The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • What does Kanu want?

    What does Kanu want?

    Nnamdi Kanu is at it again. For the umpteenth time, he pulled another stunt in court on Monday when his treason trial resumed. He was expected to open his defence so that the case can get on the home stretch. He was given between October 23 and today to do so. He wasted the one week grace without doing the needful. He kept on giving excuses whenever the case came up.

    First, it was the sacking of his lawyers. The second was that he did not have the case files as his lawyers went away with them after their sack. The third was that he believed that the court could not try him as there was no valid charge against him. He then requested that he be freed or be given one week to file a written address. Kanu may adopt whatever delay tactic catches his fancy. He will bear the brunt as he is the one in custody. But should he be allowed to dictate1to the court? The answer is NO!

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    How can he come back now and say there is no ‘valid charge’ against him after the court dismissed his ‘no-case submission’ last month; asked him to open his defence and gave him between October 23 and 30 to do so? The court has bent backward enough to accommodate Kanu, but he keeps abusing the privilege. I pity him! Whether he and his ilk like it or not, his trial must go on and justice will take its course. It is just a matter of time. Let them take to the streets from now till thy kingdom comes, it will change nothing, and  heavens will not fall.

    Since he has decided to become an emergency lawyer, Kanu should know the next step to take after the Federal High Court concludes the case. The law is no respecter of persons, but of those who respect the law. As the court ciunselled him: “this is not economics; this is a criminal prosecution”. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

  • PDP and the ides of November

    PDP and the ides of November

    THE history of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) predates the membership of many who today are at the helm of its affairs. They were young boys probably still in school then when it started as a group founded by the late former Vice President Alex Ekwueme at the 1994 Constitutional Conference organised by the Abacha junta. The mission of the Group of 34 (G34) eminent Nigerians was cut out for it from the outset – get the military out of power and ensure that Gen Sani Abacha did not transmute into civilian president.

    Abacha had a plan which he wanted to use the conference to achieve. So, he loaded it with his loyalists who will do his bidding under the pretence of preparing the grounds for a return to democratic rule. His crowd was always coming up with issues and motions that favoured the dictator. Ekwueme and other like-minds saw through the shenanigans and swiftly moved to stop the nonsense. The conference report was a blow to Abacha’s dream and so he did not touch it.

    On his death four years later and the resolve of the succeeding administration to return the country to democratic rule without much delay, the Ekwueme group which had been meeting all along, even after the end of the constitutional conference quickly seized the moment to begin the process of becoming a party. The G34 became the nucleus that formed PDP in 1998. By then, its rank had shrunk from G34 to G18, as some had left to be part of other arrangements elsewhere.

    Whether as G34 or G18, the umbilical chord of PDP can still be traced to the struggles of this formidable group of politicians who gave their all for the birth of the party. Former Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido, who is today fighting a battle of his life in order to lead the party was in the thick of things then. He was an associate of many members of G18. As governor, he built some houses in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, which he named after the G18 leaders.

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    Lamido may have seen it all as a politician, but the young turks who today control PDP may not have the sense of history to accord him the respect he deserves as an elder of the party. He might have built monuments in memory of G18 leaders in his state, this is of no significance to the governors now calling the shots in PDP, which he believes that he toiled for with others in G18 to bring to life. Lamido wants to be PDP national chairman at its forthcoming 15th (ides) of November convention in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, which is the home turf of the emerging national leader of the party, Governor Seyi Makinde.

    Indeed, if leadership were to be about age and experience, the chair would have automatically gone to Lamido. But as he knows, that is not how it is done. Political leadership is not about age, but about clout, resources and your support base which must be huge and well oiled. The governors have settled for former Special Duties Minister Tanimu Turaki as the consensus national chairman. It is said that they have the support of a section of the party’s national working committee (NWC) in endorsing Turaki.

    The governors may have their way at the convention, as things stand. As the payer of the piper, they call the tune. They are the ones now funding the troubled party since its sole funder and former Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike seems to have withdrawn such support because of  ‘irreconcilable differences’.  The convention is going to be quite interesting – if it holds. Some state chairmen of the party have gone to court to challenge it, claiming that due process was not followed in fixing it. Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, will rule on the case tomorrow.

    Also, the National Secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, is alleging that his signature on the letter sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) about the convention was forged. The party has since denied his claim. The Lamido challenge may be the ultimate in the series of rows dogging the convention. Why is the party shutting the chairmanship door against Lamido? If the governors are sure of their strength, why are they afraid of allowing him to collect the form and run against their anointed candidate for chairman?

    Legally and constitutionally, Lamido or any Nigerian for that matter cannot be denied the right to contest for any elective post of their choice. PDP should move swiftly to nip this crisis in the bud before Lamido makes good his threat to go to court as and challenge the decision to stop him from running for chairman. If they have the numbers to defeat him, they should allow him to contest and defeat him at the poll and demystify him as an oracle of the party, which in a way is how he perceives himself as a founding father of PDP

    Need I remind PDP that the ides of November is at hand? It is just 16 days away. Whether the convention holds on that day or not is in the hands of the party and its powerful governors. As they make their bed, so will they lie on it.

  • Bomb threats and panicky legislators

    Bomb threats and panicky legislators

    The earth is littered with the bones of potentates who believed they were eternal. History thrives on their ruin or renown. Let this guide every Nigerian in public office. No matter how highly placed they are, providence eventually halts their pompous strides and yanks the rug from beneath their pretentious ideals.

    The recent disclosure of a bomb threat against the National Assembly rankles ominously, no doubt. But we had it coming. Now, this article does not defend bomb threats or violent insurrection. Those acts are crimes against the common life. But to pretend that violence detonates out of nowhere, and that despair, manipulation and mass anger are spontaneous combustion, is to traffic in a convenient fiction.

    The social tinder that allows unscrupulous demagogues and foreign spoilers to light the match is assembled every day by bad governance: by governors who hoard and fail to deliver; by legislators whose opacity invites conspiracy; by public servants who confuse rent-seeking for stewardship. When the people are rendered impoverished and luckless pawns, the wreckage of trust becomes fertile ground for recruiting the disenfranchised.

    The warning bell clanged recently as lawmakers reported terror threats against the National Assembly, including a claim that terrorists threatened to bomb the legislative complex. Chairman of the House Committee on Internal Security, Hon. Garba Ibrahim Muhammad, disclosed during a public hearing on a bill to establish the Legislative Security Directorate, held at the National Assembly complex, Abuja.

    The proposed legislation is titled “A bill for an act to provide for the establishment and the functions of legislative security directorate in the national assembly; to provide for the qualification and condition of service of the sergeant-at-arms and other personnel of the directorate and for related matters, 2024 (HB 1632).”

    But beyond the legislators’ panic and cry for metal detectors, subsists a deeper malaise that renders the legislative chamber porous to fake IDs, petty traders, unvetted access and civic outrage. There was the corrosive fable of the “per-lawmaker N1bn”: a claim that lawmakers futilely battled to prevent it from calcifying into public belief. A former aspirant, David Ayodele Asalu, asserted publicly that every federal lawmaker receives not less than N1 billion annually for constituency projects, with senators supposedly getting more. That claim went viral, but the House of Representatives denounced it as “deliberate disinformation.”

    If untrue, the danger is not merely factual error but the story’s utility. For a youth who has no work, a retiree who waits months for a pension, who sees a road undone and a local clinic unbuilt, the allegation simplifies injustice into a single enemy, and imputes motive where there may be complex fiscal flows and bureaucratic mismanagement. Such simplicity becomes potent and accelerates rage.

    Otherwise, the numbers are damning. In 2024 alone, Nigeria reportedly budgeted about N724 billion on its National Assembly and 36 State Assemblies. This includes N50 billion for salaries and allowances of lawmakers at both federal and state levels, N294.7 billion specifically for the National Assembly and related bodies, and N379.28 billion for the state assemblies.

    This renders futile the former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan’s previous argument, the monthly salary of a senator is N1.5m, while that of a member of the House of Representatives is N1.3m, stressing that the alleged N13.5m monthly salary was actually their quarterly office running allowance.

    Recent findings revealed that the Nigerian Senate President actually receives N2.48 million as basic salary, while other senators receive N2.26 million monthly. Even so, the quarterly office allowance (running cost) for a senator amounts to N52m per annum, while the N8m for a member of the House of Representatives amounts to N32m in a year.

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    Nigeria could save around N250 billion every year by switching to a unicameral legislature or making lawmaking part-time. This money could be redirected towards improving healthcare, education, and infrastructure, thus aligning with the country’s economic realities and developmental goals.

    The federal government and the National Assembly must make concerted efforts to reduce the astronomical cost of governance as the current profligacy is unsustainable and morally indefensible. The maintenance of a Senate and House of Representatives, with their attendant expenses, is no longer a luxury we can afford.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has to his credit, pursued visible palliatives: expanded transfers via FAAC, the establishment and roll-out of NELFUND student loans, targeted scholarships, and investments aimed at stabilising the naira and boosting infrastructure and security. But policy without partnership is like seed scattered on a stone. If governors, lawmakers, and bureaucrats act at cross-purposes, hoarding funds, refusing to clear arrears, or allowing projects to rot, the centre’s good intentions are nullified on the periphery.

    NELFUND has disbursed loans to hundreds of thousands of students, and FAAC lifts have meant larger sums reaching subnational governments than before. But the arithmetic of revenue is not the arithmetic of care. An increase in aggregate allocation means nothing if it is not accompanied by transparency, by conditionality, and by political courage to confront mismanagement at the subnational level. The numbers can be said to climb while the lived condition of citizens remain in decline.

    And so we arrive at a harder truth: the people will only believe in bold national reforms when the political class shows it is worthy of belief. Grand rhetoric must be matched by grand gestures of restraint and identification, not just from presidents and ministers but from governors, legislators, and local power-brokers. This could look like the clearing of pension arrears; timely payment of civil servants’ wages; an enabling business environment: transparent execution of constituency projects with independent audits; and, crucially, visible punishments for corruption at every level.

    It is never enough to funnel palliatives and incentives to mitigate economic distress. Democracy does not naturally spring forth from the soil of free markets. It must be grounded in self-sacrifice. A healthy democracy must frequently challenge the economic interests of the elites for the benefit of the people. Yet government officials and corporate actors address the economic crisis by funnelling funds and resources into the financial sector because they are conditioned to maintain and manage the existing system rather than transform it.

    Perhaps the most heartbreaking subplot of Nigeria’s travails is the erosion of the middle class. Inflation, unemployment, and taxation have squeezed this demographic, leaving many struggling to maintain their status. Historically, the middle class serves as the backbone of any nation, driving consumption, innovation, and economic stability. In Nigeria, this group has become increasingly vulnerable, trapped between rising living conditions and stagnant income.

    Reviving this social stratum will require more humane and intentional policies: affordable housing, access to quality healthcare, and educational reforms that prioritise skills for a modern economy.

    The political class must also understand that the rage brewing within the disenfranchised working class and below forebodes a dangerous backlash. Pervasive hopelessness has driven too many into the arms of dubious demagogues and charlatans, who peddle utopian fantasies to a desperate populace.

    The question before us is not whether we can stop violent men, because we must, but whether we are willing to stop making violent men inevitable. The answer to that requires a more humane and relentless approach to governance: lawmakers who account, governors who pay, and a presidency that insists that its policies be matched by subnational partners who will not sabotage them.

    Until that day, every cratered road, empty clinic, unpaid pension and disenfranchised youth is an invitation to chaos. And invitations, once accepted, are hard to rescind.

  • Enablers of Kanu self-destructive behaviour

    Enablers of Kanu self-destructive behaviour

    As seductive as the federal arrangement, a social  system that guarantees ‘unity in diversity’ is, it also has the prospect of producing arrogant leaders with inflated sense of self-importance as representative of groups with their own clear vision of society. By strange coincidence, all our three founding fathers suffered from this federalism’s major infirmity.

    Obafemi Awolowo was an efficient administrator and an unrepentant federalist. His unrivalled achievement in education, communication and industrialization and drive towards an egalitarian society in a world of endless class wars, placed his Western Region ahead of other regions.

    But his audacity to dream he could replicate his West achievement all over the country, a crusade not shared by his more Yoruba irredentist deputy, Chief SL Akintola, the trusted ally he effectively used to keep the colonial masters and the feudal north at bay. This marked the beginning of the fall of the West as Ahmadu Bello who could not stand Awo’s arrogance put him out of circulation after independence courtesy NPC/NCNC alliance.

    Prof Banji Akintoye recently quoted a colleague with whom he was doing a project on Nigeria as saying “the Yoruba people are very proud; whoever told the north wanted free education?”

    Nnamdi Azikiwe, Zik was admired by Lagos intelligentsia for his erudition and worshipped by Lagos Igbo urban immigrants who had for long yearned for a spokesman. They believed whatever Zik said.  But the price the Igbo nation paid for Zik’s audacity to mislead his Igbo compatriots that unitary system is best for a multi-cultural society has been coups, pogroms, civil war and a nation that has remained ungovernable since independence.

    For Ahmadu Bello, a feudal lord, loyalty was feudalism first badge of honour. He did not forgive Awo for trying to undermine his authority among those that literarily worshiped him.  He had no apology for single handedly manipulating the constitution to remove one leg of Nigeria tripod holding Nigeria together. The consequence of Ahmadu Bello’s exploitation of innermost fears of his subjects is that the north has not moved far from where it was in 1966.

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    However, the battle today is against Nnamdi Kanu, an egocentric leader with inflated sense of self-importance but with neither a grand worldview nor even a clear vision of where he intends to take the Igbo nation to. In fact, his display of reckless power, arrogance and erratic outbursts such as “burn down Lagos”, burn down Oyigbo and kill all the policemen” when not railing against judges and lawyers old enough to be his grandfather, have led many to doubt if indeed he had enough time to imbibe the celebrated deep Igbo culture before moving to London to start his crusade.

    But his irascible behaviours have not stopped him from having millions of worshippers.  There are the Igbo youths with sense of siege and persecution complex arising from jaundiced narrative of Nigerian history of ethnic rivalries. There are also millions of children of anger in the social media who today swear by the name of Nnamdi Kanu, the long awaited messiah who will take Igbo out of the zoo run by Fulani illiterates supported by Yoruba who recently replaced Igbo as spare tyre.

    And topping the list Kanu’s enablers are a section of the media. And their award winning journalists, a segment of Igbo political elite with reputation for playing the ostrich and a section of the noble profession who has faith in the judiciary only when they are beneficiaries.

    As for Kanus media enablers, the central focus of the two platforms Channels TV and ARISE TV used for this piece was the failure of government to successfully prosecute Kanu they claimed was kept in detention for five years; that it was within the constitutional right of Sowore and Kanu’s defence lawyer to move to the street few days to Justice Omotosho’s six days accelerated hearing of Kanu’s case.

    They argued with intent to mislead the public that the court order obtained by the police banning Sowore and his group from some sensitive areas in Abuja was inferior to the constitution. They did not see Sowore’s refusal to obey court order as invitation to anarchy; for them the arrest and arraignment of Sowore and others who broke law by the police was immoral and constitute an anti-people behaviour on the part of the police.

    “If they did not say it was sub judice when Gani Fawehinmi-led demonstration’s years ago, why is it that it is now sub judice when Kanu’s lawyer is demonstration against a case in which he was a leading counsel”  Arise TV’s Rufai Oseni bellowed.  He continued “why is it that those who only yesterday demonstrated against Jonathan are today afraid of demonstration? This is exactly why we say Nigeria is a big joke”, he concluded.

    And his colleagues ominously reminded us of the Arab Spring without telling us if the nations involved are today better off for it. They did not forget to remind Nigerian government they alleged was anti-people, of the Gen-Z uprising across the globe.  They however failed to add that the current attention-seeking Sowore and a few others disturbing the peace of Abuja did not represent resourceful Nigerian youths who as far back as 1920 first demanded from the colonial masters that Nigeria federation be modelled after that of Switzerland.

    Neither could the current social media anarchists and those who called themselves ‘obidient’ be compared with our youth who in the sixties moved around the world where they engaged in debate about how to make the world better for humanity.

    I am not aware of any these platforms that covered Sowore frees Kanu’s s protest last week that informed their audience that Kanu was the architect of his own misfortune with his periodic attack and rejection of judges, intimidation of judicial officers  and abuse of the judicial process. All we got from a more restrained Laolu Akande was “Kanu wants a political solution”.

    But the leopard hardly changes its skin. With Kanu sacking his legal team, demand for 90 days as against six days of accelerated hearing granted by Justice Omotosho, his hypocritical anti-government and anti-Nigeria media enablers now understand that we now know those behind Nigeria’s nightmare even when they daily swear in the name patriotism, the last refuge of the scoundrels .

    Of course the critical enablers of Kanu are a segment of Igbo political elite. Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye and Charles Aniagolu last week spoke with two leading members of the group, Dan Iwuanyawu, a Labour Zenith chieftain and the other, an elected Labour Party member of the House of Representatives. 

    For Iwuanyawu, Kanu has not done anything against Nigerian state. Our problem, he insists is double standard. He tried to draw a parallel between Kanu’s IPOB and Fulani terrorist currently negotiating with government. He however failed to indicate the negotiation is at subnational level where tribal war between Fulani and their Hausa hosts which remained intractable despite thousands of deaths and over 12 years of federal government failed attempt to use force to install peace among siblings.

    And for the Labour Party National Assembly member, the ongoing trial of Kanu was a carryover of Yoruba-Igbo war. And his reason which the news anchor did not try to correct was that the current president is Yoruba, the  Attorney General and Minister of Justice is Yoruba, the presiding judge  in Kanu’s case, Justice Omotosho is Yoruba and Kanu’s prosecuting Lawyers are Yoruba. Therefore, Kanu’s case which preceded Tinubu’s government by about seven years is a Yoruba war against Igbo!

    These Igbo leaders unfortunately live in denial claiming periodic mindless killing of policemen and innocent Igbos arising from Kanu and his recently jailed Finland based deputy, Simon Ekpa’s ‘sit at home order’ were sponsored from outside. But we have Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra who recently disclosed to the world that “99.9% of those caught and indicted for mindless killing of Igbos, are Igbos”.

    From the outburst of some of Kanu’s defence lawyers who in the past openly spoke of persecution, it is not difficult to know from where Kanu derived his audacity and reckless bravery. These senior experienced lawyers hardly disagree with Kanu. Many have therefore argued that it may also not be difficult for them to also don the ethnic toga when Kanu insists what was going on was a persecution and not prosecution.

    Journalists as politicians pretending to be advocates of the people should be reminded that the primary role of the Fourth Estate of the Realm besides keeping government under watch is supporting all our institutions since the alternative is anarchy. The only reason there are journalists is because we have this “our own dear native land, where tribe and tongue may differ, but in brotherhood we stand” and an imperfect government trying to balance the interest of the people and that of the owners of society.

  • Kanu’s ‘delayed’ trial: Whose fault?

    Kanu’s ‘delayed’ trial: Whose fault?

    On Monday, some people led by Omoyele Sowore protested what they called the ‘delayed’ trial of Nnamdi Kanu of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) fame. Kanu was first arrested in October 2015. In November, he was arraigned in an Abuja Magistrate’s Court. In December, he was ordered released by a Federal High Court. That same month, the government brought a fresh treasonable felony charge against him.

    In 2016, three different courts ordered that he be remanded on grounds of national security. In May of the same year, he took his case to the ECOWAS  Court. In April, 2017, Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, granted him bail. He fled from his home in Abia State shortly after in September when soldiers came calling. So, when his case resumed in October, he was not in court. Some four years later, Kanu was brought back home in June 2021 as a ‘fugitive’. His case resumed before Justice Nyako about three months later and his bail was revoked.

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    Following series of theatrics and his allegation of bias against Nyako, the case was transferred to Justice James Omotosho. Before the transfer, Nyako had in 2022 asked him to answer to seven of the 15-count charge preferred against him, after expumging eight. Kanu appealed and the Court of Appeal found in his favour. The appellate court discharged, but did not acquit him of the offence. Under criminal law, such a discharge is temporary; the defendant risks being retried if there is fresh evidence to do so. To say that Kanu was freed by the appeal court is, therefore, wrong since he was not acquitted.

    His trial began afresh (de novo) in 2024 before Omotosho. The prosecution closed its case in March 2025. Since then Kanu has not opened his defence. Rather, he brought a no-case submission which Omotosho dismissed in September. The judge ordered him to enter his defence. Kanu did not. He claimed that he could not stand trial because he is ill. The court invited the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) to examine him. NMA did and reported back that he is fit to stand trial as his ailment is not life-threatening. The court consequently gave him between today and October 30 to open and close his case.

    Will he avail himself of this grace period to open his case or will he, his lawyers who should know better, and the rabble rousing protesters still resort to extrajudicial means to politicise a criminal case? Sowore and co. should stop this public show which will not get Kanu anywhere. They should let the law and not sentiment speak. Kanu, who has been in custody for over four years now, wears the shoe and he knows where it pinches.

  • Demola Osinubi at 70

    Demola Osinubi at 70

    That Night at Radisson Blu in Ikeja GRA, Lagos, Sir Demola Osinubi looked resplendent in a flowing kaftan. With patches of grey in his hair, showing that he was no longer a spring chicken, at least not the same as the young man that I first came across in 1988, he did not look like someone three years shy of his 70th birthday which he marked three days ago.

    That night, he was honoured with the well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award by Diamond Publications, promoters of the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME). There could not have been a worthier recipient than Sir Demola, who we, his reporters at The Punch then, used to call ‘Demo behind his back. Sir Demo was already the Deputy Editor of The Punch, which was then struggling for survival when I stood before  him in his office at Onipetesi, Ikeja, off the old Lagos-Abeokuta Road, in 1988.

    His office door opened into the newsroom, separated by the corridor which people took to get to other parts of the building. Osinubi was a newsman to the core. He could smell a good story from afar. His nose for news was extraordinary and like every editor he was impatient with lazy reporters. He expected you to think and write on your feet. As his reporter, he did not expect you to just walk into the newsroom, and start rambling about the story you have. You are expected to have sketched out the frame and only get to the office to flesh it up.

    Osinubi was never far from the newsroom. He was always on hand to help the News Editor, Chris Mammah, with stories of the day and how they should be treated. He was also good at spotting talents and was ever ready to help to build their careers. Though, The Punch had challenges then, it was still one of the best newspapers around. It was a breeding ground of sorts as many left despite the conviviality for greener pastures when it could not fulfil its obligations to them as when due. The story is different today. It has become a business empire, thanks to the efforts of people like him and Emeritus Chairman of The Punch, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola, among others.

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    Osinubi was in The Punch for almost 46 years. He joined the organisation in 1976 as a reporter and left in 2022 as Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief. He was not a laid back editor, who led from the rear. He led from the front and was in the heat of things in the newsroom. When news broke, he was there to give directions and guide us on how to handle it. Alhaji Najim Jimoh, the Editor, had implicit confidence in him. They worked well together. Theirs was a mutual relationship which helped to build The Punch into a great paper despite its financial challenges.

    We learnt a lot from both men – the editor and his deputy – which has shaped the lives and the careers of many of us who passed through them. One thing you learnt immediately from Sir Demo is to get the spelling of names correctly. For instance, you do not spell his surname with an ‘h’ in the Osinubi. He would not take kindly to it. As such, he would not want the same done to others. He would ask you again and again: “are you sure of the spelling of so and so person’s name”.

    Those days, The Punch was a great family. It was a school. My oga, Dipo Onabanjo, calls it a “university”. It prepared a reporter for wherever he would find himself in future. Sir Demo held the place together as a unit and if he had his way, many would not have left. I doff my hat to a reporter, editor and manager par excellence as he joins the Septuagenarian Club. Seventy Hearty Cheers, Sir Demo.

  • Recurring malady of tribalism or ethnic nationalism

    Recurring malady of tribalism or ethnic nationalism

    The issue of tribalism or ethnic differences have largely ruined the success of the country. It has infected our politics to the extent that people either votes along ethnic lines and where they tried to look at issues rationally and nationally, they are immediately slapped back into supposedly tribal redoubts or ostracized as traitors or saboteurs. There is widespread rigging of votes to enhance ethnic figures in the census which are usually rigged because revenue sharing is tied to census. This is a problem that affects states creation, education, financial allocation and inability to have genuine democracy and stability which has been the bane of our society. The constitution which was a negotiated federal constitution before independence has been undermined by the military dictatorship edged on by civilian politicians who have less than noble or patriotic motives.

    Most of the political problems Nigeria has had since independence are traceable to tribalism or ethnicism.  Example of this can be seen in the Action Group crisis of 1961 to 1963 which split the party into two rival groups which indirectly led to the incarceration in 1963 of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then leader of opposition in the federal parliament with the combined forces of the tribally rooted Northern politicians and their collaborators from the Eastern region. Awolowo may have been ambitious, but it is doubtful and unlikely to  have tried to violently overthrow the federal government of Nigeria with a few party toughies trained in Kwame Nkrumah’s Wineba Ideological School where the likes of Samuel Grace Ikoku, a former Secretary General of the Action Group was a lecturer. The evidences presented at the famous trial for reasonable felony were not overwhelming enough to condemn a major political leader without upsetting the equilibrium of the country and its stability. The reaction of the people of the West got to a crescendo in 1965 when the Chief S.L. Akintola’s government which was obviously unpopular decided to manipulate the voting process when the Deputy Premier, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode boasted that whether the people voted for their party or not “… angels would vote for them” took laws into their hands, burning and looting while the cabinet prepared for the worst. When some elements in the army struck at dawn of January 15, 1966, some of the ministers felt that their opponents were behind the “attempted coup d’état while the BBC radio network was telling the whole world that there had been an attempted coup and the prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa seemed  to have been kidnapped and two regional premiers namely, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief S. L. Akintola, the Are Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land had been killed and many senior army officers seemed to have been killed. When the news were confirmed and regional and ethnic dimensions of the killings were analysed the original cheering for the army putsch petered out in fear of what may happen because Nigeria had never seen anything like this before. Then came the counter coup of July 1966 which appeared as if the equation was balanced by the number of army officers who were killed. But unfortunately the situation got out of hands when the pogroms against the Igbo in the North began and the whole country became destabilized setting the stage for the civil war after the mediation by Ghanaian military leaders failed and General Yakubu Gowon on return from the Aburi reconciliation meeting in Ghana, appeared to have been outflanked by those who wanted to militarily sort out the issue.   Going to war was a terrible denouement for which Nigeria is yet to recover. Another example that shows up the fault line in the country is forming of the federal government in 1954, 1959, 1964 when the recurring decimal of those days of the opportunity to form a more radical governments than we have ever had but people, seemed to just have their jobs rather than what was good for the entire country. We can zero on the coalition government that took the country to independence. The election in 1959 was deadlocked with the NCNC coming first with the highest number of votes followed by the AG and the NPC coming third but having the highest number of seats and reversing the choice of the electorate. If the NCNC had shown some courage by accepting the offer of coalition with the AG, the course of Nigerian history would have changed for the better but the leader of the NCNC, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in private could not trust Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  This mistrust was not on ideological grounds but on ethnic grounds. It was the latter because his party had nothing in common with the NPC, its senior partner in the coalition government. Azikiwe had erroneously argued that the AG had bought some of the elected supporters in the Western Regional House of Assembly election in 1951 where those he claimed were his party men claimed they were independent and because of this, his ethnic supporters said Yoruba people could never be trusted! This was unfortunate because politics in southern Nigeria since then have been conducted largely on assumed rigid political division between the East and the West despite the fact that the NCNC was almost as widely supported as the AG in Yorubaland.

    This pattern has been repeated by dominant parties in the Western Regional election and East in subsequent elections despite the time changes and names and ideology of the parties. This has affected the conduct even of census and location of strategic industries such as location of iron and steel complexes, petroleum refineries for example had been determined by political factors  rather than  by economic sense. Choosing who to run these factories had not always been based on the principle of careers open to talents but rather on nebulous grounds such as federal or ethic grounds resulting in failed projects and colossal waste of public funds. The result has been lack of economic development and availability of jobs the consequences of which are slow or no growth at all thus fuelling conflicts because of competition for jobs and sharing of jobs on emotional basis of federal character and not on merit.

    We can learn a thing or two from India where most jobs are determined by principle of merit in public and private sectors and this in place much bigger than us and a population eight times bigger than the Nigerian population.

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    Our leaders have not been genuinely patriotic enough to fight for the common man’s good. The lessons of the ruinous civil war between 1967 and 1970 have largely been forgotten because at the root of the war was tribalism and corruption and both maladies still dominate our politics and political alignment and rather than ideology. Nobody is seriously fighting for how to make the country great and we will be confronted by the same difficult situation when the oil wells run out and there is no ability to solve the problem, and it will be too late because we woefully depend on the wasting assets of hydrocarbons which is exhaustible and it will be too late.

    When the civil war ended in 1970, we had the golden opportunity to remake the country. Oil production increased phenomenally and by 1973 following the war in the Middle East and the Arab boycott, the price of Nigeria’s ‘light crude’ rose phenomenally and one of our leaders was said to have said the problem of Nigeria was not the cost of things but how to spend money. This may not be true but it shows the scandal of recklessness in those years.

    We spent money in support for blacks overseas such as funding police departments in Grenada for example, embarking on iron and steel complexes and celebrating black culture and inviting people from all over the world for cultural jamboree in Lagos and building a new capital in Abuja when we could have taken Kaduna which was established in 1914 for the same purpose if Lagos was correctly considered unsuitable. A fool would soon be separated from his riches captures our situation of the time. Then the military which has become the “fall guy” for our problem of movement without motion in 1979 handed over government to civilians-led NPN after imposing an American presidential constitution on Nigeria. Meanwhile the problem of corruption virtually overwhelmed the country under President Shehu Shagari. The Shagari government was gotten rid of by a military junta under General Muhammadu Buhari who imposed a stiff and stifling government on the country. The government was at first welcomed by the people who were appalled by the corruption of the Shagari regime bogged down by importation of rice and profiteering by the leadership of the government and the parties running it. 

    The new Buhari government could not find a solution to the serious economic problems confronting the country. Some of its leaders were involved in selling foreign exchange allocation papers for imports in extremely controlled foreign exchange management. The sudden change of the national currency and the accompanying corruption and smuggling of the Naira from abroad by a traditional ruler whose son was a military officer right in Buhari’s office gave his enemy food for thought and proof of alleged corruption. There was a coup within the army which ushered in General Babangida’s regime in 1985 till 1993 after prolong transition politics which saw Moshood Abiola, a well-known businessman and influential Muslim politician as winner. His election brought up the recurring problem of tribalism with his Yoruba supporters ready to fight any attempt to deny him access to power on the grounds that he was a Yoruba man. Those opposed to him came from the East and the North until his jailer, Sani Abacha and Moshood Abiola died rapidly after the other in 1988. This was in mysterious circumstances in which the hands of foreign governments were suspected with circumstantial but unproven evidence. This happened without resolving the perennial North-South political dichotomy.

  • God’s chosen (2)

    God’s chosen (2)

    Life as a “chosen pawn” is no walk in the park. Your heart is thick with repentance, but your penance has no audience. Perhaps because your chosen idols have counted you as part of the sacrifice.

    Your date with epiphany begins with promise. Pardon the recap in real time. On January 1st, the Year of Retribution, at precisely 8:40 am, you are ushered into a media parley at the “captured” State House in Abuja. You have rehearsed “appreciable” questions for the occupying force’s spokesman and the Commander of the counter-insurgency, aka Operation Chosen Lion.

    Your wit is honed to impress, and your conscience, neatly folded like a newspaper back copy. But few hours into the propaganda parley, you are briefed that resistance fighters had breached the perimeters of the north central’s open-air prison. You are told they are being crushed and pushed back.

    You applaud the newly constituted God’s Chosen Army for its daring and professionalism, stressing that Nigeria’s former military “would have caved and taken to their heels.”

    The Commander beams appreciatively at you – glorying in your impassioned sycophancy – while your colleagues rue their inability to beat you to the butt-lick and crawl. Eventually, you are discharged with a handsome reimbursement for your time.

    Sometime between your take-off and ascent to the FCT skyline, you learn that God’s Chosen forces are battling resistance fighters close to your residential district in Lagos. But you can neither call nor text, in compliance with aviation rules.

    Instantly, you become hysterical, wondering if your home has been caught in the carnage. As your plane descends astride the southwest perimeters of Nigeria’s open-air prison, you become anxious about the fate of your family amid the onslaught. But you’ve been assured, after all, that you would always be spared any of God’s Chosen military assault, given your relocation outside the internment camps.

    As you get closer to your neighbourhood, you are turned back by God’s Chosen special forces combing through for fleeing rebels. In your hysteria, you receive a call from your wife’s phone. ‘Thank God, they made it out before the siege,” you mutter. You are relieved to hear your seven-year-old daughter at the end of the line.

    But she is pleading over the phone for you to come rescue her. You hear shots being fired, drowning out your daughter’s screams. And then, silence.

    You hear nothing of your family until two weeks later, following the withdrawal of God’s Chosen forces from the area. Your daughter’s body was found alongside five others: your wife and four other daughters, inside your family car, a Kia Picanto.

    Satellite images reveal how they were targeted by heavy artillery and run over by God’s Chosen army tanks. Your family car got riddled by exactly 335 bullets, and you can barely recognise your seven-year-old daughter, her sisters and your wife, from their severely mangled corpses.

    In your grief, you recall your mockery of the sad fate of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab. On January 29, 2024, in Gaza City, Hind Rajab pleaded over the phone for emergency workers to rescue her from a car riddled with bullets. Her body was found two weeks later, on February 10, 2024, alongside the bodies of six of her family members in the car they drove to flee their neighbourhood as Israeli forces invaded.

    Picture your daughter in the mangled carcass of Hind Rijab. Picture her as the bloody carcass of each murdered Palestinian newborn and toddler. Suddenly, it’s not so witty or “touche” anymore to write, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” in response to social media outrage to the genocide in Gaza. “How about October 7?” now resonates like a dumb riposte.

    You realise how dubious it was of you to write the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from October 7. Yet, your grief manifests as ghosts of your past hypocrisies. Each bullet in each of your family members resonates as a headline that once mocked the suffering of others. The irony is pungent, the poetry unbearable.

    You had gone to report on “order” as directed by God’s Chosen leadership, and broadcast “balance” effected through carpet-bombs. You drafted your editorial masterpiece right before you left the God’s Chosen media parley, telling your fellow Nigerians that the occupying force was grossly misunderstood; that their tanks were moral instruments deployed in a siege against anarchists masquerading as resistance fighters.

    You quoted the scriptures to justify bombardments, as though God moonlighted as a munitions dealer. In your voice, objectivity becomes fiction, crafted according to the designs of those who rewrite history with the blood of others. It isn’t true if it’s not just. And justice requires choosing sides; always against annihilation.

    Now, faced with your family’s execution, your knees collapse. As you grieve, you see your colleagues still live-tweeting God’s Chosen propaganda and competing for soundbites. Their eyes avoid yours. They will file their reports and sleep. And you, broken father, will write one last column, perhaps a confession or a curse. But it will come too late for your daughter.

    Now, you attempt the literature of rebellion, but your voice has lost its vigour, like a redundant hyperbole in a rant against God’s Chosen. Eventually, you collapse in the wreckage of your own rhetoric, your press badge dangling like a noose of your own design.

    It takes a special kind of maleficence, and insolence perhaps, to rejoice at the murder of infants. Those who justify sniper bullets in the head of a three-year-old abroad may welcome sniper bullets in the head of their child or grandchild. Karma comes full circle, always.

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    You find that, not even a swift recourse to frantic remorse, could make heaven spare you your just deserts. You are accountable for your secret lusts and espoused chaos. The goodness you espouse will make you; the evil you applaud will unmake you.

    Forget Deir Yassin, Sabra, Shatila, Jenin, Khan Younis. Forget the siege, the deathly checkpoints, and the snipers who target children. Forget the journalists who got buried with their cameras alongside their families. Forget starvation, too, because remembrance is rebellion.

    And now, in the same logic of convenience, you will forget your heartfelt losses as you parrot God’s Chosen phrases: “security operation,” “neutralised threats,” and “collateral damage.” You will sanitise massacre into lexicon as your coloniser’s grammar becomes your creed, and your craft, once meant to awaken, now anesthetises.

    Gaza was an experiment. The world watched it burn and called it geopolitics. It watched children being vaporised and called it defence. It watched truth die and called it complexity.

    The same logic is rehearsing for its Nigerian debut. Every dollar grant that demands ideological loyalty and silence from your newsroom prepares you for future occupation. Every journalist who flatters tyranny abroad must prepare to relive it soon in his native dialect.

    And when the performance begins, and the skies darken with imported drones and a colonist pall, both your patriotism and humanity will be tested.

    Every God’s Chosen pawn has a price. What’s yours? A dollar grant? A travel visa? Or an opportunity to relocate your family abroad?

    These days, the Nigerian newsroom objectively debates everything but the daily savagery depicted in Gaza. Journalists fear the rancour that may arise. But, I want to say to dear colleagues, in the poetic tenor of Stephanie Hollington-Sawyer, can we not be sad together at the descent of humanity? Can we not grieve the death of innocents? Can we not at least mourn together?

  • Tinubu’s strength: Reward for party loyalty

    Tinubu’s strength: Reward for party loyalty

    Loyalty is political party’s highest badge of honour. Therefore parties hardly invest in those with shifting loyalty. Of course the party oligarchy made up investors, former office holders, current office holders, also have obligations to party members. What therefore sustains political party is members’ trust that their leader will always do the right thing.

    If APC has in recent months become an irresistible refuge for PDP and Labour Party elected members trying to escape from what President Bola Tinubu describes as a sinking ship without life jacket, it is precisely that they found trust in APC and its leadership which unfortunately was absent in PDP during their 16 years of war of attrition, called family wars over the sharing of our national resources. Although President Tinubu had said as a democrat, he was not expected to reject anyone trying to escape from a sinking ship, I am sure he must have today become overwhelmed by what seems to have become a tsunami.

    The irony is that APC is an amalgam of strange bedfellow made up ACN with progressive world outlook, Muhammadu Buhari’s ultraconservative CPC, a faction of ANPP and APGA joined by a faction of PDP led by Atiku Abubakar and a few PDP governors bent on bringing down their party over the sharing of proceeds of fuel subsidy scam. In fact, leading members of PDP including the late Doyin Okupe, President Obasanjo’s erstwhile attack dog, swore APC would implode after three months. Rather, the party has gone on to uproot PDP that had boasted to govern for 60 years, from power in 2015 and defeated it round and square in a keenly contested 2023 election because of the usual greed of leading light of the party which led to its splintering into three factions on the eve of what Obasanjo would have described in his days as ‘do or die election’.

    But if it is going to be of any relief to PDP, they must be told that what stood out for APC was a group of loyal party members led by Bola Tinubu who understands the role of political party as modernization agent in the 20th century. Indeed this group of loyal party men and women did not include the late President Buhari, Tinubu’s collaborator during the 2013 APC formation. Buhari neither loved politicians neither did he see political party beyond a tool for attaining political power.

    Tinubu as APC leader was never discouraged by internal betrayals and party in intrigues. He remained a committed party man even after Nasir El Rufai and some PDP stalwarts, who, Buhari’s wife claimed had no idea about APC manifesto, prevented an access to an ‘un-electable’ Buhari he carried on his back around the country, he remained a committed party man as against NCNC and NPP of first and second republics who for similar reason pupped down their coalition.

    As a loyal party man, he was on hand to dance around Nigeria with Adam Oshiomhole for Buhari’s re-election. He remained steadfast and worked for Burari’s re-election. But not long after this, betrayal came from his southwest serving and former governors he had invested heavily on. Driven by ambition, they bought the dummy sold by Buhari’s Abuja loyal gatekeepers of automatic presidential ticket once their principal was out of the way. They soon joined hands with their principal’s potential rivals, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, Rotimi Amaechi and his political foes including El Rufai and Governor Boni, to illegally remove Oshiomhole as APC chairman thereby preventing their principal’s access to a party in which he was by far the greatest investor.

    If President Tinubu took risk to remove the fuel subsidy scam which allowed criminals in shining suits to rape Nigeria using NUPENG and PENGASSON  to inflict suffering and untold hardship on Nigerians, facts available to his predecessors who did not have the courage to rescue Nigeria, it was because Tinubu has his party behind him.

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    If he frontally confronted the bank owners, principal owners of society and Godwin Emefiele their CBN governor-collaborator and others who became billionaires overnight as a result of foreign exchange round tripping, it was because he was sure his party would shield him from dangerous sharks.

    If he dared states and LGAs to whom much resources had been deployed to do more for their people at the grassroots level, it was because he knew his party has faith in him as an independent arbiter when it comes to the sharing of resources.

    Governor Peter Mba of Enugu’s principal reason for joining the Tinubu train besides the vexxed issue of Igbo voice not being heard when it mattered most, was “seeking affiliation where our interest as a region are represented in the form of fair partnership” and our vision is heard at the federal level. Mba in summary was talking about trust since “Igbo DNA does not change; their “destiny does not change; even while their “vision now finds stronger reinforcement at the federal level”.

    For Governors Oborevwori’s “the decision to align with APC is strategic and thoughtful move driven by a singular objective: to fast-track Delta State development through enhanced collaboration with the federal government”.

    But I think his predecessor Senator Okowa captured it better.

    “People wondered why, but in the history of a people, there is always a time to change their path for the common good of the people, and whatever decision we took was based on that common good and the need to change our path in the best interest of our state”.  It is just as well if APC is the instrument Delta whose successive leaders have been accused and in fact indicted for frittering away billions that would have changed the lives of impoverished people of Delta for better, in underwriting campaign expenses of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007 and allegedly, Atiku Abubakar in 2023. I think it will be a big relief for a people whose leaders including the late Augustus Aikhomu and ex-president Jonathan did not see stealing government money as corruption.

    Akwa Ibom governor, Pastor Umoh Eno went biblical by aligning himself with the children of Issachar in the Holy Bible who were able to interpret the times and flow with the tide by declaring “I have progressively moved to All Progressives Congress (APC) I have changed my political affiliation; we are support the president for second term in office to complete reforms he has started”.

    Everything boils down to trust.

    Nigeria has been haunted by lack of elite consensus since the run up to independence with the tenuous one secured through the British stick and carrot approach collapsing barely two years into independence. The result was a descent into turmoil of warring groups starting with Isaac Boro’s Niger Delta insurrection, the Middle Belt violent resistance, military coups, and pogrom; civil war, and 30 years of military dictatorship. And when they were finally humiliated out of power in 1999, they replaced themselves with military-baked “new breed politician’ who behave like military occupation. In what they often describe as ‘family quarrel’, they spent 16 years fighting over illegal sharing of the resources kept in their temporary care. The era witnessed the privatization scandal through which Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b was according to House probe, sold to PDP stalwarts for $1.5b; fuel subsidy scandal through which PDP leading light and their children embarked on monumental theft of the nation’s resources.

    President Jonathan unbundled PHCN after government’s injection of billions of taxpayers’ monies and sold them to PDP stalwarts. They even in the name of dubious monetization policy sold properties dating back to pre-independence period kept in their care for our children to themselves.

    President Tinubu, of all our past leaders, is today in a unique position to address the source of the nation’s nightmare. With those who have moved into his APC in droves with the party now in control of 72 senators in the red chamber, 265 in the green chamber and 24 of the 36 state governors, he should be able to leverage on those who have claimed to be driven by his courage to take hard decisions on behalf of the nation.

    He has shown by his institutionalisation of six development commissions that he doesn’t need to go back to 1957 or 1963 that we and our fathers have agitated for in the last 50 years. His former political foes now turned political collaborators are all he needs to prevail on National Assembly to legitimize the development commissions as federating states with central police patterned after Amotekun of southwest with local and community police holding sway in the states.

  • PDP: Last kick of a dying horse

    PDP: Last kick of a dying horse

    For the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the once self-styled largest party in Africa, it does not rain, it pours. In the past few months, it has been swinging from one crisis to the other. What is more? These crises are self inflicted. The party has lost direction. It has leaders, but they are not in control.The National Working Committee (NWC) is only so in name.The National Executive Committee (NEC) is worse. It is suffering from a bent NEC(k)!

    So, it cannot turn its nec(k) and see the magnitude of the crisis which is about to consume the party. PDP has lost steam.It is no longer a party, but a collective of people struggling to keep the boat from capsizing. As its few remaining governors are straining to keep the party going, the more headwinds it runs into. Do not be fooled. The PDP governor you see talking and thumping his chest today about dying in and for the ‘great PDP’ may well be on his way out the next day.

    Things are that bad for the party. Its much-vaunted structures from the ward to local government and state levels which were its pride in many parts of the country between 2003 and 2015 have slipped off its hands. It is left with the shells of those structures. Its governors who controlled those structures have left in droves and more may still leave for the All Progressives Congress (APC). Hardly a day passes that the party does not lose a member or two in the National Assembly to the APC.

    Yet, it keeps deceiving itself that all is well. Its three governors – Bala Muhammed (Bauchi), Seyi Makinde (Oyo) and Umaru Fintiri (Adamawa) – whose lot it has become to rebuild the party which from all intent and purpose is in tatters are papering the crack with sweet talks. These are sweet nothings in the face of what is happening to their beloved PDP. How can all be well with a party which lost three governors in quick succession to another party?

    And these are not governors of just any state. They are the governors of Delta, Akwa Ibom and Enugu, Sheriff Oborevwori, Umo Eno and Peter Mbah. Mbah left PDP for APC on Tuesday, with all his commissioners, members of the House of Assembly, councillors and their chairmen. Thus, APC now has a  strong foothold in the Southeast with three of the five states there in its kitty. APC is not in charge only in Abia and Anambra. At the rate it is going, it is a matter of time before those two also fall. Besides, it is the dominant party in Southsouth where it is in charge of four of the six states there except Rivers and Bayelsa,

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    Unofficially, some say Rivers is APC because of recent developments. The governor, Siminalayi Fubara, just returned from a six-month suspension following the state of emergency imposed on Rivers. His counterpart in Bayelsa, Douye Diri, is said to be warming up to join APC. In the Northeast, a governor in a state there is also said to be on his way to the ruling party. So, what is Muhammed and Makinde blabbing about the party being intact when in fact its umbrella, the PDP symbol, is already torn?

    What is the use of a torn umbrella when it is raining? Even then, it is more than raining with what is happening in PDP. It is pouring. How can a torn umbrella contain such a downpour? To Muhammed and Makinde, PDP temains the party to beat in 2027! I laugh in Fulfude and Yoruba!! How delusional can one be? Can they not see the handwriting on the wall? The party should consider itself lucky if its convention billed for Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, next month holds. The issue is in court as some members are alleging that the NWC did not follow due process before fixing.the convention.

    Then, there are the problems in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Kebbi and Plateau where the national secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, and national publicity secretary, Debo Ologunagba, are squabbling. They issued conflicting statements on the status of the state working committees (SWCs). Ologunagba said the SWCs had been dissolved, Anyanwu countered that NWC never took such a decision. He added that if it did, he must know as the party scribe. His statement makes sense. Muhammed and Makinde can  say whatever they like to make it look as if there is nothing, but the truth is that PDP is on its way to extinction.

    As this paper reported on Saturday, its fall in Enugu, following the defection of Mbah to APC, is a clear indication that PDP is gone for good, at least for now, and there seems to be no hope for it in 2027, no matter what Muhammed and Makinde say to the contrary. Indeed, to paraphrase Makinde, the electorate and not politicians would determine the outcome of the 2027 elections. We all know that. PDP will be shocked by the outcome. Mark my words. Look at the party that wanted to rule for 60 years!