By Olakunle Abimbola

Since 2002/2006, three agenda had always dominated newspaper headlines whenever elections peeped:

— alleged term extension plot by the incumbent president;

— a sovereign national conference (SNC) push for an interim “government of national unity” (GNU), in lieu of frozen elections, while the “bastard” Constitution is re-made along federal lines;

—  the perennial bedlam over “power shift”.

It’s the crusading rights lobby; and the ever-plotting and oft-scheming politicians pushing their favorite election-eve pastimes — hardly undemocratic!

What appears civic slavery — and so, hardly democratic — is the people’s routine submission to these rituals; and the media, the all-knowing Fourth Estate that should jog collective memory, diving into the fray: no yesterday, just today and never tomorrow!

It’s routine bedlam that generates more noise than news; and from which everyone gets merrily intoxicated and short-changed.

That it might yet happen by 2026 is real — except, of course, there is a conscious and deliberate change in media mindset and focus.  That would be a historic game-changer, if it happens.

To be sure, the election-cycle hysteria of “hidden agenda” is a sad legacy of the Ibrahim Babangida power days, when the self-named military president and Army general took everyone on a bumpy ride, in a futile bid at perpetual stay in power.

By 2006, former President Olusegun Obasanjo did his image and reputation no shine, when he attempted — but failed — to amend the 1999 Constitution, to stay on as president after two terms, in the notorious “third term” gambit.

That was defeated, of course.  But from 2006, no election eve had come without the rights lobby throwing their favourite scarecrow of “third term”, or “hidden agenda”, leveraging the deep people-government mistrust to sound credible.

All too true, barely a year after the 2019 elections, this band of “human rights” lawyers chimed their usual chartered rumours, which they nevertheless served as some definitive gospel.

Muhammadu Buhari, they swore, indeed nurses a “third term” agenda!  But for once, that scarecrow didn’t fly; and since, it’s been quiet and placid on that usually bubbly front.

If “hidden agenda” and ”third term”, its post-military rule mutation, had roots deep in the best-forgotten military era, GNU, in lieu of democratic elections, was rooted in Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s snappy transition, after the long-winding cant and deceit of the IBB-Sani Abacha years.

In truth, GNU was just but bubbling foam over the split in the ranks of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), among other pro-democracy forces.

NADECO was the heroic pressure group that boxed the military into a stalemate; and forced the return to democracy.  But it has, of late, coalesced into a lobby agitating for a brand new constitution, forged from restructuring.  It also pushes that a new Constitution be built on regions and “ethnic nationalities”, as new federating units.

That, it must be said, came from the 1998/1999 take by NADECO puritans that every material condition must be right before transiting from military to civil rule.  Otherwise, they had warned, all might end in a fiasco as earlier republics.  ”Restructuring” was core to that demand.

But the more pragmatic NADECO elements counter-swore that democracy was always work-in-progress; and that its Nigerian hue would inch towards a better federal union, as it self-corrects, in the long, long process.  Otherwise?  Sterile military rule, which neither offers practice nor guarantees perfection.

The less finicky, conservative or centrist, whose idea of politics is just power by whatever means, aligned with the pragmatic NADECO bloc, backing Gen. Abubakar’s snappy transition.  Therefore, many dashing NADECO heroes ended in the lurch!

So, each time elections approached, the GNU lobby always saw chaos; and railed at the 1999 Constitution as a fraud; and called for a freeze in some GNU, while the “bastard” constitution got fixed.

The latest manifestation of that is the NADECO Independence anniversary call for a new Constitution before 2023, speaking through Ayo Opadokun, its secretary.

So far, however, these contrasting views have fetched mixed results.

Between 1999 and 2021, “restructuring” has gained more traction, as the country faces rising insecurity and tension — clear peril, NADECO and co gloat, of Nigeria’s awry “unitary federalism”.

Still, that hardly equates a complete bragging right.  Indeed, the pragmatic blocs could claim some credit too: amendments-by-instalment to the 1999 Constitution.

True, gradual amendments have not birthed the democratic utopia NADECO craves. But neither has it forced the crash its vatic political prophesy thundered.

Unlike the 1st Republic (five years), 2nd Republic (four), the still-birth 3rd (a diarchy that aborted after less than two years), the current 4th Republic is 22 years — and counting!

No, the federalists’ sworn apocalypse has not quite come — nor, as some wager, ever come!  The thing is beyond mutual baiting, neither side seems cocksure.

Still, the latest tension — real or contrived — gifts the federalists’ warnings fresh urgency.  But the rebuff, by the other side, reminds you of the Soothsayer-Caesar exchange, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“The Ides of March are come,” taunted Caesar, en route to the Capitol. “Aye, Caesar, but not gone”, returned the Soothsayer.  Before the day’s exit, Caesar was history!

Two valid, if opposing questions, therefore: could the troubled democracy of the last 22 years be no more than a long, long road to perdition, without urgent and radical constitutional tinkering?

Or are the crises the normal teething problems and painful evolution, en route to incrementally building a great country?

Indeed, the perennial bedlam over “power shift”, which now predictably rages on (as it did in the past on virtual election eves) is no more than a mere symptom, from these two fundamental questions.

What is needed — and urgently too — is some elite consensus on the winning political formula for Nigeria.  But that consensus cannot come, if the opposing sides yell at, instead of talk with, each other.

To reset mutual exchange, the Fourth Estate should moderate on high reason and earned trust — both, sadly now deficient.  It can’t afford to be captive voices of the two gladiators.

Pushing for workable compromises is the media’s historic duty to the coming generation.

By Olakunle Abimbola

Two opening contrasts: open grazing is undesirable — not for the herders themselves; not for states forced to make anti-open grazing laws, to save peaceful farmers from reckless and outright criminal herders.

Yet, open grazing can’t vanish by the snap of fingers!  It’s people’s livelihood. So, enforcing anti-grazing laws, without providing alternatives for those whose livelihoods are threatened, harbours avoidable socio-economic danger.

To fix the problem, these two contrasts must be linked to provide an integrated solution.  If we shun mutual sabre-rattling, that might not be as difficult as it looks.

Now, back to the herder challenge.  Reckless herders are those whose cattle chew up others’ farms.  This species is, at best, combatively mischievous; at worst, fatally misguided.

Criminal herders are the notorious armed bands that kill, rape and destroy.  These are the real plague, troubling the Nigerian house of Israel.

Neither of the two must be tolerated.  That is the merit of the anti-open grazing laws, mushrooming now in Nigeria’s South; a desperate measure to fend off age-old critical problems.

Still, to be clear: not every herder is either reckless or criminal.  Indeed, many — if not most —  are peaceful and law-abiding lots, who have fitted pat into the intricate fauna of their locale, anywhere they settle: North or South, East or West.

Which is why you must think of this peaceful and lawful majority, even as you roll out laws to slam the criminal minority.

That takes the discourse back to the September 1 deadline — missed, by the way — for every southern state to enact an anti-open grazing law.

In all conscience, you can’t blame the southern governors for this pan-regional move, given the common threat criminal herders have come to pose.  It’s an existential threat that calls for a drastic solution.

Still, it is difficult to see how these otherwise desirable laws can be enforced, with the emotive posture and legalistic grandstanding on both sides.

For starters, brandishing new laws in a frenzy, without thinking of how these laws can be enforced, with mutual benefits to all, is tantamount to raising unsustained hope.  That primes nothing but bitter, tragic illusion.

The Nation Sunday, in its September 12 lead, griped: “Herders defy southern states’ ban on open grazing”.  No one has “defied” anyone — except in the combat tradition of racy headlines.

Rather, they are trying to sustain their livelihood — a natural instinct.  So, after dashing to enact laws, enforcement blues are setting in.  That’s what’s happening, even in states that have passed them.  A number of states have not.

It’s the downside of preening legalism and futile triumphalism.  A law is no law, until it is firmly and fairly enforced.  The current rash of anti-open grazing laws can’t boast effective enforcement, though it’s early days yet.

Pushing an illusive momentum, with racy headlines, only primes folks for avoidable future disappointment.  Again, that calls for better enforcement strategies.

On the herders’ side, the Miyetti Allah cattle lobby is all emotion and blackmail, threatening to sue the governors for these laws; dubbing the laws satanic and evil.

Again, that is pure gas!  You can’t wish away legitimate laws — and popular to boot with homers — simply because you want to maintain a controversial (and injurious) way of doing business, saying it’s your “way”.

But if all of Miyetti Allah’s grandstanding is to ogle some illicit federal support, it should know that is doomed ab initio.  The reasonable consensus is that the herder-farmer tragedy has reached a head; and must be decisively tackled.

The Federal Government can’t just turn away from that crunch.   It would shoot itself in the foot if it did.  So, it should reason with aggrieved states on the best way out.

In any case, cold reason demands every side to the dispute keeps their eye on the ball.  The herders must sustain their livelihood — it’s their right, like other citizens, to so do.  But that livelihood must not be at the expense of others’ lives.

To be clear, in the great pan-Nigeria economic tapestry, the far-flung herder is as crucial as the ubiquitous Igbo spare parts seller, and the Yoruba taxi driver in Jos!

Read Also: Anti-open grazing law yet to be enforced in Rivers

Which is why, beyond explosive emotions, preening politics and daring legalism, cold economics may well point the way out of the row.

While saying no to open grazing, you must keep an eye on livestock and its value chain.  By basic economics, nearness to raw materials is key factor in location of industries.  If the Yoruba owambe — talk less of everyone’s routine daily protein intakes —  are incomplete without beef, breeding the cows must be of prime interest.

That means ranching in as many areas as possible — or some form of grazing reserves (not grazing routes, mark you) — while developing those ranches.  That way, the price of the commodity is kept down: at least minus transport costs, if you must “import” all cattle from the North.

In the strict short-term, en route to full-scale ranches and secure grazing reserves, you might even make laws for temporary grazing routes, restricted to mapped and safe areas, where herders can graze their herd, without any injury to the farming community.

What you cannot do is rail against open grazing and screech against reasonable alternatives, as many unthinking southern voices are doing.

We must apply fresh thinking, if we are not to solve the herder-farmer tension, only to pronto replace it with other — and worse — problems.

IBILE Adire carnival: Yuletide ’21

The Lady of Africa Foundation plans, for Yuletide 2021, the IBILE Adire Street Carnival, in Ijinle Lagos: the five original divisions of Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu, Lagos and Epe.

The five magical days, from a release by Princess Oluwabukola Fasuyi, on behalf of the Foundation: December 25, 26 and 27; and 1 to 2 January 2022.  It’s an Adire splash, running through the entire blast, of Yuletide 2021/2022!

Yuletide is a season of fun — when you let down your hair, after the year’s hurly-burly is done; and the hustle and bustle are more won than lost!

But with that seasonal fun, Adire Street Carnival targets raising 25, 000 new Adire makers, to give Nigeria’s fashion micro-small-medium (MSM) scale industry a jab in the arm.

But even that would come with classy Nigerian cuisine and drinks: eran igbe, the good old bush meat, emu fun-fun, palm wine, the only liqueur celestially brewed, ayo (the African board game), and choice musical acts, in the fun tradition of Yuletide.

The IBILE Adire Street Carnival —  catching fun for the passing year, making money for the coming one!  How are you so blest!

Waywardness and flippancy, twin traits that plagued the self-named military president as a young man, would appear still very much with him at 80.

That much was clear from Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s interview with Arise TV.

It was waywardness that would make a man annul a universally acclaimed election, and hope to live happily ever after.

But that folly alone harboured a twin-injury: first, IBB’s deep insult of those that voted on 12 June 1993; claiming they didn’t vote when they did, using military fiat.

Then, even more grievous self-injury: IBB denied himself due plaudits, for organizing Nigeria’s best election, despite his earlier yo-yo, with military hand-over date.

Indeed, as you lay your bed, you lie on it!

Then, it is in-your-face flippancy, craving to be Maradona, despite the huge baggage of the original, whose in-your-face cheating denied the Argentine true greatness, despite his audacious skills.

And it is irredeemable moral debauchery, for a man that wreaked so much havoc, ruining generations unborn, to crawl out of the woodwork and prattle over his past evil, as if that merited some Nobel Prize!

Why IBB, in that Arise interview, even struts a rogue lecture on the next president, chalking up near-final criteria, in the guise of old IBB playing God — remember his power-day bragging crow, of though not knowing who would succeed him, he certainly knew who would not?

But in that again, IBB played Rip Van Winkle — that fictional Dutch-American villager, in Washington Irving’s 1819 short story, who snoozed for 20 years, only to jerk awake to see colonial America completely transformed!

Lo, 28 years after June 12, our own Rip, though wide awake, hasn’t figured out the sweeping changes around him — eight long years more than the original!  The sweet urge but bitter futility of playing God!

It’s certainly not the best of times, for the so-called owners of Nigeria, furious and trapped, in their lairs!

Still, IBB’s gratuitous presidential lecture appears a bolt from John Milton’s Paradise Lost: a conclave, of Satan and fallen angels, that would reign in hell than serve in heaven, yet wax poetic over sure things to happen in paradise!

Now, let’s put all of these in grim context.  MKO Abiola lost his life, his wife and his livelihood, for winning a free election; and resisting the Babangida-era military’s efforts to bully him from his mandate.

Does IBB even imagine the impact, on the MKO family, of his umpteenth tale from Kandahar — the fib that he did their patriarch rogue mercy, by cancelling his mandate, because some goons, in his deranged junta, had bragged to kill the president-elect?

In Babangida’s grim political euthanasia, MKO lost everything, except his honour.  But in contrast IBB, the kind political doctor, gained everything, except his honour.

Pray, what does it profit a man, to gain everything but lose his honour?

The country that gave IBB everything, rare privileges the deluded strongman and the Army of his era took for granted, convulsed so badly, and nearly lost its soul!

Besides, the severe beauty of IBB and co, hubris-stricken soldiers all, would birth the stark Sani Abacha, the Khalifa whose in-your-face graft drove IBB-era venality into insane heights, in the most arbitrary form of primitive grabbing Nigeria ever knew!

Read Also: IBB: Prince of Niger at 80

 

Gen. Abacha, greedy, grim and stark, may have written himself into history’s dustbin as Nigeria’s most ruthless brigand-in-chief.  Twenty-three years after his death, the trails to Abacha loot, in foreign vaults, are hot and smoking as ever!

But the overarching philosophy, of that blind and soulless steal, was birthed during IBB’s roller coaster power years, when strutting venality, mouthed as “settlement”, of self and cronies, became the fundamental pillar of state policy!

Yet, the guardian angel of systemic sleaze in Nigeria just bragged, to Arise, that he fought corruption better than anyone!  What blasphemy!

Still, make no mistake: that economic slaughter of the majority, to gift a few cronies obscene wealth without sweat, had deep roots much earlier than June 12.

Indeed, June 12 was political slaughter come to meet economic plunder, of the long-suffering majority!

It all started with the August 1986 launch of the structural adjustment programme (SAP), which gifted the Naira its kiss of death!

Back then, came the IBB cant: for their future, we give our today — arrant nonsense!  For their today, he and his clique merrily gobbled up the future of the rest!

And for free-wheeling racketeering, by economic bandits, SAP provided the perfect elixir — witness the many rogue bankers and allied pimps that turned emergency millionaires!  But what was elixir to that rogue class, was abject ruin for the majority.

The abiding tragedy, from IBB to Abacha, to Abdulsalami Abubakar, to Olusegun Obasanjo, to Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, to Goodluck Jonathan and now, Muhammadu Buhari, is not throwing off SAP as economic philosophy, even if the policy’s supposed expiry was September 1993.

It’s abiding IBB-era poison that would kill Nigeria, if Nigeria doesn’t kill it first.

Just to put that ruinous philosophy in the context of rail, from IBB to elected Obasanjo and Buhari, through two oil booms and a sustained bust.

Under IBB, the rail joker was converting 16-seater vans into rail buses, rhapsodized as “Spirit of IBB”!  Rail, a proven mass transporter turned a romantic but grotesque micro-shuttle!  It was IBB’s boom time gift to his long-suffering compatriots!

On rail, President Obasanjo huffed and puffed; but his own policy, over eight years, never went beyond project designs and award of contracts — and the Ebora Owu enjoyed his own oil boom!

Under Muhammadu Buhari, it is lean times and bust all through.  Yet, rail has received no better renaissance, in all of Nigerian history!

No thanks, however, to hate merchants passing as ethnic champions, the corrupt conspiratorial elite craving post-Buhari IBB-era illicit bazaar, misguided youths, and disoriented masses, Buhari is the devil that must be nailed on the cross!

IBB would need periodic media bob-ups to pinch himself he is yet not totally irrelevant.

Obasanjo would need a presidential library — first in Africa! — as personal shrine, to ingrain, in the public mind, self-gains from his messianic and imperial presidency.

But Buhari would need neither, after his presidential term.  His public works, even in the leanest of times, will speak for him, in the public mind.

Why is why it is tragic, that many Nigerians are too mixed-up to see this clear difference.  But then, aren’t they always, at critical junctures of Nigerian history?

Still, make no mistake: the IBB lecture may be no happenstance — it may be the old coven: the ruinous old military class and civilian parasites, the so-called owners of Nigeria, giving very early notice, of their post-Buhari manoeuvres.

The long-suffering majority would be damned if, this time, they are caught napping —again!

 

 

By Olakunle Abimbola

 

Why would Prof. Attahiru Jega, former INEC chair, latch onto the APC-PDP-are-same-and-useless rhetoric, as entry strategy for his new-found partisan politicking?

How King Solomon wisely cracked the riddle of the two harlots, and averted the premature killing of a sinless infant, might just offer a pointer.

The evil harlot, who had carelessly crushed her own child, wanted both babies slashed.  The good harlot, who had hers intact, wanted the living baby spared.  Who knows?  It might yet gravitate toward its mother, later in life.

King Solomon, rippling with wisdom and intellect, pronto figured out the motive of each woman.  He ruled the living baby be given, not to the woman that voted senseless butchery, but to the one that voted life.

Case closed.  Verdict was pinnacle of wisdom.  All hail Solomon the Wise!

But what has this brief Biblical allusion got to do with the Jega declaration?  Just that whoever tries to muddy waters — and Jega did, in his sweeping denunciation  — probably hopes to scam the naive or the unthinking or the shallow-minded.

That was the hurdle Solomon brilliantly scaled. But those tricks didn’t die with Solomon.  So, here we are!

Still, to be fair, that claim wasn’t Jega’s original.

It accrued over time — defensive PDP buffs under public odium for how their party ran the polity aground under President Goodluck Jonathan; the piqued public, riled that the APC Egypt-to-Cannan trip was dragging too long in the wilderness between; and the millions of plebs, who just echo anything — sense or nonsense — like the good old plebeians, in the streets of Rome!

So, when Jega filched and pitched it for own partisan spin, it had assumed the gabble of some truth — as good, old propaganda.

Yet, it is not.  Before King Solomon, even the two prostitutes were never the same.  But again, that’s left to the discerning to figure out — as Solomon did.

Still, such sleight of hand was never Prof. Attahiru Jega’s way, going by his earnest public persona, since he broke into public consciousness.

He was Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) president (1990-1994); Bayero University, Kano (BUK) vice chancellor (2005-2010) and the most definitive INEC chair (2010-2015), rising on the solid wave of public trust, from a member of the Yar’Adua-era Muhammadu Uwais Panel on rotten elections, to be appointed INEC chief, under President Jonathan.

Indeed, Jega’s track was most uncommon.  As a leftist-leaning scholar, he fought the IBB military regime to a standstill.  That made him a non-conformist, which would later gross him the ASUU presidency, among his Aluta scholar-comrades.

That alone should have tagged him “Danger — keep off”, to the conservative order, an establishment often too scared of own shadows.  Yet, the ASUU presidency never stopped him from nicking the BUK vice-chancellorship.

Nor, for that matter, a membership of the Uwais Panel, after Olusegun Obasanjo’s “do-or-die” 2007 elections had set new lows in election butchery, to shame the winner, the decent but ill-fated Umaru Musa Yar’Adua enough, into some urgent electoral reforms that solidly resonated with the polity.

Indeed, at that critical juncture, the Jega establishment/iconoclastic cross-appeal peaked, to eventually fetch him the INEC chair, after the much compromised and fairly vilified Maurice Iwu, who delivered that 2007 electoral outrage.

It was not only tribute to his personal reputation as a scholar of deep conscience and rigorous ethics, it was also the triumph of his winning leftist rhetoric, without betraying any Samson complex that sought to bring down the roof on all in patriotic ire, at the height of impassioned theorizing — or is it grandstanding?

Read Also: Jega to voters: reject PDP, APC in 2023

 

With that mild and trusty temper, Jega pulled off Nigeria’s two most definitive elections to date: the triumph of Goodluck Jonathan, scion of the tiniest minority of his own Ijaw minority, as Nigeria’s first president from a minority ethnic stock; and the electoral burial of the PDP dream of 60 long power years, at a first instance.

Jega’s zenith, of personal glory, may have come with the immaculate delivery of those historic mandates.

But INEC Chair Jega, as a moral Leviathan of a sort, came with his calm but vicious strafing of the pathetic Elder Godsday Orubebe, and his tragic stunts, as the presidency was slipping through the fingers of Goodluck Jonathan!

Still, do all of these clothe Jega, as some moral Daniel come to judgment, dismissing both APC and PDP in frothing moral rage, just to make a case for his own PRP?

That was hubris taken too far!  Such “we-are-good-they-are-bad” emotive lather is just too rich and too mushy, for even saintly Jega to pull off, without doing tremendous damage to own reputation — if not among the neo-plebs, then among the discerning.

That has been clear from the swift partisan flak, from the two dominant parties — and just as well, for both exchanges fall within legitimate partisan thrust and riposte.

Still, in 2023, every party would fly or sink, carrying its own cross.  But that might not be such a drag for both APC and PDP; as it would be a lift for PRP, as Jega tried to spin.

For good or for ill, APC and PDP have records by which voters can judge them.  Both have formed the federal government: PDP for 16 years; APC, for six, though that would climb to eight, when voter revalidation or rejection knocks in 2023.

PRP can’t boast such records, though it’s a far older entity, dating back to the 2nd Republic (1979-1983), when it was formed by the late Mallam Aminu Kano, the great champion of the northern Talakawa.

But even at his heyday, Aminu Kano’s PRP was a fringe party.  True, it won two governorships back then in 1979: Kano, under young, charismatic and radical scholar, Abubakar Rimi; and Kaduna, under that great socialist ideologue, Balarabe Musa, both now dead.

But Malam Balarabe would lose his Kaduna governorship after 21 months (1 October 1979 – 23 June 1981), for refusing hardball cohabitation with the corrupt National Party of Nigeria (NPN)-dominated Kaduna legislature.

Rimi, on the other hand, would fall out with Mallam Aminu, leading to the birthing of the bathetic Sabo Bakin Zuwo, aka ”Banking Zuwo”, PRP three-month governor of Kano, of the government-money-in-government-house fame, at the collapse of that republic, in 1984.

APC would run on its great infrastructural and agricultural strides, and hope voters would remember only that good, sans its serious security challenges.

PDP would run on its normal bluff and bluster, and hope voters would have forgotten its smelly and wayward power years, including own insecurity woes.

Pray, what would PRP run on?  Jega’s saintliness and PRP’s exceptionalism?  Jega had better get real, if his PRP won’t remain the fringe player it has been since birth in 1979!

By Olakunle Abimbola

 

Cunning politicians, and technical-minded courts that hear their cases, think very little of the electorate.

That appears crystal clear from the 4-3 Supreme Court verdict, on the Rotimi Akeredolu vs Eyitayo Jegede Ondo gubernatorial case.

Yet, how do you run a democracy, without due regard for the electorate, and respect for their sacred choices at the polls?

That’s the monster evolving, after 22 straight years of democracy, in this present 4th Republic.  The earlier that trend is halted, the better for everyone.

That strain of judicial activism leads nowhere but perdition, after the cases of Bayelsa, Zamfara; to some extent, Rivers — and, if you love some mechanical balancing, painting a picture of cross-party rogue gains to spite the electorate, then add Imo.

But before going into these fore-mentioned states, this poser: had the July 28 4-3 Supreme Court decision for APC, ended 3-4 for PDP, how would things be now?

Jegede, smashed at the polls, would have taken office.  Winner Akeredolu, with his landslide, would have been shooed out.

Worse: the Ondo electorate would have been told — not by cast votes, but by Their Lordships — their choice stank.  Live with it, or go crack your skulls against the Idanre rocks!

And over what?  Judicial activism that fled the substance but flaunted the shadow, as the real deal?  A wide and merry gallop into judicial autarchy?  Come on!

In Bayelsa, David Lyon Perewonrimi, 2019 governorship election winner, on the eve of taking office, on 13 February 2020, was rehearsing his swearing-in, when Their Leviathan, Supreme Court Justices, turned his win into a loss, in what Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would have dubbed government — sorry, court — magic!

Though Lyon committed no infraction, Degi Eremienyo Wangagha, a sitting senator of the Federal Republic but his running mate, was alleged to have submitted, to INEC, “fake” certificates — a “forgery” a lower court later found only just his many different names!  But poof! went Lyon’s mandate.  Even after proving no forgery, no remedy!

Now, Duoye Diri, loser at the Bayelsa polls, now sits pretty as governor — a triumph of legal cunning by clever politicians; and brilliance, without wisdom, by the apex court!

Again, the Bayelsa electorate hold the short end of the stick, aside from the courts gifting PDP an APC victory.  It was the first in Nigerian history.  But it won’t be the last.

Now, Zamfara.  If Bayelsa was single miscarriage of votes — and therefore electoral injustice — Zamfara was sweeping and wholesale; though no tears for APC for tragically setting itself up, by wilfully shunning own internal laws and processes, in election primaries.

At Zamfara’s 9 March 2019 governorship polls, the result wasn’t even close — APC’s Muktar Idris: 534, 541, to PDP’s Bello Matawale: 179, 452 votes.  That sweep was reflected, across board, in all of the elections: presidential, National Assembly, gubernatorial and state House of Assembly.

But again, Suicidal APC shot itself in the foot.  Abdulaziz Yari, outgoing governor, had allegedly replaced the party’s nomination processes with own personal whim. Both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court won’t have such nonsense, and the penalty was dire: all votes, cast for APC, declared wasted!

Overnight, PDP turned sensational winners — across all spectra of Zamfara polls, sans the presidential one, which primary wasn’t faulted, in a tragic case of APC-on-APC massacre!  That catapulted Matawale to the governorship.

But then, came the thunder of June 29 — two years later: Mutawale, all three Zamfara senators, six of seven Zamfara House of Representatives members and all 23 House of Assembly members, swore fealty to APC!

There were only two exceptions: Deputy Governor Mahdi Aliyu Gusau and Anka/Mafara member of the House of Representatives, Kabiru Gaya, who chose to remain in PDP.

In all of these macabre drama, you don’t even know which is worse: judicial vote awards that turn winners into losers — in Fela-speak, turn white into blue?  Or cross-partisan whoredom that thrusts Party A’s vote to Party B, with absolutely no remorse!

In this grotesque case of Zamfara, however, the winning votes never belonged to PDP, even if that party boasted a judicial charter to haul its electoral loot and crow over it!

As folks croon in Yoruba streets, “ole gbe, ole gba” — grabbed by a band, snatched by another, case closed!

But the snag is the Nigerian vote, in such a delicate democracy, should be no kith-and-kin to such banditry — not even one with a judicial halo!  Yet, that is the case of Bayelsa and Zamfara.

Still, PDP could validly say what it gained in Bayelsa and Zamfara, it also lost in Imo, via same judicial awards, by Nigeria’s apex court.

That is not untrue, particularly that bit about the fourth-placed APC’s Hope Uzodimma (96, 458 votes) upstaging the first three: PDP’s Emeka Ihedioha (273, 404) judicially ousted governor; Action Alliance’s Uche Nwosu (190, 364) and All Progressives Grand Alliance’s Ifeanyi Ararume (114, 676).

But the Supreme Court’s explanation was that Uzodimma’s least votes were nevertheless the majority of lawful votes.

In the concrete jungle of APC Rivers politics, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi and Magnus Abe fought themselves to a terrible pass.  When the dust cleared, the federal ruling party had zero candidates, so INEC declared, in Rivers for the general elections!

It was another strain of APC high fever of self-slaughter, which always redounded to the advantage of PDP, its greatest rival and former federal ruling party.

Might that then be the stunt Eyitayo Jegede, SAN, the PDP Ondo governorship candidate, was pulling, by leaving his clear loss at the polls, to lurch at APC’s internal politics, somehow hoping to pull another Bayelsa or Zamfara?

Just to be clear: this query is without prejudice to the eminent silk’s right to explore any legal and legitimate means to argue his case; and push his gain by the judicial process.  All, after all, is fair in war!

If he had won 4:3 as he had lost 3:4, his win wouldn’t have been less legitimate in the eye of the law, even if that eye had been blinded, by legal technicalities, from finding for substantial justice.

Still, ala Bayelsa and Zamfara, the law would have, yet again, throttled the vote; and an election loser would have gained office, in another fit of “court-ocracy” trumping democracy!

That’s the dire danger of this judicial activism, gaining traction.  That’s why the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, must be wary of partisan cunning, ghosting as judicial briefs, before them.

By all means, punish the rascality of political parties raping own internal processes — but not at the expense of cast votes!  That’s the alarm the near-debacle of Ondo must blare.

By Olakunle Abimbola

 

The Igboho debacle: fugitive from Nigeria to detainee — or worse — in Benin Republic, just echoes the oft-quoted Karl Marx quip that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Sunday Igboho recalls the much more refined Anthony Enahoro, who bolted from Nigeria, to the United Kingdom, to escape the celebrated treasonable felony trials, that involved the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his political disciples in 1962.

But Her Majesty’s government repatriated Chief Enahoro to Nigeria to face trial.  The late Ishan chief, and fine Nigerian nationalist and patriot, captured this high-octane drama in his political odyssey, Fugitive Offender.

Well, we have another fugitive offender in Igboho, who evaded DSS arrest in Nigeria, only to land in gendarme cells in neighbouring Benin.

But unlike the original, who faced no wrap of UK passport forgery or racketeering, Igboho, the neo-fugitive offender, was arraigned in a Cotonou, Benin, court for alleged immigration offences, though his lawyers claim that reportage is incorrect.  Talk of history repeating itself, as tragedy and farce!

Still, since it is crass to kick a man who is down, let the Igboho supporters avail him of the best legal representation.  The case, after all, is before a Benin court.

But fashionable bias, which spurred the Igboho debacle, from the heroics of Igangan, to impassioned Yoruba nation activism, and now to a Benin Republic gaol, merits fair and legitimate discourse, however the Igboho matter is resolved.

Fashionable bias!  That bug bites not a few and brings out the worst in most!

The other day, the Blessed Father Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, stacked his cards, in a virtual discourse, with the US Congress.

As part of his explosive offer, he claimed bandits and terrorists solely target and kill Christians — a clear untruth that has sent the federal authorities howling.

To be clear, these free-wheeling criminals make absolutely no discrimination: not on faith, not on creed, not on tribe.  Indeed, if their bulk are northern Muslims, so are their victims, particularly in the killing fields of the North West and some parts of North Central — and the earlier the security agencies wipe out these brutes, the better for everyone.

But to the holy ranks on the Archbishop’s side, even if he told a lie, it would be the sacred lies of Father Kukah!  The HURRIWAs of this polity, and a lobby that calls itself the Catholic Bishops of Ibadan Ecclesiastic Province, have already received that bishopric untruth with full rapture, even if the truth is badly ruptured!

It’s the spiritual — and temporal — strain of fashionable bias!

Still, in Kukah: between the fiery archbishop playing the immaculate arbiter on the national turf and the southern Kaduna boy oozing the bitterness of ancestral feud and politics, it’s clear, to the acute mind, who is trumping who!  The poet is right: the child indeed, is the father of the man!

The other day too, a pro-Igboho Yoruba monarch from Kwara, reportedly swore Buhari — favourite demon, in the coven of the biased — was oppressing and persecuting the Yoruba.  So, the Benin authorities shouldn’t extradite Igboho to Nigeria.

Well, anything goes in propaganda, except that this royal(?) fib is concrete mirage that can’t be sustained with facts or logic — except, of course, the monarch now blames PMB for the Ilorin Yoruba-Fulani ancestral feud, which dates back to the 19th century Afonja-Alimi saga.

But let’s even interrogate this “persecution”.  A Yoruba man is No. 2 in the government; and the dominant alliance, that birthed it, is South West-North West.

But leave politics and offices aside.  The Lagos-Ibadan corridor now boasts modernized rail, linked to the Apapa, Lagos Ports complex, that could spur movement of passenger and cargo, thus giving the economy a healthy jab in the arm.  Also, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is receiving due attention.  At the Berger, Lagos end, just after the long bridge, still stands spicy deceit from the past: an Obasanjo-era signboard “threatening” to fix that expressway, but never did!  No Buhari billboard in that vicinity right now, but the roads are getting fixed anyway.

Obasanjo never crowed about his “Yoruba-ness”, it’s true.  But he bears a Yoruba name; and he wasn’t shy about dismissing Lagos as a “jungle”, to sate the regnant partisan temper of his day.

Yet, a Fulani “oppressor” is fixing decrepit, long-abandoned roads all over Obasanjo’s “jungle” — not only in Yorubaland but all over, using Babatunde Fashola, another Yoruba son, as his workaholic foot soldier-in-chief — but all folks warm up to is some Buhari-driven, Fulani hate theories!  Talk of a vicious strain of fashionable bias!

For the first time in Nigerian history, this same government is planting core progressive policies at the centre — pro-poor policies and programmes that could have warmed Chief Awolowo’s heart: feeding poor kids in schools nationwide to boost school enrolment, conditional cash transfers to the most vulnerable, credit to the lowest and humblest of micro-trades, giving farmers a fairer deal.

Indeed, as the hate campaign deafens, Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s Vice President, has quietly purloined Buhari’s conditional cash transfer policy — he must have seen its great impact on the helpless and the nameless — rebranded it “Atiku Youth Empowerment Funds”, and called on would-be beneficiaries to access N10, 000 weekly — a scheme his roller coaster presidency, with Obasanjo, never dreamed of!

But lo!  In this high season of fashionable bias, you must be blind to all that, as fevered optics must trump cold facts!  Still, it’s a costly mirage that would come back, in due course, to haunt its pushers, misleading the unwary and excitable millions.

Yes, dire insecurity hobbles Buhari: for the killing spree, by some herder criminals, continues to push a theory of a Fulani militia, sworn to gobbling up the rest of Nigeria.

And yes: there are some Fulani hegemonic extremists, mouthing lunatic screeches.  But if this ethnic cleansing theory is regnant — or even true — how come most of the killed, maimed and sacked are in the North West, bastion of the Fulani themselves?

Not from the South East?  Not from the South West?  Or even from the North Central, where you have a long history of no-love-lost, between Fulani herders, and native communities; and of Christian/Muslim tension?

Could it then be a case of out-and-out criminals?  If so, why not de-link wherever they come from, and tackle crime as crime?

But no matter!  The president must be the fall guy-in-chief, simply because of his Fulani stock.  That must also automatically translate into the president as criminal-in-chief; and, to elite job hustlers, nepotist-in-chief, who must be demonized to no end!

Such fevered optics goaded Igboho into becoming a zesty battling ram — his elite backers cheering from the safety of their homes — until he batted himself into trouble.

Those who traduce a Fulani president, for the crime of a Fulani few, had better brace themselves for what to come.  What goes around, after all, comes around.

Soon an Igbo or Yoruba president would birth — and  those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind!