Just as well, the Federal Government just withdrew its notice to exit petroleum subsidy.  For the ruling order, that would have been a primer in wilful political suicide, on an election eve.  The opposition would have grabbed that rare plum with divine thanks!

Yet, since that announcement, it’s been lamentations galore: how subsidy would stall the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).

The PIA, goes the jeremiad — drip! drip! — has no provisions for subsidy, as everything is “liberalized”.  True.

But isn’t this some deja vu of some sort?  Have we not witnessed all of this before?

In September 2004, President Olusegun Obasanjo blundered into the “government magic” (apologies to Fela) of liberalizing petroleum downstream by importation.

In 2022, can President Muhammadu Buhari blunder out of it, flashing the PIA as the new magic come to eliminate those other factors (in basic economics-speak) that remain unequal 17 years after?

The Obasanjo government didn’t get local refineries ready for downstream deregulation — beyond the media razzmatazz of ramming “market forces” on the browbeaten and the downtrodden.

With the preening “reforms” of that era also came a wish — rich and fanciful — that “deregulation” would self-correct; and market forces would send fuel pump prices crashing.  Some wish!

In fairness though, “deregulation” was only the “reform” buzz.  Blind panic, sold as policy bravery, forced Obasanjo’s hands: to flee from NNPC’s four refineries.

Turn-around maintenance (TAM) and allied repairs had gulped US$ 485.4 million between 1999 and 2003, according to “Deregulation of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria”, a CBN seminar paper delivered by Funsho Kupolokun, then NNPC group managing director.

Yet, the refineries delivered not gushing fuel pumps; but bulging pockets, with illicit cash, for party hacks and allied hustlers!  ”No more!” bayed that government — and rightly so.

But it’s one thing to flee from a bad path.  It’s another to work hard at correcting the flaws in-there to redeem that path.

Doing one but shunning the other has been the bane of this peculiar “deregulation” these past 17 years.  Until you ensure adequate local refining, not even a thousand PIAs can correct the deregulation-stalling, skewed conditions.

The good news though is that more than any time since 1999, the objective conditions to drive the PIA, and logically liberalize petroleum downstream (aside from upstream and midstream) appear near.

By the third quarter of this year, the US$ 19.6 billion, 650, 000-barrels-a-day Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals complex would start producing petrol, diesel and allied auto/aero fuels.   The plant is already producing fertilizer.

By close to year-end, the four NNPC refineries (combined refining capacity: 445, 000 barrels a day) too are projected to chip in some products, but not at full capacity.  A few private modular refineries too are expected to come on stream.

Why all of these won’t, open sesame, banish fuel importation, they should progressively crash the volume of forex spent on such imports, till domestic refiners can satisfy local consumption and thereafter essay exports.

The Dangote complex, by the way, is technically sited “abroad” (in an export processing zone).  So, from Day 1, it has its eye on the export market, aside from its commitment to Nigeria’s local consumption.

Read Also: Fuel subsidy sandstorm

All these developments make the 18-month subsidy regime stretch not unreasonable, though the now-or-never PIA puritans would screech and scream to the contrary.

This lobby is more impressed by cold, howling stats, baying economic “waste and drain”; than the relief such numbers might be offering the real masses with flesh and blood — long-suffering folks that hold the short end of wrong-headed policies.

Indeed, the government’s decision to continue with subsidy has been framed in that lobby’s image: barking a near-fatal assault on the PIA, rather than seeing a reasonable wind-down period, which may well grant the PIA a safer birth and eventual healthier life.

First, taking headlines from The Nation (by no means the most alarming) is a quiet rue: “Subsidy extension stalls Petroleum Industry Act” (January 26).

That seems a quiet prompt at a vicious blame game: who did it?  Why?  And how Nigerian governments are simply incapable of keeping to the letter and spirit of own laws — the customary media hair-splitting that seldom leads to resolving any challenge beyond thunderous blame and zealous finger-pointing.

Then, the next day, came the scare tactics: “Government to fund subsidy with N3 trillion in one year” (The Nation, January 27).  Whaaaaaat! — you could almost hear the puritans growl, patriotic keepers of the cold and sacred public books!

To be sure, the fuel subsidy cost is humongous, particularly when you factor in the more destructive cost of alleged corruption.  It’s alleged, for instance, that the claimed daily consumption of petrol (55.9 million litres by August 2021) was padded.

Still, why is fuel subsidy reported as if it is a high crime against the state; and its beneficiaries as unconscionable bugs, who would rather suck up everything than allow the state to splash such cash on roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and drugs?  Alluring emotive argument!

But the converse: why should the ordinary folks, victims of a wrong-headed energy policy, be draped as monsters because they enjoy fuel subsidy; but the policy makers, though authors of suspect decisions, are swooping, no-nonsense, corrective angels?

A blind and unthinking class war?  Come to think of it!  The state — through generous perks — has provisioned policymakers enough cushion against own harsh policies.

But when those policies bite hard, relief in subsidy, to those that grill in the harsh crucible, suddenly becomes economic sabotage?  An unthinking class war indeed!

But wherever you stand on the ideological spectrum, Nigerians owe organized Labour a huge debt of gratitude for frontally challenging subsidy removal.  But for Labour’s mobilization to act, it’s doubtful if the government would have eaten crow.

Still, the Buhari presidency deserves more praise, on ways local refining is panning out, than most would grant it.

True, on the political front, it’s enlightened self-interest for it not to add the subsidy bomb to its election-year headache.  Only a suicidal government would act otherwise.

But even on economics qua economics: putting PIA in limbo for 18 months to ensure it works for all — the book keepers in policy suites; and the folks whose blood boil on the economic street — is tribute to how the government’s domestic refining agenda is shaping up.

Better a PIA delay of 18 months with firmer prospects of local refining, than a 17-year deregulation transit to nowhere which, by the hour, throws the economy into a tailspin, the people into deeper misery, and the clime into mass poverty.

Tennis aficionados call it unforced error — that penchant to ram the ball into the net, or hit it flying into the stands, or just make sundry defaults, absolutely under no pressure!

But the Greeks, in their mythology, have a somewhat creepy and more eerie explanation.

Only the dead, they deadpan, can be well and truly happy — and why?  Because malevolent gods were always on the prowl, clutching their clubs at the ready, sardonically happy to conk the mere mortal, frail and luckless!

You could have lived a hundred years.  But if those rods come swooshing down, even 100 seconds before you breathe your last, then all is undone!

Only the dead are well and truly happy!

That captures the unforced tragedy of Chief Ernest Adegunle Oladeinde Shonekan (9 May 1936 – 11 January 2022), the Abese of Egbaland, who died at 85, on January 11.

Chief Shonekan was cruising through life, fated to exit as the glittering gold of Business Nigeria: loved by all, nailed by none.

Yet, he died at 85 as dull tinsel of Political Nigeria — no thanks to 83 fatal days, as head of an Interim National Government (ING), conjured up by the hastily exiting Gen. Ibrahim Babangida!

Eighty-three short days (26 August – 17 November 1993) plaguing 85 otherwise illustrious years?  Only the dead are well and truly happy!

Between 17 November 1993 (when Abacha shoved him from power) and 11 January 2022 (when he died) — 28 long years — Shonekan endured a long purgatory: a Roman Catholic concept for grilling sinners in a crucible, to somewhat escape the real hell.

Did the Egba high chief do enough to expiate his political sin, before exiting these shores?  Not easy to say.

But he bore his fate with stoic equanimity, which could have been so adorable under different circumstances.  That can’t be said of the jackboot hustlers that snared Shonekan in it all; the power ruffians that sealed his fate.

The Yoruba, ever bristling against treachery, savaged Shonekan with vicious taunts. They christened his ING as “Ijoba Fidihe” — provocatively cynical, yet acutely picturesque for an interim government. You could picture the officials: so nervy and sweaty they perch at the edge of their seats — fi-di-he!

Indeed, the fidihe tag proved most prophetic: Shonekan and co only “fidihe-d” for 83 days — short in days, but very, very long in piled-up taunts and equal opportunity insults, before the Evil and Goggled One put Shonekan out of his misery!

Post-power, Shonekan calmly downed his hemlock and virtually laid low for the grim reaper. That nobly contrasted to the ever-yakking, never-sorry, ensemble that lured him into his misery; but left him, all alone, in the lurch.

Yet, the charge of treachery, if not outright perfidy, was well and fairly heaped on the Egba high chief, on both political and ethnic fronts.

Chief MKO Abiola had resoundingly won the presidential election of June 12, 1993.  Gen. Babangida, who didn’t like the face of the winner (since he didn’t want to quit power anyway), annulled the election.

But faced with the thunder of public anger, he whipped out Chief Shonekan and his ING from his bag of tricks.  Shonekan would preside and organize fresh presidential elections in six months, while IBB, challenged and harassed, would “step aside”.

Read Also: Shonekan: The making of a tragic illusion

It was unclear which was more roiling: that a self-named “military president” would say no, while 14 million Nigerian voters said yes?  That reckless act was high hubris, which  smashed the perceived invincibility of Nigeria’s political military, though IBB and co didn’t quite know it back then.

Or that by military fiat, IBB could juggle, like a yo-yo, two eminent Yoruba men: one duly elected by Nigerians; the other rashly imposed by IBB.

That monumental insult drove the civil society up in arms, goaded the electorate nationwide into a fury, made the progressive media seethe with rage, and drove the huffing Yoruba hopping mad.

Even among the Egba, IBB’s wayward power game made Shonekan an instant pariah — among the masses, if not entirely with the elite.

It was a virtual kiss of communal death that Chief Shonekan would grimly bear, for the last 28 years of his life. Both MKO and Shonekan were Egba high chiefs. But for Shonekan, it was morning yet, on a long, long day of woe! On 10 November 1993, a Lagos high court, under Justice Dolapo Akinsanya (now dead), declared the ING illegal. On 17 November 1993, Gen. Sani Abacha, secretary of Defence in that same ING, overthrew his chairman and interim head of state. Ijoba Fidihe had come a sad cropper!

But for Abacha making a military decree that reaffirmed his sorry tenure, the Lagos court verdict would have erased, from the eye of the law, Shonekan’s 83-day rule.

Not only that.  Chief Shonekan would live long enough to witness President Muhammadu Buhari, on 6 June 2018, declare June 12 Nigeria’s new Democracy Day with effect from 2019. That was based on MKO’s epochal presidential win of 1993, which IBB contrived the ING to subvert.

Still, perhaps all would have ended happily ever after for Shonekan, had the Egba chief not left his chairman/CEO job at UACN Plc, for Gen. Babangida’s military government as chairman of the Transition Council, from January 1993.

Chidi Amuta wrote Prince of the Niger, to toast the Babangida power years.  But for that fatal blundering into military power politics, Shonekan could have died a more credible Prince of the Niger, if you trace UACN’s deep roots in the Royal Niger Company (RNC).

Formed in 1879 as the United African Company (UAC), it became the National African Company (NAC) in 1881 but was renamed RNC in 1886, when the British Government granted it a commercial charter, to trade along the River Niger.

After losing its trade charter, the old RNC became part of the new UAC in 1929, under the British Unilever company.  UAC was the forerunner of British subjugation, and clearly the business face of the British colonization machine of Nigeria.

Since Chief Shonekan, ace corporate lawyer became UACN chairman/CEO in 1980, it is doubtful if any star ever shone brighter, in the UACN Galaxy, than Shonekan — a scion in whom his Unilever bosses were well pleased!

From that pedestal, he morphed into an economic royal of the military years, giving budget analysis tutorials; and midwifing business lobby groups as the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) and the Vision 2010 template of the Sani Abacha era.

At the felling of Caesar, in Shakespeare’s  Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, quipped: “The evil that men do lives after them.  The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Anthony could well have had Shonekan in mind.  For 83 days of rotten politics, he traded away the putative glory of 85 years!

Only the dead are well and truly happy!

There is a “civil war” over direct primaries.  But that could underscore how Nigerian democracy may be deepening.

The governors, tin gods in their democratic state-doms, would have none of that crap.  But the MPs, members of the National Assembly with confederates in the states, seem equally determined to call the governors’ bluff.

Civil war in Nigeria’s political paradise, that!  (Wo)men of the people at war!

The bona fides of the fictional Chief Nanga, MP, were clear: he was the go-go and go-to man of the people, canonized by Chinua Achebe’s fourth novel, A Man of the People, published in 1966.

By that, Chief Nanga pushed his democratic right to be “all of you” — again for that, reference Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: the crazed-and-greedy tortoise that tried to scam his benefactors but ended up tumbling down the skies.

Chief Nanga pressed his “all of you” credentials to corral Elsie, the girlfriend of Odili Samalu, Nanga’s guest and protégée.

But Odili’s attempt to return that satanic favour: his plot to grab both Nanga’s parliament seat and Edna, betrothed to be the MP’s second wife to replace Elsie, ended in a fiasco — a clear example of separating real men from mere boys.

Still, a bigger fiasco gobbled up both men and boys — the system collapsed in a coup. But that was no more than a political equivalent of the deus-ex-machina, that divine machine in Greek classical theatre, come to force an impossible denouement.

Nevertheless, just as contemporary plays are more logically resolved, the dashing brainlessness of coups — seize power first and think what to do with it later — is fast fading.

In Nigeria’s 4th Republic, 22 years long and counting, fractious political contestation, complete with media hell-raising, appears taking over.  Our split (wo)men of the people appear condemned to resolving their direct primaries conflict within that contestation.

That’s happy condemnation — at least compared to a barren coup quick-fix, which left you far worse than it met you!  The governors themselves are a living proof of that, given the glorious exploits of some of them.

On the downside, the governors, from 1999, had shrieked and railed and flailed against President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial style: a dashing jackboot foxtrot in a civil garb, crowing and screeching presidential power and glory.

Yet, these governors have also made themselves ruthless Leviathans, pushing their near-divine rights to dominate all; rippling with “all of you” complex: ethos of Obasanjo’s overweening Presidency; ethos of Obasanjo’s post-power personal shrine, the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), first in Africa!

To such a breed, all sizzle, fizz and crackle with gubernatorial entitlement, talking direct primaries is something akin to democratic apostasy!

Still, to be fair: many of them, across party lines, have done tremendous work, in sharp contrast to military governors, who had become contemptible command-and-control Lilliputians, as military rule rolled to its end-ruin.

Read Also: Security major objective of serious govts – Akpabio

Godswill Akpabio seized newfound oil wealth to transform his native Akwa Ibom. Forget the magnificent infrastructure criss-crossing Uyo under his charge: his most revolutionary move was his declaration to no more tolerate Akwa Ibom youths serving as pan-Nigeria house helps — to your schools, o children!

The handful Nasir El-Rufai, the pocket giant of Kaduna, is a glorious challenge in critical thinking and gubernatorial courage, though he could do with better emotional intelligence.  Before him, Ahmed Makarfi had transited Kaduna from near-yearly ethno-religious blazes, to the North-South amity it is today.

From the South East comes Ebonyi’s David Umahi, who in less than eight years has transformed hitherto dusty Abakaliki into a model capital, gleaming with flyovers and fountains; aside from penetrative roads linking Ebonyi’s agricultural and mining interior with urban markets.

In the North East epicentre of Boko Haram, Babagana Umara Zulum is following the footsteps of Kashim Shettima, his predecessor; but with much more human touch: investing in superb human and physical infrastructure in a theatre of war!

In Osun, Rauf Aregbesola challenged everyone with his revolutionary concept of “Government Unusual”; and built truly historical ethos and structures to re-awaken the flagging socio-economic genius of this land-locked Yoruba state.

But of course, in all of this, with Lagos comes the classic, from 1999 and still counting: from Bola Tinubu to Babatunde Fashola, to one-term Akin Ambode and now, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, each governor has added his own unique value to the Lagos thriving story.

Suddenly, the Lagos of “no bitumen”, of the Olagunsoye Oyinlola military-administrator era, with its deep urban rot and mountains of refuse, is fast turning into a Lagos of national benchmarks, even with its still dire demographics challenge.

Even then, some of these governors appear epochal let-downs.

Abia’s Okezie Ikpeazu, for one, whose two terms have made little dent on Aba, Abia’s commercial powerhouse, swallowed by urban filth and rot; and Benue’s Samuel Ortom, with his ortom-atic — sorry, automatic — garbage, of visceral buck-passing!

Ortom’s gubernatorial day is incomplete without throwing ethnic slurs at President Muhammadu Buhari; and pumping the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen” with explosive hate — both clear passionate foil, for his near-barren governorship.

Now, the latest irritants are Ortom’s own Benue folks, who drink all day but jerk awake at dusk to traduce their God-sent governor!  Talk of ortom-atic emptiness!

Still, fair is fair.  If past presidents, from Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan (the ill-fated Umaru Musa Yar’Adua ruled too short to bear any fair analysis) had embraced the Lagos spirit, of adding progressive value, Nigeria would have been a much more improved entity.

So, on that score, the governors, warts and all, have been the real revelations of Nigeria’s renewed democracy, from 1999.  Kano is another example where, across party lines, the trio of Rabiu Kwankwaso, Ibrahim Shekarau and incumbent Abdullahi Ganduje, have all proved their worth and added own bits.

Still, does that gift the governors the licence to turn into democratic tin gods — if you’d pardon that harsh contradiction in terms — that always want to dominate everyone?

That is the crucial issue, in the direct primaries question.  The governors’ opposition to it sucks — in another fierce contradiction in terms: how can the people’s governors, shun their beloved people, to directly pick their party’s candidates?

That’s why the legislative side must not buckle in this campaign.  Let the governors, like every player, subject themselves to democratic norms.

It’s the next frontier to strengthening Nigeria’s democracy.  Let direct primaries become the grundnorm, across party lines.

The “massacre”, of the Lekki gate hue, must be some strong breed; and maybe enter the Guinness Book of Records for lexical delusion.

In an impassioned season of “massacre”, real or phantom, that delusion itself must pass for wilful, wild and merry conceptual massacre!

On the night of 20 October 2020, it was Aluta massacre.  The more known folks were pronounced dead, the more on the double, they bounced back to life.

After the rogue-leak of the Lagos judicial panel of inquiry (JPI) report on the matter, it became judicial massacre.  The JPI swore indeed 11 were killed at that fatal gate.  But before even the ink dried on that report, one or two were claimed to have resurrected. Another one or two were confirmed living, cohabiting with the dead.  Yet, another name bobbed up twice — a resilient ghost, that!

What would Fela the Inimitable, at his caustic, teasing, rascally best, have called all that?  Government magic?  No.  Judicial magic? More like it!

Yes, Fela would have found himself in strange company, as anti-government and anti-establishment as he proudly was.  Yet, the Abami Eda would have crowed all his albums were based on verifiable truth, not cheap social media fibs!  Indeed, there was an era!  Too many Fela-wannabe liars, in their absurd social media lairs!

Still pray: what might the Lekki “massacre” have morphed into, after the report’s official release, with its Lagos government white paper, in less than two weeks?  White Paper massacre, perhaps?  Only God knows!

If there indeed was a massacre, would it have taken all this huffing-and-puffing, toing-and-froing, to prove it?  What do the Yoruba say of the elephant?  That massive bulk isn’t what you see “firi” — (Yoruba for) fleeting.  If you sight the Ajanaku, you’re absolutely sure you saw an elephant!

And so it is with a massacre.  You don’t need a contextualization to arrive at a massacre, except of course you want to canonize a year-old lie, which is not about to turn true, by wishful lexical gerrymandering!

By the way, a reader (drip! drip!), in-between streaming tears, growled to Sam Omatseye that this column dismissed DJ (S)witch as a witch, being among the first to peddle the massacre fib.

I suppose fulsome apologies are in order, now that the Lagos panel has allegedly — allegedly because the official report is not out — defined, nay, canonized the alleged slaying of 11 (?) people as a “massacre”!

It would appear the DJ “witchery” has taken flight on some lexical broomstick, to find home elsewhere!  Besides, it must be Nigeria’s 21st century contribution to English lexis — an 11-(wo)man massacre!

But let’s be clear: no security agent, carrying arms bought by Nigerian common money, has a right to mow down even a-half Nigerian citizen.

So, if there were proven abuses at that Lekki gate, on that night of 20 October 2020, let whoever was involved carry their can; and face the full weight of the law, as distilled by their service codes.  If that falls short, then, the open courts to curb state abuse.

Still, to continue calling the alleged killing of 11 citizens a massacre — even without the many holes in the leaked panel report — is reckless evil packaged as good.

It is brazen lies pushed by rights lobbies: emotion terrorists milking explosive passion, in bare-faced posturing for foreign grants.

It appears nothing beyond holy racketeering: human rights do-gooders that boast a bogus platform, flash a recognizable name, and splash false claims and lying videos on the social media.

This much was clear from the very first claims of “massacre” from the Lekki theatre: when all known names declared killed instantly resurrected.

A similar howl is greeting the leaked JPI report: a deliberate, post-haste social media hysteria; a skewed Aluta narrative to rig public opinion, ahead of the official release.

Why, even the peacocky CNN, that earlier ate crow with its barren Lekki report, was all flush and triumph, in celebration of a “massacre” of max 11 bodies — probably much less!  The huge cost of reportorial arrogance on an unfazed global news bully!

So, the “gentlemanly” Lagos State government had better be wary of getting  scammed, by brazen blackmail, into unfair guilt.  It should be fair to all — not the least, itself.

But back to the nitty-gritty — verifiable #EndSARS timelines: 20 October 2020.  Breakdown of law and order.  The curfew — and the Lekki gate stand-off to bust it.

Then, allegations of “massacre”, which fed visceral anger that resulted in proven deaths, mainly the mob slaughter of security operatives.  Then, mindless arson and jail breaks, all over Lagos and the rest of Nigeria.

If Lagos imposed a curfew to stem anarchy, why did the activists attempt to bust it?

If they had de-camped and headed for their homes, even after the curfew take-off time had been shifted from 6 pm to 8 pm, would anyone be talking of “massacre”, real or fake, today?

If they didn’t, do they not also bear vicarious, if not wilful responsibility, for whatever happened that night, without prejudice to security agencies’ duty to holding their conduct to highest civilized standards, even while breaking up the wildest of mobs?

The same law which guarantees citizen liberty also empowers the government to act, when liberty spirals into dangerous licentiousness. That was #EndSARS’ tragic endgame.

Now, if activists’ curfew-busting climaxed in catastrophe, do they think mouthing “massacre” a year after — even with an alleged JPI charter — would free them from that dreadful responsibility?

Aside from luckless citizens consumed by near-anarchy, six soldiers and 37 policemen got slaughtered by sundry mobs.  Monuments were touched.  Police posts, gutted.  Private businesses destroyed.  On this score, both The Nation and TVC still lick their wounds.  Same for hundreds of other micro and small businesses, ruined till today.

This Aluta leak is funereally silent on these verified victims.  Crusading angels for change should be truthful in small matters!  Nothing great is built on fraud and lies.

When the English Parliament passed the Bill of Rights in 1689, the King was the sole, swaggering Leviathan.  The Americans, after adopting “democratic royalty”, in an elected president, made that Bill the fundament of their democratic practice.

Today, there’s need for a Neo-Bill of Rights, fitting 21st century realities.  Aside from real anarchists, armed to the teeth and contending space with the state, there are also closet anarchists, ghosting as rights activists.  They sponsor discontent and subvert the democratic process.  But they claim to protect it.  And a section of the media too, that parrots every equal-opportunity visceral nonsense.

That was the long-and-short of the #EndSARS debacle.  That’s why a report would go berserk over the alleged killing of 11, with no conclusive proof; but stay gloriously mum on the proven slaughter of 43 agents of state, on legitimate and lawful duty, by “democratic” mobs.

Such bullying would be the end of the modern government as we know it, were such unconscionable double standard to continue!  Enough of this phantom “massacre”!

 

Femi Adesina and Anambra are metaphors here for APC: the schizophrenic ruling party pulling in different directions, unsure of its growth and winning joker.

In Anambra, the partisan snatch-show-and-grow vision of Mai Mala Buni, Yobe governor and APC national caretaker chairman, just collapsed!

In spite of rushing to President Muhammadu Buhari with APC’s latest captures, from PDP and allied victims; and grabbing presidential photo-ops, the APC spectacularly crashed in the November 6 gubernatorial election.

The Buni pantomime in the run-up to that poll was the defection of Nkem Okeke, APGA’s Anambra deputy governor — and he got rewarded with a presidential pose.  Okeke too, “hot, fresh and smoking” from Aso Villa (to borrow that immortal phrase from old-English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer), spewed local Anambra bragging rights: some bits about the state playing at the centre, to rally the herd.

But despite all of that braggadocio, Mr. Okeke failed to “deliver” to his new party, his Umueze Awozu, Enugwu-Ukwu Ward 3, Polling Unit 005.  APGA’s Chukwuma Soludo (82 votes) prevailed there, over APC’s Andy Uba (61 votes).

The Okeke cross-over was followed by a rash of APGA state legislative defectors, no less estranged from Governor Willy Obiano; and a couple of other federal legislators.

Yet with all of that, the Buni growth strategy of grab-and-howl crashed!  Poor Andy Uba, APC Anambra candidate was right — and prescient.  After casting his vote, he declared he’d win otherwise the defectors would be disgraced!  Yeah right, they were!

But even more “disgraced” was the Buni strategy of raiding rival parties for growth, when he could better have leveraged the APC government’s hard-earned achievements, in the worst of socio-economic seasons.

That’s where Femi Adesina, chief presidential spokesperson, comes in as counter-metaphor.

For starters, Adesina with his “From the Inside: … Fridays with Femi Adesina” weekly, is fast becoming nemesis to his former media colleagues, who feel they can peddle personal bile as legit government criticism, because they have access to people’s mind, through their sacred mediums.

Without prejudice to the Fourth Estate’s function to call the first three estates to account, Femi Adesina is matching these media commentators in own games; and pushing the government’s democratic right to have its own say.

But Adesina has been more than devastating.  He not only pushes that right with absolutely no apologies, he does so amassing facts and figures, served in simple and fetching prose.

That only makes his opponents — and those of the government he serves — that wax poetic on empty emotions, to squirm and fidget.

While previous holders of that office got defensive and submitted to avoidable peer blackmail, under ferocious media slaughter, Adesina chose instead to go on the offensive, pushing the achievements of his government in very hard times.

But perhaps that is the telling difference between Adesina and his predecessors: his government has a lot to flaunt, in a season of scarcity; the previous ones rippled with pathetic excuses, in a season of plenty.

Yet, that same government is putatively the most demonized, though it has the potential to be the most impactful since 1999 — if not in Nigeria’s democracy since the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

Read Also: This Kumuyi is simply different, by Femi Adesina

Kudos to Femi Adesina for speaking up with facts and figures.  Yes, you can’t always agree with his glad-handing and glad tidings.  You might even decry his breezy, cheer-leader style.  But you sure cannot fault or question his brutal facts and figures.

That should have served Chairman Buni well in growing his party to the best of its strength.  Yet, the Yobe governor would rather play in the defection jungle of dubious value, than zoom on the smooth freeway of hard-won achievements!

As the Anambra electoral debacle was unfolding, Adesina was in Paris, France, with his principal.  He penned his normal weekly stuff from there, and it ended with a devastating clincher:

“Those who have consigned themselves perpetually to the complaint counters,” — and those are quite a number! — “should wake up.  The market is over.  It is time to go home, and do something better”!  Some euphonic though brutal poetry, there!

He called the piece: “They said nothing was happening — how about these?”

And he proceeded, as he is wont, to marshal the government’s achievements, the very same President Buhari was reeling out to his stellar audience in Paris: the 2nd Niger Bridge (which finally is coming to life), Bodo-Bonny road (35.7 km, first to connect oil-drenched Bonny Island to mainland Rivers), the Lagos-Ibadan expressway (West Africa’s busiest freeway), Abuja-Kano-Kaduna expressway and the Loko-Oweto Bridge, which links the Middle Belt, via Benue State, to the South East, North East and the Niger Delta.

He listed other potentially game-changing infrastructure and life-changing public assets as the Lagos-Ibadan rail (the first rail project to be started and completed by any government in Nigerian history), “brand new” airports in Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, and new runway and terminal building at the Enugu Airport.

Aside from infrastructure, Adesina listed the Buhari great strides in agriculture, with its tremendous results via the Nigerian rice and putative food security, despite the grave insecurity challenge which, he added, the government was tackling head on.

He toasted the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), which aside from giving all grades of farmers a healthy jab in the arm, has resulted in rice mills quadrupling from 10 in 2014 to 40 today; and fertilizer blending plants: from five in 2014 to 46 today — and all of these in the face of two economic recessions and a crippling COVID-19 pandemic that brought the globe to a virtual standstill!

Adesina, never one to take prisoners, then — for the road? — strafed his media sparing partners and beyond: “The apostles of ‘nothing is happening, except insecurity’ should look for other music to sing, and for other dance steps,” he declared. “Honest Nigerians can see and feel the good things happening” — and so they can!

Imagine Chairman Buni clinically staying glued to this clinical theme of hard-won achievements in a season of far-less resources — feats locals can easily see and verify — while pitching new members to join the ruling party!

But alas!  It’s a path not taken.  After the Anambra debacle, however, Governor Buni should change tack.

PDP, after a 16-year rule, has pretty little to point to as lasting legacy.  That’s why its members bluff and wax lyrical on empty emotions: abusing, traducing and maligning; sure they could scam the naive, the simplistic, the unwary.

But the ruling party can, with ease, puncture the PDP bubble with verifiable facts. That’s what Adesina offers — and luckily, the ruling party can pick and choose.

Adesina’s is the narrow path to salvation against the Buni wild and merry defection way  to perdition — and the Anambra debacle is living proof!

No matter who wins the Anambra governorship, the real winner is the system — and just as well.

At a crucial time, the Nigerian state came through against reckless non-state lobbies pushing fashionable anarchy, under the guise of perceived ethnic hurt.

Still, the threat of “no election in Anambra” turned out not only an empty threat but also soapy bluff and bluster.  But that triumph was no accident.  It was rather the steely resolve of the Nigerian state to call a dangerous bluff.

Anambra should, therefore, send a stiff message to Sunday Igboho’s “Yoruba Nation” data warriors who, aside from routine abuse and traducing of elected leaders, use their e-bazookas to boom threats there won’t be elections in Yorubaland in 2023.  Bluff!

IPOB, in a childish prank, “ordered” a week’s sit-at-home strike from the election’s eve.  Its demand was even more juvenile: if you don’t free Nnamdi Kanu, legitimately docked, you won’t hold an election, legitimately due.  Some skewed thinking, that!

Again, the Anambra poll has cured this class of their grand delusion — or has it?  This query is imperative to interrogate the orchestrated “injustices”, which the South East political elite has pushed with paranoia and xenophobia, hoping the rest of Nigeria would melt under that explosive cocktail.

To be sure: no part of Nigeria is without a grudge — not even the Fulani, who the southern media love to hate and malign, many times though due to insensitive and provocative yaks from some Fulani rogue elements.

That’s why Nigeria must have a better and more equitable federal system.  That has powered the much impassioned “restructuring” campaign.

Even then, that must be negotiated without rash threats to the evolving democratic order — this more so for a country with tragic memory of reckless jackboot rule.  Democracy is all about civil contestation.  Enough of growling threats, reckless gambits and juvenile posturing!

But back to the orchestrated “injustices”, which the Igbo mainstream political elite have seized to endorse Nnamdi Kanu’s execrable conduct, simply because their appointment stock has fallen under a Buhari Presidency.

Let’s be clear, 51 years ago in January 1970, the Igbo lost the Civil War and the Biafra attempt collapsed.  Now, no one can — or should — downplay that huge psychological trauma.  It should draw due solemnity, sensitivity and empathy from all.

Besides, since war is always lose-lose, for winners or losers, all sides should push a scrupulous agenda to avert a recurrence of such avoidable catastrophe.

That would appear the crux of Godwin Alabi-Isama’s war-time account, The Tragedy of Victory.  Brig-Gen. Alabi-Isama (rtd) was on the “winning” side.  Yet, all he gleaned from that combat was glorious tragedy!

But beyond the Civil War from which the old East came short, the pitch which claims the Igbo are products of injustice (“marginalization” is the glorious cliche), much more than any other ethnics, is hard to prove — beyond the free flow of explosive emotions.

Read Also: Independent observer, Yiaga Africa, validates Anambra Gov poll results

Solid, verifiable facts of contemporary history suggest otherwise, particularly in the areas of plum — or in that picturesque Nigerian lingo, “juicy” — appointments; bitterness from which appears to drive the current Igbo distemper.

The 1st Republic (1960-1966) was basically a North/East juicy — that word again! —bash, with the West left in the lurch.

The 2nd Republic (1979-1983) was no less a sweet romp, between the North and the Igbo political mainstream.  Nine years after the Biafra debacle, an Igbo man, Dr. Alex Ekwueme (God bless his soul!), was Vice President of the Federal Republic.

In the present 4th Republic, from Olusegun Obasanjo, to Umaru Yar’Adua, to Goodluck Jonathan, the Igbo had more than their fair share, at the high noon of PDP power.

Under President Obasanjo, the Chukwuma Soludo baritone boomed from the regime’s policy chambers: first, as National Economic Adviser; later as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor.

Meanwhile, Obiageli Ezekwesili, aka Madam Due Process, strutted her stuff with the dazzle of an immaculate dame come to conk the sick system into order.

Overall, Obasanjo’s federal exchequer sprawled under the suzerainty of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Finance minister. She was once challenged how her ministry and parastatals had become virtual Igbo colony.

Her response?  The Igbo could compete — and so they could!  But imagine how the “marginalization” orchestra would have reacted to a similar cue from other ethnic quarters!  Thunderous roar of “nepotism!”, “Fulanization!” won’t even cut it!

Under President Jonathan was Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s second coming as Finance minister,  doubling as coordinating minister for the economy.  Anyim Pius Anyim too, was secretary to the government of the federation (SGF).  No prize for guessing right: you knew what the political geography of the SGF chambers looked like!

By the way, pre-SGF, Senator Anyim was the last of the “banana-peel” rash of senate presidents (2000-2003), during Obasanjo’s first term.  Obasanjo’s two terms were eight straight years when the Igbo monopolized the Senate presidency, despite crass in-fighting.

Why this tie-back to 4th Republic appointive history, though?  To, with verifiable facts, make the point: the South East elite should cease getting hysteric in six short years, what other ethnics had borne with stoic grace for 16 long years!

On appointive Siberia, therefore, the Yoruba political mainstream, aside from northern minorities somewhat crushed into the core-North’s political system, probably have a more credible case.

Yet, neither has developed a Samson’s syndrome to crash everything, even if they risk being the first set of wilful victims. That was the rash bluff and bluster that threatened the Anambra poll; and the IPOB derring-do that imposed a so-called sit-at-home order.

Even more puerile is the campaign, by South East leading lights, political, spiritual and temporal, to go see President Buhari to willy-nilly free Nnamdi Kanu!

Is Nigeria then some pristine Greek state where the president was some lawgiver — a virtual Leviathan who could do and undo, untrammelled by institutional checks and balances?  Or should we just shunt all that aside because Nnamdi Kanu is their “son”?

Let’s be clear: in the open Kanu called this place a “zoo”.  In that same “zoo” he is being docked.  Let his lawyers vigorously prove his innocence.  That due process is what Nigeria owes its citizens.

Why, let Sunday Igboho come from his sabbatical penitentiary in Benin.  If the state decides he has a case to answer, it would be his lawyers’ business to defend him, not some Yoruba “elders” hustling and bustling the president to spring him.

That’s rule of law.  That’s due process.  That’s democracy.  Take it or leave it, it is what it is!

So, let the South East political mainstream seize the civic breakthrough in Anambra, to embrace civil methods to engage others.  This juvenile Kanu-IPOB blackmail is wrong-headed.  It won’t wash.

In 2018 when he turned 70, we all gushed at how age had stolen on the “young” Dr. Adewale Adesoji Adeeyo — Sir ‘Eyo, to many of his doting contemporaries; Uncle Wale, to the hundreds of other younger folks, to whom he was an immaculate role model.

At one of those memorable Sallah soirées at his Ikeja GRA, Lagos, home, he had casually told his gathered friends he would be 70 in a few days — a Monday — and would by honoured by their presence, at that epoch’s Islamic morning prayers.

Now, three short years after, we howl: death has, even more surreptitiously, snatched him from us! He was just three fleeting years, among young elders, of 70 and above!

But alive or dead, Adeeyo retained a cosmopolitan streak. He was born in Accra, Ghana, on 27 August 1948. His early and teenage education, mainly in Ibadan, is well documented. His avid love for his Ede nativity was without a doubt.

Yet, at his passage on 14 October 2021, Dr. Adeeyo chose to spend his post-life bliss, not in his native Ede but in Ibadan — Ibadan, the Yoruba political capital, where Adeeyo enjoyed his earliest education as a child. He rests in that same city, at Eternal Home Cemetery, Km 25, Ibadan/Oyo road.

Watching the funeral rites up close on ZOOM, it was as if Adeeyo himself was there, superintending: clean-cut grave, neat pillars, solemn hearse, immaculate procession — the quintessential neat-and-tidy stuff that defined the suave and genteel Adeeyo.

But not many people knew the story behind the giant flex portrait, that literarily stood by the grave to welcome mourners; as Adeeyo himself in life, ushered in guests to his famed, choice garden soirées.

That flex was tribute to how Adeeyo honoured — and was honoured by — those who loved him.

Muyiwa Hassan, ace photojournalist, now with The Nation, was one of the Adeeyo many protégées, spread across life’s many stations: rich or poor; young or old; patrician or pleb.

Hassan developed a sudden whim: to honour Adeeyo, his publisher at The Anchor newspaper, with a huge, befitting portrait. So, he splashed own money on one befitting his taste, as professional photographer and crack photojournalist.

An immensely grateful Adeeyo was nevertheless stunned: he didn’t like planting “garish” (his very word) giant portraits in his living quarters. Yet, he wouldn’t turn down such a kind gesture. So, a compromise: that huge portrait nestled in his serene bedroom.

From that ultra-private spot, however, its replica leapt to be “sentry” — and the cynosure of all mourning eyes — at the Adeeyo graveside!

Hassan, ever-faithful and ever-loyal, was there: at the graveside in Ibadan; at the third-day Islamic prayers at Harbour Point, Victoria Island, Lagos. From both spots and via his lens, he fed the public with the funeral rites, from The Nation pages.

Yet, not many could feel Hassan’s tinge of quiet excitement. He set out, in private, to honour the living Adeeyo. Yet, here was Adeeyo, in death, somewhat honouring him back, in full public glare: Hassan’s photography has become a treasured heirloom in the Adewale Adeeyo family history!

Dr. Adeeyo always honoured those who honoured him. As he was in life, so he turned out in death! But here is another personal example.

I had written a tribute to the late Kofi Annan, then UN secretary-general, when in 2000 he, with the United Nations, jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was routine stuff — The Anchor back-page portraiture of the befitting, mainly by Ikechukwu Ameachi, that paper’s prolific and hardworking deputy editor back then, and I.

Somehow, Dr. Adeeyo drew the attention of Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, now presidential chief of staff but then a top shot in the UN system. It was an excited publisher of The Anchor that then approached me: “Prof,” he beamed — not the real one, to be sure, but a honorific moniker among work colleagues — “everyone is reading you at the UN!”, flashing the culled copy of the Annan tribute, in the UN house magazine!

Dr. Adeeyo — God bless his soul! — sure knew how to honour you; and make you walk tall! That rare generosity of spirit is common testimony from his former employees at The Anchor, who later became his life-long younger friends: Ikechukwu Amaechi, Kunle Fagbemi (now Adekunle Ade-Adeleye), Tunji Adegboyega aka Cyclone, Ngozi Asoya, and many others.

But that was second only to his relentless intellectual pursuit. In Make or Break: A Handbook for the April 2011 Elections in Nigeria, Dr. Adeeyo left posterity with his favoured company. It was a special publication by The Anchor newspaper, though then long defunct. But the contributors were brilliant minds Adeeyo would rather roll with.

Adewale Maja-Pearce edited the collection. Prof. Adebayo Williams wrote the preface. The contributors, aside from Adeeyo himself, included Prof. Adigun Agbaje, Adekunle Ade-Adeleye, Reuben Abati, Ikechukwu Ameachi and Kanmi Ademiluyi, who now runs Osun Defender, a newspaper based in Osogbo, among others. That was quintessential Adeeyo, always in tune with acute minds!

In post-Anchor private exchanges, he often dreamed of a “post-retirement project” — a brain trust to be located in serene Ibadan (Ibadan again!), to intellectually engage the society in seminars, workshops and special publications. The Adeeyo family, estate and friends may want to actualize that dream, as fitting tribute, to his stellar memory!

Meanwhile to widow, Hauwa, and sons, Aminu and Bashir; not discounting their elder sisters, adorable products of Adeeyo’s first marriage, Farida and Olamide: your patriarch lived an impactful life that left nothing but sweet memories.

Though he is gone, you will never walk alone!

 

Still, echoes from Biafra 1 …

By Pet Mmonu

Just finished reading and re-reading your guest columnist (“Echoes from Biafra 1” by Azubike Nass, October 26). It made my Tuesday more memorable as always. Today’s column touched base. This is because the writer seemed to be writing about me too.

I was in the primary three at the time. It was at same Nsukka. My father was the principal of St Teresa’s College. I was not so young. I remembered clearly how my father came for me that Sunday morning, completely subdued and terrified. I was in a primary boarding school, run by Irish nuns; and my father used his influence to take me out of the school quietly, so as not to scare other kids.

We drove back to our house. Before then, my father had taken my pregnqnt mum and other siblings to our village. He reached out to get the keys to the house and behold: he had, in his fear, put on the pair of trousers with a deep hole in the pocket! The key fell off somewhere!

He got into the car and we left with only the clothes we had on. I remember, as a 7-year old, seeing the Biafra army guys as we got to the strategic Opi junction. They stopped us and threatened to commandeer my father’s Peugeot 403 car.

My father’s car was eventually commandeered, as was then the case in Biafra. He was driving to an engagement with Caritas. The army guys stopped him, ordered him out and drove away. That was the last time we saw the car.

To cut a long story short, it was the most horrible experience for our family. It is an experience best forgotten. This is what irks when some thugs who were not there when the corpse was buried start digging from the legs — God forbid!

I was horrified and in pains last night watching Ezeife talking Goebellian trash. I was engulfed in bitterness. You can then imagine the relief I felt, reading your guest columnist today — always a Tuesday, the best part of waking up!

Mrs Mnonu writes from Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

First, I want to identify myself, to give an indication of where my position is coming from. I am of Igbo ethnic group. I experienced the Civil War first-hand.

The first shot of the war in present-day South East was fired in Alo-Uno, a border village in Nsukka; part of present-day Enugu State. I was there at the time. Some hours before that, the first batch of Federal troops had entered the then Eastern Region in Gakem, a border village in present-day Cross River State.

I was a senior primary school pupil of Alo-Uno Primary School, when the war started. I remember what the experience was like, including our evacuation to Enugu town; and further, to my village in Anambra State.

From then, till the end of the war, in my post-war secondary-school years and after, I had developed a keen interest in the study of wars, starting from the Civil War. I later joined the Nigerian Army as an officer-cadet.

During my service years, I retained a consummate interest in military history and conflict studies across the world, with closer interest in African conflict spots: Morroccan war with Western Sahara; Arab-Israeli wars; Algerian years of fundamentalist bloodbath; the Tanzanian-supported guarrilla war that chased away President Idi Amin of Uganda; Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict; Somalia; the long Congo war (s); Liberian and Sierra Leone civil wars; Angolan war with Jonas Savimbi’s rebel army; the anti-Apartheid long war, with its extended dimensions to the wars in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Many years ago, I had argued that there was a major difference between the South West (Yoruba) and the South East (Igbo), when it comes to thinking about going to war. In about the past three centuries, before the 20th Century, the Yoruba ethnic group, which cuts across about four countries of present-day West Africa (majority of them in Nigeria), had fought several serious wars, some of which were very devastating and protracted on-and-off conflicts.

They ran a vast empire that cut across about three nations of the present-day West Africa, with headquarters in present-day South West Nigeria. Their racial memory has a better understanding of what war is. Dissent and dissidents abound, but they remain an ineffective minority, with loud voices that can dish out insults and abuses.

On the other hand, the Igbo had hardly had any experience of serious war, other than inter-village communual conflicts. They are traditionally of republican administrative structure, and personal enterprises in trade and commerce. I first made this argument in a discussion with fellow Igbos as to whether Awolowo betrayed the Igbos by not declaring secession of Western Region from Nigeria, after Ojukwu did so for Eastern Region in 1967.

In Igbo land in the late 1960s, it was relatively easier to mobilise public support for the secession war by playing up victimhood emotions and coordinated propaganda narratives that presented half-facts as the whole truth. The secession war lasted just 30 months (two and a half years), and Biafra was roundly defeated in battle.

It was a progressive combat defeat from beginning to the end. It was not any peace talk that ended the war; nor was it any international intervention. It was a clear defeat —  one of the shortest full-scale wars in contemporary African conflict studies.

By its second year, many top Biafran leaders had moved their families out of the land. In the last weeks of the war, many other top leaders, including Ojukwu, fled to other countries; and the remaining frontline commanders, particularly Brigadier Achuzia who refused to flee (he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier by Ojukwu, as he, Ojukwu, was set to flee the land), reached out to surrounding Federal troops to surrender.

It was a completely hopeless situation: no logistics, no food, no ammunition, demoralized and confused troops, at a time when even the shrinked Biafraland had been dissected into three parts (Biafra 1, Biafra 2 and Biafra 3), with virtual no-man’s-land in-between; and surrounded by Federal troops!

Read Also: Family: Akunyili lived with civil war bullet in his skull till he was killed

The present drumbeat of war in the South East is driven by dirty politics carried too far. Feeding the flame of passion with provocative rascality, insults and abuses, ethnic hate propaganda and coordinated lies, in which there is even no attempt to present a verifiable evidence: statistical facts, to prove the battle cry of marginalisation.

All that is required is the “Big-Lie” strategy as propounded by Joseph Goebbel, the Nazi propaganda minister of the Second World War: “Tell the lie boldly and repeatedly, and the masses will take it as the truth.”

But that strategy didn’t save Hitler’s Germany, despite that it had a very formidable military force. Germany was roundly defeated and its capital city, Berlin, reduced to rubbles by massive ground and aerial bombings.

Back to Nigeria, those who make stupid gambles of war today in the South East, trusting in their version of the”Big-Lie” strategy, may sooner than later face a catastrophic and even more humiliating and confusing collapse of their dream and ego.

I rest my case.

• Col. Nass (rtd), my guess columnist today, writes from Enugu, Enugu State.

 

#EndSARS: of memorials and amnesia

After #EndSARS (8-20 October 2020) tragically aborted, too many souls perished that should not have.

Yet, one year after, it’s fashionable memorials for a set of the dead; and even more fanatical amnesia to blot out the other set — especially by “do-gooder” international media and rights agencies.

In 2020, CNN’s Nima Elbagir reported a fictive “Lekki massacre”.  In 2021, Stephanie Busari, also from CNN, renewed that one-track tale, even canonizing DJ Switch and her “massacre” lies — in one-sided “news” CNN would rather push; and have the globe believe.  Call it news terrorism, if you will!

Amnesty International (AI) thunders, with admirable anger, over the doomed Nigerian 16, killed by the security forces — bad and condemnable, to be sure — during the #EndSARS commotion.

But what of the soldiers (six) and policemen (37) killed by the #EndSARS mob? The other 196 policemen injured? 164 police vehicles burnt?  134 police stations razed?

The “useless” government side deserved no instant AI empathy or sympathy, because they had no rights?  Or any institutional memory from the AI crusading angel, as it pushes its skewed international amnesty against fair and balanced empathy?

What of the many caught in the crossfire, in the course of doing legitimate work?  The Nation Lagos head office which vandals visited and torched? Or TVC’s state-of-the-art studios, now a charred carcass, one year after?

It gets even grimmer, with the latest Federal Government’s allegation that Nnamdi Kanu instigated his IPOB mob to torch and destroy target facilities!

What say CNN and AI on that allegation?  Holler from the roof top if it’s false?  Or trigger their funereal mode, of culpable amnesia, if proved true?

Rights campaign is noble and laudable.  But it becomes a charade when it’s fashionably — and arrogantly — skewed.

That’s the grotesque “rights” tale oozing from #EndSARS memorials and amnesia.