The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Behold our new redeemers

    Behold our new redeemers

    But for its tragic consequences for a nation held hostage by Fulani terrorists, last week’s antics by our lawmakers would have been dismissed as a comedy laden with some sardonic humour. The reality today is that non-state actors have seized the initiative from our elected leaders resulting in indiscriminate killings of our compatriots, on their farms, homes, in transits or places of work. And that was the time our lawmakers chose to whimsically direct Buhari to tame in six weeks, Fulani herdsmen terrorists, rated the fourth deadliest insurgency in the world. It is on record that Miyetti Allah, long before Buhari’s inauguration in 2015 had, on behalf of Fulani herdsmen threatened to make the country ungovernable if their demand for open grazing across nation was not met. There has since been no respite for our people while President Buhari insisted he had done his best and cannot wait to leave office.

    What then, if one may ask, is the sense in issuing impeachment threat to a man who said he is tired and wants to go home?  This is a president that has for seven years ignored the lawmakers’ demands, summons and resolutions, responding sometimes to their irritations through his trusted gatekeepers- Shehu Garba, Lai Mohammed and Abubakar Malami. Issuing a threat, they have neither the numbers nor the gut to enforce on the eve of an election is bizarre. Their action is even more weird. The current assembly has done everything except that which the nation desperately needs- replacing the current ‘Decree 24’ of a constitution with a federal constitution to address our diversity.

    But Nigerians are not deceived. We know why they issued a puerile ultimatum while escaping from Abuja with their tails behind their legs last week. Abuja is no more a safe haven for parasitic lawmakers that have lived in denial for seven years. Those who sowed the wind are trying to escape reaping the whirlwind.

    Our political class remains the scourge of the nation whether it is in the mismanaged privatisation programme, ‘Monetisation policy’ scam, cornering of 25% of the national budget by the lawmakers, budget padding, unimplemented constituency projects, fuel theft, collapse of the health and educational sectors while they and their wards spend billions on health tourism.

    In office, Obasanjo, Jonathan and Buhari work for themselves or their cronies. Obasanjo presided over the sales of Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b at a paltry $1.5b to his cronies, thereby turning our nation to net importer of labour of other nations. When there was nothing left to sell, President Jonathan in the name of dubious ‘monetization policy’ sold all federal structures dating back to the colonial period spread across the nation. And as for President Buhari, he doesn’t seem to be worried that if the current narrative does not change before he leaves office, he will probably be remembered as a leader who as a result of his mismanagement of our diversity, presided over the disintegration of the country.

    At the onset of the fourth republic in 1999, the lawmakers gave an indication they were coming to serve none but themselves. They publicly expressed their desire to recoup their expenses on election having sold houses for the battle. They them created an artificial fuel scarcity which forced Obasanjo to set up the Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), an instrument with which about N1.7t was stolen under the dubious fuel subsidy regime, according to a house committee report.

    For successive senate presidents viz Evan Enwerem, Chuba Okadigbo, Anyim Pius Anyim, Adolphus Wabara, Ken Nnamani, David Mark, Bukola Saraki, Ahmed Lawan, it has been a game of dog eat dog as they struggled over sharing of resources. It was no less the same in the House with speakers, Patricia Ette, Dimeji Bankole, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Yakubu Dogara and Femi Gbajabiamila.

    Okadigbo spearheaded the removal of Evan Enwerem from office on November 1999 for falsification of name, while Okadigbo was in turn removed as Senate president in August 2000 by 81-14 votes over inflation of contract costs. Anyim Pius Anyim out of office was drilled by EFCC for shortfall of about N396 billion in ecological fund deductions as well as over $1.3b Centenary City project.

    Saraki sold the victory of his party to the opposition by cutting a deal which ceded the deputy senate presidency to the opposition in what Itse Sagay described as ‘a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline”. On January 11, 2017, a Range Rover SUV that the Nigerian Customs “had intercepted and impounded valued at N298 million, with an alleged fake documents presented by the driver showing payment of N8m as against expected customs duty of N74 million was traced to the senate president. David Mark, challenged by EFCC for buying his official residence at a giveaway price went to court to defend short-changing the nation.

    In 2007, Patricia Ette’s award of about N628m for the renovation of her official residence and that of the deputy speaker forced her to be booted out of office. Dimeji Bankole bought his palatial official quarters for N45m. That was after N200m provision had been provided in 2008 budget for its renovation. The sale of the 32-storey NECOM building to his company also led to a presidential probe. Abdul Mumin Jibrin, accused of ‘unilaterally padding the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State, attributed his travails to his inability “to admit into the budget, almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

    Nigerian opinion leaders, at different periods called attention to the excesses of our lawmakers. Sanusi Lamido as governor of Central Bank on December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin lamented that the federal legislators were gulping about 25% of federal government overheads.

    Former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Kayode Eso, on November 21, 2010, described the National Assembly as an assembly of fascists for trying to make laws that would make their return automatic. For him, “the nonsense of ‘first refusal is’ fascism”. He also believes “for any senator including absentee senators, to take home N30 million every month without accountability…as a foundation for revolution.”

    For Biodun Jeyifo “if you want to know why looting and thievery became so pervasive in the 4th Republic, you must pay attention to the legalization and institutionalization of greed and sleaze in our predatory legislature”. Similarly, Obasanjo at the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”.

    And in July 2013, The Economist, one of the most influential economic newsmagazines in the world, ranked Nigeria as the country with the most unjust and lopsided pay structure in the world.

    We have no evidence the current National Assembly leaders are dealers. But actions speak louder than voice. Nothing can be more self-serving than Lawan’s recent attempt to derail his party rotational arrangement. As for Gbajabiamila, hosting big party for his 90-year old mother in Dubai or throwing big parties in Lagos to display $300,000 car gift to mark his wife’s 50th birthday, pastimes that were rare before becoming a lawmaker are not true mark of leadership.

    Dear compatriots, behold thy self-proclaiming messiahs.

     

  • Tobi Amusan: A breath of fresh air

    Tobi Amusan: A breath of fresh air

    I woke up on July 25 to be bombarded with emails and WhatsApp messages telling me the good news of a young Nigerian lady, 25 year old Oluwatobi Amusan breaking the world record in 100 meters women hurdles. This was at the world athletics competition in Portland Oregon, United States. I was immediately infected with the virus of excitement to use a medical idiom. Most of the messages came from my friends in the universities, my old secondary school mates and my family. Surprisingly no messages came from my young friends and former students who always solicited my opinion on budding issues of national importance, perhaps they felt what’s the excitement about? We old people are hankering after when our nation was great but the young ones blame us for our present predicament. This Tobi Amusan’s good news came just about the same time when terrorists were threatening to kidnap our president, Muhammadu Buhari and Nasir el Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State. As a citizen, I was infuriated and angry about the verbal humiliation of our president. With the recent terrorists’ invasion and capture of the Kuje correctional centre in the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) and the hurried closure of schools in Abuja and security alert in Abuja and Lagos  recently to forestall an imminent countrywide operation of terrorists, I felt really worried about the future of my country, Nigeria.

    The questions that came to my mind is why the failure of security architecture in the country despite the huge amount annually budgeted for the military, police and the Department of State Security and other security organizations in Nigeria. Are these bodies subverted from within? Could it be a case of wrong or inadequate personnel? Is it a case of inadequate modern equipment? Or is it a case of lack of morale and mobilization? Whatever it is, it seems we are getting to a point where something has to give. If we can’t sort out our internal security problems, maybe we should, without shame, call on our friends in other parts of the continent or our trading partners outside the continent for assistance. Or if the situation is caused by internal political structure, perhaps it is time to look at this and do something about it. Some have been preaching secessionist options but I honestly don’t think this is the way to go. There is security in numbers!

    The consequences of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and nearer home, Ethiopia are not too good to recommend the option. There is no guarantee that this can be done without violence as the relations among the successor states of the dissolved political associations and country cited above have shown. There is no doubt that there are tremendous advantages for Nigerians to remain together under the big umbrella of the most populous country and the biggest economy in Africa if only we can solve our security problems. This is why it is desirable for us to appreciate what we have and to work to preserve it. Our size also attracts hostility and envy to us from Africa and beyond and we must factor this into our politics, ethnic relations and the desire for moderation in our political and economic debates and management of complex issues instead of going for broke all the time we have problems.

    Now back to Tobi Amusan putting smiles on our faces. I rejoice with this young lady and the attraction she has brought to Nigeria confirms the well-known fact about the   effectiveness of what is generally referred to as cultural diplomacy. Culture broadly defined will include sports, literature, movies and dramatic arts, cultural artifacts, fashion and all tangible and intangible things that can promote the interest of state by attracting  to it positive attention of the international community. Cultural diplomacy is relatively cheap. This is unlike the traditional diplomacy conducted by governments through the heads of state, their foreign ministries and diplomatic missions and other relevant ministries like defence and finance and in our own case in Nigeria, the ministry responsible for our hydrocarbons. Traditional diplomacy is conservative, routine in nature with developed languages and norms and sometimes not fit for urgency and requirements of the moment. Cultural diplomacy on the other hand is effusive and expressive and instant in operations and results. This is why many countries invest in sports as a way of building respect for one’s country. But for the ping pong tournament between China and the USA in 1972, there would have been no rapprochement between President Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong and restoration of ties between the USA and the Peoples Republic of China. The point of the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy needs to be made so that our sportsmen and women should be treated like cultural diplomats and be accorded better training and funding and respect and recognition necessary for the effective performance of their duties. We should not wait for the solitary performance and achievements of individual sports men and women before according them respect.

    When Tobi Amusan brought joy to all of us, some of us cried with the girl when she started shedding tears of joy and perhaps of sorrows on the podium when our national anthem was played. The sorrow was about what has become the present and future of our country. Those of us old enough agree that our past as a country was much better than this even if not totally glorious. In1961, our prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was given the privilege and opportunity to address the United States Congress in Washington DC. No African president or prime minister has been given that privilege since that time. Rather we have gone down the slippery slope of irrelevance.

    Our hope lies in our youth and we should give them the chance and opportunities to play positive roles in our political, economic and cultural lives. We should not tie their legs and hands by the ropes of religion, ethnicity and mediocrity. Tobi  Amusan has proved that without the humbug of national irrational restrictions, a Nigerian citizen can outperform their contemporaries in any part of the world. The people of Ijebu Ode have come forward to claim that Tobi Amusan belongs to them. Yes they are right. She was sired there but she ran for Nigeria and we are justifiably proud of her as J.F. Kennedy said “success has several fathers, failure is an orphan” so it is with the great Tobi and let us hope her achievements will unleash the energy of other young Nigerians to perform outstandingly in their various areas of human endeavors.

    We can’t all be sportsmen and women; whatever talent God has deposited in you as young people should be exploited to the limit. We of course know that there are thousands of unsung heroes of young and old Nigerians in academia, business and technology. What is missing is our ability to apply our intellectual intensity in the areas of governance in our country.

  • Shall we tell the President?

    Shall we tell the President?

    One thing led to another. This has been the case since the March 28 trainjack in which scores of passengers were abducted. Over 100 days after the incident, 34 of the abductees are still in captivity. The abductors have been releasing their victims in phases after collecting ransom on them. It was said that they have collected over N900 million so far!

    No business pays that much in just four months? Among the abductees were the aged, women and children, but the abductors do not give a hoot. There were also expectant mothers, who had since given birth in captivity. A doctor, perhaps a gynaecologist, was reportedly invited to take delivery of one of the women. The other was allowed to go and give birth at home.

    The trainjackers have not ceased been in the news since their despicable act. They keep using their victims as baits to make demands on the government. The government’s response has not been encouraging. It has been all talks without action. With the government’s seeming impotence in the face of this development, the abductees’ families have been left with no choice than to negotiate with the abductors. Most of the negotiations are done on phone, the same device which Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card we were made to link with our National Identity Number (NIN) in order to curb cyber crime!

    What do we make of that project, with the way criminals are carrying out transactions on phone? The terrorists have kept up their illicit activities since the train attack, coming out now and then, to commit other atrocities. With the aid of members of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), they stormed Kuje Correctional Centre on July 6 and freed many inmates, including some commanders of Boko Haram. Twenty-four hours earlier, they attacked President Muhammadu Buhari’s advance team which was on its way to his Daura, Katsina State hometown, to await his arrival for the Eid-El-Kabir celebrations. A security agent was killed.

    The President paid a brief visit to the Kuje facility, criticised the security agencies for not doing enough to stop the attack and jetted out to attend a summit in Dakar, Senegal. Many wondered if that was an auspicious time for the President to travel out, but his aides said there was nothing wrong with him going on the scheduled trip! After all, President Shehu Shagari left for India onJanuary 24, 1983, in similar circumstances after visiting the burning Nigeria External Telecommunications (NET) building in Marina, Lagos. The building is still lying in ruins, 39 years after. Buhari was aware of the trainjack, the Kuje facility invasion and the attack on his advance team. Yet, nothing has come out of his interventions.

    If we are to believe Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the President was unaware of the trainjackers’ threat to attack him and the Number One Citizen until they met on July 24! He claimed to have told the President about it. “What happened within this week is what made me to seek to see the President… I told him about the recent developments, particularly the video released by the terrorists. In fact, up till that moment, he was not even aware… the following day, that is on Monday (July 25), the Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle, confirmed to him that he (Bello) even saw the video, so we need to take action”, El-Rufai said.

    How can that be when the Presidency reacted to the video the same day it was released? In a statement entitled: Latest version of terror propaganda and military readiness, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said the security forces were not relenting in their efforts to defeat criminals.  The President, Shehu said, had done the needful for the armed forces and was, therefore, waiting on them to deliver victory to Nigerians. The terrorists, the statement noted, were using propaganda and violence to get the government’s attention. But, the statement did not take the terrorists up on their threat to attack the President and El-Rufai.

    The Presidency probably felt that it was an empty threat not worth wasting time on. The Presidency has all it takes to secure itself. The power of state is at its disposal and can be deployed anywhere to protect the President and his family. But the state should spare a thought for the people, the suffering masses, who look up to the President for their safety and security. What we should be telling the President is how insecure the people feel. How the cost of living is skyrocketing. How inflation is affecting them and their families. How businesses are either dying or folding up and moving to countries with conducive environments to keep afloat.

    He should also be told that university students have been at home in the last five months because of their lecturers’ strike which has been extended by four weeks. An extension which came after the expiration of his two-week ultimatum to his education minister to resolve the issue. Add to the mix, the threat by the minority senators led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in the National Assembly to impeach the President, and we have a country buffeted from all sides. The senators are citing rising insecurity for their planned action.

    The plot is a long shot in the dark. What is needed urgently is to free the remaining victims of the March 28 trainjack and end the agonies of their families who have been left alone to do all they can, including raising money in these hard times, to pay as ransom. No government worth its name leaves its citizens exposed to the intrigues of terrorists. Indeed, as the President said on Tuesday, “this madness must end”. But, when and how? That is the President’s remit.

     

    Sterling v Sterling

    Getting a Point-of-Sale (PoS) machine is simple. It costs nothing to get one, as long as the prospective merchant meets the requirements of his bank of choice. The simplicity of the process may be why PoS operators and their banks misbehave when issues arise as they will surely do once in a while. All you need to do to get a PoS machine is to approach a bank, fill an application form and within a week, it is ready. In a country like ours where anything goes, some underhand deals cannot be ruled out in the process.

    As many customers prefer to use their Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards on their banks’ platforms to avoid the payment of charges, so are they happy to carry out transactions on PoS machines linked with their banks, despite no known accruing benefits from it. From experience, it is better to use, as they call it, ‘other bank’s’ PoS. On June 1, I used my Sterling Bank ATM card on a Sterling Bank PoS. The N7000 transaction failed, but I was debited. All efforts to get back my money since then have failed. The PoS operator, according to Sterling Bank, Matori, Lagos Branch, has refused to yield to requests to send the receipt of the transaction for which I have since provided all the evidence. What else does the bank want? My blood?

  • Beyond rant and rascality

    Beyond rant and rascality

    The 2023 elections incite the Nigerian cult of infantilism. It accentuates disparate voter divides, our fear of growing up, and inclination to soak in the lagoon of misbehaviour.

    Public discourse segues to rant and rascality, en route to the polls – online and offline – thus validating Marc Cooper’s pungent portrayal of the television-marinated society, in which the boundaries between childhood and adulthood blur, and completely get erased, in the glitz of pseudo realities.

    The Nigerian political arena, extends beyond the political parties, to the platforms of public discourse and channels of communication, especially social media, where children and adults trade tantrums, and hurl juvenile rant and rage in protest against everything Nigerian.

    The political landscape has deteriorated on the watch of predatory oligarchs, no doubt. The latter displays, to date, willful incompetence and inexplicable disdain for the electorate. The citizenry, in time, developed deep-rooted loathing for their pretensions, coldheartedness, and abuse of authority.

    The next few months, however, offer the electorate yet another opportunity to stand on the bight of history and salvage or waste opportunities for change, again.

    For the umpteenth time, Nigeria fields contenders, some of whom may be out to excite the electorate’s frantic hopes simply to dash them. Like a changeling of fickle principles, passion and integrity are changeful in their wake.

    The electorate must make its way past the fraud and extortion of these seasoned politicians and younger aspirants, who are out to lure the psyche into committing political capital (that is, electoral votes) to unsound judgment and investments.

    But to achieve this, the Nigerian voter must learn to discern the likely messiah from false patriots and conmen.  It’s about time we exercised tact and meticulousness, in casting our vote at the forthcoming general elections.

    I ask that we be wary of everybody and everything. I ask that we watch out for certain questions which we will frequently hear and certain apologies that may resound as philosophical queries or rhetoric. They are in truth, psychological confessions and expositions of the treachery and chaos constituted by our preferred candidates and their apologists.

    If we pay good mind to their politics, we just might find that every touted good by some candidates, masks a damning evil, like the extent to which altruism erodes a man’s capacity to grasp the concept of rights, or the actual value of human life. And the extent to which his conscience and humaneness has being wiped out.

    I urge that we be wary of the extremely platitudinous and patronising candidate, who is desperate to serve as the means to the end of others; such a character will ultimately regard others as disposable means to achieve his ends, often at very expensive cost.

    The more neurotic and ‘conscientious’ he gets in his practice of altruism, the more colourful schemes he devises “for the love of the collective good,” “for the love of the common man,” or “posterity” and “leaders of tomorrow.”

    Every effort of such a candidate will be geared at reinforcing all manners of sentiments and sound bites – he would claim to seek the fulfillment of “the people’s needs” except the actual needs of the electorate, like you and me.

    Among other measures, shall we institutionalise the debate as a platform for scrutinising our candidates? I moot a discuss, where the crucial, dreaded questions get asked.

    Let us wield it as a looking glass by which we view and analyse the politics, antecedents, and soul of each candidate. Let us not be deceived by their politics of unblemished altruism.

    The advocates of such selflessness often promise automatic and wholly magical solutions to problems of poverty, security, sub-standard education, and healthcare to mention a few.

    They promise success and survival to everyone but what they offer, ultimately, are what Rand calls “life-boat” solutions – fleeting lifelines by which short-term benefits are derived. Such a philosophy of governance conflicts with our social realities. It’s akin to applying menthol on a bullet wound.

    Let us not be deceived by the promises of restructuring, modern and affordable housing, true federalism, fiscal prudence, quality education, and so on regurgitated by our preferred candidates.

    Let us begin to ask, in Rand-speak, how they would pay for these things and at what cost to you and me. Let us make each candidate define his philosophy of social reform, welfare governance, and the psychology of his noble experiments in the interest of our most basic necessities and his antecedents in public or private office.

    The appalling recklessness by which some candidates propose, justify and project “government with a human face” may be discernible, measured, and disclaimed through the looking-glass of their antecedents in public office, well-organised political debates, interviews, pseudo-events, and frank talk.

    Who knows? We may discover, in the nick of time, that the hallmark of our preferred candidate’s humanitarian disposition is the advocacy of some limitless, grand-scale public goal or initiative without regard to context, cost, or the means of achieving it.

    For such a goal or initiative to be desirable to all, it has to be made public and glamorised because the costs are not to be earned but to be expropriated, and a dense patch of venomous fog has to enshroud such vital issues as the means of achieving it. This is because the means could be human lives. Human lives like yours and mine: battered, bruised, browbeaten, easy to fleece.

    Healthcare appropriately illustrates a modicum of the random aspirant’s lifeboat ventures. “Isn’t it desirable that the government subsidises treatment of compatriots living with HIV/AIDS?” clamours an average citizen. The preferable answer would be “Yes, it is desirable.”

    It is at this point that both the mental and moral processes of a collectivised brain are wholly cut off. The rest is fog. Only the desire remains in sight of our “altruistic” candidate.

    “It’s for the greater good. It’s hardly in my interest but in the interest of others. It’s for the public, a helpless, ailing public,” rants the familiar candidate. Consequently, the fog hides such facts as the embezzlement of public funds, unbridled looting of the public till, compromise and sacrifice of medical science, professional integrity, and the careers and happiness of those who are to administer such care, the nurses and medical doctors; and those who are to enjoy it, the patients.

    The examples of such projects are innumerable as daily, our favoured candidates, whip up more slogans to bait and confuse us. Therefore, be wary of the candidate promising to clean up our slums while avoiding questions about what happens to the victims of such cleansing and those in the next income bracket.

    Be wary of the candidate who seeks to “educate the shanty kid” while avoiding crucial issues such as the quality and welfare of staff to anchor such educational projects. What will be taught, and what back-up measures are to be adopted in the event that the initiative fails?

    Be wary of the candidate who seeks that Nigeria too gets to do the moonwalk and conquer space even as he avoids the crucial issues of government and private sector neglect, Nigeria’s white elephant space technology, and discrimination against the nation’s polytechnics and technical training schools.

    Be conscious of their unreality – their blind, savage, ghastly fantasies that inspire them to prevaricate and if possible, avoid the usually unanswered and unanswerable question to all their “popular” and “altruistic” goals: “Who really gets to enjoy the benefits?”

     

     

  • Good bye Boris Johnson

    Good bye Boris Johnson

    On July 20, the flamboyant and controversial British Prime minister, Boris Johnson, bowed out of the House of Commons (parliament) after prime minister’s traditional question time. This followed personal and policy scandals over the past three years as prime minister and over the last decades of unconventional social life involving series of sexual alliances and fathering of a couple of children out of wedlock. Beginning from holding parties at his official residence at 10 Downing Street which also functions as office of the prime minister and ending at the appointment of a sex offender into parliamentary office and denying having knowledge of the man’s past even though he had been briefed.  This was after more than 40 allegations of sexual abuses and harassment of people including staffers of parliament by members of the Conservative Party, the prime minister’s party. He was also accused of regularly lying to parliament and even giving peerage to a Russian emigré, one Lebedev living in London whose family allegedly had ties with the Russian KGB, the spy organization of the old Soviet Union. This incident led to insinuations about being connected to the Russian secret service which is obviously an exaggeration.

    Boris Johnson has an interesting pedigree. His great grandfather Ali Kemal was born a Turk and a Muslim in Constantinople (Istanbul). His grandfather was Wilfred Johnson, Kemal Ali’s son who was born in England in 1909 and died in 1992. Boris Johnson’s grandfather was a writer and had citizenship of both France and Great Britain. Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson born in 1940 of an Anglo-French parentage is a writer. Apart from being a writer, Stanley Johnson was a politician and journalist who is very much alive and was working in New York when Boris Johnson was born 58 years ago. This makes Boris Johnson an American like his hero Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time hero whose mother, Jennie Jerome was an American citizen. To use a phrase of Wole Soyinka in the 1960s, Boris Johnson is a “miserable mimic” of Winston Churchill. At birth he was named Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson apparently because of his father’s fascination for French culture. Boris Johnson was well prepared for life. He was sent to Eton for his secondary education by his parents and later went to Balliol College Oxford and graduated with a degree in classics.  In Oxford, he was known for riotous living but this did not prevent him being elected president of the Oxford union in 1986.  After graduation, he became the Brussels correspondent of and later political columnist for The Daily Telegraph and was editor of the Spectator magazine from 1999 to 2005.

    Before becoming the leader of the Conservative Party in 2019, he previously served as  Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2016 to 2018 in the Theresa May’s administration and had previously served as mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.  He was a colorful and charismatic mayor of London and made a rather dour position attractive and noticeable by his jokes and grassroots and streets wise people oriented administrative style. He had been a member of parliament for Uxbridge South Ruislip  since 2015 and previously for Henley from 2001 to 2008 .  He became leader of the Conservative party when without apparent conviction but with opportunistic calculations led a rebellion against Theresa May, the second female prime minister of Great Britain after Margaret Thatcher. Theresa May was then negotiating with the European Union for control of Immigration among other things to give Britain more control of its laws and finances in a Europe  that was tending towards federalist union under the leadership of France and Germany. The rising popularity of English nationalism led by Nigel Paul  Farage  who formed  the UK Independent Party drove the Conservative Party to right wing nationalist positions which made Prime Minister May’s efforts at reaching a modus vivendi with Europe more and more arduous. It was this situation that Boris Johnson exploited to lead a revolt against Theresa May who called a snap parliamentary election but came out worse than she was before the election. Johnson deceived the British public that he would withdraw Britain from Europe and save the British exchequer billions of pounds which he would pump into the National Health Service (NHS). Johnson on edging out Theresa May out of 10 Downing Street called a snap election with the promise of Brexit and won a landslide majority with over 40 seats in parliament – something that has not happened since Margaret Thatcher’s time. Having won, he has found the problem of totally extricating Britain from Europe more difficult than he bargained for especially over the border problem of Northern Ireland with the European Union member state of the Republic of Ireland. After three years of his prime ministership, the northern Irish  border with the Republic of Ireland has remained problematic over how a province of Britain can maintain a seamless border with the EU in Ireland.

    Boris Johnson has also been unlucky to have to deal with the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine. He was first dismissive of the Covid-19 virus which led to the death of thousands of mostly elderly people before

  • Bloom in gloom

    Bloom in gloom

    Unknown now, but soon I will be UNFORGETTABLE…I will persist until I succeed – Tobi Amusan

    The ‘nearly-woman’. What a moniker! That was what they called her. It was a moniker derived from Oluwatobiloba Amusan’s many medal misses, but which eventually served to propel her to become the best sprinter in the world. After failing to win medals in several competitions, getting to the edge of victory, only to take the fourth place, she was tagged a serial loser, which plainly speaking is the raw meaning of that moniker.

    It can be frustrating to see victory right in front of you and yet unattainable. Not because you are not good enough, but for the fact that your resolve is being tested. Tobi Amusan went through a lot, but she remained focused. Her story is the stuff of which legends are made. She showed resilience, determination and sheer power in the face of her drawbacks.

    Those drawbacks were not failures; they cannot be called that because she was no pushover in the event in which she finally created a new world record in the early hours of Monday in Eugene, Oregon, United States (US). She broke the fourth position jinx at the World Athletics Competition (WAC), becoming the first Nigerian to win a world gold medal as well as create a new world record in her event.

    The spell was broken because she did not quit. At times when she felt like quitting, something stirred up in her and she listened to that still voice which warned: do not do that girl; your time will come. When her time came on Monday, it was on a double-quick note. She broke the world record in the 100 metres hurdles for women in quick succession under two hours.

    She performed the first feat in the semifinals when she ran 12.12 seconds to break the existing record of 12.20 seconds. To tell the world that her performance was no fluke, she broke her own record in the final by running 12.06 seconds. That timing will, however, not stand because it was said to be wind-assisted. Wind-assisted or not, Tobi has made her mark and the world stood still for the Nigerian girl as she stared at the electronic timer in disbelief after she finished the race of her life.

    Tobi was stunned. ‘So, I did it’, she seemed to say as she looked up into the sky after she left a pack of other runners behind her, while the stadium erupted in jubilation. Around the world, millions watching on television, especially in her home-country of Nigeria, could not contain their joy. They rose for the champion.

    As Nigeria’s National Anthem blared out from the public address system, for the first time ever at a world athletics fiesta, with Tobi at the head of the winners’ podium, something would have given way in many of her compatriots back home and wherever else they were in the world.

    Something good has come out of Nigeria in front of the entire world, they would have mused. Our compatriot, the best woman hurdler in the world, was not being paraded for any crime, but was being honoured for her feat in a track event by a world, which is always quick to condemn anything from Africa, especially Nigeria. At their airports and in their countries where some of us are making a living, they treat us like the jetsam and the flotsam of the earth. But on Monday, the world stood in awe as Tobi received her medal.

    This girl of history has written her country’s name in gold by winning gold in a golden race in which on two occasions and within a spate of two hours she showed the world the can- do Nigerian spirit. She beat a different field of competitors twice to prove her mettle as a world-class champion. Back home, we are celebrating Tobi as a Nigerian, not as a Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Bini, Nupe, Ibibio or Fulani. Nor as a Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Animist or Traditionalist.

    Tobi is yet another proof of what we can achieve as a country if we allow the best and the brightest to represent us. In the face of the gloom in the land, she has given us something to cheer. Congratulations, Tobi. Your prediction of becoming unforgettable has come to pass. As your name implies: God is indeed the greatest king. May your tribe increase.

     

    What’s the worth of 7k?

    There is this television jingle about the worth of N2000. “People dey make me laugh when dem say 2k nor be money; 2k, 2k…”, the narrator went on and on. The jingle is all about saving N2000 at your convenience to a point where you can win millions of naira in a bank promo. The essence of that jingle, in the estimation of that bank, is that 2k ‘na money’ if allowed to grow.

    But to a so-called one-customer bank, 2k ‘nor be money’. If this is not so, Sterling Bank would have returned the 7k debited from my account in a failed point-of-sale transaction since June 1. Rather than do the needful, the bank keeps giving excuses for its tardiness. N7000 na money. If dem nor know make dem know now.

     

     

  • Warped logic of warring clerics

    Warped logic of warring clerics

    Of course, Nigerian Christians have every reason to be apprehensive. President Buhari’s handling of the security situation in the country has come under serous scrutiny by those who believe he has handled the menace of Fulani herdsmen killers and bandits with kid gloves.  Unfortunately, he has not done enough to prove critics who accused him of ‘Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda wrong. One proof of this was his identification with Gumi’s thesis that rehabilitation and reabsorption of repentant killers into the security services as against outright elimination of those who had visited violence on Nigerians vigorously canvassed by Kaduna’s Nasir El Rufai and Katsina’s Aminu Masari. Today, herdsmen and bandits operate unchallenged attacking trains, liberating prisoners from correctional centres and keeping their victims in the bush for as long as they desired.

    But it will be a disservice to the nation for stakeholders including Christians, opposition parties and their media that rightly hold Buhari responsible for the mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building to give the impression that our problems are about Christians Muslim conflict. “The nation’s scourges are Fulani herdsmen terrorists, bandits and kidnappers who hide under religion to wage war against the nation, sacrilegiously torching churches and mosques to massacre worshippers and attacking subsistence farmers and confiscating their farmland. And for the north that has always manipulated the poor masses of their people using religion as instrument of electoral warfare, the chicken has only come home to roost.

    Undoubtedly, religion plays an important role in modern society. Part of this includes ‘promotion of good citizenship, dialogue among the people and serving as witness of truth and righteousness by speaking against injustice’. Unfortunately for our nation, instead of acting the gospel by promoting fellowship, trust, faith and hope, a large section of the church uses the church for the exploitation of the innermost fears and ignorance of our people. In the east, the church has become instrument of economic warfare with the church selling grace to the highest bidders especially their governors just as the Catholic Church did some 500 years ago before Martin Luther. In the southwest, Obasanjo, Jonathan and Osinbajo wasted a great deal of time they should be ministering to the people doing night vigil while their ministers stole the country blind. Buhari’s inept management of Fulani herdsmen and bandits onslaught on Nigerians, sometimes using attack on Christian churches to divert attention from their real objective – the lust over land – as an incentive for crooked pastors to further exploit the ignorance of our people by inflaming passion.

    But Tinubu who insists religion is not our problem hopes to change the above narrative by proving Muslim-Muslim ticket is not antithetical to the interest of all adherents of various religions in Nigeria. But for the PDP and their media that are expected to reflect society or set agenda for society, it is an all-out war against Tinubu. Whipping up religious sentiments against his Muslim-Muslim ticket, they hope will enhance their chances in the 2023 election.

    Since the ethnic irredentists in Buhari’s government are more favourably disposed to replicating the crisis in the south rather than find solution, the question today should be which of the three leading candidates are best prepared to achieve elite consensus that has defied the nation since the end of the civil war.

    Both PDP and APC unfortunately suffer the same affliction.  By its constitution, PDP presidential candidate ticket ought to have gone to a Southeast or South-south Christian, the two geo-political zones that have remained loyal to PDP since 1999. To this end, PDP and APC southern governors met in Asaba under Governor Okowa.  Pa Edwin Clark cursed any southern leader that would accept VP slot from any northern PDP candidate. At the end, the hegemonic owners of PDP from the north, claiming they could not find an electable Christian candidate from the south, outwitted Wike, the leading candidate from the south and handed over their ticket to Atiku who had contested every presidential election under various parties since 1999. PDP and their today’s warring clerics kept their peace.

    But for his grit and gut, Tinubu was not supposed to secure the APC presidential ticket already ceded by Adamu, former PDP stalwart and Buhari imposition as APC chairman, to Ahmed Lawan, another Fulani from the north. His steadfastness paid off when 11 predominantly northern Muslim governors rebelled against Adamu and took sides with Tinubu. And based on their advice, he settled for a Muslim-Muslim ticket as a strategy to win the election.

    That was all PDP stalwarts, their powerful and influential media, Pa Clark, their sympathetic Bishops and clerics from the southwest and southeast where religion is heavily commercialized, needed to start a war in support of northern minority Muslim VP candidate.

    Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation who lost his ward to PDP and yet hoped to be picked as VP candidate says Tinubu’s choice of “Muslim-Muslim ticket was a direct attack on Christians.  A section of CAN even passed a fatwa: “This is a clear instruction, when it is time to vote, vote only in the favour of the Church not for your party. Any believer that sells out his faith in the name of party is heading for hell”.

    Tragically for our nation, this type of CAN members would prevent their Christian children from reading the Quran just as some misguided Muslims parents would prevent their wards from reading the Bible forgetting we are grooming them to manage our society.

    For the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria’s (CSN) Fr. Zacharia Nyantiso Samjumi and Rev. Fr. Michael Nsikak Umoh “the unity of this country has, over the years, been maintained by a delicate balancing of the religious and the regional”, a claim not totally true. Religion has always been a threat to the survival of our nation with many complaining Islam is mentioned in more than a dozen places in the constitution as if Nigeria, a secular state dragged by Babangida to Organisation of Islamic countries (OIC) without consultation is an Islamic state.

    Former President Obasanjo says that any attempt to engage in Muslim/Muslim ticket will not only amount to “insensitivity of the highest order but will also amount to very bad politics indeed”. I hope someone reminds him that it was under his Obasanjo/Atiku Christiaan/Muslim ticket, 13 northern governors institutionalised illegal Sharia, sent their youths to Sudan for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden and returned to form the nucleus of today’s insurgents’ groups.  General Aziza, President Jonathan National Security Adviser, shortly before a helicopter crash told us it was Obasanjo’s PDP that was behind the formation of Boko Haram to serve as balance of terror for political opponents.

    With the above facts, it is difficult to fault those who say that warring southern Christians who instead of first removing the logs in their own eyes are waging battle on behalf of northern minority Christians are PDP sympathisers.

    The only purpose religion shares with politics according to George Will in his ‘Statecraft as Soul craft’ is the emancipation of the individual through the education of his passion”. And if a section of CAN is nostalgic about their gains under Obasanjo/Atiku and Jonathan years of the locust want to know how Christians can lead by example, they can take a look at the life of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis who has a reputation of modesty and humility, eschewing trapping of office by living in an apartment where he made his own food and rode to work by bus.

     

     

  • Through the chaos

    Through the chaos

    Votes may always be sold and paid for in Nigeria. The motive for selling and the purchase of votes would, however, differ across political platforms, cultures, and climes. Nigerians would rationalise this to reinforce their vanities and fantasies of political correctness.

    The chaos of artifice, clashing troops and dubious bromides, is purged and pervasive at the twilight of every administration. It becomes gross and easily accessible en route to the polls and the ushering in of a new dispensation.

    Whatever the loathing and rationalisation of Ademola Adeleke’s emergence as Osun’s new governor-elect, for instance, pundits may rest assured that the people made their choice through their votes, and the wisdom or folly of their action would manifest over four years.

    Politics will part you from your money and professed values as efficiently as the Yahoo Boy lurking at an atrocious click-bait away. It’s part of the culture. It is all about heightening your hopes to fleece you of money, values, and hope; when these run out, you might as well cease to exist.

    Ask the casualties of ambition gone awry: the failed aspirants at the recently concluded presidential primaries across the All Progressives Congress (APC), People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party, and the African Democratic Congress (ADC),  among other platforms.

    Yet each failed aspirant shied from brutal honesty about his role in our pervasive culture of exploitation. To deal with their loss, they resort to mischief, spreading falsehood and inciting loyalists to vapid protestation.

    It gets grislier on social media, the virtual threshing floor of the ignorant from the wise, the cognizant from the uninformed. In this arena, the maladroit cancels out the reflective; everybody is a pundit. Thus to question a trending preoccupation of the herd has become even among the so-called liberal elite, an unforgivable heresy. Folks wield lavish contempt for any perspective that queries or opposes their preferred sentiments.

    Such characters can only be confronted by an expansion in breadth of human reason, catholicity of will, and culture. The native aspiration of such a herd to covet and project candidates whose chief preoccupation is to loot our coffers and feed their greed, for instance, must not be encouraged any further. Nor should we persist in pitiful complacency and eagerness to acquiesce to their boorish enterprises, for the love of sentiment or token.

    To stimulate the wildly weak and untamed mind is to ignite a ravenous and uncontrollable fire, and to impede our often rudderless enterprise is to incite the volatile minds to a harvest of violence and blood-letting, Du Bois would say. Politics must be rid of bitterness and cutthroat rivalry.

    Political passivity bred by a culture of illusion is exploited by demagogues who present themselves as saviours to a submissive population. These pseudo revolutionaries are further validated by the robust toxicity of the marketplace of prejudice patronised by powerful elements among the political class and electorate.

    Mob tyranny has steered us towards a radically dictatorial direction. This dictatorship cuts both ways, afflicting us with tyrant democrats among the political class and the electorate. The prevalent bullying between right-wing and left-wing political divides further highlights how feeble the commitment to democracy is in the Nigerian circumstance.

    While the youth have been drawn appreciably towards politics, it is alarming to see the levels of ignorance and base sentimentality fostered amid rival political divides. “If you are not for my candidate, you are the enemy!” becomes their battle cry as they fight dirty online and offline.

    Through it all, democracy plummets the steep slope of decline, beleaguered. The extent to which young people scorn truth and reason and embrace intolerance makes them vulnerable to the lying demagogue.

    Partisan media frantically influence public debate about contesting candidates and alternative forms of power. Ultimately, they seek to determine who gets heard and who does not; each news medium seeks to malign every rival of its preferred candidate.

    Like criminals forsworn against good nature, multimedia pundits discuss politics as a horse race. Rather than discuss the crucial issues and ideologies promising progressive reform, they obsess with the pseudo-events staged by rival candidates.

    Such partisan press evolves like a bitch; a scrawny, docile mutt led only by wild instincts and subservience to crafty,  self-seeking characters. Media tyranny is bodacious and corruptive of intellect, yet the unstated ethic of partisan intelligentsia is to survive by justifying the dominance of sentiments or deep pockets.

    Through it all, you are forced to wonder: Does power truly repose in the electorate? How can we stage a peaceful but decisive revolt by our votes without malice and blood-letting? Is the current electorate capable of such a noble exploit?

    To these bothersome questions and contradictory tributaries of thought, the potent and yet inadequately explored panacea of education towers above all others. We live in dire need of human training that will awaken our minds to the timeless knowledge inherent in the idealistic and the practical, the realistic and the fantastic, the permanent and the contingent, in a workable equilibrium.

    The incumbent electorate comprises two fractions of radical beings: the cantankerous, irrational illiterate, and semi-literate constituted by street urchins, park thugs, petty traders, and criminals.

    The other fraction consists of the methodically savage kind including the so-called articulate, cultured, progressive breed comprising young, upwardly mobile professionals: doctors, engineers, journalists, lawyers, teachers, the armed forces, civil servants, and unemployed graduates.

    Both divides are afflicted by bitter cynicism and despondency. They betray as much bestiality as the political class particularly in instances demanding inviolable tact, sensitivity, and maturity.

    Their reactions to the victory of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s Ademola Adeleke at the recently concluded gubernatorial polls in Osun State, are also instructive. Irrespective of the dynamics that gifted Adeleke victory over the incumbent, All Progressives Congress (APC)’s Gboyega  Oyetola, virtual space pulsates with acrimony, name-calling, cursing, and hate-mongering even among spectators far removed from the politics of Osun State.

    Previous reactions to the arrest and subsequent trial of corrupt public officers also provide a worthy yardstick by which the nature of partisanship may be judged across the country. Many would adduce reasons bordering on ethnic and religious bigotries in decrying the “persecution” of alleged looters of public office even where the latter have issued confessions substantiating the charges against them.

    Such characters are incapable of rational, cognitive, and affective sensitivities pivotal to nation-building. Everyday encounters with gluttonous gangs of “struggling youth” reveal, among other things, that, many are the same social products as their peers across the political class and aristocratic divide.

    A visit to any nightclub, party congress, or religious office attests to this fact. There, several youths engage in unjustifiable excesses, to the applause of mates yearning to be in their shoes; be they advance fee fraudsters, bankers, journalists, ‘prophets,’ accountants, secretaries, factory hands or ordinary clerks, youths, they engage in a bitter, desperate struggle to chance on sudden and stupendous wealth.

    How could such vitally impaired characters be trusted to conduct their affairs appropriately? Thus the imperative of a practical, ingenious process of human training in the struggle to build a truly progressive and formidable movement of the people, for the people, and by the people.

    Yet democracy is simply never enough. Nigeria will never become that model nation of our dreams until we evolve a social process that enables sufficient nurturing, the guidance of thought, and adroit coordination of deeds – sureties to freedom, peace, equality, justice, and rebirth.

    This brings us back again to the issue of quality education.

     

     

     

     

  • The election in Osun: Case of poisoned chalice

    The election in Osun: Case of poisoned chalice

    The election in Osun State has been lost by Governor Gboyega Oyetola and won by the candidate of the PDP Nurudeen ‘Jackson’  Ademola Adeleke .This is a replay of the contest of 2018 which Governor Oyetola won under controversial circumstances leading to legal challenges all the way to the Supreme Court which finally decided in favour of Oyetola. One hopes that Oyetola will accept his defeat like a gentleman that he is and congratulate Adeleke for his victory.

    Adeleke polled 403,371 votes to Gboyega Oyetola’s 375027 votes. The two candidates are separated by about 28,000 votes which are not that many and which means the state is divided down the line and Adeleke must govern in such a way as to placate the losing side if he is to have peace in the state. The incoming governor won in 17 LGAS and surprisingly in Ila LGA, the home of the founding chairman of the APC Chief Bisi Akande while the defeated APC governor won in 13 LGAS. Adeleke defeated the incumbent governor not surprisingly in the state capital which is contiguous to Adeleke’s hometown of Ede.

    Adeleke’s victory can be explained in many ways. Oyetola as governor by all indications performed excellently, paying salaries and pensions when due and also managing to provide physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges in the state and generally maintaining law and order. What he did not do was sharing money to fellow party men and women as demanded by some party leaders who claimed in the Nigerian fashion that they brought him to power. By training, Oyetola is an accountant and an insurance practitioner and he brought his professional background to bear on husbanding the resources of a state which in the best of times has never been rich and whose internally generated revenue has been dismal and poor. The agricultural basis of states like Ekiti and Ondo and the industrial and commercial revenues of states like Lagos and Ogun states are absent in Osun State. The state does not also have the tax revenue base of its sister state of Oyo. I say all this to moderate the expectations and to avoid disillusionment of the people of Osun State no matter who is governor.

    I was in Osun State during the governorship of Abdulrauf Aregbesola. He was an ambitious governor who over-borrowed to develop the state’s infrastructure particularly the roads, airport and fantastic schools he built all over the state. By the time deductions were made from the states normal financial allocation coming from the federal government to amortise the loans he borrowed from banks, there was little left to pay teachers and bureaucrats in the state. This angered the workers to no end. The result of which was open rebellion including the judiciary which was ordinarily expected to be reticent. Aregbesola then espoused some crude socialism in which he paid lower class workers while doling out fractions of the salaries of higher level officers in the civil and teaching services. He also took over private missions schools and imposed the wearing of hijab on Muslim girls in all the schools in the state. He even changed the Gregorian calendar to Islamic calendar to please the Muslim population of the state while angering the Christian community which founded most of the schools the state took over. He was not done yet; even with all these changes until he embraced some poorly digested traditional beliefs on those who did not follow the Abrahamic traditions of Christianity and Islam. Aregbesola left a legacy of good school buildings but also bitterness in the unpaid salaries and pensions and the seizure of missions’ schools and what people felt was his covert Islamisation of the state.

    Even though Oyetola was Aregbesola’s chief of staff, Oyetola responded to the yearnings of the people by totally abandoning Aregbesola’s policies and returned all the schools to their original owners. Naturally Aregbesola felt betrayed and he locked horns with Oyetola and was determined to deprive Oyetola a second term as governor of the state. This was where Aregbesola ran into conflict with the leader of his party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and threw caution to the wind in his invectives on Tinubu his benefactor. The division in the Osun APC opened the door for Adeleke. We must grant Adeleke the fact of the existence of his family’s tentacles in Ede and the state. Ademola Adeleke’s father was a UPN senator during the second republic.Their father married an Igbo woman turned Christian evangelist and allowed his children to practice the Christian religion of their mother or his own Islamic religion. This unique religious liberalism of their father set him apart from Muslim leaders of his time. Ademola Adeleke’s brother, Alhaji  Isiaka Adeleke was a governor of the state in the third republic. Another brother, Pastor Deji Adeleke the founder and president of Adeleke University has invested billions into building  in Ede, one of the best universities in Nigeria judging from its excellent buildings, laboratories and library. The second generation of the Adelekes like Davido and another rising singing sensation have made their contribution to the fortunes of the Adelekes. They were therefore not to be easily outspent. One had thought the emergence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as APC flag bearer in the 2023 presidential election would bring some support to Oyetola as it did to the APC gubernatorial candidate in recent Ekiti election, but the brouhaha about Muslim-Muslim ticket has undermined the excitement about the Tinubu factor.

    The election coming at a time of acute economic crunch, shortage of fuel, cooking gas, and hunger in the land presents a poisoned chalice to all APC candidates at state, federal and presidential levels. President Buhari’s less than sterling performance in the last seven years has become a stumbling block to members of his party. The apparent nonchalant attitude by the president to the electoral fortunes and future of the party does not bode well for members of the party running for electoral offices. The sectionalism, religious  and ethnic parochialism, and the collapse of the economy with the Naira reduced to a useless coloured paper and above all the rampant insecurity which are hallmarks of the federal administration under the APC are not good campaign slogans and whoever is an APC candidate must not run as a follower of Buhari but must distance himself from the non-performing regime at the federal level. All may not be lost if the president can take more interest in the future of the party that brought him to power and do what all incumbent governments do all over the world by ameliorating the conditions of the people in an election year. The APC may yet get lucky if the Russian war in Ukraine winds down, thus ending the high cost of wheat, vegetable oils stored in the ports of Ukraine and imported gas and oil to European refineries where we buy petrol and diesel in the absence of local production.

  • Same-faith ticket and federal character

    Same-faith ticket and federal character

    YESTERDAY’S formal presentation of Senator Kashim Shettima as the running mate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, presented the standard-bearer another opportunity to shed light on why he made that choice. The dust raised over his choice has yet to settle since he picked Shettima on July 10.

    Some of his political opponents and even friends perceive his choice as audacious. Really? What is the big deal in Tinubu being a Muslim and his running mate also of the same faith? He is virtually being skinned alive politically today any corner he turns to because he chose a fellow Muslim and not a Christian as his running mate. Nobody is talking about him not picking an atheist or an animist or a traditionalist, for that matter, as his running mate. Nor about Shettima’s capability.

    Why? Is it that competency no longer counts? Is it that people of no faith are not eligible to be presidential running mates? Or is it that they are not Nigerians who are also covered by the same provisions of the Constitution which some people are today throwing at Tinubu. Lest we forget, the Constitution, which is our organic law, does not discriminate against any Nigerian, no matter his faith, from becoming the nation’s leader.

    What it frowns at is denying any Nigerian from holding leadership position on the basis of his ethnic nationality. The Constitution is clear on this provision. It does not rate faith above ethnicity, but that is not to say that it does not warn against religious discrimination. What it did not do is to raise religion to the height that some people have taken it to because of politics.

    The framers of the Constitution knew the dangers of playing up religion and that is why they warned in Section 10 of it that: The government of the federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion. Nigeria is a secular state with a multiplicity of faith but the well known two are Islam and Christianity. We are lucky that those who profess other faith are not religious fundamentalists as some of us who pride ourselves as good Christians and Muslims are.

    If they were, this country will not be at ease today. I will not be saying anything strange if I submit that most of the problems we face today are caused by either those who are Muslims or Christians. Look around you and see those accused of one crime or the other. Is it corruption? Drug trafficking? Bank fraud? Robbery? Kidnapping? Banditry and terrorism? You name it; those involved are usually people of faith. If we really imbibe the teachings of our faith will Nigeria be in a mess today?

    Our problem is not Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian or Muslim-Christian ticket. Our problem is us as a people. We wear our faith on our faces and as a badge of honour without following its tenets. We want to be seen as good Christians and good Muslims clutching our Bible and Quran in public when the thoughts of our hearts are evil. The devil laughs when he sees us behaving like that. The holy books teach us to flee from the devil and he will flee from us, but many of us choose to sit with him when it pays us to do so.

    It is when their aspirations are not met that some politicians play the religion card as they are now doing with the Muslim-Muslim ticket. Unfortunately, many who know next to nothing about politics have joined them in crucifying Tinubu for picking a fellow Muslim as his running mate. Did they stop to ask themselves what other choice Tinubu has, if he wants to win the 2023 presidential election, before descending on him for going that route?

    Elections are about numbers. It is either you have or do not have them. The paramount consideration for Tinubu in making his choice is how do I win the election? Is it with a Muslim or Christian running mate? The numbers available and those in control of the figures pointed him in the direction to go.

    By so doing, he did not breach Section 14 of the Constitution which speaks of principles of democracy and social justice. Section 14 (3) stipulates that the government of the federation shall be composed in a manner to reflect the federal character of Nigeria, promote national duty and also command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies.

    Tinubu has not done anything to offend this provision. It will therefore amount to standing logic on its head for some legal pundits to accuse him of doing so. They are lying with the Constitution. But thank God we all have access to the document.

     

    Not a Sterling act (1)

    It prides itself in being a one-customer bank. This is its payoff line which it finds difficult to live up to. I found this out the hard way. Since June 1, I have been trying to get Sterling Bank to refund the N7000 debited from my account when I bought petrol at an outlet. The retailer was not credited. So, I had to cough out another N7000. Meaning that I was debited N14,000 for a N7000 transaction done through PoS (Point-of-Sale).

    In order to get back my money, I have become a regular caller at the Sterling Bank branch at Matori where I lodged a complaint on June 2. Since then, it has been one story or the other. The latest is that the merchant, who incidentally uses a Sterling PoS, has refused to make the transaction receipt available so that my account can be credited. Is that my fault? Does the bank not have control over its PoS agents? Eventually, this matter may have to be resolved by the central bank. Did I hear you ask: so wa ju N7000 lo ni? Ko juu lo! All I need is my money.