The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Will presidential election be decided by hate campaign?

    Will presidential election be decided by hate campaign?

    For nearly three months now, the two main contending parties in the presidential election, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party, and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party at the centre, have been seriously engaged in vigorous electoral campaigns for support in the forthcoming presidential election. There is a lot at stake for both parties and a hard fought and robust election campaign is an essential part of the democratic process. The electoral situation is more fluid today than ever before. Marginal votes are likely to be significant and these can swing the election one way or the other between the two main contending parties. Despite this, the public still expects that the election campaign should be conducted in a civilised and civil manner, with the main focus being placed on the critical political and economic issues of the day.

    Sadly, this is not the case now as this is increasingly looking more like a rancorous, hateful and divisive campaign, instead of one with the real focus on the critical issues of the day. It is perfectly understandable that the two main contending parties, the PDP and the APC, should engage themselves in a robust manner in the election campaign. But this is no justification for the resort to the kind of foul language the public is being treated to in the course of this electoral campaign. All decent persons must find this development reprehensible. We have been having elections in Nigeria long before independence in 1960 and after. But I cannot recall previous election campaigns in Nigeria that have generated such hateful and indecorous language as this one. Nigeria’s four pre-independence leaders, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Sardauna, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, refrained during election campaigns from calling one another names, or heaping insults and vile attacks on their political opponents. The political rivalry among them was very intense, but they deliberately refrained from personal attacks on one another. Whatever their political differences, they were decent men and conducted themselves decorously. Only during the disgraceful era of Akintola/Fani-Kayode’s dirty politics were the electorate and the Nigerian public treated to such scurrilous and foul attacks on their political opponents as we now have it.

    In this current campaign climate of hate, and resort to ethnic and religious divides, the PDP, the ruling party, has been guiltier than any of its political opponents. Shopworn lies are constantly being concocted, fabricated and peddled by some of the party’s roughnecks, veterans of street fighting and, beerhouse brawls.  Femi Fani-Kayode, head of the PDP publicity in the elections who like his deceased father, Remi Fani-Kayode, is a Cambridge educated lawyer, has constantly hauled personal attacks and insults on General Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate. He is certainly not a proud product of Cambridge, that genteel and sedate university. President Goodluck Jonathan has not yet disassociated himself from this hateful campaign. In fact, he seems to encourage it.

    Femi Fani-Kayode claimed falsely that Buhari did not have the school certificate, the basic requirement for contesting the elections. When he was proved wrong, he came up with other incredible lies regarding Buhari’s Chatham House lecture, which were equally debunked. More recently, he claimed that the fuel crisis in the country was the handiwork of the APC, the main opposition party. Again, his allegation proved to be false as the crisis was due to the refusal of the oil marketers, who were being owed money by the PDP Federal Government to import refined oil. Femi Fani-Kayode has neither admitted his mistake in this regard, nor apologised to the nation for his misleading remarks. Governor Ayo Fayose has been equally totally unrestrained in his verbal attacks on General Buhari, going as far as to warn that if he won Buhari would die in office. This is most uncharitable and has been roundly condemned in the country. It is a real pity that Jonathan has chosen these indecorous propagandists to lead his campaign. They have done his campaign more harm than good. But what else should we expect when President Jonathan himself irreverently dismissed former President Olusegun Obasanjo as ‘a motor park tout’. How can he then call his men to order?

    In contrast to the desperate campaign of the PDP, the opposition party, the APC, has been more restrained in its approach to the electoral campaign. It has conducted a brilliant, skilful and impressive electoral campaign that has fully exploited the weakness of the PDP Federal Government. It has refused to be drawn into personal attacks on President Jonathan, Buhari’s opponent in the election. Instead, it has identified the main issues on which the elections should really be fought, namely massive corruption in the PDP Federal Government, colossal mismanagement of the national economy, Nigeria’s woeful infrastructure, the increasingly violent Boko Haram insurgency that has led to thousands of death in Nigeria, the vast number of the internally-displaced refuges in our country and Jonathan’s Abuja land grab.

    To some extent, ensuing economic and political events have also been broadly favourable to the APC. The falling oil prices, the 30 per cent devaluation of the naira, the continuing dispute over how much money exactly is missing from the national accounts, and the inability of the PDP Federal Government to maintain security, law and order in the country have all contributed to the growing unpopularity of the PDP in the country. The APC has wisely anchored its campaign on the inherent incompetence and inability of the PDP to run a clean, honest, transparent and effective government in the country. Its poor record on employment, creation of jobs, reduction of poverty level in the country has been its Achilles heel. The Nigerian economy may be the largest in Africa. But Nigeria, under this PDP government, has one of the lowest par capita incomes in Africa. Evidently, the man in the street is mystified that the country is so rich but that its people are so poor, and that there is still such mass poverty in the middle of such opulence in the country.

    The resort to vile language and personal insults by agents of the PDP shows quite clearly that its campaign has no real merit and that the party cannot defend its appalling record in office. Vast sums of money, most of it public funds, illicitly acquired, are being expended by the party to bribe the churches, the mosques, and the traditional rulers. But it is doubtful, given the structure of Nigerian politics, that this will have any effect on the electoral fortunes of the party in the March elections. In the case of Afenifere that has so shamelessly and so strangely declared its support for President Jonathan, its support is worth little or nothing to the PDP. Afenifere is no longer the formidable political organisation or movement that it once was. None of its present leaders can win elections in the Southwest. They have become irrelevant in the politics of the Southwest where their political influence has fallen considerably. Equally, the traditional rulers in the Southwest that President Jonathan has been trying desperately to woo have little or no influence on the electorate in the region. Even in Ife, the Ooni, the leader of the pack, has little or no political influence now. So trying to bribe the Obas is a waste of money, time and effort. They cannot deliver the votes Jonathan needs to win the elections, if they are free and fair.

    Instead of focusing its attention on the real issues of the elections and defending its record in office, the PDP has been trying desperately to scuttle it. First, it fraudulently procured a shift in the date of the elections. Then it rejected the use of the voters’ card reader for which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was provided by the PDP Federal Government with the necessary funds. Then its leading spokesmen, particularly Chief Edwin Clark, the self-acclaimed ‘god father’ of President Jonathan, attacked Professor  Attahiru Jega, the fair-minded chairman of INEC, demanding his premature suspension from office. Altogether, the PDP has run a negative electoral campaign, which is counterproductive. It has alienated quite a lot of the few uncommitted voters and will not secure for Jonathan the marginal votes he needs to win the election.

    It must be said to the credit of Buhari that he has stood above the petty electioneering of the PDP propagandists. He has looked more confident, charismatic and presidential than Jonathan, his main opponent. He has refused to be drawn into any negative campaign, preferring instead to focus on the main issues of the day. He has his own faults too, but on the basis of his campaign strategy and his steady and unwavering commitment to defining the real issues of the elections, many consider him to be a far better candidate than Jonathan. He deserves to win the presidential election.

  • Jonathan, Mark and their whiz kid Ministers

    Absence of governance in an election year is not unique to Nigeria. It is a feature of all participatory liberal democracies where elections are held periodically to determine the fate of political office holders, legitimise or delegitimize their authority. Our own Problem is that there has hardly been any form of governance since the coming of President Jonathan in 2011. This is largely due to Jonathan’s leadership style which can at best be described as ‘delegation by abdication’ which was not helped by the intra party feuds which threw his ruling PDP into disarray. This has led to a situation where when the president is not setting up committees to escape taking difficult decisions, he allows his ministers to operate without restraint.

    Thus we have a Ministry of Petroleum where an estimated 400,000 barrels of fuel are stolen daily in spite of amnesty programme and the empowerment of the leadership of the militant groups through multibillion dollar contracts and where unilateral action of its minister led to the nation’s loss of about N1.6 trillion. In the office of the Minister of Finance there has been evidence of gross abuse of government policy on import duty wavers. While the customs records for instance showed N1.4 trillion as the value of wavers granted over a period of three years the figure posted by the minister’s office was a paltry N171 billion. Similarly the minister of power insists power generation has improved despite the fact that we today generate 3,479.55MW after an injection of $8.26b. Four years on, the figure falls below the 4,747MW President Jonathan promised he would achieve by December 2011.

    And because ministers are on their own, it took the return of long queues of motorists searching for fuel to power their homes and run their cars for the minister of finance to remember her ministry needed to pay fuel importers some N260b  following the devaluation of naira. The minister of works who also operates on his own claims 25,000 kilometer of roads have been constructed in the last four years, a wild claim that prompted the  governor of Lagos to remind PDP that the distance between Nigeria and London is 5000 kilometres. It is for the same reason the president and his wife were embarrassed by ministry of Internal Affairs government that was unable to confirm whether indeed close to 300 girls were abducted from their dormitories by insurgents. Ten months on, they still don’t know where the girls are.

    Tragically the president instead of addressing the absence of governance, an issue raised even by the international community, he has often chosen to play on the intelligence of Nigerians by trying to equate the pursuit of his interest with the well being of Nigerians. Just some four weeks back, some elders statesmen and ethnic irredentist, behaving like Motor Park touts (apology to President Jonathan) at the behest of government facing a possible defeat at the poles threatened violence if the dates for the elections were not shifted forward. No sooner that was achieved than the president’s men erected new road blocks aimed at buying time for the president. Last week, precisely on the 16 February, the president, a master of political subterfuge, rushed the names of Patricia Akwashiki (Nasarawa), Nicholas Akise Ada (Benue), Augustine Okwudiri Akobundu, Fidelis Nwankwo (Ebonyi), Hauwa’u Lawan (Jigawa), Kenneth Kobani (Rivers) and Joel Danlami Ikenya (Taraba).and Musliu Obanikoro, a former junior minister in the ministry of defence.to the senate for confirmation as ministers.

    Suddenly a government that was not in a hurry to fill the then vacant defence  portfolio for several months  despite the raging Boko Haram insurgency war, a Jonathan government that failed to appoint a substantive minister for the all important ministry of education despite the crisis that kept universities and polytechnics closed for about a year while the supervising junior minister Nyeson Wike  spent his time  fighting the president was back in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital where he swore to ensure governor Rotimi Amaechi, the presidents political rival did not sleep with his two eyes closed, now wants the senate to confirm 8 ministers  when the life of this administration technically ends in two weeks time. Many are bound to agree that the whole exercise is driven by the desire to serve self rather than Nigerians.

    Obanikoro’s nomination  in fact tends to validate the thesis of critics who argue President Jonathan will hardly ‘invite anyone to come and chop’{ apology to late Sunday Afolabi, Obasanjo’s minister of internal affairs} if such a person will not enhance his hold on power. Obanikoro during his first tour of duty as a junior minister of defence served President Jonathan instead of serving Nigeria. He never for once visited the war ravaged north eastern Nigeria. He instead deployed all his talents towards the pacification of Yoruba land.  In Lagos state, Governor Fashola, a governor not known for frivolities publicly accused Musiliu Obanikoro of bringing soldiers to physically stop ongoing public housing projects.  In Ilaje ESE odo of Ondo state, he was similarly accused of bringing soldiers to intimidate his party’s opponents during a bi-election to fill a vacant house of assembly seat. His outing in Ekiti was no less scandalous. He was in the company of Jelli Adesiyan the police affairs minister, Iyiola Omisore, a controversial politician from Oshun, Ayo fayose, an impeached former governor who was then a PDP candidate and Andy Uba a self confessed election master rigger from Anambra {He had at the onset of the forth republic, kidnapped governor Ngige in a broad day light, locked him up like a common criminal, and demanded his resignation claiming it was he who rigged Ngide into office.}They jointly discussed how to rig the election before proceeding to arrest and detain leading opposition leaders on the eve of the election.

    He played a similar despicable role during the Oshun election. Puffing and huffing, he told Journalist during a press conference organized by PDP that he was in Oshogbo to reenact the Ekiti experiment. He is perhaps now desperately needed in government to complete his unfinished work of pacification of Yoruba land. He will now be in good company of pa Olanihun Ajayis, the Okunrounmus, Ayo Adebanjos, Olu Falaes and their newly crowned “Yoruba Leaders”, Ayo Fayose and Olusegun Mimiko who now say there is no alternative to a president Jonathan, who has nothing but contempt for the Yoruba on whose back he rode to power in 2011

    The response of the Senate which many Nigerians consider an extension of the executive and an ‘upper house of deals’ is no less scandalous. In spite of Obanikoro’s controversial past, a pending case against him the courts and two different petitions against his appointment, David Mark wanted him confirmed without questioning. But then what does one expects from a David Mark’s Senate whose members are said to be the highest paid in the world. In a nation where the minimum wage is N18,000 per month, our senators are said to earn about $2m compared to an annual senators pay of $174,000 in the US, $105,000 of Japan, $149,700 of Germany$74,000 of Kenya and $46,000 of Ghana. Although the senators have not been forthcoming on what they earn but the proposed budget for the next senate has finally settled that. It for instance makes provision for each senator to collect. N4, 052,800m for accommodation, N6, 079,200 for furniture, N8, 105,600 as car loan.etc. As The Nation Newspaper editorial put it last Sunday “In all, the 107 senators would get N433,649,600 for accommodation, N650,474,400 for furniture allowance and N867,299,200 as vehicle loans. It is annoying that the lawmakers’ proclivity for extravagance has continued unabated since the beginning of this dispensation”

    Sadly Nigerians derive little joy from their world most expensive senators who draw wardrobe allowance from tax payers sweat while police men buy their own uniforms. A senate that is truly serving Nigeria would have asked president Jonathan to reserve his newly discovered whiz kid ministers until after the election that comes up in about two weeks.

  • Professor Ayankanmi Ayandele: A Tribute

    I was visiting one of the universities in the Atlanta Metro area in summer of 2014 when I heard through a newsletter from the Nigerian academy of letters that Professor Ayankanmi Ayandele passed on sometimes in June, 2014. Needless to say I was shocked and somehow bewildered as to how such a great man can pass on unsung by the academia in particular and the polity in general.

    Professor Ayandele was born in Ogbomosho some 79 years ago. From his name, it can be deduced that he descended from a family of drummers. Drummers in Yorubaland historically were quite knowledgeable about the society and somehow knew not only the history of kingdoms but also the cognomen of most people. His ancestors must have influenced him in the way he developed his mental ability for retention of the details of development in his environment. He was educated in one of the Baptist schools in Oyo State before going to the then Nigerian College of Arts and Science in Ibadan which was a kind of preparatory intermediate school for entrance into Ibadan, the only university in colonial Nigeria. It was from here that he entered the University of Ibadan and majored in History. From the University of Ibadan he went to the University of London as a postgraduate student and earned the PhD in History in1964 and immediately returned to the University of Ibadan and went through the various stages of a normal academic career. And by 1972 he was not only a professor but the founding principal of the Jos campus of the University of Ibadan. This was a campus that was set up in response to the demand of the people of the then Benue-Plateau state who wanted their own university distinct from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria whose staff and student population was largely dominated by the majority group of the Hausa-Fulani in northern Nigeria. The existence of the University of Ibadan Jos campus was therefore largely resented by the powers that be in northern Nigeria but through the efforts of the then governor, commissioner of police, J.D Gomwalk who was a science graduate of the University of Ibadan before joining the police and the support of the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon who was from the Plateau, the college took off in 1971. Professor Ayandele provided the dynamic leadership for this college which was located in abandoned warehouses belonging to some tin-mining companies; Professor Ayandele worked tirelessly to make the college a reality and lived a spartan life somewhere among the Naraguta people on Bauchi road in the outskirts of Jos metropolis.

    I joined this college in 1972 and I headed the History unit and my other colleague now Professor Joseph Inikori now of Rochester University was assistant lecturer pending the completion of his PhD in Ibadan. Most of us who worked with Professor Ayandele were Lecturer grade II and Assistant lecturers in departments such as English, History, various Sciences, Geography, Islamic and Arabic studies. He, as a Professor towered above every one of us. I had the privilege of representing the college in the senate at the main campus at Ibadan.

    The country then was peaceful and Professor Ayandele sometimes drove all the way from Jos to Ibadan and back if the weather was not good for flying; I also did the same. On a personal note, I lost two children through premature birth which brought untold suffering to my wife and myself because of poor medical services in Jos. But inspite of these personal losses, as a young family, my late wife and myself had a great time, planting roses, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes and other sub-tropical fruits that only the Jos area can grow. We lived in modest shoddily built bungalows along Bauchi road built by contractors who came from the then Mid-West state apparently on recommendation from the then Colonel Ogbemudia who was a bosom friend of Governor J.D. Gomwalk of Benue-Plateau state. I remember being visited by thieves who came to rob us of the few belongings we had in our fragile homes. We found listening ears to our complaints in Professor Ayandele who made us believe that we were rendering patriotic service. We had good relationship with our students some of whom became friends because we were just a few years older than them; some of these students included Professor Sonny Tyoden who became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos some years later. Another student that I remember is John Nwodo who later became a minister under Shagari and later under Abdul-salami Abubakar.

    Professor Ayandele left Jos in 1975 when the Ibadan Jos campus was upgraded to a federal university and professor Unuaguluchi became its first Vice-Chancellor. I had left the University for University of Lagos in 1974 because of the need for proper medical attention for my wife. Professor Ayandele’s sterling performance did not go unnoticed by the federal government which rewarded him with appointment as the foundation Vice Chancellor of the newly established University of Calabar and remained so up till 1982. He was the one who built the university from scratch and to the level of a comprehensive university with all the major disciplines of Medicine, Engineering, Law, the Sciences, Education, Social science and Liberal Arts. He took the job of building the university as a personal challenge. He breathed and lived the university every moment of the time he spent on the job. He visited Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States several times to see to the recruitment of staff and building a library worthy of a university. I had the opportunity to serve him between 1978 and 1982 when I was respectively director of the national universities commission’s offices in Ottawa Canada and Washington DC, United States respectively and also when he came to Howard University between 1981 and 1982 on sabbatical leave. He was so engrossed with the building of the University of Calabar that he brooked no opposition from the local people whom he arrogantly dismissed as “an atomistic society perpetually at war with itself”. This earned him a lot of opposition from the then Cross-river state whose people were known for the mutual antagonism between the Ibibios and Anangs, the Efik and Efuts and others which Professor Ayandele apparently could not understand but he meant well and left an enduring legacy in the solid foundation which he laid for the University of Calabar. When he left the University of Calabar, he served as regional director in UNESCO office in Dakar, Senegal as a form of self exile and from there he returned home to Ibadan where he lived almost isolated from others in his private home, only coming out to give lectures if and when invited by various learned societies.

    • To be continued.

  • The ides of March

    By now, we would have known the results of the elections – if they had held as scheduled on February 14 and 28. But, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was left with no choice than to postpone the polls till March 28 and April 11 after being ‘’advised’’ that the military requires six weeks to run Boko Haram out of Sambisa Forest.

    Since then, the polity has been  heated up by people with hidden agenda. These people do not want the elections to hold and they are doing everything to throw a spanner into INEC’s works.

    These conspirators are no doubt acting a script because in the first place there was really no need to shift the elections. Now that the polls have been shifted, they are still not satisfied. What do they want? They do not want the elections to hold, at least for now, until they are sure that their candidate will win.

    They want to go, to borrow  the words of former President Olusegun Obasanjo,  the Laurent Gbagbo way. Gbagbo was the Ivorian president who refused to conduct election until, so he thought, he was sure of winning. He was goaded by his wife, Simone – who was sentenced to 20 years in jail for post-election violence on Tuesday- to hold on until the time was auspicious for him to hold the election and win. When the result turned out otherwise, she prevailed on him not to hand over. The couple then holed up in government house, which they saw as  their personal fiefdom, while fighting raged all over their country.

    Obasanjo was right in drawing a parallel between what happened in Ivory Coast  and what we are experiencing in our country today.

    The president’s men think that by beating the drums of  war louder and harder, the more they would be  drawing  attention to themselves as working for him. In this critical month of March, which over the centuries, has witnessed a lot of political upheavals worldwide, they should know that it is better to err on the side of caution than be seen talking rabidly.

    From Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose to his Ondo State counterpart Olusegun Mimiko,  Femi Fani-Kayode, Doyin Okupe, Mike Omeri and their ilk, it is as if Nigeria is at war.

    These people have declared war on All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Gen Muhammadu Buhari, calling him names and maligning him. Yes, Buhari was a military head of state, just as  Gen David Mark, who is today the Senate President, was a military governor and minister. As a minister under the Babangida regime, Mark made the famous statement that telephone was not for the common man, but has that stopped him from being in politics?

    So, why should Fayose, Mimiko and Fani-Kayode and others in their group  use the actions Buhari took while  in office as military head of state against him today because he is contesting an election against their principal? The 1983 coup against President Shehu Shagari was not solely executed by Buhari, so why is he being crucified for it? As military head of state, what did Fani-Kayode and co., expect him to do? To keep quiet in the face of what his regime met on ground after Shagari’s ouster? Have they forgotten that it was the public’s cry that led to the  coup? After the coup, didn’t the people troop out  rejoicing?

    You see, it is easy to forget these things when partisan politics is involved. Today, it suits some people to paint Buhari black. But if his administration had succeeded in bringing back the late Umaru Dikko in a crate from London in 1984, they would have hailed him as the people’s leader. Why? Because the public believed that the late Dikko, sorry to say this of the dead, was the villain in the Shagari administration. This election is a straight contest between Jonathan and Buhari and on the streets today, the people are rooting for the general.

    Just four years ago, it was not like this. Jonathan rode on the crest of public goodwill to power in 2011 that the same Buhari, who is now giving him goose pimples, had no chance against him in that year’s election. Surely, he cannot be thinking of repeating the 2011 feat in 2015 because the people are disenchanted with him.

    We must watch Jonathan’s men during the forthcoming elections because they would do anything to ensure that he retains power. These conspirators should not be allowed to kill our dream of a better Nigeria under a purposeful leader just as Cassius, Brutus and others killed Caesar out of envy in Rome hundreds of  years ago. We must be vigilant to ensure that the people’s will prevails in the March 28 election because if we go to sleep, these people will stab us in the back.

    A General’s parting shot

    Lieutenant-General Martin Luther Agwai is more of a reserved soldier than the garrulous type. He does not talk much, but whenever he does heads must turn because he says it as it is. That is what is expected of an officer and a gentleman. A General must not only be a general in words, but also in deeds. Gen Agwai has proved times without number that he is a General’s general. He proved his mettle as Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff as well as head of the African Union Force in Darfur, Sudan. So, with such intimidating credentials, Gen Agwai will be doing himself and all he stands for no good if he cannot look power in the face and speak truth to it. After being army and defence chiefs, what else does he want in life than to be grateful to God for all He has done for him.

    His appointment as Chairman of Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) last year was icing on the cake for him. It is not that he needed the job as such. So, by relieving him of the job on Tuesday, President Goodluck Jonathan only did him a world of good. But the president has  shown us the kind of leader he is  – one who does not brook criticisms, especially from his appointees. His action does not remove anything from Gen Agwai’s warning to the military not to allow itself to be used by politicians during the forthcoming elections. Did he talk too much? To the president, he did, but to Nigerians, he spoke the plain truth and that remains his parting shot.

  • Another of Nigeria’s deadly diseases

    I refrain usually from commenting on matters touching the employments and careers of highly placed professionals employedin the public service anywhere. My reason for that is that, having lived many decades of my life (since 1966)as lecturer and professor in universities in Nigeria and abroad, I can see, at any time, a broad spread professionals who had once been (or might have been) students of mine, in the public services of various countries and international agencies – in particular of my own country, Nigeria. For me, such persons are family. If I ever intervene in matters concerning their employment experience, it is only to commend or recommend them; I hesitate to raise issues that can tend to make them uncomfortable or make them wonder about the support of their former teacher.

    It is with utmost reluctance therefore that, in this column today, I raise issues of fairness concerning the recent employment experiences of two highly placedNigerian public servants, both of whom I regard as family in the sense explained by me above.   My comments here are really not about the two persons concerned – the two are commendably highly educated and experienced citizens of our country. It is about the awful quality of governance in Nigeria – about the use of inexplicably unfair considerations in the manning of our public service, and about the insensitive hurting of many of our own citizens because(and only because) of the place or nationality of their origin in Nigeria. For all Nigerians, the story below is a story to ponder.

    Furthermore, and most importantly, at this point when we Nigerians are about to elect or re-elect a president, a matter like this deserves to be put respectfully before us all. In this column last week, I called on certain highly revered leaders of the Southwest who are now being very supportive of President Jonathan’s re-election bid, and urged them to show us, the people of their Southwest, that they have obtained from President Jonathan satisfactory assurances that the Southwest, and the citizens of the Southwest, will henceforth get their fair place in a further Jonathan presidential term, and that the citizens of the Southwestwill not, for any reason, continue to be subjected to the marginalization and unfairness that they have suffered in the Jonathan presidency until now. I now recommend for these revered fathers a consideration of the information contained in this column today.

    Finally, I need to add that today’s column is not about supporting or opposing anypolitical party or anyelectoral candidate. It is about proper management of our country, about inculcating a tradition of fairness into the peaks of our country’s corporate life, about nurturing a spirit of common acceptance of all by all on a reasonably plain Nigerian field, and about using positions of power in our country to promote a spirit of harmony among our many different peoples.

    The Basic Story

    LamidoSanusi, the official who had served as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for many years, had to give up that position suddenly in February 2014. President Jonathan immediately appointed LamidoSanusi’s Deputy Governor, a woman named Sarah Alade (Dr. Mrs. Sarah OmotundeAlade) to the position of Governor of CBN. But on June 3, 2014 (less than five months later) President Jonathan pushed Dr. Sarah Alade off that seat and back to her former position of Deputy Governor, and appointed  another person, Mr. Godwin Emefiele from a private bank, as Governor CBN. That is the basic story .

    Here now are the facts which are available to all in the public domain about the two persons concerned. I will merely present the facts as they have been published, add nothing of my own, and leave the public to do the comparisons and the judgment. Of the two persons concerned, I can’t remember ever meeting either before; and I have no contact with either.

     

    About Dr. Mrs. Sarah Alade:

    Dr. Sarah Alade attended Obafemi Awolowo University where she obtained the degree of B.Sc. (Hons) in Economics in 1976.  Later, she obtained the degree of M.Comm at the Unversity of Melbourne, Australia, in 1983, and the degree of Ph.D. in Management Science (Operations Research) from the University of Ilorin in 1991. She started her working career in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, in Ilorin, Kwara State, in 1977. After obtaining her Ph.D in 1991, she joined the University of Ilorin in 1991 as a Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.

    In 1993 she was employed into the Central Bank of Nigeria as an Assistant Director in the Research Department. In that position, she served as Head, State Government Finance Office (1993-6), Head, Federal Government Finance Office (1996-2000), and Head, Fiscal Analysis Division (2000-2004).

    “Dr. Alade has served on the teams on major economic policy studies, and has been involved in the preparation of Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary and Credit Policy Proposals over the years. She was actively involved in the drafting of the Medium Term Economic Programme (MTP) for Nigeria and the IMF staff Monitored Programme/Standby Arrangement.Dr. Alade was appointed Director, Banking Operations Department of the Central Bank in May 2004. In that capacity, she served as Chairman Board of Directors, Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) as well as Secretary, National Payments System Committee (NPSC)”.

    Dr. Alade was a member of the Technical committee of the Vision 2010 and currently a member of the Technical Committee of Vision 2020 and member of the National Economic Management Team (EMT).

    Dr. Alade was appointed Deputy Governor (Economic Policy), of CBN, in 2007. In that position, she “superintends over the Economic Policy Directorate, comprising the Research, Monetary Policy, Trade and Exchange, Statistics Departments and Financial Markets Department. As Chair of the Monetary Policy Implementation Committee (MPIC), she interfaces with operational departments and coordinates technical inputs for the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)”.

    “Dr. Alade, has several publications to her credit and is currently carrying out research into Interest Rate Policy and Monetary Policy Implementation in Nigeria. Dr. Mrs. Alade is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Operational Research”.

     

    About Mr. Godwin Emefiele:

    Mr. Godwin Emefieleattended the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he obtained the degree of B.Sc. (Finance) in 1984 and also the degree of MBA (Finance).

    “Before commencing his banking career, he lectured Finance and Insurance at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, and University of Port Harcourt, respectively”.

    Mr. Emefiele served in the management of ZenithBank Plc from the inception of that bank in 1990, as its Deputy Managing Director from 2001, and as its Chief Executive and Managing Director from 2010.As Deputy Managing Director, Emefiele was directly responsible for all the Group’s local subsidiaries, Treasury and Correspondent Banking, and Multilateral, Conglomerates, & Private Banking. He also had responsibilities for direct supervision of majority of the bank’s branches in Lagos and Northern Nigeria.

    As Chief Executive officer and Group Managing Director of the bank, he served as the Executive Director in charge of Corporate Banking, Treasury, Financial Control and Strategic Planning of the bank.Mr. Emefiele has also served as Director of Zenith Bank (Gambia) Limited. He also serves as Director of ACCION Microfinance Bank Limited.

    “Mr. Emefiele is also an alumnus of Executive Education at Stanford University, Harvard University (2004) and Wharton Graduate Schools of Business (2005)”, all in the United States.

    I repeat that I need not add anything.

  • This shameful thing that is still happening…

    As you read, a shameful thing is recurring; men in their teens are meeting to determine the fate of the Nigerian State. Apology to teens, for many a teen have been proven to possess the intellect and soul of a man of 40 and above. It is amusing to see the so-called best amongst us: career youth leaders, activists, journalists, actors, musicians, artisans, professional associations and so on, court the devils we swore to divorce.

    Today, such characters parade themselves as representatives and spokespersons for the Nigerian youth. They are meeting with representatives of the ruling party and its rivals. They meet to chart a game plan; an almighty formula by which the ruling class may enslave us, for the umpteenth time.

    That has to pale in the face of logic; it does. Things are supposed to be different now but they aren’t. As the 2015 elections draw near, familiar trolls are joining hands with the devious and sly amongst us; their intent is to use us against us in their customary plot to rob us silly. The end result of course, can be better imagined.

    Money changes everything. It vitiates the soul of the Nigerian youth. Although the need of it makes us human, loving it could be practical but an obsession with it drives us to the brink, it shows us up, upside-down and inside-out; as men of vulpine souls and intellect, eternally forsworn to despise honour for the love of mammon and associated luxury.

    Many have argued that we can never sell out by playing muscle to the ruling class. “We are only enjoying our share of our collective wealth that they steal from us,” they claim, even as we get ready to be courted and plied with easy money and other inducement, by the same politicians that habitually treat us with disdain, until the elections approach.

    Whatever justification we choose to give to it, a bribe is a bribe. And more often than not, it changes relations. Once accepted, it vitiates a large chunk of the essence of the recipient, making him inferior, like a man who has paid to lie with a skunk the same way the impotent pays to be sodomized by a horse, thinking it would cure him of his impotence and aid him to sire by a woman, a blessed child.

    The folly of our ways shall soon dawn on us, as it did, few days after we installed the current dispensation. The meek and humble leadership we thought we had installed evolved to become one of the worst tyrannies Nigeria would ever produce. It’s worse than any other, given Mr. President’s manipulability by the murder of crows he has surrounded himself with.

    A brilliant tyrant could be trusted to a certain degree of depth and capacity to lead but a manipulable tyrant is infinitely more dangerous, as he cannot be trusted beyond his blandness, intellectual handicaps and devious plots of his coven of cronies, advisers and kitchen cabinet.

    Sadly, in the corrupted currents of the world such men have foisted upon us, we can only devise more alluring ways to play dumb and project our generation as easy marks for the ruling class to exploit. The current liaisons between the ruling class and the so-called representatives of the Nigerian youth portend an ominous development.

    It presages the continued enslavement of the Nigerian youth and our incapacitation by obscene inducements and gifts of grandeur; the perpetuation of a system in which the youth are psychologically confined and broken by financial inducements, dubious segregation and manipulative politics; a situation in which the sentimental fops amongst us are programmed by rumors, innuendo and outright falsehood to shun the path to progress and tow the fast lane to destruction.

    Many argue that the major problem afflicting Nigeria is the dearth of inspired leadership drawn from the nation’s youth. A converse view advances the presence of eminently capable persons out there, many of whom have failed to altruistically and responsibly apply themselves because like every other Nigerian, they are too busy looking out for themselves. Potential heroes we could rely on have learnt the wisdom in keeping silent. They tactfully scoff at our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo, knowing that, as usual, we would settle for an opportunistic contract between our exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour and youth leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin aptly identifies as “the original sweetheart agreement.”

    I recommend as usual, peaceful revolt guided by probity and a conscious quest to achieve the collective good within the ambit of fairness, equity and unflinching morality. Without such humane attributes, every measure we adopt will fail. Policies and practicable solutions are mere words on paper; they can only be activated by our conscious efforts to actualise them.

    Mr. President, the National Assembly, the judiciary, our 36 State governors and political parties are indisputably worthless and impotent without the support of the Nigerian youth. These societal creatures depend on our goodwill to survive. It’s about time we stopped playing disposable muscles and junkyard dogs to them.

    Money and other inducements they dangle before us shall be exhausted sooner than we can ever imagine. If we are indeed serious about installing visionary leadership capable of steering us from the threshold of ruin to the portal of hope and social renaissance, we have to start now.

    The Nigerian youth needs a platform. We need a more concrete forum than Facebook and Twitter. We need to create a rallying point by which we could sit to determine a bloodless path to a promising future. Yes, the current leadership won’t relinquish power easily hence our need to act. Let us identify and vote into power that particular breed whose idealism and pragmatism capably understands our painful silences and heartfelt dreams in order to speak and actualize them.

    Let us begin to ignore those who would desert us no sooner than they regain their hold on power. I speak of men and women that would recoil into their exclusive homes in Banana Island, Lagos, their palatial estates in Abuja, and fashionable neighbourhoods in Europe at the barest sign of chaos. There, they isolate themselves from the tragedies that mar our world by indulging in unrestrained hedonism and extravagant consumption of their ill-acquired wealth. We, the suffering masses are however, repressed with greater ferocity every time we protest.

    Our resources are being depleted; soon they will be exhausted. And then our hollowed-out edifice will collapse. Impoverished and severely robbed of optimism, we, the hopeless masses will rise against the ruling class in a premeditated and very savage strike – of which we shall suffer the worst consequence.

    Like in all such uprisings, Nigeria will plunge into a canyon of blood and maniacal murders, in the name of the “revolution.”  The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress, “…extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations ossify and collapse.

    Today, we tow a similar path.

  • The African condition – 2

    Mercifully, Lesotho is a more civilised place of slightly over a million people, perhaps too civilised, because there are about 10 political parties there creating a sense of instability. Politics seems to be the only profitable business in Lesotho, therefore creating a feeling of hopelessness in the citizenry. I was in this country in the late 1980s as part of Commonwealth electoral monitoring group. I was amazed at the level of drunkenness, unemployment, sexual licence and prevalence of AIDS infection and consequent high mortality. Zambia, Malawi and particularly Zimbabwe are studies in political and economic regression. The story of Zimbabwe is one of the saddest on the continent. Here is a country whose people fought gallantly for their freedom and liberation from white settler regime. The regime of Ian Smith who had boasted “not in a thousand years” will there be majority rule in the then South Rhodesia was happily pushed aside by the fighting cadres of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) under the leaderships of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo respectively. Hardly had victory been won when the two parties took on each other in a death grip with Robert Mugabe winning. This was the licence he needed to stay in power from the time of independence in the 1980s till now at the ripe age of 90. More galling is the fact that he has perpetuated himself in power and he is busy grooming his wife, who is half his age, as his successor and future president of the country. While engaged in this travesty of rule, he has watched the country’s economy collapse into Stone Age primitivity of people merely surviving and not living.

    When one moves to the Horn of Africa, the picture is the same. In Ethiopia the previous revolutionaries now in government have become reactionaries killing protesting students after rigged election. Somalia has disappeared, at least politically from the map and the country is a free for all for Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab and other terrorists high on khat and marijuana. Somalia has the distinction of being the first state to disappear as a political entity in the world. Eritrea that seceded from Ethiopia is locked in mortal struggle against its bigger neighbour over a tract of forbidden frontier. The Sudan is now divided into North and South along racial lines, and if Darfur in the South West of the country succeeds in its war of secession, it may add another division to a complex map. Yet the work of governance is left in abeyance while the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government with support from oil consuming India and China slaughters its own people. The chaos has spread into Chad, where Idris Derby, the typical African ruler refuses to give up power.

    West Africa is not better. Central Africa is even worse. The central Africa Republic and Congo Brazzaville have alternated between one brutal leader and the other. The Ivory Coast, the economic jewel of French speaking West Africa is coming out of the division arising from struggle for political power between Laurant Gbagbo and Al-Hassan Watara, between a Christian and a Muslim manifesting a malady afflicting the whole of West Africa. Guinea is afflicted by ethnic struggle between the Fulah and the Mandinka because of the problem of political succession. Nigeria the crown jewel of the continent is struggling against the tide of political instability because of problem of political succession.

    Yet Africa announced a few years ago, NEPAD- New Partnership for African Development. There has been neither partnership nor development. The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) that was supposed to ensure leaders abide by constitutional rules has been ignored.

    North Africa to complete the picture is not different. Morocco, with its Sharifian dynasty is modernising royal tyranny and Tunisia that first raised the flag of Arab Spring has just elected an 88 year old president. There has been no peace in Libya since Africa colluded with the West to murder Muamar Ghadafi, its late mercurial sit-tight leader. Now the country is partly occupied by ISIS with loyalty to Al-Baghdadi its murdering caliph somewhere in Mosul. Egypt tried some form of Islamic democracy under the Muslim Brotherhood President Muhammad Morsi before General Muhammad Al-sisi threw him out and the country has therefore murdered sleep. FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) is waiting for Algeria under its eternal leader Abdul-aziz Bouteflika to collapse.

    Nigeria has the biggest economy on the continent and has 25% of Africa’s population. Its 170 million people are poorly served by a conniving and corrupt regime at all levels. Its problems are compounded not only by the fissiparous tendencies of religious schism but deep seated ethnic animosity of one group against the other thus making national consensus near impossible. Leaders of Nigeria are oblivious of the fact that other Africans look up to them. Therefore if the country fails it will drag the entire continent down with her.

    It is really sad that just a few years ago, Africa was seen as the frontier of opportunity and economic growth. Like a mirage this hope of a happy African decade has disappeared. What this illusion has proved is that prosperity cannot be built on export of raw materials and minerals alone. Africans must add value to their God-given endowments. Secondly, Africans must be eternally vigilant about their self-serving and self-aggrandising leaders if the fruit of liberty and development is to come to them and to the generations of Africans yet to be born. There is also a need for massive civic education in Africa to prepare the citizens for their civic responsibilities and rights. Not only that, the place of the black man in the world needs to be emphasised. We are not living in a cocoon isolated from the rest of the world. We therefore have to march in tandem with the rest of civilised world observing the norms of civilised behaviour.

  • Jega : An electoral umpire’s burden

    When five years ago, President Goodluck Jonathan was planning to appoint Prof Attahiru Jega as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, he spoke glowingly about the activist academic. It was an appointment he kept close to his chest as the media kept speculating about who will get the job after the disastrous tenure of Prof Maurice Iwu. Having seen what happened under Iwu, who conducted the sham election which brought him and the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to office, the president knew that he had to pick a man of integrity for the job.

    So, as he kept the public guessing  on who his choice would be, Jonathan did not allow any opportunity go by without making it known that his man for the job is someone that cannot be pushed around. ”I have found the man for the job; we have contacted him and he is ready to take up the job. He is a man of integrity and Nigerians will be happy with our choice when we announce his name”. The president was virtually over the moon when he picked Jega for the INEC job. He knew very well that to continue to endear himself to Nigerians whoever he picked as electoral umpire must be above board.

    Jonathan made a statement with his choice of Jega, who he knew as an uncompromising figure, yet chose him for the highly sensitive INEC job.  Jega is not just an academic, he is a unionist to boot, having been president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in the late 80s. He led ASUU during the military regime and he gave a good account of himself.

    A man like him is no doubt needed to head INEC, which under Iwu had become an appendage of government. Since his coming, Jega has tried his utmost to maintain the independence of INEC, despite coming under blistering  attacks from the parties sometimes for being impartial. This is expected. There is no way Jega could have satisfied all the parties, especially when it comes to elections. There is no party that wishes to lose an election; every party wants to win and where it does not, the next thing is to cry foul.

    It is understandable when a party challenges the competence of the electoral umpire after an election. If that happens, it is likely the party is crying because it lost. But when before an election everything is being done to rubbish the electoral umpire, then something must be amiss. It becomes more worrisome when those badmouthing the electoral umpire are members of the ruling party. In the past few months, Jega has been the butt of destructive criticisms by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its chieftains and the problem they have with him is because he never agreed with them  that the February 14 and 28 elections as initially scheduled should be postponed.

    Although the party gave the impression that it was not bothered one way or the other with  what INEC decides to do about the elections,  latter events showed that the party, its national leader, that is the president, and its leading lights were all for the postponement of the elections, but getting Jega to do their bidding without being seen as the ones pulling the string was their problem. They eventually got the security chiefs to force Jega’s hands to shift the polls to March 28 and April 11. Despite having their way, they are still after Jega. They are not ready to let him be until they push him out of office.

    Why does PDP want Jega out of office? It is to ensure that it has its way at the polls.  His  integrity that counted in his favour when he was appointed in 2010 is now hanging around his neck as an albatross. The PDP can no longer stand the integrity of the man whose praise the president sang to high heavens when he was appointing him five years ago as INEC chairman. So, instead of getting set for the rescheduled elections, the party is busy fishing for reasons to get Jega out of the way to enable it rig its way back into power. So far, they have  not given any tangible reason why Jega should not conduct the forthcoming elections.

    Having succeeded in getting the elections postponed, one would have expected PDP to go back to the drawing board to plan and map out plans for the forthcoming elections. But no, it is not doing that; all it is after is to get Jega replaced by another professor, who it can manipulate to get its way at the polls. But removing Jega legally will not be easy. So, they will not take the legal route; they may give him the Lamido Sanusi treatment. Remember, the president went outside the enabling Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act to get Sanusi out of the way because he was too vocal for his liking. With Jega too independent-minded for his liking, Jonathan may devise a way of removing him without following the Constitution.

    According to Section 157 (1) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, subject to the provisions of subsection (3) of this section, a person holding any of the offices to which this section applies may only be removed from that office by the president acting on an address supported by two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that he be so removed for inability to discharge the functions of the office (whether arising from infirmity of mind or body or any cause) or for misconduct. By virtue of this provision, the president cannot on his own remove Jega nor can he send him on terminal leave whimsically. But then, this is Nigeria where anything goes.

    The cards are stacked against those who want Jega out of INEC.  They do not have a case against him; they are just afraid that with him at the helm, they cannot get INEC to rig the elections for PDP. They said the elections should be postponed because millions of eligible voters had not collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

    Now that a substantial number has collected PVCs, their song is that the Temporary Voter Cards (TVCs), which have been exchanged for PVCs, should be used for the elections. Does this make sense? Does it not show that some people somewhere are afraid of contesting the elections? Jega conducted one of the best elections ever held in this country in 2011 and since then, INEC under his watch, has been improving with the series of staggered elections held in some states.

    Like every human being, Jega is not a saint. But, what sin has he committed to warrant the call for his removal by PDP chieftains and their cohorts. What do they know that we do not know that informed their call? Is it at this 11th hour that we should be talking of removing Jega or sending him on terminal leave when he is not sick nor involved in any misdemeanour? All these PDP chieftains are doing is to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. The president should not fall for their trick. It is heartening that the president has reassured the world that he won’t remove Jega.  But we hope that when push becomes shove, the president will not sing a different tune.

  • Fani-Kayode: fighting GEJ’s battle without grace

    It is no more in doubt that President Jonathan is a very cynical leader. And with the on-going PDP’s game of deceit, appeal to religion and ethnic sentiments after 16 years of uninspiring leadership, Nigerians must have come to the sad conclusion that PDP is contemptuous of Nigerians. And if Nigerians needed any further proof, the appointment of Femi Fani-Kayode as Director General of PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, (PDPPCO) and his on-going war against the person of General Muhammadu Buhari is all that is needed. Add this to the President’s admission during his chat with Tell editors shortly after his inauguration back in 2011 that he is ‘never moved to action by  public opinion’, the picture one gets is that of a President who does not give a damn about how we feel as Nigerians.

    For a man  who few months back wrote the President off as “a wicked and insensitive leader”, whose “chapter has been finally closed by OBJ with his letter”; who predicted that “All Progressives Congress, APC, would form the next government at the centre” and wrote off PDP by saying “PDP as we once knew her has gone forever; the ship has hit the rocks and she has sunk to the bottom of the sea; she is dead and buried” to have emerged as the best the President and PDP can find to launder their image is a measure of the value they place on credibility. And finally that a man standing trial before a High Court in Lagos for alleged money laundering  was appointed by the President and his party as chief  image maker, is not only scandalous, it is an assault on our collective sensibilities. It speaks volumes about “the President Jonathan we don’t know”. (apology to Reuben Abati)

    The ignoble role his father played in the destruction of Yoruba land is well documented. Chief S B Falegan, a former Managing Director of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) in his new book My Yester-Years describes Chief Remi Fani-Kayode as “belonging to a group of political rascals who engaged in the selfish pursuit of greed, and personal enrichment at the expense of the country.”  And reviewing for Nigerians, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode’s rascal antecedents in the Nigeria’s politics during the NPN, he says, Femi Fani-Kayode, ‘who could say President Jonathan government is a bad omen to the country and thereafter decamp to the PDP to engage in a  re-twisted propaganda, has only taken  after his father’s styles”. And in fighting Jonathan’s war, Femi like the chip of the old block, has been trying to outdo his father who literarily aided the NPC ruling party to dig its own grave.

    First, it was about Buhari’s West African School Certificate. Sponsored government paid agents laid siege on television houses especially the respected Channels TV tasking our patience by insisting that Buhari, a retired four star General of the Nigerian Army, who attended the best military schools in the world, a former military Head of State ‘has no papers’, and therefore not qualified to contest for a position he had vied for thrice between 2003 and 2011. And when finally the authorities of Buhari’s old school presented his WAEC results, Fani-Kayode accused Buhari of perjury.

    Thereafter, Fani-Kayode’s heartache became Buhari’s age despite evidence of serving heads of states around the world that are of Buhari’s age. Fani-Kayode moved on to accuse Buhari of toppling Shagari’s government. It turned out Shagari was in fact removed by Babangida, Gusau and Abacha who merely used Buhari to buy credibility and legitimacy because of his personal integrity. Twenty months later, they deposed him  and unfolded their own agenda which included ‘a transition without end’, acceptance of IMF loan and liberalization of our economy which started the era of sharing of our national patrimony among privileged members of the military and their political and socio economic counterparts.

    Then last week on the eve of presidential election that would have  held two weeks back but for the mischief of panic stricken PDP, Fani-Kayode addressed journalists in Abuja to announce that “the Federal Government has concluded arrangements and may soon drag General Buhari before the International Criminal Court” for the mindless killings that followed Jonathan’s victory in 2011. But they would wait until after the election Fani-Kayode swore would be won by PDP.

    But for now, following Buhari’s successful outing in London to sell himself, his agenda and counter PDP’s propaganda that cast him as an irredeemable dictator, Fani-Kayode has opened another battle front. He swore “General Muhammadu Buhari last Thursday’s outing at the Chatham House in London was a monumental failure.”  He also took on Chatham House, blaming it for offering “its prestigious platform to sell a bad product to the world”.

    The question is why Fani-Kayode who in view of his new position is at liberty to change  his earlier perception of Jonathan as “‘wicked and insensitive leader” is losing sleep over  Buhari’s ‘failed’  visit that may not necessarily take anything away from the engrained image of his principal’s among the western nations as ‘a deeply corrupt government’ (Hilary Clinton,) ‘A failed Nigerian leader’; (Economist), ‘A failed president’ (Washington Post), and A lousy incumbent’ (New York Times).

    Jonathan’s government, whose intelligence has failed it in locating the whereabouts of close to 300 secondary school girls abducted from their dormitories about 10 months back or finding out the identities of the criminals who engage in an orgy of killing of women and children in their sleep in the middle belt region of Nigeria, has suddenly rediscovered itself only two days after Buhari’s visit to Chatham House. Fani-Kayode listed “some interesting facts about Buhari’s Chatham House out”, gathered through intelligence: ‘The event was organised only two days before it took place and well after Buhari had arrived in London; ‘The questions that were asked were given to him two days before the event and the answers were prepared for him and given to him to rehearse’; and ‘The programme lasted for only 55 minutes and only five questions, which were all planted, were asked’.

    Lest we forget, government intelligence according to Fani-Kayode also indicated that Buhari who depends on donations of as low as N100 from the masses of Nigeria who have faith in his ability to fix Nigeria, budgeted N5 billion for what was termed “the Buhari’s London jamboree”.

    Government intelligence however missed out Buhari’s plan to turn all the aircrafts in the presidential fleet to form the nucleus of a new Nigeria Airways because he considered it wasteful for President Jonathan to keep a fleet of over six aircraft when the Prime Minister of Britain like many of his western counterparts fly public airlines.

    But I think what should worry Nigerians is Fani-Kayode’s foreboding boast that “the government would first demystify Buhari by defeating him at the polls”, and that the PDP “would win the Presidential and general elections slated for March 28 and April 11 respectively”   while vowing that “the APC will never smell power”.

    But looking at the past and critically assessing PDP that often scores landslide victories in opposition strongholds as it recently did in Ekiti state,  I think there is the need for eternal vigilance by the opposition as well as all Nigerians that still have faith in our nation.  Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, after defecting to the opposition NCNC in the First Republic first called on the federal government to declare state of emergency in the West and later told the Yoruba that whether they voted for his new party or not, NNDP would win the election. It is part of our history that the Balewa government illegally declared state of emergency and went ahead to supervise the rigging of the 1965 Western Region election.

    President Jonathan and PDP have always found a way to undermine the constitution to achieve their set goals. The cases of the illegal removal of Justice Ayo Salami, the illegal suspension of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as CBN governor and to some extent the President’s open support of losers of Nigerian Governors Forum election are clear indications that President Jonathan and PDP can swing any surprise.

    They just don’t give a damn.

  • Nigeria: Public corruption is king!

    Greed, corruption, self-serving criminal conduct – all these and more are part of human life in every nation or society. They are part of what all known religions among men would classify as “man’s sin nature”. In every known polity in the long history of man, there have always been some leading men and women who use their offices to serve their personal purposes in obviously criminal ways. Public corruption is part of the experience of governance everywhere.

    As I write these words, I have open before me many lists from the United States governance and leadership experience. I limit my search to lists of public officials convicted of corruption or other crimes in the past decade. Each list runs to many many pages – lists of “Federal Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “Federal Officials Convicted of Crimes”, “Federal Officials under Sex and other Scandals”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Crimes”. Most of the officials on these lists were arrested while in office, and tried, convicted and jailed. The lists contain the names of state governors, federal ministers, federal and state senators and representatives, mayors, members of county governments, military officers, police officers, assistants working for these high-placed public officials, etc. As of this moment, there are tens of these former public officials serving jail terms in prisons across the United States. In short, no members of any nation are more, or less, prone to corruption and criminal conduct than the rest of humanity.

    But, at that point, we come to the differences.  In some countries, the degree of tolerance of public corruption is very low. In America, the degree of tolerance of corruption and criminal behavior in public office is so low that if any public official, no matter how high, engages in corruption or crime, he is very likely to get caught and to end up in jail. Very many things in America’s group life contribute to that picture. In general, Americans love their country so much, and cherish their laws and traditions so passionately, that if a public official engages in corruption or wrong doing, someone in his office, or someone close to him, is likely to step out some day to tell it. A person who speaks out like that (known as the ‘whistle blower’) is protected by the law – so that he does not have to fear persecution by his superiors. The news media play a very mighty role in this too. Once the news breaks that some public official is suspected of wrong doing, American journalists don’t seem ever to be able to give up the case as long as there remains any unresolved part of it.

    Much more importantly, America’s law enforcement officials are exceptionally dedicated to their tasks. No American public official is so high that the American police and secret service would not keep an eye on him. If any suspicion of wrong-doing arises against any official of the Federal Government, the Federal Attorney General (though a member of the party in power) would rev up his office (the Department of Justice) to investigate. If the wrong-doing is big, he may choose to appoint a Special Investigator from outside to handle the investigation. And if any wrong doing is found, his lawyers would start prosecution against the offender. If it is the President, he would hand him over the Congress for impeachment processes. A president was so investigated and impeached in the 1970s. Another was so investigated but narrowly managed to avoid impeachment in the 1980s. Recently, federal detectives got hint that a governor was demanding material rewards for doing official favours. They bugged his phones, recorded the criminal conversations -arrested him and landed him in court. He is in jail. Many years back, a popular politician, after serving as governor of his state, became Vice-President of America. Law enforcement officials in his state discovered that he had evaded taxes during the years when he had served as governor. They raised up criminal charges against him. He confessed in order to get a smaller punishment and not go to jail (Americans call it “making a plea bargain”). As his smaller punishment, he was ordered to resign from his position as Vice-President. He resigned in disgrace. While investigating a president for some suspicion of wrong-doing, law enforcement officials wanted to take some blood from his arm as evidence. Some secret service officers went to the White House and told the president what they had come for. The president rolled up his shirt sleeve, and the secret service officers brought out their needle and syringe and drew the blood they wanted and went their way. Yes, that is the way it is. America takes serious steps to protect itself from possible rampages by wrong doers. America is a land of law.

    In comparison with America, Nigeria is just one crooked and lawless jungle,  a land of the powerful and the influential, a land over which the whims and caprices of the powerful and influential reign. Corruption is therefore king in Nigeria – king unrestrained and impossible to restrain. And the reasons are quite easy to see. Altogether, it often seems as if Nigeria is a country without citizens. Everybody (including the journalist and the law enforcement functionary) is so consumed with trying to benefit from whatever is going on (no matter how terribly dishonest and corrupt) that nobody ever does anything to protect Nigeria against wrong doers. In Nigeria, the man occupying the position of the Attorney General is, unashamedly, a lawyer for the party in power. He himself would readily take part in criminal acts, if such acts benefit his party.  No powerful evil doer needs to fear him – except, occasionally, members of opposition parties who are foolish enough to refuse decamp to the party in power when they come under investigation by law enforcement. For public officials at federal, state and local government levels, if they belong to the party in control of the Federal Government, the freedom to steal public resources, to corrupt their offices, to distort the governmental system, and to commit crimes, is limitless. The police, the secret service and, now, the military would, as errand boys of the Nigerian president, readily flout Nigerian laws. Essentially, Nigeria is a country without any kind of law enforcement.

    An important feature of this awful picture is the nationality factor. Every Nigerian president tends to surround himself with appointees from his own nationality. And, cocooned in that inner circle, he and they can do any evil without any fear of consequences. For them to steal enormous amounts of public wealth is, to them, a fair share for their nationality. To some nationalities, in fact, public corruption is justified by the teachings of religion.

    It is day-dreaming to think that these aberrations can be eliminated substantially and abidingly in Nigeria. Conceivably, a major dose of power decentralization can help. But there are some nationalities to whom strong centralization is gospel and decentralization is anathema – and who would start a war to prevent decentralization. Those who advocate that Nigeria should split up into smaller and ethnically less diverse countries make a lot of sense.