Iraq. Right from the start, Bush had decided he would go to war in Iraq over the false intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDS. After 9/11 Bush had made up his mind to shake things up in the Arab world by dealing with the ‘bad’ guys. Whether or not Hussein had WMDs was immaterial to him in his narrow and unsophisticated view of the world which he simply divided into the ‘bad and good guys’. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and had to be removed from power. A regime change in Iraq, Bush concluded, had become imperative. In the several trips that Tony Blair made to Camp David for talks with George Bush he was left in no doubt that Bush was determined to go to war. According to the Chilcot report, Blair made a feeble attempt to delay the final decision on going to war by suggesting to Bush that the matter be placed before the UN Security Council. Bush agreed to go to the UN but insisted that while a role by the UN was useful, he did not consider it as necessary. A UNSC resolution was in fact passed later urging Saddam Hussein to rid his country of the WMDs, or face the consequences. But this did not amount to the endorsement by the UN of a unilateral military attack on Iraq by the so-called coalition partners, or the use of force to resolve the crisis.

    As revealed by the Chilcot report, even as a junior coalition partner to the US, Britain did not make adequate defence preparations for the war. Blair ignored warnings from the Defence Ministry and British defence establishment that Britain lacked and could not provide the resources, the equipment, to go to war in Iraq, and that the British military should first be re-equipped. This advice was ignored by Blair. The consequences of the war have been truly tragic and continue to reverberate around the world, including the US, with increased terrorist violence and insurgencies all over the world.

    For Britain, the upshot of this criminal negligence on the part of Tony Blair was that young innocent British soldiers were sent to war, in harm’s way, severely handicapped. 179 of them needlessly lost their lives in the war leaving their loved ones to mourn their needless and premature deaths. The war against Saddam Hussein was won by the coalition forces. But it left Iraq and the whole of the Arab world in turmoil, in a far worse situation than ever before. Violent sectarian conflicts have widened as the ISIS simply moved into the vacuum left behind by the departing coalition forces. Instead of a localised war in Iraq, we now have the ISIS’ full blown war in Syria that has again brought in the US and Russia into combat in the region. So, the objectives of the war for securing peace and stability in the world have not been realised by both the US and the UK.  Here in Nigeria, the Boko Haram, which claims affiliation to ISIS, is a direct consequence of the Iraqi war in which we were in no way involved.

    The Iraqi war raises some basic but old issues about why nations go to war and the extent that their leaders can be trusted in making the right decisions on war and peace. Nations do not on their own decide to go to war. This decision is taken on their behalf by their leaders based on their own judgments about any perceived threat to the nation. As was the case in Iraq the decision to go to war or the reasons advanced for doing so are often wrong. Even in a stable and advanced democracy such as the UK and the US, such mistakes can be easily made by leaders who go to war when there are no real or direct threats to their countries. That was the tragic mistake of the former British Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the longest serving Labour leader and Prime Minister for well over half a century.

  • Portrait of the Nigerian as a ‘black’ ant

    We live to a devastating stereotype. Like fattened ducks, we waddle against the walls of institutionalized pigeonholes as the ram thrashes in its soul at the descent of the butcher’s jackknife. But we are no ducks neither are we cattle of any kind. We are humans, learning to live as livestock, because we think it’s shrewd and fashionable to do so.

    Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, however contented, never know, writes Cowper and quite truthfully too. The tragedy is in the details. And the details are all around us, in our past glories and defeat, infinite quirks and measured sobriety. It is in our fabled heritage and defunct humanity, colourful history and grand inadequacies. It’s what separates our mistakes from what we term fate. And what symbolizes our mental inferiorities and political expediencies.

    But necessity, like William Pitt the Younger would say, is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. Slaves like the Nigerian nigger.

    A 27-minute video among other things, distinguishes a select few of Nigeria’s pioneer statesmen from the gangs of glorified eejits – if I may insult poor eejits by comparing them to the country’s ruling class – that currently occupy the country’s corridors of power. The video is of the July 1961 visit of Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to the United States of America (USA).

    Great thanks to Farooq Kperogi, a Nigerian scholar resident in the USA; after he stumbled on the video on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, he promptly shared it with friends on Facebook. The video is intense with charm and instructive with lessons in manhood, desirable pride, poise and refinement epitomized by the league of extraordinary statesmen that served Nigeria at independence.

    Between July 25 and 28, Kperogi, enthused and it could be confirmed in the video, the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and a modest entourage of about 10 key government officials visited the United States on the invitation of the late President John F. Kennedy during which Tafawa Balewa visited major historical landmarks in representative parts of the United States and addressed a special joint session of the United States Congress that was convened in his honor.

    Only a select few, as Kperogi noted, “are accorded the honour of addressing a joint session of the United States Congress. Certainly no Nigerian head of state has been accorded this honour since Tafawa Balewa.” According to the website of the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, since 1874 when the King of Hawaii first addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, there have been only 112 such privileges granted to foreign leaders and dignitaries.

    Watching the video was as enchanting as it was delightful; Balewa’s address to the joint session was persistently “punctuated” by thunderous, standing ovation. In all the cities he and his entourage visited, Americans came out to wave at them hospitably, and U.S. government officials bowed very respectfully when they shook hands with the Nigerian Prime Minister. Thus was the depth of respect the pioneer Nigerian leader and nationalist inspired in 1960s America.

    Men like Balewa and his contemporaries at the period in the persons of the late Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe to mention a few, personified the infectious grandeur, unimpeachable character, progressiveness, patriotism, depth and self-assurance that remains the prime requirements of statesmanship that Nigeria and the African continent deserves. These men, despite their shortcomings, were no Nigerian niggers. The same can hardly be said of incumbent Nigerian leadership and citizenry.

    If you separate President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osibajo from the herd, a greater section of the incumbent leadership could be likened to men gifted with the mentality of the hyena and the sensibility of the guinea fowl. The same may be said of the citizenry. Our lust for unearned riches, acclaim and the West’s approval, illustrates the Nigerian adult’s ignorance and awfully preadolescent mind. It reiterates a very shrill cry for help that’s at once self-seeking, infantile and regressive.

    It is what makes Nigerian public officers pilfer and deplete the nation’s treasury in order to finance reckless trips abroad, to learn Western-European governance styles. It is what makes Nigerian leaders throw their doors open to every visiting foreign cub reporter even as they deny seasoned journalists back home, similar opportunities. During such interviews, such characters persistently expose themselves to ridicule, presenting themselves as inveterate boobs; by their utterances which are tailored to glorify the disturbing plots and agenda of the foreign newshounds.

    The citizenry is guilty of the same inanity as indicated by the widely broadcast documentaries on Niger Delta militancy, the insidiously “professional” and manipulative “This is Lagos” and “Law and Disorder in Lagos” documentaries on Lagos which glorifies the city’s shanty and street urchin (area boys) culture and malaise. Such media fare reveals contemptible plots to fulfill derogatory news agenda to the delight and pitiful acquiescence of the news subjects.

    I am yet to see a Nigerian journalist travel abroad for instance, to enjoy similar courtesies and lack of common sense from the countries’ leadership and citizenry. It’s even more worrisome to note that the incumbent Nigerian leadership has never enjoyed and will never enjoy the kind of respect accorded the late Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo and their ilk at independence. It is impossible for the average Nigerian to enjoy such courtesies and honor given the inexplicable greed, complacence, degeneracy, shallowness of thought and character characteristic of majority of the Nigerian people.

    The kind of inferiority complex projected by the ruling class and passed down to generations of Nigerian youth affirms the western belief that we are not as mentally proficient as they are. Consequently, they see us as irredeemably ignorant, inept, corrupt and susceptible to inexplicable violence and inferiority complex. Unfortunately, the average Nigerian’s sociability and prodigal nature manifests to further serve as evidence of a collective idiocy and inferiority complex of a crude race that recognizes and accepts its intolerable limitations.

    That we are very accommodating and hospitable like Akin Akindele rightly notes shouldn’t make us “bend over backwards to impress any white or yellow man more than we would any other ordinary person.” But the import of such admonition is lost on us; mediocre and highly incompetent foreigners come to Nigeria and are immediately regarded as ‘expatriates.’ Yet many brainy and exceedingly talented Nigerians are treated with contempt and suspicion at home and abroad. Abroad, they are despised for being Nigerians based on bigoted generalizations about the average Nigerian’s fraudulence and deadliness. At home they are despised for being different and capable of evolving the process that would lead to that progressive and prosperous socio-economic system that we seek.

    If we are to be judged by indigenous mores of morality or what Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, deems the human measure of all things, we shan’t fare excellently well, not by a smidgen. We have fared diffidently for too long; that is why local and international idiots as fragile as clay toys have evolved into outsized heroes and gods, on our watch. To the rest of the world, we are just a bunch of contemptible niggers; still.

  • Brexit and its aftermath

    I was in London about two years ago when the referendum on whether Scotland would exit the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland was held. Mercifully the Scots seemed to have had doubts about the wisdom of abandoning a time tested union. The entire United Kingdom in this new referendum has decided to leave the European Union  to which the Conservative government of Edward Heath took them into  in 1973  about 43 years ago. The British Prime Minister David Cameron gambled like his Labour predecessor Harold Wilson did in 1975 by directly consulting the British people about whether to stay or leave the European Union apparently believing in the good sense of the British to stay but he was disappointed by the result. It needs to be stated that the leave vote was not overwhelming. It was 48 to 52 percent. But whatever the margin was, it was still a clear decision to leave. Many people in the United Kingdom are however unhappy about the result. Scotland and Northern Ireland, two of the constituent nations making up the United Kingdom voted clearly to stay in the European Union. The capital city of London also voted to stay and more than four million petitions against leaving the union have been signed within the first week after the referendum. To me, all these will amount to nothing. The deed has been done and the consequence will remain for years to come. The Scottish government has gone to meet the EU officials about its desire to stay in the European Union. It is also threatening to hold another independence referendum which it lost two years ago. There is of course no certainty that the Scots would vote to sever ties with the United Kingdom if the Scottish government were to run precipitously into a new referendum. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party which is almost a spent force is also joining its Scottish counterpart in threatening a dissolution of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland has not said much apart from Sin Fein the nationalist party there unconvincingly saying it may call for unification with the Republic of Ireland. The problems on the issue of possible union of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland are so fraught with danger of renewed civil war that no serious politician would dare raise the issue at this volatile time. Nothing is really predictable these days.

    There is of course no doubt that the economic repercussions of BREXIT would have serious ramifications in the United Kingdom. Its economy would definitely contract gradually during the next two years of its negotiation to exit the European Union. Its currency is weakening and there is a long term forecast that the pound sterling will be at par with the American dollar which will be almost a 20 percent depreciation. The result of this may be positive or negative. It will make British goods cheaper on the world market but the negative aspect is that imports like oil to Britain will be costlier since this is priced in dollars and there is not much left of North Sea oil. Inflation will rise and there will definitely be job losses arising from headquarters of multinationals moving their European operations out of London to Dublin, Paris or Frankfurt.

    The political instability that exit from Europe has already created can be seen in the disarray in both the Conservative and Labour parties. The Conservative Party would not have a new leader until the end of August and Jeremy Corbyn  has just lost a confidence vote in his leadership by the labour parliamentary  party. Ordinarily he should have resigned but he is banking on the illusion that the rank and file of labour members outside parliament are with him. He foolishly thinks they approve of his lack-lustre performance since his election last year. If he does not go, the Labour Party may witness history repeating itself with the coming into being of a new party as happened in the 1970s when the brilliant Roy Jenkins formed the Social Democratic Party and took substantial members of the Labour parliamentary party with him. No one knows what will happen this time and the situation in the Conservative party is also not clear.

    In the Conservative party, Boris Johnson the openly ambitious and flamboyant London mayor may put people off because of his putting his own interest above that of country. The man who was riding the horse of anti-immigration to achieve the BREXIT victory is now saying he would not insist on banning immigrants coming to Britain in exchange for access to the European Union. He says there was more in the campaign than just anti-immigration. Yes there are other things but the poor electorate was sold the dummy of a stop to immigration and impliedly an expulsion of those who are here already in order to create jobs for Britons and school places for their children as well as huge funding of the national health services through retaining and transferring to it 350 million pounds sterling allegedly being transferred by Britain every week to the European Union. It has now turned out that the BREXIT campaign was based on outright lies. If Boris Johnson loses, the current Home Secretary Theresa May could emerge as consensus candidate. The political vacuum is creating instability all around Britain and anti-social elements are beginning to vent their pent up anger and racism on European immigrants and visible minorities of Blacks and Asians. People are being bullied, heckled and physically assaulted on the streets and told to go back to their home countries irrespective of how many generations they have stayed in the United Kingdom. This dangerous trend is being watched by the security people and politicians are being asked to rein in their unruly supporters.

    The BREXIT no doubt would have negative effect on the European Union itself. There is fear that other members may follow BREXIT. France under Marie Le Pen, its racist and right wing politician may take a page out of the British exit. If that happens, the European Union will disintegrate. This is why the British will be harshly rebuffed when it dreams of negotiating a new deal that will guarantee it the advantages of the free market without commitment to free movement of labour. The European Union too will see its influence and its market and economy diminish by BREXIT and even the global economy will witness a decline in growth as has been predicted by the IMF.

    The British are living in the past of “RULE BRITANNIA, BRITANNIA RULE TH E WAVES “. Some of the BREXIT campaigners are citing Australia and New Zealand as already asking to trade with Britain as if that can replace a near market of over 500 million people in Europe. On the day of the referendum result, I heard one of the leaders saying Ghana had indicated its readiness to enter into new trading relations with Britain. What a joke! This shows the level of propaganda the BREXIT people will go. Of course Britain will survive as a viable country; the question is whether it will thrive. The USA would do all in its power to assist the British but it would not choose Britain over Europe no matter how many times the Obama administration parrots, tongue in cheek, the so-called special relations with Britain. Britain is in post-industrial phase of its development relying mostly on service industries of banking, insurance, legal services, shipping, aviation and international education and tourism. All these can be wiped out by growing racism and xenophobia.

    African countries will not be seriously affected by BREXIT. Our trade nowadays is mainly with China, India, European Union and to a lesser extent the United States. The coming decline in the United Kingdom’s economy will lead to diminution in technical assistance. This however cuts both ways. Besides the time has come when we should depend on ourselves and pull up our countries by our own bootstraps. The economic volatility which BREXIT caused would however settle down and one sincerely hopes Scotland can be persuaded not to trigger the liquidation of the British Union.

  • INEC’s misadventure

    The fact of the right of appeal to the Court of Appeal granted by the constitution under Section 220 (1), and afortiori, to the Supreme Court under Section 213 (1) of the same constitution is in itself tantamount to a stay of execution, for the legislature cannot grant the right to the appellant to argue his appeal and expect him to argue it as a dead man.
    – Justice Anthony Aniagolu in Nasiru Bello v AG Oyo State (1986).

    It is the glory and wisdom of our constitution, that to prevent any injustice, no man is to be concluded by the first judgement, but that if he apprehends himself to be aggrieved, he has another court to which he can resort to for relief.
    – Justice Chukwudifu Oputa in Bakare v Apena (1986).

    Thirty years ago, Nasiru Bello was sentenced to death by firing squad for armed robbery by the Oyo State High Court. His counsel assured him that he had a right of appeal and that he would not be executed until he exhausted that right. He was mistaken. On the advice of the attorney-general of the state, the governor ordered Bello’s execution and he was executed before his appeal was heard. Then began the battle by his family members for compensation because, according to them,  they have been deprived of their breadwinner’s support. They lost at the high and appeal courts and the matter went to the Supreme Court.

    The public wondered what will be the Supreme Court’s take on the matter. Will it uphold Bello’s execution as an open and close case  just as the high and appeal courts did? The issue at stake in Bello’s case was whether he should have been executed when he had appealed the verdict. Unlike a civil matter, there is nothing like applying for stay of execution of judgement in a criminal case. All a condemned man needs do is to exercise his right of appeal up to the Supreme Court. It is deemed that the appeal will act as a stay until the case is determined. This is why a condemned man like Chukwuemeka Ezeugo aka Rev King was not executed during the pendency of  his appeal at the appeal and Supreme courts. He was convicted by the Lagos High Court over nine years ago on January 11, 2007. The Supreme Court affirmed the verdict last February 25.

    As I write this on Tuesday night, Rev King is still on the death row. I have used the cases of Bello and King as analogies to discuss the vexed issue of stay of execution of judgement following recent developments in Abia State. A Federal High Court last June 27 sacked the governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to issue the plaintiff, Dr Uchechukwu Ogah, a certificate of return (CoR) “forthwith”. INEC complied with the order ‘’immediately’’, despite being served with a notice of appeal and a motion for stay of execution of the judgement. In matters like this, opinions always differ, especially among lawyers, the very people who should know better, because of vested interests.

    Ogah’s lawyers are arguing that INEC did the right thing because its action, though misguided, favoured them. The Ikpeazu camp is, expectedly, condemning the commission for not waiting for the determination of its appeal before issuing Ogah the CoR. The Ikpeazu group tried to nip the Abia crisis in the bud. It wrote INEC intimating it of the filing of its appeal and a motion for stay, but the commission ignored the correspondence, issued Ogah the CoR and threw Abia into crisis. What would it have cost INEC to tarry until the disposal of the appeal before doing the needful? It would have cost the commission nothing.

    To now seek to hide under what it called the ‘immediacy’ requirement of Justice Okon Abang’s order to justify its action will not fly. INEC did not think it through before acting. Its action was hasty and unjustified though the court ordered it to act ‘’forthwith’’. If it were to be a criminal matter like that of Rev King, would the commission have executed him when his appeal is pending citing the ‘immediacy’ of the judge’s order? Public institutions like INEC, which should be non-partisan, must try as much as possible to stay so. They should like Caesar’s wife be above board. Why the hurry in issuing Ogah the CoR when the commission had already been served with processes showing that the case had gone on appeal?

    By its action, INEC constituted itself into an appellate court. By its action, it has concluded that Ikpeazu has no chance on appeal. By its action, it has shown its bias. By its action, it has decided that come what may Ogah will be the governor. So, because it has the CoR in large quantity, it should be issuing it anyhow? When its National Commissioner for Southeast, Ambassador Lawrence Nwuruku, made that careless statement on national television last June 29, I felt like throwing up.  As an umpire, INEC is required to be neutral and must be seen to be so; it should not join the fray. INEC ran into trouble because it interpreted the judgement by itself. If it had consulted its lawyers, it would have received experts’ advice which may have prevented the mess it has created in Abia.

    If the situation were beyond redemption like in the Bello case, the nation would have been foisted with a fait accompli. Thank God that despite INEC’s action, the situation is still redeemable. The courts and not INEC would have the last say on the matter. Truly,  an appeal does not constitute a stay, but it serves as a notice that the case is still hot and alive.  Being that the case, should the appellant be thrown out of office before the determination of his appeal? The answer is no. So, on being served with a notice of appeal, a law abiding person is not expected to take any action to destroy the subject matter of the case because he wants to enjoy the fruits of litigation. Unfortunately, this is what INEC did by issuing Ogah the CoR after being served with Ikpeazu’s appeal.

    The late Justice Aniagolu was unsparing of the Oyo State Government in his concurring judgement in the Bello case. Noting that the government “hastily and illegally snuffed off the life of an appellant whose appeal was pending without regard for the life and liberty of the subject and the principle of the rule of law”, the late justice said : “The brutal incident has bespattered the face of the government with the paintbrush of shame”. So has INEC’s handling of the Ikpeazu-Ogah matter brought it to public ridicule and scorn. But, we hope this is not the new face of INEC under the  Prof Mahmood Yakubu leadership.

  • Ekweremadu, champion of democracy?

    Ike Ekweremadu, not too long ago, forwarded the court summons over alleged forgery by the Senate leadership and some others  to the United Nations, governments of the UK and USA, the European Union parliament and foreign missions, to call the world attention to an ‘attempt by Buharis’s government to rubbish the legislative arm of government’, ‘ clampdown on opposition’ and for what  he described as  continuation of ‘marginalization of the South-east and South-south geopolitical zones of Nigeria’. He however conveniently forgot to say by whom since the Igbo, according to General Alabi Isama, have been part of every government since independence and have played leading roles in every government since the return of democracy in 1999 with Ekweremadu (South-east) as Deputy Senate President in the last nine years and ex-President Jonathan (South-south) as Vice President and President for eight years. All the same, decked in Igbo traditional war attire to give a wrong impression his arraignment for alleged forgery was an assault on the Igbo nation, his travails, he claimed during his press conference ,was ‘an attempt to silence the highest ranking opposition leader’, a  move he said  was ‘capable of truncating Nigerian democracy’. His grieving supporters a few days later, followed with another distress call, this time on Nigerians. ‘Buhari’, they said, ‘was about to black out democracy’, citing as evidence ‘the alleged kill­ing of members of Inde­pendent People of Biafra (IPOB) in Onitsha as well  the continued detention of the Director of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu’. Others supporters also followed by lionizing and praising him for his courage. Finally, there were those who celebrated him for his letter which they claimed found only parallel in those letters the APC wrote as opposition party to warn the international community about Jonathan’s plan to prolong the nightmare of besieged people of north-west through corruption-ridden war chest if only that would guarantee his reelection .

    Except for those whom the end justifies the means, many believe Ekwerenmadu’s letter crafted to defend a position which he by his own admission was acquired inelegantly was childish, ill-advised and self-serving. There is no doubt that those to whom a letter in which Ekweremadu positioned himself  as the champion of democracy in Nigeria was addressed know he is the greatest threat to democracy. Those who have had long years of political socialization in the long established participatory democracies know there can be no greater threat to democracy than the betrayal of the spirit of democratic rules and conventions. They know that Ekwerenmadu’s self admission that he immorally usurped a position that by convention belongs to the ruling party with majority was a calculated attempt to derail the democratic process. Unlike Nigeria where many of our compatriots suffer from the crisis of ideas and crisis of poverty, any misguided politician who embarks on such political perfidy in the UK, USA or in the European Union parliament, would be digging his own political grave. None of his generation would ever smell elective offices.

    They know more. They know that Ekweremadu cannot be a champion of democracy. They witnessed the obscene scenes in states houses of assembly such as Ekiti, Rivers and Edo where five thugs as lawmakers supported by the federal might purportedly impeached speakers supported by as many as 20 state lawmakers while the 7th assembly presided over by Mark/Ekweremadu looked the other way. They also know that by the virtue of Ekweremadu’s position in the 7th assembly, he cannot pretend not to be privy to how $2.1b inclusive of $1b loan meant for procurement of arms for our embattled soldiers who at a point could not defend their barracks and their loved ones were shared by PDP stalwarts to buy support for Jonathan’s 2015 failed reelection bid.

    If there is anyone deceived by  Ekweremadu and his 7th Senate whose leadership publicly admitted spending a whole night scheming about how to steal what belongs to others, where those who handsomely rewarded themselves for being called upon to serve the people routinely abandoned the Senate chambers in solidarity with their leader facing charges at the Code of Conduct Tribunal,  and where elected senators are threatening to sabotage the federal government programmes instead of prevailing on their leaders facing alleged forgery charges to clear their names, it is certainly not United Nations, the governments of US  and Britain or the western society for that matter.

    Perhaps Ekweremadu and his supporters need to be reminded that unlike his self-serving letter, but for the APC letters which forced the US to reconsider the plan to sell arms to Nigeria upon discovering that Nigerian arms were finding their way to the insurgents, beyond the 29 LGA seized by Boko Haram, the whole of the besieged three north-eastern states would have been captured by Boko Haram. The US had accused Nigerian Generals of human rights abuses. What greater human right abuse than condemning your ill-equipped young soldiers to death. Revelations from the ongoing probe has vindicated APC. Dasuki, Jonathan’s NSA has since confessed the $2.1b funds meant for procurement of arms ferried in boxes to his office was authorized by President Jonathan. EFCC has since revealed how a minister of defence, using an aircraft personally ferried N4.7b of the amount to Akure airport from where it was allegedly shared between Fayose, Omisore and Obanikoro. PDP stalwarts and their sympathizers such as Dokpesi, Metuh, Fani Kayode, Olu Falae and many others have since admitted receiving money from the NSA office. With these facts before Nigerians, the motive of Ekweremadu’s letter to the international community is clear-preemption. It is a survival strategy.

    But using the name of the Igbo poor in vain by those who rode on their back to power whenever they are called on to face their demons is not uncommon. And not long ago some Igbo elites facing prosecution for evasion of payment of land rent on the palaces they erected in exclusive parts of Lagos claimed they were being persecuted by Fashola’s government for criticizing his repatriation of some destitute back to their home states. That was at a period similar exercise had just been carried out among the south-eastern states. That was a time Imo State government was trying to cope with crisis of Imo indigenes repatriated from Abia State civil service while thousands of Igbo were gainfully employed in Lagos civil service and parastatals.  But some Igbo ex-governors who led the crusade against ex-governor Fashola over the repatriated few destitute were silent on the fate of thousands of poor uneducated Igbo youths who can neither read nor write that roam the streets of our major cities hawking smuggled substandard goods. They are only relevant to Igbo political elite during season of personal travails or when they want to ride on their back to power as they did in 2015 when they were railroaded to vote Jonathan who twice promised to build the second Onitsha Bridge and twice failed.

  • The good cop who lost it

    The good cop who lost it

    Many Rivers State policemen are unlikely to forget February 11,2014 . That was the day they gathered at the expansive Command Headquarters in Port Harcourt to “pull out”   a chief some of them hailed as a damn good officer and a kind man.

    In the city, there was joy that the curtain had been drawn on an era of anxiety and confusion, when the line between policing and politicking became indecipherable.

    It was a mixed farewell indeed for Mbu Joseph Mbu, the former Commissioner of Police whose tenure had the distinction of being the most controversial ever in the history of the state.

    A master of drama, he can never be caught being sober. He does not pretend to be imbued with the reflective ability of a philosopher. Nor is he capable of expounding a progressive vision of a leader who knows the delicate nature of his job – in the eyes of many who were confronted with the ambivalence of an officer loved by his men and despised by many of those he was paid to protect.

    Presumptive and cocky, he huffs and puffs like an elephant in the jungle. He is boisterous and easily excited. Not for him the finesse and refinement of an officer who is proud of his epaulettes. He is proud and excessively discourteous, always willing to pick up a quarrel, ignite a fight and slug it out like a motor park tout. Cantankerous.

    But all that have changed – courtesy of last week’s tremor that hit the police, a momentous event that passed quietly like an orphan’s birthday, except for the whimpering of some officers who alleged that they were unfairly treated. A generation of Assistant Inspectors-General of Police – 21 in all – got the push to pave the way for Acting Inspector-General  Ibrahim Idris’ ascension to the seat.

    Among them is Mbu – I am sure you remember him – who long  after dropping the rank of Commissioner of Police for Assistant Inspector-General was still widely described with his old beat as former Rivers State Commissioner of Police.

    Deliberate inexactitude? Mischief? It is neither here nor there. But Mbu’s tour of duty in Rivers State will take a long while to forget, especially by those who were at the receiving end of his belligerence.

    He got caught up in – some insisted that he actually joined willingly to feather his own nest – the bitter struggle for power between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party at the centre. Mbu would not tolerate any opposition to the PDP –led Federal Government, which was desperate to “capture” the state. When the Save Rivers Movement, a group backing then Governor Rotimi Amaechi organised a rally, Mbu sent his men to smash the gathering. When the protesters stood their ground, his men fired rubber bullets at them. Many were injured. Among them was Senator Magnus Abe, who was flown to Britain for treatment.

    When eight lawmakers in a 32-man House of Assembly launched a seditious attempt to impeach Amaechi, their hands were strengthened by the police. A fight broke out. Heads were smashed. By the time it was all over, those who failed in their nefarious bid to torpedo the governor became the complainant as the police grabbed those who foiled the bid.

    In no time, the political crisis in Rivers State dissolved into a battle over Mbu’s future. Amaechi and his sympathisers insisted that he must go. The then aspirant and now Governor Nyesom Wike led the touch-not-Mbu crowd. Rallies jammed rallies. Cudgel-for-cudgel, both sides battled to outdo each other.  The Senate deliberated on the matter and set up a committee that visited Rivers State. Mbu told them that he was just doing his job professionally.

    Then fate supervened. The tension could not be contained any longer. Mbu was moved to Abuja. He, however, remained cloaked in controversy. The leopard won’t just change its spots. He banned public rallies and dared the Bring BackOurGirls protesters campaigning for the rescue of the Chibok girls to march on the Presidential Villa. “My death threat worked,” he said gleefully after a blistering criticism of his threat.

    Nor were reporters spared of his maniacal tendencies. He invited an AIT reporter, Amaechi Anakwe (no relation of the Minister of Transportation), for describing him as “controversial”. The poor fellow was detained and charged to court even as many felt he was charitable to have described Mbu as “controversial”. He was that and more – going by his conduct – they insisted.

    As the last general elections drew close, the police – apparently in connivance with the Dr Goodluck Jonathan Villa – moved some officers round. Mbu was posted to Zone II, comprising Lagos and Ogun states. Reason: the PDP was eager to add Lagos to its shelf of trophies in an ambitious move to strengthen its vacuous claim to being Africa’s biggest party, as if size – not sense is all that matters.

    On arrival at his new posting, Mbu served notice that an interesting season was on the way. He said if a policeman was killed in the line of duty, he would ensure that 20 persons got killed in vengeance.

    Apparently in love with obfuscation, Mbu mixed up his concept of discipline with his belief in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye. He told Ogun State Command officers: “If you love this job, the number one commandment is discipline. That’s why I said ‘don’t touch my policeman’. If you shoot my policeman, I will shoot 20 of you. I will shoot a hundred of you.”

    He preached hatred and spiced it up with violence. His messages were blood curdling . “Anybody who fires you, fire back in self-defence,” Mbu told his men, adding: “But don’t fire first.”

    Mbu later claimed to have been misquoted. He said he was simply advising his men not to be cowardly but to be guided by the Force Order 28 on the use of firearms. So much for honesty and integrity.

    To many, Mbu was vaulted onto that hubristic pedestal by sheer ambition. He would have loved to become the Inspector-General of Police. In that grim encounter with the Ogun State Command officers, he spoke of “being in a critical period, a period that this (sic) all our ranks are now shaky; either you’re promoted or you retain it or you’re demoted or you’re dismissed.” “So, it’s left for you to choose which one is better for you. For me, I want to maintain my rank and I want my rank to be increased (sic). I want to go up and be at the top.”

    Poor man. Now he must have realised the futility of a blind ambition, pursued blindly and lost blindly; never to be attained. What manner of IGP would Mbu have been?

    Mbu’s transfer to Abuja did not soften his stand on Amaechi. He told the man who took over from him at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of how he, a lion, tamed the leopard of Port Harcourt. In his usually obfuscatory manner, he said: “I advise you to carry the senior officers along in your administration.” But that was not his thought as he went on to say: “It is only a lion that can tame a leopard. I tamed the leopard in Port Harcourt. Each time he remembers my face, he would remember I tamed him.”

    To Amaechi, the innuendo was as clear as daylight. Not one to run away from a fight, Amaechi replied Mbu, calling him “a puppet who completely lacks the steel and strength of a character of a lion, and is rather a shameless, corrupt puppet and toothless attack dog of a woman”. No prize for guessing who the woman puppeteer was, dear reader.

    The likes of Mbu have given room to the police being the subject of deriding jokes, such as this that once appeared on this page:   “In an effort to determine the top crime fighting agency in Nigeria, the President narrowed the field to three finalists: DSS, Army and Police. The three contenders were given the task of catching a rabbit that was released into the forest. The SSS went in, placing informants all over the place. They questioned all plants and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigation, the DSS concluded that rabbits do not exist. The army went into the forest. After two weeks without a capture, they burnt the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit. They made no apologies. The rabbit deserved it.

    “The police went into the forest. They came out two hours later with a badly beaten hyena. The hyena was yelling: `Okay, okay; I agree! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!`”

    Mbu should put all behind him and settle down to write his memoirs. Among others, he should try as he has always done to debunk the allegation that he deployed what his admirers described as his remarkable skills of a “grade one officer” in the selfish service of greedy politicians and their pompous wives. How about this for a title: “The good policeman who lost his way.”

  • ‘I will come when quilt warms my cradle’

    •(From Ajantala to prospective father)

    Forgive me for tarrying with my response. It is beautiful up here and I couldn’t bear to smear heaven’s beauty with earthly haste. Such pleasantness shouldn’t be sullied by the ugliness of earth. I am coming to earth father. I will weigh 11 pounds at birth, having stayed two extra weeks in the womb. Do not fret if I come starry-eyed, blame it on wonderment. I will come flabbergasted, aghast at the depth of your infamy, on earth.

    Even as I write this, my heart thumps precariously. My head aches with fantasies of your world. My thoughts grope with harsh, cold realities you wrote about, like cherubs wrestling mischievous sprites off the Elysian playground.

    The tone of your missive is frightening. On the flipside, it stresses and illumines the dark, crevices of earth’s wild. It enlightens me. It imposes the weirdest feelings on my infant husk and mind. Some angels I know said I am experiencing ‘earth jitters.’ They called it the burden of humankind. And that its best cured arriving stillborn – thus I could fast track my life and departure from your wild, wild world.

    As an alternative, they recommended generous doses of ‘Aiye Bitters.’ When I asked them where and when I could get the alternative bitters, they concluded that I was ready to be human. I shouldn’t be curious about ‘Aiye Bitters.’ I shouldn’t be having such feelings; having them means I am ready to be part of humankind, they said.

    Every day, I peep through blue firmament, to see the old, shimmering nothingness you call life. Green scaly moosewoods attract me, tenants of the lost Eden. Tell me, why isn’t your world as picturesque as paradise? Why do you behave strangely on earth?

    Tell me, why are your lives fouled by stress and discord? Why have you left the simple paths with no complications? Why do your people die young? I worry because very soon, your people will become my people and heaven help me if, like you, I have to “stir to strife, live in chaos and sleep one-eye open to endless threats of volatile nights.”

    At times, I trouble that your words might be true. Most times, I think you are just trying to scare me from coming. Perhaps you shirk your responsibilities to me even before I am born. How pathetic.

    Every second, earth folk arrive heavenly gates. Some make it through. Some never do. Many struggle to return almost as soon as they arrive. They say they have unfinished business. We call them wretched souls with unfinished lives. It’s their stories that fascinate me.

    Contrary to your expectations, I cannot tell you how Moshood Kashimawo Abiola died. I can’t tell who killed Dele Giwa, Bola Ige and the Igwe couple neither can I tell you who stole your N55, kulikuli and garri back when you were in high school.

    I can’t tell you what my calling will be or what role I would play for humanity. Up here, we are bound by certain confidentiality clauses. I have to honour the codes of silence.

    Like you, I ask my own questions. If you must know, I am yet to see Eledumare.

    To humour you, I will write answers to your questions on an almond nut and I will come clutching it as I arrive on earth through the moist, pink pathways of my intended vessel, your wife.

    Better still, I could cram the answers and scream it as the doctors pat me to cry but I doubt if you understand baby-speak. Tell me baba, do you speak gibberish?

    I have learnt some bits about your world, from what the earth folk often tell us. I have learnt that in your world, kids desert their parents as they grow old. They leave them to suffer till death. When they die, they spend millions throwing parties and carnivals. They say they are celebrating their parents’ lives.

    I have learnt that parents find it difficult to pay their children’s medical bills and school fees although they find it easier doling out money for aso ebi, the acquisition of new wives and other wasteful ventures.

    I have learnt that your leaders are wary of building schools; they would rather build prisons to incarcerate and destroy youth who may have turned out better had they enjoyed the right to quality education.

    I have learnt that husbands subject their wives to treatment they would never let any man mete to their daughters. They love to ruin the lives of other men’s daughters while they seek the best among men for their girls. I have learnt that wives spend their lifetime domesticating and enslaving their men by crook or diabolism, only to become monster-in-law to their prospective daughters-in-law. No woman wishes her type as wife for her son.

    I have learnt that being a good wife does not necessarily translate to being a good mother. These days, earth women fail at both, and their husbands and kids are the worse for it. When they fail as women, the society is the worse for it.

    I have learnt that money rules your world and the lack of it makes a man an aberration to his kind. I seek the noblest of roles for humanity but you have scared me from the noble callings. To be a teacher you say, is to sign an oath of poverty. To be a doctor, you warn, is to lose my conscience. To be a cop is to become an armed robber. To be a banker, you say, is to become a fraudster and to tread your journalistic path, you claim, is to commit eternal professional and emotional hara-kiri.

    I wish I could caress your ego and become a journalist but oftentimes, I have seen you flounder at the crossroads of truth and injustice. Most times, I fear you would opt for the dark side but painstakingly, you choose the path of light while you wither in want and the darkness of everlasting grief.

    These days, I can’t tell what I would do. Would you mind if I come as a politician? Rumour has it that they enjoy the best of earth spoils. Wish I could tell what becomes of them in yonder. But you need to be dead to find out. Here in heaven, they are separated from the pack. Word on the street is that they are judged very differently. Who cares though?

    Eager as I am to grace your household, I fear what fate may befall me at my arrival in your homestead. You talk of the great plague but I hear of several great plagues: HIV/AIDS, Poliomyelitis, Leukemia, Stroke, Human Ebola, Tomato Ebola, Diabetes, and so on. They say some are transferable from mother to child. Will you test mother to be sure she carries none? Would you test yourself to be sure you aren’t a vector?

    Just so you know, I would like to come when your farm swells with lush and tuberous burdens. I would like to come when quilt and satin warms my cradle. I would like to come when schools offer the best education and moral guidance. I would like to attend public school for I hear the best of earth folk attended free schools.

    Under the thick beams of our mustard tree, heavenly cherubs are clustering. I see them huddle in together, hopes alight, fire at heart. Their talk is of humanity. I hope to join them soon on the earth-journey but these days, it’s hard to be keen for mortality.

  • Food security in Nigeria

    I travelled two weeks ago to the University of Ilorin for a lecture in their Department of Political Science precisely to Masters Students in International Studies. I could not but notice the immensity of the university’s campus. It stretched beyond what the eyes can see. It reminded me what a former Israeli ambassador to Nigeria told me about the abundance of land in our country most of which lie fallow without being used. He then ruefully said how his country and the Arabs were fighting over little tracts of desert land. He added that if Israel had just Kwara State as its land, it would be able to feed the whole world.This is not an exaggeration after all four percent of the Americans who are farmers produce more than enough food to feed the whole world and to maintain a good price for their produce substantial portion of which yield are routinely destroyed. It is not only the University of Ilorin that has huge land which is hardly utilized; many of our universities are in the same league when it comes to the size of their campuses. I sometimes wonder if our people know that land is wealth. God really loves us in this country that He has endowed us with so much land ranging from mangrove to rain forest; to Savannah and Sahel; each of this zone is suitable for different agriculturaluse.

    Recently housewives in some parts of Nigeria particularly Lagos were crying about how expensive tomatoes and peppers were! And yet our land is crying for cultivation while our youth are riding motorcycles all over the country including in the villages supposedly making a living as motorcycle taxis. The question of food security in our country is assuming significant dimension. The peasant agriculture that we had been depending upon is no longer adequate and we must do something about it. We can begin by challenging all our universities both state and federal universities that have faculties of agriculture to go into commercial agriculture by turning their unused lands into commercial farms. The federal government can afford to endow each university with anything from half a billion to one billion Naira with the proviso that the money is a loan which will be deducted from their normal allocations spread over a period of five years. This way the money will not be misappropriated, misapplied or stolen. The challenge to be given to these universities would be to feed the towns where they are located by providing enough food for the people to buy. If there are a hundred universities that have agricultural faculties and feeding our people, then our country will be secure and we will be self-sufficient in yams, maize, cassava, soybeans, black eyed beans, plantains, millet, sorghum not to talk about peppers, onions,tomatoes and all kinds of fruits that our tropical climate is suitable for. Our universities with faculties of engineering would be challenged to produce appropriate technology to add value to what would be produced by these commercial farms. We will then do away with graduates of agriculture looking for jobs in the banks and engineering graduates riding okada.

    I know some people may say this cannot be done or that it cannot work because it has not be done somewhere before. Why don’t we do it and make it work so that people can come to learn from us for once? Why are we always learning from others without contributing to the quantum of knowledge? What I have suggested here may not fall within the parameters of economic orthodoxy. But who cares. If it works we would be better for it.

    What better time to try all kinds of strategies just to get this country out of dependency on oil and gas and the blackmail we are being subjected to by the insatiable demands of those claiming  the right of ownership to these wasting assets. The only way our country will develop is through industrialization and agriculture. We must be able to add value to our produce. We must not only be able to feed ourselves we must also be able to export our agricultural produce after adding value to them. Land is such a valuable asset. We must not just allow it to lie fallow without exploitation.

    I remember as a child in primary school we had school farms. We grew yams, maize and groundnuts. At Christ School Ado–Ekiti, we had farms growing yams maize and groundnuts and we had young farmers club which even had apiggery. This is why I do not understand why our faculties of agriculture are merely producing theoretical farmers without huge experimental farms to inculcate practical agriculture into the lives of these students. The time to try new ideas hascome. I remember as a young professor in Canada, some of my students were young people living on the farms with their parents and just hungry for education so that they would know what was going on in the world. I have a dream that one day farming will be so lucrative that after a good degree in the humanities, people will go back to the farm to make a living out of mechanized agriculture not the hoe and cutlass  type invented by our great grandfathers centuries ago which we have not improved upon as if we are brain dead.

  • Why Nigeria is failing – 1

    More than a few times, I have said in my university class lectures, and in public speeches, that America is not merely the greatest country in the world but the greatest country in the history of the world. I say it now again. America is simply an incredible country. America is great because America’s systems work. And America’s systems work because Americans are phenomenally loyal to the systems of their country.

    I have taught courses on the American Idea in various American universities. Yet, one frozen winter morning not long ago, as I drove in my car and listened to an interview on my car radio about an American public institution, I was still simply awed. The interviewer was asking questions from an author who had just written a book on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – the highest police and secret service institution in America, the equivalent of the Federal Police and Secret Service in my country Nigeria. To listen to that interview about the FBI is to listen to the best expert lesson on how to make a country work – how to make a country stable – how to make a country prosper. For me as a Nigerian the message was clear.  My country does not work because my country’s systems do not work.  It is almost impossible to find a Nigerian public servant who believes that the public system he works for was really meant to do the task it was designed and created for. We Nigerians simply do not have any aorta of concept or consciousness of systems loyalty or systems integrity.

    The author who was being interviewed told this story at one point: An American president was being investigated once for some alleged wrong doing. As part of the investigation, two FBI agents went to the White House with authorization to collect forensic evidence (in form of blood) from the president’s person. The president had no choice. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and let the FBI agents pull the blood from his arm and go their way!  Think of it:  The president of America is the most powerful man in the entire world. Shouldn’t he be above that kind of thing? In America, the answer is NO. The American president is the most powerful person on earth, but he is the servant of the American system that is more powerful than any person in America!

    The voice of the lady interviewer in that radio interview was quivering as she asked, “Are you then saying that it is impossible for anybody, no matter how high in office, to hide any misdeed done in the American government?” The author answered, “Well, it is virtually impossible for any public office holder to hide anything, or to get away with any misdeed, in America’s government, federal, state or local. Somehow or other, the truth will come out. Someone will do his duty and reveal the truth. And then the justice system will go into action.”

    Can we Nigerians imagine that? Can we imagine a country in which even the highest public officers cannot easily hide, or get away with, any shady act they do in the government? Our Nigeria is a country in which loads of crooked deeds are perpetrated, hidden, and gotten away with, hour by hour, in our practice of governance.

    But in America, it cannot be done; nobody can do it. The integrity of the system – the readiness of the people to uphold the system – always wins in the end. The justice system is more powerful than any person in America, no matter his or her office or popularity. There is no shrine in America that the FBI, or even the lowest local police, cannot enter. And trying to bribe one’s way out of an FBI investigation, or even out of a local police investigation, is literally like trying to commit suicide.

    Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that Americans, or rulers of America, are above corruption, crookedness, criminal behaviour.  Not at all. Human beings are human beings everywhere in the world.  In the government of any country, there are many individuals who can act illegally or criminally, and who can take advantage of their positions to appropriate some things improperly to themselves or their families or friends.

    The difference always is in the integrity of the system – in how much support the system enjoys among its people to maintain integrity; how each person employed to work in the system will, on the aggregate, do his or her little job in it; how, ultimately, the general citizenry, on the aggregate, has been conditioned by history and culture to view and regard the system.

    Of course, people do all sorts of inappropriate things, illegal things, crooked things, criminal things, in the portals of America’s government. The beauty of the American experience in this matter is that most, or at least a good many, of such people will find the justice system coming after them and will be made to suffer the punishment they deserve.

    For instance, it does not look odd to Americans when their country’s Attorney General, who is appointed by the President, institutes some criminal investigation against the president that appointed him.  I was a young visiting professor in an American university when President Nixon was facing investigation in the Watergate allegations in the early 1970s.  I saw a lot of things that would be inconceivable in my country. For instance, a Special Investigator appointed by the Attorney General was digging up lots of evidence that could destroy the President; the President told the Attorney General to fire the Special Investigator; and the Attorney General refused to fire him.  And in the end, it was the president’s own Chief of Staff that advised him that the game was up – as a result of which the President offered his resignation.

    I have seen the American justice system tear a Vice President apart because of allegations that he had evaded taxes years before, when he had served as governor in his state. I have seen them pursue him relentlessly until he gave up the job of Vice President.

    Like most Africans of my time, I loved President Clinton during his presidency.  Therefore, I watched every minute, every twist and turn, of his travail at the hands of the justice system during the investigations of his alleged misdeeds with Monica Lewinsky. I was unhappy about what my friend was suffering, but I loved and respected the awesome majesty of the system.

    In America, I have seen many state governors facing criminal investigations, I have seen many forced to resign from office, and I have seen some arraigned before criminal courts or sent to jail.  I have avidly followed the cases of many erring members of Congress, many Senators, as the American justice system has dealt with them.  I have seen many popular and powerful members of Congress or Senate, when the justice system steps into their lives, lose the support of their once adoring colleagues.  I have seen many city mayors wriggling in the hands of the justice system, and I have seen quite a few go to jail.

    That is the American way. Nobody is above the law in America. And that is one secret behind America’s stability, strength and success.

    And, let’s face it; no country can succeed without having systems that have integrity – systems that work as they were designed to work – systems whose integrity enjoys the loyalty of its people.  In spite of Nigeria’s many other weaknesses, if we had made it a high priority from the beginning to make our systems work, we might have given our country a fair shot at stability and success.

    We Nigerians generally attach little or no importance to giving integrity to our systems, and that is a major reason why our country has fallen into ruins in our hands. In our country, corruption of all kinds and sizes, even criminal actions as big as murders, have become part of the privileges of men and women in high places.  Just see what our public officials are capable of doing today to stall the ongoing war against corruption. See how accused public officials easily get the support of their colleagues in office, or the support of their political parties, or bribe important functionaries of government for support – and thereby avoid punishment for their crimes against our country. Given all these, what chances of survival and success does Nigeria have in the world?

  • Shared fate

    For Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, these are not the best of times. The duo have been going through a rough patch since they became leaders of the eighth Senate through what some consider to be unfair means. They were said to have forged the Senate Rules to facilitate their coming to office on June 9, last year. Saraki and Ekweremadu do not belong to the same party. Saraki is of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); Ekweremadu belongs to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    As the majority party, APC has the prerogative of filling the principal offices of Senate president and deputy Senate president. Acting under the principle that the party is supreme, the APC leadership settled for Senator Ahmad Lawan from Yobe State as its candidate for Senate president and asked its members to support him. Some members kicked, saying the party could not decide who their leader should be in the Senate since it is not made up of APC loyalists alone. As presently constituted, APC has 57 members in the Senate, PDP, 45 and Labour Party (LP), one; six seats are vacant. Then, it was APC, 59 and PDP, 49 because of the death of APC’s Senator-elect Khalifa Ahmed Zanna from Borno State..

    Among those who kicked against the party’s position was Saraki, who was also interested in the Senate presidency. His supporters went all out to campaign for him and castigated the party for meddling in what they called the Senate’s internal affairs. The APC insisted on Lawan despite the antics of the Saraki loyalists. To break the logjam, President Muhammadu Buhari invited the APC senators to a meeting at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja on June 9, the day he had fixed for the proclamation of the National Assembly. By now, there was a split in the rank of APC senators, with the creation of two opposing camps – the Unity Forum and the Like Minds.

    Lawan’s supporters are in the Unity Forum; those for Saraki belong to the Like Minds. The Unity Forum members went for the meeting, which eventually did not hold; their Like Minds counterparts, who seemed to be aware that the Senate will be inaugurated that day in accordance with the president’s letter to the Clerk of the National Assembly, were on the floor of the chamber in full force. They came prepared for the election of the Senate president and his deputy. Armed with the supposedly amended Senate Rules, which allow the  inauguration of the Senate without its full complement of members, the clerk proceeded with his job and called for nominations for the post of Senate president. Saraki was nominated unopposed, while Lawan and his loyalists watched the proceedings on television dumbfounded from the ICC.

    APC’s Ali Ndume vied for the deputy Senate presidency with Ekweremadu. With the PDP members outnumbering their APC colleagues at that sitting, Ekweremadu won hands down. The truth is God saved APC from losing the Senate presidency too. If PDP had contested the position with APC, it might have won because it had the number to carry the day, but it refrained from the race because of what some political pundits described as the understanding it had with Saraki, who was a member of the party before he defected to APC. Since then Saraki and Ekweremadu have become conjoined politically. With their shared destinies, they have been facing good and bad times together since June 9, 2015.

    Reason: the Senate Rules under which they became presiding officers are said to have been forged. Who forged the rules? This is the puzzle Justice Yusuf Haliru of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court is to unravel in the trial of Saraki, Ekweremadu, former Clerk of the Senate Salihu Abubakar Maikasuwa and Deputy Clerk Benedict Efeturi. They appeared in court last Monday and were granted bail. Their trial begins on July 11. Beyond the trial is what Saraki and Ekweremadu said after their arraignment last Monday. Saraki believes that he is being persecuted by the Presidency, which he claims ‘’is distracting the nation with its inability to move beyond a leadership election among Senate peers’’.

    Accusing Attorney-General Abubakar Malami of filing trumped up charges against them, Saraki asked : ‘’How does this promote public interest and benefit the nation…however, what has become clear is that there is now a government within the government of President Buhari which has seized the apparatus of executive powers to pursue its nefarious agenda. This latest onslaught against the legislature represents a clear and present danger to the democracy Nigerians fought hard to win and preserve’’. Not to be outdone, Ekweremadu said it ‘’is democracy and not the defendants that is on a ridiculous trial’’.

    He went on : ‘’This grotesque display of vindictiveness, arrogance and mindless targeting of innocent citizens should find no sanctuary in our democracy’’. Replying Saraki, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said his ‘’allegation is not worth the paper on which it is written as anybody can wake from a troubled sleep and say anything…pretending to carry an imaginary cross is mere obfuscation, if, indeed, a criminal act has been committed. But we leave the courts to judge’’.

    Yes, the ball is in Justice Haliru’s court and milord has promised to dispense justice without fear or favour, affection or ill will. Saraki and Ekweremadu too should concentrate on defending themselves instead of making incendiary statements. What will it profit them if through their statements they heat up the polity? A clear conscience has nothing to fear. The law presumes that they are innocent until otherwise proven. The onus is on the prosecution to prove its allegation that the Senate Rules were forged. If, indeed, they were forged, who did it? This is the trillion naira question, which no amount of political chicanery can answer. Only evidence, credible evidence, at that, can answer the question.

    No matter how much the attorney-general may hate their faces, assuming that is the case, he cannot get them convicted without proving his case beyond reasonable doubt. The nation is watching how the case will go because it is the number three citizen that is being tried not just anybody that was randomly picked off the street for an offence he did not commit. Will this case sink Saraki and Ekweremadu or will they swim out of it?