The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Labour and sundry piques

    Labour and sundry piques

    Of all the challenges Nigeria faces today, organized Labour’s brilliant intervention is its knee-jack pastime: issuing a strike notice!

    Yes, things are hard and workers — Labour’s favourite street bogey — are suffering.  Indeed, to be fair, everyone is.

    Still, can you imagine a fire tearing at a farm; yet the farm’s foreman traps the owner in a hostile ring of irate farm hands, all yelling the owner cannot save the farm, without first settling the day’s wage?

    Pray, if the farm goes up in smoke, will the foreman and irate work gang still have a job? That pretty much settles the wisdom of adversarial Labour in crisis times!

    Organized Labour appears yoked to that Yoruba quip: profit or loss, the labourer’s wage is sure! 

    Shouldn’t Labour’s thinking have morphed from just loud, bellicose hands to, in troubled times, thinking partners — thinking minds that recreate wealth, and after, insist on a fair share for their members?

    That fixation with willy-nilly demand — even with so little in the pot — has been the standard default of the factory-floor Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), under Joe Ajaero. 

    The hitherto more tempered Festus Osifo-led Trade Union Congress (TUC) is fast losing its introspection to the Labour mob.  Ripples just hopes this duo won’t crash workers’ interests with their fashionable rashness.

    Yet, the Federal Government too must apply tact and wisdom in navigating the social bomb of its double-whammy tornado: the removal of subsidy on petroleum products and the floating of the Naira for imperfect market forces to make hay.

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    The two form the basis of its tough economic reforms, with the acute inflation they have sparked; and the pain and anguish they have wreaked in the land.

    President Bola Tinubu and his economic czars should therefore ready their policy wonks to continue explaining why the present bitter pills are no hemlock to kill but rather, an elixir — very tough elixir, to be sure — to save.

    It’s the government’s duty to explain and the people’s right to know, why the bitter gulps must continue.  Aside, the government should pray — and work harder — for the reforms to soon turn a positive bend to, at least, have something less dreary to report.

    Still, that threshold might not be so far away as it seems.  For starters, pressuring hard the ready local refineries to roll out stock could well take some sting off inflation.

    Besides, forex gained from importing petroleum products — when local refining takes off — should increase the available pool of dollars; and stanch the Naira’s free bleeding, though that forex market appears a bastion of sharks and crooks.  But then again, the government must do its duty to checkmate these economic vermin.

    Until then, however, the government has no choice but to answer for its own policy choices. The snag, though is: how do you engage folks who don’t want to understand?  If you don’t understand an issue — and don’t even want to — how do you productively engage?

    Again here, Labour takes the cake. It dismissed the Tinubu administration’s twin reform pillars as “ill-conceived and ill-executed IMF/World Bank-induced hike in the price of PMS and the devaluation of the Naira.”

    That might well be.  But beyond the bogey of “IMF/World Bank”, how did the NLC showcase its own superior thinking, beyond its predictable dogma that everything Bretton Woods must be evil?  These folks just love to talk the talk!

    Even with the perceived notoriety of IMF and co, isn’t that instant dismissal more of hot dogma that treats any reasoned discourse as more or less heresy?  Pray, who mouths heresy in the open debate on public policy?

    But aside from dogma, NLC’s ultimate joker is its populist appeal to the rumbling belly! 

    “Widespread hunger,” it fumes in triumphant rage in its strike notice, “is now ravishing millions of Nigerians, with the workers’ purchasing power significantly eroded, while insecurity has assumed an increasing dimension.”

    From playing the people’s hunger tribunes, it went on to stack its cards, over unresolved union politics, simply because it likely backed the wrong horses in the sweepstakes involving National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) unionists!

    Yes, union politics is the NLC/TUC turf.  But why don’t the Labour centres admit they are co-hustlers — not disinterested monitors — in those sweepstakes: the same charge they levy on others?

    Indeed, pouring vitriol on policy and traducing those in government for wilfully punishing the people, by hard policy choices, is organized Labour at its distracting worst. Such emotive play to the gallery seldom offers any plausible alternative thinking.

    Take hunger, again.  It’s true hunger stalks the land.  Still, do a content analysis of newspapers or radio/TV contents since 1999. Hunger stalking the land has been a recurrent theme.

    Even back in President Shehu Shagari’s 2nd Republic (1979-1983),  hunger and allied rumbling earned the late Alhaji Umaru Dikko, and his Essential Commodities (Essenco) outfit, deserved notoriety.

    No: the issue is not playing dumb to food insecurity, which clearly is still a challenge, despite the agricultural activism of the Muhammadu Buhari years, which saw Nigeria come from nowhere to be Africa’s No. 1 cultivator of rice.

    It’s rather the set way the media just echoes the hunger panic, without putting it in context, to better understand specific gains and losses. 

    Such uncritical echo of panic — even when there could have been in place hard and sustainable work to turn the tide — makes organized Labour and sundry lobbies to escape with emotional howlers. 

    Yet, such howlers have, so far, proffered no superior ideas.  All they do is milk people’s misery: Buhari was the old devil.  Tinubu is the new demon.  Abuse is cheap!

    The Nigerian favourite pastime, elite or masses, is to point fingers at critical times. NLC mirrors that tendency.  Yet, the critical collective ought to pool ideas in a time of crisis.

    But still again, the regime must carry own cross — absolutely no escape from that.

    A more rigourous Labour should have hustled the government to fire, pronto, the ready refineries into production.  That should be more job opportunities for its members.

    It could also query the wisdom of the government (on deep reason, not cheap dogma) to float the Naira; and its bet that the huge foreign venture capital that could draw — to invest in road, rail, power, processed agriculture and allied critical sectors — will more than compensate for the current Naira slump and its spiral of inflation.

    Instead, Labour is dreaming fond dreams of a N400, 000 minimum wage, without breaking a sweat where the cash will come from!  Such antediluvian thinking! 

    Still, the government must continue to engage citizens, irate or calm, sober or hysterical, while it fixes its sight on the ball.

    If it’s any comfort, the first two years of the Tinubu governorship in Lagos (1999-2007) was a welter and thunder of citizen abuse. Now, 27 years later, it’s a national reference. 

    That might yet be the story of the Tinubu Presidency.  But it must first manage the present storm.

  • Time for state police

    Time for state police

    State police is an idea whose time has come and it’s crystal clear why: Nigeria is too vast for a central constabulary.

    Here though, the irony is rich!  “Constabulary” could mean “an armed police force organized as a military unit”.  But the winning Nigerian model should mirror “the collective constables of a district” — another dictionary meaning.

    Since post-1st Republic (circa 1966/67), Nigeria has more or less adopted the bristling central force, supposed to menace felons, with its awesome arms. 

    But many times, it never boasts such arms; and is itself, progressively menaced — by non-state actors and sundry, formidably armed felons.

    True: politicians and local potentates had thoroughly abused the pristine constabulary, the well-feared “Olopa”, though it wielded nothing beyond the good, old baton!  Still, contrast the citizen awe of that “Olopa” of old, with the quiet scorn that often meets his rifle-wielding offspring today!

    The pseudo-messianic military pushed out the old Olopa and Dogari — for good reasons — just as they did the fumbling politicians that thoroughly abused them; replacing both with a uniform Nigeria Police.

    Indeed, the local police — either in the southern regions of East and West — or the no less notorious Native Administration police in the North — the Dogari (royal guards) — had become an intolerable instrument of citizen coercion, oppression and suppression.

    Still, over the years, the over-stretched central police has frayed at the seams, and left gaping holes in rural areas and extensive forests: voids that have turned shimmering oases of violent crimes and sundry insecurity.

    Now, from about everywhere comes a near-uniform cry: the stone the army refused might well become the security cornerstone of future Nigeria: state police! 

    An idea whose time has come?

    Bala Mohammed, Bauchi governor and chair, PDP Governors’ Forum: “There is need for the decentralization of the security apparatus so that we can deliver good governance by having state police.  We will,” he pledged, “work in tandem with the established best global practices rather than being forced to be using vigilantes …”

    That’s a not-so-opaque reference to the ad-hoc pressing of northern youths into security duties.  But formalizing state police would have admitted that systemic gap and applied a systemic solution, under the Constitution of the Federal Republic.

    Gen. Aliyu Gusau, a former national security adviser (NSA), at the sign-off of the Zamfara Community Protection Guard — yet another ‘state police’ all but in name: “Nigeria is a difficult country to secure.  Therefore, expecting a single Police Force to patrol and control such a large and complex nation effectively is a very tall order.”

    But news flash!  Gen. Gasau was one of the fundamental pillars, both as avowed military centralist and conservative politician, that balked for much too long against state police.  Indeed, this is pleasant epiphany, forced by local dire straits!

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    Dikko Radda, Katsina governor, on the Katsina Community Watch Corps:  “The reason we chose these people is because they were directly affected: their parents were killed, their sisters were raped, so they have more courage to do this job.”

    In brass tacks, the recruits are victims of violence, in far-flung rural Nigeria, that the central Police can’t reach.  Yet, they too are citizens entitled to state protection from bandits.  So, the Community Watch Corps is desperate Katsina rural police, without being so-called. 

    The flip side, of course, is that policing here could spiral into naked vengeance — hunting down bandits that hitherto had killed, raped and hewn kith-and-kin — thus risking an endless cycle of violence. 

    But again for these bitter citizens, tempering vengeance with professional police training, could be the ultimate antidote — both for day-to-day survival and healing. 

    Besides, having a well-trained, well-drilled and well-armed resident cadre, made up of passionate natives, in frontline rural communities ravaged by bandits, is a powerful step towards dominating the security space; and plugging the present voids. 

    Imagine all of that as routine parts of an integrated federal police network, woven as state and central police corps, each working tick-tock to fend off crime — that tight structure erected on doughty checks and balances? 

    Imagine the intelligence trove that should be at the disposal of such a police set-up?  Imagine the prospect of crime prevention which active intel-harvesting offers? 

    Imagine the vastly increased numbers on police duties — of hitherto incensed and alienated youths, now making a career of earning a living to protect own folks?

    Imagine.  Just imagine!

    The beauty of the moment is that the call for state police is coming from nearly all parts of the federation — not from some hectoring South West Solon, thundering down other folks, too slow-witted to catch the sheer paradise-on-earth of “restructuring”!

    For the North, it’s ugly reality trumping romantic dogma, nevertheless erected, many times, on genuine fears that a restructured Nigeria would knock off the North.

    For the crowing South — particularly the always bristling South West — it’s a gangling failure of messaging, built more on anger and contempt, hardly on humble persuasion. 

    It’s nice that regional pathologies are vanishing in the face of the ugly nitty-gritty. State police is threat to none.  It is rather a win-win to all.

    Yet, weak dissenting voices abide.  Hope Uzodinma, the Imo governor, seems less hopeful or upbeat about state police, claiming states don’t have the cash to fund it. 

    As chair of the South East Progressive Governors, he seemed to speak not only for  his native Imo, but for the entire South East, where frankly the Ebube Agu, the South East’s regional security answer to the South West’s Amotekun, appears floundering rather than thriving.

    Still, that Seyi Makinde, the Oyo governor, has faced down the Uzodinma claim shows its relative unpopularity.  But it could also hallmark the relatively high unanimity in the South West for the federalization of the Police.

    Whichever way between Uzodinma and Makinde, something must fill the present security vacuum, if the present insecurity must improve.

    That brings the discourse to two critical concepts: federalization and liberalization. 

    To federalize the Nigeria Police is all but settled: if not by fanciful dogma, then by the terrible praxis.  Having a unitary police secure a federation is a catastrophe — and it’s ugly in our eyes!

    But then, liberalization takes care of those states who, despite the present peril, still cannot afford it.  Liberalizing the police structure would ensure those states maximize the use of the present central police.

    State police, for the umpteenth time, is an idea whose time has come. President Bola Tinubu should cut a deal with the National Assembly for it to happen — as early as yesterday, as they say in that street lingo. 

    Time is running out.  Delay is dangerous.

  • Karma, overdog, underdog

    Karma, overdog, underdog

    The Rivers power drama, hot and explosive, may thaw (or harden) on the wisdom — or folly — of two (or even three) elders, but not the bristling combatants: Nyesom Wike, former governor and overdog, and Siminalayi Fubara, sitting governor and underdog. 

    Karma looms between both.

    One key elder is Chief Edwin Clark, Ijaw leader by own confession since 1975.  From his take on the Rivers crisis, Pa Clark wears, unfazed, the stark conflict binoculars of an Ijaw irredentist — and the old man picks no bones about it!

    Compare and contrast his hard stand with Dr. Peter Odili’s — first Rivers’ elected governor from 1999.  Indeed, the warring camps can be rightly tagged Odili boys and girls, much as you’d dub the present ruling elite in Lagos, Tinubu boys and girls.

    Yet, not for the former governor some stark war envoy, booming a no-retreat-no-surrender Ikwerre-Ijaw combat (ala Pa Clark)! Odili has rather nudged his warring wards into some reasoned detente, from open but mutually self-destruct fracas.

    But there is a “third force” of influence in this Rivers “civil war” — Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of the Federal Republic; and with his involvement, history beckons. 

    Very early in Nigeria’s 1st Republic, the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, took sides in the Western Region crisis.  It was a rogue intervention that eventually buried that republic, after less than six years (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966).

    Now, 24 years into Nigeria’s 4th Republic — after decades-to-nowhere under best-forgotten military rule — the President has intervened in another regional crisis, this time in Nigeria’s oil-rich, often volatile, South-South.

    Now, is that intervention as rogue as Balewa’s? Or of compelling good faith to defuse a ticking bomb?  The jury is out.  Indeed, that is the violent contrast between the Clark and the Odili schools on the Rivers crisis. 

    Clark thinks Tinubu intervened to clobber his Ijaw ward in Governor Fubara, so the old man feels obliged to bawl Ijaw power, and bark Ijaw nationalism.

    Odili adopts a more even-handed stand — neither jumping on the side of the volatile Wike, now Tinubu’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, nor on Fubara’s.

    Indeed, for Wike and Fubara, feuding godfather and godson, it’s a fierce pull from two ends:

    Wike, to keep the “structure” that subdued everything to gift Fubara gubernatorial power (even if that means junking the errant godson); Fubara, to keep his cherished “red biro” — read, remain governor (even if that means burying the over-bearing godfather)!

    The stakes seldom get higher!  Still, karma menacingly lurks!

    Karma!  That should be Wike’s gravest worry.  So, it’s understandable if the bruising godfather sounds more and more belligerent, even as his mild godson sounds more and more amenable.

    The harsh prognosis is that in Fubara looms Karma: a terrible ogre that could well do to Wike, what Wike did to own boss, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi!

    Yet, Fubara is no saint any more than Wike is a devil. 

    Indeed, to be fair, Fubara stands fairly docked for perfidy to the collective structure — and personal mentor — that suppressed everything and everyone to hand him power.  So, if Wike dismisses him as a grand traitor, he’s not just talking gas. 

    As for Pa Clark and other Ijaw nationalists, now trenchant on activating their Ijaw “Sim”, as some Ikwerre plot to suppress the Ijaw, where were they when Wike, the Ikwerre man, was shutting out fellow Ikwerres, to make Fubara, the Ijaw man, governor?

    But for all his amplified perfidy, Fubara has been a study in civility towards Wike, never tires to call him “my oga” (my boss), even as the governor holds his own and throws his darts!  Talk of the mouse biting and soothing all at once!

    Still, that’s way more polite than Wike’s own coarse-and-gruff savaging of Amaechi, his former boss and benefactor.  He would, with undiluted contempt, slam Amaechi as some never-do-well predecessor. 

    But that’s not true.  Amaechi was a fine governor.  Though Wike achieved fame as Rivers’ “Mr. Project”, he only built on the gains of the Amaechi years, just as Amaechi did on the gains of the Odili years — before the 2015 politics of APC versus PDP fissured the Rivers ruling elite, once united under Dr. Odili.

    But beyond karma, Wike and Fubara seem to have done enough in mutual crippling, though, as always, the overdog’s crash appears more crushing than the underdog’s.

    For starters, Wike made a tactical error for thinking he could, just like that, bounce Fubara off the governorship.  That was clear from the failed impeachment move. 

    Yet again, rash, raw power has proved its impotent worst.  Fubara dared it — and survived — and the overdog is condemned to cutting the underdog some slacks!  So much for the limits of raw power.

    Worse news: the Wike forces, by the near-wholesale defection of the Rivers parliament from PDP to APC, have put their neck on the legal chopping block. They can only hope the law is Damocles, whose sword never swishes down — or else they could be toast!

    Still, that hardly transforms Fubara from a scurrying rat into a roaring lion.  He himself has committed grave infractions against democracy and due process — faults that can put his continued hold on power in lawful jeopardy.

    One is rushing the 2024 budget through a rogue parliament in 24 hours!  Parliament’s non-endorsement of the money bill is about the gravest crime in a democracy.

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    Another is, in blind panic, bulldozing the temple of the first estate of the realm — the parliament building, for whatever sugar-coated reasons.  That bombs the letters and spirit of democracy — for Parliament, the bastion of the people, is conceived to hold the executive in check.

    It’s from this prism of mutual jeopardy that the warring factions must, therefore, see the Tinubu presidential intervention.  Viewed with less baggage, it’s simply for both camps to freeze, and withdraw from their mutual excesses, read outlawry.

    Neither the ethnic rage of the Clark camp, nor the “structure” ire of the Wike army, can wish away both sides’ grave constitutional infractions.

    That’s why the president must keep a tight leash on both, save them from one another, so that the Rivers people can breathe.  But the intervention must be even-handed, and transparently so.  It’s good that the president enjoys the confidence of both camps.

    The Rivers elders must play own parts too — which is why the Clark camp must tap into the even-handedness of the Odili school.  There’s nothing ethnic about the Rivers power struggle.

    And the lurking karma? Maybe a Wike-Fubara rapprochement can nudge the Wike-controlled parliament to be less rash; and the Fubara-led executive to undo its budget outlawry.

    Who knows?  That might break the karma cycle!  That way, Fubara won’t treat Wike as Wike himself had rubbished Amaechi.  Neither would any future governor maul Fubara!

    Rivers people will be the ultimate winners.

  • Between ‘Umoru’ and Aketi

    Between ‘Umoru’ and Aketi

    “Umoru, are you dead?”  

    That was former President Olusegun Obasanjo with ghoulish relish, at a live phone-in, on the stumps for the 2007 presidential election.  It was Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s spectral run for the Presidency.  It all ended in tears. 

    Yar’Adua’s illness was an open secret.  So, when Obasanjo was, in absentia, stumping for Yar’Adua, with the candidate rumoured to be somewhere abroad, the thick rumours that Yar’Adua was “dead” buzzed with added virulence.

    “No, I’m not” — Yar’Adua assured, to the thunder of cheers from the gathered PDP zealots.  But less than three years into his Presidency on 5 May 2010, he did.  Enter Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

    In 13 years, the spirituality of brash politics and stark politicking has again happened upon us, with the 27 December 2023 death of Rotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, the late governor of Ondo State.

    As it was then, just as it is now, everyone seems sucked in by the easy din of it all.  No one seems struck by the terrible quiet of its portent.  Contemporary Nigeria!  Yak, yak, yet fail to grasp the significance of many a grave situation!  

    Yet, Akeredolu’s link to it all — alive or dead — is nothing but stunning.

    Akeredolu, the fearless Aketi, was the fiery crusader-president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), thundering the “right thing” must be done on Yar’Adua; bashing the Yar’Adua ”cabal” that blocked Vice President Goodluck Jonathan from rightful power.

    Aketi thundered the right and principled things under the law, earning the respect of not a few, under those unfortunate circumstances.   

    But 13 years down the line, Aketi himself became the new “Yar’Adua” — and the Aketi “cabal” hee-hawed no less than the “Umoru” “cabal”!  Deja vu?

    Should Aketi have, even in his moral thunder, been more sensitive to the pangs of the Yar’Aduas, who not only pined at the inevitable but also wilted under the harsh censure of their dying patriarch? 

    The jury is still out.

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    To be sure, Aketi was no Obasanjo who egged on Yar’Adua despite — many swear — knowing his frail health; yet was the first to disown him on his virtual death bed. 

    Aketi was only the fiery archangel of the rule of law.  But would he have been far more empathetic, far more nuanced than brash, though his cause was just, if he knew he was yoked to Yar’Adua by fate, and would exit power — and life — much the same way the Katsina noble did? 

    Life!

    Yet, how Yele Sowore was yakking over the Aketi fate — as Aketi himself did over Yar’Adua — shows the enfant terrible of Saharareporters, and likes, have learnt nothing from these twin-fates, only 13 years apart.

    Does Sowore know what lies ahead of him 13 years on?  But more on that presently.

    Now, back to Aketi and Yar’Adua — a stunning parallel. 

    As Vice President, Yar’Adua had Goodluck Ebele Jonathan — and Yar’Adua’s “nemesis” was Jonathan’s “good luck”: luck so good it must survive poor Yar’Adua and claim his office, by law, by morality and by right!

    Aketi had something even more intriguing — a deputy governor with a triple name, a triple name forged for intriguing times: Lucky Orimisan Ayedatiwa!

    Lucky is lucky — self-explanatory in English.  Orimisan is Ikale — a Yoruba sub-ethnic group — reinforcement of lucky: dub it lucky raised to Power 2!  Then, came the clincher and picturesque nemesis: Ayedatiwa — the world has become our own!

    How — at least with the superstitious — could Aketi have survived his fatal odyssey, with a guy with such turbo-charged, treble-trouble names, waiting in the wings?  How?

    Then, throw in the perceived roles of Hajiya Turai Yar’Adua and Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, luckless wives doomed to become widows, under the harsh glare of hard gladiators, that take no prisoners, in merciless politics!

    Hajiya Turai was as taciturn as Madam Betty, the preening “Ada Owerri”, was vocal. Yet, both were charged — at least by the scandal-chomping media — as alleged heads of cabals: the one from Katsina though domiciled in Abuja; the other from Owo, though domiciled in Akure — or was it Ibadan?

    The soon-to-become widows — poor ladies! — were alleged to have given no quarters, dished out purported diktats in darling husbands’ names as the battle for power and control raged, while poor darling hubbies wilted in a futile clinging to life!

    Still, never gulp in all of these colourful tales, for the scandal-hugging media thinks nothing of spicing and sizzling up stuff!  But maybe there was no smoke sans fire?

    After the grim inevitable — Aketi gone, Lucky to take his place — Ayedatiwa became a subject of sundry tales.  A few growled over his “A ku oriire” — congratulations to us — comment. Yet, that could have been blown out of its innocuous context.  

    Others kicked the new governor for beaming with smiles all through his swearing-in —that was half-true, though — when a long, grave and sombre face would do.  

    Why, even our own Sam Omatseye bombed the poor fellow for satanic hurry to present himself for inauguration as governor.  Sam reasoned he ought to have tarried as a last mark of honour for Aketi.  The snag here though is that the law would scowl at such mushiness, no matter its ingrained nobility!  The harried fellow had little choice.

    But all of this nibbling missed the most devastating symbolism on Ayedaitiwa’s part: did anyone notice how the new governor had shaved off the extended grey beard he shared with Aketi, leaving just a grey moustache, with a trim grey goatee?  So long for identity politics!  That clearly died with Aketi!  Life!

    Still, why all of this bad blood, when all is vanity?  Make no mistake: between the Aketi and Lucky power gangs, no side was a saint.  Both sinned and fell short of civil glory.

    But what triggered the crisis was that penchant to scorn the office of the Deputy Governor (and Vice President), reducing the occupier to some glorified serf — at the mercy of some overzealous governor’s aides, many of them below cabinet ranks, never part of the winning ticket.

    That dysfunctional order often holds — if the governor lives through his term.  But if he doesn’t?  Kata-kata bursts — as it goes with that picturesque street lingo.

    That was what happened with Aketi — and with Yar’Adua before him.  The dead are dead.  But the living can fix the problem: give the office of the Deputy Governor the honour it deserves.  By that, you can drain needless bad blood and deepen our democracy.

    As for Sowore that turned another person’s death into morbid excitability, yakking as rogue coroner? That was uncalled for.  Every death tolls the end for the living.

  • Grateful hearts

    Grateful hearts

    The Israelites’ syndrome — of fashionable jeremiad — is loosed upon the land. Perhaps that’s natural when things are tough?

    It’s double jeopardy, though: when chief among those that spew that distemper are those that ruined the land during their sweet and reckless power days.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo just whipped “Afro Democracy” — whatever that means — from his bag of subversive tricks, with trademark malice masking as reason.  

    His Vice-in-power, Atiku Abubakar, also just huffed after a single six-year rotative presidency (by the way, an Abacha-era ploy to cripple pro-June 12, 1993 democratic forces), after Atiku’s insensate fixation with power had blighted his latest run.

    Twin-prodigals that wrecked yesterday, posing as today’s — and future — messiahs? Toh!

    Still, instead of getting defensive, the Tinubu order should put things in right frames, and stop moaning over “serious liabilities from Buhari”, as Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser (NSA), just did — though he claimed he blamed no one but told the truth.

    At the Chief of Defence Intelligence Annual Conference, Ribadu said President Bola Tinubu inherited more or less a bankrupt country, referring to the Buhari-era loans. 

    To be sure, loans are always disconcerting.  But which serious capitalist economy demonizes loans — lazy ones that lack the creative oomph to thrive from loans?

    Later, at the 19th Annual Nigerian Editors Conference in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, the NSA restricted his jeremiad to his core duty: security.  He listed Tinubu’s inherited challenges: Boko Haram (North East), Banditry (North West), massive oil theft (South-South) and security meltdown (South East).

    Good, the NSA addressed the flower of the media.  But had the media tracked the environment, as it should by its core duty, and always published reports which core data dutifully track progress and setbacks, Ribadu should have sounded hollow.

    Why? Of all four, only Banditry (North West) dawned during the Buhari era.  

    Even then, it was a spin-off from de-fanging Boko Haram: felons fleeing from a North East getting too hot; but plaguing, with their small arms, other parts of the country, as bandits (North West); and kidnappers-for-ransom (nation-wide, though with a vicious North West strain).

    The other two: massive oil theft and South East insecurity were self-inflicted. 

    All seem to have forgotten the Niger Delta New Avengers, once lionized by a section of the media back in 2015/2016, because President Goodluck Jonathan lost power; and some folks swore they’d make the country ungovernable.

    It’s fitting irony though that Government Ekpemupolo, aka Tompolo, linked with New Avengers back then, now does a yeoman’s job putting off the New Avengers’ blaze!

    The South East meltdown is too fresh to forget. The Igbo political elite, rogue or straight, cut that region’s nose to spite its face, on account of Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB.  Beware of what you wish for!

    But back to assets and liabilities: pray in 2015, what assets did President Muhammadu Buhari inherit from President Goodluck Jonathan — the electoral fall guy for PDP’s 16 years of ruin, though ill-luck Jonathan bore his brunt with uncommon grace? 

    What assets, indeed — beyond PDP-era sleaze, which hit doomsday proportions under President Jonathan, and caused the party to kiss federal power goodbye?

    On the contrary, what assets did President Tinubu inherit from President Buhari?  

    In 2015, the 2nd Niger Bridge was not there.  Neither was the Lagos-Ibadan standard-gauge rail.  Or the 1835-metre Loko-Oweto bridges, that link the North to the South East and South-South, over the Benue River.  

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    The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, now fully reconstructed, was a virtual death trap.  From 2015 to 2023, Buhari’s Works Minister, Babatunde Fashola, drove work on the relay of roads and bridges to, first time ever, link Bonny Island, home of Nigeria’s Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), to the Rivers mainland; just as he did on the Apapa-Oshodi-Alapere carriage way in Lagos, now completed. 

    Besides, pre-2015, no one seriously pushed cultivating Nigerian rice — and other crops — until the eat-what-you-grow and grow-what-you-eat whoop of the Buhari era. 

    That agro-rebirth has divined admirable agro-processing zones that may yet hallmark the Tinubu era.  If well implemented, food security is well-neigh sure, via agro-allied re-industrialization, with jobs that come with it. 

    After, add Buhari-era investments in refineries, now rolling into the Tinubu era, and set to banish the import of refined petroleum by end of 2024 — all of that in eight years, rolling into nine.  Compare and contrast all of that to the 16 PDP years!

    Yes, the Buhari-era debts were the flip sides of these critical infrastructure.  But wouldn’t the assets, acquired by those debts, be pressed into service to better drive the economy, than defensively whine over the “serious liabilities” from Buhari?

    All too true: Buhari made his mistakes, not the least the catastrophic Naira redesign policy.  The Tinubu administration would make its too.  But the point is that serious attempts to right long-settled wrongs, started with Buhari in 2015, after the Obasanjo-led PDP had frittered near-all away, with a far richer till.

    Again, compare and contrast Buhari’s and Tinubu’s opening policies.  Buhari, though slow off the blocks, tried to rally local efforts, with support loans — grow-what-you-eat and eat-what-you-grow!  

    Tinubu, admirably bolting off the blocks, is pitching for global capital: venture capital from anywhere — even the Nigerian diaspora — to come set up shop in a huge, mutually beneficial market.  That’s the sum total of his explosive economic diplomacy.

    Different tactics and strategies.  But same urgent push to catch up with lost time.  

    That’s the thing though — with eternal droning and wailing, critical breakthroughs, even as clear as a sunny day, vanish with sweet doom and gloom.

    You see only the large swath of undone business.  But are blind, deaf and dumb to little problems solved, which could well be the pivot for scaling the so-called big ones.  Grateful hearts do the direct opposite.

    That the Jews spent 40 years, instead of 40 days, may well be scriptural history.  But it’s also piquant metaphor for a mind that sees nothing but gloom, even if the day dazzles with promise.  That’s the Israelites’ mindset.

    But hey, it’s politics! You can’t stop folks from always brooding and painting the worst-case scenarios, as Obasanjo, Atiku and allied opposition, will continue to do.

    But the Tinubu order should remind everyone of the ruins of PDP’s 16 years, than crumble under pressure, belittling the recalibration, from 2015, on which it must build, though tweaking policies, wherever necessary.  Any other way is shooting itself in the foot.

    In truth, Buhari handed Tinubu a better prospect than Jonathan handed Buhari in 2015.

  • Dino: Ajekun Iya!

    Dino: Ajekun Iya!

    At the zenith of his dashing rascality, even as a senator of the Federal Republic, Dino Melaye “waxed” a monster hit of a video-skit — Ajekun Iya!

    Touting rich Yoruba lore, earnest or witty, he told the tale of the weakling (read: Dino’s foes) that brawl with the mighty (all-mighty Dino) and swore, with swashbuckling conceit: such folly would fetch a hideous hiding — Ajekun Iya!

    Poor Dino! He was predicting his very own gubernatorial thrashing of November 11 — Ajekun Iya!

    It’s just surreal how art often imitates life — and Dino is living proof of such macabre art.  It was so ugly in his eyes he chickened out of voting for himself!  That must be a record in Nigerian gubernatorial election history — Ajekun Iya!

    No tears from here for Dino’s political doom at noon.  

    Everyone loves a nuisance, the Yoruba often scoff, but whoever claims such as golden children?  That’s the long and short of Dino Melaye’s street autobiography of endless stunts.  The Kogi collapse was a well-earned meltdown.  

    It was indeed self-doom foretold.  November 11 was harsh pay day.  But Dino was too garrulous, too soaked in his low show-boating, to hear the rumbling thunder of defeat.  

    But the Kogi electorate, not the least Dino’s own Okun Yoruba folks, were sure taking own notes.  Good riddance!

    Still, Dino’s politics-as-giddy-delinquency only mirrors the sad tumble of politics-as-high-ideals, despite the din from the opposition camp. 

    Take the duo of Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, twin-losers that framed selves as twin-winners, over a sole presidential prize they knew they lost fair and square!

    Dino is following the example of both to lament his well-earned loss.  

    His ready punching bag — just as Obi’s and Atiku’s — is the calm Mahmoud Yakubu and his well-clobbered Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the automatic Judas for politicians’ election-day waywardness. How rich!

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    Obi never told a single lie all his political life.  But he never lived a single truth too!  At best, his ballyhooed political saintliness is rotten core forged in glittering gold!

    Or, how else would you frame his gubernatorial era “savings” which, by the Pandora Papers’ expo, was no more than brazen private capture of public money: pouring Anambra funds into family business, yet swearing it was the zenith of pious frugality!

    Thrift is being frugal with money.  Obi’s Anambra case was being frugal with the truth!  It’s the classic of public rot preening as public good.

    Nine years later in 2023, Obi headlined his presidential run with weaning Nigeria from “consumption to production” — the same bloke that, by his NEXT retail outlet, has made a fortune from unbridled imports!

    So long for Obi and his loud but gullible crowd! 

    Atiku, former Vice President of the Federal Republic, ought to know better; and ought to boast deeper introspection, if not outright wisdom.

    But alas!  The Wazirin Adamawa is often flighty and restless, with scant any grand ideological anchor, beyond the political equivalent of business profit and loss.  

    In his eternal quest for power, he flits towards any charmed platform: progressive, conservative, or even reactionary — like some swoony butterfly craving nectar.  

    That explains his peripatetic sojourns; and bitter retreats to hitherto scorned bases, to gobble hitherto hated vomits: PDP to Action Congress (AC); AC back to PDP — even before AC was defunct — PDP to APC, and APC back to PDP, when the elusive party ticket was far from sure!

    After his umpteenth loss at the February polls, the former Vice President traduced the apex court; abused the INEC chair and swore the 2023 election was the “worst”!  

    That was plain hysteria blabbing! That was deep-felt bitterness wailing!  Dino, his protégée, just joined the wailing and screeching party!

    But Atiku knows tarring February 25 is pure gas.  The Abel Guobadia-conducted 2003 elections, which handed Vice President Atiku and President Olusegun Obasanjo a second term, was far worse than 2023.

    The 2007 poll, for which President Obasanjo appointed Maurice Iwu as INEC chair, is the worst ever — for it orchestrated Obasanjo’s “do-or-die” electoral heist.

    Atiku was beneficiary of 2003 but victim of 2007.  So, he should know!

    Iwu’s INEC, Obasanjo’s special purpose vehicle for 2007’s blatant vote steal, could have rushed Atiku off the ballot, but for the courts.  

    Even at that, Prof. Iwu wasn’t sorry for his INEC’s outrage, unlike the mild-mannered Prof. Yakubu, who the delinquent losers of 2023 bash for their electoral seppuku, with Dino being the latest in that ignoble line.  

    Yet, from the Attahiru Jega-era card reader, to present-day BVAS and IReV, all INEC has done is try to strengthen the credibility of the vote.  But must INEC be pilloried for politicians’ roaring bad faith — bad faith that is a ruinous constant that never changes?

    Indeed, Election 2007 is the worst ever!  But don’t take Ripples’ word for it.  Take the evidence in the public space.

    Aside from the late President Umaru Yar’Adua who decried the disgraceful vote that earned him power — and put in place urgent reforms — the courts reclaimed no less than four stolen governorships from that brazen robbery: Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun.

    Edo’s Adams Oshiomhole and Osun’s Rauf Aregbesola would go on to erect model development governance, refreshingly alien to the PDP era of cooked votes and paralyzed governments — at least in Edo and Osun.

    Unfortunately, the stellar heights of both, Oshiomhole and Aregbesola, were undone by the politics of sterile succession — ironically by successors who either didn’t share their predecessors’ high ideals or just couldn’t vault selves to those levels.

    Ondo’s Segun Mimiko — the first to gain power with Labour Party after hire — boasted dizzying heights in political mobilization.  Ekiti’s Kayode Fayemi posted a redemptive two terms, though the split terms sandwiched Ayo Fayose’s second coming, with its populist sweet poison of “stomach infrastructure” — which was a drag.

    But all the four were a loud rebuke of the first eight years of PDP rule; and set the tone for the party’s democratic ouster eight years later — and today’s shadow of itself.

    Which is why former President Goodluck Jonathan missed the point, big time, by decrying off-season elections.  

    A more introspective Jonathan should have hailed these elections.  They are reminders of how the judiciary saved this democracy from the bold-and-merry rigging of the PDP era.  But the former president earned a pardon: he lost the presidency with rare grace.

    Not Atiku — or Obi for that matter — howling “rigging” when both knew their cross-ambitions crashed PDP in February, as Dino’s own rascality smashed his Kogi dreams in November.

    Ironically, Dino serenaded Atiku during his doomed presidential run as much as Atiku serenaded Dino during his Kogi collapse.

    Both should snap out of their well-earned bad dreams!  Ajekun Iya!

  • Ajaero’s Waterloo?

    Ajaero’s Waterloo?

    Joe Ajaero, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president, is a trove of historical allusions.  Poor Joe!  He looks like an actor, doomed yet merry, in a bizarre drama!

    Compared with Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), intrepid emperor of post-monarchy France, Ajaero craves the fear-no-foe local Labour(?) Napoleon, ready to cut-and-thrust, with whoever, whenever, wherever or however.

    Kamikaze Joe, daring master of crippling strikes-as-potent-blackmail!  He loves playing the Yoruba fly that taunts the man with the deep sore.  What happens when the man, demented with rage, starts gobbling up the pesky flies?

    But having run into a stiff jab at Owerri on November 1, had Ajaero, too soon, faced his own Waterloo, though unlike the French original, he has not exactly galloped from victory to victory, in his rather rashly chosen battles?

    If Owerri evoked the Waterloo of the original Bonaparte, pint-sized Ajaero, juxtaposed with equally pocket-sized Adams Oshiomhole, former NLC president, evokes no less Louis Bonaparte, pretentious Napoleon III, the emperor-wannabe, whose pitiful conceit  sparked that Karl Marx memorable put-down.

    “History,” the grand, old theorist of Marxism sneered, “repeats itself: first, as tragedy, then, as farce.”  So long for Butterfly Louis, kidding self as Eagle Bonaparte!

    Ajaero, drunk with Aluta wine and brimming with reckless verve, must have fancied himself some fiery Oshiomhole II, in charged Nigerian Labour agitations.

    In truth, Oshiomhole galloped from victory to victory in his fearless jousting with the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidency, over the vexed issue of fuel pump pricing.

    But Oshiomhole’s times were the halcyon days, when Labour was not self-spiked with partisan politics; and the NLC picked its battle much more carefully.  Not any more!  

    If the Imo ditch can re-set NLC’s battle strategies, perhaps Comrade Joe can still regain his mission.  If not, not only Ajaero will sink.  Organized Labour too might.  

    That would be unforced tragedy — as the unforced error in the game of tennis — for workers and their causes.  That will just be too bad!

    Still, has Owerri taught Ajaero anything?  Very doubtful.

    To be sure, no citizen should get clobbered as Ajaero was.  Many days later, after he had re-found his voice, poor Ajaero wailed: alleged thugs pummelled him, hands tied, like a common felon!  He was the sad coquet, flirting with folks that had pity to spare!  

    Why, he even alleged that the Police arrested him, and passed him over to his alleged thug-pounders!  That’s a serious charge. The Police must investigate it — and it is just as well the Inspector-General (IGP) has promised a probe.  That should be prompt.

    Still, you see poor Ajaero, beaten and battered?  That’s how he himself had battered the law!  When you thumb your nose at the courts and their injunctions, you raze the social fabric, woven by the state via due process, to protect you!

    How?  A little, basic theorizing here.

    By the Social Contract, the very pillar of the pristine state, the people ceded a part of their rights to a central Leviathan (read power), in exchange for common protection.

    That power is the government which, pronto, erected many “safety nets” against the powerful, bullying the powerless.  One key “safety net”, so vital in a democracy, is the court of law, which even shields the citizens against the all-mighty government!

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    Yes, the government could play pranks with the courts, in terms of the so-called “jankara” (read rogue) orders or injunctions. Even if that happened — and it often does — the solution is not self-help, but a patient recourse to the courts for remedy.

    Indeed, self-help, in a clash between citizen rights (to not be bullied) and government rights (to assert its authority), often ends in self-pulverization!  That was the monster at Owerri — and it was ugly in our eyes!

    By pushing Aluta rights — the courts be damned! — Ajaero pulled rogue elements to deal him merciless blows, in a lawless jungle. Conveniently, the state looked elsewhere!

    But had Ajaero obeyed the National Industrial Court (NIC), and was less zesty to “shut down Imo” at all costs, he would have escaped that thrashing, for he wouldn’t himself have savaged the law.

    But that was even at the very surface.  That Ajaero and his Aluta army glibly boasted about truncating the Imo November 11 election, knowing how crucial that was to the democratic Republic, added a sinister motive to the entire misadventure.

    That sparked the merry tragedy of the parasite, giddy over the death of its host!  

    Labour rights are entrenched in, and best guaranteed by, a democracy.  But what happens when Labour threatens to subvert the very fundament that gives it life and nurtures its essence? Isn’t that a ghostly parasite dancing on the grave of its host, in fatal delusion it still had life?  Which parasite lives when its host is long dead?

    But beyond that fundamental blunder, Ajaero’s partisan dreams, pre-November 11, got buried under the thumping loss of Athan Achonu, the Labour Party (LP) candidate.  

    True, Achonu and co are replicating the Peter Obi bluff and bluster, thundering flowery polling-day allegations they hardly can prove, and claiming LP “won” — just as Obi did.  Like Obi at the presidency, Achonu came a distant third at the Imo gubernatorial race.

    An apple doesn’t fall that far from the mother tree, does it? 

    A victorious Governor Hope Uzodinma rubbed it in — Ajaero in the context of the Imo LP/NLC debacle!

    Flush with victory, the governor praised the Imo local NLC and TUC; but razed their national interlopers, who came launching an “evil conspiracy”, couched as workers’ wage mass action, against his government, close to a crucial poll.

    Indeed, Uzodinma duly earned his victory crow — the same nervy Uzodinma that apologized to Ajaero, over a battery he “knew nothing about”, when no one knew where the pendulum of victory would swing!

    You can’t really blame Achonu and co for bawling and kicking over LP’s crushing loss.  Politicians are born to cry wolf, when defeat hands them a thunder slap.

    But why drag NLC — and workers — into this political delinquency?  That is Ajaero’s cardinal crime, which organized Labour must sort out — and fast.

    By the way, what has happened to the NLC/TUC threat to start a national strike today, if their Imo “demands” were not met?  Both are too shame-faced to walk their talk?

    Besides, how do Labour undo their costly dance of shame at Abuja and Lagos airports on November 10?  How are those “Labourized” thugs, who disrupted flights in Abuja and Lagos, different from the thugs that beat Ajaero black and blue?

    Ajaero, by his rashness, is dragging organized Labour into a needless storm.  TUC, hitherto dignified and reasonable, is behaving as the stupid fly that would buzz and buzz, while following the corpse into the grave.

    When that storm finally comes, NLC will either keep Ajaero on its sinking ship or, as jetsam, toss him into the sea to save others.  Either way, workers will bear the brunt.

  • Mob after parliament

    Mob after parliament

    Ripples is all for a far less costly government; and a more equitable and fairer access to state resources all round.  But in pushing this noble ideal, it’s unfair to burn just the National Assembly at the stake of vicious public opinion.  It is only one of three arms of government.

    That would be sending a mob after Parliament — the first estate of the realm, of any democracy.  That’s hardly smart — or even healthy for democratic deepening.

    The cacophony against the National Assembly — over what it gulps — echoes Menenius Agrippa’s belly fable, told to Roman plebs, furious at their Senate, as beautifully captured in Shakespeare’s tragic play, Curiolanus.

    To the plebs and tribunes of Rome (read: the public and press of today’s Nigeria), the Senate of old Rome — as the National Assembly of Nigeria today — was a parasite: the belly that gobbled up everything but produced nothing.

    But the witty Menenius spun it round: the belly consumed everything all right.  But it hardly retained any — for it was no more than the body relay that fed all other parts!

    Enter, the scorned belly in grumpy and angry body politics!  To be sure, Menenius was no pleb.  He was every inch the patrician, who spoke up for his peers that ran the Senate, as the tribunes did for the plebs, though the tribunes added own poison, bile and envy — as the media often does today.

    To be fair, his stand that the belly retained “nothing” but processed “everything” is a clear hyperbole.  Pure altruism hardly exists anywhere, not the least in politics.  

    Don’t the Yoruba always say: work in the shrine, eat of the shrine?  

    Still, his wit (that by the way jolted the plebs and the subversive tribunes to new realities, beyond their loathe-prison) showed there were many sides to a story.

    The mass hysteria against the Nigerian legislature has gone on for too long.  It’s high time it was balanced with some reasoned discourse.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, it was, that first threw the National Assembly under the bus, over the so-called “furniture allowance”.  But — old fox — he was silent on his own ministers’ perks.

    Indeed, the way Obasanjo tore at the legislators and the venom with which the media trumpeted the tirade is reminiscent of a Coriolanus classic on the Roman rabble! 

    When the tribunes hollered “oh!”, he mocked, the rabble thundered “oh!-oh!-oh!” without thinking!  It’s been pretty much the same on the National Assembly’s case.

    Hostile public opinion, from 1999, often leaves them bruised, if not dead, as a band of  greedy ruffians, sworn to crashing the common till.  But are they?

    Three citizens, former legislators but now ministers, explain the harsh censure.

    Dave Umahi (Works minister but elected senator at the last poll), Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo (now Interior minister but also elected into the House of Representatives) and Nkeiruka Onyejeocha (ranking House member from Abia, who lost her seat at the last poll).

    While about everyone is hysterical over what their former peers get, either as senators or Representatives, there is not even a whimper on what this trio gets — why?

    Same set of citizens.  Same entry points as elected legislators.  But a jarring, different treatment, just because they had crossed to the executive!

    That underscores the double standard that has driven the anti-National Assembly roasting.  Ripples just ponders what the personal takes of this trio might be!

    Could people be placid over executive perks, just because the ministers are far fewer?  That appears clear.

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    Folks wail and grouch over the buying of “exotic cars” for the “multitudes” in the legislature. Yet they are mute to similar perks for the lucky “few” in the executive.  Blessed are those whose “sins” are covered?

    Carping over legislator numbers, viz-a-viz their perks, is both emotive and fraudulent.

    Starting with emotions: the emotive seldom ever win a logical joust. They subvert the mind’s ability to x-ray every angle, and rashly wave the proverbial smoking gun.  Most times, however, that turns out a mirage, leading to conclusions skewed, unfair and unjust.  

    And the fraud: using the legislature’s numbers, against its members, is clearly unfair.  The Constitution birthed the numbers to fairly represent the people.  Parliament did not.

    That’s the cost of democracy the state must pay.  But if democracy is expensive, we all saw the cheapness of junta rule, which incidentally junked the legislature for closet but ruinous rule!

    Besides, in the gripping passion of the moment, partisans often limit the executive to just the President and his cabinet.  But what about the departments, parastatals and agencies under the ministries?  

    Is anyone tallying their numbers?  If so, why isn’t anyone using those numbers — and perks their heads and hierarchs enjoy — to bawl, in holy rage, as they often do against the National Assembly?  Are numbers inferior to numbers?

    It’s tragic the focus is often on how much a governmental arm gulps, not the value it adds.  To fairly judge the legislature, a robust template on its output is imperative, not just emotional outbursts.

    But again, that underscores the crafty skew of the anti-parliament campaign.  The thrust is that the National Assembly sits in plenary, enjoys fat perks and does little else.

    That’s untrue, though.  Just as the executive has its huge bureaucracy, so does the legislature.  Being the most stunted among the three arms — no thanks to past junta rules — you’d expect far more sensitivity regarding its careful nurture.  But no!

    Even going beyond the three arms — legislature, executive, judiciary — and their comparative costs, why does even the private sector richly pay its chief executives and top hierarchs, leaving virtual chaff for others?

    It’s because they are thinkers.  Law-making is serious business.  It is no plebeian job, for glorified office boys and girls.  

    It’s rather a federal chamber of thinkers — the upper symbolizing states’ equality; the lower stressing differing population — elected to think and make laws for the republic.  It’s either the state is ready to pay for their high services or it closes shop!

    Still, nothing in all of this rally should suggest the government should live off the fat of the land, while the people wilt and waste away in penury.  Far from it!

    But if you must call out the legislature, you must also call out the executive, not leaving out the judiciary.  That would be fairness and equity under the law.

    Besides, it’s just rich looking back at the first eight years of this Republic from 1999. Obasanjo raved and hollered over “furniture allowance”.  Yet, post-2007, it’s clear who, among the three arms, trapped the most of public resources for own personal gravy.

    It certainly was not the much vilified National Assembly, given the “kill” of the executive and its twin-leaders!

  • Supreme gambit, supreme crash

    Supreme gambit, supreme crash

    The willy-nilly presidential wannabes, on October 25, got their supreme comeuppance. Now, the polity can breathe! 

    Still, it has been such a huge but needless distraction, on far too many fronts. 

    For eons, you x-rayed a legal bubble that sure would burst: right from the day INEC declared the result of the February 25 presidential election.

    Yet, that bubble was so cynically wrought: with so much hell-raising, garnished with maximum muck-raking, to cause so much angst and pain in the land.

    That aptly captures the post-poll gambit of Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, using raw emotion to weaponize the court processes, after a clear — and fair — election loss.

    It was the supreme crash of a supreme gambit — and just as well!

    But make no mistake: February 25 was one of the fairest polls Nigeria ever had.  It was clearly the cleanest and most evenly contested since 1999.  No bile can cancel that.

    Yes, rabid partisans might have been bewitched by the closeness of the poll: Bola Tinubu (12 states), Atiku (12), Obi (11 plus FCT) aside Rabi’u Kwankwaso (one).  That closeness points to its fairness.

    For sore losers, the harsh reality should have set in, especially with both Atiku and Obi unable to prove any “rigging” in court when the chips were down.  But no!

    Indeed, beyond raw emotions, both had hardly any case.  That was why they took their “evidence” to the court of rabid supporters, rather than the clinical court of justice.

    The result was as clear as the lamentation was shrill — 5:0 at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC); 7:0 at the Supreme Court.  It was a 12:0 rout all round!

    Lest we forget: PEPC tanned the opposition lawyers — PDP, LP and the Allied People’s Movement (APM) — for wasting its time on a vexatious cause, with hefty fines to boot! 

    The Supreme Court also flayed Atiku’s lead counsel for selling a legal dummy: PEPC wasn’t bound by petition time limit because it was the Court of Appeal!

    That rebuke, over the infantile position by a silk, could well be fine metaphor for how empty the case was.  Still, such resort to Gbajue (in-your-face desperate) tactics to game the apex court, was a laughable ploy to try trickery, after cold logic, in facts and figures, had abysmally failed.

    Just as well the lead judgment dismissed the trick with supreme contempt, laced with terse humour, searing and biting!

    Still, the supreme collapse of the challenge may well hallmark the supreme collapse of reputations, legal, social and political. 

    Here, the lawyers are the most fortunate.  They live in legal cloisters.  Even then, those involved would be galled by the ultimate putdown by elderly silk and senior citizen, Robert Clarke, SAN, that not even a junior in his chambers would take the Atiku case!

    Not so, for opportunistic critics that seized the Atiku/Obi legal vacuity to dance naked, all for Obi’s empty cause.  Vacuity, it would appear, merrily begets vacuity!

    Take these takes on the PEPC verdict.

    Robert Clarke, SAN, 50 years at the Bar, told Channels TV: “I have every belief, and I seriously believe that the unanimous judgment of the Court of Appeal (now as PEPC) is unassailable.  It is as fixed as you can fix anything and I can assure you that if there is an appeal, I doubt whether anything can come out of the appeal.” 

    Indeed, nothing did, with a 7-0 affirmation, with absolutely no dissent.

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    Chimamanda Adichie, fiction writer, told CNN: “I am in the middle of reading the judgment and it’s stunning how shoddy it is. The elections were manipulated in a way that is very shabby and the judgment is shabby and shoddy.  I didn’t expect it to be very thoughtful but I am shocked at how very lacking in thought it is.”

    Now that the Supreme Court just validated that “shabby and shoddy” verdict, maybe Chimamanda should be stunned at how shabby and shoddy her thinking always is, particularly where she knows nothing but is too arrogant to learn!

    Fiction writing, in plays, novels and poetry, is a cherished genre, which challenges our common humanity to keep us all sane, because of the presumed honesty and fairness of its vessels — playwrights, authors and poets.

    But when such take wild liberty for licence, and try to ram down clear fiction as facts, because of tribal and sundry bias, then a wilful collapse of reputation is near.  The Bible is of course right: what you gobble doesn’t destroy you, what you vomit does!

    So, Chimamanda beware!  But then, reputation suicide is a democratic choice!  A writer sans integrity is as dead as dodo, though (s)he lives a thousand years!

    Oby Ezekwesili, railed about some “criminal enterprise gang” from her bitter and wailing soul, asked the rhetorical question “where is the hope?”, and sizzled in her  traducement of the apex court, for “judicial enthronement of criminality as an official norm”!

    “Easy, Oby, easy!” Femi Adesina, presidential spokesperson during the Buhari years, would have counselled.  “Wail responsibly!”

    For Mrs Ezekwesili, of course, talk is always cheap. 

    All her Madam Due Process gra-gra of the Obasanjo years didn’t stop that regime’s No. 1 and 2 — and cronies — from gaming the system and bequeathing rampaging sleaze of the PDP years: the fundament of today’s mass penury and economic pains. 

    Even as the regime’s latter-day Education minister, her ministry nearly sold off the federal unity schools to alleged regime cronies, but for trenchant public opinion. 

    Her own aborted presidential run in 2019 exited with a departing stench: a controversy over campaign funding! Even in the case of the Anambra girl that forged her JAMB result, blood was thicker than water for fiery Madam Due Process!

    Criminal enterprises indeed!  Ezekwesili’s hypocrisy on four feet continues to rankle!

    But away from those that wail more than the bereaved, to the actual dramatis personae: Atiku and Obi.

    That the Supreme Court dismissed Ob’s appeal in less than 160 seconds reflected its emptiness, beyond raw hysteria and parasitizing on Atiku’s case.  To borrow from our inimitable WS: it was Gbajue demagoguery spectacularly unhinged!

    Still, Obi could have further complicated things for the South East political elite, in their legitimate push for the Nigerian presidency.  In truth, Obi’s clannish politics and brazen push as cynical “Christian” candidate of convenience, alienated not a few nationwide.

    It’s refreshing though that Works Minister, Dave Umahi and Governor Chukwuma Soludo, play more cosmopolitan, less clannish, politics. That is the path to tread. The South West too played enclave politics, until MKO Abiola found the right pan-Nigeria mix.

    No thanks to bitterness, Atiku Abubakar just unravelled from a perceived pan-Nigerian to a narrow northern irredentist, if not supremacist.  That was tragic — for it crashed the PDP!  If he wants to contest again, he has a big personal problem to fix.

    Post-Supreme Court, Atiku claimed Nigeria was “doomed” — because he lost?  A classic Samson’s complex!

    President Tinubu must double down to work — if only to prove those “doomed” are only the Atikus, trapped in their bitter Doomsday. For hardworking Nigerians, there must be a new dawn of laughter.

  • Gaza: cost of mutual lunacy

    Gaza: cost of mutual lunacy

    How about this for “divine” propaganda, courtesy of Amos 1:6, now viral in the social media?

    “The Lord says,” says the quote, ‘Gaza has sinned again and again, and I will not forget it.  I will not leave her unpunished any more.  For she sent my people into exile, selling them as slaves in Edom.’ “

    “‘So I will set fire to the walls of Gaza, and all her forts shall be destroyed, and destroy Ekron and the King of Ashkelon; all Philistines left will perish. The Lord has spoken.’ ” — thunderous, chilling, sweeping and final!

    The simple-minded, especially among faith zealots, may well be wowed: 21st century Gaza’s fate had long been sealed in BC Israel!  

    So, let the Gazans pay for their latest catastrophe, triggered by the October 7 terror raid of Hamas inside Israel; and massacre of defenceless Isrealis in their Kibbutzes?

    The snag, however, is that Ashkelon today sits in Israel, and also wilts under Hamas’s barrage of retaliatory rockets, even as Israel bombs Gaza to ashes.

    Sure — thanks to the Israeli Iron Dome and Iron Beam defence systems — Ashkelon may well escape the ashen treatment that appears the terrible fate of Gaza. 

    Still, is Ashkelon, part of present-day Israel, also doomed by the Biblical decree in the Book of Amos?  Is Hamas part of the “divine” rod to doom Ashkelon, for its BC crimes? 

    The limit of spin, “divine” or earthly! Every propaganda is spin, woven to scam! 

    So Amos, as literature or as “prophecy”, has nothing to do with present-day Gaza and Ashkelon. 

    Rather, Israel and Gaza are man-made cauldrons, stoked by mutual lunatics, scalding their respective peoples — by the way, ancestral cousins, offspring of Jewish Father Abraham; or Ibrahim, the Arab equivalent.

    In a way though, by their electoral choices, present-day Gazans (Palestinians) and Israelis — the ultimate victims in this conflict — bear ultimate responsibilities. 

    You don’t elect Hamas terrorists and Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition extremists, and feign surprise you are hugging naked grenades!

    Still, the Amos account shows the danger of tracking Palestine’s explosive history from the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel.

    The trouble in that region dated way back.  It’s sweet fiction therefore, peddled by faith zealots, that Palestine belonged to Arabs. 

    Indeed, both can claim the area: both being one-time happy and harsh conquerors; other times sorry and torrid victims of ruthless conquests, both spanning centuries.

    Unless you build from these fundaments, you will flare on rabid emotions but wilt on cold logic.  Only a clinical mind can be fair to both sides, sworn to mutual annihilation.

    Still, how about this PM Netanyahu pitch to Israelis — cant at its most sublime — after the Hamas massacre?  It’s a study in crass emotions, trapping grieving minds.

    “Let us remember,” Bibi the orator thundered, “all nations, empires or cultures who once tried to destroy us, no longer exist today while we still live!  Egypt?  Babylon?  The Greeks?  Alexander of Macedonia? The Romans — does anyone still speak Latin these days?  The Third Reich?”

    This brilliant demagoguery more or less paints Israel’s grim odyssey through the ages: the AD 70 Roman crushing of a Jewish revolt and the sacking of Jerusalem; plus a more ruthless putdown in AD 135, when imperial Rome renamed Judea as Palestine.

    AD 638: Muslim Arabs toppled imperial Rome, and seized the area. Jerusalem became Al-Quds (meaning “The Holy Sanctuary”). Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its famous dome, nestles on the Temple Mount, sacred to the Jews, bang inside Jerusalem’s old city, now in East Jerusalem! 

    AD 1099, Christian Crusaders “briefly” seized the area — for a century or two — before the Muslim Saracens recaptured it, for more than a millennium.  Of course, Crusaders and Saracens were war thugs, grappling at loud faith for moral life.

    So, same shrines. Three faiths.  Untrammeled cross-faith sacredness.  A peep into how Jews-Arab Muslims-Christians are yoked in faith, yet scattered by politics!

    Palestine — and its umpteenth troubles — is living proof of that boiling cauldron!

    Still on Hamas’s barbarism of October 7, Bibi even managed a crow: “Sixty years ago, no country.  No army. [But] today, we have a state (country), an army, a powerful Air Force, a state-of-the-art economy with exports worth billions of dollars …”

    But Bibi blissfully forgot it was same hubris, from felt invincibility, that drove him to strike a desperate deal with ultra-right lunatics (never before tolerated in Israel since 1948), just to return as Prime Minister.

    One, Bazalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance minister, in March blithely blabbed “there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.  There is no Palestinian history.  There is no Palestinian language”!, provoking a fire storm in the Arab world.

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    Another, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security minister, went marching on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with some Israeli settlers, and Israeli Police in tow!  How can a “national security” minister be so insensate, without courting needless danger?

    But that’s the lunacy on the Israeli side.  The lunacy on the Palestinian side is no less berserk.

    No matter its grouse, Hamas just damned itself as a terrorist cell, with its premeditated massacre of Israelis in their homes, and killing of 260 partying youths in cold blood.  

    Indeed, if you heehaw over October 7, but howl in a pity-party over the Gaza bombing, you are a closet terrorist — no matter your faith, racial or ethnic cant or camouflage.

    You can’t glorify Hamas’s butchery, yet wax hysterical over Gaza and its tragic fate.

    Israeli children, as Gaza’s, have a right to breathe and live!  So, the Israelis are right to insist Hamas started this present cauldron.  It is what it is — the grim logic of it all!

    Still, Gaza’s fate ought to capture the humanity in us all, sans pride, bias or prejudice. 

    Which is why the lasting solution must be to shun the loonies on both sides — bury Hamas, in Gaza; bury Bibi and his ultra-right coalition, after the guns had fallen quiet.

    But sadly, that path — of moderation — had hardly been taken, on both sides.  1981: Islamist extremists despatched Egypt President Anwar Sadat. 1995: a Jewish fanatic assassinated dovish PM, Yitzhak Rabin.

    Their crimes?  The temerity of both to push for peace and accommodation.

    Still, a flicker: Abu Dawud (1937-2010), who plotted the Black September terrorist attack that massacred 11 Israeli athletes, at the 1972 Munich Olympics, died unbowed. 

    Yet in 1996, the same Israel guaranteed his safe passage to and fro Gaza, to attend the PLO meeting that rescinded Fatah’s old protocol that called for Israel’s eradication. 

    Bitter Dawud was displaced from Jerusalem, following its Israeli capture, after the 1967 Six-Day War — just as the ancient Israelites must have felt, in AD 70 and AD 135, when Rome cracked down and scattered them from their Promised Land.

    Israel’s fearsome war machine cannot win the peace.  The Palestinian impotent rage cannot win the war. 

    Both must settle for moderation: a fair two-state solution that guarantees peace and mutual existence.  It’s a much safer path than mutual lunacy.