The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Lagos where tenants dictate to landlords

    Lagos where tenants dictate to landlords

    As institutions of state, part of the responsibility of the media and civil society groups is to advocate for the less privileged in society. Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial and economic powerhouse which attracts  thousands immigrants daily from across the nation and from neighbouring states, have not a few of this survivalists who with no relatives in Lagos often end up sleeping under bridges or turning Lagos Lagoon shorelines to illegal shanties. Civil society groups including those seeking attention of foreign donors have often picked up the battle for these fortune-seekers. And following their persistent blackmail, successive Lagos State governments have come up with most liberal laws that are not only protective of immigrants, but that which literarily put landlords at the mercy of tenants and squatters.

    I remember a few years back when Governor Babatunde Fashola wanted to clean up Lagos Lagoon shoreline to encourage tourism, the media and the human right groups challenged him to first provide alternative accommodation for the trespassers. It was as if anyone could start the erection of a structure in any state of the federation without permission from the traditional ruler or local council chairman.

    What has brought the helplessness of Lagos landlords home more vividly is the ongoing protests of tenants of recently demolished Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) shopping complex opposite the Computer Village in Ikeja. As it is often the case, the sympathy of the electronic media (Channels and TVC) that reported the case live and  The Punch that reported it later on its “Metro” pages was with non-law abiding tenants.

    The focus of the media was on the plight of the tenants, their losses and their false claim that they were never informed of the demolition.  Even after admitting notices were issued by the owner of the distressed plazas in 2019 and 2020, little was done to correct the traders’ false narrative including the claim of the chairman of Computer Village Dealers Association, Tayo Shittu who accused Lagos State government of storming the complex with about 300 policemen at 12 am to bring down the two plazas with 300 shops.

    This has however forced the Lagos State government to deny having any hand in the demolition of the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) shopping complex. .In a statement issued by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, said: “The structure is owned by the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA), which ordered its demolition.”, adding that “those circulating the fake news that Lagos State government is demolishing Computer Village are opportunistic ethnic chauvinists who will always relish in vacuous propaganda that can fuel their fiendish mission; they will always fail in dividing Lagosians.”

    What must not be lost on us was the fact that it took POWA two years to eject tenants from their plaza already declared distressed by Lagos State. And this was made possible because their husbands were able to mobilise 300 police officers to battle tenants that are ready to take laws into their own hands.

    Read Also: Lagos records first rain in 2024

    Are you still wondering why Lagos landlords are at the mercy of Lagos State’s over-pampered tenants? 

    Although I will not consider myself a landlord but let me share with readers my recent encounter with two young men who lived with their young families in the boys quarters vacated by my children after marriage or joining the JAPA syndrome.

    The first was introduced along with his wife by one of my daughters who is a pastor.  She had claimed the young man used to stay in a boys quarter directly opposite our house while all of them were in the university. Claiming their apartment was ravaged by flood, she pleaded they should be allowed to pay just about a quarter of the going rate in the estate.

    First year, the young man said he could only pay half of what he agreed to pay because his cousin was wedding at home. There was another excuse the second year. But trouble started when PHCN discovered he had paid only N7k in about three and half years despite almost 24 hours power supply during which he used his air-conditioner, morning, afternoon and night since he claimed to work from home.

    PHCN calculated his backlog of arrears as N1m and advised me to seek the help of police because I would have to pay if he vacates the house without settling the outstanding. Because I turned down the request for money by the police officer in charge, he had declared after a few unproductive meetings, that it was not the job of police to collect debt on behalf of PHCN or anyone for that matter. Now I have a PHCN meter I cannot use except I pay N1m.

     My second nightmare was introduced to me by my neighbour. He and his young wife wanted to do naming ceremony of their first child and there was no water where they were staying in the outskirt of the estate. I also discovered he was my 300L student at University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute.  I was to later personally take them in my car to their church for the naming. The baby was often kept with our house girl when the wife was going out while the husband on some occasions borrowed my car for outing. We were that close that when he had his second baby, without telling me he removed my cars , erected canopies and took control of my generator to have a party from morning till late in to the night.

    Again trouble started when it was discovered part of the house including the fence behind his apartment was distressed and needed a comprehensive work which would require us vacating the building. We both agreed on when work would start and for that reason he paid for six months. Instead of moving out like me as agreed at the end of the six months, he brought a long letter from a lawyer claiming he was never given a quit notice. Initially I had thought it was a joke. I approached my neighbour who suggested a refund of the six months payment he made even after the expiration of his tenancy period. He turned down the offer insisting his lawyers would have to decide. Meanwhile he got the police involved claiming inconvenience because of materials already deposited for repairs. Even while I remain a tenant elsewhere, this young man for the next two months held everyone to ransom until the POWA strategy minus the 300 police men option was adopted.

    My last example was from my lecturer and senior colleague at the University of Lagos. A tenant who occupied his uncle’s house in Ikeja GRA not only refused to pay his rent for several years, he would not allow anyone entry into the premises. Relief only came when the then military governor of the state ordered an invasion of the premises by soldiers who discovered an erection of a new structure and the conversion of the old one into an illegal drug manufacturing factory.

    I think most Lagos tenants desirous of taking advantage of Lagos State tenant-friendly laws are of the same colour. The two tenants that gave me nightmare are Yoruba from one of the southwest states.

  • A copse of poisonous petals

    A copse of poisonous petals

    Our collective persona as a nation is reflected in the governor who once stole $4.2 million from his state’s coffers and stashed it to fund his vanities abroad, not minding what good such loot could do in resolving the educational, healthcare, and infrastructure woes of his state.

    It is reflected in the shenanigans of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor who is seeking a plea bargain to escape punishment over a 20-count charge over alleged conspiracy to perpetrate procurement fraud running into billions of naira, among others.

    It is reflected in the former female Minister of Petroleum, who raped Nigeria silly until we suffered the industrial strokes of scarcity and recession. Yet she frantically fights to walk free and her cronies are eager to let her off with a pat on the back. Thus the protracted drama of her prosecution at home and abroad.

    Lest we forget the governors looting billions of naira via “security votes and hyperbolic capital projects, outrageous life pensions, among other frills,  even as poverty, policy failure, and insecurity devastate the citizenry and crucial social institutions on their watch.

    Our collective personae flourish in the antics of youths feverishly flying ethnic flags in support of their ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ lawmaker, governor, minister, and ex-CBN governor irrespective of the atrocities committed by them and the criminal charges levelled against them.

    Public officers in the executive, legislature, and judiciary embody our frantic culture of dubious citizenship. They legitimise our culture of being, which enables and justifies a public officer’s immediate descent into a basement of opportunism right after emerging as an elected representative.

    The latter locks himself or herself in that amoral cellar, against the ethical rungs and wise counsel of sterling statesmanship. As the citizenry sinks in wretchedness, he embarks on a quest of inordinate acquisition and counts his spoils in material possessions.

    He is, however, a mere fragment of our bigger cultural dilemma. Think of him as the pointed end of the spear of our culture of greed, feverish pillaging, and criminality, in whom the triggers of consequence-free theft, sponsored violence, ethnoreligious carnage, gender, and sexualised menace are fused.

    In concert with fellow wild personae prowling Nigeria’s corridors of power, he reinvents, with creative malice, the penetrative outcrops of our national maelstrom. Optimists would call them salvageable ogres from our dark, primal aspects but their cruelty attains deeper resonance in their manifestation as poster icons of our corrupted personae.

    They are our decadence. Our disease. Like the millions of citizenry they supposedly represent, they are products of our moral void, the sickly stems bearing our poisonous petals. Little wonder we suffer a carnage of incarnations.

    Yet even as we have rightly identified their emergence as an affliction of the eye and disease of the mind, our chances at healing are hindered by chinks in our surgical armour: the fissures of ethnoreligious bias, illiteracy, willful degeneracy, greed, poverty, savage ego, and sheer malevolence.

    These constitute severe impediments to our healing. Thus, as usual, we corrupt the debate on our complicity. We should be discussing and taking decisive steps to rid governance of their savage afflictions but they continually hoodwink Nigerians into a thick emotional fog over several issues of governance and nationhood.

    At the slightest prompt, the citizenry engage each other in intense bickering, often in defence of their ethnic brothers and sisters, irrespective of the latter’s misdemeanour. The people fall for their gimmick, threatening war and secession from the Nigerian enterprise in solidarity with their dubious representatives.

    It’s a familiar scene, a Nigerian reality that often resounds like the fable of the doomed Odysseus and the labouring ships.

    In the backdrop of these shameful proceedings, the argument persists in academia, social and political circuits, that the future is blurry and bleak due to youth absence in politics. But the youth had been in politics as armed thugs, assassins, arsonists, and internet trolls for several years.

    Lest we forget our more ‘youthful men and women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s control the country’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and major opposition platform, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    Their clannish pride bequeath the country’s leadership to their wards to sustain their legacies even as they draft boondocks young as cannon fodder and enforcers of their never-ending cycle of sleaze and mayhem.

    But the youth are hardly the prey they are thought to be. They are often willing participants in a dehumanising ritual of violence and bloodshed.

    Read Also: Kaduna Council to bury 49 unclaimed corpses next week

    This minute, the image persists of the nation’s youth as dispensable tools of specific and random politicians. Unlike the artist’s immobile masterpiece, sculpted in bronze and stone, such youths evolve like plasticine, easily malleable and amenable to devious plots.

    Some have attributed their afflictions to structural banes and the perverse culture of citizenship by which they are weaned and ushered into adulthood.

    In the wake of plausible and often far-fetched analyses, too many ‘patriots’ conveniently absolve themselves of blame. Some propound the tragic theory of Nigerians as being innately incapable of self-determination and self-governance.

    These arguments have over time attained a language of their own and thus evolved as a dialect of dissent and exaggerated self-abnegation. The nation’s elite frequently marshals clashing precepts as solutions and in condemnation of the status quo according to their biases.

    A more damning view identifies the youths’ persistent claims of victimhood as a consequence of their sense of entitlement. Between hyperbole and informed sophistry, Nigeria suffers the affliction of intellectual miscreants and promising youth-turned-fetal-adults.

    The coordinated tragedies afflicting our consciousness daily, append the only real structure to our lives as impoverished Nigerians. From burdensome realities of fast-slipping youth, and recurrent rites of bigotry to the ethical quandary of coping with strict moral codes of adulthood and ideal society, our lives obscure in purpose and meaning.

    Thus the scorning of ethics by the youths for fast, illicit riches even as ripples of their actions keep hundreds of millions more in binds of despair.

    Consequently, the revolutionary dissent that sprouts from oppression is pitiless and unbending. It radically splits our world into ‘insensitive ruling class’ and ‘clueless lower class,’ ‘elite’ and ‘downtrodden,’ ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ It fosters even more fragmented discord that continually pits Nigerian Christians against Muslims, Hausa against Igbo, Igbo against Yoruba, and Itsekiri against Urhobo.

    While this piece too may resound as hackneyed howl and lamentation, it needs to be said that our ultimate solution lies in our will to effect true change.

    Can any of the existing political parties foster a progressive nation? Pundits aver that they are programmed to a recurring cycle of self-destruct and rebirth while showing occasional flashes of brilliance and daring against familiar odds. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

    Greening the Nigerian pasture is not achievable in a sprint or marathon. Think of it as a cross-country run. It is not a race winnable in four years. But who cares?

    As we advance, President Bola Tinubu’s administration must rid Nigeria of a culture of public governance dependent on administrative corruption and lifeboat solutions. To truly empower the citizenry, his administration must actualise a stable electricity supply and a better road and marine infrastructure; he must also revive the agricultural economy, and get the refineries working.

    Systems thrive by their human elements thus Nigerians humanise our systems and dehumanise them. The President must also be wary of the human factors that hinder the successful implementation of most policies and Social Intervention Programmes (SIPs).

  • Looking forward, backward

    Looking forward, backward

     It is a new year, and as individuals, institutions and nations, we have started to map out plans for it, just as we take stock of the outgone one. Many things and issues shaped 2023, and they will also certainly be at play in 2024.

    2024 may not be a transition year, as 2023 was, but off-cycle governorship elections will hold in the year. Edo and Ondo states will go to the polls to elect new governors. For the race, Governor Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa (the man with three magical names) of Ondo, who assumed office just last week after the death of his predecessor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, seems to have a headstart.

    He will be vying for the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket as a sitting governor and not as a ‘disloyal’ deputy, who did not wish his now late predecessor well. If he gets it, he will run for the election as an incumbent. His chances look bright, but in politics, especially electoral contests, two plus two is not always four. The Edo contest will be keen. The state can go either the way of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or the opposition APC, which is the government at the centre.

    Govermor Godwin Obaseki is no longer eligible to run having done so on two previous occasions as constitutionally allowed. But he wants to determine who succeeds him and he is said to have settled for boardroom guru Asue Ighodalo. How he will do that without being called a godfather, a tag which he loathes and made him to part ways with his successor, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, waits to be seen.

    There will be by-elections to fill vacant National and Houses of Assembly seats too. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may not be that stretched and stressed in organising these polls as they do with general elections, but they come at enormous cost in terms of logistics, funding, staffing (both regular and ad hoc) and security. The umpire should be able to cope and also use the exercises as a test-run for the 2027 general elections in three years time.

    Who will be at its helm then? Only the President can say as he has the constitutional power to appoint or remove the INEC Chair, no matter the noise being made to the contrary in certain quarters. Until the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is amended, there is nothing anybody can do about that. As it has been in the past 14 years, the issue of security will remain on the front burner. Terrorists, bandits and kidnappers continue to wreak havoc across the country.

    Read Also: Courts bars PDP, INEC from stopping 27 Rivers lawmakers

    The Yuletide carnage on the Plateau was a rude awakening to us as a nation that we are still a long way away from bottling the insecurity genie. As this reporter asked and answered in this space last week: “Why have these attacks become frequent?” “Can the attacks still be reduced to the farmers/herders clashes?” “These incessant attacks have gone beyond that”. Governors of the North central states spoke in the same vein on Tuesday.

    During a solidarity visit to their colleague, Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, they said the attacks had nothing to do with herders/farmers skirmishes. According to them, they were purely banditry and terrorism and drew a distinction between those two  and kidnapping. The carnage is heartrending. An account of it given by Senator Abdul Ningi in the hallowed chamber of the Senate is blood chilling.

    “What happened in Bokkos was unprecedented. The attack was by a group of bandits, over 400 of them moving at a go… First, there was a rumour of this attack. Second, the governor tried to make this information available, but they didn’t take him seriously. What was discovered is that these marauding bandits were not moving with weapons. Those weapons were domiciled in certain locations”, Ningi said. Then he asked: “Who are these people and why are they doing it?” It is a question which resonates with what was written here last week, to wit: “Only the attackers can say what they want”.

    In 2024, the government must step up the war against terrorism and banditry. It should hasten action on the prosecution of those held for these crimes so as to assure the nation that it is not handling the matter with kid-glove. The huge vote for security in this year’s budget will amount to nothing if these mindless attacks persist.

    Insecurity is an ill wind that blows no good. It destroys everything in its trail, including the economy. We are already seeing results of its destructive nature in the killing of the real sector. No matter what it takes, insecurity must he tamed in 2024 in order to revive the sector for the good of  the country.

  • Let’s be positive this new year

    Let’s be positive this new year

    When I read newspaper columns or posts exchanged with friends and colleagues nowadays, I ask myself whether there was ever a time when our benighted country, Nigeria was ever in a better shape than we presently are. I try to go back in a journey of retrospection and I zeroed in on the period between 1951 and 1962 when most of my readers were yet unborn. Most of them would probably say we do not care of what happened in the past especially faced with the hardship of the present.  

    I understand their predicament because not everyone has an idea of historical perspective. Yet without a perspective view of what happened in the past, we really cannot grasp the importance of the present and the now and whether there is a prospect of a better future. If we all agree about our golden past and how we got from there to the deplorable position now, we can probably go back to the past to achieve a better future.

    When we began our golden era was when we constitutionally practiced a system of fiscal and political federalism in truth and indeed unlike now when we deceive ourselves by practicing a unitary form of government and yet calling it federalism with essential powers concentrated in the hands of the federal government in not only just in the creation of states but even local government areas (LGAs) as well. What an absurdity which we should have deprecated but instead, we always asked for more states and local governments to satisfy our greed and not need. We thus created a monstrosity of the most administered land and people in the world. We create mini and miniaturised states whose finances were more or less tightly controlled by a powerful central government which had seized most of the financial resources and revenues generation of the constituent states. This destroyed innovation and local talent with everyone going to the centre where there is more recognition and unfortunately more resources to toy around with and to loot for the greedy ones among us.

    In my youth which coincides with my idea of the golden era of Nigeria, all men of talents and innovation remained in the regions where the action and the resources were most needed. This was the period when like Canada, Australia and the USA and smaller federations like Belgium and Switzerland, the constituent states of the union, created the centre rather than the situation in Nigeria after the coup d’état of 1966 where the centre created the states/ regions thus creating a situation in which the federal government stood on its head so to say. It was not just a question of distribution of power between the centre and the constituent regions but of resources because in the past before 1966, the regions kept their wealth and used it for what they considered most important for their peoples’ wellbeing. If it was building primary schools which admitted all children old enough to attend school that they considered important, that was what their money was used for. Every region had graded areas of priority and each state developed at its own pace. To a certain extent there was positive competition and no one was slowed down for others to catch up with the rest.

    In order to maintain power, the military emphasised our ethnic differences and maintained them to create states based on ethnicity but the more states and local governments that were created, the more fissure was created yearning for closure. There was no ending to the division of states until states littered the Nigerian political environment without the satisfaction of all.

    Read Also: Lawmaker gifts constituents New Year’s package

    Since we cannot really go back to the golden era, the question to ask is what then do we do?  We are persuaded that we need to overhaul our economy and build a powerful economy if the political edifice is to survive. If we have the most clinically constructed constitutional architecture without money in our pockets simply put, we labour in vain. We have to build this economy based on comparative advantage. We must base our production on what is available or what we grow in our neighbourhood.  If we are going to industrialise, it must be based on what we are going to add value to and share with our compatriots at home and the wider global community. If we are truly over 200 million, we should make this huge market available for those who can provide for the multitude of our people’s needs.

    I am not suggesting a kind of autarky but a system of economic independence unlike what we currently have in an economy of overwhelming dependence on importing household goods from China and India and industrial, chemical and engineering goods from Europe and America. We cannot do this suddenly but through a gradual process of weaning ourselves from the feeding bottle of the west generally over the shortest time possible.  

    At the period of trial, we must not expect home grown industries to produce at optimal levels of quality but overtime as had happened in other parts of the world the quality will improve. When it becomes increasingly profitable, the economy will leap forward and the question of constitutional structure will almost become irrelevant. In the most sophisticated and advanced countries of the world, how many people really worry about the constitutional arrangements when their bellies are full and there is money in the banks and in the pockets to have a shelter over their heads and money to pay for their children’s fees?

    Alexander Pope the English philosopher, I believe was right when he said “For forms of government let fools contest, whatever is best administered is best”. This a credo that would minister to most of us in this country and many academics will agree with it because any serious scholar can write a critique of any form of government as an academic exercise! The same way we can write about our past and present governments. What we need to do is to be a little more positive and make critical suggestions that can lead us from the economic doldrums in which we find ourselves. We all know our economic malady is one of conspicuous consumption without shame and this tendency is based on rampant corruption in which the few sit on the necks of the many and gorging on what belongs to all. If we continue like this, the entire territorial edifice will collapse. It seems as if our rulers cannot help themselves and this is why we have to call to order those who are over indulging themselves in affluence before the on-looking mass of the poor take on them and those of us who are looking unconcerned. We are all in danger and we must all join in the rescue of the states and its organs because if we don’t do this, there will be no state to rescue. If we want our contribution to be taken seriously, then it must be on the side of positive change rather than on the side of destructive criticism characterising most of criticism.  It is quite clear to us that we cannot continue for long in a situation where we frequently run out of ordinary currency printed money backed by state power and where the national currency has become a chiffon de papier and almost totally worthless and saving for the future is a fruitless effort in the face of devaluation, depreciation and decline.

    What was a national asset of a big market is now an albatross round our neck because internal travelling has become hazardous and dangerous. It behoves us to firm up the security apparatus in the country to guaranty the critical environment necessary for economic intercourse and communication with all the parts of the country rather than only what intrepid adventurers can now indulge in. Government has to rise to the level of guaranteeing the minimum level of security available to citizens of government in all countries of the world. This is the least we can expect from our government and we do ask for it and in asking for it we should pledge our support because this is right and our bounden duty as citizens.

  • Oshiomhole and battle for strong political parties

    Oshiomhole and battle for strong political parties

    Adams Oshiomhole during last week’s launching of a book “APC and Transition Politics”, authored by Salihu Lukman, spoke of how he was illegally removed from office by APC Governors’ Forum led by Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, aided by Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State and Rochas Okorocha of Imo State among others who were aggrieved over his valiant efforts to enforce party supremacy as obtains in most parliamentary democracies.

    Amosun, who deserted ANPP when the party lost and has been behaving like a woman with five husbands since finding himself in ACN and APC, in an effort to obfuscate the serious issue of party supremacy had claimed Oshiomhole was the architect of his own misfortune for conducting what he termed “one of the worst party primaries in the history of Nigeria’s contemporary politics.”

    But I think he can save his breath as Nigerians who saw his attempt to impose his successor, the speaker and all the members of Ogun State House of Assembly and how he betrayed the party when his efforts failed can see beyond his subterfuge.  Amosun who along some southwest governors were promised consensus candidature once Tinubu was disqualified, was believed to have worked with the likes of Okorocha who was also prevented from imposing his in-law as successor, to illegally remove Oshiomhole who they thought was sympathetic to Tinubu out of office. To change that narrative, he needs more than the mischievous attempt to set Oshiomhole against former President Buhari who by his treatment of Oshiomhole confirmed the fears of some Nigerians that Buhari  who saw political party only as a vehicle to acquire power, loves only Buhari.

    Sadly, what has come to define the party system of the fourth republic is governors’ illusion that they own the political parties by virtue of their spending their state monies to fund them.  That was why in 2013, seven aggrieved PDP governors during what was described as PDP family quarrel, often over sharing of resources wrecked their party.  It was for the same reason Nyesom Wike, who has continued to hold his party to ransom, in 2023 joined his other four PDP colleagues to exploit leadership deficit in PDP to prolong the party’s agony. And that was why APC governors despite the claim by Oshiomhole that not a dime was taken from them towards running the party thought they could illegally oust their chairman from office. What saved APC was Tinubu’s political brinksmanship that earned him the trust of northern governors despite betrayal by some of his southwest governors.

    But political parties are never owned by sitting governors but by a democratic oligarchy often made up of founders, former office holders, current office holders and aspiring office seekers and others with interest which could be economic, cultural or sectional.

    That the West had over two century’s head start because of institutionalization of political parties as modernization agents does not mean that in terms of philosophy and political ideas, Africans are inferior. For instance, the thoughts of Socrates, the greatest influence on Plato’s philosophical development according to late Professor Sophie Oluwole, was in no way superior to that of Orunmila, the father of Ifa divination, both of whom never wrote anything; the political realism of Machiavelli, the so-called apostle of naked force who believes ‘the end justifies the means’, finds parallel in Yoruba “afoba je l’oba npa”( the first victims of a new king is the king maker); liberalism, described as the West dominant ideology,  finds parallel in Yoruba tales of the tortoise to celebrate principle of gradualism in the development process, and democracy and legitimacy as consent of the people and rule of law finds parallel in the check and balance’ provided by the Ogboni cult in the Yoruba traditional administrative system.

    And of course, once we decided to acculturate the best of imported cultures, we are hardly left behind. It was only in 1923 that Nigeria embraced political parties as modernizing agents but by independence in 1960, Nigeria, because of the giant strides of Action Group, NPC and NCNC, Nigeria was being compared with Canada and Japan. The Western Region through the exploits of Action Group had the first television in Africa (WNTV) ahead of some European nations.

    Again we must know where the rain started to beat us.

    The military after destroying our party system, out of self- delusion offered to teach Nigeria what the nation had perfected 70 years earlier. Ibrahim Babangida came with his decreed two-parties, the NRC and SDP, headed by Tom Ikimi and Tony Anenih respectively. This was followed by Abacha’s five parties viz: the UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM which late Bola Ige described as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’. The PDP, dominated by retired Generals and their contractors, described by John Campbell, a former US envoy to Nigeria as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria, a political party that came together with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, was midwifed by Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1998.

    The party between 1999 and 2015 went on to validate Campbell’s thesis with its leaders and their siblings stealing N1.7 trillion through the fuel subsidy scam, selling to themselves Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1.5b through privatization policy and in the name of monetization policy sold to themselves inherited properties dating back to colonial period, kept in their custody for our children.

    Read Also: Nigeria is in good hands, Tinubu assures citizens

    It was against this backdrop that with the inauguration of APC, this column on these pages on January 31, 2023 said “What Nigerians want from Buhari and Tinubu is inauguration of a modernizing party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies. The challenge before the two and their colleagues is to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders…. What these times call for are men with eyes on history; men who would emulate the federalists Hamilton and Adams, the Republicans Jefferson and Madison of USA of the 1790s, the British enlightened elite of 1832, their French counterparts after French revolution of 1789 and the Japanese  and their Meiji Restoration of 1867.”

    Unfortunately, Buhari did not see a political party beyond instrument for acquiring power. Egged on by those who claimed he won the election on his own merit without the party, he ignored APC until the eve of 2019 election when Tinubu and Oshiomhole came out to salvage the situation. No sooner had he won the election than he sold Oshiomhole to APC governors opposed to his battle for party supremacy.

    The difference between Buhari’s APC and PDP was that of six and half a dozen. Both have been adjudged corrupt, unable to dream dreams and total embarrassment even in the routine art of governance.

    Bishop Kukah in his Christmas Homilies few days ago said Tinubu has no excuse for failure.  He has had opportunity to study the Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria of the first and second republic respectively. He was a part of AD before forming ACN with Afenifere Renewal Group as new investors and was the moving force behind the formation of APC.

    Tinubu also understands that there can be no social change without an elite consensus and there can be no elite consensus without strong political parties. If he therefore wants to succeed and be remembered by history, he knows the supremacy of the party must be enshrined not only in APC but also in PDP and other opposition parties.

  • 2023: A bloody curtain fall

    2023: A bloody curtain fall

    Again, another year recoils cloaked in blood and the sadism of murderous characters. Eight days to the new year, Plateau mounted its funeral pyres.

    This minute presents the umpteenth scare in the state’s grisly drama, perhaps. The most recent being the Christmas Eve killings of at least 100 people in Plateau villages.

    On Sunday, gunmen stormed Ndun, Ngyong, Murfet, Makundary, Tamiso, Chiang, Tahore, Gawarba, Dares, Meyenga, Darwat, and Butura Kampani villages in the Barkin Ladi, Mangu and Bokkos Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state, burning houses and shooting residents.

    Eyewitnesses alleged that about 140 people were killed in the attacks. The state government said over 115 people were killed, while the police put the death toll at 96.

    The assailants targeted 17 communities in “senseless and unprovoked” attacks on Saturday and Sunday, burning down most houses in the area, Plateau Governor Caleb Mutfwang said in a TV broadcast.

    “As I am talking to you, in Mangu local governorate alone, we buried 15 people. As of this morning, in Bokkos, we are counting not less than 100 corpses. I am yet to take stock of [the deaths in] Barkin Ladi,” Mutfwang said. “It has been a very terrifying Christmas for us here in Plateau,” he said.

    There are fears of a higher death toll as some people are unaccounted for.

    Some locals said it took more than 12 hours before security agencies responded to their calls for help, thus echoing past concerns about slow interventions in Nigeria’s security crises.

    Earlier in the month, a report by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) stated that at least 750 persons have been killed by bandits, terrorists and other non-state actors. In comparison, no less than 45 persons were abducted from various educational institutions in the country in 2023.

    With the recent Christmas Eve killings in Plateau State, the figures have indeed increased. The year, which opened with reports of attacks on unarmed civilians by insurgents and other non-state actors on one hand and the security forces on another, is also ending the same way.

    Thus, 2023 recoils cloaked in blood and the sadism of murderous characters. The terrorists maimed rural Nigeria, murdering fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, leaving Plateau and the entire country cringing in anticipation of the next horrible attack.

    At the start of the year, the dominance of despair seemed so complete and insurmountable. Still, the political class, split along party lines and lusty for electoral votes, issued habitual promises to secure lives and property. They also vowed to improve living conditions in the country. 

    The citizenry, still smarting from the carnage of the previous year, believed them even as shady separatists emerged from the woodwork, 

    chanting bloody banality to the politicians’ insensate bromides. The latter killed unarmed civilians and law enforcers, triggering fears over the possibility of holding the elections. 

    Now that the elections have been lost and won, will the political class fulfil the pledges they made while canvassing for votes? As 2023 records more funeral pyres, can Nigerians count on their elected leaders outside the pressure of an impending election or their frantic need to grandstand before the camera?

    Politicians know the electorate through sadistic plowing; nailing them down with spikes of cash and bigotries, they catch their shrieks in a metaphoric calabash. The vessel is chillingly archetypal. 

    The gourd vine connotes pathologic self-preservation. The ruling class’s metaphoric calabash sheaths its exaggerated pride and self-idolatry—a poisoned chalice.

    Like the Biblical bawds of Babylon, they hold their gourds scummy with lust and amorality. The insolence persists across social platforms and spills through our worship houses, schools, and social circuits into our rural divides; shady politicians pant to serpents interred in our possessed spirits. We have seen such individuals and their bungling parties sadistically maul tenet to wile and policies to streaming blood. 

    The 2023 elections provided an opportunity to divest the country of their cancerous forms, lest we end up as tissues and blood in their gourds. Nonetheless, the ruling class reflects our degeneracy to us. They actuate rather than constrain our perversions.

    Boorstin would call this the mirror effect. The political class’ administrative hearse becomes the railcar of our death-tending impulses: terrorism, kidnap for ransom, and armed robbery flourish. Fraud and embezzlement of public funds persist in public and private corporations.

    The maladies persist through dispensations. From now, over the next three years, voters will get to know if, by their votes, they have once again fallen victim to errant lusts. 

    At the moment, the political arena equally unfurls like a red-light district, an expansive brothel, where electorate bodies are the stringed instruments hysterically plucked by politician-patrons. 

    In this decadent theatre, politicians emerge as master harpists, making dark melodies to the electorate’s torment. In anguish, the latter gains identity as faceless natives: bleeding sap condemned to infernal dystopia. Think of the Plateau massacre and the like.

    Beyond the false narrative of one candidate’s sainthood and the opposition’s villainy, the consistency and emotionality of the story is paramount. Thus, the occasionally wild and absurd drama. 

    Did the Plateau electorate choose the most suitable candidates for their public offices? Have they entrusted their lives to the right hands? Or were their votes hijacked or stolen by the most devious candidates? Did the illiterate voter escape the snare of political con men at the 2023 polls? 

    Take the Plateau government and police authorities, for instance; since they assumed office, what have they done differently from their predecessors in curbing the seasonal massacre in the state?

    It’s about time the federal government overhauled the regional security architecture, with particular attention to intelligence and anti-terror operations in established hot spots. This would forestall a recurrence of the Plateau massacre, among others.

    The frightful spurts of violence in Plateau and other parts of the country intone a brazen incantation of bestiality over humankind. It exposes the scourge of our inner ugliness and establishes citizenship as a barbaric ritual drama, where the performers periodically swap masks among the government and the governed.

    Read Also: Alleged vote-buying: Adebutu reports to police in Ogun

    From Boko Haram’s terrorism, armed banditry, and kidnap for ransom to the killer herdsmen-farmer crisis, criminals and mass murderers actualise their fantasies of ill-bliss across the country.

    Every fresh killing occurs jarringly in the wild drama. The corpses manifest as a sick rose wrapped in menacing public thorns. Amid the mayhem, the governors look up to the federal government to rescue their states from the jaws of insecurity, thus drawing speculations about what they do with the monthly outrageous security votes they draw from the national purse.

    The occasional knee-jerk reactions to insecurity are ineffective. The incumbent government must not lose its grip on the nation’s security apparatus. It is, however, pointless rehashing calls for an overhaul of the security system. Nigeria needs a more drastic intervention.

    The President Bola Tinubu-led administration must avoid the occasional flashes of feeble resolve deployed by his predecessor and empower the nation’s armed forces lest they make a frantic recourse to the glorified hide-and-seek escapades with terrorists.

    Whatever good the incumbent administration seeks to achieve mustn’t be smothered by the miseries and death cries of victims of insecurity, unemployment, and the collapse of security infrastructure. 

    On President Tinubu’s watch, Nigeria mustn’t diminish into a Darwinian spectacle of turbulent energies: terrorism, warmongering, buck-passing, corruption, and inefficiency – the same failings for which previous administrations were tirelessly chastised. 

  • Another year is ending and a new year begins

    Another year is ending and a new year begins

    Year 2023 that is ending has been a difficult year all over the world, but to say the least, it has been doubly, problematic in Nigeria. There is a shortage of food because we are not growing enough food, the farming population is aging and the young people are flooding into the towns for the bright lights in the cities. Secondly the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are disrupting the flow of food and cost of available food imports is skyrocketing. The cost of fuel and consequent devaluation of the local currency is making the cost of imports unbearable. 

    We are also witnessing the global inflation ravaging the entire world. We are going through a transition from living beyond our means to living within our means. We transited from one government to another despite the rather contentious and disputed national and state elections, a feature which has sadly come to characterise our elections in Nigeria. Election seems to be a festival of bountiful harvest of monetary rewards for lawyers and some would say, for members of the judiciary in Nigeria.

    I don’t think there is any other country in the world where elections are followed by so much litigation as we have in Nigeria. In our country, when a candidate loses an election, the refrain is that she or he has been rigged out. When he wins an election, it is either he or she has bought his or her victory. It is not that elections are not sometimes challenged in other countries but in Nigeria, it is the routine end of all our elections. This is sometimes accompanied by violence. This makes one to come to the conclusion like Marquis de Montesquieu came to in the 18th century that people in the tropics are predisposed to dictatorship than to democracy which is more suitable to people in the temperate regions of the world. I cannot think of countries in the tropics that run democratic constitutions seamlessly whereas democracy seems to be rather popular in the temperate countries particularly in the temperate region of Europe, the United States and Canada in spite of dictatorships of the Nazi, the Fascist, Communist ideology which were European export to the world.

    In Africa our monarchical legacies like other monarchies in other parts of the world did not tolerate opposition. We mostly do not have positive terms for opposition in our languages. Nowadays we all want to be on the winning side in any elections no matter in which country. Winning an election in Africa may be the difference between having flowing potable water in your pipes or dry pipes or no piped water at all. It could also mean no motorable roads or smooth expressways. It could mean absence of other great things like hospitals, good schools, good communications and transportation and other appurtenances of modern life.

    In other parts of the democratic world, some of these things are regarded as normal expectations from good democratic governance. The thing is that some of these things are also available to citizens in countries run by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The difference is that if the totalitarian and authoritarian rulers do not provide them, there is nothing the citizens can do because protest or demands for them are not allowed unless the protesters are sure of support for a change of government or the consequences of liberty or death as battle cry.

    What has our experience in Nigeria been since about 1951 since our country exited from British dictatorship based on racial superiority and western educational achievement of knowledge? The British conquest and domination was based on superiority of knowledge translated into superiority of weapons and intelligence and governance wisdom based on knowledge. When the British felt they had to concede to our fathers a share in government based on the fact that our founding ancestors had acquired western education, they brought into being constitutional provisions that made it possible to share with us the burden and opportunities of government with our fathers and sometimes with our mothers schooled in the same intellectual environment with our fathers. This first crop of rulers guided by the British overlords seemed to have imbibed the democratic culture which allowed difference of ideas not leading to blows and undemocratic exchanges in the public glare.

    But when the British left or surrendered to our pressure, the democratic edifice carefully constructed collapsed like a house of cards because the structure itself was built on faulty foundations. From the collapse we needed a civil war to realise our mistake and to build back on the debris and ruins of the previous sandy foundation. We learnt the hard lesson that it is much easier to destroy than to rebuild. Since our civil war, we have been writing constitutions only to find them not quite adequate to the problems that keep emerging and to tackle each new problems cropping up all the time.

    We have not found the magical constitutions that substantial portion of our people like. Once a new constitution is written, people use it to satisfy their greed. Those out of the gravy train would then commence on serious agitation to make the country unstable and if possible ungovernable. We then put together a governing coalition to ram down the throats of those who are out of the loop. This has been our story since independence. The devil is in the detail the skeleton of our problem is clear to any serious thinker. The kernel of our problems is the ethnic divide and the bringing of chicken and pigeon together in a cage. They will soon cohabit uneasily or they will fight against each other using whatever advantages they have against each other until they are separated or they fight till death.

    Read Also: Akeredolu was a patriot, Mimiko mourns

    Of course we have seen on the African continent in Somalia people of the same ethnicity and religion finding it difficult to stay together and reducing themselves to the level of the most primitive Homo sapiens and an atomistic society only tolerating each other at the level of clans, not even tribes. The option before us is to realise that no country is a paradise. We must make our country work.

    It is people who build countries we have to use who we have. Not all our people are devils.  Quite substantial parts of our people are indeed saints. If you are a religious person, you will know that God can use anybody to achieve His mission in His divine creation. Perhaps our mistake is that we want to be governed by saints rather than by practical men of action and women of action. There is no country on earth where their leaders and politicians will pass the test of righteousness. We just have to make do with what we have and confine them within the structure of established laws and constitution of our country and if they go out of line, we find a way of throwing them out and replacing them with next best offer we have.

    This seems cynical. But from all the recent revelations about those in commanding heights of responsibility, we see that virtually all those we hold very high have individually and collectively betrayed us  and stolen the resources of the country, resources that they cannot use up to the fourth generation. When people do this, it is not just greed but outright madness. This is not just a recent thing; it seems one regime has bettered the other in undoing the country in the nefariousness of undermining the economic health of the country.

    I have heard people say that the present regime is our last chance and that if it fails then we are done for. There is so much hope that judging from his antecedent of being a political brawler and being a street fighter, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the incumbent president should be able to put the country on the path of rectitude. This is a mistake we all make. The solution to our present problems has to be collectively designed, negotiated and executed. It cannot be solved by one Poobah at the head of government but by all of us having a change of heart and determinedly deciding to rebuild our country block by block of hard work and righteous living and serving the country rather than serving ourselves. It is by doing this that the whole world will know that there is a new day in our country and the beginning of moral rearmament in a country where for years people had always waited for our potential greatness to be actualised.  The time for a radical change is now.

    Happy new year my readers.

  • On a sad note 

    On a sad note 

    It is the season of joy and merriment.  The season in which christendom celebrates the birth of the Messiah, of Him that was written, according to the Bible , would save the world. In celebration of the season, Christians prepare well ahead for it. Those days when the economy was booming, they spared no expenses in their preparations.

    The prevailing economic downturn has made us all the wiser. We have learnt to do things moderately – celebrate without much fanfare, eat only when necessary and cut down on expenses considered wasteful and unhelpful. Prudence is now the keyword for individuals and organisations.

    It was in the heat of these preparations and with all eyes already set on the D-Day, which was barely 48 hours away, that the Plateau was on the boil again. For the umpteenth time, gunmen struck in some communities in Bokkos and Rafin Dadi Local Governments of Plateau State, killing, maiming, raping, burning and looting. In their wake, they left sorrow, tears and blood (STB), as Fela termed the aftermath of the destruction of his Kalakuta Republic in 1976 by those referred to as  ‘Unknown Soldiers’ by a judge.

    These gunmen too are unknown and they have for long being troubling the Plateau, leaving behind their ‘regular trade mark of STB’, apologies to Fela once again. As usual, the besieged communities are peopled by the poorest of the poor – people that can barely make ends meet. But at Christmas, they forget their poverty and pain, albeit temporarily, to revel in the birthday of Jesus. To them, the celebration of Christmas is routine.

    Whether they have money or not; whether tney have new clothes or not; whether they can afford chicken or not, Christmas still holds a special place in their hearts. So, no matter their condition, they must celebrate it. But the gunmen spoiled their fun, even before it started. According to reports, they stormed the communities in the wee hours of the night and began a systemic destruction of the place. They yanked husbands, wives and children off their beds, shooting some to death at pointblank range.

    It was a bestial act; something that is not expected at a time like this. This is a season of joy and celebration; a season to remember the birth of the Prince of Peace and live in peace and harmony with ourselves. Plateau has not known peace for long, but at a season like this, its fragile peace should not have been broken. What did the marauders come looking for when Christmas was at hand?

    To kill, maim, burn, loot and rape? The marauders have done their worst. There is nothing more that they can do. As we take stock of the tragedy as a nation, let us in retrospect ponder over these incessant attacks. What have these people achieved with these attacks beyond killing, maiming,  raping and looting? Why have these attacks become frequent? Why have the security operatives not been able to stop them in their tracks?

    Read Also: Nigeria is in good hands, Tinubu assures citizens

    Can the attacks still be reduced to the farmers/herders clashes? These incessant attacks have gone beyond that. There is more to it than we all know. Only the attackers can say what they want. Whatever it is, is it by these killings that they will achieve it? In these latest killings, the casualty figure is conflicting. The police put it at 96, while the Bokkos and Rafin Dadi Local Government Chairmen, Monday Kassa and Danjuma Dakil, said it was 155. The conflicting figure is not the issue because human life cannot be quantified. Even, if it was one person that was killed, the atrack remains horrendous, despicable and condemnable.

    The essence of the figure is to have a record of the victims. The public may want to know the numbers, but what is of greater importance is for us to remember that the victims are human beings like us who were unfortunately killed in a callous way. It could have been anybody because these marauders do not discriminate when they strike. But for the purposes of closure and in order to put their family members’ minds at rest, we should get the casualty figure right.

    It is painful that the year is ending on this sad note for the bereaved families. My heart goes out to them. Getting the killers and bringing them to justice will go a long way to healing their wounds.

  • DStv and its antics

    DStv and its antics

    As the leading pay television station in the country, DStv enjoys virtual monopoly of the market. Almost every Nigerian with the means subscribes to it. But DStv is not fair in its dealings with customers. Last November, it sent to its agents a notice of price increase beginning from November 6. MultiChoice, the parent company of DStv, did not go public with that notice until early December when it announced a so-called loss in the outgoing business year.

    In effect, it was saying the price hike became imperative because of the high cost of doing business and other incidentals which led to its purported loss. It was a lie. It had effected the price hike before declaring that loss! That is by the way. On being alerted of the price hike, I immediately subscribed for two months and the DStv agent in my neighbourhood acknowledged the transactions which were done on November 2 and 3.

    Read Also: Akeredolu was a patriot, Mimiko mourns

    To my rude shock, DStv sent me a notice on December 8 that my subscription will lapse on December 12. I ignored it becsuse I knew the subscription will subsist till January 11, 2024. When I contacted the agent, he also assured me that all was well. To my dismay, I was disconnected on the said day and I promptly contacted the agent, who took it up with DStv. For four days, I was denied the services I paid for. I would have reported DStv to the consumer protection agency but for its agent who kept pacifying me.

    On realising its mistake, DStv reconnected me, without apologising for its wilful action. Instead of an apology, all it did was to send me an email, reminding me that my subscription will lapse on January 11 and 17, respectively, on my two decoders. As if I did not know. It should keep its payment reminder to itself.

    Until we meet again in 2024, here is wishing you, dear reader, a happy and prosperous New Year.

  • We need to protect and nurture our current democracy

    We need to protect and nurture our current democracy

    Recently in Phoenix, Arizona, President Joe Biden while declaring open the late Senator John McCain Library at the University of Arizona made some profound statements about democracy and America’s mission to defend it against its enemies all over the world. The American president has made it a point of duty to speak in support of democracy since he came into office about three years ago. This arises from his long service in the US senate and his service as vice president under President Barack Obama and his belief that democracy is America’s gift to the world. Going therefore to honour Senator McCain, a Republican, demonstrated his commitment to democratic ethos of accepting that differences of opinion without rancour is a basic attribute of democratic governance and principle.

    I listened carefully to the president’s call on Americans about the need to defend and protect their democracy by speaking against all acts and actions taken against it by political leaders and influential people in the society. The American president said without naming President Donald J. Trump that the greatest enemy was within America itself. It is of course debatable whether any country can save democracy if the people themselves feel let down by the democratic government they install after every election.

    In the same vein, I feel compelled to raise my voice against undemocratic actions of some functionaries of government that are undermining democracy and if attention is not called to such actions, this may lead to the demise of democracy in Nigeria. We have witnessed happily the return of democratic governance since 1999 when the military exited the scene of government. Although many people felt what we actually had was not democracy but militarised democracy. Whatever we have is however a semblance of democracy and if we protect and nurture it the possibility of it growing to what we want is there.

    About eight years ago there was an intra-party dispute between the retiring governor of Edo State and his deputy who wanted to succeed him. The dispute of succession led to the deputy leaving the governing party and joining the leading opposition party. Incidentally he was supported and financially aided by the leadership of the party in power in Rivers State. When he won the election he was faced with the majority members of his old party in the legislature. When he could not persuade them to follow him into the opposition party he refused to allow them enter parliament by not swearing them to the oath of allegiance to the constitution. He followed this up by removing the roof of the parliament thus daring its members to meet in the open. This went on for four years until the term of the parliamentarians expired. All threats against the governor even from the national parliament in Abuja came to nothing until the governor served two terms of four years each.

    Read Also: Three kidnapped while performing sacrifice at Enugu river

    The lesson here is that the governor is supreme if determined to stay in office even against the opposition of members of parliament and the courts. We are again faced with the same situation in Rivers State. The government there is confronting the former governor of the state who is currently serving as minister of the federal capital territory in Abuja. The new governor in Rivers State even though apparently supported to become governor by the previous holder of the office deservedly want to be his own man against the wishes of his former boss. The vast majority of members of the House of legislature, 27 out of 32 or so , who are beholden to the past governor decided to support the past governor and to impeach and possibly remove the incumbent governor despite the intervention of the president. The whole situation has assumed dramatic turn with the legislators leaving their former party on which they and the governor were elected. The scenario is that when and if they return to the legislative building, they would probably invoke impeachment procedure and send the governor packing. The governor has borrowed from the Edo play book which Rivers State which the incumbent governor and his predecessor had used successfully in Edo State. This time it was even more dramatic. The state governor sent bulldozers to pull down the legislative building on the grounds that it had been damaged when there was a fracas between the two groups.  This destruction of a building worth billions of Naira when the country is facing horrendous economic problems is not only insensitive but totally outrageous.

    In the meantime, the few legislators about four or five of them supporting the governor have approved the 2024 budget. The cabinet of the governor has been hollowed out with the resignation of the supporters of the previous governor. The governor is banking on the hope that if the House members cannot meet in the legislative building, all their decisions would come to nothing. I am not sure that his few supporters meeting in the governor’s chamber and approving the budget could pass through the cannons of law. The governor must be banking on previous history of this kind of contest between the executive and the legislature.

    During the first Republic, Chief S.L.A Akintola in the Western Region fought successfully the parliament’s intention to remove him. He had the support of the federal government at the time.  At the end of the day, the outcome was neither in in the interest of democracy nor the country. One is not sure the federal executive would support the governor now that the majority of the legislature are on the same side with the ruling party at the federal level. The minister of the federal capital territory even though still a member of the opposition party, is likely to follow his colleagues from Rivers State into the governing party. This will have effect on the federal position. The governor can hopefully take solace in that both in Edo and the old Western Region, the governors prevailed against the legislatures. One hopes the Rivers State judiciary will not be dragged further into the political miasma as it’s usually the case to the embarrassment of everybody.

    We have to take legally binding decisions on this kind of scenario for future occasions. There are constitutional provisions about resigning from parties that sent a person to parliament when leaving the party and joining another but those provisions are not strictly enforced. If enforced, the frivolous trading of positions in the parties will be eliminated especially if such people have to leave parliament. The constitutional provisions on impeachment have to be tightened up to include crimes which are justiciable in courts of law not just that the person has lost political majority.

    Certainly the physical attack on parliament must not only be deprecated, it must be forbidden. There ought to be laws to prevent former executives’ attempt to subvert the functions of the government of their successors. This kind of thing caused the crisis in the ACTION GROUP and remotely led to the civil war in Nigeria between 1966 to 1970. Anybody who thinks the present democratic dispensation in Nigeria is here to stay and that we don’t have to guard and protect it is not realistic. The country is too fragile and is beset by all kinds of fissiparous tendencies tearing the country apart ranging from ethnic and existential economic problems to social and political insecurity. Democracy is not a perfect system but it remains the best the human brain has come up with but it has to be protected and nurtured to preserve it.